G/6145. Private William George Ardouin

13th. (Service) Battalion, The Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex Regiment). Born June 1891 in Westminster, Middlesex. Enlisted in Mill Hill, Middlesex. Lived in Hornsey, Middlesex. Died of Wounds on Monday 4th. November 1918, aged 27, on the first day of The Second Battle of the Sambre,  just 1 week before The Armistice was signed. Buried in Preseau Communal Cemetery Extension, Nord, France, Row B, Grave 7.

THEIR NAME LIVETH

FOR EVERMORE

William was 1 of only 3 Servicemen with the surname “Ardouin” to Fall during The Great War. 9 of William’s Comrades from the Battalion also Fell on this day, including:

G/18602. Corporal Albert Harry Langley M.M.

The Second Battle of The Sambre

At the front, German resistance was falling away. Unprecedented numbers of prisoners were taken in the Battle of The Selle, and a new attack was quickly prepared. The French First Army and the British First, Third, and Fourth Armies were tasked with advancing from south of the Condé Canal along a 30 mile (48 km) front toward Maubeuge-Mons, threatening Namur. Together with the American forces breaking out of the forests of Argonne, this would, if successful, disrupt the German efforts to reform a shortened defensive line along the Meuse.

At dawn on 4 November, 17 British and 11 French divisions headed the attack. The Tank Corps, its resources badly stretched, could provide only 37 tanks for support.

The first barrier to the northern attack was the 60–70-foot (18–21 metre) - wide Sambre Canal and the flooded ground around it. It was there that the BEF had fought over four years earlier. The XIII and IX Corps reached the canal first. German guns quickly ranged the attackers, and bodies piled up before the temporary bridges were properly emplaced under heavy fire. The 1st and 32nd Divisions of IX Corps lost around 1,150 men in the crossing. 

It was during one of these violent confrontations, while crossing the Sambre Canal, that Wilfred Owen, probably the greatest poet of the Great War, was killed. He died near Ors on 4 November 1918 just one week before the signing of the Armistice and the final Allied victory. 

Even after the crossing, the German forces defended in depth amid the small villages and fields, and it was not until midday that a 2 mile deep (3 km) by 15 mile wide (24 km) breach was secured. Lieutenant Colonel D.G. Johnson was awarded the Victoria Cross for leading the 2nd Battalion Sussex Regiment's crossing of the canal.

Also on 4 November the town of Le Quesnoy was the scene of a very surprising, almost medieval action. Refusing to surrender, the German occupiers were finally taken prisoner by New Zealand soldiers who entered the town by scaling the ramparts with ladders . . .

Barry Jenkins