by Peter Hart
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
Haig was more than ever convinced that the Germans stood on the brink of collapse and he was not prepared to give them any chance to recover. Any break would allow them to restore their equilibrium and all the sacrifices of the previous months would be undermined.
We had already broken through all the enemy’s prepared lines and now only extemporised defences stood between us and the Bapaume ridge: moreover the enemy had suffered much in men, in material, and in morale. If we rested even for a month, the enemy would be able to strengthen his defences, to recover his equilibrium, to make good deficiencies, and, worse still, would regain the initiative! The longer we rested, the more difficult would our problem again become, so in my opinion we must continue to press the enemy to the utmost of our power.2
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
It was an increasingly technical business as his intelligence staff attempted to work out the state of the available German reserves. Bluntly put, this was the cold-blooded business of monitoring the wholesale slaughter of the youth of Germany.
We have now got a very full and thorough examination of the Soldbücher, both of prisoners and of dead, with a view to identifying their classes. In most cases where we have found a man of the 1917 class he has turned out to be a volunteer. Still, if the 1917 class is now beginning to appear, and if the weather holds we shall have worked through them pretty quickly, though I do not think we shall get the 1918 class in the front line before December at the earliest, and probably not before the end of the year.3
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
War between industrial nation states was a ruthless business that was emphatically unsuitable for the faint-hearted. And certainly, whatever Haig’s faults, he was not faint-hearted. Yet the evidence was seen through the prism of what might be about to go wrong for Germany, rather than how the Germans might yet endure despite all the privations. It was the age old question of whether the German glass was half empty or half full.
There is no doubt that the German is a changed man now when opposed to British infantry. His tail is down, he surrenders freely, and on several occasions has thrown down his rifle and run away. Altogether there is hope that a really bad rot may set in any day. Do not think that this means I am very sanguine. Nobody can be who sees the ground over which the men are fighting here. Still there is a possibility.4
Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
There was indeed that possibility. But although the morale of some of the German soldiers undoubtedly was at a low ebb, the mood of the majority or the way that they would fight could not be effectively judged by those that were captured. Miserable letters home did not mean that the men would not fight when they had to—otherwise half the British Army would have been good for nothing. Indeed, if Charteris had applied the same criteria to the British he may well have come to the same conclusions: the British soldier was hardly averse to moaning immediately after becoming a prisoner of war. The British Army was getting through its manpower at a fast rate and there were food shortages, strikes and unrest back at home. However, the British proved to have plenty of ‘go’ left in them. Likewise, the Germans were suffering but they would endure. Perhaps the men who fought to the last in the labyrinthine trenches of the Schwaben Redoubt served as a better indication of how the German soldier would respond when put under pressure.
Yet, if the British did not persevere, they would never know what might have been achieved. This was both the temptation and the trap. If they suspended the battle for winter then the Germans would have in effect five months to bind their wounds, reorganise and dig new defence lines to thwart the British advance. In 1914 Haig had seen the Germans stop attacking just as they were about to break through to victory during the First Battle of Ypres and he had sworn never to make the same mistake. He would keep on going forward and trust that the German collapse was imminent.
By this time ‘the plan’ was fairly simple—to keep attacking and load all possible pressure on to the ‘staggering’ Germans—culminating in another concerted attack all along the Somme front on 12 October. The Fourth Army would continue the attack ranging along the Le Transloy Ridge, the Reserve Army would thrust forward again on Pozières Ridge, and the Third Army would re-enter the fray with another push to pinch out the Gommecourt Salient.
In the meantime, the Fourth Army continued to occupy centre stage as it changed the axis of its attack to move on a more northerly or northeasterly orientation. On 1 October it pushed forward again, attacking the villages of Eaucourt l’Abbaye and Le Sars in an attempt to finally eradicate a salient that bulged into the British lines. The contact patrols of the Royal Flying Corps had a perfect view of the attack and were given a textbook example of the key role of the creeping barrage and why the troops must stick as close to it as was humanly possible.
At 3.15 p.m. the steady bombardment changed into a most magnificent barrage. The timing of this was extremely good. Guns opened simultaneously and the effect was that of many machine guns opening fire on the same order. As seen from the air the barrage appeared to be a most perfect wall of fire in which it was inconceivable that anything could live. The first troops to extend from the forming up places appeared to be the 50th Division who were seen to spread out from the sap heads and forming up trenches and advance close up under the barrage, apparently some 50 yards away from it. They appeared to capture their objective very rapidly and with practically no losses while crossing the open. The 23rd Division I did not see so much of owing to their being at the moment of Zero at the tail end of the machine. The 47th Division took more looking for than the 50th, and it was my impression at the time that they were having some difficulty in getting into formation for attack from their forming up places, with the result that they appeared to be very late and to be some distance behind the barrage when it lifted off the German front line at Eaucourt l’Abbaye, and immediately to the west of it. It was plain that here there was a good chance of failure and this actually came about, for the men had hardly advanced a couple of hundred yards apparently, when they were seen to fall and take cover among shell holes, being presumably held up by machine-gun and rifle fire. It was not possible to verify this owing to the extraordinary noise of the bursting shells of our barrage. The tanks were obviously too far behind, owing to lack of covered approaches, to be able to take part in the original attack, but they were soon seen advancing on either side of the Eaucourt l’Abbaye-Flers line, continuously in action and doing splendid work. They did not seem to be a target of much enemy shell fire. The enemy barrage appeared to open late, quite five minutes after the commencement of our own barrage, and when it came it bore no resemblance to the wall of fire which we were putting up. I should have described it as a heavy shelling of an area some 300–400 yards in depth from our original jumping off places. Some large shells were falling in Destrémont Farm but these again were too late to catch the first line of attack, although they must have caused some losses to the supports. Thirty minutes after Zero the first English patrols were seen entering Le Sars. They appeared to be meeting with little or no opposition, and at this time no German shells were falling in the village. Our own shells were falling in the northern half.
To sum up: the most startling feature of the operations as viewed from the air was:
1) The extraordinary volume of fire of our barrage and the straight line kept by it.
2) The apparent ease with which the attack succeeded where troops were enabled to go forward close under it.
3) The promiscuous character and comparative lack of volume of enemy’s counter-barrage.5
Major John Chamier, 34 Squadron, RFC
Over the next couple of days Eaucourt l’Abbaye was captured, but the onset of blanket rain delayed the next step forward and Le Sars did not act
ually fall until 7 October.
The artillery still took pride of place at the centre of everything the British planned, and not for nothing was its proud motto ‘Ubique’. Yet the gunners were suffering from an accumulation of problems by this stage of the campaign. The men that served the guns were suffering from the relentless nature of the long drawn-out battle. The artillery did not come in and out of the battle like the infantry; gunners tended to stay in position fighting day in and day out. Ground down, the officers and men began to suffer from the effects of physical and mental exhaustion. The sheer physical hard labour of serving the guns cannot be underestimated, but it was compounded by the German counter-battery fire, which placed a terrible mental strain on the men. Thus Lieutenant William Bloor and his long-suffering battery came under fire from some German heavy 8-in guns. It was the seemingly random nature of the shells that unnerved them. Of course, they had been aimed with all the care and skill that the science of gunnery allowed but the results seemed to be totally random.
As we were not shooting at the time, the Major and I, as well as every man on the position cleared out to a flank and lay there until the ‘bumping’ ceased at about one o’clock. It was lucky we did as about twenty or more fell right on top of us, scattering things every way. Thanks to our uncanny luck, we escaped with only one casualty; although I thought the Major had gone—one bursting at his very feet and burying him. One 4.5-in howitzer was lifted and thrown 30 yards, falling muzzle downwards on the roof of an officer’s dugout. It sank in the floor up to the wheels, and the trail and spade stuck through the roof. The officer who was in the place got a slight bruise only! What might be called a 500 million to one chance!6
Lieutenant William Bloor, C Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
Such incidents happened day in and day out for months on end. Gradually, the near escapes scratched away at the brittle veneer of courage with which the men protected their inner feelings. But the guns were needed by the infantry, so the men could not rest.
When the massed batteries of the British field artillery were moved forward into their new gun positions following the advances, they found that the configuration of the ground meant that there was very little space in which to pack all the hundreds of guns.
There is a very great difficulty here which is causing our staff a good deal of anxiety, and that is that all the batteries have to be crowded into this one little valley as it is absolutely the only spot that is not under direct enemy observation. If we advance over the crest there is a gradual forward slope right up to Bapaume. It is entirely destitute of any form of cover and is in full view from three sides, and any battery on it would be blown sky high at once. There is a tiny dip (a sort of sunken road) just south of Gueudecourt, which 148th Brigade are going into; I don’t envy them the position a wee bit. The whole brigade is jammed in axle to axle, covering a front of about 110 yards, whereas one battery alone is supposed to have a frontage of 100 yards. In this small spot the New Zealand Division, the 5th, 12th, 21st, 41st, Guards Divisional Artillery and ourselves (30th) are all crammed together. Every bit of ground is taken up, and it is only with the greatest difficulty we could find any spots unoccupied in which to dig holes for ourselves. There are three infantry brigade headquarters, several signal stations and a Royal Flying Corps wireless in a little gully just on our left, and their orderlies etc., have burrowed all over the place like rabbits. Everyone spent the day digging hard, endeavouring to get a little shelter. Gurrie and I kept ourselves warm by digging a hole six feet long, five feet wide and three feet deep, and roofed with ground sheets, praying devoutly that it would be rainproof. It wasn’t, however; but that is a trifle in our present state. The sides of the ‘mess’ fell in at lunch time, the rain having loosened the clay and half buried me. The Major and I got ourselves warm in the afternoon by digging it out. There are three lines of guns and howitzers here, about 20 yards or so apart, and the risk of prematures is fearful, but no one seems to think anything about it at all. One shaves and washes and stands about generally with two rows of muzzles spitting it out behind you for all they are worth.7
Lieutenant William Bloor, C Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
Another officer of the same brigade found himself forced forward into an extremely exposed and muddy position actually under the nose of the Germans on the forward slope. The position seemed suicidal yet there were benefits.
Everywhere round the guns and ammunition dumps is knee deep, while the banks of the road are so soft that it is very difficult to make anything except scoops for cover, and they also become rapidly filled with mud. But to this there is one great sell off—that here we appear to be quite immune to shell fire. We are on a forward slope, in full view of Hunland on the ridge round Bapaume, and I am sure that no Hun has yet suspected that anyone can be mad enough to have put a battery in such a place. Consequently the whole of the heavy shelling goes over our heads into the crowded Delville Valley.8
Major Neil Fraser-Tytler, D Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
Lieutenant Bloor could certainly testify to the amount of German shell fire that they were forced to endure in their supposedly superior gun positions just behind the cover of the low ridge. The Germans also had the remnants of the roads covered.
What was the road from Longueval to Flers runs just on our left, and this the Boche has registered to an inch, and all day and all night he bumps it with HE and shrapnel. It is always packed with traffic, and he can’t shoot at it without hitting somebody. It is only 50 yards from us, and we have seen some terrible sights. Today he hit a six-horse team in a GS wagon; two minutes later he dropped a 5.9-in on a water cart, and just after that another fell in the middle of a platoon of ANZACs, coming out of action, killing and wounding about twenty. The road is thick with dead horses and derelict vehicles and is a perfect death-trap. I wouldn’t volunteer to go down it unnecessarily for £50!9
Lieutenant William Bloor, C Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
And this, as they say, was when £50 was £50!
The guns were also wearing out through continuous firing. The barrels needed replacement once a certain number of shells had been fired as the rifling was worn down. Such limits were massively exceeded and as the barrels wore out the shells rattled their way up the barrel to emerge ‘wobbling’ in their flight rather than spinning, thereby losing all accuracy and often dropping short with painful consequences for their own infantry. The whole of the gun mechanism needed a through overhaul and a period of tender loving care from its artificers. In the absence of such basic maintenance misfires and devastating premature shell bursts became much more common. This did nothing to improve the gunners’ morale.
This afternoon, one of Major Kirkland’s howitzers, about 50 yards from us, burst on discharge. Horrible groans and screams broke out on all sides, and it fairly chilled the blood to hear them. I have never seen anything so horrible done by a hostile shell. We had one man hit in the stomach, but thirty at least were laid out by it. One man near me had his knee blown off, and another I saw lost an arm.10
Lieutenant William Bloor, C Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
A further problem for the Royal Artillery was securing accurate aerial observation. The Royal Flying Corps was increasingly handicapped by the rain and overcast conditions and could do little to correct the accuracy of the guns. Yet the weather was not the only problem facing the RFC; the German Air Force was definitely emerging from its long quiescence. Aircraft had been diverted from Verdun and the new Albatros scouts were making their debut.
About 4.30 p.m. five Boche planes come sailing over our heads and flying (for them) quite low. This was colossal cheek as our air supremacy here is absolute, and the Hun never seems to challenge the fact, which is rather surprising. Our Archies’ get on to them, and in less than a minute one of them was hit and a flame burst out of it, and
turning round and round it crashed to the ground about 200 yards away from us. The others cleared off with great celerity, and everyone started cheering. This was one of those little passing tragedies, which was gleefully described in a hundred dugouts over tea.11
Lieutenant William Bloor, C Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
Such triumphs could not disguise the increasing confidence of the German pilots. The Albatros DI was a truly awesome weapon of war with the power to cut a swathe through anything the British could put up against it. It was faster, more powerful and far better armed than any British aircraft. Its twin Spandau machine guns firing through the propeller could fire some 1,600 rounds a minute in sharp comparison to the pathetic 47-round drum fired by the Lewis gun with which most of the British scouts were equipped. It was an unequal battle in the skies but at least the RFC still had the advantage in numbers. Like the artillery they guided, the pilots knew their prime duty was to serve the infantry. The BE2c carried on its photographic and artillery reconnaissance duties, accepting casualties, while the increasingly obsolescent DH2 scouts tried their best to keep back the Albatros.