Allies launch dual offensive on Western Front

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On May 9, 1915, Anglo-French forces fighting in World War I launch their first combined attempt to break through the heavily fortified German trench lines on the Western Front in France.

At Vimy Ridge, a strategically important crest of land on the Aisne River, in northwestern France, French troops launched an attack on German positions after firing shrapnel shells for five hours on the morning of May 9, 1915. On the heels of the artillery barrage, the French soldiers left their trenches to advance across No Man’s Land, only to find that the bombardment had failed to break the first German wire. As they struggled to cut the wire themselves, German machine gunners opened fire. Eventually, the French were able to reach their objective, as the Germans withdrew to better lines, but they suffered heavy casualties: one regiment of the French Foreign Legion lost nearly 2,000 of its 3,000 soldiers, including its commanding officer, who was shot in the chest by a sniper, and all three battalion commanders.

That same day, British troops under the orders of Sir Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the 1st Army Corps, attacked German lines further north in the Artois region in an attempt to capture Aubers Ridge, where they had failed during the Battle of Neuve Chapelle two months earlier. The British artillery here also proved ineffective, with many of the shells fired proving defective and many others too light to cause serious damage. As a result, when the soldiers attacked, they were completely unable to break through the German defenses. An entry in the German regimental diary about that ill-fated advance recorded that There could never before in war have been a more perfect target than this solid wall of khaki men, British and Indian side by side. There was only one possible order to give — Fire until the barrels burst.