1917 battle in France, First World War
The Capture of Oppy Wood was an engagement on the Western Front during the First World War on 28 June 1917. The Battle of Arras of 1917 ended with the Germans in possession of a fortified wood to the west of the village of Oppy, which overlooked British positions. The wood was in area and contained many German observation posts, machine-gun nests and trench mortars. New German defensive tactics adopted after the Battle of the Somme of defence in depth and rapid counter-attack, had been enforced on the German 6th Army after the disaster of 9 April, the first day of the Battle of Arras. The British attack of the Third Battle of the Scarpe (3–4 May), was defeated everywhere bar Fresnoy, which was captured by the 1st Canadian Division. The attack on Oppy Wood by the 92nd Brigade of the 31st Division, was a costly failure. The area was defended by the 1st Guard Reserve Division and the 15th Reserve Division, which did not need the support of specialist (counter-attack) divisions.
A second attack took place on 28 June, as part of a series of feints, intended to simulate a threat to the cities of Lens in the First Army area and Lille in the Second Army area. The attack was conducted by the 15th Brigade, 5th Division and the 94th Brigade, 31st Division, which advanced on a front extending from Gavrelle in the south to the north of Oppy Wood. After a hurricane bombardment, the objectives were captured with few British losses and German counter-attacks were defeated by artillery-fire. An attack at the same time by the 4th Canadian Division and the 46th (North Midland) Division, astride the Souchez river, also succeeded. Operations to continue the encirclement of Lens by an attack by the Canadian Corps on Hill 70 to the north were postponed until August due to a shortage of artillery. The feint attacks failed to divert German attention from Flanders, which included the transfer of ten divisions to the 4th Army, despite claims by the 6th Army command that the British were preparing an offensive towards Lens; the operations did divert German attention from the French front further south.
Background.
Strategic developments.
Before the Third Battle of the Scarpe, the cancellation of the French part in the Nivelle Offensive seemed certain. A continuation of British attacks towards Cambrai would be pointless in the absence of French operations to the south and Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig decided to continue operations on the Arras front to reach a good defensive line, then to conduct surprise attacks to keep German troops in the area. Preparations were made to begin operations in Flanders, with the attack at Messines to begin in early June. Despite uncertainty about the French attack on the Aisne, which was due from 4 to 5 May, a plan for an attack by the British Fifth Army, Third Army and the First Army on a front, went ahead and the First Army objectives were given as Oppy and Fresnoy.
The move of the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to Flanders in late May and June, left the First Army with twelve divisions to hold a front from Arras northwards to Armentières on the Lys river. During the period needed to prepare the offensive at Ypres after the Battle of Messines (7–14 June), threats to Lens and Lille were planned for the end of June. The First Army was to operate on a three-corps front, in which XIII Corps was to advance between Gavrelle and Oppy on a front, while to the north the Canadian Corps and I Corps was to attack on both banks of the Souchez river towards Avion.
Tactical developments.
German.
"Experience of the 1st Army in the Somme Battles", () was published by Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, the supreme command of the German armies) on 30 January 1917. During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, Colonel Fritz von Loßberg (Chief of Staff of the 1st Army) had been able to establish a line of "relief" divisions (), with the reinforcements from Verdun which had begun to arrive in September. In his analysis of the battle, Loßberg opposed the granting of discretion to front trench garrisons to retire, as he believed that manoeuvre did not allow the garrisons to evade Allied artillery fire, which could blanket the forward area, making evasion futile and also invite Allied troops to occupy vacated areas unopposed. Loßberg considered that spontaneous withdrawals would disrupt the counter-attack reserves as they deployed and further deprive battalion and division commanders of the ability to conduct an organised defence, which the dispersal of infantry over a wider area had already made difficult. Loßberg and others had severe doubts as to the ability of relief divisions to reach the battlefield in time to conduct an immediate counter-attack () from behind the battle zone. Loßberg wanted the Somme practice of fighting in the front line to be retained and authority devolved no further than the battalion, to maintain organisational coherence, in anticipation of a methodical counter-attack () by the relief divisions after 24–48 hours. Erich Ludendorff, the (First Quartermaster General) of the German armies was sufficiently impressed by the Loßberg memorandum to add it to the new "Manual of Infantry Training for War".
British.
The British training manual "Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action" (SS 143) of February 1917, marked the end of attacks made by lines of infantry with a few detached specialists. The platoon was divided into a small headquarters and four sections, one with two trained grenade-throwers and assistants, the second with a Lewis gunner and nine assistants, carrying 30 drums of ammunition, the third section comprising a sniper, scout and nine riflemen and a fourth section of nine men with four rifle-grenade launchers. The rifle and hand-grenade sections were to advance in front of the Lewis-gun and rifle-grenade sections, in two waves or in "artillery formation", which covered an area wide and deep, with the four sections in a diamond pattern, the rifle section ahead, rifle grenade and bombing sections to the sides and the Lewis gun section behind, until resistance was met. German defenders were to be suppressed by fire from the Lewis-gun and rifle-grenade sections, while the riflemen and hand-grenade sections moved forward, preferably by infiltrating round the flanks to overwhelm the defenders from the rear.
Changes in equipment, organisation and formation were elaborated in SS 144 "The Normal Formation for the Attack" of February 1917, which recommended that the leading troops should push on to the final objective if only one or two had been set. For a greater number of objectives, when artillery covering fire was available for the depth of the intended advance, fresh platoons should "leap-frog" through the leading platoons to the next objective. The new organisation and equipment gave the infantry platoon the capacity for fire and manoeuvre, even in the absence of adequate artillery support against German defences. To bring uniformity in adoption of the methods laid down in the revised manuals and others produced over the winter, Haig established a BEF Training Directorate in January 1917 to issue manuals and oversee training. SS 143 and its companion manuals provided British infantry with off-the-peg tactics, devised from the experience of the Somme and from French Army operations, to go with the new equipment made available by increasing British and Allied war production and better understanding of the organisation necessary to exploit it in battle. For the attack on 3 May, the Fifth Army wanted to make a night assault, to evade German machine-gun fire but the Third and First armies needed to attack in daylight and Haig enforced a compromise zero hour of 3:45 a.m. The moon was close to full and set only sixteen minutes before zero hour; on many parts of the attack front, troops assembling were silhouetted as the moon sank behind them. In XIII Corps the 2nd Division had already had suffered casualties in recent operations and was exhausted; the fresh 31st Division took over the right flank of the 2nd Division front.
Prelude.
British plans.
The First Army plan had assumed a dawn attack and no preparations had been made for an advance at night, such as putting out boards with luminous paint on the German wire, taking compass-bearings or organising intermediate objectives. Sunrise was not until 5:22 a.m. and it would not be possible to distinguish objects at until 4:05 a.m. An attack on German observation balloons was planned in the First Army area, to be carried out by Nieuport Scout aircraft of the Tenth Wing of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), which was to be covered by an artillery bombardment; bombing raids further behind the German lines were arranged. The attack of the XIII Corps was to be conducted by two divisions on a front from the south end of Gavrelle northwards to the wood south of Fresnoy.
The depleted and exhausted state of the 2nd Division led to its attack front being reduced to , from Greenland Hill to Oppy Support Trench and Fresnoy by the extension of the 31st Division front to a width of . The Germans had managed to retain of the Oppy Line, to the west of Oppy Wood in the Battle of Arleux (28–29 April), which complicated the task of the 31st Division. Oppy Wood was full of fallen trees and tangled branches and a long west to east slope left the British field artillery at extreme range, which reduced its accuracy. The division was supported by nine field artillery brigades and extra machine-guns borrowed from the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division and the 1/1st Northumberland Hussars, the XIII Corps cavalry regiment.
The First Army planned to attack in the first half of July, as part of operations by the First and Second armies to keep German troops away from the Flanders front for as long as possible by feinting towards Lens and Lille. The dispatch of heavy and siege artillery to Flanders led the First Army commander General Henry Horne, to bring forward the attack to 28 June and to limit the attack to the XIII Corps operation against Oppy and Gavrelle. Artillery moving Flanders from the Third Army was diverted, temporarily to increase the weight of the First Army bombardment, which was to take place on a front, to create the impression of an imminent threat against Lens. XIII Corps had four divisions, with the 31st and 63rd (Royal Naval) divisions alternating in the line on the right and the 2nd Division and 5th Division alternating on the left flank. The 5th Division withdrew the 15th Brigade for a week of training for the attack, which was conducted by all four battalions. The plan required the artillery to cut the German wire but leave the German trenches intact, so that the British infantry could occupy them.
British preparations.
A corps conference was held on 30 April, at which the tired state of the 2nd Division was discussed but it was still required to participate in the attack. A composite brigade was formed from the survivors of the three brigades. Three field artillery brigades, corps and army heavy artillery were arranged in support of the composite brigade and the 1st Canadian Brigade was to attack on the northern flank. The 63rd (Royal Naval) Division took over the line from the 31st Division and the right flank sector of the 5th Division on 4–5 July. The division sapped forward down the long slope from the old German Fampoux–Farbus Switch Line, which had become the British "army" line of resistance, by driving forward sap heads and listening posts which were linked laterally overnight. Before the attack, Fresnoy was subjected to an incendiary bombardment by Livens Projectors as a diversion.
Raid.
A raid by the 92nd Brigade was planned for 22 June, to inflict casualties on the Germans, study the German defences and note the position of machine-gun nests. Zero hour was set at 10:20 p.m., when the adjacent troops of the 93rd Brigade were to open rapid fire with small arms and to fire German rockets to distract the defenders. On the 92nd Brigade front, the artillery was not to fire until zero hour, at which it would begin from Cadorna Trench for one minute and then lift onto the trench. Three minutes later, the barrage was to creep