Operation Hush

Operation Hush
Part of World War I
Date 1917 Location Belgian Coast
Belligerents
United Kingdom	German Empire
Commanders and leaders
Sir Reginald Bacon	Ludwig von Schroeder
Strength
13,750 189 heavy guns	24 coastal batteries, including eight large calibre naval gun batteries 33 concrete machine gun nests

Operation Hush was a plan to make amphibious landings on the Belgian coast during World War I, supported by a breakout attack from Nieuwpoort and the Yser bridgehead.^[1] The operation would begin when the main offensive at Ypres advanced to Roulers-Thourout, linked by advances by the French and Belgian armies in between.^[2] Operation Hush was cancelled on 14 October^[3] as delays at Passchendaele made it too late in the season.

Background

The German occupation of the Belgian coast in 1914 caused the Admiralty to swiftly advocate their removal. On 26 October 1914 the First Lord, Winston Churchill wrote to Sir John French, commander of the BEF 'We must have him off the Belgian coast.',^[4]Churchill offering naval fire support for such an army operation. French adopted the idea for the main effort of 1915. The army would advance between Dixmude and the sea while the navy provided fire support and a surprise landing near Zeebrugge. Eventually the plan was shelved by the British government in favour of the Gallipoli campaign.^[5]In early 1916 the idea was revived and talks began between Sir Douglas Haig the new BEF commander-in-chief and Rear Admiral Reginald Bacon, commander of the Dover Patrol. Haig appointed Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston who had been involved in the Gallipoli campaign to work with Bacon. An offensive from Ypres and the landing operation in support of it superseded the offensive on the coast. Bacon proposed a landing from six monitors and 100 trawlers of 9,000 men in Ostend harbour, with decoys towards Zeebrugge and Middelkirke, when a coastal assault began from Nieupoort. Hunter-Weston rejected the plan because it was on a narrow front, Ostend harbour was in range of German heavy guns and the exits from the harbour were easy to block. This led to Bacon producing a revised plan for a beach landing near Middelkirke.^[6]

Events forced Haig in June 1916 to postpone the offensive from Ypres to 1917. Bacon began work on a new plan which incorporated Hunter-Weston's recommendations and Haig's suggestion that tanks be incorporated into the landings. A caution from Lieutenant-Colonel C. Macmullen (Haig's advisor) to delay until a general advance had begun from Ypres and had reached Roulers was accepted. To land troops swiftly so as to benefit from surprise, Bacon designed flat-bottomed craft which could land on beaches. The pontoons were 550 feet long and 32 feet wide, to be loaded with men, guns, wagons, ambulances, box-cars, motor-cars, hand-carts, bicycles, Stokes carts and side-cars plus three tanks (two males and one female) were specially built and lashed to pairs of Monitors. HMS General Wolfe and the other monitors would push the pontoons up the beach, tanks would unload, climb the sea-walls (an incline of about thirty degrees), surmount a large projecting coping-stone at the top and then haul the rest of the load over the wall.^[7] The Belgian architect who designed the wall was in France and supplied his drawings. A replica was built at Merlimont and a detachment of tanks under Major Bingham reharsed on it using 'shoes' on the tank tracks and special detachable steel ramps carried by the tanks, until they could climb the wall.^[8] In experiments on the Thames estuary the pontoons performed exceptionally well, riding out very bad weather and being easier to manoeuvre than expected,^[9] suggesting that they could land reinforcements as well. Night landings were also practiced with wire stretched between buoys to guide the pontoons to 100 yards of their landing place.^[10]

Plan

The plan was to combine a breakout from the Niewpoort bridgehead by two divisions of XV Corps (Lieut. Gen John Philip Du Cane) of the Fourth Army (General Henry Rawlinson) with landings from the sea under the command of Rear-Admiral Reginald Bacon by 1st Division from Dunkirk the following morning.

On the afternoon before the landings, the two divisions of XV Corps were to attack from the bridgehead between St Georges and the coast with a bombardment and barrage from 300 guns and a naval bombardment laid on a 3,500 yard front. A 1,000 yard advance would be followed by a one hour pause. Four more similar advances over six hours would take the land attack to Middelkirke where it would link with the landing force. Three landing sites for 1st Division were planned: Westende Bains, a mile behind the German second line; another site three quarters of a mile beyond at the German third line and the third 1 3/4 miles beyond that at Middelkirke Bains^[11] to cut off the German artillery's line of retreat around Westende, turn the German second and third positions and advance inland as far as possible.^[12]

Units

• British Units
  • Fourth Army
  • XV Corps
  • 1st Division
  • 32nd Division
  • 33rd Division
  • 49th (West Riding) Division
  • 66th (2nd East Lancashire) Division

• • IV Brigade Royal Flying Corps
  • 4 (Naval Wing) Royal Naval Air Service
  • Dover Patrol

• German Units
  • 4th Army
  • Gardekorps
  • Marine-Korps-Flandern
  • 3rd Marine Division (Germany)
  • 199th Division

Prelude

The attack depended on the Yser bridgehead, because the river was deep, tidal and 100-200 yards wide. The Germans made a spoiling attack on 10-11 July (Operation Strandfest) after bombarding the area from 6 July. The 1st and 2nd Marine Regiments, 3rd Marine Division with 199th Division in support, attacked on a front of 2,000 yards between Lombartzyde and the sea and quickly overran the bridgehead, destroying two battalions of 1st Division. Yellow Cross (chemical warfare) (mustard gas) and Blue Cross (chemical warfare) was used for the first time.^[13]

the enemy was using a new gas shell freely. Shell bursts like a small H.E. Gas makes you sneeze and run at the nose and eyes. Smell is like cayenne pepper. "This actually was the 'blue-cross' shell, a different type from the mustard('yellow-cross') shell. Both new shells were used in this action.^[14]

In the area of the Marine Corps, following a thorough and effective artillery bombardment, units of the battle-tested Marine Infantry assaulted the strongly constructed defence line between Lombartzijde and the sea.... The enemy was thrown back over the Yser. More than 1,250 prisoners, 37 of them officers, were captured. British casualties in the area between the coast and the river were very high....^[15]

Counter-attacks by 32nd Division were cancelled after the XV Corps commander, Lieut-General John Du Cane wrote to General Henry Rawlinson, GOC Fourth Army objecting to this, preferring to wait until the main offensive at Ypres had begun and Rawlinson agreed. Operation Hush was revised so that the attack on Lombartzyde would begin from the ground still held north of the Yser, with a flank attack shortly after from the Geleide brook to the coast. The attack up the coast and the landings were left unchanged. Haig accepted this on 18 July and gave 8 August as the proposed date for the operation.^[16]British losses were 3,126 men.^[17]

Postponements

Despite the German spoiling attack the operation was to go ahead. XV Corps added the attack on Lombartzyde due the day before the coastal advance to cover the right flank of the force crossing the Yser. As the 3rd Battle of Ypres began, Rawlinson and Bacon had assembled the ships, crews and landing forces. 8 August had the best tidal conditions for the landing but slow progress at Ypres led to a postponement to 6 September. Gough had attacked on 16 August (the Battle of Langemarck) partly to meet the landing schedule. At a meeting on 22 August between Haig, Rawlinson and Bacon three alternatives were discussed; another postponement of the coastal operation, conducting the operation independently or moving the divisions from XV Corps to Fifth Army. Rawlinson favoured an independent operation which he thought would get as far as Middelkirke, bringing Ostend into artillery range and which would make the Germans commit forces for a counter-attack, despite the pressure being exerted on them at Ypres. Haig refused and the operation was postponed, this time for a night landing under a full moon in the first week of October, unless the situation at Ypres changed sooner. In September Rawlinson and Bacon became pessimistic and Haig postponed the operation again but told them to be ready for the second week of October. Hopes rose after the Battle of Broodseinde on 4 October and again after the Battle of Poelcappelle, despite the small gain in ground, although the operation could not start before end of October. The result of the First Battle of Passchendaele on 12 October led to the operation being called off. Rawlinson wrote 'things have not been running at all smoothly - it is now clear that we shall do nothing on the coast here. (Diary, 14 October)^[18]

Aftermath

1st Division left the camp at le Clipon on 21 October, the rest of Fourth Army following on 3 November.

J. F. C. Fuller, on the staff of the Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps (as the Tank Corps was then called), called the scheme "a crack-brained one, a kind of mechanical Gallipoli affair" and when in the area in 1933, discovered the sea-walls were partially covered in a fine green seaweed the tanks might not have been able to scale.^[19]Admiral Roger Keyes thought that the operation was doomed to fail and Admiral Jellicoe expected a great success. Despite the demands of the battles at Ypres, Haig had kept a large force on the coast throughout, ready to exploit a German general withdrawal. Haig resisted the suggestion to launch the operation independently, wanting it to be synchronised with the advance on Roulers which loomed in October but did not occur until a year later.^[20]

See also

• World War I
• The Great War

References

1. ^ Wiest, A. The Planned Amphibious Assault, pp. 201-211 in Liddle, P. Passchendaele in Perspective, (1997, paperback edn)
2. ^ Jones, H. A. op. cit. p. 139.
3. ^ Jones, H.A. The War in the Air, p. 150. (1934, 2003 reprint).
4. ^ Wiest, A. The Planned Amphibious Assault, p. 202, in Liddle, P. Ed, Passchendaele in Perspective, pp. 201-212.
5. ^ wiest, A. ibid, p. 202.
6. ^ Wiest, ibid, p. 203-204.
7. ^ Wiest, ibid, p. 205.
8. ^ Haris, J.P. Men, Ideas, Tanks, p. 101.(1995)
9. ^ Edmonds, J. OH 1917 II, p. 117 and fn 1.
10. ^ Wiest ibid, p. 205.
11. ^ Edmonds, ibid, p. 116.
12. ^ Wiest, ibid, p. 207.
13. ^ Edmonds, J. OH 1917 II, pp. 137 & fn 4,p. 138.
14. ^ Bean, C. Australian Official History, Volume 4, p. 962, fn.
15. ^ Daily Report Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht 11 July 1917 in Sheldon, J. The German Army at Passchendaele, pp. 38-39. (2007)
16. ^ Edmonds, J. OH 1917 II, pp. 116-123.
17. ^ Terraine, J. The Road to Passchendaele, p. 195. (1977)
18. ^ Wiest, W. The Planned Amphibious Assault, p. 210 in Liddle, P. Passchendaele in Perspective, pp. 201-211.(1997 paperback edn)
19. ^ J.F.C. Fuller, Memoirs of an unconventional soldier, Ivor Nicholson and Watson, Limited. London, 1936. pp. 117-19.
20. ^ Wiest, op. cit. pp. 210-211

External links

• Operation Hush - planned landing on the Belgian coast - 1917