29 September in military history: the Battle of the St Quentin Canal, 1918

29 September 1918 · 108 years ago

“The last and strongest”

The Australian War Memorial calls the Hindenburg Line "the last and strongest of the German army's defence". Sir Douglas Haig's Victory Despatch, quoted by Major-General Sir Archibald Montgomery of the Fourth Army's General Staff, speaks of "the last and strongest of his prepared positions".¹

On the Fourth Army's front the main Hindenburg system lay behind the canal, except in the north, where the canal ran through the Bellicourt tunnel. Edmonds, the British official historian, and Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash give the tunnel as 6,000 yards long; the American Battle Monuments Commission's 1938 guide says "nearly 4 miles". The Commission describes it as "artificially ventilated, heated and electrically lighted" and calls the defenses there "among the most formidable on the Western Front".²

General Sir Henry Rawlinson commanded the Fourth Army. Edmonds counts 1,044 field guns and howitzers and 593 medium and heavy guns and howitzers in the bombardment, begun at 10.30 p.m. on 26 September. The American II Corps of Major-General G. W. Read, with the 27th and 30th Divisions, served under Monash's Australian Corps for operations. The Americans were to take the first objective and the Australians to pass through them to the second. To the south, Lieutenant-General Sir Walter Braithwaite's IX Corps was to cross the canal itself.³

Life-belts from the leave-boats

Edmonds writes that on the 46th Division's front the canal ran on the level in the south, with little water but 8 feet of mud, while farther north the water stood 7 to 10 feet deep in a cutting up to fifty feet deep. Major R. E. Priestley, in his history of the division, has the northern half run between "almost perpendicular cliffs".⁴

Edmonds records three thousand life-belts "from the cross-Channel steamers"; Priestley says over 3,000 came from the leave-boats. Rafts, collapsible boats and scaling ladders were prepared too, and the crossing was rehearsed on the Somme on 28 September.⁵

Edmonds, Monash and Montgomery set zero hour at 5.50 in the morning. Bean, the Australian official historian, has the Australian Corps' barrage open at 5.55, and the Commission puts the American jump-off at 5:30. Edmonds judges that the morning mist "certainly favoured the attackers".⁶

The race for Riqueval bridge

The 137th Brigade's three Staffordshire battalions stormed the trenches west of the canal and reached it on time. In Edmonds's account the leading parties crossed the shallow southern stretch on rafts, life-lines and a single plank, and the deeper northern one with the life-belts or hauled over on planks.⁷

Edmonds credits the capture of the Riqueval bridge, "the main route for the supply of the Germans on the western bank", to a company of the 6th North Staffordshire. Priestley and Bean name its commander as Captain A. H. Charlton. Edmonds and Priestley have an officer and nine men rush the machine gun guarding the bridge and then the bridge itself. Priestley goes on: "A race ensued, which was won by the assaulting troops, the nearest N.C.O. shooting all four of the Germans, while the officer seized the leads, cut them, and threw the charges into the Canal". He places Corporal Openshaw of the Royal Engineers "in the forefront of the attack on one of the German bridges".⁸

Edmonds counts 800 prisoners taken in the Bellenglise tunnel. Lieutenant-Colonel B. W. Vann of the 6th Sherwood Foresters rushed up to the firing line and got the attack moving again. Edmonds adds that Vann was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously. Monash heard that the corps on his right had "achieved an astonishing success".⁹

Over the tunnel

North of Riqueval the plan was in trouble before it began. The 27th Division's preliminary attack of 27 September had not secured its start line, and because American wounded were still out in front, Rawlinson kept the barrage where it had been planned. Edmonds puts it a thousand yards ahead of the infantry; Bean writes of "a preliminary advance of 1,200 yards" without a barrage. The Commission blames the British for "the error" that left a zone "about 1,100 yards in depth" without artillery fire.¹⁰

Of 34 tanks of the American 301st Battalion with the division, Edmonds writes, only ten rallied. The Commission records that the 107th Infantry had 337 men killed and 658 wounded that day: "No other American regiment suffered such a heavy loss in a single day during the war".¹¹

Leading troops of the 30th Division crossed the main Hindenburg Line, and Bellicourt and the southern mouth of the tunnel were taken. At 11.12 Monash received a telegram from the 3rd Australian Division: "We are dug in on west side of tunnel. Americans are held up in front of us". He concluded that the Americans had neglected mopping up, so that "The enemy had reappeared in strength from underground". Bean disagrees: "Nor did resistance come chiefly from Germans left behind by the Americans; it came from supports and reserves counter-attacking normally from the front".¹²

Of the situation at about 2 p.m. Monash writes: "The southern end of the tunnel was in my possession, the northern end was not".¹³

Less than had been hoped

Edmonds sums up: "The results of the day were less than had been hoped; but on the right a three-mile thrust had been made into the German front and the greater part of the Hindenburg Main Position and about half of the Hindenburg Support had been captured". Montgomery admits "some disappointment" at the check in the northern tunnel defences, yet calls the day "a crushing defeat" for the enemy. The Australian War Memorial writes that "On 29 September, the line was finally broken", but dates its complete break to the capture of Montbrehain on 5 October.¹⁴

The figures count different things. Edmonds gives the IX Corps 5,100 prisoners and 90 guns, 4,200 prisoners and 72 guns of them taken by the 46th Division, which lost "under eight hundred men". Priestley gives the division 4,200 prisoners and seventy guns, "at a cost of rather under 800 casualties". The Commission gives the 27th and 30th Divisions more than 7,500 casualties "on this battlefield". Bean gives about 5,000 for the 27th Division on 27 to 30 September and 1,881 for the 30th.¹⁵

Ten o'clock at Spa

Ludendorff writes that at six o'clock on the afternoon of 28 September he put to Hindenburg "my views as to a peace offer and a request for an armistice", because "The position could only grow worse, on account of the Balkan situation, even if we held our ground in the West". Edmonds and Ludendorff both date the conference at Spa with the Foreign Minister, Admiral von Hintze, to 10 a.m. on 29 September. Of the fighting on 29 September and the following days Ludendorff writes that it presented "the normal difficulties, but not compelling us to sudden, momentous decisions".¹⁶

The Commission's 1938 guide counts 1,833 Americans buried in the Somme American Cemetery near Bony, not only from the 27th and 30th Divisions but also from other units, among them the 1st Division's dead from Cantigny, and places the American monument north of Bellicourt directly over the tunnel. The wider campaign is told in our article on the Hundred Days Offensive.¹⁷