page_title: Action of 22 August 1917
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Action of 22 August 1917 / Aftermath / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: English: Map showing progress in the Ypres area, 1 Aug to 17 Nov, 1917. 8th edition. GSGS 3588. 1:40,000. War Office.
context_page_description: The Action of 22 August 1917, took place in the First World War, in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front during the Third Battle of Ypres. The engagement was fought by the Fifth Army of the British Expeditionary Force and the German 4th Army. During the Battle of Langemarck, the British had advanced north of the village but had been defeated further south and failed to capture the Wilhelmstellung, the third German defensive position. At a conference with the Fifth Army corps commanders on 17 August, Gough arranged for local attacks to gain jumping-off positions for another general attack on 25 August. At the Action of the Cockcroft on 19 August, XVIII Corps and the 1st Tank Brigade had captured five fortified farms and strongpoints for a fraction of the casualties of a conventional attack.
  The attack on 22 August was much bigger effort, which advanced the British front line up to 600 yd in places, on a 2 mi front but failed to reach the more distant objectives. On 24 August, a German Gegenangriff recaptured Inverness Copse on the Gheluvelt Plateau and a more ambitious British attack due on 25 August was cancelled.
context_section_description: Gough had received an intelligence report on 24 August describing the checkerboard layout of the German defensive positions and the tactic of holding back counter-attacking Eingreifdivisionen beyond artillery range. Gough ordered that more troops be used to ensure that enough would survive to defeat counter-attacks and that the ratio of troops reserved for mopping up behind the foremost infantry should be increased, to make sure that by-passed positions were occupied. In 1931, Gough wrote that the attack had been made with reduced objectives because of the state of the ground to limit the ordeal of the infantry, while conforming to his instructions from Haig to continue the battle. An advance of about 500 yd (460 m) had been achieved on about a 2 mi (3.2 km) front up to the II Corps boundary. The attack by II Corps on the Gheluvelt Plateau was a success but by 24 August, German counter-attacks had re-taken most of the captured ground. In 1948, James Edmonds, the British official historian, wrote that the XIX and XVIII Corps were still overlooked by the German defenders in the Wilhelmstellung from the Ypres–Zonnebeke road northwards to the east end of Langemarck. In 1996, Prior and Wilson wrote that the success of XVIII Corps on 19 August had not been repeated in the bigger effort on 22 August. The German strong points were further from the roads still fit to drive on; when the tanks tried to get closer they sank in the mud.
  On the XIX Corps front, machine-gun fire from the German fortified posts had devastated the infantry of the 15th (Scottish) Division and 61st (2nd South Midland) Division as they struggled through the mud. A report from the 8th Seaforth described how the creeping barrage had failed to damage many pillboxes; the German defences had been underestimated and were insufficiently bombarded by the heavy artillery. The swiftness of the Germans in inflicting casualties left the survivors incapable of capturing strong points, even where the garrisons seemed willing to surrender. The attack by II Corps on Inverness Copse began two hours later, which gave the Germans on the Gheluvelt Plateau time to get ready. In 2008, J. P. Harris called the attack an "almost complete failure" and that rather than pausing, Gough continued to attack until 27 August, despite it raining from 23 August. In 2017, Nick Lloyd wrote that the attack had gained some ground but that the German pillboxes, blockhouses and fortified farms had been almost impossible to capture. Eighteen tanks were still operational and four tanks from C Battalion managed to drive along the Frezenberg–Zonnebeke road but it had been bombarded to the point where it was almost invisible. One tank had been knocked out and the others ditched. Six tanks of F Battalion had been able to suppress snipers and some machine-gunners but it had not been a successful operation for the Tank Corps.
  After the Germans recaptured Inverness Copse on 24 August, Gough cancelled the general attack due for 25 August. Haig transferred responsibility for the offensive to the Second Army, which would use all the resources that could be assembled to capture the Gheluvelt Plateau. The II Corps was to revert to the Second Army and the attack front was extended southwards to Klein Zillebeke. By the end of August, thirty German divisions had fought at Ypres, two of them twice and 23 had been exhausted and replaced; at full strength, German divisions had only 12,000 men, rather than the 20,000, in a British division. The British had used 21 divisions, two twice, of which 14 had been withdrawn. Including the four French divisions of the First Army, 26 Anglo-French divisions with an establishment of 520,000 men had engaged 37 German divisions with an establishment of 440,000 men. Nine of the German divisions had been transferred from Champagne and Alsace-Lorraine, which eased the pressure on the French armies.
  It was conventionally assumed that an attacker needed a 3:1 superiority to prevail but the Fifth Army had a superiority of only about 1.2:2; the British would have needed another 40 divisio
caption: Map showing the Anglo-French advance during the Third Battle of Ypres
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