Troops from the colonies and dominions of the European empires had been looked down
on or dismissed as unequal to their European counterparts, thought they had been slowly
but steadily proving that wrong as the war progressed.
And that happens big time this week, as Canada strikes.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the United States declared war on the German Empire, though it would take many
months to get men trained and over to Europe.
British and Russian forces had made contact on the Persian front, and in the west there
was a gathering of French political and military leaders to discuss the coming British and
French Offensives scheduled to begin April 9th and 16th.
And at 5:30 AM Easter Monday, April 9th, 1917, the Battle of Arras began with British army
assaults at Arras and Vimy Ridge.
As I said last week, the British had nearly 3,000 big guns, and the preliminary artillery
barrage, featuring the new 106 fuses, had begun April 4th.
There was real hope that the massive German barbed wire emplacements would be totally
destroyed.
And there were new innovations.
Livens projectors could launch barrels of poison gas well over a kilometer and completely
saturate a region.
The British also used batteries of Vickers machine guns firing long-range indirect lines
of fire whose job was to rain down bullets on road intersections.
They were also determined to dominate the air above the battlefield for recon and ar
tillery spotting, but both sides risked everything in the skies, knowing that failure there would
be disastrous for the men on the ground.
In just the preparations for the battle, 75 Allied aircraft were lost and 19 pilots were
killed.
As the battle began, every German artillery battery that had been identified was deluged
with high explosives and gas shells, two mines tore open the ground beneath the German lines,
and the creeping barrage rolled forward, the infantry behind it.
At Vimy Ridge came the Canadians, who had moved to within 150 meters of the enemy through
a maze of sewers and tunnels and were now partially hidden by a smoke screen.
Four divisions attacking as one, they were on top of the Germans before they knew what
hit them and many Germans were trapped in their dugouts.
“...making for the second line... we came under fire from machine guns in pillboxes
on the hillside.
Still we went forward, losing only a very few men at this stage, until... there came
a withering burst of fire from hidden machine guns well ahead of us...
Then a trench mortar group came along, sighted on the machine gun post and secured direct
hits on it.
We again went forward...
When we finally reached the point at where we were to halt... we were surprised to find
that we had been in action for three hours.
It had been hard slogging, but we had reached our objective.”
The first two German lines, it turned out, had been obliterated by the artillery barrage,
though the third and points beyond would prove tougher.
In fact, the Canadians and the British 51st Division on their right had already consolidated
their positions before German counter attack divisions had any chance at all to get there,
and the swarming Canadians had swept the Germans off of most of the ridge quite easily.
Within three days, the whole of the ridge would be in Canadian hands.
The first British assaults on the axis of advance of the Arras-Cambrai road were also
successful.
The German lines were pierced and 6.000 prisoners were captured.
In fact, in under an hour pretty much the entire German first line was overrun, and
the second line in two hours.
By sundown, even part of the third line had fallen.
That third line was another matter; it was better fortified and it held fast.
The tanks to be used fell behind and many of them either broke down or were trapped
in the mud - at this stage tanks still had major problems.
There was also a new problem- horse drawn artillery had huge difficulties crossing the
captured German trenches, with horses up to their bellies in mud.
Some had to even be put down.
And those artillerymen had never before had to take their guns past the front lines.
And remember, just because I use the word success about this day, that doesn’t mean
the attackers didn’t take heavy casualties themselves.
Even that night as the attackers slept, an unexpected cold spell saw to it that some
of them never awoke again.
There were also problems near the hamlet of Bullecourt.
It was small but it was a strategic point, and the Germans had turned it, and the nearby
villages of Riencourt and Hendecourt into fortresses.
Lieutenant-General William Birdwood’s I ANZACs faced it on the left wing of Hugh Gough’s
5th Army.
The plan was to attack on the 9th, punch a hole, and execute a pincer movement to the
north, towards the 3rd Army, but Gough discovered that his artillery had not broken the German
barbed wire - over 30m thick in places - and figured it would take another week of shelling
to do so.
When he heard of the successes further north, he was anxious to join the battle and accepted
a plan for a surprise attack by one division - the 4th Australian - on a front of just
2km, if it was supported by every tank available.
This was 12 Mark I’s, and their job was to handle the barbed wire.
The Australians would have British artillery and infantry support and by 1 AM on the 10th,
they were in no man’s land, lying out on the snow.
The tanks did not show up, though, and the attack was called off just in time, though
the British support infantry was not informed of this, went forward, and some of them even
broke into the Hindenburg Line only to be ravaged by German machine guns.
Gough decided to try it all again the following day.
That day, to the north, the main attack was resumed, and Commander of the Third Army General
Edmund Allenby did so with urgency since he had received word that big German reinforcements
were on their way, and by that evening he was so confident of a real breakthrough that
he messaged his commanders, “All troops are to understand that the Third Army is now
pursuing a defeated enemy and that risks must be freely taken.”
The men at the front received this with what I will describe as stunned incredulity because
it wasn’t true.
They were still making gains, and the Canadians would soon secure all of Vimy, but it was
slower going.
And did the Aussie infantry down at Bullecourt get their tanks that day?
Sort of, but they played no real part in the fighting.
It’s confusing to figure out what exactly happened to them, but Robin Neillands sketches
out in “The Great War Generals on the Western Front” that only one of the tanks managed
to be effective at Bullecourt.
But the plan for the no-longer-a-surprise assault relied ENTIRELY on the tanks.
Still, the Australians went forward and took a portion of the Hindenburg Line, but they
were cut off from aid, and had to withstand counter attacks alone.
By the time they pulled back they had taken over 50% casualties in 12 hours.
I don’t have time to really go into it, but the men had performed their duty admirably
and had been let down by shockingly bad command.
But at High Command, that sense of impending victory was still there on the 11th and British
Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig insisted on sending forward the cavalry to penetrate
the “gap” in the German lines.
They rode forward in a blizzard singing the Eton Boating Song “Jolly Boating Weather”,
but were soon stopped and repulsed by German barbed wire and machine guns.
The British did, though, capture a first day objective, the village of Monchy-le-Preux,
advancing in the Scarpe Valley after a brilliant display of “Zone call” artillery that
could bring down a tremendous concentration of shells on specific targets, like German
defensive batteries, but as the blizzards grew in intensity, the first German reinforcements
finally arrived.
And seriously, after three solid days of attacking in bad weather, the attackers were exhausted.
Haig even began urging caution, and we haven’t heard him doing a lot of that before.
So the week ended with the offensive stalled for the moment.
For all of their new technical skill and tactical improvements, the British army still, it seems,
did not have the means to break through the new German defense system, only into it.
Thing is, the first day had been really carefully planned, right?
But after the successes the following attacks were just ad hoc, and they failed.
Nevertheless, the British had done what they were supposed to do - provide a diversion
for French General Robert Nivelle’s impending offensive at the Chemin des Dames, scheduled
for the 16th.
And the preliminary artillery barrage for that offensive began the 9th.
And here are a few notes to end the week: on the 7th, Cuba and Panama declare war on
Germany, later in the week Brazil and Bolivia cut diplomatic ties with Germany, and Austria-Hungary
and Bulgaria do the same with the US.
And that was the week, a week of intense action as the Western Front comes alive after months
of slumber.
Erich Ludendorff, who had designed the new German defenses, had been surprised by the
losses of April 9th - his 52nd birthday - especially to the Canadians at Vimy Ridge.
At first he thought his new system didn’t work, but on closer examination it turned
out that General Ludwig von Falkenhausen commanding the German 6th army, had not followed new
instructions and continued to do the old style of defense, trying to block the Canadians
with a heavily manned continuous front line and not falling back when pressed.
He had kept his 2nd and 3rd lines near the front, vulnerable to artillery, and his reserves
were 20km to the rear, too far away to do any good.
Where the new system had been tried, it had worked and worked well.
Falkenhausen was dismissed and every effort was made to ensure that the new system would
be in full operation when the French attacked at the Chemin des Dames next week.
If you want to know more about Ludendorf’s defense system, you can watch our special
episode right here.
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