Battle of Messines (1917)

Background

By the spring of 1917 the British had long wanted to fight in Flanders, to clear the Belgian coast and deny the Germans its ports. In January 1916 General Sir Herbert Plumer, commanding the Second Army in the Ypres Salient, had recommended taking the Messines Ridge first, before any attack on the Gheluvelt plateau further north. Verdun and the Somme put the plan off. When the French Nivelle Offensive on the Aisne failed in April and May 1917, and mutinies broke out in the French army, Haig ordered the Second Army to take the Messines–Wytschaete ridge as soon as possible, partly to take pressure off the French.

The ridge mattered out of all proportion to its height, about 80 metres at Messines. It formed the southern arc of the salient and gave the Germans observation over the British positions behind Ypres. Taking it would shorten the line, blind the Germans on that flank and give the British a view of the southern slopes of the Gheluvelt plateau, ready for the main offensive.

The attack had been a long time in preparation. British tunnellers had been working under the Wytschaete salient since 1915, and from 1916 a deep mining offensive drove galleries into a layer of blue clay far below the German front, despite German counter-mining. Plumer and his chief of staff, Charles 'Tim' Harington, who worked in close understanding, planned the battle with unusual thoroughness. The British preliminary bombardment began on 8 May and grew much heavier from 23 May.

The armies

Plumer attacked with three corps. In the north X Corps (Morland) had the 23rd, 47th and 41st Divisions, with the 24th in reserve. In the centre IX Corps (Hamilton-Gordon) had the 19th (Western), the 16th (Irish) and the 36th (Ulster) Divisions, with the 11th (Northern) behind. In the south II Anzac Corps (Godley) had the 25th, the New Zealand and the 3rd Australian Divisions, with the 4th Australian in reserve. The 3rd Australian, under John Monash, was fighting its first big battle. The nationalist 16th and the unionist 36th went in side by side.

Artillery was the main weapon: 756 medium and heavy guns and 1,510 field guns, controlled centrally from Second Army headquarters by Major-General George Franks, with a dedicated counter-battery staff, flash-spotting and sound-ranging. Some 700 machine-guns would fire an overhead barrage, 72 Mark IV tanks supported the infantry and about 300 aircraft watched the rear slopes. Nineteen mines would open the attack.

The German 4th Army's Gruppe Wijtschate, under Maximilian von Laffert, held the ridge with five divisions in successive lines: forward breastworks, the Sonne line, the Höhenstellung on the crest and the Sehnenstellung, the British 'Oosttaverne line', on the far slope. Two Eingreif divisions waited behind to counter-attack. Rupprecht and his chief of staff Kuhl had considered withdrawing, but local commanders believed their counter-mining had dealt with the mines, and the ridge was held.

The battle

The mines, 03:10, 7 June. A thunderstorm on the evening of 6 June cleared by midnight. British aircraft flew over the lines at 02:00 to drown the noise of the tanks, and by 03:00 the infantry were in their jumping-off positions, mostly unseen, though a German gas bombardment of Ploegsteert Wood cost the 3rd Australian Division about 500 men on the approach. At 03:10 the mines began to go off, over about twenty seconds, from one end of the front to the other. An Australian account describes a huge glowing bubble swelling from the earth near Wytschaete, then another and another, as seen from the New Zealand lines. Some fired early, some late: men of the 36th Division were knocked over by Spanbroekmolen, and the Petit Bois mines were about 12 seconds late. The craters were up to 300 feet across, and each buried the garrison of a stretch of trench. The barrage opened at once.

The ridge, 03:10–09:00. The nine divisions went forward behind a creeping barrage moving 100 yards in two minutes, with mopping-up parties to clear by-passed dug-outs. The German forward zone fell in the 35 minutes allotted, the surviving garrison stunned by the mines and the barrage. In II Anzac Corps the 3rd Australian Division formed the southern flank astride the Douve, and the New Zealand Division took Messines village, a fortress of cellars and pillboxes, whose garrison surrendered when its commander was captured. In IX Corps the 36th (Ulster) and 16th (Irish) Divisions took Wytschaete together. Major Willie Redmond MP, 56, of the 6th Royal Irish Regiment, 16th Division, was hit near the Maedelstede Farm crater; Private John Meeke of the 36th Division carried him back, and he died that evening at Dranoutre. In X Corps the 41st Division took the Dammstrasse and the 47th fought for the White Château and the Spoil Bank by the Ypres–Comines canal, which held out. By about 09:00 the black line, the crest and the observation line beyond it, was taken, with far fewer losses than planned for, so the crest became crowded under German long-range fire.

The Oosttaverne line, 15:10. The planners had allowed a long pause for the German counter-attack. The Eingreif divisions came late and were caught by British artillery; the 1st Guard Reserve Division reached the area east of Messines about 15:00, just as the barrage resumed. Plumer postponed the afternoon attack by two hours to 15:10, and the 4th Australian Division's leading brigade lay in the open under fire while it waited. The reserve brigades then went down the eastern slope. Australians, the 57th Brigade of the 19th Division and the 24th Division took most of the Oosttaverne line, but 1,000 yards across the Blauwepoortbeek valley, between the Anzac and IX Corps, stayed in German hands. Bean judged that the postponement saved the attack.

Friendly fire and consolidation, 7–14 June. That evening, fearing counter-attacks, British gunners fired SOS barrages that fell on the 12th Australian Brigade, dug in beyond its objective, and on IX Corps troops; New Zealand observers brought the fire closer still. The shelling went on until about 22:00 and the Australians fell back. On 8 June observers mistook a relief for a counter-attack and both sides shelled the area for two hours. The confusion came from the divisions on the ridge controlling the guns that covered the reserve divisions below. German shelling caused most of the British losses in these days. The Germans gave up the Blauwepoortbeek on 11 June, and by 14 June British posts were pushed forward without resistance.

Aftermath

The ridge was taken in less than twelve hours. The British took 7,354 prisoners, 48 guns, 218 machine-guns and 60 trench mortars. British losses for 1–12 June were 24,562, about half of them in II Anzac Corps; German losses were about 22,000–26,000. Laffert was sacked two days after the battle. Whether the mines killed the often-quoted 10,000 Germans is doubted: the figure comes from the German official history's total, and Simon Jones has argued from primary sources that the mines killed no more than about 500.

Haig wanted rapid exploitation towards the Gheluvelt plateau, but Plumer said he needed three days to move his guns. Haig gave the next step to Gough's Fifth Army, and the main offensive did not open until 31 July. That pause is part of the Passchendaele argument: Prior and Wilson called Messines a noteworthy success but criticised the delay, while Ian Brown and Andy Simpson argue that the roads and supply lines had to be rebuilt across the devastated ridge first.

Edmonds called it a great victory; Lloyd George, an aperitif; Liddell Hart thought it inflated expectations for Third Ypres. The Lone Tree crater at Spanbroekmolen is now a Pool of Peace, and the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines remembers the two Irish divisions. Not every mine went off: one exploded in a thunderstorm in 1955, and another is believed still to lie under the fields.

Wargaming it

Messines is the model set-piece attack, which makes it a fine game about planning and timing rather than manoeuvre. At brigade or battalion scale (a stand as a company) the whole morning attack fits on a table: a front of about 17,000 yards, a ridge rising gently to 80 metres, woods, farms and the two fortified villages of Wytschaete and Messines as the key terrain.

The interesting rules problems are the mines and the barrage. Mines should be random in timing and effect, stunning defenders near the craters but breaking up the attacker's formations too; several commanders felt the craters caused as much trouble as they solved. The barrage moves on a fixed timetable that the attacker cannot easily change.

The best scenario is probably the afternoon: reserve brigades advancing down the forward slope to the Oosttaverne line's pillboxes, with Eingreif divisions arriving late and both sides' SOS barrages liable to fall on their own men. For the defender the what-if is Rupprecht's rejected withdrawal from the ridge before the attack. For the attacker it is the 13:10 start Plumer postponed, and Haig's wish for immediate exploitation towards the Gheluvelt plateau. A small grand-tactical game, a division a counter, can test whether going on at once on 8 June could have shortened Third Ypres.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.