Western Front: Battle of Messines, 7–14 June 1917
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German prisoners near Messines, by Will Dyson, 1917. Brush and ink with charcoal on paper, 49.2 x 44 cm. Depicts an Australian soldier guarding two German prisoners. Dyson was the first Australian artist to visit the front during World War I, recording the experiences of Australians in France from December 1916 to May 1917. (Australian War Memorial ART02214) |
The Battle of Messines, fought on 7 June 1917, was the opening assault in the British Expeditionary Force’s ‘Flanders offensive’ of 1917. The aim of the operation was the capture of the Messines–Wytschaete heights south of Ieper (Ypres) in order to straighten out the Messines ‘salient’ or bulge, from which German forces could have fired into planned British advances east of Ieper during July–August 1917. For Messines, the British 2nd Army under General Herbert Plumer issued the most detailed plan ever prepared for a major British offensive to that time. Artillery targets were carefully plotted, and an immense creeping barrage of artillery and machine-gun fire was designed to move ahead of the infantry to protect their advance on the German positions. Huge scale models of the ground were built behind the lines and studied by the troops, especially in the 3rd Australian Division commanded by Major General John Monash.
A key element in the Messines attack was the detonating of huge mines under the German front line. For two years British and German tunnelling companies had manoeuvred and fought an underground war in this area and the British succeeded in concealing from the Germans that they had pushed nineteen tunnels deep below the German frontline trenches. From November 1916, the oldest of the mines, three kilometres south-east of Ieper at Hill 60, was taken over by the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company. Its main job was to keep the enemy away from the deep mines, by means of tense fighting, explosion and counter-explosion in the network of tunnels that ran over three levels.
The preliminary artillery bombardment for Messines commenced on 31 May 1917, and the Germans reacted with heavy shelling, including phosgene gas shells fired into areas that attacking troops might have to pass through when moving up to their start lines. Throughout the night of 6 June, Ploegsteert Wood, through which battalions of the 3rd Australian Division approached their start lines, was saturated with gas shells, temporarily putting 500 men out of action.
At 3.10 am on 7 June, the rate of artillery barrage increased and nineteen great explosions obliterated the German front lines as the mines were detonated. Infantry from nine divisions then moved across no-man’s-land. The mines destroyed the German front line and temporarily shattered German morale. The infantry, however, met tough resistance at some ruined farms and, for the first time, Australians came upon well-defended concrete blockhouses known popularly as ‘pillboxes’. By 5.30 am Messines had been captured by the New Zealand Division and the main heights were taken along the whole battlefront.
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Two tanks in action during the attack on Messines Ridge, Belgium, on 7 June 1917. (Australian War Memorial E01419, photographer: Herbert F Baldwin) |
As troops consolidated the newly won positions to prepare for the expected German counterattacks, other units came forward for a second assault timed for the afternoon. Men of the 4th Australian Division now moved through the area taken by the British 25th and New Zealand Divisions, supported to the south by the 37th Battalion (Victoria), 3rd Australian Division. A hitch developed in the plan when a British unit that was to advance north of the 4th Division was late in arriving and Captain Arthur Maxwell, in charge of the Australian left flank company, ordered his men to occupy the whole of the British objective, which fortunately the Germans had abandoned. It took four more days of hard fighting before all the objectives of the first day were safely secured.
Messines was a success, eliminating the German salient south of Ieper and paving the way for the Third Battle of Ypres, which commenced on 31 July 1917. However, the 3rd and 4th Australian Divisions suffered nearly 6,800 casualties.
Over the next six weeks the front forward of Messines was gradually advanced, from farm to farm. It was during this time that the Australian Imperial Force suffered the loss of Major General William Holmes, the commanding officer of the 4th Australian Division and the most senior Australian officer to be killed on the Western Front. General Holmes was taking the Premier of New South Wales, William Holman, by a normally safe route to see the battlefield, when he was mortally wounded by a shell. Of Holmes, Charles Bean wrote:
There is naturally a tendency to wonder how far citizen soldiers, who have been more or less complete amateurs until the war plunged them into soldiering as by far the most important business in their lives, could be suitable for high commands… None will grudge it to General Holmes that he was, of all others, the Australian who first showed that it could be done with complete success.
Major General William Holmes is buried in Plot 1, Row X, Grave 42 in the Trois Arbes Cemetery, Steenwerck, France.
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