11 April 2023
Operation Georgette and the cost of the Battle of the Lys
In April 1918, the Imperial German Army launched the second phase of its Spring Offensive: Operation Georgette. Learn the story of this costly battle 105 years on.
Operation Georgette
The Ploegsteert Memorial: The story of the Battle of the Lys told in names carved in stone
Casualties on Ploegsteert Memorial help us tell the tale of the Battle of the Lys
Tucked amidst the verdant woodland and gentle rolling farmlands of the Belgian-French border lies the quiet village of Ploegsteert.
Today, a brick works churns out building materials while the villagers go about their daily lives peacefully
Just outside the village lies a memorial signalling a time when the village wasn’t quite so tranquil: the Ploegsteert Memorial.
The names of over 11,000 World War One casualties are displayed on its stone name panels.
These missing men have no known war grave. They may have been lost to artillery fire, the terrible battlefield conditions of the Western Front, or their remains simply never recovered.
There are casualties from the length of the war at Ploegsteert.
The area, British and Commonwealth troops stationed there as Plug Street, saw bitter fighting from 1914-1918 – but one day stands out in particular: 12th April 1918.
Nearly 1,100 men are commemorated on Ploegsteert from that day alone. Why? These men fought in the heat of Operation Georgette: the second phase of the German Spring Offensive.
Those who lost their lives at Plug Street and the surrounding area, known as the Ypres Salient, tell of the sheer cost of holding the line in the last months of the war.
In fact, from the 9th-17th April 1918, the Ploegsteert Memorial commemorates over 5,000 casualties.
Nearly half the names of the missing come from the height of the Battle of the Lys and Operation Georgette.
As the casualties mounted, day by day, it tells the story of the fiercest fighting in the positions around Plug Street, until they peak on 12th April 1918.
But what was Operation Georgette and the Battle of the Lys?
What was Operation Georgette?
Following Operation Michael, Operation Georgette was the second of four planned spring attacks made by the Imperial German Army in early 1918.
Its goal was to attack British positions around the French-Belgian border that fell under the Ypres Salient and drive them back to the channel ports.
Map of Operation Georgette (Wikimedia Commons)
Ypres was essentially a gateway city: whoever controlled Ypres controlled the paths to the channel and its ports.
The flow of men and material through these maritime hubs was crucial to the Allied war effort. Cutting them off could prove fatal for Britain and its dominions and possessions’ ability to wage war on the continent.
Interestingly, Operation George was actually much broader in scope. However, the resulting actual attack was much smaller than planned so its codename was changed from “Georg” to “Georgette”.
A full 35 German divisions, over 600,000 men with supporting artillery, had been assembled for Georgette. They were led by the stossstruppen, “stormtroopers”, new formations of specially trained assault soldiers specialising in infiltration tactics.
Opposing them were British First and Second armies, supported by Portuguese, Belgian, French, and American troops.
Under the British umbrella served soldiers from Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and South Africa.
The Battle of the Lys begins
Image: British artillerymen and their 6-inch guns during the Battle of the Lys (© IWM Q 6568)
Operation Georgette kicked off on 9th April 1918. A terrific four-and-a-half-hour artillery barrage, spewing millions of deadly shells into the air, hit a 25-mile stretch of British-held lines.
The German attack zone covered Flanders, in Northern France and overlapped with Southern Belgium.
Operation Georgette is also known as The Battle of the Lys as the Lys wound its way through the attack zone, creating an important crossing at Armentières in the centre.
At 8.45 am, the first German elements ploughed into the Allied positions.
The section hit by a storm of Imperial German steel had been a quiet sector. It was lightly defended with 12 divisions manning the line.
The tip of the German spear hit the understrength Portuguese Expeditionary Force like a thunderbolt. The Portuguese were undermanned, had lost most of its officers, and was suffering from low morale.
They were swept aside by the German advance. Several British-held positions were soon overrun too, and the southern defensive line began to falter.
On the first day of Georgette, German armies had broken through 9 miles of frontline and advanced a further five, reaching Estaires on the Lys.
On the 10th of April, four German divisions entered and captured the Lys crossing at Armentières. British Second Army under Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Horne committed its reserves to stem the tide, but it too was pushed back by the marauding Germans.
By the end of the day, the Germans had also captured the strategically important village of Messines. The British situation was now looking desperate.
“With our backs to the wall…”
With events unfolding at a dramatic pace across the Lys, British overall commander Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig gave one of his most famous dispatches.
His Special Order of the Day, delivered on 11th April 1918, addressed all ranks of the British and Commonwealth armies in France with a stirring proclamation:
“There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end.”
Calls for reinforcements from Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch had fallen on deaf ears. The French general was not convinced Georgette was Germany’s last throw of the dice. More attacks would come, Foch thought, so he needed men and materiel to combat them.
On the 11th, the Belgian town of Messines was captured. Despite a gallant counterattack by the South African Brigade, the town remained in German hands for the remainder of the battle.
Hazebrouck
Image: A Lewis Gun crew at the Battle of Hazebrouck (© IWM Q 10902)
Capturing Allied logistical centres to disrupt supplies was an important part of Operation Georgette.
One of Germany’s key objectives during the Battle of the Lys was the capture of Hazebrouck.
Hazebrouck at that time was an important railway hub. Rail was instrumental in quickly moving men and supplies around the Western Front. Controlling the hubs controlled the flow. A capture of Hazebrouck could stymie British and Allied supply chains.
On 12th April, the Germans continued to push towards Hazebrouck.
The French town of Merville was taken after a German advance of around 2.5 miles. Once they got to Hazebrouck, however, things changed.
They important railway link was defended by the men of the First Australian Division. The ANZACs had played an important role in stopping Operation Michael at the Battle of Villers Bretonneux.
Over two days the Aussies successfully defended Hazebrouck. They were supported by the British Four, Fifth, and 33rd Divisions.
On 15th April, the German assault on Hazebrouck was called off and attacking units assigned to other targets. The vital rail hub was kept in Allied hands at the cost of hundreds of lives.
The end of the Battle of the Lys
German Troops guarded by Australian soldiers at the close of Operation Georgette (© IWM Q 6570)
All told the Battle of the Lys and Operation Georgette lasted 20 days.
Operation Georgette’s final actions saw two battles at Kemmel for control of the high ground there, as well as fighting at the villages of Merckem and Béthune.
French reserves were committed to the Lys sector in late April, following battles at Kemmel. The British defenders at Kemmel had repulsed a German attack between 17-19th April and were subsequently relieved by their French comrades.
However, as Operation Georgette wound down, the Imperial German army managed to capture some important areas of high ground.
First came a second attack on Kemmel. The Germans defeated their French opponents and took the hill known as the Kemmelberg between 25-26th April 1918.
On the last day of the Battle of the Lys, German units captured the important hill called the Scherpenberg, only a short distance from the Kemmelberg.
Even so, on the 29th of April, German HQ realised it couldn’t continue to push. Operation Georgette and the Battle of the Lys was over.
Was Operation Georgette a success?
Like Michael before it, Georgette had brought the British frontline to its knees.
A heroic effort by all the troops involved, including South African, ANZAC, Canadian and Newfoundland soldiers, managed to stall and ultimately stop the German advance.
Casualties had been high. The amount of ground taken by the advancing German Army was also significant in the context of Great War gains.
However, Operation Georgette had failed in its primary objectives:
- The capture of Hazebrouck
- The withdrawal of the British from the Ypres Salient
- The capture of Ypres itself
With the addition of French reinforcements bolstering the Allied defence, and German casualties mounting, German commanders called off Georgette on the 29th of April.
For German High Command, the Battle of the Lys had proven a failure. No knockout blow was achieved. The war would rumble on, continuing to claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men and women across the Western Front.
Casualties of Operation Georgette
Image: Bodies on the Kemmelberg (Wikimedia Commons)
Operation Georgette was a major World War One offensive. Actions of this size and scope resulted in intense loss of life.
Both sides suffered terrible losses. Estimates have varied wildly over the years, but most recent research suggests Lys battlefield casualties totalled:
- 80,000 – British & Commonwealth killed, captured, wounded, or missing
- 85,000 – German killed, captured, wounded, or missing
- 30,000 – French killed, captured, wounded, or missing
The Portuguese Expeditionary Force lost a third of its fighting men in the Battle of the Lys. Some 7,000 service personnel never returned to Portugal.
The cost of the Battle of the Lys was high, paid in blood, sweat, and tears by servicemen on both sides.
One of the most high-profile casualties of The Battle of the Lys was Manfred von Richtofen, the infamous Red Baron.
The notorious fighter pilot was World War One’s highest-scoring fighter ace with 85 victories to his name. He was struck by anti-aircraft fire over Australian positions on 21st April 1918, although officially Baron von Richtofen was killed by Canadian RAF pilot Arthur Roy Brown.
Despite being only a short drive from the tourist trails around Ypres, the beautiful Ploegsteert Memorial is one of our less well-known memorials to the missing on the Western Front.
A closer look at the Ploegsteert Memorial
Located near the border between France and Belgium, this memorial commemorates over 11,000 British and South African servicemen who died in the area just south of the Ypres Salient and north of Lille throughout the First World War and have no known grave.
Many of these men died in fierce small-scale battles or brutal day-to-day fighting that characterised this part of the Western Front.
At the end of the War, two small cemeteries – Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks) Cemetery, and Berks Cemetery Extension – stood on either side of the road in the village of Ploegsteert, and it was decided that the Ploegsteert Memorial would be incorporated into the design of Berks Cemetery Extension.
The memorial and surrounding cemetery were designed by Harold Chalton Bradshaw, while the two large snarling recumbent lions at the entrance were sculpted by Gilbert Ledward.
The memorial was unveiled by the Duke of Brabant on 7 June 1931. At 7 pm on the last Friday of each month, the Last Post is sounded here by local volunteers.
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