Chapter 3

173 Brigade and the Defence at La Feré

I still hoped against hope that we should be reinforced, as the colonel had kept rubbing it in at conferences before the battle that we had to stand fast at all costs.

Lieutenant Geoffrey Lester – C Company, 2/4 London Regiment at Triangle Post.

Lieutenant General Richard Butler began the war in command of the 2nd Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers; rapid promotion saw him take up his appointment as General Officer Commanding (GOC) III Corps just as his three infantry divisions were moving into the line on the extreme right flank of the Fifth Army. It was his first corps command. Moving into position in the La Fère sector was the 58th (London) Division, commanded by Major General Albemarle Cator. Cator’s ten battalions took over nine-and-a-half miles of the front line extending from just north of Travecy, where it joined the 18th (Eastern) Division on its left, to the junction with the French south of Barisis. Beyond Travecy to the north the 14th (Light) Division held the line to Itancourt, some three miles, southeast of St Quentin. The whole III Corps sector covered seventeen miles of front line which Butler had to defend with twenty-seven below strength front line battalions and three battalions of pioneers.

Had the preceding months been wet, the level of the water in the Oise Canal and their associated marshes may well have presented a natural defensive obstacle to any enemy incursion south of Vendeuil. Unfortunately very little rain had fallen since December reducing the defensive value of the river line to the extent that Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Richardson, commanding 2/2 London Regiment, 173 Brigade, dismissed the Oise marshes as an obstacle that was more apparent than real. More worrying to Richardson was the inability of the battalion to bring any significant weight of firepower on the canal to prevent the enemy from bridging the waterway or indeed to check a determined enemy from crossing the marshes.

Richardson was the archetypical territorial officer; he fought with distinction in South Africa as a volunteer, returning home to study for a first class honours degree in mathematics. Commissioned into the Territorial Force in 1909, he was assistant professor of mathematics at Imperial College London from 1912–14 and although he was clearly destined for an academic lifestyle, it was one he shared with the demands that came with his ‘part-time’ soldiering. Richardson was appointed to command 2/2 Londons in January 1917, four months later he won a DSO for his leadership at Bullecourt, an engagement in which the battalion lost eight officers and 168 other ranks killed, wounded or missing. The battalion historian, Major William Grey, noted that Richardson was a ‘hard taskmaster’ that ‘always demanded that his battalion should be efficient in the one thing that really mattered more than all else – its ability to attack’. It was now about to experience the confusion of retreat.

On the night of 15/16 March 2/2 Londons relieved the 3rd Battalion in the Forward Zone who then went into brigade reserve at Viry-Noureuil. In deploying his men to the four fortified areas of the Forward Zone he must have hoped that the German attack would come after they had been relieved. The zone was approximately 1,000 yards in depth and relied on small company strength redoubts interspersed with machine gun positions; on paper the defences looked good but in reality the length of frontage they defended was far too much for one under-strength battalion. Despite the enormous amount of work that had been put into strengthening these defences they were in no position to hold the four divisions of Georg von Gayl’s Gruppe Gayle who were now massing opposite them.

Whatever fears Richardson may have had as his battalion moved into the Forward Zone he kept them to himself as his companies took over the main defensive redoubts. D Company was on the right flank around the Japy steel works, sandwiched between the St Quentin Canal and the Chauny-Laon railway line. In command was Captain John Howie who joined the battalion in July 1917 as a second lieutenant and won an MC three months later during the Third Battle of Ypres. North of the railway line situated in and around the Luzerne Quarry and the ruined artillery barracks on the D338, was the Main Keep where Richardson and C Company were based. B Company, commanded by Captain Leonard Bindon, held the Brickstacks locality which took its name from the nearby brickworks on the D55 and stretched from the bridge at Faubourg St Firmin north towards the village of Travecy which was held by A Company and Captain Maurice Harper. Between the main posts of defence were smaller platoon-held posts such as Railway Post which was south of the Main Keep covering the railway bridge which was one of the few Forward Zone posts that could fire directly onto the canal crossings.

The Battle Zone was the preserve of 2/4 Londons and occupied a depth of some 2,000 yards and consisted of isolated redoubts which were wired in and benefitted from interlocking fields of fire. Commanding the 2/4 was Lieutenant Colonel William Dann who took command of the battalion in November 1916 after being transferred from the Bedfordshire Regiment. Dann’s headquarters was at Fargniers at the junction of the Crozat and St Quentin Canals close to A Company who occupied the Fargniers South sector while B Company, less two platoons, was positioned further north in what was known as Fargniers North. Further north still, around Rouge Farm – marked on present day maps as Tournevelles – Captain Charles Clarke commanded the men of D Company. Here the ground opened out towards Triangle Post which was over 1,000 yards further north and had been dug into a triangle of sunken roads on the D557. Commanding the Triangle and the men of C Company was Lieutenant Geoffrey Lester. Lester was typical of many regimental subalterns in 1918 in that he had served his time in the ranks before becoming commissioned. After enlisting into the 4th Battalion he found himself in Gallipoli as part of the Royal Naval Division, a sojourn that would keep him away from the Western Front until he joined the 2/4 Battalion in February 1917.

The two remaining platoons of B Company were divided between Distillery Post – near the junction of the Crozat and St Quentin Canals – and Condren, where Lieutenant Brown’s platoon and a party of fifty-eight officers and men of the Oxfordshire Hussars held the line east of the canal. South of Condren the line was held by the two remaining 58th Division brigades. A little to the north of Fargniers on the eastern side of the Crozat Canal, Brigadier General Rivers Worgan, commanding 173 Brigade, had established his HQ in the château at Quessy where there was also a company of divisional pioneers in the form of Captain Harry Staddon and the 4th Battalion Suffolk Regiment.

The initial German bombardment – Trommelfeuer – that broke over the British lines on 21 March destroyed communications and effectively paralysed command and control on the battlefield. It was a paralysis that contributed significantly to the almost total disintegration of the Fifth Army as it began to fall back towards the line of the Somme River. Remembered by all who experienced it, the opening barrage seared the memories of men along the whole front line. Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Lawrence, serving with A Company, 1st South African Regiment in the 9th (Scottish) Division, had just returned from leave and spent most of the previous day nervously waiting for the storm to burst. His experience was one that was shared by practically every unit along the forty-two miles of front line held by the Fifth Army:

‘The next morning at a quarter to five the German barrage came down with a thunderous crash from thousands of guns of all sizes. We lit our candles and burrowed as close as we could get to the ground. First a shell blew one door in and then the other near me. The candles went out and we groped for our gas helmets in the dark. Splinters of metal were making sparks as they fell through just above us and the din was quite indescribable. Soon amongst the high explosive shells falling all around we heard the unmistakeable plop plop, as gas shells mixed with the others and the burnt potato or onion smell warned us it was time to put on our gas helmets.’¹

Evan Lloyd, commanding the 9th Manchester Regiment, 198 Brigade, in front of St Quentin recalled ‘a terrific bombardment opening all down the line, it sounded like the bubbles bursting in a huge cauldron of boiling oil. The smell of gas is overpowering’.

On the III Corps front the fog began to rise long before the opening barrage, increasing the sense of loneliness and isolation that crept along the Forward Zone outposts. On the afternoon of 20 March the order to ‘prepare for attack’ had been sent out to all III Corps units and for the previous fourteen hours they had been waiting. When the bombardment did begin it was almost a relief for the 2nd Londons:

‘The German guns rent the air, and shattered the stillness of the dawn, the long threatened attack had come at last. The bombardment was stupendous; great columns of flying earth shot skyward as the shells burst in sheets of orange flame; the ground shook with the continuous explosions; the noise rose in volume until it became deafening, and the opening of the British guns in reply passed almost unnoticed.’²

To this concentration of artillery – roughly 100 guns per 1,000 yards of front – were added the trench mortar batteries which had been brought well forward to take out the Forward Zone outposts. The bombardment lasted until sometime after 7.00am but the first enemy units were crossing the Oise Canal in several places with floating bridges before it finally concluded.

The actual time of the infantry attack is indefinite but from the scant evidence available it would appear to have been between 6.30 and 7.00am. There is little doubt that the presence of a thick fog which lay over the Oise marshes aided the enemy in infiltrating the Forward Zone, indeed the general consensus of opinion was that it masked all local landmarks and rendered any co-operation between strong points practically impossible. The artillery was also similarly handicapped in that it was unable to direct an accurate fire onto the advancing enemy. Many accounts tell of redoubts that found themselves surrounded before they had even taken up their firing positions and were in complete ignorance of what was going on around them. However, German accounts lament the loss of direction experienced by many units and state emphatically that but for the fog their first day successes would have been greater than they actually were. They may have been right but there is little doubt that the fog did prevent the British Forward and Battle Zones from functioning effectively and in the opinion of many officers and men, contributed extensively to German success.

At 7.10am a message received from Colonel Richardson in the Main Keep to the 2/4 Londons’ HQ confirmed the enemy was in Jappy Keep. The battalion historian described the events that overtook the Forward Zone units in the Fargniers sector:

‘All communication was cut at an early hour; and each garrison was left to fight its own fight against odds entirely unsupported. It is established beyond any question that the defences of all posts in this area save Railway Post alone, were destroyed by the fierce preliminary bombardment, and those garrisons that had no shelter to go to, were either wiped out to a man or rendered quite incapable of serious resistance.’³

The hastily-scribbled messages sent by Richardson to Brigade HQ reveal a grim story of resistance as, one by one, the redoubts around the Main Keep fell to the attacking infantry. By noon, with little hope of a counter-attack, Richardson realised that there was little left to do but attempt to withdraw to the Battle Zone. Shortly afterwards the mist began to lift and he and the survivors of C Company took up positions near the communal cemetery at Fargniers where they fought on until Richardson was badly wounded. Surrounded and without hope of rescue a small party of men managed to slip away across the Crozat Canal with Company Sergeant Major Herbert Boag before the remnants surrendered.

Further north at Travecy village, however, Captain Maurice Harper and the men of A Company were still holding out. Like many of his fellow officers in the Londons, Harper had begun his military career as a private soldier before being commissioned. A born soldier, Harper’s uncanny ability to avoid the fate that befell so many of his brother officers led to rapid promotion. In March 1917 he joined the battalion at Boisleux as a second lieutenant and in the space of six months was a temporary captain commanding A Company. His award of the Military Cross came in October 1917 while the battalion was fighting north of Poelcappelle, an occasion that reduced his company of over 200 officers and men to a mere 18 survivors.

The story of A Company at Travecy is one that is often used as a shining example of the heroism and endurance of the British soldier in defence. They held out against overwhelming odds until the evening of 22 March having expended some 18,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 400 mills grenades and 200 trench mortar shells. Harper had certainly drawn the short straw when he found himself along with the 200 or so men of his company in the Forward Zone on the morning of March 21.

The village of Travecy sits on the west bank of the Oise between the canal and the D1044, a distance of just over a mile-and-a-half north of the Brickstacks strongpoint. From the D1044 the ground falls away towards the river which in March 1918 would have provided very good fields of fire – not only for the various posts Harper had established in the village, but also for Harper’s battle headquarters in Travecy Keep which was probably situated on the D1044 close to the junction with the D555. The morning of March 21 began with the German bombardment, Harper’s personal account of the action gives some idea of the confusion and isolation he and his men must have felt:

‘At 7.00am the mist was so thick that we could not see 10 yards. All phone communication was cut and we couldn’t see the visual lamps on account of the mist. At 7.05am a heavy barrage fell on my sector and lasted an hour. Immediately it lifted I went to my battle headquarters at the keep. At 8am I received a note from the battalion on my left saying their right had been driven in. I moved a platoon to cover my left flank. I sent two runners to battalion headquarters but discovered later they had been captured. A few minutes later came a runner from Mr Gibson (my right platoon commander) saying he was being attacked from the front, south and north – at the same time hostile machine guns opened up on the keep from the rear. From this I gathered that, taking advantage of the thick mist, the enemy had succeeded in getting through the gaps in our line and encircled our posts. I had no news from the centre post (Mr Dixon) and runners were unable to get through.’⁴

Quite where Harper was during the bombardment is unclear but he joined Lieutenant Stuart Clapham in the Main Keep as soon as it was safe to do so. Shortly after he had moved half a platoon of men to cover his left flank, the three posts in the village came under direct attack from enemy infantry advancing in mass formation. Given the advantage of good fields of fire, particularly from the ridge of high ground that ran through the village, the Germans were largely held off on the right flank until 10.00am when Lieutenant Gibson was forced to fall back on the Main Keep, reporting that enemy forces were now in possession of the southern and eastern edges of the village. Gibson’s platoon of twenty-five men had been virtually annihilated leaving only himself and another man to escape. However, despite Harper fearing the worst, the remaining posts in the village under Lieutenants Dixon and Roberts were still fighting and holding their positions with sustained and accurate Lewis gun fire. At some point Dixon and his men were overwhelmed leaving Roberts and the survivors to fight on before they too were forced to seek the comparative security of the Main Keep.

By 7.00pm Harper received confirmation from his runners that he was completely surrounded. The enemy had penetrated several miles to the north on the 18th Division’s front and were close to the banks of the Crozat Canal to the south. Harper’s men comprised of three officers and sixty other ranks and it was with this meagre garrison that he fought off the next attack which came shortly before dusk. Nightfall brought a relative calm although all through the hours of darkness there were continuous efforts to bomb the garrison out of their trenches. Dawn on 22 March was greeted by thick fog again and little relief in the relentless attacks that came from all sides. In the rare intervals between these attacks several men, including Corporals Alfred Shilton and George Ansell, were still able to creep out into the village and open fire on enemy machine-gun teams and sniper positions and on one occasion Harper’s account describes how they were able to bring fire to bear on an enemy transport column on the St Quentin to La Fère road. ‘About 500 Germans were observed on the road across the marshes. We opened up on them with Lewis guns at 1,500 yards range and inflicted many casualties.’ Both Ansell and Shilton were awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for their work but sadly 28-year-old George Ansell’s decoration was posthumous.⁵

But Maurice Harper knew their stand was coming to an end, particularly as ‘our ammunition had got very low and the men were thoroughly exhausted’. Whether he was aware that III Corps was now across the Crozat Canal is unclear but at 5.00pm the keep was bombed by a British aircraft which had wrongly assumed anyone this far behind the enemy line must be German. ‘This had a great effect on the men’, wrote Harper, ‘making them think that we were quite deserted and beyond help.’ It was also becoming apparent that the Germans would soon close in for the coup de grace which could only result in a further loss of life:

‘After repulsing an attack at dusk, I found the last box of ammunition had been used. At 7.30pm on 22 March, I had a council of war with my officers and CSM [Pascall]. We summed up our situation as follows: Our ammunition was exhausted, we were entirely cut off from the rest of the Army, and there was no prospect of a counter-attack reaching us, the men were so exhausted they could hardly stand, we were outnumbered by at least fifty to one, our casualties were exposed to the enemy’s fire and our further resistance could in no way help our Army. In consideration of these points I decided, when next the enemy attacked, to hand over the position rather than attempt to resist them with the bayonet, which would have meant the needless sacrifice not only of the garrison, but probably of the casualties also’.⁶

Surrender came some time later when the Germans were massing for another attack:

‘Very reluctantly I gave orders for a white flag to be put out. When this had been done, the enemy ceased fire and called for us to come out. An officer was called for and I went to meet the enemy. I was armed but dropped my revolver as I advanced. A German private, who would have bayoneted me, was stopped by an NCO and I was told to call my men out. They came, with their hands above their heads – the most heart-rending sight it has ever been my lot to witness.’⁷

Exactly what time this occurred is again unclear, several accounts have times ranging from late evening to 1.00am on 23 March, but whatever time it was when Harper and his men surrendered, their capture brought the total losses of the 2/2 Londons since 21 March to 21 officers and 550 other ranks. On the day the offensive began the battalion mustered 22 officers and 585 other ranks. Harper and Gibson both received the Military Cross, Harper’s citation which appeared in the London Gazette on 1 July 1919 was a fitting tribute to the men of A Company – nearly all of whom were volunteer soldiers:

‘For most gallant conduct and devotion to duty whilst commanding an outpost company at Travecy, March 21/23rd, 1918. His example inspired the remnants of his company to a desperate resistance when surrounded and without hope of relief. In addition to beating off several heavy attacks, he dispersed enemy transport, battalions in close order, and rendered excellent service.’⁸

* * *

As with the Forward Zone, the bulk of the defences in the 2/4 Londons’ Battle Zone were concentrated on the right flank where, should a breakthrough occur, the road to Chauny and Noyon lay open. The precise time the German bombardment began differs in the various accounts of the battle, but 2/4 Londons in the Battle Zone record it as beginning at 4.20am. The brigade signal centre at Quessy was almost immediately knocked out with a direct hit and Lieutenant Colonel William Dann did not receive any orders to ‘man battle stations’ until long after the battalion were actually in place. Quite why the main battle station garrisons were not already in place is strange, particularly as the whole brigade had been forewarned of the attack the day before! Martin Middlebrook’s suggestion in his Kaiser’s Battle that some seventy or eighty battalions suffered in a similar manner whilst en-route to their Battle Zone stations may well be correct, certainly many of the initial casualties sustained by 2/4 Londons occurred in the rush to their battle positions.

As the fog lifted slightly around noon the Battle Zone redoubts had the first sight of the Germans who were advancing in large numbers all along the line. At 2.00pm Dann received word that the platoon holding Distillery Post had been overwhelmed and that the Farm Rouge and Triangle Posts were under heavy attack. Triangle Post was situated on the D557 just under a mile east of the Travecy Keep – which at this time was still holding out – and was under the command of Lieutenant Geoffrey Lester. Dug into a triangle of sunken roads and garrisoned by C Company, its strength lay in the fields of fire it enjoyed and the volume it could bring down on an advancing enemy. By 3.45pm Captain Charles Clarke’s men had been pushed out of the Farm Rouge redoubt and the assaulting enemy columns were moving in the direction of Quessy and the Crozat Canal isolating the Fargniers sector in the south and Lester and his men in Triangle Post. By way of response Brigadier General Worgan immediately ordered a company of 3/Londons to counter-attack and lift some of the pressure from the retiring men of D Company and fill the gap between Triangle Post and the Fargniers North positions which were still intact. Only two platoons ever reached their objective – most were killed or wounded crossing the Crozat Canal.

By 7.15pm Dann’s battalion was in serious trouble but continued to fight back against the odds, but it was clear to all that unless the remnants of the brigade fell back they were in great danger of being outflanked and overwhelmed. The orders to retire west of the Crozat Canal came soon afterwards and Dann – by this time in overall command of all troops in the Battle Zone – skilfully withdrew his mixed band of men over the canal to positions along the railway, aided significantly by a company of the 4th Battalion Suffolk Regiment (4/Suffolk) and 24-year-old Captain Harry Staddon. The 4th Battalion had been in France since November 1914 and had fought in many of the major engagements on the Western Front, but by January 1918 had been relegated – as many of the officers and men saw it – to the role of divisional pioneers. When the offensive began Staddon and A Company were positioned on the canal at Quessy and were soon in action covering the withdrawal of Dann’s Force over the canal, positions which they held all day against increasingly heavy attacks. Finally Staddon withdrew what was left of his company across the remaining canal bridge which was then demolished by Second Lieutenant Ernest Bilham and his section from 303/Field Company.

Harry Staddon was an officer who had enlisted in the ranks of the East Anglian Field Ambulance before he was commissioned in 1915 and turned his considerable talents to soldiering. Although his defence at Quessy was one that was typically repeated all along the British line that day, it was in itself a superb feat of arms that went unrewarded in terms of official recognition and mustered only half-a-dozen lines in the regimental history. Unfortunately we know little more of what took place but suffice it to say that Staddon survived the war to return to civilian life.

With the brigade across the Crozat Canal, Triangle Post was now completely isolated along with its near neighbour at Travecy Keep. Captain Clive Grimwade, who wrote the battalion history in 1922, felt the ensuing battle was ‘a magnificent example of stern courage again overwhelming odds’. The initial bombardment had taken its toll but the Triangle Post garrison was not closely engaged until the Forward Zone units had been overwhelmed. As soon as the fog lifted it was clear that C Company faced a very strong and determined enemy:

‘From this time onwards no orders or messages of any kind reached Lester from battalion headquarters or the adjoining companies, and he was left to fight his own battle. The advancing enemy were hotly engaged by rifle and Lewis gun fire, and large numbers were killed. Already D Company were losing their grip on Farm Rouge, but Lester decided the only course open to him was to await reinforcements. These never came, and probably, owing to the utter severance of communications, it was never realised how urgent his need was. The only support to this gallant company was one 18-pounder gun firing over open sights from near Quessy. All the afternoon the unequal fight was maintained, though the defenders were much harassed by low-flying German planes. With the approach of dusk the mist came down again, surrounding the company with an impenetrable curtain. Again and again Lester sent out runners and patrols to seek connection with the adjoining troops but these never returned.’⁹

Surrounded on all sides and with the fog thickening Lester realised this was going to be his only opportunity to break out and get his men back to the Crozat Canal. It was the last move in what had been an extraordinary stand against the enemy but the odds were stacked against them and only the remnants of two platoons under Lieutenant John Blair managed to get back, the others being killed or captured. Geoffrey Lester was one of those captured and spent the remainder of the war in a German prisoner of war camp. The 2/4 London casualty figures for the two days of 21/22 March are difficult to ascertain with any accuracy, but casualties sustained by the battalion between 21 March and 3 April amounted to fifteen officers and 712 other ranks.

When the 18th Division withdrew across the canal that night the bridges at Liez were blown by sections of Sappers from 79 and 92/Field Companies while 80/Field Company tackled the canal bridges at Mennessis. However, in the confusion regarding who was responsible for what, the bridge over the railway west of Mennessis remained intact as did the two railway bridges west of Jussy. Although the Jussy bridges would be demolished on 22 March, the fears expressed by Major General Reginald Buckland over bridge demolition looked very much as if they were beginning to haunt the retreat.