Operations in Flanders, FWW, 1916, by the German 4th Army and British Second Army
The Actions of the Bluff were local operations in 1916 carried out in Flanders during the First World War by the German 4th Army and the British Second Army. The Bluff is a mound near St Eloi, south-east of Ypres in Belgium, created from a spoil heap made during the digging of the Ypres–Comines Canal before the war. From 14 to 15 February and on 2 March 1916, the Germans and the British fought for control of the Bluff, the Germans capturing the mound and defeating counter-attacks only for the British to recapture it and a stretch of the German front line, after pausing to prepare a set-piece attack.
The fighting at the Bluff was one of nine sudden attacks for local gains made by the Germans or the British between the appointment of Sir Douglas Haig as commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), and the beginning of the Battle of the Somme. The BEF was at a tactical disadvantage, on low boggy ground, easily observed from German positions. A retirement to more defensible ground was impossible but rather than conserving manpower and resources with a tacit truce, the British kept an active front and five of the German local attacks in the period were retaliation for three British set-piece attacks.
The Germans had better weapons and with a homogenous army, could transfer troops and equipment along the Western Front easier than the Franco–British. The German army still had many pre-war trained officers NCOs and soldiers; the British wartime volunteers gained experience in minor tactics but success usually came from firepower; in the underground war, the BEF tunnellers overtook the Germans in technological ability and ambition. Capturing a portion of the opposing front line proved possible but holding it depended on the opponent. When the Bluff was captured, the British retook it; at the Battle of Mont Sorrel Mt Sorrel and Tor Top were retaken by the Canadians and British gains at St Eloi and Vimy Ridge were lost to German attacks. Had the British occupied the front less densely, more training could have taken place and the wisdom of each policy was debated at the time and since.
Background.
Ypres district.
Ypres is overlooked by Kemmel Hill to the south-west and from the east by low hills running south-west to north-east with Wytschaete (Wijtschate), Hill 60 to the east of Verbrandenmolen, Hooge, Polygon Wood and Passchendaele (Passendale). The high point of the ridge is at Wytschaete, from Ypres, while at Hollebeke the ridge is distant and recedes to at Polygon Wood. Wytschaete is about above the plain; on the Ypres–Menin road at Hooge, the elevation is about and at Passchendaele. The rises are slight apart from the vicinity of Zonnebeke, which has a gradient of 1:33. From Hooge and to the east, the slope is 1:60 and near Hollebeke, it is 1:75; the heights are subtle but have the character of a saucer lip around Ypres. The main ridge has spurs sloping east and one is particularly noticeable at Wytschaete, which runs south-east to Messines (Mesen) with a gentle slope to the east and a 1:10 decline to the west. Further south is the muddy valley of the Douve River, Ploegsteert Wood (Plugstreet to the British) and Hill 63. West of Messines Ridge is the parallel Wulverghem (Spanbroekmolen) Spur; the Oosttaverne Spur, also parallel, is to the east. The general aspect south of Ypres is of low ridges and dips, gradually flattening to the north into a featureless plain.
Possession of the higher ground to the south and east of Ypres gives ample scope for ground observation, enfilade fire and converging artillery bombardments. An occupier has the advantage of artillery deployments and the movement of reinforcements, supplies and stores being screened from view. The ridge had woods from Wytschaete to Zonnebeke, giving good cover, some being of notable size like Polygon Wood and those later named Battle Wood, Shrewsbury Forest and Sanctuary Wood. The woods usually had undergrowth but the fields in gaps between the woods were wide and devoid of cover. Roads in this area were usually unpaved, except for the main ones from Ypres, ribboned with occasional villages and houses. The lowland west of the ridge was a mixture of meadows and fields, with high hedgerows dotted with trees, cut by streams and ditches emptying into canals. The main road to Ypres from Poperinge to Vlamertinge is in a defile, easily observed from the ridge.
The Bluff.
Spoil banks had been created during the digging of the Ypres–Comines Canal, connecting the Yser lowlands with the Lys river valley. The canal cutting runs through a low point between Messines Ridge and the higher ground south-east of Ypres, about east of St Eloi and near Voormezele. At this point the canal is wide, in a cutting made higher by banks, extending on the north side to a feature marked on British maps as the Bluff and called the or by the Germans. The Bluff was high, steep on the west side, with a gentle slope to the east and one of the best vantage points in the Ypres Salient. To the north, the ground rises for to Hill 60 and Hooge. After the First Battle of Ypres in 1914, the front line ran at a right angle across the canal, which was still full of water. The British front line on the north bank ran here, just east of the Bluff. No man's land was about wide and narrowed to about opposite a German salient about north, called the Bean by the British and by the Germans.
Mining.
In the spring of 1915, there was constant underground fighting in the Ypres Salient at Hooge, Hill 60, Railway Wood, Sanctuary Wood, St Eloi and the Bluff, which required new drafts of British tunnellers for several months after the formation of the first eight Tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers. During October and November, the Germans blew two mines under the British lines about north of the canal. In November, John Norton-Griffiths proposed to sink 20 or 30 shafts, about apart, into the blue clay from the Bluff to St Eloi. In late December, the 27th Division (General Graf von Pfeil und Klein-Ellguth) was transferred from the Argonne to Flanders to reform the XIII "Württemberg" Corps (General Theodor von Watter) with the 26th Division and took over part of the line on 6 January 1916. The relieved the 30th Division in about of the front line from the Ypres–Comines Canal to Zillibeke, south of the positions of the 26th Division. The division found the defences in good repair and well-drained, although mostly sandbag breastworks rather than trenches. There was a vulnerable spot at the south end of the line, where the Bluff overlooked the German defences. Previously a mine had been exploded under the Bluff but to no effect and the division began a greater mining effort. A bigger mine was detonated on the night of 21/22 January but all this achieved was a crater about wide, which the British occupied and made into another defensive position. After the big mine explosion of 21/22 January the British fortified the front lip of the crater and the 172nd Tunnelling Company was diverted from its mining at St Eloi to dig a defensive mine system to prevent the Germans trying again; waterlogging and the loose soil along the canal back caused the miners much difficulty.
Prelude.
German offensive preparations.
As part of the German plan for the Battle of Verdun (21 February – 18 December 1916), the German armies on the Western Front were ordered to divert attention from the 5th Army with line straightening operations and giving the impression that reinforcements had arrived. From 8 to 19 February, the 4th Army ( [Colonel General] Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg) in Flanders, conducted several operations around the Ypres Salient, with artillery bombardments and bombardments followed by attacks. On 12 February, the Germans attacked near Boesinghe (Boezinge) as the 20th (Light) Division was relieving the 14th (Light) Division and got into the front line, until driven back by a prompt counter-attack, the British suffering 184 casualties. The Germans attacked again during the evening and were repulsed; another attack on 19 February also got into the front line for a short time. On 14 February, after a bombardment and the springing of several small mines, German infantry attacked several times against the 24th Division at Hooge and either side of Sanctuary Wood. The XIII Corps commander, Watter, had given orders for a methodical attack at the Bluff by Infantry Regiment 124 (IR 124), despite a judgement from General Berthold von Deimling, the previous corps commander, that the Bluff was easier to capture than to hold.
British defensive preparations.
The purpose of the German diversionary operations was unknown to the Second Army (General Horace Smith-Dorrien). Reconnaissance flights by the new II Brigade Royal Flying Corps (RFC) were made more difficult by the bad winter weather but 6 Squadron managed to see enough to report that a German offensive was unlikely. The RFC concentrated on artillery-observation for the British heavy guns and in February arranged a standard call "general artillery action" at which all aircraft stopped routine operations for artillery-observation and reconnaissance sorties. The V Corps (Lieutenant-General Herbert Plumer) front ran from south of St Eloi to Hooge and was held by the 17th (Northern) Division, 50th Division and the 24th Division. The 17th (Northern) Division had relieved the 3rd Division from 5 to 8 February on a front, either side of the Ypres–Comines Canal, with the 52nd Brigade on the south side responsible for the canal, the Bluff and New Year Trench on the north side and the 51st Brigade further north. The only crossing of the canal was a plank bridge some distance back from New Year Trench and although the rule that a topographical feature going through a position should not be used as a unit boundary was followed, only a platoon of the 10th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers held the Bluff, the rest of the battalion being on the south bank. The 50th Brigade was in V Corps reserve which left only one battalion in reserve for the 17th (Northern) Division.
The 51st Brigade held a front with three battalions and one in reserve, half kept ready for an immediate counter-attack if the Bluff was captured. One battalion was moving up to relieve one of the front battalions, its bombers (after complaints from the Grenadier Guards, hand-grenade specialists had been renamed bombers and had recently been issued with steel helmets) and Lewis gunners having arrived on 13 February. During the relief, the Bluff was the responsibility of another brigade and two battalions were mixed up; the brigade machine-gun companies, which had joined the division the day previous, were still behind the front line. On the morning of 14 February, the left flank of the 52nd Brigade at the canal and the fronts of the 51st Brigade and the rest of the V Corps front to the north, were subjected to several bombardments by German heavy artillery and after 3:30 p.m. the shelling of the 51st Brigade and the 24th Division front at Hooge increased. The platoon of the 10th Lancashire Fusiliers on the Bluff took cover in The Tunnel, formerly a German mine gallery from the Bluff to the canal. Trench mortar and howitzer fire, which was usual before an infantry attack led the defenders to request heavy artillery support.
Action.
14–16 February.
By 5:45 p.m. the British front parapet had been demolished and a mine detonation buried the party sheltering in The Tunnel, killing all but three men; two mines were blown on the left of the 10th Sherwood Foresters (10th Sherwood) on the left of the 51st Brigade. IR 124 attacked on a front from the canal to a feature known as the Ravine, a stream parallel to the canal. The British front line was captured by 6:05 p.m. and by 6:32 p.m. all objectives had been taken, apart from a machine-gun post at the junction of trenches 31 and 32. A platoon sent to replace the men trapped in The Tunnel was killed and the Bluff was captured, as were the front trenches of the 10th Sherwood. Some German troops pressed on to the British support trenches but were repulsed. Parties of IR