What Happened at Aubers Ridge?

By David Craig

The poor old Northamptons were in the firing line and we were reinforcements. . . It was simply raining lead, what with shells and machine guns. . . I stopped one through the hip but had sense enough not to stop. . .  The ditch was full of wounded and dead. . .the order came along to tell the Northamptons and the King's Royal Rifles to get back the best way they could. Couldn't take the position and no more reinforcements.

Albert Money, the King's Royal Rifles
9 May 1915 at Aubers Ridge

Barely Discernible in the Distance Beyond the British & German Trenches, Aubers Ridge Would Prove Impregnable and Would Not Be Abandoned by the German Army Until October 1918 

[In the Spring of 1915] Now convinced of the British intent and ability to mount offensive operations, the French proposed a series of joint attacks in the Artois, the BEF to operate on the left flank of major French attacks by their Tenth Army over an 8-mile frontage in the Notre Dame de Lorette/Vimy Ridge area. Fifteen miles to the north, Haig's First Army—ten divisions and 600 guns strong—would mount its attack, carried out at the strong request of the French to draw German reserves away from the French assault [to the south in Artois.]

The British expected great things for the coming battle. They hoped to build on the undoubted success of the early part of Neuve Chapelle in March and take the feature known as the Aubers Ridge. Douglas Haig planned a two-pronged initial attack, with 1st Corps and the Indian Corps on a front of 2400 yards in the south and 8th Division of IV Corps on a 1500-yard front in the north. The two attacks were to be mounted 6000 yards apart. The plan was that once the two breaches in the German line had been achieved, the reserves would spread out in front of the Aubers Ridge and advance eastward. 

The German defenses in front of the Aubers Ridge had been considerably improved after the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. In addition to thickening the defensive area with the addition of a fortified second line and the addition of two or three times the previous amounts of barbed wire, they augmented machine gun numbers by the addition of two per battalion firing at ground level from concrete bunkers and carefully sited to enable enfilade (flanking) fire to sweep no man's land. 

Three British Battlefields of Early 1915

The destruction of these defenses by artillery fire was crucial to the success of the infantry attack. Similar fire plans to those used at Neuve Chapelle had been prepared, but on a larger scale. The British had assembled 121 heavy guns and 516 field guns and light howitzers. In addition, French heavy guns of D'Urbal's French Tenth Army, attacking Vimy Ridge on the right of the British, would fire in support of the BEF southern attack. The BEF, however, had very small stocks of ammunition. The preparatory bombardment had to be limited to 40 minutes as compared to the French Tenth Army's four days. Moreover, much of the ammunition proved faulty and either did not explode at all or, worse, exploded in the gun. 

The Aubers Ridge attack on 9 May failed in the face of determined German resistance from a defense line almost completely undamaged by the preliminary artillery fire. So little were the Germans troubled by the British effort that German reserves, while put on the alert, were not moved forward. 

At 5:00 a.m. the preliminary barrage started. Ninety-six field guns were tasked with wire cutting and 46 howitzers targeted the German breastworks. At 5:30 the barrage became even more intense and the wirecutting guns switched from shrapnel to HE shells in order to add to the destruction of the German breastworks. Ten minutes later the guns "lifted" 600 yards and the infantry climbed over the frontline breastworks into No Man's Land.

German Machine Guns on the Ridge

In the south, German machine guns, undamaged by the artillery barrage, opened up almost immediately, sweeping across the top of the British breastworks and killing many attackers as they attempted to get into no man's land; nonetheless many men were able to form a line sheltering from the German fire. As the guns lifted, these men of the three attacking brigades rose and charged the German trenches but were met by a devastating fire from both rifles and machine guns. The majority of these guns were firing from ground level, at ankle height, a particularly effective method of downing attacking infantry. It was clear that the preparatory barrage had failed to suppress German firepower and, additionally, had only partly succeeded in cutting wire and creating breaches in the enemy breastworks. 

Here and there a few small parties managed to enter the German front line, but none returned. Few of the attackers were able to get more than halfway across no-man's-land, where they took shelter in what cover they could find. The British commanders attempted to renew the attack, but any movement brought about fierce German artillery fire and it proved impossible to mount a renewed attack for the rest of the day.

In the north the attack fared better, with some areas well cleared of wire, and 250 yards of German front line captured along with prisoners from the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment. The attackers succeeded in reaching the German reserve trench, but these successes were short-lived. The attackers were quickly isolated by attacks from uncaptured areas of breastwork into a no-man's-land now being swept by heavy fire, with all movement either forward, lateral,or to the rear impossible.

British Artillerymen

At 6:00 p.m., when the scale of the failure became known to Haig at First Army HQ, he cancelled orders for a renewal of the attack on the following day and broke off the battle. During a conference on the evening of 9 May it had become clear that BEF artillery ammunition stocks were now so low that no follow-up attack could be executed. A total of 11,619 BEF soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing.

The Official History puts almost the whole responsibility for the failure at Aubers Ridge on the artillery. Lack of ammunition, unreliability of ammunition, defective fuses, inaccurate gunnery due to barrel wear, the need to allow for meteorological conditions, and breakdowns in communication between the front line and the guns all contributed to a failure of the artillery to support the infantry attack by destroying the German frontline defenses (particularly the machine guns) and the German gun positions beyond.

"The brief 40 minute bombardment, though it raised a curtain of dust and smoke immediately above the enemy's front line, did no appreciable damage, and merely gave the enemy warning to stand-to to meet an assault which he had been expecting." British Official History.

Source: Originally presented in the July 2015 issue of Over the Top