Start of the Battle of the Matz

On 9 June 1918 the German Eighteenth Army of General Oskar von Hutier attacked the French Third Army of General Georges Humbert on a front of more than 30 kilometres between Montdidier and Noyon. The attack, code-named “Gneisenau”, the fourth of the great German offensives that spring, was meant to straighten the front between two large salients driven into the Allied lines in March on the Somme and at the end of May on the Aisne, and to open the road to Compiègne. For the first time since March the French knew exactly when the Germans would strike, and yet the first day brought them another defeat. By evening the Germans had advanced about 10 kilometres in the centre, crossed the river Matz and taken more than 8,000 prisoners. This time, however, the French front did not fall apart.

Between the Somme and the Marne

Two weeks earlier, on 27 May, the Germans had opened the Third Battle of the Aisne: within a few hours they took the Chemin des Dames, and within four days they reached the Marne. The success, however, went beyond their plans. The western wing of the Seventh Army got stuck at Soissons, and the huge new salient was supplied by a single railway line. To the west of it, between the Oise and Montdidier, the French front still jutted out as a wedge between the new salient and the March one, when the Germans took Montdidier. The Eighteenth Army, the same one that in March had smashed the right wing of the British Fifth Army, had been preparing an attack on this wedge for weeks. At first it was only meant to widen the Seventh Army’s front and complete the victory on the Aisne. On 5 June, however, the Supreme Command changed its role: Hutier was told that whether the Seventh Army could go on depended on the success of “Gneisenau”.

The plan was more modest than in March and May. The Eighteenth Army was to advance about 8 kilometres in a single bound, pivoting on Montdidier, to the lower course of the Matz, a small stream flowing towards the Oise above Compiègne. No final objective was set, but it was hoped to reach the line Montdidier–Compiègne. According to the British official history, which summarises the German monograph, Hutier had 11 divisions in the first line and 7 in the second and third, together with about 600 artillery batteries, many of them brought over from the Chemin des Dames. The attack was fixed for 7 June, but at a conference at army headquarters Erich Ludendorff became convinced that the artillery would not get into position in time, and postponed it to 9 June. He knew that this meant loosening the link with the battle on the Aisne and would give the French time to move up reserves, but he judged careful preparation more important.

The warning

Before 27 May the Germans had concealed their preparations with exceptional care. Now there was no time for that. From 30 May French aircraft and intelligence recorded all the usual signs of a coming attack: traffic on the roads, new batteries, ammunition dumps. The staff was for a moment confused, because the preparations were so open that they might be a ruse, and similar signs had also been seen north of the Somme. Above all, the French did not know what forces the Germans would throw into the battle. By the staff’s reckoning it could be as many as forty-odd divisions, more than on the Aisne. Philippe Pétain and the commander of the Reserve Army Group, General Émile Fayolle, assembled behind the Third Army several reserve divisions, a cavalry corps, tanks and strong air forces. Ferdinand Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied armies, also asked Douglas Haig to get ready to move British reserves south. Haig, who himself expected an attack on his own front, protested and appealed to the government. On 7 June Foch, Haig, Lord Milner and the chiefs of staff met in the office of Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau; Foch gave an assurance that he did not intend to take the British reserves unless it became truly necessary.

There was also a dispute over how to defend the threatened sector. Humbert, in line with Foch’s earlier directives not to give up an inch of ground, concentrated on the first position, while the second was barely marked out. After the defeat on the Aisne, where General Duchêne had crowded his troops into the front line and lost them under German shellfire, Pétain and Fayolle ordered the main line of resistance to be moved back. Humbert replied that eight days were needed to prepare the second position, and placed the line of resistance on the line of redoubts, on average about 3 kilometres from the German trench mortars. Fayolle agreed. In practice, however, nearly half of the French infantry still stood in a belt up to 2 kilometres from the front line. On 7 and 8 June prisoners stated that the attack would come on 10 June at the latest, and the number of German deserters suddenly rose, which in 1918 was a sure sign of an approaching offensive. In the night of 8/9 June one of them revealed the exact day and hour.

Night and dawn

The French decided to forestall the Germans. At 11.50 p.m. on 8 June their artillery opened counter-preparation fire on the German assembly positions and batteries. A few minutes later, at midnight, the German bombardment began. It was planned much like that of 27 May, but lasted 40 minutes longer, 3 hours and 20 minutes. Against about 600 German batteries the French had 146 field and 161 heavy batteries, and there was a similar disproportion in trench mortars. The infantry moved off towards morning. According to French accounts this happened at different times on different sectors, between 3 and 4.30 a.m., which the British official history attributes to the haste in which the German staffs worked. According to Foch, the sector between Ayencourt near Montdidier and Thiescourt was attacked first, and at 6 a.m. the attack extended along the front as far as the Oise.

The German divisions were not spread evenly. On the flanks they were stretched thin, while in the centre, between Rollot and Thiescourt, according to Foch nine of the thirteen first-echelon divisions attacked. They assaulted as they had since March: small groups infiltrated between the strongpoints, which were left to the following waves. The forward position, which the French treated as a screen held mainly by machine guns, fell quickly. In the centre two French divisions gave way under the blow and shortly after 7 a.m. were thrown back beyond the village of Gury. By about noon the Germans had passed through the main line of resistance along almost the whole width of the attack, except for a few places on the flanks.

The Matz valley

At 10 a.m. the Germans entered Ressons-sur-Matz, and at 11 a.m. they took the second French position on a stretch of about 12 kilometres, from Méry to Mareuil-la-Motte. Advancing along the Matz valley, they outflanked the fortifications on the wooded hills of the Lassigny massif, between Lassigny and Ribécourt, and occupied the Saint-Claude plateau and Thiescourt Wood. In the afternoon six French divisions from reserve entered the fight and slowed the attack. In the evening the Germans halted on a line from Méry through Belloy and Marquéglise to Vandélicourt. In the centre they had advanced about 10 kilometres, crossed the middle course of the Matz, taken roughly one third of the second position and pushed 3–5 kilometres beyond it. They took more than 8,000 prisoners, and three French divisions were almost knocked out of the fight. The right wing of the attack, near Montdidier, gained little. Farther west, in the sector of the French First Army, stood the American 1st Division, which at the end of May had taken Cantigny; the attack did not reach it. The artillery bombardment went on all night.

Evening at headquarters

Despite the loss of ground, the French command was not as alarmed as after 27 May. The troops fell back in good order and nowhere did they break. Fayolle moved further divisions closer to the front: one from the Tenth Army he handed over to the Third Army, another he brought from Verdun, and yet another, from the Marne valley, he held in readiness. At 7.30 p.m. Pétain asked Foch to give him the British XXII Corps. Foch refused, because the armies of Rupprecht of Bavaria facing the British had not taken part in the fighting and could still strike in the north. He asked Haig only to move one division of that corps to Conty, south of Amiens. As he wrote in his memoirs, Hutier’s attack had driven a new wedge into the French front and directly threatened Compiègne, but the forces of the Reserve Army Group were sufficient to master the situation. On the same day, according to the British official history, General Duchêne, blamed for the defeat on the Aisne, lost command of the Sixth Army to General Jean Degoutte.

On the German side the first day was regarded as a success: in the centre the Eighteenth Army had reached its first objective. Its attack, however, was to last only a few more days. The next day the Germans reached the Oise near Ribécourt, but on the western flank of the breach Fayolle was already gathering reserves for a counter-attack, which on 11 June was led by General Charles Mangin.