THE BATTLE OF THE SAMBRE 4 NOVEMBER 1918 by JOHN DEREK CLAYTON 669689 A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY College of Arts & Law Department of History University of Birmingham September 2015 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Acknowledgements The completion of a PhD thesis can be at times a solitary occupation: the completion of this one would never have been possible, however, without help from a number of sources on the way. My thanks go particularly to my supervisor, Dr John Bourne, for his direction, support, encouragement and unfailingly wise counsel. I would also thank Professor Peter Simkins who supervised my MA dissertation and then suggested the Battle of the Sambre as a subject ripe for further study. He then kindly supplied data on the performance of divisions in the Hundred Days and permitted me to use it in this work. Thanks must also go to the staffs of the National Archive, the Imperial War Museum and the Bundesarchiv – Militärarchiv in Freiburg. Fellow PhD students have been a constant source of friendship and encouragement: my grateful thanks to Geoff Clarke, who allowed me to use some of his doctoral research on logistics, and to Trevor Harvey, Peter Hodgkinson, Alison Hine and Michael LoCicero. 2 Battle of the Sambre 4 November 1918 Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Context 13 Chapter 2 XVII Corps 30 Chapter 3 VI Corps 49 Chapter 4 IV Corps 79 Chapter 5 V Corps 119 Chapter 6 XIII Corps 165 Chapter 7 IX Corps 228 Conclusion 277 Bibliography 288 Appendix A Order of Battle 302 Appendix B Commanders‟ Length of Service 314 Appendix C Divisional Fatal Casualties 317 Appendix D Victoria Cross Winners 318 Appendix E Map References for Original Trench Maps & How to Interpret Them 326 Maps & Diagrams Index 327 Maps & Diagrams 328 3 Abbreviations AA Assistant Adjutant BA:MA Bundesarchiv: Militärarchiv BEF British Expeditionary Force BGC Brigadier-General Commanding BGGS Brigadier-General General Staff BGHA Brigadier-General Heavy Artillery CHA Commander Heavy Artillery CRA Commander Royal Artillery CRE Commander Royal Engineers DAQMG Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General DRLS Despatch Rider Letter Service DSO Distinguished Service Order GHQ General Headquarters GOC General Officer Commanding GSO 1 / 2 / 3 General Staff Officer grade 1 / 2 / 3 MC Military Cross MGC Machine Gun Company MGGS Major-General General Staff MGRA Major-General Royal Artillery MM Military Medal OR Other Ranks QMG Quartermaster General RAF Royal Air Force RE Royal Engineers RFA Royal Field Artillery RGA Royal Garrison Artillery 4 Introduction This thesis analyses the first day of the Battle of the Sambre, 4 November 1918,1 with specific reference to the actions of Third and Fourth Armies.2 This was the last large-scale battle fought by the British Expeditionary Force [BEF] on the Western Front. If the battle is known at all in the public domain, it is for the death of the poet Wilfred Owen.3 The battle was on a huge scale: thirteen divisions of the BEF led the assault on a frontage of approximately twenty miles, supported by over a thousand guns, with initial plans presuming an involvement of up to seventy tanks and armoured cars. This engagement was therefore not dissimilar in scale to the attack of 1 July 1916 on the Somme, yet other battles of the summer and autumn of 1918 overshadow this one in current historiography, notably the Battle of Amiens (8 – 11 August), and the Hindenburg Line, including the crossing of the Canal du Nord (27 September - 1 October). Questions to be Addressed Analysis of the last large-scale set-piece attack of the Great War by the BEF raises a number of questions. Was the battle decisive? What had the BEF learnt in the previous four years‟ fighting and therefore where does the Battle of the Sambre fit in the context of the „learning curve‟? To what extent was this engagement an „all-arms‟ battle? This raises the further question of plan versus reality: did the battle go entirely to plan? If objectives were not reached, did it matter? Was it necessary for officers on the spot to adopt a pragmatic 1 The battle ran officially from 4 to 6 November 1918 2 Commanded by General Hon. Sir Julian Byng (Third Army) and General Sir Henry Rawlinson Bt. (Fourth Army) 3 Lieutenant Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Battalion (attached 2nd Battalion) Manchester Regiment, 32nd Division, was killed in action on the Sambre-Oise Canal, approximately 1,000 yards north of the village of Ors. He is buried in Ors Communal Cemetery, Grave A.3. 5 approach rather than adhere strictly to instructions? The battle cannot be viewed in isolation: what other factors influenced the rapidity of the German Army‟s disintegration and was it necessary for the BEF to fight the battle at all? This work focuses on the level of tactical and operational effectiveness of the BEF at the very end of the „learning curve‟ and shows how it managed to storm a challenging, prepared defensive position without involvement of the much-vaunted Australian and Canadian divisions.4 This assault also gives a fascinating and starring role to the Field Companies of the Royal Engineers who rarely receive the attention and recognition they deserve and is also a battle with immediate strategic and political consequences. The thesis also argues that the British victory was decisive - at the strategic level it expedited the Armistice – and that it was necessary to fight the battle: until the German Army was pushed off its last prepared defensive line, German High Command [OHL5] was still hoping to be able to make a strategic withdrawal to an as yet incomplete line between Antwerp and the Meuse, to hold out through the winter and pursue a more favourable negotiated peace settlement in the spring of 1919. What the BEF had learned in the previous four years‟ fighting is examined and the extent to which this final battle was its ultimate expression analysed. By describing and analysing the fighting methods used, the question to what extent this engagement was an „all-arms‟ battle can also be answered. At the operational level, the dilemma that dogged British High Command was that of which methodology would best lead 4 There were Dominion troops involved: the 3 New Zealand Rifle Brigade and 1 New Zealand Infantry Brigade assaulted the fortified town of Le Quesnoy, and a small contingent of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company were involved in building a bridge over the Lock near the village of Rejet de Beaulieu at the southernmost point of the attack frontage. 5 OHL – Oberste Heeresleitung 6 to the strategic victory that would defeat the German Army on the field of battle and throw it out of France and Belgium. Breakthrough or attrition? The repeated failure of the former led eventually to an acceptance of the latter in the form of „bite and hold‟ tactics, where attacks would be limited in both time and geographical scope so as to avoid overstretching attacking troops and ensure that ground captured could be held against counter attacks. This thesis explains how this tactic developed and shows how the methods of late 1918 fit into this paradigm. It also demonstrates that the levels of fighting efficiency and of training were not uniform, showing how some units fared better than others. In places the assault went largely to plan. In others, it took improvisation, the adaptation or discarding of original plans, for some units to achieve success in the face of serious initial setbacks. The execution of the battle plan is shown to be far from perfect, with some units underperforming at the tactical level. The nature of the Hundred Days campaign is examined, along with the effect on the German leadership of the collapse of their Allies. The battle of 4 November did not initiate German requests for an armistice. Negotiations had been ongoing since early October 1918, but the effect of the defeat on the Sambre will be shown as pivotal in the process. The concepts of „bite and hold‟, „all-arms battle‟, the „learning curve‟ and an overview of the Hundred Days campaign, including Germany‟s peace negotiations, are dealt with in Chapter 1, “Contexts”. The performance of the German Army is not examined except through the eyes of its 7 opponent. Detailed analysis of this kind is beyond the scope of this work, but an overview can be found in Jonathan Boff‟s Winning and Losing on the Western Front.6 Malcolm Brown‟s The Imperial War Museum Book of 1918, Year of Victory covers the events of 4 November in a little under two pages,7 focusing on the Victoria Cross winners and the unfortunate poet. He does, however, in one sentence, evoke the question of the need for the battle: in quoting an officer present at the time (John Glubb, later Lieutenant-General Sir John Glubb), who commented “The enemy has melted away before us like snow”,8 he raises the matter of whether the battle was necessary at all, with the BEF by now pushing on what was surely an open door with the Armistice an imminent certainty.