British Army During World War I - Western Front

Western Front

Under the command of Field Marshal Sir John French, the BEF began to deploy to France within days of the declaration of war. The first encounter with the Germans came at Mons on 23 August 1914, after which the Allies began the Great Retreat, the BEF was involved in the battle of Le Cateau. The BEF had a small role in halting the German advance at the Marne, before participating in the Aisne counter-offensive, in September which was followed by a period known as the "Race to the Sea" during which the BEF redeployed to Flanders.

For the BEF, 1914 ended with "First Ypres" which marked the beginning of a long struggle for the Ypres salient. British casualties in the fighting between 14 October and 30 November were 58,155 (7,960 dead, 29,562 wounded and 17,873 missing). It is often said that the pre-war professional army died at the first battle of Ypres. The army had arrived in France with 84,000 infantry. By the end of the battle, the BEF had suffered 86,237 casualties, mostly to the infantry.

Trench warfare prevailed in 1915, and the BEF—as the junior partner on the Western Front—fought a series of small battles, at times coordinated with the larger French offensives, like the battle of Neuve Chapelle which is always associated with the shell crisis, the battle of Aubers Ridge, the battle of Festubert in May and the battle of Givenchy in June. On 22 April 1915, the Germans launched the second battle of Ypres, employing poison gas for the first time on the Western Front and capturing much of the high ground that ringed the salient. By September 1915, the British Army had grown with the first of Kitchener's New Army divisions entering the line, and as part of the third battle of Artois, the army launched a major attack, the battle of Loos, utilising its own newly developed chemical weapons for the first time. The resulting failure marked the end for Field Marshal French. On 19 December 1915, General Sir Douglas Haig replaced him as Commander-in-Chief of the BEF.

For the British Army, 1916 was dominated by the battle of the Somme which started disastrously on 1 July. The first day on the Somme remains the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army when over 19,000 soldiers were killed and nearly 40,000 were wounded, all for little or no gain. The only real success was in the south where, using imaginative tactics and helped by the French, the 18th (Eastern) Division and 30th Division took all their objectives, including Montauban, and the 7th Division captured Mametz. At Thiepval, the 36th (Ulster) Division seized the Schwaben Redoubt but was forced to withdraw because of lack of progress elsewhere. There followed nearly five months of attrition during which the Fourth Army of General Henry Rawlinson and the Fifth Army of General Hubert Gough advanced an average of 5 mi (8.0 km) at a cost of 420,000 casualties.

In February 1917, the German Army began to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line and it was these formidable defences that elements of the British Army assaulted in the battle of Arras in April. For this battle, the British Prime Minister—David Lloyd George—had placed Haig and the BEF under the orders of new French Commander-in-Chief (Robert Nivelle), who planned a major French Army offensive in Champagne. When the battle officially ended on 16 May, British troops had made significant advances, but had been unable to achieve a major breakthrough at any point. Having failed to deliver a breakthrough, Haig now embarked on his favoured plan to launch an offensive in Flanders. In a successful preliminary operation, General Herbert Plumer's Second Army seized the Messines ridge south of Ypres. The battle of Passchendaele, which began on 31 July 1917, was one of the harshest ordeals endured by British and Dominion troops during the war, with the battlefield reduced to a quagmire. It was not until 6 November that Passchendaele ridge was captured, by which time the British Army had sustained 310,000 casualties. For the British Army, 1917 ended with the battle of Cambrai which demonstrated the potential of tanks operating en masse. The Third Army commander—General Julian Byng—planned an ambitious breakthrough and achieved an unprecedented advanced of 5 mi (8.0 km) on the first day but lacked the reserves to either continue or consolidate. A German counter-offensive succeeded in recapturing most of the lost ground.

The final year of the war—1918—started with disaster and ended in triumph. On 21 March 1918, German General Erich Ludendorff launched the Spring Offensive and the main weight of the first blow—Operation Michael—fell on the British Fifth Army of General Gough which was forced to retreat, finally halting the German advance on the Marne in June 1918. The next German attack came south of Ypres in the battle of the Lys river and here too the British Army fell back. Haig issued his famous Order of the Day, "With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end." In response to the crisis facing the Allies, French general Ferdinand Foch was made Supreme Commander for Allied forces on the Western Front, placing the BEF under his strategic direction. On 8 August 1918, General Rawlinson's Fourth Army launched the battle of Amiens which marked the start of the Hundred Days Offensive, the final Allied offensive on the Western Front. Over the following weeks, all five armies of the BEF went on the offensive from the Somme to Flanders. Fighting continued right up until the Armistice with Germany came into effect at 11:00 am on 11 November 1918.

In the final offensive, the BEF captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns which was only 7,800 prisoners and 935 guns less than those taken by the French, Belgian and American armies combined.