The Stars and Stripes Reports the Lost Battalion Episode

New Zealand Takes Messines: 7 June 1917, Part II–The Attack

New Zealand Division Advanced Dressing Station at Messines

In II Anzac Corps sector, the New Zealand Division was in the center between the 3rd Australian Division on the right and the British 25th Division on the left. Its role included the capture of the heavily fortified Messines village upon which the whole army plan depended. Once the village was taken the 4th Australian Division could pass through it on the way to the final objective, a line about a mile beyond the crest. 

At 3:10 a.m. on 7 June the mines went up (only 19 of them exploded), and a colossal barrage over a kilometer deep crashed down on the German defenses. The noise from the explosion was distinctly heard as far away as the United Kingdom, and an observatory on the Isle of Wight registered it on its seismograph. 

The famed war correspondent Philip Gibbs described it as: 

The most diabolical splendour I have ever seen. Out of  the dark ridges of Messines and Wytschaete and that ill-famed Hill 60 there gushed out and up enormous volumes of scarlet flame from the exploding mines and of earth and smoke all lighted up by the flame spilling over into mountains of fierce colour, so that the countryside was illuminated by red light. 

A German officer on the receiving end of this "diabolical splendour" recorded this vivid account of the event and its effect on his battalion: 

In the front line the relief was in full swing: when suddenly, at 4.00 am, there was an almighty roar and the earth began to quake and everything flew off the chairs: explosion! Attack! Both officers and men poured out of the entrance into the open air. An awe-inspiring and appalling sight met their eyes. The hills from Wijtschate [sic] to Messines were enveloped in a great sea of flames. Fourteen fiery volcanoes and masses of earth erupted vertically into the sky colouring it a blood red. Then the great masses of earth crashed back down to the ground and, simultaneously, drum fire of an unprecedented violence crashed down. Time passed worryingly then, at about 5.00 am a runner arrived from the front, with dreadful news: `3rd Battalion Bavarian Infantry Regiment 17 has been blown sky high.' 

Click on Map to Enlarge

Capture of Messines by the New Zealand Division

 

Many other German battalions on the ridge suffered a similar fate.  Immediately following this eruption the infantry from the nine assault divisions moved off in the semi-darkness and advanced into the smoke and dust cloud that hung over the ridge. Moving behind a protective artillery barrage they occupied the Messines Ridge almost unopposed. So effective was the British artillery's counterbattery fire that it was ten minutes before a feeble German barrage fired on the advancing infantry. By then it was too late. 

The New Zealand Division easily captured Messines village by 7:00 a.m. and a New Zealand soldier, Lance Corporal Samuel Frickleton, won a Victoria Cross in the fighting to clear the village's outskirts. That afternoon the New Zealanders repelled a German counterattack that crumpled under heavy machine gun and artillery fire. 

The New Zealand infantry remained around (but not in) the village of Messines for the next two days, and it was then they experienced the bulk of their casualties.  The exposed ridge line was overcrowded with Allied soldiers (the Allied front line had shrunk from seven to four miles in length), and the New Zealand position  was no exception. Major General Russell requested but had not been permitted to thin out his defenses. The German artillery, once it had recovered from the shock of the opening attack, pounded the Messines village and its outskirts mercilessly. On 8 June those New Zealanders on the ridge endured a German artillery bombardment that lasted uninterrupted for ten hours. Fortunately, the survivors were withdrawn into reserve the next morning. 

Today: A Soldier of New Zealand Stands in Central Messines

The attack beginning in the early hours of 7 June 1917 was a complete success, the finest of the war to date, according to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. The Battle of Messines came to be regarded as a model for offensives on the Western Front. Careful planning, effective preparation, and excellent infantry-artillery cooperation had produced an outstanding success. As Russell later commented: 

The battle. . .was won through the weight of metal thrown onto the enemy positions and the mettle of the men who advanced to attack. Everything went like clockwork. 

This success did not come cheap though; it never did on the Western Front. When the New Zealanders were withdrawn from Messines village on the morning of 9 June, they had suffered nearly 4,000 casualties of which some 700 were killed in action in just over two days of fighting.

Source:  Over the Top, June 2017

New Zealand Takes Messines: 7 June 1917, Part I–The Mission and Preparation

Messines Today from the 7 June 1917 Front Line

Professor Glyn Harper, Massey University

For the New Zealand Division 1917 was a crucial year. Brought up to full strength after its severe blooding on the Somme in September 1916 and after spending many months training its large number of reinforcements, the New Zealand Division was involved in three set piece battles and two minor actions during the year. Prior to the first military engagement of 1917 the New Zealand Division was at the peak of its  condition. At the end of the year after suffering the nation's worst-ever military disaster in October, the division was a spent force incapable of further military action. In its opening effort of the year, the division performed brilliantly, however, in capturing the objective which gave the opening operation of the Allies 1917 Flanders campaign its name—Messines.

As a preliminary to the launch of the British Expeditionary Force's (BEF's) main offensive for 1917, the Messines Ridge, south of the Ypres Salient was to be captured. This ridge line ran for nearly ten kilometers from St Yves, near Ploegsteert Wood, in the south to just beyond Wytschaete. This would secure the southern flank of the Ypres offensive planned for later in the year as well as ejecting the Germans from a vital piece of high ground, thus denying them observation over the potential battlefield. 

Responsibility for mounting the attack at Messines was assigned to General Herbert Plumer's Second Army, which had spent many months planning and preparing it. Plumer, despite his un-military appearance, was one of the most able generals in the BEF, and this operation involved several innovative features. For a start, the objectives were strictly limited in what Plumer's colleague General Henry Rawlinson called a "bite and hold" operation. Capture of the ridge line was the ultimate prize; there was to be no attempt at breaking through the German lines. 

The Three Major Battles of the Flanders Campaign

Artillery support, upon which success of the operation depended, was to be overwhelming—more than 2,000 guns, of which a third were heavy and medium. The American military theorist Stephen Biddle has calculated that the ten-day artillery bombardment that preceded the infantry attack on 7 June was "of literally atomic magnitude" with more explosive power than a U.S. W48 tactical nuclear warhead dumped on every mile of the German frontline trenches.

The infantry from the nine divisions involved in this attack and the three more in reserve were well trained and moved into location early so that most commenced the attack well rested. Railways had been constructed right up to the start line to ensure adequate logistical support throughout the operation. All preparations had been made under cover of darkness so as to preserve the element of surprise. 

Then there was the knockout blow. Twenty-one mine shafts (26 in some sources) had been sunk deep under the German lines and filled with more than a million pounds of high explosive. Their detonation would signal the start of the attack. As the Australian official historian Charles Bean commented on Messines: "Never had a big British operation been prepared in such detail." 

The New Zealand Division had a key role in this attack. As a result of being involved in only minor actions since leaving the Somme in October 1916 and being able to train those formations not holding the frontline trenches, the division was in fine form for this attack. In April 1917 the various artillery and infantry brigades underwent, in turn, 12 days of intensive training for their roles in the forthcoming offensive. The history of the New Zealand Division records of this training: 

. . .nothing was left undone to achieve realism. The ground at the training area happened to conform with  the actual position to be assaulted, and replicas of the whole German trenches and our assembly ones were cut out a foot deep to scale. In these, battalions and brigades rehearsed the delicate operations of the assembly and attack, and attained the invaluable certainty of purpose. The final full-dress rehearsals were witnessed and criticized by the Second Army Commander and his Staff.

 

New Zealand Troops in the Sector Before the Attack

The training for Messines included testing tactics for open warfare and for obtaining the maximum firepower from the recent reorganization of platoons into specialized sections of riflemen, Lewis gunners, bombers, and rifle bombers. As a result, the historian Christopher Pugsley believes that the New Zealand Division was "at its peak" for Messines. He writes that "the combination of enthusiasm, esprit de corps and training reached its high point for this battle." 

Tomorrow: Part II, Capturing Messines

 Source: Over the Top, July 1917