The Capture of La Boisselle (1–6 July 1916) was a tactical incident during the Battle of Albert, the name given by the British to the first two weeks of the Battle of the Somme. The village of La Boisselle forms part of the small commune of Ovillers-la-Boisselle about 22 mi (35 km) north-east of Amiens in the Somme department in Picardy in northern France. To the north-east of La Boisselle lies Ovillers; by 1916, the village was called Ovillers by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to avoid confusion with La Boisselle, south of the road.
On 1 July 1916, the first day on the Somme, La Boisselle was attacked by the 34th Division, III Corps but the bombardment had not damaged the German deep-mined dug-outs (minierte Stollen) and a German listening post overheard a British telephone conversation the day before, which gave away the attack. The III Corps divisions suffered more than 11,000 casualties and failed to capture La Boisselle or Ovillers, gaining only small footholds near the boundary with XV Corps to the south and at Schwabenhöhe (Swabian heights), a field fortification in the German front line, after the explosion of the Lochnagar mine had destroyed some of its defences.
The advance of the 103rd Brigade was over ground with a fold, which meant that the disaster of the attack by preceding brigades occurred unseen in dead ground. The 103rd Brigade advanced from behind the British front line because of the lack of room for all three brigades to deploy there. The brigade was engaged by artillery and machine-gun fire, which inflicted 70 per cent casualties before the troops had advanced as far as the British front line. The 19th (Western) Division was rushed forward from reserve, in case of a German counter-attack on Albert and to continue the attack. Most of the village was captured by 4 July and the operation was complete by 6 July.
Background
1914
In 1914, La Boisselle was a village of 35 houses on the right of the D 929 Albert–Bapaume road, at the junction of the D 104 to Contalmaison. On 26 September, the French 11th Division attacked eastwards, north of the River Somme but after French Territorial divisions were forced back from Bapaume, the division was ordered back to defend bridgeheads from Maricourt to Mametz. The II Bavarian Corps attacked on 27 September between the Somme and the D 929, the Roman road from Bapaume to Albert and Amiens, intending to reach the River Ancre and then continue westwards along the Somme valley. The 3rd Bavarian Division advanced close to Montauban and Maricourt against scattered resistance from French infantry and cavalry. On 28 September, the French were able to stop the German advance on a line from Maricourt to Fricourt and Thiepval.
The XIV Reserve Corps began operations west of Bapaume on the same day, by advancing down the Bapaume–Albert road to the Ancre river, to complete the advance down the Somme valley to Amiens but by 29 September the French had stopped the Bavarian advance around Fricourt and La Boisselle. A night attack on Bécourt, about 0.93 mi (1.5 km) south of La Boisselle to capture Albert was planned for the evening of 7 October; the Bavarian infantry found that keeping direction in the dark was impossible. Small-arms fire from well dug-in French troops added to the confusion and the attack collapsed, 400 German troops being captured in the fiasco. In early November, French artillery reinforcements arrived and bombardments beyond the front line began. On 19 November, two divisions of XI Corps attacked to pin down German troops but were repulsed and on 28 November an attack by the XIV Corps managed to advance the French line by 980–1,310 ft (300–400 m). In early December, IV Corps attacked and gained 980–3,280 ft (300–1,000 m). The French attacks were costly and pushed forward the front line only a short distance.
Attacks by the French 53rd Reserve Division (XI Corps) took place from 17 December at La Boisselle, Mametz, Carnoy and Maricourt. Although wire-cutting had not been completed, the operation was ordered to begin at 6:00 a.m. without artillery support, to gain a measure of surprise. The attackers got beyond the German front line near Mametz and north of Maricourt and then repulsed German counter-attacks from Bernafay Wood and east of Mametz. The advance was contained by German reserves in the support lines and by flanking machine-gun fire. The 118th Infantry Regiment reached the cemetery of La Boisselle and the 19th Infantry Regiment closed on the western fringe of Ovillers. A German counter-bombardment then swept the ground west of Ovillers and Ravine 92, which prevented the approach of French reserves. During the night the French survivors of the attack fell back to the French front line, except at La Boisselle.
Next day, XI Corps broke through the German defences at La Boisselle cemetery but was stopped a short distance forward in front of trenches protected by barbed wire. A German counter-attack using incendiary grenades recaptured a trench north of Maricourt and a French counter-attack at 10:30 a.m., by two battalions of the 45th Infantry Regiment and a battalion of the 236th Infantry Regiment, managed to regain a small amount of ground. A German counter-attack on 21 December, near Carnoy was repulsed. On 24 December, XI Corps attacked again at La Boisselle, with the 118th Infantry Regiment and two battalions of the 64th Infantry Regiment at 9:00 a.m. after a bombardment. The 118th Infantry Regiment captured several houses in the south-east of La Boisselle and consolidated the area during the night. The 64th Infantry Regiment overran the German first line but was held up short of the support trench, not been discovered before the attack, then dug in, having suffered many casualties.
On 27 December, a German bombardment on the captured positions in La Boisselle was followed by an abortive counter-attack on the 118th Infantry Regiment and the 64th Infantry Regiment. German heavy artillery reinforcements had been brought into the area and made the ground untenable; the French infantry were withdrawn and mine warfare began. Many of the German units that fought on the Somme in 1914 remained in the area and made great efforts to fortify the defensive line, particularly with barbed-wire entanglements to hold the front trench with fewer troops. Railways, roads and waterways connected the battlefront to the Ruhr from where material for minierte Stollen (dug-outs) 20–30 ft (6.1–9.1 m) underground for 25 men each, excavated every 50 yd (46 m) and the front divided into Sperrfeuerstreifen (barrage sectors).
1915
January began frosty, which solidified the ground but wet weather followed and soon caused diggings to collapse, making movement impossible after a few days, leading to tacit truces to allow supplies to be carried to the front line at night. The rains eased and Bavarian Engineer Regiment 1 continued digging eight galleries at the south end of La Boisselle, towards L'îlot, which had been captured by the French in December and which became known as Granathof (Shell Farm) to the Germans and later Glory Hole by the British. On 5 January, French sappers were heard digging near a gallery and a 660 lb (300 kg) camouflet was quickly planted and blown, collapsing the French digging and two German galleries in the vicinity. A 1,300 lb (600 kg) charge was blown on 12 January, which killed more than forty French soldiers. On 18 January, Reserve Infantry Regiment 120 made a surprise attack and destroyed the 7th and 8th companies of the 65th Infantry Regiment, taking 107 prisoners.
Fighting continued and on the night of 6/7 February when three more German mines were sprung close to L'îlot. After the explosions, a large party of German troops advanced and occupied the demolished houses but were not able to advance further against French artillery and small-arms fire. At 3:00 p.m. a French counter-attack drove back the Germans and inflicted about 150 casualties. For several more days both sides detonated mines and conducted artillery bombardments, which often prevented infantry attacks. On 1 March, at Bécourt, German infantry massing for an attack were stopped by French artillery and at Carnoy on 15 March, a German mine was sprung and crater-fighting ensued for several days. On the night of 8/9 March, a German sapper inadvertently broke into French gallery charged with explosives; a group of volunteers took a tense 45 minutes to dismantle the charge and cut the firing cables. From April 1915 to January 1916, sixty-one mines were sprung around L'îlot, some with 44,000–55,000 lb (20,000–25,000 kg) explosive charges.
General Erich von Falkenhayn, the German Chief of the General Staff (Oberste Heeresleitung [OHL]), ordered a construction programme in January 1915, to create a systematic defensive system on the Western Front, capable of withstanding attacks indefinitely with a relatively small garrison. Barbed wire obstacles were enlarged from one belt 5–10 yd (4.6–9.1 m) wide to two belts 30 yd (27 m) wide and about 15 yd (14 m) apart. Double and triple thickness wire was laid 3–5 ft (0.91–1.52 m) high. The front line was increased from one trench to three, dug 150–200 yd (140–180 m) apart, the first trench (Kampfgraben [battle trench]) to be occupied by sentry groups, the second (Wohngraben [accommodation trench]) for the front-trench garrison and the third trench for local reserves. The trenches were traversed and had sentry-posts in concrete recesses built into the parapet. Dugouts had been deepened from 6–9 ft (1.8–2.7 m) to 20–30 ft (6.1–9.1 m), 50 yd (46 m) apart and made large enough for 25 men. An intermediate line of strong points (Stützpunktlinie) about 1,000 yd (910 m) behind the front line was also built. Communication trenches ran back to the reserve position, renamed the second position, which was as well built and wired as the first. The second position was beyond the range of French and British field artillery, to force an attacker to stop and move artillery forward before assaulting the line.
In mid-July 1915, extensive troop and artillery movements north of the Ancre were seen by German observers. The type of shell fired by the new artillery changed from high explosive to shrapnel and unexploded shells were found to be of a different design. The new infantry opposite did not continue the live-and-let-live of their forerunners and a larger number of machine-guns began firing against the German lines, which did not pause every 25 shots, like French Hotchkiss machine-guns. German troops were reluctant to believe that the British had assembled an army large enough to extend as far south as the Somme but a soldier seen near Thiepval was thought to be a French soldier in a grey hat. By 4 August, it was reported by OHL that the 52nd Division and the 26th Reserve Division had seen a man in a brown suit. On 9 August, the arrival of the British was revealed when Private William Nicholson of the 6th Black Watch, 51st (Highland) Division was shot and captured during a German trench raid. A second British soldier was captured when troops of the 1st Battalion East Lancashire Regiment of the 4th Division were wiring in no man's land. The soldier got lost in fog near the Ancre and blundered into the German lines near the Biber Kolonie (beaver colony) redoubt.
1916
After the Herbstschlacht (Autumn Battle, Second Battle of Champagne) in 1915, a third defensive position another 3,000 yd (2,700 m; 1.7 mi) back from the Stützpunktlinie was begun in February 1916 and was nearly complete on the Somme front when the battle began. The artillery Sperrfeuerstreifen (barrage sectors) were co-ordinated with the infantry, whose officers were expected to know the batteries covering their sections of the front line and the batteries to be ready to engage fleeting targets. A telephone system was built with lines buried 6 ft (1.8 m) deep for 5 mi (8.0 km) back from the front line, to connect the front line with the artillery. The Somme defences had two inherent weaknesses which the rebuilding had not remedied. Front trenches were on a forward slope, lined by white chalk from the subsoil and easily seen by ground observers. The defences were crowded towards the front trench, with a regiment having two battalions near the front-trench system and the reserve battalion divided between the Stützpunktlinie and the second position, all within 2,000 yd (1,800 m) and most troops within 1,000 yd (910 m) of the front line, accommodated in the new deep dugouts. The concentration of troops at the front line on a forward slope guaranteed that it would face the bulk of an artillery bombardment, directed by ground observers on clearly marked lines.