Less than ten hours after it began, the assault had ended in failure. Exposed on both flanks, cut off from reinforcements by German artillery fire and at risk of being trapped by Germans working their way to the Australians’ rear, the survivors made a break for their own lines. Within hours though, they faced annihilation. Without armoured support, the Australian infantry achieved what was until then considered an impossible feat breaking into the German trenches without a protective artillery barrage. Those that did either broke down or were destroyed, just one reached the enemy’s first trench. Again some of the tanks failed to arrive. The attack did go ahead the following morning, 11 April. One soldier said “going back through the snow was like telling the Germans what we were going to do tomorrow.” Dawn was breaking as they retreated under the eyes of the enemy. When the tanks failed to reach their start line on the morning of 10 April the attack was postponed, leaving the infantry lying in the snow covered no-man’s-land ready for the advance to hurry back to their own lines. Both formations were then to push through to the rear of the German defences. Two of the 4th Division’s brigades, the 4th and 12th, were to advance to the right of Bullecourt, turn left along the Hindenburg trench system and advance until they linked up with men of the British 62nd Division attacking from the other side of the town. Instead tanks, being used for the first time by the British 5th Army, including the 4th Australian Division, would lead the attack. In a hastily planned operation, and for the first time on the Western Front, the assault was to proceed without a supporting artillery bombardment. The attack on Bullecourt was scheduled for 10 April 1917. The strategy for the Arras offensive included British and Australian infantry breaching the Hindenburg Line to the east and west of Bullecourt and seizing the town. The German withdrawal disrupted Allied planning for a 1917 offensive, but in April the British began operations around the town of Arras in support of a French offensive in the Champagne region. In early 1917 the Germans carried out a withdrawal from the Somme, scene of a major Allied offensive the previous year, to a series of heavily fortified positions to the east, known by the Allies as the Hindenburg Line.
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