by Peter Hart
The preliminary bombardment was designed to last for four days prior to the release of the gas and the infantry attack. This then was no hurricane bombardment and there was no element of surprise. Despite some prevaricating over the wind direction, the attack went ahead with a final artillery bombardment and the release of the gas clouds at 0530 to presage the infantry attack at 0610 on 25 September 1915. The results were patchy in the extreme, but even so in some sectors the speed of advance by the infantry across No Man’s Land occasionally allowed them to surprise the Germans before they could emerge from their deep dugouts. Yet the German second line was not taken and the British reserve formations from the IX Corps were delayed in coming forward through a frustrating confusion in command and control that was later blamed on Sir John French. As a result the German reinforcements arrived first and the offensive petered out in a welter of attacks that achieved nothing.
Even as new offensive tactics were being developed in the painful laboratory of the Western Front so defensive tactics were mutating to counter them. Barbed wire belts thickened exponentially, trenches became deeper and better sited to secure raking fields of fire, dugouts were deeper and substantially reinforced by the use of concrete, while villages and farms became fortresses, support lines were properly integrated to cover the front lines and the once sketchy reserve lines gradually became fully-fledged defensive systems in their own right.
The failure at Loos was unacceptable to the British government and people. This time a scapegoat was required. A confusion over the method and speed of deployment of the reserve troops was seized upon and, after considerable intrigue amongst the soldiers and politicians, on 19 December 1915 Field Marshal Sir John French was summarily dismissed. He was replaced as commander of the BEF by his erstwhile subordinate, General Sir Douglas Haig.
AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF of the BEF Douglas Haig was the dominating figure in the history of the British Army for the duration of the war on the Western Front. The responsibility on his shoulders was truly immense. It happened that Haig’s birth certificate accidentally omitted his Christian name and there was indeed a slightly chilly remoteness that clung to Haig throughout his life. Hard working, with a driving sense of duty, he was self-sufficient and seemed to live only for the army. Even his devoted wife was not privy to his inner depths: ‘All who knew Douglas will know of his extraordinary reserve (true to Scots type), and he had told me very little of what he had done before I married him.’4 Cool, calm and aloof, his chiselled jaw and flinty blue eyes seem to have expressed much of the essence of the man within.
Unfailingly polite and even-tempered, he possessed an equable temperament that did not betray any trace of panic or temper no matter how grim the state of affairs at the front. Indeed, his wisest recorded words in conversation were probably, ‘The situation is never so bad or so good as first reports indicate’.5 Mere expressions of opinion were irrelevant to him and he demanded reasoned arguments based on facts before making any decision. Increasingly religious as he grew older, Haig became possessed of a firm belief in his own destiny. He had a deep and abiding confidence in his own powers of judgement and would not revisit decisions already taken unless new evidence was brought before him.
His own usual chronic inarticulacy was both explained and excused by the staff officers who knew him best—it was his very speed of thought that thereby outran his tongue and caused him to disconcertingly break off sentences or omit the verbs normally considered essential to verbal communication. They pointed to the force and clarity of thought as demonstrated in his self-written work to indicate his true level of intellect. Nevertheless, he frequently lapsed into long periods of gruff silence that could be disconcerting to those who did not know him, although his faithful staff swore it did not reflect any underlying sourness of mood. One brief quote sums it up in a nutshell: ‘He was obviously in very good spirits, and kept silence merrily.’6
Haig’s capacity for sustained hard work was formidable. His General Headquarters were soon moved into a small château located just outside the town of Montreuil. There his office was dominated by a huge map of the Western Front and an empty desk that betrayed his indomitable work ethic. Haig believed in clearing each day’s work as it came. His personal routine was metronomic.
Punctually at 8.25 each morning Haig’s bedroom door opened and he walked downstairs. In the hall was a barometer, and he invariably stopped in front of the instrument to tap it, though he rarely took any particular note of the reading. He then went for a short four minutes’ walk in the garden. At 8.30 precisely he came into the mess for breakfast. If he had a guest present, he always insisted on serving the guest before he helped himself. He talked very little, and generally confined himself to asking his personal staff what their plans were for the day. At nine o’clock he went into his study and worked until eleven or half past. At half past eleven he saw army commanders, the heads of departments at General Headquarters, and others whom he might desire to see. At one o’clock he had lunch, which only lasted half an hour, and then he either motored or rode to the Headquarters of some army or corps or division. Generally when returning from these visits he would arrange for his horse to meet the car so that he could travel the last 3 or 4 miles on horseback. When not motoring he always rode in the afternoon, accompanied by an ADC and his escort of 17th Lancers, without which he never went out for a ride. Always on the return journey from his ride he would stop about 3 miles from home and hand his horse over to a groom and walk back to Headquarters. On arrival there he would go straight up to his room, have a bath, do his physical exercises and then change into slacks. From then until dinner-time at eight o’clock he would sit at his desk and work, but he was always available if any of his staff or guests wished to see him. He never objected to interruptions at this hour. At eight o’clock he dined. After dinner, which lasted about an hour, he returned to his room and worked until a quarter to eleven.7
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, BEF
And so to bed. This routine was only rarely broken. The visitors to Haig’s headquarters were courteously treated but some of them found his austere hospitality somewhat inhibiting. On one memorable visit the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was driven almost to distraction by his puritanical host.
D.H. has some excellent old brandy, which, however, he only sends round once at each meal; after that it stands in solitary grandeur in front of him on the table. The Prime Minister obviously appreciated it very much and wished for more, but did not feel that he could ask for another glass. His method of achieving his aim was to move his glass a little nearer the bottle and then try and catch D.H.’s eye and draw it down to his glass and then to the bottle. The glass advanced by stages as small as those of our attack, until, last of all, it was resting against the bottle; then, overcoming all his scruples, the Prime Minister, with a sweep of the arm, seized the bottle and poured himself out a glass. I was sitting opposite and the by-play was indescribably funny. D.H. did not notice it at all. When I told it to him afterwards his comment was, ‘If he has not enough determination to ask for a glass of brandy when he wants it he should not be Prime Minister.’8
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, BEF
The passage is almost too revealing for all concerned. Asquith’s anguish may have been real—he had already acquired the undesirable sobriquet of ‘Squiffy’ with all that this entailed; while Haig’s general lack of awareness or sensitivity is equally amusing. But then, as was so often the case with Haig, it is incontrovertible that he had drawn the right lesson from the incident—once it had been brought to his notice.
Much of what Brigadier John Charteris considered admirable about Haig could be and has been, frequently turned on its head by those inclined to be critical of his beloved chief. Thus his lack of any facility or sympathy for intuitive reasoning; his stubbornness once he had made up his mind; his anal retentive mindset and habits; his easily caricatured inarticulacy and occasional social ineptness�
�these have been commonly held perceptions of the great man. Yet as the responsibilities of his command are almost unimaginable perhaps we should not be surprised that Haig needed hard facts before making decisions that would commit his men to battle; that he would not arbitrarily chop and change his best laid plans; that he would work hard all day and every day in the cause of his country for which the men he commanded were risking their lives. As to his restricted, almost stunted lifestyle it is certainly not surprising that anybody under such incredible pressure should need the bolster and reassurance of a set routine, especially one brought up and thoroughly indoctrinated in the ways of the British Army.
Haig, together with General Sir William Robertson who had just been appointed as Chief of the Imperial General Staff back in London, were the foremost ‘Westerners’: men who made it their determined business to discourage or stamp out all schemes that they considered diluted the war effort in the only place where it really mattered—the Western Front. To them it was blindingly self-evident that Germany was the beating heart of the Central Powers; that without her Austria–Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey would soon collapse. Germany could not and would not be defeated until her main armies had been defeated in the field. That meant the Western Front. He succinctly summarised his policy in his diary.
The principles which we must apply are:
1. Employ sufficient force to wear down the enemy and cause him to use up his Reserves.
2. Then, and not till then, throw in a mass of troops (at some point where the enemy has shown himself to be weak) to break through and win victory.9
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, BEF
Clearly, given the strength of the German Army, this would be a painful, exhausting process, the casualties on all sides would be dreadful, but they would just have to grit their teeth and get on with it. For Haig and Robertson there was no easy option, no magical solution to the challenge. They may have been unimaginative, they were definitely ruthless when required, but above all they were hard, practical men and they were entirely right.
The ‘Easterners’, who were led in the first two years of the war by the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and subsequently by David Lloyd George, wished to avoid the full implications of engaging in a Continental war on the Western Front and therefore consistently sought another way. They were sentimentally attached to the traditional British strategy of using her omniscient naval power to strike at the periphery of her enemies, seeking to inflict maximum damage at the minimum cost and avoiding entanglement in the bloodbath of Continental warfare. They also held the fervent belief that Germany must have a soft underbelly—if only it could be located. The ‘Easterners’ looked to strike at Germany via the weaker Central Powers: through Turkey at Gallipoli, Palestine or Mesopotamia; through Bulgaria at Salonika; through Austria–Hungary from an attack launched by Italy.
Yet the military realities of the First World War meant that each of these ‘easy’ options offered only a mirage of painless success. Trenches could be quickly dug almost anywhere, barbed wire was cheap and a very substantial investment of British troops, guns and munitions would be required before there was any realistic chance of success in any of these theatres of war all of which, coincidentally, seemed to feature the worst extremes of terrain and climate. In seeking new avenues to victory, the ‘Easterners’ often made new enemies and gave them, too, an opportunity to fight the British and tweak the lion’s tail. And of course, as Haig was well aware, every British division so engaged correspondingly weakened Britain’s forces amassed on the Western Front in the decisive battle that would determine the outcome of the war. Fundamentally, the ‘Easterners’ were looking for a shortcut to victory; but shortcuts, as any Gallipoli veteran could have told them, can often lead to setbacks, unforeseen disaster and humiliating defeat. Yet almost every British politician seemed to be looking for an easy way out. Haig’s staff endured the visits of the great and the good to General Headquarters with an amused contempt.
Sooner or later they, one and all, bring the conversation round to the Eastern versus the Western Front problem. That is easy argument, but leaves an uneasy feeling that there is some very strong leaning at home towards easy victories in unimportant theatres, with small casualties and no real results. How on earth one can hope to beat Germany by killing Turks or Bulgars passes comprehension. It is like a prize-fighter leaving the ring to trounce his opponent’s seconds.10
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, BEF
Haig took over command of the BEF at a point when the British Army had achieved a considerably increased stature with some thirty-eight infantry divisions deployed on the Western Front by January 1916—a total of nearly a million men. The massive recruitment programmes of 1914 and 1915 had duly delivered their harvests of soldiers. The peoples of the empire had also put their shoulder to the wheel: Indians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and Canadians all flocked to the colours. Plans were afoot to send a further batch of New Army and Territorial divisions to the front before the summer of 1916. There was even the promise of the arrival of at least some of the nine assorted divisions that were kicking their heels in the Middle East after the final evacuation of Gallipoli in January 1916. At home the collective strength of the British engineering and manufacturing industries had been fully mobilised onto a war footing, and at last guns and munitions were beginning to pour forth in the unprecedented quantities required for trench warfare. It was two years late from a French perspective, but the British had finally managed to mobilise a force commensurate in size with the inherent potential of the massive British Empire.
Yet Haig was by no means the master of his own destiny. The Minister of War Lord Kitchener had specifically ordered him to cooperate with the French Army as a united army while at the same time maintaining his independence of command.
I am not under General Joffre’s orders, but that would make no difference, as my intention was to do my utmost to carry out General Joffre’s wishes on strategical matters, as if they were orders.11
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, BEF
This difficult balancing act was essential. The French Army was still clearly the dominant factor in the alliance—in the field the army numbered some ninety-five infantry divisions in early 1916. When the six Belgian divisions were added into the equation there were some 139 Allied divisions on the Western Front of which twenty-three were available for an offensive in that they were not required in a defensive capacity to hold the line. Much of the overall strategy for the Western Front in 1916 was therefore decided by the French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre.
Born in 1852, Joffre was the son of a cooper and he entered the army as a cadet in 1870. His leadership potential soon became apparent when he took command of an artillery battery during the Paris uprising the same year. After a career serving in the French colonies in Indo-China and later North Africa, he became Director of Engineers in 1904. In 1911 he was made Chief of the General Staff of the French Army and had a major part in the development of the disastrous plan for the frontier offensives on the outbreak of war in August 1914. However, to counter this he was feted as the man who had stopped the Germans on the Marne.
This then was the man with whom Haig must forge an effective working relationship from a position of de facto inferiority. Effective liaison was not easy, given the inevitable stresses and strains of war transmitted down fallible communication lines and interpreted by officers brought up in different social and military cultures. A degree of tolerance on both sides was absolutely essential. The situation was further complicated as Joffre had already agreed the basic programme for 1916 with Haig’s predecessor.
The general lines of the grand strategy for this oncoming year have already been settled between Joffre and Sir John French, a combined and practically simultaneous offensive on the Russian, Italian and this front. Kitchener is doubtful whether France will stand more than another year of war, and thi
nks unless we win this year, the war will end in stalemate, with another war in the near future, and therefore urges that we must force the issue this year. Much depends upon what reserve of fighting power the French still have. They have borne the brunt so far, but they cannot go on for ever. This next year the big effort must be ours.12
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, BEF
It is not surprising that the French, who had suffered so terribly in the first two years of the war, were insistent that the British should begin to finally pull their weight in 1916. At the conference held at Joffre’s General Headquarters at Chantilly on 6 December 1915 it had already been decided that the Allies should try to negate the Central Powers’ advantage of internal communications by launching a joint Anglo-French offensive on the Western Front in concert with simultaneous offensives from Russia and Italy. Haig was fully in agreement with this overall concept but as ever the devil was in the detail. Joffre had already decided that the main attack of the summer should be where the two armies adjoined by the River Somme in Picardy in the summer of 1916. While the French launched an attack south of the Somme the British would attack north of the river.
The French offensive would be greatly aided by a simultaneous offensive of the British forces between the Somme and Arras. Besides the interest which this last area presents on account of its close proximity to that where the effort of the French armies will be made, I think that it will be a considerable advantage to attack the enemy on a front where for long months the reciprocal activity of the troops opposed to each other has been less than elsewhere. The ground is, besides, in many places favourable to the development of a powerful offensive.13