Noyon in the First World War

Noyon, an old episcopal town on the Oise with a Gothic cathedral, was for two and a half years the point of the German front nearest Paris, less than a hundred kilometres from the capital. That made it an important strategic point. The French recovered it in March 1917, when the Germans fell back to the Hindenburg Line, lost it a year later during the great spring offensive and retook it in August 1918, in ruins.

The war comes to the town (1914)

In the last days of August 1914 the British Expeditionary Force retreated through Noyon, and its general headquarters stood here on 26–28 August. Close behind it came the German First Army of Alexander von Kluck, which on 30 August turned south-east, towards Noyon and Compiègne. The date the town was taken is uncertain: the British chronology gives 26 August, French sources 30 August, and the description of the British military cemetery at Noyon 1 September.

After the Battle of the Marne the Germans fell back to the Aisne, and the Race to the Sea began near Noyon. From 17 September the French Sixth Army advanced along the Oise towards the town, while the new Second Army of General Noël de Castelnau tried to outflank the German wing in the First Battle of Picardy. The British chronology records that the French entered Noyon on 21 September and the Germans retook it on 25 September, but this episode is poorly documented. What is certain is that the front settled a few kilometres west and south of the town, between Lassigny and the Oise.

“The Germans are at Noyon” (1914–1917)

When the front froze, it formed a great salient around Noyon, driven deep into France. Joseph Joffre wanted to cut it off with blows from two sides, from Artois and from Champagne, but the attack in Champagne, waged from December 1914 to March 1915, did not break the front. Until the Germans left, Georges Clemenceau reminded the readers of his newspaper of it with a short sentence: “The Germans are at Noyon”.

The occupation ended in March 1917, during the retreat to the Hindenburg Line. For several days the Germans flooded the roads around the town and blew up bridges, and on 18 March French cavalry and light troops from the army of General Émile Fayolle entered it.

Unlike Péronne, Noyon had not been destroyed. The Germans gathered the civilians of the area in it, and also in Nesle and Ham, almost all of them children, mothers and old people. According to the British official history, they wanted in this way to get rid of “useless mouths”, and they took almost everyone able to work behind the new line. The overcrowded and hungry town welcomed the French soldiers after thirty months of occupation, and on 24 March President Raymond Poincaré visited it.

Second occupation and destruction (1918)

A year later Noyon again lay in the path of a German offensive. During Operation Michael the Eighteenth Army of General Oskar von Hutier broke through a line of French reinforcements on 25 March 1918 and in the evening entered the town, where abandoned British depots were burning. The inhabitants, liberated only a year earlier, fled south again. The Battle of Noyon ended a day later below the hill of Mont Renaud, and the Eighteenth Army turned its main forces west, towards Montdidier and Amiens.

For five months Noyon lay on the front line, and French artillery on the surrounding hills reduced it to ruins. The roofs of the cathedral burned. In June the Germans attacked west of the town, between Montdidier and Noyon, in the Battle of the Matz, but after initial success they were stopped by a counter-attack of General Charles Mangin.

In August the armies of Mangin and Georges Humbert attacked between the Oise and the Aisne in the Second Battle of Noyon. On 29 August 1918 Humbert’s French Third Army retook the town, and the next day it took the hills above it. Some French sources treat that second day as the date of final liberation. The French found Noyon about 80 per cent destroyed, with mined streets and public buildings.

After the war

Of the 1,800 houses Noyon had in 1914, only 23 were fit to live in. The town was rebuilt in an effort to keep its old, picturesque character, and the rebuilding of the cathedral took many years. In 1920 Noyon was awarded the Legion of Honour.