The Battle of the Lys, 1918: Givenchy and the River Law

INTRODUCTION

The main body of this book deals with the three days that opened the southern sector of the battle of the Lys, the second German offensive of 1918 (named ‘the battle of Estaires’ by the Battlefield Nomenclature Committee), though I have stretched it into the fourth day, 12 April, because it makes narrative sense to do so. Though a German attack was expected, the scale and date of it were unknown. When it came, the brunt of the assault fell on the Portuguese Expeditionary Force holding the centre of the front, which collapsed like a house of cards. Four German divisions poured through the gap, creating a breach several kilometres wide and, by the end of the first day, nearly 10 kilometres deep. Only in the south, around Givenchy, did the British line hold firm. Elsewhere, in a series of desperate holding actions, assorted infantry battalions, engineer and tunnelling companies and groups of stragglers were rushed in to create temporary lines which flexed, bulged, fell back but never quite broke. This was truly an infantryman’s battle: a number of factors handicapped the artillery, there were no tanks and the Royal Air Force made little contribution. In many places responsibility devolved to company and platoon commanders to plug gaps as they opened and to mount local counter-attacks as the opportunity presented itself.

When I started researching the First World War over twenty years ago there seemed to be little interest in the Givenchy area about the events that had happened there sixty years before. I am pleased to say this has changed and French local history societies in the area now put on exhibitions relating to the First World War and often involve the British in their activities. An excellent case in point is the inclusion of the King Edward’s Horse memorial in the annual 11 November commemorations at Vieille Chapelle, which were only resumed in 2001.

In May 1940 British troops of the 2nd Division BEF fought a series of desperate rearguard battles across much of the old Lys battlefield. Once again they were defending La Bassée Canal, this time from German troops advancing from the south. Many of the villages and bridges mentioned in this book were fought over once again. With the exception of one incident, I have not mentioned the events of the 1940 campaign in this book, although some of the cemeteries and monuments from the Second World War are listed in the Tours section where they coincide with the routes of the walks or drives.

Visiting the Battlefield

The most useful map for visitors is no. 2 in the Serie Vert (Green) series, entitled Lille/Dunkerque, which covers the whole of the Lys battlefield area and is quite good enough to give an overall picture. For more detailed coverage the Serie Bleu (Blue) maps are useful; those covering the areas discussed in this book are nos 2404 O (Hazebrouck), 2404 E (Armentières), 2405 O (Bethune) and 2405 E (Lens). These will be needed to accompany the walking tours given in Chapter 9, or to do any walking exploration of your own.

Travellers from the UK generally cross the Channel on the ferry or through the Channel Tunnel and arrive at Calais. The main road down to the battlefield is the A26 – E15, and the journey should take just over an hour. The exit for Bethune is no. 6, which is just outside the town and will bring you to the south-west corner of the battlefield.

With Ypres just an hour away to the north and the Somme battlefields an hour and a half to the south, the Lys battlefield is easily accessible from these better known areas. From Ypres take the N366 south to St Eloi, then take the right fork on to the N365 south, down the Messines Ridge through Wijtschate (referred to as Wytschaete by the British at the time and henceforth in this book), Mesen (Messines) and past the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing, where the missing from the northern sector of the Lys battlefield are commemorated. From Armentières the D945 will take you south-west along the southern bank of the Lys towards Estaires, the area defended by the 40th and 50th Divisions on 9 April. From just outside Estaires the D947 will take you south across the Portuguese area and down towards Neuve Chapelle and La Bassée. From Estaires the D945 south will take you down the west bank of the River Lawe to Bethune. From the Somme the route north is via the A1 – E15 motorway (this is a toll road) up to just north of Arras, where it becomes the Autoroute Du Nord. At Lens take the A21 west and at junction 10 join the N47 which will take you up to La Bassée and the southern sector of the battlefield.

For the short-term visitor there are several small and cheap hotels around Bethune, Armentières and La Bassée, and bed and breakfast is available where you see the sign Chambres d’hôtes. For those planning to spend more than a day or two visiting the area, the generally excellent Gites de France organisation (website: http://www.gites-de-france.com/gites/uk/rural_gites) can be used to find good quality self-catering cottages or apartments at a reasonable price. There are currently eleven gites listed within 10 kilometres of Bethune, including some excellent ones (from personal experience) right in the heart of the battlefield.

The French Tourism office in London is at:

French Government Tourist Office

Lincoln House

300 High Holborn

London

WC1V 7JH

Tel: 09068 244 123 (lines open 9 am—5 pm Mon to Fri; calls charged at 60p a minute at all times)

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: http://ur.france.com/home

For the Bethune area a useful website is http://www.tourisme.fr/tourist-office/bethune.htm.

Please remember that this is a working farming community and that car parking should be done carefully so as not to obstruct field entrances. Though the area did not suffer the huge volumes of long-term shelling that the Somme and Ypres did, explosive relics are still turned up from time to time. Please take care and do not handle anything that you are not sure of.

Previous History of the Battlefield

On the morning of 10 October 1914 German cavalry arrived in Richebourg but French troops, supported by British reinforcements which arrived in the afternoon, prevented their advancing any further towards Bethune. There followed three days of intense fighting, including hand-to-hand combat among the houses, before the Germans were driven out.

Givenchy was the focus of heavy fighting in December 1914, when British and Indian troops launched an attack to try to prevent German reinforcements being moved south to be used against the French near Arras. Indian troops from the Lahore Division captured two lines of German trenches but were counter-attacked and part of Givenchy village fell into German hands before they were finally driven out by two British battalions. Givenchy’s relative elevation (standing some 9 or 10 metres above the plain, with important lines of sight for artillery observation over the Allied lines) meant that shallow mining operations could be carried out and both sides dug tunnels under no-man’s-land and exploded charges beneath the other’s defences. Several large craters dominated no-man’s-land around the village, with both sides running saps and posts out into them. The garrison of Givenchy always had to be on the watch for a surprise German assault, or for further enemy mining operations. In June 1916 tunneller William Hackett was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross after refusing to abandon an injured comrade when the tunnel they were working in was collapsed by a German mine.

In March 1915 Neuve Chapelle was the scene of the first major British offensive since the opening moves of 1914. British and Indian troops took the village after four days of heavy fighting, but were unable to drive the enemy off the Aubers Ridge and advance on Lille. Further attacks on the position during the battles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert during 1915 resulted in heavy British casualties and little else.

On 30 June 1916, in advance of the major attack to be launched on the Somme the next day, a diversionary attack was made from the lines near Richebourg St Vaast against a bulge in the German trenches known as the Boar’s Head. Two battalions (12th and 13th) of the Sussex Regiment attacked the German trenches after several days of bombardment. The Germans knew they were coming (even putting up signs above their parapets asking ‘When are you coming, Tommy?’). It was a disaster. The Sussex battalions suffered some 1,100 killed and wounded without making any advance. Three weeks later a similar diversionary attack was launched against the village of Fromelles on the Aubers Ridge. Small-scale advances were made by the Australians in their first major action on the Western Front, but once again casualties were heavy, to no significant advantage. From mid-1916 onwards, however, this part of the front was considered quiet, so the untried Portuguese Expeditionary Force was sent there in 1917 and in March 1918 the 34th, 51st and 40th Divisions were posted into the area to rest and recuperate after their severe mauling on the Somme.

The ground over which the battle of Lys was fought is flat and wet. There are no other words to describe it. Even the area around Ypres presents more subtle rises and falls in the terrain than the ground between Givenchy, Armentières and Robecq. Only Givenchy itself, standing on an extension of the Aubers Ridge, and rising some 9 or 10 metres above the surrounding terrain (30 metres as opposed to 20 or 21 metres locally above sea level), stands clear. This meant that Givenchy dominated the land behind the British lines and, if captured, would provide excellent artillery observation for the Germans right across the British lines to the north and south, and across the strategically important Bethune coalfields. It had to be held at all costs.

Because the land was low-lying it rapidly became waterlogged in wet weather. General Jeudwine of the 55th Division wrote that without the river Lys exiting the plain to the north the whole area would be a lake. He also noted that ‘trenches or any shelter below the surface are an impossibility and breastworks standing up from the ground level are the only possible protection’. The water table is usually only a foot or two below the surface, and a complex web of shallow drainage ditches criss-crosses the area, feeding into the streams and small rivers. The ditches had been kept clear and the drainage system generally well maintained by the British. The ditches could be used to provide cover for troops unable to throw up breastworks or to dig shallow trenches, but could equally well be used as a route forward for advancing soldiers. They were also an obstacle to a straightforward advance. For soldiers of both sides, even though the winter had been the driest in living memory, this was to be a cold and wet campaign. In a few sites the British had managed to build concrete dug-outs and machine-gun posts but these were cold and desolate places offering only limited protection from artillery. On at least two occasions shells landed underneath the pill-boxes, with the resulting explosions blowing the floor up to hit the roof, badly injuring those inside.

Taken from Le Plantin, Givenchy can be plainly seen on the slight ridge from which it dominates the surrounding area. The ground between was a killing ground as the Germans were forced to retreat across it, covered as it was by machine guns.

Three water features dominate the southern sector of the battlefield. The southern boundary was La Bassée Canal itself, running more or less east—west and some 90 metres wide. In the vicinity of Givenchy the canal had been badly damaged and was pretty much drained, but it remained a formidable obstacle. To the west of the town it remained a working canal, with barges bringing up supplies into the vicinity of Robecq. The river Lawe, running south—north to the rear of the battle line, had been canalised in the previous century. Some 5 to 10 metres wide, the Lawe was crossed by numerous permanent bridges as well as by temporary structures built by the Royal Engineers. These were all fitted with explosive demolition charges. Other temporary swing and float bridges were ready to be moved up to allow the rapid movement of troops in either direction. The canal locks presented more of a problem, because the canal narrowed at them and the lock gates could be used to get across, but there does not seem to have been a plan to blow them up. The river Lys more or less marks the northern boundary of the battlefield covered in this book. Much wider than the Lawe, at least 20 metres across, it presented a more formidable obstacle but was spanned, like the Lawe, by numerous permanent bridges, both road and rail, as well as by temporary swing and float bridges. These three watercourses dictated the Germans’ initial strategy. If crossings could not be captured within 24 hours, the advancing troops would be trapped in a salient.

Armentières was the main town in the northern part of the battle area. Previously popular among the troops for its friendly estaminets and patisseries, it had been evacuated during the summer of 1917 because of prolonged and heavy gas attacks. The main square was known to the troops as ‘Eleven o’clock Square’ because the clock on the clock tower had stopped at that hour in 1914 when it was struck by a shell. Otherwise the Armentières sector had been quiet and the trench system was decayed. A series of isolated posts, lightly held and poorly wired, made up the main defences. The town was flattened during the Lys battle and rebuilt in the same style in the 1920s. The other main town in the area was Bethune, on the banks of La Bassée Canal a few kilometres behind the line. Still populated, it boasted ‘a first class restaurant, an excellent officers’ club, a well stocked Expeditionary Force Canteen and several cinemas’ as well as attractions of ‘a more dubious character’. The centre of the Bethune coalfield, the town was to be a prime target in the southern part of the attack. Though it was shelled at long range and evacuated, it never fell and still retains many buildings from the period, including the bell tower in the main square, which was hit several times but remained standing.

The landscape was dotted with numerous small villages and hamlets as well as isolated farms. Many of the farms took the form of a square built around a central courtyard, with living accommodation on one side and stables and other working or storage buildings forming the remaining three sides. Most were strongly built of brick, with a brick cellar beneath the house, and most had two storeys (the upper floor typically using the roof space), which meant these were ideal buildings for billets and headquarters and as the central bases for defensive positions. A typical farm could accommodate 200 men quite easily. Mesplaux Farm and many others across the battlefield took this form and were rebuilt in exactly