Resistance was hopeless

The final blog post of May sees us returning to France and the German Spring Offensive for Operation Blücher-Yorck, or the Third Battle of the Aisne (27 May-6 June 1918). It was thought by General Erich Ludendorff that taking the Chemin des Dames ridge would allow easier access for the German Army to Paris. In turn, he believed that this would cause the British Army to move its troops from Flanders to Paris, giving the Germans an easier time on that front. 

The battle did not go well for the British and French armies. They both suffered extremely heavy casualties and thousands were taken prisoner of war. The Durham Light Infantry Collection at Durham County Record Office includes the diaries of two officers who were captured on the first day of the battle, Captain Percy Lyon of 6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, and Captain Henry Wilkinson of the 8th Battalion.

A German 15 cm gun mounted on a barge in action on the Aisne Canal, May 1918 © IWM (Q 54416)

Both diaries begin on the 26 May 1918, the day before the battle begun, and both talk of how quiet it was. Lyon, who was in command of a company wrote, ‘The men were happy, and I think pleasantly surprised at the quietness of the line, many of them being in the trenches for the first time, and the majority for the second or third only’.

Part way through dinner that night, a message was received to take precautionary defensive measures. At 10:30pm, Lyon received the following message:

‘Prisoner states attack coming at 4am. Bombardment probably with gas at 1am. Tanks may be used. Troops must fire at infantry and not at tanks. No fighting men to carry wounded. Issue 50 extra rounds per man, and inspect pouches to see no. is complete. All Lewis gunners over four per team to come to Company HQ at once. Destroy all maps and important documents’.

Captain Wilkinson, was second in command of a company. After they had spent the day ‘resting under a blazing sun’, it came as a shock when they received the message of the imminent attack, ‘We could not take this seriously, as the place was so exceptionally quiet, but nevertheless, all preparations were made – as a reserve company we had not much to do’.

Lyon wrote, ‘All through the night our own guns kept up a desultory and at times heavy fire on the enemy lines and communications, the Germans remain, ominously silent. I think that many of us were half ready to believe the prisoners story a fake. At 1am exactly came the beginning of the German bombardment, following the fire of our guns as a roar of applause follows a single speaker, drowning and obliterating it in a moment’.

The 151st (Durham Light Infantry) Brigade war diary states, ‘All accounts of the bombardment received agree in describing it to be the heaviest hitherto experienced’. The bombardment, which included widespread use of gas shells, took out the communication wires within an hour. 

The German attack began as expected at 4am. As a reserve, Wilkinson’s company did not know what was happening in front of them, ‘We were not long in doubt – the advance of the Boches in liberal open order told its own tale! Our four posts, of course, resisted, but were too far away for us to know with what success. At Company HQ we collected our few men, and, together with Harrison and a few remnants of the front line, attempted to delay matters. But with only one Lewis Gun, two Vickers, and our 20-25 men, we could do little, and after half an hour’s glorious scrapping, found ourselves outflanked on right and left’.

They retreated to the Battalion HQ where Wilkinson ordered his men to go on, while he checked the area. Finding it empty, he made to follow his men, but the route was now under heavy fire. He decided to head for the light railway, then follow that, but ‘…I ran headlong into a party of five boches. It was then 6.15am. Resistance was hopeless. The usual procedure was followed, and I was quickly deprived of all my kit, including pocket-book, diary, tobacco, whisky, etc., and sent back with a guard’.

In a reflection on his experience, Lyon wrote that he was expecting a pause between the barrage and the appearance of the German soldiers, but in this case, the Germans left no time for the defence to recover. ‘The air was full of their planes, which went before them and swept the trenches with machine guns. A few tanks had broken through, and were by now well behind us. The defence seems to have crumpled up completely; the intense bombardment, heavy beyond all precedent, had split the line into small isolated groups of sadly shaken men, who fell an easy prey to the first German line’.

Lyon knew their position could not be held, but to fall back meant retreating through the German barrage, ‘For the next two hours or more I was in the barrage area, and it is a miracle I was not hit, as the concentration was tremendous. My men dropped off as were hit, and by the time I had got through to our HQ I was practically alone’.

German infantry reserves advancing towards the front line during the assault on the Chemin des Dames, [1918]. © IWM (Q 55008)

Those at Battalion HQ decided to head for the Brigade HQ to see what orders or information they could get. En route, they met some 5 DLI men coming up from the reserve. Lyon volunteered to attach himself, and 20 men, and they headed for an emergency line, ‘By now the front of the company had reached the top of the hill, to find this already in the enemy’s possession. Some were killed, some captured, and the rest came helter-skelter down on top of my party in the rear. We turned with them, to find the way back as bad as the way on. Men were being hit on every side now, and an aeroplane flying low added to the hail of bullets… By now I saw Germans all round the hill, and looking up I saw half a dozen of them ten yards away, shouting and raising their rifles. The wounded men were shouting at me to surrender, and indeed I saw nothing else for it, so I just stood up, and in a minute we were prisoners’.

This is a moment that clearly stayed with Lyon, and one he gave a great deal of thought to reconciling, ‘The shame of that moment has proved ineffaceable. I suppose that every man taken in battle must feel that smart of indignation and remorse, for every such man has deliberately chosen life before freedom. And such a choice, even in the most desperate conditions, is a falling off from the ideal (so often in men’s mouths) of ‘resistance to the last shot and the last man’. For myself, I only know that it seemed inevitable, and that in similar circumstances I should almost certainly do the same again. It may be a taint of cowardice, or merely an unheroic common sense’.

Lyon was moved around several camps before reaching his final destination of Graudenz [now Grudziadz, Poland], on 17 June 1918. As it was a new camp, housing around 540 officers, a lot of organisation was still in progress.

For Wilkinson, the first camp he arrived at was Rastatt on 9 June. However, it wasn’t long before he and other prisoners were moved on. They arrived at Stralsund at 6:30am on 27 June, then by small ferry to the island of Danholm. This is where he remained for the rest of the war.

Whilst the battle was a low point for the British Army, it was not as good for the Germans as it may have seemed. At the end of the battle, the generals of the German Army were pleased with the amount of territory gained, and planned further offensives. On the ground, however, the army, like the Allies, had suffered very heavy casualties, and the remaining men were nearing exhaustion.

You can read more about Lyon and Wilkinson, and read their diaries on Durham at War:
Percy Lyon: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/story/12850/
Diary: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/657/
Henry Wilkinson: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/story/11369/
Diary: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/504/