9 facts about Operation Georgette

On 9 April 1918, the German Army launched the second attack of its spring offensive. Here are nine things you need to know about the attack...

Lewis gun team on the bank of the Lys canal at St Venant, 15 April 1918. © IWM Q 10902

• Operation Georgette was the second large-scale German attack in spring 1918. The attack was smaller in scale than the original plan, so the codename was changed from “Georg” to “Georgette”.
• The offensive began at 4.15am on 9 April 1918. The Germans bombarded 25 miles of British frontline south of Ypres for four and a half hours before the infantry attacked.
• This part of the front had been a relatively quiet sector and was lightly defended by just 12 divisions. When the German infantry advanced, they overwhelmed the defenders and advanced more than three miles in the first few hours.
• The Germans captured the village of Messines despite a counter-attack by the South African Brigade and took Mount Kemmel, the dominating geographical feature in West Flanders. British troops were forced to reduce their line in the Ypres Salient, giving up virtually all of the gains made during the Third Battle of Ypres the previous year, but crucially holding on to Ypres itself.
• Fighting alongside the British were two divisions of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps, who had arrived in France in early 1917.
• During the battle Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of British forces in Western Europe, issued this famous order ‘…with our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each of us must fight on to the end'.
• The offensive lasted 20 days. Despite initial German gains British and Commonwealth forces rallied with the aid of French troops. Ypres was held and the vital rail hub of Hazebrouck remained in Allied hands.
• Both sides suffered terrible losses. British casualties were more than 80,000 and French losses were some 30,000, while around 85,000 German soldiers were wounded, captured or killed. The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps lost around a third of its fighting strength.
• The Commission commemorates more than 26,000 service personnel who died in France and Belgium during the period of Operation Georgette, some of whom died in other engagements. More than 11,000 have no known grave and are commemorated on CWGC memorials to the missing.