Cyril Frisby and Thomas Jackson
On 27 September 1918, both these men of the 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards, led a lethal assault against enemy machine gun positions during the Battle of the Canal du Nord, earning the regiment two Victoria Crosses on the same day
These two members of the Coldstream Guards earned the VC on the same day
Following the German Spring Offensive in March 1918, the Allies launched a series of successful counterattacks from May to July 1918 that forced the Germans to fall back. These were followed by a series of Allied attacks, which have become known as the Hundred Days Offensive, beginning with the Battle of Amiens in early August. These campaigns drove the Germans out of France and contributed to bringing World War I to a successful close.
Success at Amiens was followed by attacks launched in the north at Albert, adhering to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s plans to avoid massive losses. The forces that were involved consisted mainly of men from Great Britain and the Commonwealth (especially Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Further successes at Mont Saint-quentin, Bapaume and the Second Battle of the Somme followed. These attacks met determined resistance but were eventually successful, with the Allies taking the Drocourt-quéant Line on 2 September.
This was ‘Wotanstellung’ to the Germans, the western edge of the formidable Hindenburg Line defences. On the night of 2 September, the Germans fell back to the Canal du Nord.
Further assaults across a wide front pushed the Germans back to the Hindenburg Line during September, at Havrincourt, Saintmihiel and Epehy, carried out by forces from nearly every Allied army. The Allied supreme commander Ferdinand Foch’s ‘Grand Offensive’ on the Hindenburg Line itself began on 26 September with units from the French and American Expeditionary Forces attacking in the Meuse-argonne, followed by Belgian, British and French troops attacking at Ypres in Flanders on 28 September.
The British Fourth Army (consisting of British, Australian and American troops) began its assault on 29 September at the Battle of Saintquentin Canal. The attack on the Canal du Nord was launched on 27 September by the British Third Army (consisting of troops from Britain, Canada and New Zealand), deliberately planned to occur one day after the Meuse-argonne Offensive and a day before the Flanders campaign so that Allied forces would not be met with huge numbers of German reserves, which could have been brought to bear against a single Allied attack.
The Canal du Nord was an incomplete canal system that stretched from the Oise River to the Dunkirk-scheldt Canal. Its construction had begun in 1913, but the sections of the canal were in various states of completion when war broke out in 1914. This meant that in some sections the ground was difficult and boggy, while in others the incomplete canal workings created almost perfect fortifications for the defending German forces. The retreating Germans also exacerbated the challenging terrain by flooding and damming various sections, to hold up an Allied advance or force
“THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE DAY UNTIL HE WAS KILLED THIS YOUNG N.C.O. SHOWED THE GREATEST VALOUR AND DEVOTION TO DUTY AND SET AN INSPIRING EXAMPLE TO ALL” – London Gazette, 26 November 1918
them into the fields of fire of the copious machine gun and field artillery positions they had set up to defend the line of the canal.
The Canal du Nord faced both the British
Third and First Armies. The Third Army was also expected to provide support for the British Fourth Army in the assault that would launch on 29 September. Speed in achieving the aims of the assault was essential, but several of the other offensives became bogged down after initial success (in the Meuse-argonne and Flanders campaigns). Breaching the Canal du Nord would leave the path open to Cambrai. The First Army was tasked with crossing and penetrating the Canal du Nord northwest of Cambrai, while the Third Army would need to take the canal as far as the Scheldt Canal (and so be in a position to support the Fourth Army assault on Saint-quentin on the 29th). Although it was mainly an infantry action because of the terrain, some tanks were also incorporated.
The 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards was part of the Third Army and was posted on the extreme left of the army’s line. In keeping with the regimental motto, ‘Nulli Secundus’ (‘Second to None’), they were placed on the extreme left of the line so that they would literally be second to none. The 1st Battalion was tasked with securing a crossing of the Canal du Nord on the Demicourt-graincourt road, almost directly west of Cambrai. The attack was launched at 5.20am on 27 September in total darkness. Immediately to the Guards’ north, the Canadian Corps (part of First Army) was tasked with capturing the important high ground in Bourlon Wood.
Cyril Hubert Frisby was acting captain of a company of the Coldstream Guards during the assault on the canal. He had enlisted as a private in the Hampshire Regiment in 1916 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards in March 1917. The Guards had suffered high casualties among its officers, so Second Lieutenant Frisby was put in command of a company as acting captain.
Born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, he was eligible to join the Guards because Barnet had been a stop on George Monck’s 685-kilometre march from Coldstream to London in 1659/60, and the counties through which Monck had marched remained the recruitment corridor for the regiment. This was unusual for the British Army, since most regiments were open to anyone from the four home nations.
Frisby witnessed the leading platoon “come under annihilating machine-gun fire” from a strong machine gun nest situated under an iron bridge on the far side of the canal. The platoon was unable to advance even when waves of reinforcements arrived. Captain
Frisby realised immediately that unless the machine gun nest was taken, the entire advance would fail. If the advance failed there, then the contemporaneous assaults on the canal to the north and south would also be jeopardised. Frisby knew what needed to be done and called for volunteers to follow him across the canal.
The first man to volunteer was Lance
Corporal Thomas Norman Jackson. Hailing from Swinton, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, Jackson was 17 when war broke out in 1914. He volunteered in the 1st Battalion of the
Coldstream Guards in September 1916, his home also sitting in the traditional recruitment corridor of the regiment.
Two other men also volunteered to accompany Captain Frisby, and together the four men dashed to the canal edge and climbed down over the barbed wire into the dry canal bed, under “intense point-blank machine gun fire” from the nest. They ran forward and succeeded in capturing the machine gun post, taking two guns and 12 prisoners. In capturing the machine gun post the four men engaged in desperate handto-hand fighting. Frisby was wounded in the leg by a bayonet thrust but remained at his post to command further actions during the day.
For both Frisby and Jackson, this action was the mainstay of their recommendation for the Victoria Cross. Both men’s citations, however, highlighted their further actions later the same morning. The actions of Frisby, Jackson and their colleagues enabled the advance of the Coldstream Guards companies to continue. Frisby then supported the neighbouring Coldstream Guards company to his right, which had lost all of its officers and sergeants. He organised its defences, and with them held off a fierce German counterattack.
Lance Corporal Jackson went forward from the captured machine gun post to other tasks. Later that day his company was ordered to clear an enemy trench. Jackson was the first man into the position, encouraging his comrades and shouting, “Come on boys!” as he led the charge. He entered the trench and killed the first two Germans he encountered but was then shot in the head, killing him instantly. The citations for both men praised the exemplary nature of their conduct for others to emulate – Frisby being described as a “splendid example to all the ranks” and Jackson’s devotion to duty “an inspiring example to all”.
North of the Guards, the Canadian Corps had constructed wooden bridges to cross the canal because it was flooded in their sector.
The Bourlon Woods and its high ground was captured, and by the end of 27 September, all objectives were reached.
Lance Corporal Jackson was buried with full honours in Sanders Keep Military Cemetery, Graincourt-les-havrincourt. His fiancée and sister were presented with his Victoria Cross on 29 March 1919 by King George V at Buckingham Palace. Captain Frisby received his Victoria
Cross at the same investiture ceremony. In addition to the two Victoria Crosses for Frisby and Jackson of the Coldstream Guards, another ten Victoria Crosses were awarded to participants in the Battle of the Canal du Nord – men among the Canadians and the other regiments south of the Coldstream Guards
(the Grenadier Guards and other regiments) at Flesquieres. They were mostly awarded for conduct in crossing the canal at various points in the face of extreme enemy machine gun fire.
The Allied victory at the Canal du Nord was hard won and costly. Although the Germans were on the defensive and had suffered reverses in the months leading up to the battle, they put up a fierce resistance and mounted several determined counterattacks during the battle.
The success of the battle opened up the route to Cambrai and the decisive Allied Victory at the Battle of Cambrai in October 1918, notable for the relatively low number of Allied casualties.
Before the war, Thomas Jackson had been employed at the Mexborough Locomotive Depot. For reasons unknown, Lance Corporal Jackson’s name was not added to the Great Central
Railway Memorial, built in 1922. This error was corrected in 2016 when his name was finally added to the memorial.
Frisby returned to the London Stock Exchange after the war, where he had been a jobber (or dealer) since 1911. His brother Lionel joined him there. Lionel had been awarded a DSO with the 6th Battalion Welsh Regiment at Maissemy and Pontru in September 1918. The two were ironically (if unkindly) known at the stock exchange as ‘the cowards’. Thereafter Cyril
Frisby achieved fame as a sports fisherman, especially in regard to tuna. He died in 1961.
A single file of infantry advances during the Battle of the Canal du Nord
“BY HIS PERSONAL VALOUR AND INITIATIVE HE RESTORED THE SITUATION AND ENABLED THE ATTACKING COMPANIES TO CONTINUE TO ADVANCE” – London Gazette, 26 November 1918