The First Battle of Bullecourt

April 1917

The attack on Bullecourt by General Sir Hubert Gough's Fifth Army formed part of an operation which included an attack on Vimy Ridge by the First Army and on Arras by the Third Army.

Vimy Ridge

First Army launched their assault on Vimy Ridge on 9 April and whilst that was a success elsewhere things did not go so well. It was up to Gough to force the line.

The main assault at Bullecourt was to be made by the Australian 4th Division of I ANZAC at 04:30 hours on 10 April.

The Australians had been sending out patrols and the reports coming back were not good. The wire was near intact and the German trenches heavily defended. This was not a stop off on some greater withdrawal by the Germans - they were here to stay.

Another point to understand is that the German line went around Bullecourt and that 4th Division would be attacking on the right hand side of this salient.

A critical instrument in the attack was going to be the use of tanks to batter down the enemy wire and to neutralise machine gun positions. Tanks were still very new to the war - having only first been used on 15 September 1916 - and what was to be attempted at Bullecourt was untried.

Despite misgivings about the place and method, Gough insisted that the attack went ahead. Orders went back to the rear to bring up the tanks, which would proceed the infantry. These same infantry were maintaining their positions in the midst of a snow storm. As time moved on the storm got worse and the tanks failed to arrive by Zero, their drivers unable to see where they were going.

The Australians postponed their attack and continued to wait upon the tanks. Unfortunately they didn't tell the 62nd (West Riding) Division that this was going to be the case, and in-line with their own orders, the 62nd sent out units of three West Yorkshire Battalions towards Bullecourt village.

All of them suffered severe casualties by machine gun and artillery fire before they realised what was happening and fell back again. Not all of the staff errors were to prove to be British.

With the blizzard getting worse the decision was made to call off the attack and the Australians were called back.

11 April 1917

Gough decided that as the offensive by Third Army was being pressed, he would make a second attempt on Bullecourt at 04:30 hours on 11 April. The extra 24 hours allowed for more thought to be put into the plan which was geared to helping the tanks achieve some sort of surprise: there would be no preliminary bombardment!

The plan also came as an unpleasant surprise for the soldiers who had only just finished trudging back to their lines having lain out in the snow all night. After only a few hours rest they had to turn around and make their way back to their jumping off points.

Two Brigades would make the attack: 12 Brigade up the right hand side of Bullecourt village and 4 Brigade on their right towards the village of Riencourt. The dividing line between them would be a track called the Central Road which ran northwards until it met the Diagonal Road running north-east from Bullecourt to Riencourt.

The Tanks

A crucial element in the battle was the use of tanks to aid the infantry to get through the enemy's defensive obstacles and into their trenches.

The tanks were part of the 1st Battalion Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps, and were all of the Mk I and Mk II types. Some of them were training vehicles without any armour plating.

The twelve tanks were supposed to have been in position by Zero ready to advance in front of the infantry. By Zero only eleven had arrived and most of them were not in their allotted positions.

The orders were a little fuzzy about what should happen in the event of the tanks arriving late. In the event 4 Brigade went ahead without the tanks, whilst 12 Brigade hung on until they had arrived.

As it was, the tanks made little impact on the battle getting knocked out very quickly. One did manage to make its way into Bullecourt village but had to be abandoned in the face of stiff resistance and the fact that the supporting infantry had not made as much progress as had been planned.

The attack by the Australian 4th Division