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| 'Backs to the Wall" time. The alarming advance made by Operation Georgette. |
The end of the first week of Operation
Georgette saw both sides’ fate hanging in the balance. The Germans had to pause
to re-group and to supply their troops. For the British, Bethune and Hazebrouck
were still at risk, and the Germans were now pressurising the full range of Flanders hills west of
Ypres, from Mont des Cats behind Bailleul to Mount Kemmel. Not only Ypres, but the route to the coastal ports was opening.
It was at this stage, on 11th
April that the dour Haig, unable to persuade Foch to release more reserves from
further south, issued his most famous and Nelsonian order of the day: “There is no other course open to us but to
fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man; there must be no
retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justness of our
cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the
freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this
critical moment”. Things would get worse before they got better. On 14th
Bailleul fell, and on 16th so too did Wytschaete and Spanbroekmoelen.
By the 18th the Germans were ready to advance on Mount Kemmel from
the south and west. Success here would all but cut off Ypres, prompting an
Allied retreat to the channel, and necessitating flooding of the coastal plain.
Ludendorff’s revision of Georgette now had
two immediate objectives: the capture of Bethune, and the isolation of Ypres by
taking Mount Kemmel. Hazebrouck and a retreat to the coast would then follow as
a matter of course.
To increase the pressure on Ypres,
Ludendorff authorised Operation Tannenberg (an emotive choice recalling the
great pincer like German victory of 1914 see Post…). This was to be a huge movement
with Kemmel in the south, the coastal route in the north, and the beleaguered
Ypres caught in the pincers. The crucial engagements took place on 17th
and 18th April. Firstly the Belgian forces were successful in
rebuffing the coastal movement. Strong counter attacks rapidly reversed some
initial German gains, and the right hand pincer ground to a halt almost before
it had started. The left hand pincer was also rebuffed in several places, but
made sufficient progress to take the southern and western aspects of Kemmel,
and took all of Wytschaete. It was now able to overlook the remains of Ypres,
almost one year after it had been driven from the ridge.
South of the Lys, von Quast made his assault
towards Bethune along his whole section from Givenchy to Merville. To capture
Bethune he had to get across the La Bassée
canal. Despite reaching the eastern bank along much its length, his attempts
to cross all ended in costly failure. The defence put up by 4 Division of
Horne’s Army fully met the demands of Haig’s order of the day. Holding Givenchy proved the key to the defence of Bethune.
This was the beginning of the end of the
Battle of the Lys. The German machine had been comprehensively repulsed in the
north of Belgium, and severely damaged in its failure to cross the La Bassée
canal in front of Bethune. Only in the centre, at Mount Kemmel, could
Ludendorff hope to gain Ypres, and this would prove to be the final act of the
battle*. Sporadic action continued but for the next week both sides prepared for
this decisive moment. By now Foch was taking the lead on tactics, and he
brought in French reserve divisions to strengthen the Kemmel defences.
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| The bleak view of Mount Kemmel in April 1918. Hardly Himalayan, but at 500 feet, it dominated the views over Ypres and to the coast |
The
attack came on 25th April, following an opening bombardment from
Meeteren (west of Kemmel) to the Ypres-Comine canal. The fighting of the next
four days matched any of the war for its fierceness, with thousands of British,
French and German casualties. As in OM, the Germans almost made all of their
objectives, but fell just short before losing ground to counter-attacks. They
did reach the highest point of Kemmel, and the road from Ypres to Poperinge
but, exhausted, by the end of April they were contained by Allied
reinforcements. A final attempt to break through on the coastal route north of
Ypres had again been successfully beaten off by the Belgian forces. By the end
of May, Ludendorff’s focus had shifted again, this time for his final gambit of
the Kaiserschlacht – against Paris from the Aisne.
The battle of the Lys was a turning phase
of the war. The Germans won tactical victories but failed strategically. Their
armies were showing fallibility, and the innovative shock tactics were
regressing to attritional warfare as a result of the high casualties they were
suffering. Foch was growing into his role as Allied supremo, and had acted
decisively and with resolve in the later stages of the battle.
At the close of Operations Michael and
Georgette the Germans retained their numerical superiority on the Western Front
– 208 Divisions ranged against 168 – but they had been badly damaged, and many
of their best units had been sacrificed. Most worryingly for Ludendorff he now
had nowhere to look for reinforcements from the East, whereas from the West,
American troops were beginning to arrive in numbers. His Kaiserschlacht was to
have one more roll of the dice.
* The battle of Kemmelberg, as a distinct departure from Operation Georgette's original conception, is also frequently known as the Fourth Battle of Ypres
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