Arras
9 April – 16 May 1917
WW1 - Battle of Arras
Following the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in early 1917 the British were now faced with a new set of positions with state of the art defences: thick belts of wire, deep trenches to stop tanks, concrete machine gun bunkers with inter-locking fields of fire. But the offensive at Arras began on 9th April 1917 with some success.
The Facts
- Date: 9 April – 16 May 1917
- Location: Arras, France
| Countries Involved | |
|---|---|
| British Empire | German Empire |
| Countries Commanders | |
| Douglas Haig Edmund Allenby Hubert Gough Henry Horne |
Erich Ludendorff Ludwig von Falkenhausen |
| Number of Casualties | |
| Nearly 160,000 | Between 120,000–130,000 |
In the north the Canadians took Vimy Ridge, and on the British sectors the majority of objectives were achieved. But it quickly turned into another of the great attritional battles of WW1, with on average over 4,000 casualties a day: making it more costly than even the Somme and Passchendaele. There is also a very high percentage of missing on this battlefield with over 35,000 of them commemorated on the Arras Memorial.
Battery under German fire
Canadian machine gun squad at Vimy Ridge
British machine gunners fire on German aircraft near Arras
