The Attack on the Gommecourt Salient was a British operation against the northern flank of the German 2nd Army during the First World War. The attack took place on 1 July 1916, on the Western Front in France, during the Battle of the Somme. The operation was conducted by the British Third Army (Lieutenant-General Edmund Allenby) as a diversion, to protect the northern flank of the main attack. The British Fourth Army on the First day on the Somme, attacked from Serre southwards to the boundary with the French Sixth Army at Maricourt. To extend the attack front of the Fourth Army, the VII Corps (Lieutenant-General Thomas Snow) of the Third Army was to capture the Gommecourt Salient, the most westerly point of the Western Front. In the first week of May, the 56th (1/1st London) Division (Major-General Charles Hull) and the 46th (North Midland) Division (Major-General Edward Montagu-Stuart-Wortley) moved into the area for the attack. By 10 May, both divisions had taken over the front on the right flank of the 37th Division (Major-General Count Gleichen) and begun training for the operation, making no attempt to conceal the preparations.
At on 1 July, the attack on Gommecourt began; the 56th (1st London) Division, to the south, overran the first two German trenches. Troops also reached the third trench but a strongpoint at Nameless Farm held out despite several attacks. The German artillery fired a standing barrage along no man's land and trapped the British on the far side all day, as German infantry gradually recaptured the lost trenches; attempts to send reinforcements from the British lines were costly failures. The 46th (North Midland) Division attack on the north side of the salient had even less success, a smoke screen led the attackers to lose direction as their advance was slowed by deep mud. Some parties of the 137th Brigade got into the German front line and parties of the 139th Brigade reached the second line but German small arms and barrage-fire on no man's land by artillery trapped the attackers and isolated them from their supports. The parties who got across no man's land were surrounded and destroyed, a few men being taken prisoner. The 46th (North Midland) Division had the fewest casualties of the 13 British divisions which attacked on 1 July, which got Montagu-Stuart-Wortley sacked (Stellenbosched) on 5 July. After several local truces, the British wounded were got in during 1 and 2 July, the area becoming a backwater.
The Germans retreated from the Bapaume Salient, created by the Battle of the Somme, in February 1917 and abandoned Gommecourt, which was occupied unopposed on 27 February. In 1918, during the (Spring Offensive 1 March – 18 July), the British dug an improvised defensive position, the Purple Line, south, east and north of the village but the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division (Major-General Walter Braithwaite) at Bucquoy to the east stopped the German advance. On 28 March, the 41st Division (Major-General Sydney Lawford) occupied the purple line and a battalion of the 124th Brigade attacked Rossignol Wood. As night fell, the 4th Australian Brigade of the 4th Australian Division to the south of Bucquoy and the 2/8th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, 185th Brigade, [62nd (West Riding) Division], attacked the German positions to the south-east. The attack failed but a gap between the Australians and the 186th Brigade was closed and the German threat to Gommecourt removed.
Background
Gommecourt
Gommecourt is a village to the south-east of Foncquevillers (Funky Villas to the British) and north-east of Hébuterne on the D 6 road to Puisieux. The village is from Albert. From late 1914 to early 1917, the Western Front turned north-east towards Arras and thence northwards to La Bassée and the bend in the line became known as the Gommecourt Salient. The village is atop four low, flat-topped ridges in the shape of a flattened X, the ends pointing towards Essarts, Rossignol Wood, the west side of Hébuterne and the eastern fringe of Foncquevillers. On the north-west side of the salient, the German front line was below the crest of the west side of Essarts Ridge facing a shallow valley, with the British front line on the other side, which was overlooked for about over the level ground to the rear of the British line, except where the ruins and trees of Fonquevillers blocked the view.
1914–1915
On 4 October 1914, German attacks by the (II Cavalry Corps), Georg von der Marwitz) and the XIV Reserve Corps drove the group of divisions comprising the 81st, 82nd, 84th and 88th Territorial divisions (General Joseph Brugère) back from Hébuterne, Gommecourt and Monchy au Bois to the north. Gommecourt was captured by the 1st Guard Division ( Oskar von Hutier) on the night of and held against French counter-attacks, which were stopped short of the village, where the front settled until March 1917. The French XI Corps attacked at Beaumont Hamel on 19 November but failed to capture the village after being held up by uncut wire. A diversion, the Battle of Hébuterne, was conducted by XI Corps from 7 to 13 June 1915 at Ferme Toutvent (Windy Farm), to the south, during the Second Battle of Artois. On a stretch of the German front line, an area deep was captured and held against German counter-attacks, at a cost of The area around Gommecourt was taken over by the British in July 1915.
Strategic developments
Allied strategy for 1916 was decided at the Chantilly Conference from 6 to 8 December 1915. Simultaneous offensives on the Eastern Front by the Russian army, on the Italian Front by the Italian army and on the Western Front by the Franco-British armies, would deny time for the Central Powers to move troops between fronts. In December 1915, General Sir Douglas Haig replaced General Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief of the BEF. Haig favoured a British offensive in Flanders close to BEF supply routes, to drive the Germans from the Belgian coast and end the U-boat and destroyer threat to cross-Channel traffic from Belgian waters. Haig was not formally subordinate to General Joseph Joffre but the British played a lesser role on the Western Front and perforce complied with French strategy.
In January 1916, Joffre wanted the BEF to deplete German reserves by a large attack north of the Somme, on a front around 20 April and then attack elsewhere in May. Haig objected, since partial offensives would appear to be defeats, would not sufficiently reduce German reserves and give the Germans too much time to recover. On 14 February, Joffre dropped the preparatory offensives idea in favour of a combined offensive, where the French and British Armies met, astride the Somme in Picardy, to begin around 1 July. A smaller attack from La Bassée to Ypres would take place a week or two earlier and the Tenth Army would be relieved in early June as more British divisions arrived in France. A week later, the Germans began the Battle of Verdun and the costly French defence of the Meuse Heights eventually reduced the French contribution to the Somme offensive from three armies to on the southern flank of divisions.
The chief of the (OHL, the German General Staff), Erich von Falkenhayn, intended to end the war in 1916, by splitting the Anglo-French Entente, before its material superiority became unbeatable. Falkenhayn planned to defeat the large amount of reserves which the Entente could move into the path of a breakthrough, by threatening a sensitive point close to the existing front line, to provoke the French into costly counter-attacks against fortified German positions. Falkenhayn chose to attack towards Verdun, to take the Meuse Heights and make the city untenable. The French would have to conduct a counter-offensive on ground dominated by the Germans and ringed with masses of heavy artillery, leading to huge losses, bringing the French army close to collapse. The British would mount a hasty and equally-costly relief offensive, which Falkenhayn expected to occur south of Arras and be destroyed by the 6th Army ( Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria), which held the Western Front from Hannescamps, south-west of Arras, northwards to St Eloi, south of Ypres.
Despite the certainty by mid-June of an Anglo-French attack on the Somme against the 2nd Army, Falkenhayn sent only four divisions as reinforcements, keeping eight in the western strategic reserve. No divisions were moved from the 6th Army, despite it holding a shorter line with divisions and having three divisions of the OHL reserve in its rear area. The maintenance of the strength of the 6th Army at the expense of the 2nd Army, indicated that Falkenhayn intended the counter-offensive against the British to be made north of the Somme once the British offensive had been shattered. If such Franco-British defeats were not enough, the would attack the remnants of both armies and end the Entente for good. The unexpected duration of the Verdun offensive and the need to replace many exhausted units in the 5th Army, depleted the German strategic reserve stationed behind the 6th Army and reduced the German counter-offensive strategy north of the Somme to one of static defence.
Tactical developments
The original British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of six divisions and the Cavalry Division, had lost most of the army's pre-war regular soldiers in the battles of 1914 and 1915. The bulk of the British casualties were replaced by volunteers of the Territorial Force and Kitchener's Army of wartime volunteers, which had begun forming in August 1914. Rapid expansion created many vacancies for senior commands and specialist posts, which led to many retired officers (dug-outs) and inexperienced newcomers being appointed. In 1914, Haig had been a lieutenant-general in command of I Corps and was promoted to command the First Army in early 1915, then the BEF in December, which eventually comprised five field armies with sixty divisions. The swift increase in the size of the British Army reduced the average level of experience within it and created an acute equipment shortage. Many officers resorted to directive command to avoid delegating to novices, yet divisional commanders were given great latitude in training and planning for the attack of 1 July, since the heterogeneous nature of the army of 1916 made it impossible for corps and army commanders to know the capacity of each division.
Despite considerable debate among German staff officers, Falkenhayn continued his policy of unyielding defence. On the Somme front Falkenhayn's construction plan of January 1915 had been completed. Barbed wire obstacles had been enlarged from one belt wide to two belts, wide and about apart. Double and triple thickness wire was used and laid high. The front line had been increased from one trench line to a 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. 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 . An intermediate line of strongpoints (the ) about behind the front line was also built. Communication trenches ran back to the reserve line, renamed the second position, which was as well built and wired as the first position. The second position was beyond the range of Allied field artillery, to force an attacker to delay the infantry advance until sufficient guns and ammunition had been brought forward.
Prelude
British preparations