Battle of Arras

“ Their Staff work must have been good, and the training and morale of the troops equally good to have done it. After the first great success, we gained only small local successes, costing thousands of casualties and vast expenditure of ammunition. Eventually, after about five weeks of fierce thrusts, the Battle of Arras came to an end, giving us, it is true, a much improved position in front of Arras, but leaving the main object of the attack unaccomplished. ”

“ The spring offensive of the French army, after a brilliant beginning, had faltered, then halted. There had been recriminations, inquiries, resignations; and Pétain, the saviour of Verdun, had succeeded the gallant Nivelle. To keep the enemy from benefiting by the sudden relaxation of pressure on the Chemin des Dames the British army had flung itself into the premature Battle of Arras, and once more the casualty lists had shot up.
At home, the talk was mainly of Gothas—the Zeppelin was entirely démodé—and ration cards. The war was costing us six million pounds a day. ”

“ During the battle of Arras in April of 1917 there was always a wonderful pageant of men in that old city which had been under fire since October in the first year of war and was badly wounded, with many of its ancient houses utterly destroyed, but still a city with streets through which men could march, and buildings in which they could find comfortable, but unsafe billets. ”

“ The prison cages to the rear of Arras were filled with German prisoners, nearly all of whom were captured in a dazed condition from the terrific British fire that won the great battle of Arras.
A TITANIC STRUGGLE FORESEEN.
"The struggle in the western theater of war promises to be a titanic one," said an eye-witness at British headquarters, April 16. "The Allies are prepared as never before, both in material and personnel, and are co-operating with a smoothness which comes from a complete understanding and thorough appreciation of the work in hand. ”

“ The Somme fighting ends. Again our armies are built up, until the 760,000 point is reached. FRONT, increased to nearly 120 miles by a relief of French troops, falls again to 105, owing to the German retirement about ARRAS. Heavy guns have increased from just over 300 to 1,500. Again our armies are ready, and the Battle of ARRAS opens the ALLIED SPRING OFFENSIVE. It is immediately effective, for casualties never reach the same height as in the Somme, and prisoners are much more numerous. ”

“ During the progress of the battle I went many times into the broken heart of Arras while the bodies of men and horses lay about where transport columns had gone galloping by under fire and while the shrill whine of high velocities was followed by the crash of shells among the ruins. In the town and below it there were always crowds of men during the weeks of fighting outside. I went through the tunnels when long columns of soldiers in single file moved slowly forward to another day's battle in the fields beyond, and when another column came back, wounded and bloody after their morning's fight. ”

“ They devoted themselves to the technical details of their work, and only in subconscious thought pondered over the powers that lie behind the preparations of battle and decide the fate of fighting men. The scenes in Arras and on the roads that lead to Arras are not to be forgotten by men who lived through them. Below ground as well as above ground thousands of soldiers worked night and day for weeks before the hour of attack. Above ground they were getting many guns into position, making roads, laying cables, building huts and camps, hurrying up vast stores of material. ”

“ The 3rd Canadian Division gave valuable assistance with nine 18-pounders.
8. The First Battle of Arras 1918.
“From this time till about 3 p.m.” (writes Brig.-Gen. Elkington) , “many excellent targets in the open were engaged by both field and heavy artillery with great effect. Unfortunately, owing to the limited number of guns available, and that many had to be used for the immediate protection of our infantry, only a few could be used for the excellent targets in the open. At about 3.30 p.m. the enemy made a heavy attack against the Bailleul line, particularly on Bailleul East Post ”

“ Our soldiers, in their steel hats and goatskin coats, looked like medieval men-at-arms. The Highlanders who crowded Arras had their pipe-bands there and they played in the Petite Place, and the skirl of the pipes shattered against the gables of old houses. There were tunnels beneath Arras through which our men advanced to the German lines, and I went along them when one line of men was going into battle and another was coming back, wounded, some of them blind, bloody, vomiting with the fumes of gas in their lungs—their steel hats clinking as they groped past one another. ”

“ On August 18, 1915, violent fighting broke out in the region north of Arras, in the course of which the French took an important field position. In a desperate bayonet charge the following night the Germans vainly endeavored to recover the ground. The French also captured a trench in a long battle spread over a wide section of the Alsatian front. In the Artois they seized the junction of the highroads between Bethune and Arras and between Ablain and Angres. ”

“ On the last day of November the Division was withdrawn from the Arras sector: its move to relieve some of the troops who had been severely handled by the enemy at Bourlon Wood seemed probable. Events occurred to change the destination. The Battalion, after two nights at Arras, entrained amid all symptoms of haste on the morning of November 30 and travelled without the transport to Bapaume. The noise of battle and excited staff-officers greeted its arrival. In the back area it was on everybody's lips that the enemy had (p. 152) broken through. ”

“ The difficult problem for the Allies, in preparing to defend their long front against the expected German offensive, was to provide against the well-known German tactics of assembling superior numbers at the place of battle. In this war the German "massed attacks" have not been so much a matter of formation as of delivering streams of troops at the chosen point of contact to overwhelm their opponents with superior numbers at that point. These German tactics were again used in the attacks, begun on March 21, against the British front from southeast of Arras as far as La Fère. ”

“ Our front line ran along at the bottom of the slope, having the ruined piles of Roeux, which was the scene of such furious fighting in the latter stages of Arras battle, immediately in its rear. Half right, to the south of the river Scarpe, what remained of the village of Monchy stood out like a sentinel on the top of the hill. ”

“ A retirement was accordingly ordered, and on the morrow Kressenstein counter-attacked. He was driven back with considerable losses, and although Dobell had failed to take Gaza he had reached the Wady Ghuzze and secured the means of bringing his railhead right up to the front of battle. With a few weeks' respite for reinforcement and reorganization, April might yet see the British well on the way to Jerusalem; for Arras was not intended to stand alone, and in every sphere of war the Allies had planned a simultaneous offensive (*see Map, p. 352*) . ”

“ No painter could depict the frightfulness of that city of the dead. No camera could make you see as it is. Only your eyes can do that for you. And even then you cannot realize it all at once. Your eyes are more merciful than the truth and the Hun.
The Germans shelled Arras long after there was any military reason for doing so. The sheer, wanton love of destruction must have moved them. They had destroyed its military usefulness, but still they poured shot and shell into the town. ”

“ The capture of this city belongs to the third great attack which has been delivered by the enemy since March 21. Always he has massed his strength opposite the British lines and struck with full weight against their troops. In the first phase down from St. Quentin and the Cambrai salient the French came to their help and relieved them by their gallant aid, but the Germans then edged away from the French to strike the British again, this time at Arras, where they failed. ”

“ Nobody was living in Arras. No one could have lived there. The houses had been smashed to pieces. The pavements were dust and rubble. But there was life in the city. Through the ruins our men moved as ceaselessly and as restlessly as the tenants of an ant hill suddenly upturned by a plowshare. Soldiers were everywhere, and guns—guns, guns! For Arras had a new importance now. It was a center for many roads. Some of the most important supply roads of this sector of the front converged in Arras. ”

“ In the middle of November hard fighting was resumed on the Artois front in the region of the Labyrinth, north of Arras, and continued day and night, conducted chiefly with hand grenades. Artillery actions raged in the Argonne forest, near Soissons, Berry-au-Bac, and on the Belgian front. German activity in the Arras-Armentières sector was regarded as prognosticating a big attack. While the Germans collected men and munitions at one spot, the French and British, adopting worrying tactics, suddenly descended and harassed them in another. ”

“ The glorious victories always took place at the other end of Europe.
But nothing was published officially about the military situation on the Western front. German soldiers back from the trenches of Arras spoke bitterly of their failure to capture the French positions. Rumour said that the German casualties between Arras and Ypres amounted to over 100,000 killed. Arras was known to us as "Le Tombeau des Allemands." Reports from Valenciennes told of crowded hospitals, train-loads of wounded, and train-loads of dead. ”

“ In rapid succession the British positions, now indefinitely exposed on the north, were then attacked between Arras and La Fère, with tremendous concentration between the latter and St. Quentin. According to the German report of the 22d: "After powerful fire by our artillery and mine throwers our infantry stormed in broad sectors and everywhere captured the first enemy line." ”

“ Every night one could count dozens of fires caused by enemy shells hitting the cordite propellant of batteries.
We were billeted for some time in Arras, one of the best laid-out cities in France, which before the war had a population of about 40,000.
It had suffered severely from bombardment in 1914 and 1915. The trenches ran right through the town. The granite blocks of the pavé in the streets had been taken up in many places and formed into breastworks, with loopholes arranged for rifle and machine-gun fire. The Arras railway-station was quite interesting. ”

“ It was hell in Arras, though Easter Sunday. The enemy was flinging high explosives into the city, and clouds of shrapnel burst above, black and green. All around the country too, his shells were exploding in a scattered, aimless way, and from our side there was a heavy bombardment all along the Vimy Ridge, above Neuville-St.-Vaast, and sweeping round above St.-Nicholas and Blangy, two suburbs of Arras, and then south-west of the city on the ridge above the road to Cambrai. It was one continuous roar of death, and all the batteries were firing steadily. ”

“ Meanwhile, the French, after a prolonged bombardment, had taken the German positions north of Arras on a front of nearly five miles, and had pushed forward from two to three miles, capturing 2,000 prisoners and six guns. This remarkable success was gained by our allies in the course of a few hours.
As may be supposed from the nature of the fighting which has been in progress, our losses have been heavy. ”

“ He had long employed his troops on the construction of new lines of great strength on the Crinchon, stretching from Arras and the Somme, and he had here collected nearly a hundred thousand men, and a hundred and thirty pieces of cannon. After reconnoitring this position, the Allied generals concurred in thinking that it was equally impossible to force them, and undertake the siege of Arras, while the enemy, in such strength, and so strongly posted, lay on its flank. ”

“ To this wide sweeping storm of fire the British were replying with far greater violence, sending two shells to the enemy's one, a rivalry of destruction that had not been surpassed on any previous occasion since the war began. Except for occasional raids the infantry remained quiescent under this gunnery. North of Arras and east of Ypres the British raids netted a considerable number of prisoners and machine guns. ”

“ Condé proposed to the Spanish court to besiege Arras, to avenge itself for the siege of Stenay. Arras contained a garrison of little more than two thousand men; the army of the archduke Leopold consisted of thirty-two thousand men, Italians, Lorrains, Flemings, Spaniards, and discontented Frenchmen. Alarmed at this enterprise, Mazarin had recourse to Turenne, and an army of fourteen thousand men was sent under his command to succour Arras. ”

“ It was ‘not a local effort for the capture merely of Fromelles and Aubers villages,’ but was ‘part of a much larger operation designed to break the enemy’s line on a wide front.’ The importance of the forces employed was also emphasized. ‘Not only is the offensive being undertaken by the First Army’, we read, but a force of ‘the best French troops, amounting to 300,000 or 400,000 men, is likewise advancing to the attack north of Arras.’ The disposition of the British troops made their objective quite clear. They faced the Lille-La Bassée road, curving round La Bassée at the extreme right. ”