Fricourt is a village that was fought over in July 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, which took place in France during the First World War. Fricourt is from Albert, north of Bray and west of Mametz, near the D 938 road and at the junction of the D 147 with the D 64. The village is north-east of Amiens and on the route of the Albert–Péronne light railway. Fricourt Wood was north-east of the village, with a château on the edge of the village and a number of craters, known as the Tambour ( to the Germans) on the west side. Fricourt formed a salient in the German front-line and was the principal German fortified village between the River Somme and the Ancre.
The ground sloped south-west from Bazentin ridge, divided by Willow Stream, which rose in Trônes Wood and flowed past the ends of the Mametz and Fricourt spurs. The stream was the inner boundary of the 7th Division on the right and the 21st Division on the left, of the XV Corps. German fortification of the area around Mametz and Fricourt had created a web of trenches deep behind the front-line trench, which was irregular making many angles from which an attacker could be engaged.
On 24 June 1916, the artillery preparation began for the Anglo-French offensive; the Fricourt area was subjected to several British gas attacks during the bombardment. Several mines were detonated just before 7:30 a.m. on 1 July, when British infantry attack on the German defences either side of the village began. By the end of 1 July, the village had been enveloped on three sides and during the night, the German garrison withdrew towards the second position. British patrols reported the retirement overnight and at noon on 2 July, troops of the 17th Division occupied the village and captured Fricourt Wood in the mid-afternoon.
The 28th ("Baden") Reserve Division, which held the front from Montauban to Fricourt and Ovillers, was saved from destruction by reinforcements from the 10th Bavarian Division. The 3rd Guard Division was hurried forward from Valenciennes, to hold the ground in front of the second position and British attacks began on Shelter and Bottom woods up the slope towards Contalmaison. XV Corps had more than 8,000 casualties on 1 July, of which the 10th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment suffered 733 losses, the worst of the battalions engaged on the first day; XV Corps took c. 1,600 prisoners.
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Background.
Strategic developments.
The German army arrived at Fricourt on 29 September 1914, when the 26th ("Württemberg") Reserve Division and the 28th () Reserve Division of the XIV Reserve Corps, tried to continue an advance westwards towards Amiens. By 7 October, temporary scrapes had been occupied, after a night attack turned into a fiasco and 400 German soldiers were captured. Fighting in the area from the Somme north to the Ancre, subsided into minor line-straightening attacks by both sides. In December the French attacked all along the new Western Front, which around Fricourt from 17–21 December, cost both sides thousands of casualties. In 1915 the war around the village went underground, with mining and counter-mining. In the village of La Boisselle, just north of Fricourt, 61 mines were blown between April 1915 and January 1916. At the end of July 1915, fresh troops were observed moving into the French positions north of the Somme and were identified on 1 August, at Thiepval Wood as British soldiers ("dressed in brown suits").
In January 1915, Erich von Falkenhayn, the German Chief of the General Staff ("Oberste Heeresleitung") issued instructions on defensive policy, which required the existing front line to be made capable of being easily defended by small numbers of troops. Positions lost in the front line were to be recaptured by counter-attack and a second trench was to be built behind the front trench to shelter the front garrison during bombardments. To evade shellfire on the area behind the front line, communication trenches were to be dug, through which the troops in the second trench could move forward. Behind the front position, a new position was to be dug beyond enemy field-artillery range, to hold up an attack which had broken through the first line, while a counter-attack was mounted. A new line could be formed and linked to the occupied flanks of the first position, restricting an attacker to a bend in the line, rather than a breakthrough if counter-attacks failed. Construction of these defences took much of 1915 and since the front line was to be held at all costs, the forward position was completed first. On 6 May, another defensive position was ordered to be built behind the front line.
In July 1915, Joseph Joffre the head of Grand Quartier Général (Commander in Chief of the French Army) held the first inter-Allied conference at Chantilly and in December 1915, a second conference resolved to conduct simultaneous attacks by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies. For the British, Flanders was the main theatre of operations but in February 1916, Haig accepted Joffre's plan for a combined attack astride the Somme river to begin around 1 July; in April the British Cabinet accepted the necessity of an offensive in France. The nature of a joint offensive on the Somme began to change almost immediately, when the German army began the Battle of Verdun on 21 February. In March, Ferdinand Foch had proposed an offensive on a front between Lassigny and the Somme and a British attack on a front from the Somme to Thiepval, with 42 French and 25 British divisions. French divisions intended for the joint offensive were diverted to Verdun and the offensive was eventually reduced to a main effort by the British, with a supporting attack by one French army. British planning for the offensive began in April, with a Fourth Army proposal for a methodical advance to the high ground around Thiepval, thence to the Bapaume–Péronne road. Haig rejected the concept and required the British objective on the Somme to be the capture of the ridge north of Péronne, to assist the French to cross the Somme further south. Diversion of French divisions to Verdun and the assumption by the British of the main role in the Somme offensive led to revisions of the plan towards a more ambitious attempt at strategic attrition, by a breakthrough and a battle of manoeuvre with distant objectives.
Tactical developments.
1915.
In January 1915, General Erich von Falkenhayn the German Chief of the General Staff ("Oberste Heeresleitung", OHL), ordered a reconstruction of the defences which had been improvised when mobile warfare ended on the Western Front, late in 1914. Barbed wire obstacles were enlarged from one belt wide to two belts wide, about apart. Double and triple thickness wire was used and laid high. The front line had been increased from one trench line to a front position with three trenches apart, the first trench () occupied by sentry groups, the second () for the bulk of the front-trench garrison and the third trench for local reserves. The trenches were traversed and had sentry-posts in concrete recesses built into the parapet. Dugouts had been deepened from to , apart and large enough for 25 men. An intermediate line of strong points (the ) about behind the front line was also built.
Communication trenches ran back to the reserve position, renamed the second position, which was as well built and wired as the front position. The second position was sited beyond the range of Allied field artillery, to force an attacker to stop and move guns forward before assaulting it. The French Second Army had fought the Battle of Hébuterne (7–13 June) on a front at Toutvent Farm, to the west of Serre, against a salient held by the 52nd Division and gained on a front, at a cost of 10,351 casualties, 1,760 being killed against a German loss of c. 4,000 men. The building of a third position, another further back, had begun in February 1916. In the first half of 1916, as signs of an Anglo-French offensive on the Somme multiplied, more defensive works were built all over the Somme front and raiding was increased to snatch prisoners for questioning. In late May 1916, a spoiling attack was planned from Foucaucourt, south of the Somme, to St Pierre Divion north of the river, intended to reach a depth of . The plan was cancelled on 4 June, when the forces to carry it out were sent to Russia to counter the Brusilov Offensive.
1916.
The British method of attack by 1916 was to fire an intense bombardment on the German front trenches just before zero hour, then lift the bombardment to the next trench, then the next according to a timetable. Before the barrage lifted, infantry were to creep as close as possible to the bombardment, considered to be from the trench and to attack as soon as the shellfire lifted. The destructive effect of the bombardment was said by Haig and Rawlinson, to be such that nothing could live in the target area and that infantry would only have to occupy the ground,
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Much the same had been said by the commander of the German 5th Army before the assault on Verdun.
It was recommended that the infantry should attack from trenches no further than from the German front line. The digging of such trenches was opposed by some divisional commanders, lest it alerted the defenders and the decision was left to the discretion of corps and divisional commanders. Some divisions dug advanced trenches but most expected to begin the advance across no man's land covered by the barrage. In the XV Corps area, both divisions were to attack behind a creeping barrage, some starting from support trenches behind the British front line, due damage caused by German artillery-fire and mining and some from no man's land, after crawling forward just before the end of the bombardment.
Prelude.
British offensive preparations.
XV Corps (Lieutenant-General Henry Horne) with the 7th, 21st and 17th (Northern) divisions, five artillery groups and a siege battery, on a front of , about one heavy gun every and one field gun per . The infantry attack was to be made behind a creeping barrage, in which the 18-pounders would slowly move their fire beyond the German front trench, at intervals, as the heavy artillery lifted from objective to objective when the creeping barrage reached it. If infantry caught up with the creeping barrage, they were to take cover and attack when the barrage moved forward. Air co-operation for XV Corps was to come from 3 Squadron and 9 Squadron Royal Flying Corps (RFC).
British plan of attack.
In the first stage of the corps plan, the divisions were to occupy higher ground either side of Willow Stream and beyond Mametz on the right, then take Fricourt in the next stage, moving through the first German intermediate position, to the second intermediate position across the valley fronting Mametz Wood. The right was to gain contact with the XIII Corps at White Trench and the left link with III Corps at Quadrangle Trench, below Contalmaison. The final objective was chosen to receive a counter-attack, with good artillery observation in front of dead ground, from which the artillery could bombard the German second position. If the German defence collapsed, the 17th (Northern) Division, in corps reserve, would pass through and advance beyond Mametz Wood, up the north side of Caterpillar Valley, to Bazentin le Grand, Longueval and Ginchy. Fricourt was not to be attacked frontally but isolated, for which the right hand brigade of the 7th Division was to take Mametz and then White Trench, the centre brigade was to form a defensive flank on the south rise of Willow Valley, which faced Fricourt and Fricourt Wood to the north. The inner brigades of the 7th Division and 21st Division were to wait in the front-line trenches opposite the village, until ordered forward by the corps commander.
At 6:25 a.m. an intensive bombardment was to begin and from 7:15–7:25 a.m., gas was to be released at the centre of the front opposite Fricourt. At 7:22 a.m. a hurricane bombardment from Stokes mortars was to begin and at 7:26 a.m. a smoke-screen would be generated to screen the inner flanks of the 7th and 21st divisions and cloud the German support line