Cambrai, battle of (1917). Cambrai Day—20 November—is celebrated by the British Royal Tank Regiment as the first occasion when tanks were used on a large scale and with tactics specially devised for them, after a disappointing debut on the Somme in September 1916 and in support of infantry attacks at the third battle of Ypres. The British attack, by Third Army under Byng against the Hindeburg Line west of Cambrai, had mixed parentage. The Tank Corps, under Brig Gen Hugh Elles and his chief of staff Lt Col Fuller, saw the rolling downland as offering excellent opportunities for the use of tanks, and Fuller proposed a large-scale raid with the aim of getting tanks onto the German gun-line. Brig Gen Tudor, commanding the artillery of the 9th Division, had developed a system for marking targets by survey rather than adjusting them by fire, so that an attack would not be heralded by artillery preparation. Surprise would be lost, however, if guns cut the belts of barbed wire in front of German trenches, and Tudor proposed that these should be crushed by tanks. These ideas were synthesized, and Third Army, recently eclipsed by operations around Ypres, supported the project. In September Haig gave Byng outline permission to proceed with planning, but it was not until the third battle of Ypres had ended that the plan was approved. Even then it was one of limited liability: Third Army was to break the German line with tanks, push cavalry across the St Quentin Canal, and seize Bourlon Wood, Cambrai, and other objectives. If early results were not encouraging, the operation would be called off after 48 hours.
Four hundred and seventy-six tanks were assembled in the strictest security, and their crews practised battle drills with the infantry which would accompany them. There were two main types of tank, ‘males’, armed with a pair of 6-pounders, and ‘females’ with machine guns. They were to carry fascines (bundles of sticks or pipes) to drop into trenches too broad for tanks to span. Thus equipped, they would gap the wire for the infantry following close behind, cross trenches, and then, while some tanks drove parallel with them to kill or neutralize their defenders, others were to push on to the next trench while the infantry mopped up in their wake. Over 1, 000 guns supported the attack from positions which had been meticulously surveyed, opening fire at 06.10 when it was barely light enough for the horrified defenders to see the tanks and infantry bearing down upon them.
The battle of Cambrai, 20 November 1917.
(Click to enlarge)
Fuller believed that, used en masse, tanks would prove a powerful psychological weapon, demoralizing the defenders and encouraging the attackers. This proved the case across much of the front, and many of the defenders were shocked into surrender by the dual impact of the stunning bombardment and the unexpected arrival of the tanks. However, at Flesquières in the centre of the attack sector, there were at least two German batteries that had recently been trained in the anti-armour role and were not destroyed in the short but very intense bombardment that preceded the attack. While elsewhere the tanks rolled over trenches and achieved their first-day objectives by noon, at Flesquières they were checked, suffering heavy loss as they crested the ridge. Haig's dispatch later paid tribute to a German artillery officer who manned his gun single-handed until he was killed, but the episode is almost certainly a myth: in this sector well-handled guns, unfavourable ground, and a difference of tactical opinion between the tanks and the local infantry commander all contributed to the disappointing result. In all, 179 of 378 fighting tanks were lost, 65 destroyed by direct hits. Nevertheless, the day had seen the German defences penetrated at their strongest point to a depth of some 5 miles (8 km), and church bells were rung in England for the first time in the war.
The Germans rapidly recovered from their shock, and on the second day, 21 November, when the tanks rolled into villages in front of Cambrai, German infantry climbed to the first floors, above the limited elevation of the tanks' side-mounted guns, and engaged them at close range. Without infantry support, more tanks were lost and the momentum of the attack petered out. Haig, however, believed that the Germans were ‘showing a disposition to retire’, and decided to continue with the battle. For the next week there was a bitter struggle for Bourlon Wood, whose whaleback mass still dominates the battlefield. During it the British lost Brig Gen R. B. Bradford, at 25 their youngest general. They were tired and off-balance, with most unit commanders ordered out of the line for a well-earned rest, when the Germans counter-attacked on 30 November, jabbing in hard on both sides of the salient the British had driven into their lines. They came close to actually cutting off British troops in the centre, and though they were eventually checked, recovered about as much ground as they had lost. Both sides lost about 45, 000 men, but Haig found the sudden reversal of fortune especially damaging, coming as it did after the painfully slow progress at Ypres. Cambrai suggested that, under the right circumstances, and with predicted artillery fire, the tank could indeed break through trench lines, though exploitation still lay beyond it. During their counter-attack the Germans further developed the storm-troop tactics they had already pioneered, and the importance they allocated to surprise in artillery fire-planning, used to such effect in their offensives of spring and early summer 1918, reflected their painful experience of the British ‘lightning bombardment’ at Cambrai.
Bibliography
- Cooper, Bryan, Ironclads of Cambrai (London, 1967).
- Foley, John, The Boilerplate War (London, 1963).
- Harris, J. P., Men, Ideas and Tanks (London, 1995)
— Peter Caddick-Adams/Richard Holmes
