The 21st March 1918

The following is not an account of the battle on the whole front, only in the area of 6th Division, and my grandfather’s battalion.  By now my grandfather was back with 2nd Battalion, following the disbandment of the 10th.

The bombardment starts

Gas

6th Division

British are over-run

The 22nd March

Pte. Davies, KSLI

The Attack starts

Before Action   I, that on my familiar hill Saw with uncomprehending eyes A hundred of Thy sunsets spill Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice, Ere the sun swings his noonday sword Must say good-bye to all of this;- By all delights that I shall miss, Help me to die, O Lord   The last verse, by Lt Hodgson, M.C., shot in the throat and died, 1st July, 1916.

The Germans were to use gas shells in their offensive, because of this the wind strength and direction would have to be taken into consideration for the final timing of the assault. Ludendorff made his decision at noon on the 20th March after discussions with his meteorological officer, Leutnant Doktor Schmaus. The British were also getting reports of the weather for the next day and as the Official History says; “In the defence schemes no provision had been made for weather conditions, and when, on the evening of the 20th March, the mist and the fog began to form, no special instructions were issued as to the attitude to be adopted. The matter was not overlooked: special precautions were not considered necessary in the circumstances.”

The forecast was for slack winds on the 21st, so the bombardment would take place as planned, 04:40 on the 21st, with the infantry attack following the five hour bombardment. To achieve the required timetable German infantry units had started moving up on the 16th March, final artillery units would be moved up on the evening of the 20th. 

The paragraphs in red are from Sheriff’s “Journeys End”.

Osborne: It’s been expected for the last month.

Hardy: Yes, but it’s very near now: there’s funny things happening over in the Boche country. I’ve been out listening at night when it’s quiet.  There’s more transport than usual coming up - you can hear it rattling over the pave all night; more trains in the distance - puffing up and down and going away again, one after another, bringing up loads and loads of men -

Act I

On the night of 19-20 infantry units moved up to their concealed positions, and then rested through the remaining hours.  All units were to be in their final positions by 01:00 on the 21st.

By 01:00 when the German units were all in position the ground mist had turned to fog, this would have an effect on the coming battle.  The following is from the Battalion History.

At dawn on the 21st, and for some time afterwards, a very heavy fog lay all along the front of the Third and Fifth Armies, and opinions differ greatly as to whether the want of visibility thus occasioned did or did not aid the enemy advance. Major-General Marden, commanding the 6th Division in the IV Corps of the Third Army, considers that the fog did aid the Germans, for he has placed it on record that “fog favoured the Germans in that it prevented our seeing when the attack was launched”.

The 20th Fussartillerie Regiment was facing the 51st Division, just to the right of 6 Division.  Unter Offizier Erich Kubatzki of the 20th said of the last hours before the attack “By early morning the stars were sparkling cold and clear in the sky.  Nearly 4 o’clock. The crews stand at the guns. The roads absolutely deserted. Not a sound. It must be the same picture all along the front. Wherever there is room for a gun there is one, the gunners around it dead silent. The infantry of the storm division lie in cellars, combat packs ready - a cartridge belt, two bags with hand grenades, gas-mask, steel helmet and rifle.” (Middlebrook)

At 04:40 the bombardment began, and was to be the heaviest artillery bombardment ever, but the effect of it was aimed primarily to destroy wire, break phone communications, collapse trenches and break morale. A private Jacobs remembered; I recall thinking “For Christ’s sake, pack it up, Jerry. Come and fight you bastards”.  At the same time I was sane enough to realise that while all those shells were falling we were safe from infantry attack. (Middlebrook)

When the bombardment began the various Headquarters realised that this was the ‘real thing’; “Orders were at once issued for the troops held in readiness behind the Battle Zone to “man battle stations”, the code word for which, very suitably, was “Bustle”. Despite fog and shelling, which compelled the troops to wear their gas masks, and caused them to hold on to each other like blind men as they stumbled forward in the darkness, this movement was generally completed in good time.  Only a few units lost their way and were late or altogether failed to reach their stations; some battalions had not waited for the general order, and arrived at their stations before the bombardment began.” [Official History]

Siegfried Sassoon Attack   At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glow’ring sun, Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over the top, While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, Flounders in mud.  O Jesus, make it stop!

The effect of the bombardment on the British troops was compounded by the addition of phosgene gas shells. These meant that the men had to spend the period of that horrific barrage wearing their gas helmets, constricting breathing, vision and sapping their energy.

The picture on the right is from “The War Budget”

My grandfather suffered twice from gas poisoning in the war, this may have been one of them.

Henry Williamson has a brief description in ‘Love and the Loveless’ of an attack while wearing a gas mask;

“The whole area was being drenched by gas. Stifling hot mask of box-respirator. Goggle glass steamy. Damn, why not anti-dimmed by paste?  Impossible to speak, rubber teat in mouth.”

The following is from Max Plowman’s “A Subaltern on the Somme”.

I have just come into the dug-out from wiring. All the while we were at work we heard light shells sailing with a watery whistle high over our heads towards Hebuterne.  They flowed on in a stream, and we wondered what they could be, for they burst with very little noise.  Now this sickly-sweet pear-drop smell, together with a tingling sensation in the eyes, shows that they were what we call tear shells - shells filled with some gas, very harmless in its effects, but sufficiently unpleasant to make the eyes water profusely.  They also make uncovered food uneatable and smoking beastly. Those last two effects are particularly offensive to me because my birthday fare, sent from England, lies here in the dug-out wasted, and a hard smoker could do great violence to the man who poisons his tobacco.

This futile waste seems an epitome of the childishness of modern war.  The kind of mind that now devises inventions of war would be kept in an imbecile home in any civilised society; such a mind is as far beneath reprobation as contempt.

It has been mentioned that the slack winds allowed the Germans to use their gas plan, but also it led to a visibility problem which assisted the Storm Troopers. Quite a lot of the battlefield would have poor visibility, a mix of gas, smoke and mist.  From the Official History; “At 6 a.m., sunrise, the fog was still thick on the front of the Fifth and Third Armies, particularly on the right of the former in the valley of the Oise and along the St. Quentin canal, where even a column of troops at a distance of twelve yards was lost to sight. As the sun rose, its disc could be seen faintly from the higher ground where the fog was thinner, but on the low ground the fog remained thick until well into the morning. The denseness of the fog towards 9.40 a.m., the time of the German assault, may be said to have varied inversely with the distance from the Oise valley near Barisis; it was thickest, and lasted longest, that is, until 1 p.m., on the right of the Fifth Army”. This fog would suit the tactics of the Storm Troop units.

Captain Lawrence in 9th Division from Lyn Macdonald’s ‘To the Last Man’; “Soon amongst the high-explosive shells falling all around we heard the unmistakable plop, plop as gas-shells fell mixed with the others, and the burnt-potato or onion smell warned us it was time to put on our gas-helmets.

.....we then all staggered out to find our battle positions, trying as best we could to see through helmet eyepieces and the dense fog.  We were making very slow progress when Sergeant-Major Alex Smith did a very brave thing. He pulled off his gas-helmet, fully aware of the grave risk, and led us through the thick gas to our allotted posts.  I was quite aghast at Smith’s selfless act, deliberately inviting a cruel death. We had witnessed it graphically in our reserve line - the terrible sight of gassed men caught by the mixed gas and high-explosive shell fire.  They were carried past on stretchers in what seemed an endless procession, each man frothing at the mouth and blowing bubbles. It was a frightful and unnerving sight.”

The 6th Division was in an area of the British front line opposite Queant as part of IV Corps. The three brigades of of 6 Division were positioned with 18th on the right, 71st in the centre and 16th on the left.  The disposition within 16 Brigade was; 1st Shropshire Light Infantry on the left, 2nd York & Lancs on the right and 1st Buffs in reserve at Favreuil. Facing the left half of the division, some 2,000 yards of front, were the units of a complete German Corps with five divisions - five British battalions in that sector of front with their reserves some six miles back, facing fourty-five German battalions.  One of the front line German divisions facing the 6th Division and 2nd York & Lancs was the very strong elite 195th Division, a complete division of “Jagers” (the 6th, 8th & 14th Jager Regiments) and the 17th Division.

During the bombardment the German Storm Troops got as close as they could to the British lines, their initial “shock attacks” to be delivered as soon as the barrage lifted were essential to the success of the whole attack. When these troops launched their assaults they were surprised to see how much wire was destroyed, the collapse of the British trench system and how quickly and easily they were able to advance into the Forward Zone.  In less than an hour most of the British line had fallen back or disappeared. The German plan of infiltration and rapid follow-up had worked.

There were no dug-outs in our front line; it was very thinly held to prevent casualties. We had had to huddle up under the parapet during the shelling; there was no other shelter.  When the bombardment lifted, we were not attacked frontally.  We were considerably shaken by the shelling.  It was a moment of fear.  “What’s coming next out of the mist?” We fired our rifles blindly into the mist then heard firing from our left and from the rear. We realised that we were being outflanked.  The men started to drift back until we were left with only two men, myself and a sergeant.  (This was a report from a soldier in the 51st, mentioned by Middlebrook)

It was the view of many of the men in the Forward Zone that they were there to be sacrificed in the initial attack.  many found themselves surrounded and then surrendered quickly. There were some 21,000 prisoners taken that day by the Germans.  The following, again from Middlebrook, is the recollection of a soldier from the German 89th Grenadier Regiment who attacked the 1st Shropshires in 16th Brigade, immediately to the left of 2nd York & Lancs.

   Our orders were very simple: “Always forward and keep right up with the creeping barrage.” I noticed a minefield, which we avoided easily, and, in their front-line trench, a heap of bloody slime rose up in front of me - an English soldier, his eyes imploring. I had my pistol ready to put him out of his misery but somehow I couldn’t.  He fell back into the mud.  A terrible end for him in this cruel war.

   We went on farther against only feeble resistance but then the fog lifted and we were fired on by a machine-gun post. I got several bullets through my jacket but I was not hit. We all took cover. A few hundred metres to the right I saw the commander of the 3rd Battalion.  It was good to see him there.  His trumpeter was next to him and he sounded the signal “advance”.  Trumpeters left and right followed suit. It was a most heartening sound.  In long, loose lines we moved forward, looking like a picture of the old battlefields. A platoon from another company joined me and between us we killed the six or seven men - every one of them - in the machine-gun post.  I lost five or six men in my platoon; I don’t know what the other platoon lost.  The whole action had taken about thirty minutes.  I was thirsty so I went to one of the dead Englishmen and took his water bottle.  It contained tea, not hot but still warm. It was marvelous. It must have been good because I can still remember it so well.

   I looked across to the right and there were British prisoners going back. I estimate that there were about 120 - a company perhaps.  They were stooping down and hurrying back to avoid being hit. I think that English position had been covered by the nest that we had just wiped out and this much larger number of enemy decided that they had better surrender.

The report of the C.O. for the 2nd York & Lancs describes how the battle went for those units that my grandfather was part of, and also mentions the surrender of a group of British soldiers.  My grandfather may well have been one of that group, as he was captured that day.  According to a story I can remember my father telling me many years ago, my grandfather was captured with “Uncle Jim”. Jim was not my father’s uncle, but was a close friend of my grandfather. Jim was shot that day in both legs, and my grandfather always believed that it was the cold that morning that kept Jim alive as it limited the bleeding.  After capture Jim had both legs amputated by the Germans. My father remembered Jim as a man with no legs in a wheelchair running a sweet shop in Owlerton in Sheffield where my father and the other kids used to buy their sweets.

Leutnant Wedekind in the 20th [German] Division to the right of my Grandfathers unit, taken from Lyn Macdonald’s book; “Five or ten Englishmen without weapons and with strange expressions came towards us. They had not quite reached us when their own artillery dropped some shells between them and us. Several of them fell down, and the rest ran past us. We ran over to the first, shot-up English trench. As far as we could see, the enemy was not putting up any resistance at all and had evacuated his positions. We quickly pushed on.  There were no Englishmen in the second trench either.  We were in an empty field.” Many of the English soldiers found themselves quickly surrounded that day.

Over-run

The German advance in that first hour was overwhelming.  very few of the British soldiers made it back from the Forward to the Battle Zone, and the British Third and Fifth Armies lost the equivalent of fourty-seven infantry battalions, with Gough having lost most, around 30% of his effective infantry in that first hour.  The majority of the losses were men who had been captured rather than killed.  The rapid advance meant that not only were the men in the Forward Zone rapidly over-run, but in many areas men in the Battle Zone found themselves under attack within half an hour of the start of the German infantry attack.  The new German tactic is quite well described by a 16th Brigade officer from the 1st Buffs.

I suddenly saw small groups of Germans coming through on the high ground to the right of the Hirondelle Valley.  We had lost our Lewis gun in the shelling and only had rifles.  We opened fire. We undoubtedly hit some but this was the whole point of their tactics. As soon as one party was fired on, the others came on and round.  They were looking for our weak spots.  Whenever one of these parties got established, they opened up on us with a machine-gun but I don’t remember any of my little group being hit. In our previous attacks, a platoon had gone over in a line and they made a good target; we found this new tactic of the Germans interesting. (Middlebrook)

This photo is from “The War Budget”. It is not from 21st March, but shows the troops trying to get a “bully beef” lunch in a shell crater.

The Germans had made the kind of advance that both sides had been looking for  after six years of static warfare. Total breakthrough by the Germans was to some extent prevented by the move forward of reserve forces into the Battle Zone.  For 59th Division, on the left of 6 Division the 2/4th Battalion of the Leicester Regiment stopped the German advance, while the 1st Battalion of the Leicesters helped hold the Battle Zone for 6th Division. Middlebrook’s description of the situation facing the 2/4 Leicesters.  “... the Leicesters could get no farther than the rear of the Battle Zone, which may have been a fine line on the map but was no more than a marked-out trench with only the turf removed and having no barbed wire. It was completely exposed in the open.......the men piled up in front of them the pieces of cut turf to give a little cover from the masses of German infantry .....There was absolutely nothing between the advancing Germans and the open ground behind the Battle Zone except this single line of infantrymen in their makeshift positions.”

When the 9th Division on the extreme left of Vth Army retired back to the rear trenches (Green Line), they were equally poor.  From Lyn Macdonald’s book we have a description from Private Jamieson; “The Green Line was supposed to be really something outstanding in the way of a defensive line, but it was never completed, and when we came back into it we thought the trenches must have been intended to trap tanks, they were so wide! They were twice the width of a normal trench - about twelve feet wide - and they had no fire-steps.  That was the first moment that I was frightened, really frightened, because the orders came along, ‘This position must be held at all costs until the last man.’  Well, you’ve got to be in that situation to understand what it means. I was only nineteen, I’d only been in France a little over a month, and I thought I was going to be killed.  I had a sinking feeling in my tummy.  Everybody was thinking, ‘How on earth can we hold this position? It’s impossible!’  That was on the night of the 22nd.  Of course, what happened was that, when daylight came on the morning of the 23rd, we had been outflanked and we were out in the blue. The order came to retire once again, which I must say was a great relief to me.”

As mentioned above, the highest casualty rate on the 21st March was the number of men captured, rather than killed.  The Germans planned the attack with Storm Troops infiltrating quickly, avoiding strong points that could be “mopped up” by following forces with no regard for their flanks. The British were used to fighting in line, giving mutual support to the flanks of adjacent units. One result of the German tactics was that British units withdrew quickly when these tactics exposed their flanks.  For the British there was a large withdrawal or a “March Retreat”. 6th Division was no different, with both flanks exposed it withdrew during the night of the 21st to maintain cover with adjacent units.  As the Official History states at the end of day on the 21st “Of the two front battalions of the 16th Brigade, 1/Shropshire L.I. and 2/York & Lancaster, only 57 and 54 of all ranks came back from the Forward Zone.”

The 22nd March.   The 6th were in action again on the 22nd. This is from the Battalion History. “On the morning of the 22nd some one hundred and fifty survivors of the 2nd York and Lancaster, joined by seventy men - all that remained at hand of the Shropshire L.I. - were ordered to make an attack upon Vaulx Wood, but this was found to be out of the question by reason of the very deadly fire maintained by the enemy machine-guns; and these troops were then directed to make a stand along the Vaulx-Morchies Sunken Road (see the trench map). About 11 o’clock, however, the enemy attacked this line, causing its defenders to withdraw to another defensive line in rear; but very soon the German infantry managed to break through on the left flank of the Battalion, penetrated into the village of Vaulx and commenced to fire up the Sunken Road where the Battalion was dug in, at the same time enveloping the right. The Battalion held its ground, however, inflicting severe losses on the attackers, until nearly surrounded, when it fell gradually back to a similar position in rear, where a stand was again made, finally being ordered to withdraw to the Army Line.  Here, about midnight, the Battalion was relieved by the 10th Queen’s of the 41st Division, and marched back to a camp at Achiet-le-Grand, where it arrived in the early hours of the 23rd and took up a position on the line Longeast Wood - Achiet-le-Grand - Bapaume Railway, where it dug in.  On the evening of the 23rd a warning order was issued to the effect that the 6th Division was now to leave the Third Army and join General Plumer’s Second Army in the north, and the move commenced next day.”

The German offensive lasted for some time after this, and follow-on actions will be covered later. For my Grandfather, his active war was over, and the 6th Division had now moved to another Army. Another who was captured was the Grandfather of Adrian Gray, he contacted me recently to say that his relative had been with the 11th Essex (also in the 6th Division) and in April he sent a card home from a POW camp in Poland.

I was contacted by Neil Hampson whose great grandfather was in the 1st Battalion, Kings Shropshire Light Infantry. They were also part of the 16th Brigade, and were on the immediate left of my grandfather’s battalion.  Unfortunately Neil’s relative, 17205 Pte. R.J.Davies, was killed in the battle. The following extract is from Neil’s email to me:

“He enlisted in 1916 (aged 40/41) despite him being in a Reserved Occupation as an engineer and having five children. He took part in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 with the 6th Division. His unit was in the adjoining sector/trenches to your grandfather and the 2Bn Y&L on that day, although I do not yet know which Company he was in.

He has no known grave, being commemorated on the Arras Memorial. His body was buried by the Germans after the battle (and his identity disc returned after the war), but the exact whereabouts are not known. The CWGC has told me that the grave locations were not well marked during this battle due to the speed of the Geman advance and were likely distrubed by the subsequent fighting in 1918.”

Neil believes that he was killed and buried in the Queant / Lagnicourt area.

However, after the war, Neil’s great grandmother received the following letter from the War Office:

From : Record Office No. 1 (No. 4 District) Shrewsbury

To: Mrs. M L Davies, 26 Salop Road, Oswestry, Salop

20 April 1920

Madam,

A further report has now been received from the British Military Mission, Berlin, taken from the German records, that your late husband,No. 17205 Pte. R. J. Davies K.S.L.I. fell and was buried between 25/26th March 1918 on the waste land between the field roads Queant-Lagnicourt and Vaux (actually Vaulx). Exact burial place not known.

Yours faithfully,

Pte R.J. Davies, a family man of 40, off to the war. Neil’s grandmother is at the front, aged 4. Photo courtesy of Neil Hampson.