by Peter Hart
Medical Officer Lieutenant Lawrence Gameson, 45th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, 15th Division
Of course, there were many men who could not be saved; their broken bodies afterwards awaited removal, acting as a haunting reminder of the medics’ impotence, when it came down to it, to save their mangled patients.
Two bodies in room, covered with blankets—head one end, feet the other. It’s the repetition which gets on one’s nerves. Stiff and still. They obtrude. Seem to fill the place. Can’t look away from them. Turned back the blankets and looked at their faces. Covered them up and went to doorway. But, God! The world seems stiff and still today and death is everywhere.20
Medical Officer Lieutenant Lawrence Gameson, 45th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, 15th Division
Helping them, on occasion, were the padres sent to comfort and pacify the dying with promises of eternal life. Sometimes the medics found the presence of these padres deeply depressing.
A certain unhumorous Presbyterian priest haunted our cellars in those days. Padres were always welcome, but this man was rather exceptional. In addition to the usual armaments of cigarettes and field service postcards, he carried a concertina. An eeriness clung to him. His favourite pitch was at the distant end of the cellar floor, beneath the vaulted roof. Here he squatted. A figure not easily forgotten: long lugubrious face peering above the wheezing bellows, swaying from side to side in the flickering candlelight, playing dour tunes to those on the stretchers around him. He was quite beyond my ken. He suggested impending doom. He gave me the creeps. Most of our patients were Scotsmen; beyond question they valued highly the ministrations of this terrifying priest.21
Medical Officer Lieutenant Lawrence Gameson, 45th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, 15th Division
Stressed by constant danger and the sheer ubiquity of the sordid physical and mental horrors that surrounded them, it is not surprising that the atmosphere was tense as the over-worked medical officers found themselves in extremis and locked underground with only each others’ company for weeks at a time.
My vividest memory is that of enforced and confined companionship with those who constantly jar and irritate; a torture less easily endured than some which touch the flesh only, as everyone knows who has had to put up with it. It was quite unimportant, but added to one’s unease. That unease, which just then was almost overwhelming, derived in part from the sense of separation from a normally ordered world. Being cut off from the land of dreams where I used to live in that other life on the other side of the war.22
Medical Officer Lieutenant Lawrence Gameson, 45th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, 15th Division
When the doctors had bandaged them up as best they could the seriously wounded would be sent back on the ambulances. These relatively unsprung ambulances jolted unmercifully down what remained of the endlessly shelled roads. This was an experience that many men never forgot as their broken bones grated against each other. After being severely wounded in his hip and left leg at Mametz Wood, Sergeant Tom Price faced such an ordeal.
We were put on a Ford ambulance van with rubber tyres, hard wheels. There were six of us, three on each side and I don’t know which of the six of us screamed the most on that journey down over the rutted, shell-holed roads.23
Sergeant Tom Price, 14th Battalion, Welch Regiment, 14th Brigade, 38th Division
When the wounded finally reached safety, well behind the lines, there was a new awakening. Many had almost given up hope of ever returning to a normal life and the presence of the women nurses seemed to epitomise the promise of a whole new life away from the horrors of the front line.
I looked up in a sort of half coma to see a Red Cross nurse looking down at me. I was never to forget this, because I have always thought of it as the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life. I never saw this girl again, and I only know her name to be Miss Jones. I have been asked what is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I have always given the same answer—a woman. I have seen the sunrise on the Jungfrau, sunset at Corbiere, the midnight sun in Northern Norway, evening light on the Taj Mahal, the Mediterranean blue, England and Paris in the Spring, the glory that was Greece. I can therefore claim to have seen a lot of wonderful sights, but I still give the same answer.24
Private Henry Russell, 1/5th Battalion (London Rifle Brigade), 69th Brigade, 56th Division
There were plenty of men, however, who came round only to find that new horrors surrounded them. When Private Norman Cliff awoke in a tented hospital his senses were almost overwhelmed.
I looked around and my nostrils were assailed by the sickening odour of suppurating wounds and soiled bandages. There were badly disfigured men, pale-faced lads from whom life was ebbing, heavily bandaged stumps indicating this or that limb missing. Saddest of all was a youngster who had been reduced to a trunk, minus arms and legs. How could it be possible that he was not only alive but that his spirit seemed undaunted? Glancing at the bandages swathing his stumps, he challenged his nurse in a strong Scottish accent, ‘How about three rounds with me tonight, Sister?’ Humour even in extremis. Mercifully, before day dawned the spark of life went out of him ... 25
Private Norman Cliff, 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, 3rd Brigade, Guards Division
Even when wounds responded to medical treatment the process of healing was often agonising. There was no penicillin and many of the methods of packing and draining pus from wounds seem almost primitive in their nature.
My wound is dressed twice a day and is more awful every time—a sign as I am assured, that it is healing up nicely. It has to be ‘packed’ at the lower entrance, which means that a few yards of bandage are poked up with a knitting needle, to keep it open and allow it to discharge. It consists of a little blue mark on the top of my shoulders where the bullet went in and a long deep slit a few inches down my back, where it came out.26
Sergeant Roland Mountfield, 10th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, 11th Brigade, 37th Division
The lightly wounded would be patched up ready to fight again, but the prospects for the seriously wounded were extremely bleak. There was no underpinning concept of the welfare state. People earned a living or existed in dire poverty. The war crippled, with their prosthetic legs, wheel chairs, missing arms, emasculated bodies and mutilated faces, were a nuisance to a society that believed in standing on your own two feet—if you had them.
One man’s story may stand for those ruined lives and the cruel impact of war that could reach down through the generations to torment its victims. Private George Dray was wounded with the 6th Northamptonshires during the battle to take Trônes Wood on 14 July 1916. After the war the multiple wounds suffered in his various battles took a terrible toll, as his son, John Dray, relates.
He was the deputy pier-master on Woolwich ferry. I was born in 1926 and in December 1928, two years old I was, he came home from work, just before Christmas and he said, ‘I’ve got a headache I think I’m going to bed’ It was December 23rd. My sister went up with a cup of tea for him and she came running down, ‘There’s something funny with daddy’s eye!’ The eye was bulging on one side. They ran him into hospital and this blood clot was pushing the eye from behind. They took the eye away and they thought that was the end—that he’d be ‘One-Eyed George’ for the rest of his life. But the blood clot had turned and was going back. The next day, 24 December, was my mother’s birthday. About eight at night she went up to the hospital. He was dozy, half unconscious. All of a sudden he came very clear, and he said, ‘Elsie, have you hung the children’s stockings up?’ She said, ‘Not yet!’ He said, ‘I would go home if I was you and do the stockings! I’ll see you tomorrow!’ Well she did, and before she got home he was dead—this blood clot had touched his brain and killed him. Christmas Eve, my mother’s birthday and she was six months pregnant with my last sister.27
John Dray
CHAPTER TEN
When Push Comes to Shove
THE ORIG
IN OF THE Battle of Flers-Courcelette, which commenced on 15 September, lay back in the middle of August when Haig sent a memo ordering Rawlinson to prepare plans for an all-out offensive with the aim of capturing the original German Third Line defensive system. Haig considered that the second half of September 1916 would mark the decisive phase of the ‘wearing out battle’ that the Fourth and Fifth Armies had been waging on the Somme. This was the time to amass all the British reserves and strike the tottering Germans.
The general plan of the attack projected for the middle of September will be to establish a defensive flank on the high ground south of the Ancre, norm of the Albert–Bapaume road, and to press the main attack south of the Albert–Bapaume road with the objective of securing the enemy’s last line of prepared defences between Morval and Le Sars, with a view to opening the way for the cavalry.1
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
The trials and tribulations of much of the fighting in August and early September had originated in the pressing need to attain a good start line—one that was not fatally undermined by the presence of German strong points, which could catch the advancing British troops in enfilade in the next attacks. All that agonising, long drawn out struggle had still left some key strong points in the German’s grasp—most evidently in the splintered remnants of High Wood. By the time the British were ready for the next stage the Germans had, of course, significantly strengthened their defensive positions. That the ‘last shall be first’ was now literally true, as the German Third Line, such as it was on 1 July, was now the German First Line.
Although the new obstacles did not have the deep sunk dugouts of the original defences, they were still a formidable obstacle to further progress. In addition, the development of German tactics to encompass placing machine gunners in neighbouring shell holes was particularly effective, and it should be remembered that in many sectors the forward German defences had been reduced to little more than a line of connected shell holes after the recent attentions of the British artillery. Unfortunately the ferocious fighting in August had demonstrated that every string of shell holes left by the crashing shells of the British high explosive barrage was a potential additional line of defence for the Germans. Artillery bombardments had to cover not just the main lines but also all the cratered area that surrounded them—this meant that ever more guns and shells were necessary to attain the same results.
Yet just as the British were encountering the renewed logistical problems that such a huge artillery effort thrust upon them, so there appeared a new weapon of war that offered a slim hope of shattering the deadlock on the Somme. The origins of the tank lie in a number of simultaneous brainwaves by an army desperate for some kind of armoured vehicle that could both burst through barbed wire to clear a way for the infantry and carry guns or machine guns across No Man’s Land.
After a fairly prolonged gestation the results were two variants of a tracked vehicle: the lozenge-shaped Mark I ‘tank’, as the new weapon of war was known—probably in recognition of its outward resemblance to a water tank. The ‘Male’ tank was armed with two 6-pounder guns held in protruding sponsons clamped on to either side, with an additional four machine guns for good measure; the ‘Female’ tank had six machine guns. These machine guns could enfilade German trenches to great effect, while the ‘Male’ tank’s guns could blast away fortified posts. Tracks on the tank enabled it to surmount difficult ground conditions, crush its way through barbed wire, cross trenches and generally surmount obstacles at an overall top speed of just under 4 miles per hour. Yet its abilities should not be over-exaggerated. The tank was armoured, but this was no defence at all against any shell fire, and small arms weapons could cause ‘splashes’ of white hot metal to whirr round inside the tank to painful effect. Wide trenches, deep craters and mud, and tree stumps all brought the tanks sooner or later to a halt. The crew of eight were also severely limited in what they could achieve by the dreadful working environment inside the tank. Visibility was extremely restricted through the narrow slits, which made it difficult to avoid dangerous obstacles or to seek out enemies. Although the tanks looked big the engine filled most of the available space and it made its presence felt in no uncertain terms: the noise was deafening, the heat utterly enervating and its noxious fumes quickly poisoned the atmosphere. After a few hours the crews were good for nothing. Unfortunately, the sheer mechanical unreliability of the tanks meant that this was usually of little importance as the tanks often broke down well before the crew’s health became a problem.
Haig was probably the most effective champion of the tank in the early days in that he not only quickly appreciated its potential but also, unlike so many of the vainglorious buffoons who subsequently made the Tank Corps their career, he had the power to get things done.
I saw Colonel Swinton with Generals Butler and Whigham (the Deputy CIGS) regarding the ‘Tanks’. I was told that 150 would be provided by 31 July. I said that was too late. Fifty were urgently required for 1 June. Swinton is to see what can be done, and will also practise and train ‘tanks’ and crews over obstacles and wire similar to the ground over which the attack will be made. I gave him a trench map as a guide and impressed on him the necessity for thinking over the system of leadership and control of a group of ‘tanks’ with a view to manoeuvring.2
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
Already Haig was thinking about how the tanks should be used in action and pondering on some of the command and control problems that would bedevil the tanks in action. It was also apparent that the question of integrating these tanks into the complex mix of artillery and infantry tactics would not be a simple matter. The Heavy Section, Machine Gun Corps were themselves short of training and most of the infantry had had little or no opportunity to train alongside them.
I was present at a demonstration in the use of ‘Tanks’. A battalion of infantry and five Tanks operated together. Three lines of trenches were assaulted. The Tanks crossed the several lines with the greatest ease, and one entered a wood, which represented a ‘strong point’ and easily walked over fair sized trees of six inches through! Altogether the demonstration was quite encouraging, but we require to clear our ideas as to the tactical handling of these machines.3
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
Some people have claimed that Haig should have withheld the use of this ‘super-weapon’ until there were sufficient numbers to end the war in a single mighty stroke. Such fantasies ignore the natural weft and weave of weapon development. The 1916 Mark I tank was by no means the fully fledged article of war: there were simply too few available, they were mechanically unreliable in the extreme, too slow and cumbersome and with limited powers of both offence and defence. Until weapons have been used in active service conditions it is almost impossible to judge their efficacy in action, to carry out the development work to eradicate technical problems, or to train the crews under the pressures of battle and generally to develop the tanks as effective weapons of war within the total effort. After all, the Battle of the Somme was no skirmish—it was the major Allied effort of 1916, and Britain was very much the junior partner in the coalition with France. As such it was a ‘kitchen sink’ battle—everything was thrown in that might add weight to the battering ram of British arms and thereby finally overthrow the brick wall of German resistance in September 1916.
There was much discussion as to their use—whether we should wait until we had built up a bigger form of them, and had the personnel more highly trained. The main argument in favour of their use was that the Germans did definitely know we had some new instrument, but had not yet found out what it was. If we waited, they would find out and might—we do not know—have found a suitable reply. Also we learn more by one day’s active work with them than from a year’s theorising. When we use them next time we shall have improved by this experience; it is still not too late t
o make an alteration in design if necessary. Above all, this is a vital battle and we should be in error to throw away anything that might increase our chance of success.4
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
THERE WERE MANY sources of raw data as to the state of German morale both at the front and back at home. One key indicator that all was not well was the recent change in the German High Command. Commanders are not usually replaced while their strategies are bearing fruit and the replacement on 29 August 1916 of the Chief of General Staff General Erich von Falkenhayn by General Paul von Hindenburg and his First Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff was a sign that the German plans for 1916 were in ruins. The Verdun offensive had rebounded against them, the Somme was one long nightmare for the German Army, the Russians were once again stirring on the Eastern Front and Romania had joined the Allies on 27 August. Translations of German newspapers exposed a great deal about the country’s internal tensions, while reports from neutral countries, captured orders and briefings revealed the German tactical plans and fears. Letters and diaries provided snapshots of morale and often details of scandals and food riots occurring in Germany that the newspapers did not always report. Even the German corpses revealed their units and helped the Allies draw up an accurate list of which divisions were in the line at any one time. Obviously prisoners were a fertile source of information: by their very age it was plain to see where the Germans had reached in their conscription of young men. Subsequent interrogations showed much about their personal morale and often revealed recent unit movements. There was thus much evidence to delineate the declining state of German morale, but at the same time there is no doubt that Brigadier Charteris had an optimistic approach to the interpretation of intelligence on the state of the German Army. He took all the reports of chaos in Germany, all the depressed letters and despondent prisoners and extrapolated from that the conviction that the Germans must be on the very point of collapse. This therefore was the advice he gave Haig.