Somme

by Peter Hart

  The Somme

  Peter Hart

  PEGASUS BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  To my favourites:

  Polly, Lily and Ruby

  Contents

  Preface

  CHAPTER ONE: The Rocky Road

  CHAPTER TWO: Armies and Weapons

  CHAPTER THREE: Moving On Up

  CHAPTER FOUR: 1 July 1916

  CHAPTER FIVE: The Morning After

  CHAPTER SIX: Creeping Forward

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Stumbling to Disaster

  CHAPTER EIGHT: From Bad to Worse

  CHAPTER NINE: You are not Alone

  CHAPTER TEN: When Push Comes to Shove

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Hammering On

  CHAPTER TWELVE: October Attrition

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Last Shake on the Ancre

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Assessment

  Acknowledgements

  APPENDIX A: Life in the Trenches

  APPENDIX B: British Orders of Battle

  APPENDIX C: German Orders of Battle

  Notes to the Text

  Index

  List of Maps

  The Western Front 1915

  The Somme 1916

  Objectives on 1 July

  Gommecourt

  VIII Corps attack on Serre and Beaumont Hamel

  X Corps attack on Thiepval

  III Corps attack on La Boisselle and Ovillers

  XV Corps attack on the Fricourt Salient

  XIII Corps attack on Montauban

  The French sector

  Situation at night, l July

  Situation 3 July

  Situation 8 July

  Situation 14 July

  Longueval and Delville Wood

  Pozières

  Guillemont and Ginchy

  Plan for the Battle of Flers-Courcelette

  Battle of Flers-Courcelette

  Battle of Morval

  Battle for Thiepval

  Battle of the Transloy Ridges, 7–20 October

  Butte de Warlencourt, 5 November

  Battle of the Ancre, 13–19 November

  The End of the Battle

  Preface

  THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME will always be controversial. By the early 1960s a stark image was firmly established in the public consciousness of long lines of men marching bravely to their futile deaths, cut down in their thousands by massed German machine guns. The casualties were beyond comprehension with 57,470 British casualties on the first day alone. Of these a staggering 19,240 were killed.

  The unimaginative generalship of bewhiskered idiots safe in their chateau headquarters far behind the lines was roundly pilloried on all sides. This slaughter of the innocents was deftly portrayed by the theatrical production and film Oh! What a Lovely War. Slowly, however, another view began to emerge that took account of the problems faced by General Sir Douglas Haig and his subordinate commanders. This more sympathetic perspective recognised the sheer complexity of modern warfare. It saw that there was a grim necessity to wear down the might of the German Empire on the battlefields of the Western Front before there could be any hope of victory. It discussed the ‘learning curve’ that had to be surmounted before the new legions of the British Empire could gain the skills required of the new ‘all arms’ tactics that would finally defeat the German Army in 1918. The controversy rages on to this day: raw emotive sentiments and folk myths vying with the academic assessments of military historians such as the great John Terraine.

  There is no doubt that the Somme was a tragedy and the massed slaughter and endless suffering it epitomises cannot simply be brushed aside by the justification of cold-blooded military necessity. Although the British Army used the Battle of the Somme de facto as a primer to emerge as a stronger fighting machine, the ‘learning curve’ theory is not a mantra that can deflect all criticism. Yet, it is equally inane to adopt the morbid sentimentality of portraying the men who took part as helpless victims, mere stooges in a titanic battle that somehow engulfed them all unawares. On the contrary, many were actively looking forward to the moment when they could finally prove themselves as fully-fledged ‘warriors’. When engulfed in the fighting many confirmed themselves as brave men in the most dreadful and terrifying of circumstances. Others, unsurprisingly, faltered. But they were not sheep-like victims: such descriptions do a considerable disservice to the memory of a large number of heavily armed soldiers, confident in their abilities, who would have killed their enemies—if only they had had the chance.

  Neither was the First World War the result of the machinations of a few politicians and their ‘henchmen’ generals. We should never allow ordinary people to abrogate their role in the genesis of Armageddon, either then or now. War in 1914 was the near-inevitable result of the frequently expressed wishes and prevailing attitudes of the British population—it was hence a national responsibility. Popular jingoism was certainly stirred then as now, by cynical politicians and morally opaque newspaper proprietors; however, it had its wellspring deep within the dark corners of the popular consciousness. The political imperatives of defending the bloated empire, the endemic racism and all-embracing casual assumption of moral superiority of the age, the overwhelming reliance on blunt threats to achieve what might have been better achieved by subtle diplomacy—these were all part of the British heritage in 1914. All social classes in the Home Country benefited to some extent from the operation of the global British Empire. Amidst the ceaseless jockeying of the old European Continental and Imperial powers, additionally complicated by the remorseless rise of the militaristic new German Empire, conflict was inevitable and in truth no one did much to avoid a war that was easily portrayed as a crusade. War was a risk, casually accepted. When it arrived it was not as they had imagined, but by then it was too late. The remorseless rhythms of global war had already wrapped themselves around the British Empire.

  In battle, for the most part their leaders had plans that, although built at times on shaky foundations, were pretty sound in themselves. The generals were not stupid; they were no ‘donkeys’. Their military education had been accelerated beyond all pre-war comprehension, but they had for the most part struggled through, just as one would expect of men who stood near the peak of their chosen profession. Mistakes were frequent and there were undoubtedly some outright blunders. Yet several generals proved themselves to be rapid learners. New and old weapons were eventually slotted into their correct place in the great complex puzzle of war. Above all the primacy of the artillery was recognised. Throughout, although the exigencies of military necessity were their primary concern, the British Army commanders did stand accountable for the consequences of their decisions. The British generals held most responsible for the Battle of the Somme—Douglas Haig, Henry Rawlinson and Hubert Gough—knew full well that the men they sent into battle would pay the price for their actions and misjudgements. It was a grave responsibility that they did not shirk.

  Even blessed with hindsight, there are still real difficulties in making a final judgement on the overall conduct of the Somme campaign. All this book can do is to try to show what the generals were attempting and chart the effects of their decisions on the men who served them. In the end it is inevitable that the interpretation of such a complicated mélange of issues is a deeply personal matter; in essence the reader must make up their own mind as to what degree the Battle of the Somme was militarily justified.

  The general approach adopted in this book is to provide an outline of events within which I have layered personal accounts to help bring dry facts and complex concepts to life. The contemporary quality and vivid writing of the veterans, the raw emotions of participants in a calamity, these cannot be matched by the musings of inevitably distanced modern commentators. There is a vitality, a pathos, even a beauty in the unsullied words of th
ose who were actually present while history was being made around them, qualities that cannot be faked. I have been led by the power of these sources to concentrate where they most eloquently reveal a general truth. Anything else would lead to an uncomfortable amount of repetition without making the salient points any clearer.

  My main interest is in the insights into the human condition granted by studying the conduct of men of all ranks under conditions of incredible stress, fear and suffering. All of life is here amidst the reeking dead. The gallant young officer leading his men to death or glory: his reward in the main dull oblivion, but just occasionally, a Victoria Cross and a life marked out as a wondrous oddity. The stolid sergeant, solicitous of his men, critical of their manifold faults during the long months of training, yet willing, when needs must, to die to save them from the consequences of their foolish mistakes in action. The feckless private, drunk and brawling out of the line, good for nothing, the ‘scum of the earth’, yet transformed by the ‘grace’ of battle into a hero, battling forward when all but hope had gone, risking his life for reasons he surely could not comprehend. These clichés will be made flesh in this book. For such near-caricatures certainly did exist.

  However, the unpublished memoirs, personal letters, diaries and recorded interviews that I have used also reveal their complex motivations and it is the purpose of this book to interpret these. How could men voluntarily walk into the fire of the machine guns and the crunching maelstrom of massed shell fire? Was it duty or sheer grit and determination? Was it to prove something to themselves, that they too were men, as good as any around them? Was it a hatred of ‘Hunnish’ Germans, a desire for revenge for relatives and friends already lost in battle? Or was it a conviction that God was on their side, perhaps even that the day of Armageddon had truly dawned and that they must stand up to be counted in the final battle? And, after all, most of their best friends were going over the top with them. Was it the comradeship engendered by the ordinary experiences of their former lives—the classroom, the Sunday school, the factory floor, the office, the pit, the merry banter of the pub, the casual crudities of barrack-room life—that carried them forward almost despite themselves? Were others simply trapped when the whistles blew, too scared to escape from the mess in which they were embroiled, left with no alternative in those final grim moments before they went over the top?

  Peter Hart

  2005

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Rocky Road

  We do not live alone in Europe but with three other powers that hate and envy us.1

  Prince Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Imperial Germany

  THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME was the direct result of the British government abandoning their traditional maritime geo-political strategy. In previous European conflicts Britain had sought to stand back and minimise her involvement in Continental land campaigns. Wherever possible Britain would use her economic strength to inveigle her Allies into bearing the bulk of the fighting while addressing herself to the far more profitable agenda of preying on the overseas colonies of her enemies. Britain’s strength was based on the Royal Navy and the pre-eminence of her maritime empire. Unlike the Continental powers who were forced to raise huge armies able to compete with the equally powerful countries that surrounded them, the British Isles were just that—islands—unattainable unless her enemies could first comprehensively defeat the Royal Navy.

  British global strategy in the nineteenth century could be encapsulated within three simple rules of thumb. Firstly, the Royal Navy would be maintained in accordance with a ‘two power standard’—it must be equal, or better still, superior to the strength of the next two naval powers. Secondly, no one country should be allowed to secure domination of Europe—in particular the coastline of Belgium and the Netherlands should not be occupied or controlled by any of the Great Powers. In essence this was perceived as buffer territory, intended to prevent any army gaining a base from which an effective invasion of the British Isles could be mounted with minimal warning. Thirdly, the British Empire was to be defended, and where possible expanded, across the globe to provide the resources and markets that fuelled the economy. These ‘eternal and perpetual’ policies may have seemed defensive to the British, but they were highly aggressive to other Great Powers who found themselves constantly baulked by the British in attempting to chart their own course to a global empire.

  The overall dynamic of power in Europe was complicated following the rapid rise of the German Empire. Since the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 successive British governments had devoted much of their time to suspiciously monitoring and countering the real and imagined activities of France and Russia. France was an obvious cause of concern—she already had ports just across the Channel and had thus been the traditional enemy since time immemorial, and she was still considered a potent threat to British colonial ambitions in Africa and the Middle East. Russia meanwhile was seen as a looming menace to the jewel of the British Empire—India. Now, however, there was a new Continental power. Germany had not only the military might to threaten domination of the European mainland, but also the burgeoning industrial and manufacturing base to threaten British economic interests.

  Germany was determined to carve out a new colonial empire in China and Africa and equally determined to build a navy fit to challenge any fleet afloat. The successive German Naval Laws commencing in 1898 specifically set out the size of the fleet they wished to achieve and their promulgation struck directly at the heart of British concerns in a manner that they could not ignore. The massive German Army had already proved itself the dominant military force in Europe by defeating the Austrians in 1866 and the French in 1870. Ever since 1882, Germany had been at the heart of the powerful Triple Alliance alongside Austria–Hungary and Italy. Now the Germans appeared to want to supplement this with a significant element of naval power. If Germany was to achieve her aims then others must surrender power and as such her rise was a direct economic, colonial and naval challenge to the hegemony exerted by the British Empire. Inevitably Germany came to be perceived as the main threat and gradually her enemies came to be viewed as putative friends.

  Towards the end of the nineteenth century the French and the Russians had been driven to resolve their own multifarious differences by the threat posed by their common enemy in Imperial Germany. At first they merely pledged to assist each other in the event of a German attack, but slowly their affiliation deepened as the threat from the Triple Alliance was perceived to grow. Britain was soon determined to resolve her differences with France and Russia—differences that seemed to melt away with every battleship launched by the German shipyards. The relationship was formalised in the Entente Cordiale signed with France in 1904. Year by year increasing diplomatic tension and the precautionary countermeasures taken by both sides only served to create an overall mood of a Europe simmering in crisis.

  But what could Britain offer the Entente Cordiale? The first part was obvious—the power and global reach of the Royal Navy would deliver maritime superiority at a stroke. An arrangement with the French fleet left the bulk of the Royal Navy free to concentrate its power against the German fleet across the North Sea. What they could not offer was a powerful standing army. The British Army was established as a force to garrison the far-flung empire and as a mobile strike force to be swiftly deployed by sea to any developing point of conflict. It was certainly not an army capable of playing a significant part in a full-scale Continental war—it was simply too small. From the German standpoint the Entente Cordiale offered an encircling threat—with the Russians to the east, the French to the west and the British balefully eyeing them across the North Sea, they seemed to be surrounded by enemies. German diplomacy seemed unable to resolve the conundrum and various ham-fisted attempts to break up the Entente Cordiale merely had the effect of pushing their putative enemies still closer together. The expensive continuation and escalation of the naval race following the genesis of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 provoked a significant groundswell of an
ti-German feeling right across Britain.

  Slowly the British Army began to be drawn into the Continental equation. The hearts and minds of the Royal Navy were concentrated only on a great naval set-piece battle with the German High Seas Fleet and they inevitably spared little thought for the type of operations that had typified the British approach in previous wars. In the resulting vacuum it became accepted in joint army staff talks with the French that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)—small though it may be—might mark the difference in the coming battle between the mighty French and German armies and ought therefore to be deployed on the mainland. Thus it was over the next few years mobilisation plans were laid for the six divisions of the BEF under the Commander-in-Chief General Sir John French to cross the Channel and enter the main Continental war alongside the mighty sixty-two divisions of the French Army.

  War, when it came, was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in far away Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. In a sense war was inevitable: all the Great Powers harboured essentially selfish ambitions that could not all be achieved without thwarting the aims of other powers. No single power particularly sought war, but equally none did enough to avoid it as the crisis flared through the embassies of Europe during the next few weeks. Serbia was blamed for the assassination and threatened by Austria–Hungary: Germany supported Austria–Hungary, Russia supported Serbia; Germany threatened Russia: France supported Russia, and so the ultimatums and mobilisations began, until there was no longer any room for talking. When Austria–Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914, Britain simply could not stand by. The German invasion of Belgium on 3 August triggered all the traditional British foreign policy concerns and if Britain abandoned her commitments to her European Allies it would inevitably lead to her utter diplomatic isolation—she would be alone in a dangerous world. Britain really had no choice and finally declared war on 4 August. To a large extent the British still saw their role as naval and although the BEF would be sent to fight alongside the French, as far as the British government was concerned this was an afterthought.