| Battle of Flers-Courcelette | |||||||||
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| Part of the Battle of the Somme of World War I | |||||||||
2nd Battalion, Auckland Regiment, in the Switch Line after the battle |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| United Kingdom Canada India New Zealand |
German Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Douglas Haig C-in-C, Henry Rawlinson 4th Army Julian Byng Alexander Godley |
Crown Prince Rupprecht | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 11 Divisions, 49 Tanks [1] | |||||||||
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The Battle of Flers-Courcelette, was a battle within the Franco-British Somme Offensive which took place in the summer and autumn of 1916. Launched on the 15th of September 1916 the battle went on for one week. Flers-Courcelette began with the overall objective of cutting a hole in the German line by using massed artillery and infantry attacks. This hole would then be exploited with the use of cavalry. It was the third and final large-scale offensive mounted by the British Army during the Battle of the Somme. By its conclusion on September 22, the strategic objective of a breakthrough had not been achieved; however tactical gains were made in the capture of the villages of Courcelette, Martinpuich and Flers. In some places, the front lines were advanced by over 1.2 miles (2 kilometres) by the Allied attacks.
The battle is significant for the first use of the tank in warfare. It also marked the debut of the Canadian and New Zealand Divisions on the Somme battlefield.
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The project to develop the 'Land Battleship' had commenced in the summer of 1915 under the initiative of the British Landships Committee with the objective of developing an armoured vehicle that would break the deadlock of trench warfare. Under the highest degrees of secrecy the 'tank', as it later became known, was designed and built with the first prototype of the Mark I rolled out in January 1916.
Just less than six months after its first tests, General Sir Douglas Haig had wanted to launch the first mass tank attack on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. However, the manufacturers could not have the tanks ready in time for the first attacks on July 1.[2] Two and a half months later, as Flers-Corcelette was being planned, the tanks were delivered and Haig had General Sir Henry Rawlinson, his subcommander in charge of 4th Army, (the troops that would carry out the attack), incorporate them into his battle plans. From the beginning the tanks were challenged by having to traverse the heavily upset terrain of the Somme battlefield while still beset with numerous mechanical failings and manned by crews that had had little training in their operation. Nonetheless, the decision was taken to send the 49 tanks that were available into battle on September 15. He was warned against this by the engineers who were responsible for the creation of the tank and his subcommanders, such as Ernest Dunlop Swinton (who had been part of the Landships Committee), and the French government, which sent Colonel Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne and Sub-secretary of State of Inventions Jean-Louis Bréton, (who were normally arch-enemies), to London, hoping to persuade the British government to overrule Haig. The primary concern of those who didn't want the tank used was that they wanted it kept secret until they could be massed in larger numbers and be more likely to lead to a major breakthrough.[3]
Like the earlier offensives of 1 July (Battle of Albert) and 14 July (Battle of Bazentin Ridge), Haig had hoped to achieve a breakthrough of the German defences, enabling a return to mobile warfare with cavalry units pouring through a hole punched in the line by a successful swift and decisive infantry strike.[4] Though the British, Canadian and New Zealand forces did make significant gains on the first day and in the week that followed, a breakthrough did not develop and the Somme front reverted to an attrition struggle, which, with the onset of wet weather, created dreadful conditions in which the infantry had to live and fight.
The Canadian Corps made their debut on the Somme on left flank, at the north end of the attack. Starting from a line anchored on the ruins of the Pozières windmill, the Canadian 2nd Division advanced in an arc stretching from north to northeast, focused towards the fortified ruins of Courcelette and the fields to the west of the village. The Canadians saw considerable first day success on 15 September, advancing approximately two kilometres in their initial attacks, capturing their assigned objectives in and around Courcelette village. Noteworthy efforts from the 25th Battalion (the Nova Scotia Rifles) and the French Canadian 22nd Battalion (the 'Van Doos') were delivered in the process of clearing the German defenders from the village and holding it in the face of four days of enemy barrage and counter attacks despite being cut off from supplies including food and water.[5]
After having struggling for the preceding two months to take control of it, on the commencement of the battle, the British 47th (1/2nd London) Division succeeded in clearing the last German-held sections of High Wood, sustaining heavy losses in the process.[4]
The New Zealand Division fought for and captured a position known as the Switch Line between High Wood and Flers after 30 minutes of fighting. The British had initially set their eyes on the position two months earlier during the Battle of Bazentin Ridge.[6]
In the centre of the attack, two villages were captured. Martinpuich, was wrested by the 15th (Scottish) Division, and Flers, was captured by the British 41st Division,[7] but these were more than 2,000 yards short of the lofty final planned objectives of the fortified villages of Gueudecourt and Lesbœufs which lay still further to the east.
To the south, on the right flank of the attack, where Haig had hoped the hole would be opened in the German lines to allow the cavalry penetration and breakthrough, the attacks faltered.[8] In this area, a fortified German position known as the "Quadrilateral" Redoubt sat west of Ginchy, but due to poor weather that prevented flying and poor sight lines, the exact position of the trenches of the redoubt were unknown to the attackers.[9] The artillery preparation and tank support did little to neutralise the defenses and left the trenches and wire protecting the position largely intact, which allowed the German garrison to batter the 56th (London) Infantry Division and 6th Division of the XIV Corps' attack. The 6th division finally took the Quadrilateral after four days of attacks on 18 September. With the Quadralateral quieted The Guards Division made considerable headway, advancing 2,000 yards, but they were stopped short of their ultimate objective, the village of Lesbœufs. To take the remaining objectives, the British Fourth Army launched the Battle of Morval on 25 September.
The performance of the tanks was patchy. Of the 49 ordered only 32 were able to reach their assigned start positions on the battlefield and of them, seven failed to start - leaving 25 moving forward at the commencement of the attack. In the end, the tanks proved to be largely a psychological asset, emboldening the attackers and intimidating the defenders where they moved forward. Tactically however, they provided little advantage or support to the attackers with most breaking down or becoming immobilized in the terrain of the battlefield and only nine actually reaching and penetrating the German lines. Even where they were successful they were hard pressed to advance across the cratered battlefield faster than a soldier's walking pace.
When Winston Churchill, formerly head of the Landships Committee but now a backbench MP, heard of the tanks use and performance at Flers-Courcelette he responded: "My poor 'land battleships' have been let off prematurely on a petty scale" .[10] The flaws that were exposed in the designs of the Mark I at Flers-Corcelette led to refinement and redesign and the ongoing redevelopment that led to the tank being a formidable weapon by the war's end.
Ultimately, the Battle of the Somme would continue on for almost two more full months after Flers-Courcelette, but none of the battleplans that followed set the grand objectives that Flers-Courcelette or the July battles of Albert, and Bazentin Ridge had when total breakthrough was the intended outcome of the attacks. Though there was success found in pushing the Germans back at Flers-Courcelette, the failure to decisively cut through the German lines convinced Haig and his Army commanders Rawlinson and Gough to scale back their objectives in further attacks on the Somme to smaller 'bites' of strategically significant territory in limited attacks.
The Victoria Cross is the highest military honour in the British and Commonwealth system of honours. It is awarded for acts of the highest valour in the face of the enemy in battle. For their actions at Flers-Courcelette four Victoria Crosses were awarded: