The Battle of Festubert

The Battle of Festubert, 15–25 May 1915, was an offensive in northern France involving Indian, British and Canadian forces fighting side by side. It followed the failure at Aubers Ridge and the crisis at Second Ypres, and formed part of a wider Allied plan to press the German lines while the German army was heavily engaged on the Eastern Front.

It became one of the earliest examples of attrition warfare on the Western Front: long bombardments, repeated infantry assaults, and extremely high casualties for limited gains.

Festubert lay in a flat, waterlogged region where trenches could not be dug deep and defences were built upward as breastworks. The ground between the lines was cut by water-filled ditches, the German wire was largely uncut, and errors in the trench maps ran to as much as 450 yards — all of which made coordinated attacks extremely difficult.

The British First Army under General Sir Douglas Haig aimed to break through three German trench lines, capture the fortified farms and strongpoints, and support the French offensive in Artois while German attention was on the Russian front.

The plan rested on a sixty-hour artillery bombardment. Many of the shells were shrapnel rather than high explosive, a high proportion failed to explode, the wire was left uncut, and the German batteries were all still in action when the infantry went forward.

The Indian Corps, under Lieutenant-General Sir James Willcocks, formed the left assault wing of the offensive and later reinforced the most exposed of the captured positions.

On 18 May 1915 the Indian Corps was holding a dangerously exposed section of captured German trench known as the Glory Hole. The Germans kept up continuous bombing attacks with grenades, and by early afternoon the Sikhs holding the forward company were running out of bombs. Bomb-carrying parties sent forward were all killed or wounded before reaching halfway. The position was on the point of being overrun.

At 3.30 p.m. Lieutenant John G. Smyth of the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs received a direct order.

The ground between the trenches was swept by machine guns, rifles and shrapnel, and strewn with the dead of earlier attempts. Smyth asked for volunteers. Many stepped forward; he chose ten men of the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs.

The party set off carrying the two heavy boxes of bombs. For the first fifty yards a trench gave some cover; once they emerged, shrapnel found them and the first man was hit. As they went on, more were killed and wounded. They struggled for cover among the dead and the wreckage of trenches as the German guns and machine guns intensified. By the time Smyth reached a shell hole thirty yards from the objective, only one man was still with him — Sepoy Lal Singh — and they had one box of bombs left.

Under covering fire from the forward company, Smyth and Lal Singh made the final dash and delivered the bombs, and the Sikhs could fight on. German bombers came down the trench again at once, but with the fresh supply of grenades the position held until nightfall. In that final action Sepoy Lal Singh was shot through the head and killed, moments after the mission was complete.

The 1st Canadian Division, under Major-General Edwin Alderson, entered the battle on 18 May, relieving exhausted British units and forming “Alderson's Force”. Its brigades were commanded by Brigadier-General R. E. W. Turner, VC (3rd Brigade) and Brigadier-General Arthur Currie (2nd Brigade).

The British bore the brunt of the early assaults and suffered extremely heavy casualties in the first forty-eight hours. The 2nd Division made the main assault of 15–16 May, its 6th and 5th Brigades leading the night attack; the 4th (Guards) Brigade attacked near Ferme Cour d'Avoué; the 7th Division attacked at dawn on 16 May; the 47th (London) Division made the major assault of 25 May; and the 51st (Highland) Division supported the Canadians.

The project's research gathered letters written home by Canadian soldiers in the weeks after Festubert, as reproduced by the Canadian History Ehx project from newspapers and local histories of the time. They are given here as the research gives them.

Festubert stands as one of the earliest battles where Indian, Canadian and British troops fought shoulder to shoulder in a coordinated offensive. Indian soldiers showed extraordinary courage in close-quarters trench fighting, above all at the Glory Hole. Canadian battalions pressed repeated assaults despite inadequate maps and artillery. British divisions absorbed devastating losses in the first attempts to break through.

The battle produced limited territorial gain — about 600 yards — and has been called the most unsatisfactory engagement involving Canadians of the entire war. In Canada it is rarely celebrated, overshadowed by Vimy Ridge; many Canadians died there for a few metres of ground.

Yet Festubert remains a shared chapter of military history linking India, Canada and Britain — a record of courage, endurance and unity across the Empire in the crucible of the First World War.