Start of the Battle of the Scarpe

At three o’clock in the morning on 26 August 1918 General Arthur Currie’s Canadian Corps attacked east of Arras, on both sides of the road to Cambrai. Two Canadian divisions, backed by a powerful barrage, passed through the German forward lines in the dark, and before eight in the morning took the hill with the ruins of the village of Monchy-le-Preux, from which the Germans had been looking down on Arras since March. North of the river Scarpe the 51st (Highland) Division joined in. In this way the great Allied offensive, begun eighteen days earlier at Amiens, spread to the front of General Henry Horne’s British First Army. By the evening, after a full day’s fighting, the Canadians stood more than five kilometres further on than in the morning, and the German command began to prepare a retreat on the front from Bapaume to Noyon.

Back to Arras

The Canadians knew this ground. In the spring of 1917 they had taken Vimy Ridge, north of the Scarpe, and south of the river the British Third Army had taken Monchy-le-Preux after heavy fighting in April that year, during the First Battle of the Scarpe. In March 1918, during the great German offensive, the British gave up the hill without a fight, and on 28 March repulsed at Arras an attack meant to take the town itself. Since then the front here had not moved.

After the victory at Amiens, Currie’s corps was taken back to Arras by bus and rail. The 2nd Canadian Division moved off on the night of 19–20 August, the 3rd a day later, while the 1st and 4th Divisions were still on the way. The Canadians took over from the British the sector from Neuville-Vitasse to the Scarpe, and the 51st Division beyond the river was also placed under Currie. As early as 23 and 24 August the Canadian 31st Battalion occupied the sugar factory and most of the village of Neuville-Vitasse. The German 39th Division gave it up without a long defence. According to German sources it did so because it had detected the arrival of the Canadians, “the best British troops”.

This time surprise was out of the question. The Germans expected the attack from the Somme to spread northwards and had concentrated three divisions on both sides of the Scarpe: the 48th Reserve north of the river, the 214th between the river and the Cambrai road, and the 39th at Neuville-Vitasse. Their artillery was ready to repel an attack, and resting battalions had been moved up to battle positions. Currie could surprise them at most with the hour of the attack. It was originally to start at dawn, but he moved it to three in the morning. Rain fell several times during the night, and Currie noted in his diary that at zero hour it was “not at all too light”.

Monchy-le-Preux

The barrage was fired by fourteen field artillery brigades and nine heavy ones, and reports described it as excellent. On the right, south of the Cambrai road, General Henry Burstall’s 2nd Canadian Division attacked. Surprised by the early hour, the Germans at first defended themselves weakly, so the infantry did not even need the help of the tanks, which in any case could arrive only at about 5.30. The 6th Brigade formed a defensive flank for the corps’ right and cleared the area around Neuville-Vitasse. The 4th Brigade quickly passed through the German forward zone, and soon after six its 20th Battalion took Chapel Hill by the Cambrai road. Once it grew light, the tanks could support the infantry closely, but the Germans on high-lying Monchy could now see everything too, and their field artillery put some of the machines out of action. At 7.30 the 21st Battalion was approaching Guémappe under fire from Monchy.

On the left, General Louis Lipsett’s 3rd Canadian Division faced Orange Hill, which rose a dozen or so metres above its surroundings. Lipsett decided to bypass it along the south bank of the Scarpe. The 8th Brigade, made up of Canadian Mounted Rifles battalions, met weaker resistance than expected. The 4th Battalion advanced along the river bank and went round the hill, while the 2nd Battalion turned right and took it from the north. Then the 1st and 5th Battalions passed through their lines and attacked Monchy from the north and the west. At 7.40 the village was in Canadian hands. It did not come without heavy fighting. Lieutenant Charles Rutherford of the 5th Battalion single-handedly captured several dozen Germans and silenced several machine-gun nests, for which he received the Victoria Cross.

From 6.50 two RAF squadrons assigned to the Canadians circled over the battlefield at a height of about 60 metres, keeping contact with the advancing infantry. Four more attacked targets ahead of it from low altitude. According to the British official history this cost only three pilots wounded, one aircraft missing and four crashed.

Afternoon and evening

At about 11.00 the boundary between the Third and First Armies was shifted so that the attack would give stronger support to the armies attacking further south. The 2nd Canadian Division had to change its direction from east to south-east. At about half past four in the afternoon two battalions of its 6th Brigade crossed the dry bed of the Cojeul stream and attacked the ridge south-east of Wancourt. At the top they ran into uncut wire and machine-gun fire from Hindenburg Line outposts and had to dig in short of their objective. Meanwhile the 18th Battalion took Guémappe at about five in the afternoon after heavy fighting. On the left the 7th Brigade passed through the 8th and advanced less than a kilometre east of Monchy, but fire from both flanks stopped it, and all four tanks accompanying it were destroyed. To the right of the Canadians the British 52nd Division of the neighbouring Third Army broke into the flank of the Hindenburg Line and took the hill near Hénin. Edmonds quotes the histories of the German regiments of the 39th Division, which explained their defeat by the fury of the barrage, the smoke screen, gas and tanks. The division lost 1,300 prisoners that day.

North of the Scarpe the 51st Division received its order to attack only at about 8.30, when news of the capture of Monchy reached Currie’s headquarters. It moved off at 10.30 and met almost no resistance. At noon it took its first objective, in the evening its second, and then reached Rœux on the Scarpe and the western slopes of Greenland Hill.

From the direction of Bois du Vert and Jigsaw Wood, in front of the Fresnes–Rouvroy line, came a strong counter-attack by two regiments of the German 35th Division, brought up from the Drocourt–Quéant line with orders to retake Monchy. It was broken up, but the Canadians advanced no further that day. At dusk their line ran from near Pelves on the Scarpe, about a kilometre east of Monchy-le-Preux, taking in Guémappe and the ruins of the tower near Wancourt. According to Canadian sources the corps advanced more than five kilometres that day. During the night the 6th Brigade, in a silent attack without artillery support, took a trench on the reverse slope of the ridge near Wancourt, from which it was to push on the next day.

The decision to retreat

Edmonds writes that extending the offensive to the First Army front brought “a very great success”. On the German side 26 August brought important decisions. That day the staff of the German Crown Prince’s army group wrote to Erich Ludendorff that a long Allied offensive had to be reckoned with and that they should fall back sector by sector according to plan, as far as a strong, permanent position. Orders were issued for the Second and Eighteenth Armies to withdraw on the night of 27–28 August to the line of the Somme and the canal towards Noyon, and for the left wing of the Seventeenth Army to withdraw with them, giving up Bapaume. According to Edmonds, preparations for the retreat began as early as the night of 26–27 August, and this time it was no longer voluntary.

The Canadians, however, still faced three more days of heavy fighting for the Fresnes–Rouvroy line and, behind it, the even stronger Drocourt–Quéant line.