Battle of Drocourt-Quéant Line

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Drocourt-Queant Line

German wire at Quéant, 4 October 1918

Date	1917 – 1918
Location	East of Lens, south to Quéant near Bullecourt on the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line).
Result	Indecisive; German Army withdrew 40 miles (64 km) to the Hindenburg Line in February – March 1917

Belligerents

United Kingdom

France

German Empire

Commanders and leaders

Douglas Haig

Ferdinand Foch

Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria

v t e Western Front

Liège Frontiers Namur 1st Marne Antwerp Race to the Sea 1st Ypres 1st Artois 1st Champagne Hartmannswillerkopf Neuve Chapelle 2nd Ypres 2nd Artois 2nd Champagne Loos 3rd Artois Verdun Somme Arras 2nd Aisne 3rd Champagne/Battle of the Hills Messines 3rd Ypres 1st Cambrai Spring Hundred Days

The Drocourt-Quéant Line (Wotan Stellung) was a set of mutually supporting defensive lines constructed by Germany between the French towns of Drocourt and Quéant during World War I. This defensive system was part of the northernmost section of the Hindenburg Line, a vast German defensive system that ran through northeastern France.

Description

The Drocourt-Quéant Line ran between the French cities of Drocourt and Quéant and was part of a defensive system that ran from a point within the Hindenburg Line, eleven miles west of Cambrai, northward to within seven miles west of Douai and terminated along the front east of Armentières.^[1] The Drocourt-Quéant Line was a system in depth and incorporated a number of mutually supporting lines of defence. The system consisted of a front line system and a support line system, each consisting of two lines of trenches.^[2] The system incorporated numerous fortifications including concrete bunkers, machine gun posts and heavy belts of barbed wire.^[2]

Defeat

British Maudslay 3-ton lorries parked up alongside the wreckage of German motor transport destroyed by shell fire during Third Army's attack on Quéant, 2 September 1918

At 5 AM in the morning on September 2, 1918, the Canadians attacked the D-Q Line supported by tanks and aircraft, during the Hundred Days Offensive, also known as Canada's Hundred Days. In twilight, the Canadian 1st Division attacked the line south-eastwards, on the extreme right, south of the Arras-Cambrai road, The Canadian 4th Division attacked in the centre between Dury and the main road and the British 4th Division attacked south of the River Sensee. The next day the Germans retreated to the Hindenburg Line with the Allies taking many prisoners. The British now moved on to their next objective, the Canal du Nord.

Memorials

The Canadian Dury Memorial commemorates the Canadian Corps' attack on the Drocourt-Quéant Line in 1918.

References

↑ History of the Corps of Royal Engineers’ (Volume V), Chatham, The Institution of Royal Engineers, 1952, p.416, f.n.1.
↑ 2.0 2.1 Military Operations. France and Belgium, 1918’ (Volume IV), compiled by Brigadier-General Sir James E Edmonds, London, HMSO, 1947, p.396

External links

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