| Home > Battle
Histories > Western
Front > The Cambrai Operations, 20 November - 7 December 1917 |
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 The
Battle of Cambrai ranks as one of the most thrilling episodes
of the whole war. Tanks at last came into their kingdom. The
notion that the Hindenburg Line was impregnable was exploded. Captain Stair Gillon: The Story of the 29th Division: a record of gallant deeds. |
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Summary
- Cambrai was a spectacular success ... |
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| There is a trend among military historians to assign the eventual military defeat of Germany to well planned and co-ordinated assaults by the Allies, in which industrial might and the hard learning of four years of war combined to great effect. Beginning on 8 August 1918, the British Expeditionary Force undertook a series of large scale attacks on multiple fronts in which artillery, armour, aircraft and infantry operated effectively together in “all arms” battles. The opening of the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917 is often identified as the first demonstration of the sophisticated techniques and technologies required to effect such a battle. On that day, the British attack broke deeply and quickly into apparently impregnable defences with few casualties. This early result was widely regarded as being a great and spectacular achievement, so positive was it in comparison with the recent ghastly slog to Passchendaele. The Daily Mail called it a “Splendid Success” and headlined on 23 November with “Haig through the Hindenburg Line”. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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...
which all went wrong |
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| Yet two months later, a court of enquiry
convened at Hesdin to examine what had gone wrong at Cambrai.
This unusual step was taken after questions had been asked by
the War Cabinet, following a German counter attack that had apparently
come as a surprise and against which the British forces lost
ground and suffered heavy losses. Initial success, even if containing
the seeds of a war winning approach that would germinate on the
Santerre plateau in August 1918, had been short lived, and there
was bitter disappointment at the net result. One respected commentator,
a former junior officer, said that Cambrai was
a highly speculative gamble which I find inexplicable, so out of character is it with the rest of Haig’s career, not because it was inventive but because it was haphazard, not thought through. and that it was a harum-scarum affair, ill-planned and feebly directed, yet in military history it stands as the most significant battle of the First World War.[Charles Carrington, Soldier from the wars returning (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1965), pp.205-6] |
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Inception |
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 When
the Official History of the battle was being compiled, Lieutenant
General Sir Launcelot Kiggell, Haig’s Chief of General Staff
in late 1917, said that he could give no definite date as to the
first discussion of Cambrai, nor would any written record be found
as all was verbal at the inception of the campaign. He recalled
that General Hon. Sir Julian Byng, commanding Third Army, had come
to see Haig around three months before the
attack, asking to be
allowed to make a surprise assault at Cambrai. Thereafter, according
to Kiggell, the plan “just growed". |
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 Byng
would have been aware of an existing arrangement, prepared in
June 1917 by Fourth Army’s III Corps after Haig had ordered
it to examine breaking the German defences in the Cambrai area.
Some preparations had already been made in accordance with this
plan before Third Army took over the Cambrai front in early July.
It required a methodical “bite and hold” advance in
four stages using six Divisions. This approach probably seemed
unimaginative to the characteristically optimistic Byng, but it
was conventional by the standards of the latter half of 1917. |
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| It appears that it was the enthusiasm of the Tank Corps and the artillery that swayed opinion at GHQ and Third Army and built support for the “harum-scarum” operation that eventually took place. Brigadier General Hugh Elles, commanding the Tank Corps in France, and his chief staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Fuller, visited both the Montreuil General Headquarters and that of Third Army at Albert several times in August 1917. They made a convincing case that with growing strength in France, the Corps should not be frittered away at Ypres but used collectively to punch a hole into the enemy defences. Cambrai, being on relatively undamaged rolling chalk land, would be ideal although they favoured an attack in French Flanders, which GHQ vetoed. Elles and Fuller talked of a short, limited heavy raid designed to cause damage and chaos - a tactical operation designed to kill, not capture ground. Major General John Davidson, Chief of Operations staff at GHQ, was taken with the idea as was Byng, already mulling over such an operation at Cambrai. Independently and at the same time, IV Corps in Byng’s Army had developed a scheme for a surprise attack using unregistered artillery. The Tank Corps much approved of the idea, for it would avoid the devastation of ground that had caused so much difficulty for the machines at Ypres. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hindsight |
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| The genesis of Cambrai can be traced easily enough through these developments in the summer of 1917. Enthusiasts, learning from prior disappointments, were developing new ideas and advocating their use, finding in Byng an equally enthusiastic and respected figure who achieved a consensus of support at the highest levels of command. The pace at which Third Army created the plan, then trained and assembled their forces and executed a successful attack indicates a growing maturity of the organisation and processes required to make this so. Yet the improvised, experimental nature of Cambrai was a root cause of the lack of planning and feeble direction highlighted by Charles Carrington. The sketchy nature of the plan is to some extent forgivable, for here was a chance to leave the disappointments of Passchendaele behind and do something audacious. What is much more difficult to understand is the strategic need to carry out this operation at all, the objective of employing these ideas at this place and at this time, and the evident lack of thought about potential outcomes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Why here, why now? |
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| Why Cambrai at all? Its strategic significance as the target of a surprise attack is far from clear. After falling to the Germans in 1914, Cambrai had become an important railhead, billeting and headquarters town. It lay at a junction of railways connecting Douai, Valenciennes and Saint-Quentin, and as such was on the supply routes coming in from Germany and the northern and eastern industrial areas of occupied France, as well as a lateral route down which men and material could be moved along the western front. It was also on the Saint-Quentin canal, from which the front could be supplied along the River Scheldt with which it was contiguous. As a military target, Cambrai would be a useful capture to deny the enemy a key part of his communication system. But it lay behind a formidable defensive position. Assuming this could be breached, it would also be most difficult to fight through an industrial town, as had been recognised in 1915 when attacks on the not dissimilar Lens were avoided. It would seem that Cambrai was chosen at least as much because it was in Byng’s area and that the Tank Corps were convinced the ground was to their advantage, as for any other sound military reason. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Order of Battle |
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Byng’s growing enthusiasm, even with Haig’s support, was insufficient to summon up forces for the operation while Third Ypres was still underway. One GSO1 staff officer at GHQ – Brigadier General E. N. Tandey – recalled a meeting in September 1917: I was called one afternoon, in the absence of the MGGS, to the Chief’s chateau. I found him alone with General Byng. He quietly announced that as he intended to attack with the Third Army at Cambrai with tanks in early November … he wanted to tell General Byng exactly which Divisions he could have for the purpose. He told me that he had offered him 2 or 3 which he named. I remember my quandary as I had to tell him that none of those he had selected (and one or two others he also mentioned) … would be fit to go into the attack by the date named, as they would not have had the minimum time necessary to absorb their reinforcements without which they could not be battle formations. I thought he would eat me.Kiggell counselled that there were insufficient troops to undertake both operations and Third Army’s action was placed on hold. It was not until 13 October that Haig gave his approval, and another two weeks after that before Byng briefed his Corps commanders. |
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The plan of attack |
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| In Third Army orders – codenamed Operation
GY - issued
on 13 November 1917, the attack was defined as a coup de main, “to
take advantage of the existing favourable local situation” where “surprise
and rapidity of action are … of the utmost importance”.
It was also to be a deep attack on a 10,000 yard (5.6 mile) front
that would be “widened as soon as possible”.
Once the key German Masnieres-Beaurevoir line had been breached
by III Corps, the cavalry would pass through, reach around to isolate
Cambrai from the rear and cut the railways leading from it. Haig
would later say that the purpose of the attack was to compel the
enemy to withdraw from the salient between the Canal du Nord and
the Scarpe, although the objectives must be achieved within 48
hours before strong enemy reserves could come into play.
So the high speed and short tactical operation had somehow become
one of seizing and holding ground, and while not quite a plan for
strategic breakthrough – there were never enough reserves
to exploit a breakthrough – the orders had faint resemblance
to the original concepts.
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20 November 1917: dawning of a new era:
operational factors that led to tremendous success |
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| The operational factors that led to initial success were the ability to maintain surprise, emphasis on neutralisation of enemy firepower, adequate weight of artillery and deployment of well trained if hardly fresh troops. A contributory factor was intelligence of the enemy’s dispositions and ability to reinforce and counter attack, which appears to have been reasonably accurate. Things were also helped by a corresponding intelligence failure on the part of the German Second Army. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Artillery It is apparent that although the methods to exploit these developments were evolving, they had not as a whole been driven into artillery doctrine from the top: their use at Cambrai was an innovation from below, for the idea of a surprise bombardment using the new methods came from Brigadier General Tudor, officer Commanding Royal Artillery of the 9th (Scottish) Division. By August he had discussed his idea with Brigadier General Hugo de Pree of IV Corps General Staff and in turn had gained the approval of the commander of IV Corps, Lieutenant General Sir Charles Woollcombe. That the new methods had not been enthusiastically adopted may have been due to lingering doubts about their effectiveness: IV Corps Order 320, issued on 15 November 1917, said that the barrage “being unregistered cannot be expected to be as accurate as usual”. The surprise bombardment using predicted firing from there on became a key part of Third Army’s plan. The concealment of assembly of more than 1000 guns and howitzers on the fronts of III and IV Corps and the success of the opening bombardment at 6.10am on 20 November 1917 were strong contributory factors to the bells ringing in Britain three days later. It was not just surprise that made the artillery effective: weight of firepower and the proportion devoted to neutralisation of enemy batteries were also important factors. The number of guns and the 900,000 rounds assembled for the operation were approximately equivalent to those used in the preliminary bombardment to the successful attack on Vimy Ridge six months before. |
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| Tanks If the secret concentration of a large number of guns was impressive, the assembly of 476 tanks possibly surpassed it, although when running in low gear at low engine speed, the new Mark IV version tanks, although just as heavy, slow and difficult to manoeuvre as their predecessors, were remarkably quiet. Even so, aircraft flew up and down the area on 18 and 19 November as a ruse to mask the sound as the tanks moved up. While this and other signs of unusual activity had somewhat raised the state of alert – for example, German Second Army placed 54 Division at readiness – and raids had taken prisoners from the assault units, it is clear from German reports that their intelligence had failed to identify the imminence and nature of the British attack. The planned role for the tanks was to advance en masse, with the objective of crushing wire defences and suppressing firing from trenches and strong points. The innovation of fascines to be dropped as makeshift bridges enabling the crossing of a wide trench removed one of the known shortcomings of the current tank design. Much attention had been paid to training, particularly for co-operation between infantry and tank, with the units designated to make the initial assault being withdrawn to Wailly for this purpose. An innovation was that the infantry would follow the tanks through the gaps they made, moving in “worms” rather than the familiar lines: their training seems to have done much to improve infantry confidence in the tanks, hitherto seen as a mixed blessing. The tanks were a notable operational success. Shrouded by mist and smoke, they broke into the Hindenburg Line defences with comparative ease in many places. |
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20 November 1917: seeds of failure |
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Successful though the day was, with an
advance three to four miles deep into a strong system of defence
in little over four hours at a cost of just over 4000 casualties,
it was on 20 November that things began to go wrong, leading
inexorably to failure ten days later. Third Army failed to fulfil
its objectives, notably in that the cavalry had been unable to
push through a gap at Marcoing-Masnieres and on to encircle Cambrai
itself. Nowhere had the Masnieres-Beaurevoir line been convincingly
penetrated, and the key Bourlon ridge, dominant of the northern
half of the battlefield, remained firmly in German hands. No fewer than 179 tanks had been destroyed, disabled
or broke down. By the afternoon, the attack had already lost its
early impetus. Byng was all for carrying on, issuing orders to III
Corps at 8pm to continue the push into the Masnieres-Beaurevoir
line to allow passage of the cavalry, and to IV Corps for finally
completing the capture of Flesquieres and Bourlon before the 48
hour limit was reached. With few fresh troops, surprise lost, the
tanks weakened and the field artillery in the process of moving
up, the renewed attack had all the hallmarks of “penny packet” Somme
fighting and achieved little. Late on 21 November, Byng ordered
the III Corps operation to halt and for consolidation to take place.
 Driven by the tactical importance of the position, absence of signs
of growth of German strength and the fact that Third Army had not
yet called upon V Corps (which had been placed at its disposal
as reserve at the outset of the battle), Haig ordered Byng to continue
with the attack on Bourlon. This was a serious command failure.
The audacious sweep to capture Cambrai and force evacuation of
a wide area to the Scarpe had become a bitter yard by yard fight
for a difficult feature of landscape. |
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| “All arms” fighting broke down, the tanks few and impotent in the thick woodland of Bourlon and La Folie, and defeated in the ruined streets of Fontaine Notre Dame. Behind the front, the roads resembled those at Morval a year before, the traffic unable to move through mud and snow, along roads for which there was insufficient stone and labour to carry out adequate running repairs. The “ray of hope” had become a slow, piecemeal and inevitably costly shambles. Third Army closed down offensive operations on 27 November and units were ordered to consolidate. Three days later, The German Army struck back. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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German reaction to the
British attack |
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On 17 December, Lieutenant General Thomas Snow wrote from VII Corps HQ to Third Army: The abnormal movement and increased registration were duly recorded in the Corps Daily Intelligence Summary; these were believed at first to be connected with an expected divisional relief, though as time went on the suspicion grew that they might mean something more.VII Corps stood to the right of the tired III Corps. Facing the area Gouzeaucourt-Epehy, it had not been part of the main attacking force at Cambrai but had carried out subsidiary operations. The “something more” reported to Snow over the days since the British attack had been called off had since turned into disaster for both Corps. Recovering from the initial shock of the attack, Second Army had quickly arranged for reinforcements to move to Cambrai. By good fortune, 107 Division had arrived in the area to relieve a Landwehr Division on 19 November – undetected by British intelligence – and was deployed piecemeal to help stem the attack next day. The situation for the Germans was serious for a while: two divisions virtually destroyed, gaps in the line, ammunition short, and infantry details being sent in to shore up the defences. The fighting at Bourlon was bitter and at times worrying, with reports of men retiring in disorder from Fontaine. But if the slowdown in the British attack in the afternoon of 20 November had given precious time to regroup, the concentration on Bourlon after 21 November provided the opportunity to thoroughly reinforce. An entirely new command, the XXIII Reserve Corps or Busigny Group, came into being on 23 November, bringing together the 5 Guard, 30, 34 and 220 Divisions, arriving from other parts of the front to face the British VII Corps. It is little wonder that Snow received reports of unusual activity. Other formations arrived to reinforce the Caudry and Moser Groups, opposing III and IV Corps. By 27 November, the balance had swung to such an extent that an opportunity for a vigorous counter attack presented itself. |
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Counter attack |
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On the same day that Byng was closing down his offensive, Second Army received orders to hit back. The plan – devised and organised with exceptional pace for an action of this magnitude - was for a main force from the Busigny and Caudry Groups to strike from the south, recapture the Hindenburg positions at Havrincourt and Flesquieres and then roll up the British forces now stuck in Bourlon Wood, when forces of the Arras Group north and west of that area would also join the attack. Such was German confidence that reserves were assembled to exploit success, and a further operation north of Saint Quentin was authorised to add to the pressure. On 28 November, operations opened with a heavy gas bombardment of Bourlon. Two days later, the counter attack began in earnest. On the right flank, south of the Gouzeaucourt-Bonavis road, the break into British positions was swift. The defending 55 (2/West Lancashire) Division and much of 12 (Eastern) and 20 (Light) Divisions seemed to evaporate, and Snow called for reinforcements as early as 9am. Many artillery batteries soon came within range of advancing German infantry. Both they and units hurriedly ordered to shore up the clearly splintering defence were shocked at what they saw. Not least of them was the Guards Division, still recuperating from a mauling in Fontaine Notre Dame and now heading into what would become a bitter fight to hold the enemy at Gouzeaucourt: First we had to struggle through the flood of terrified men … nothing seemed to stem the torrent of frightened men with eyes of hunted deer, without rifles or equipment, among them half-dressed officers presumably surprised in their sleep, and gunners who had had the sense and calmness to remove the breech blocks from their guns and were carrying them in their hands. Many were shouting alarming rumours, others yelling “Which is the nearest way to the coast?”[Norman D. Cliff, To hell and back with the Guards (Braunton, Devon: Merlin Books Limited, 1988) p.85] |
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| The improvised defence gradually sealed the position and once again an initially promising attack lost momentum. The German attack met a far stronger defence north of the road, but even there, weight of artillery and numbers told, and hard-won positions were reluctantly given up by the British. Once again, the battle resembled the Somme: piecemeal attack and improvised counter attack. The German army suffered from problems familiar to the BEF: heavy losses, chaotic supply, and battlefield command breakdown that did not seize upon and propagate success. By 5 December, the line had re-stabilised. The net result of the Cambrai operation in terms of ground was that north of Gonnelieu the British had gained from their 20 November start line, standing on the Hindenburg Support positions snaking around Flesquieres and Welsh Ridge – while south from Gonnelieu they had been pushed back an average of 3000 yards with the loss of Villers Guislain. Both sides now occupied their respective bulges in an S-shaped double salient. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Enquiry and review |
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Viewed as a heavy hit and run raid, Cambrai had been a failure.
As a more strategic operation, designed to punch a deep hole,
capture Cambrai, disrupt German rail communications and compel
withdrawal from there to the Scarpe, it was a dismal defeat.
Stories began to filter back of headlong retreat; of Generals
caught in their pyjamas, and of new, wonder German tactics that
sliced easily through the British defences. Questions were rightly
asked in the War Cabinet, which requested an enquiry. Haig pre-empted
it, having already organised one of his own. The collective view of the operational factors
contributing to British defeat was outlined very clearly in the
papers assembled for the enquiry. That the enemy attack had been
a surprise was denied. All those consulted said it was
expected and suitable defensive measures had been taken. Far
from admitting that the men holding these positions were tired,
having not been relieved, on the contrary they were, according
to Byng, “elated,
full of fight”. Both of these points are open to challenge.
Byng, Haig and Smuts all assigned the absence of serious resistance
on the southern part of the front to a lack of training among
junior officers, NCOs and men – a much more credible factor,
but one directly attributable to the rush to undertake the operation
despite advice from the staff that the divisions were simply
not in a condition to undertake it. The tactically poor position
and thinly held front resulting from the 20 November assault
is hardly mentioned and where it is, is denied. Reports also
mention the panic-inducing effect of rumours of defeat passing
quickly between units and back down the lines of communication.
No mention is made of the breakdown of all arms fighting, nor
the serious communication failures that led to the commander
of 29th Division (Major
General Sir Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle) claiming that he knew
nothing of the German attack before it was upon his headquarters. The fact remains that, innovative as it was, the British assault was insufficiently successful. The initially winning operational factors proved unequal to the task of stopping the enemy from regrouping. In addition, German tactics had proven an ability to break quickly into a sketchily held front: a portent for 1918. The “dawn of hope” theory of Cambrai has merit, but as far as evidencing a learning curve is concerned, it is overstated. All arms success had come by luck rather than great design. More important is that the battle provided a basis from which operational strengths could be identified and refined, and weaknesses eliminated, by the time of the key victories at Hamel and Amiens in June and August 1918. |
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Casualties |
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| Third Army reported losses of dead, wounded and missing of 44,207 between 20 November and 8 December. Of these, some 6,000 were taken prisoner in the enemy counterstroke on 30 November. Enemy casualties are estimated by the British Official History at approximately 45,000. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Cambrai battlefield
today |
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One more trick to play |
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| On 30/31 December, German troops dressed in white camouflage suits surprised British battalions in snow on the southern part of the Cambrai front. A difficult defensive action took place: the Action of Welch Ridge. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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References and useful
reading |
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 Forward
to March 1918, and the vast German Spring Offensive of 1918 |
