by Peter Hart
Captain William Bloor, C Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
As the Royal Flying Corps slowly lost their iron grip over the battlefield, so the German army cooperation aircraft began to emerge, flying above or even across the British front line. With them came the onset of much more accurate counter-battery fire.
Enemy aeroplanes were very active and flew over our batteries at a great altitude. Very soon an intense bombardment with 5.9-ins and 8-ins was started on the Delville Valley, no doubt directed by their planes. We escaped loss, but my old battery (C/149th) had a direct hit on ‘E’ gun, killing the detachment, B/149th lost two guns and several men, A/149th had a direct 8-in hit on a gun, and D/149th (the howitzer) battery had a gun blown up and several dugouts also. A terrible day for my poor brigade.38
Captain William Bloor, B Battery, 150th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
In this benighted place no one was safe. Many of the generals were exposed to severe danger as they toured their front-line areas.
On the 16th, Colonel Bartholemew, Prideau and I went for a tour at an hour at which we hoped the enemy would not be too frightful. We entered Lesboeufs just as dawn was breaking and I made straight for the large pile of masonry, which had been the church. Lesboeufs, by daylight, was quite impossible at that time owing to the shelling and we had no troops in it. We scrambled to the top of the masonry and had a look over the depression a few hundred yards in front, in which lay the much fought for gunpits. We couldn’t even then get a clear view. A lot of mist hung about the ground and the shrapnel, which kept rattling in the masonry, made even Prideau express his joy when we decided to get away. We went out at the north end of Lesboeufs and found a vantage point in the next brigade area, from which we got a splendid view. The enemy’s observers saw us however and belted us with 5.9s, several being too close to be at all pleasant. We wound up the morning by being shot at by a sniper, who made extremely good practice at some 1,200 yards as we were going home. It was rather a lively morning and very tiring, 10 or 12 miles over mud shell holes, varied by running short stretches doubled up is no light amusement.39
Brigadier General Hubert Rees, Headquarters, 11th Brigade, 4th Division
Even back at headquarters Rees was vulnerable to the attentions of the Germans.
The enemy had marked down my headquarters and had registered it. Shortly after the action began, they started shelling it with disconcerting accuracy with salvos of 5.9-ins which burst close enough to blow all our candles out. A little later, there was a cry of ‘Gas!’ and we had to don our gas masks. Our value as a directing centre of operations was practically nil. Luckily the gas was only lachrymatory and we all wept copiously. At 10 a.m., I came to the conclusion that it was useless to stay there, so went back to Guillemont about three miles behind.40
Brigadier General Hubert Rees, Headquarters, 11th Brigade, 4th Division
The Royal Artillery commander of the 9th Division also found that his guns were all too willing to accidentally pay him their ‘respects’ by dropping a ‘short’ close by him while he was in the front line.
I went down with Thorpe to the front trench to check our barrage which looked very effective. There was a lot of mutual shelling. An 18-pounder HE shell landed short where a communication trench joined the front trench—just where we were standing while I was talking to Moorhead, a company commander of the South African Brigade. The shell hit the corner of the rear parapet and as the earth was very sodden from the recent wet weather, it collapsed on us and buried us both up to our chins. The heavy, wet, sandy soil was deep over us and we could not move a limb. A party began at once to dig us out, and in the process I know I hoped the 18-pounder battery had discovered the mistake—a repeat would have been most unfortunate for the men digging and for Moorhead and me. It was a brave action by the men digging. I got home in the dark unhurt; my nose is scratched, probably by a splinter.41
Brigadier General Hugh Tudor, Commander Royal Artillery, 9th Division
This incident had been watched with considerable ironic amusement by one of the infantry officers, who had been trying to persuade the gunners that their shells often fell short of their targets. It is noticeable that the two accounts still do not agree as to which British battery was responsible!
Our CRA was nearly killed here by one of our shells. We had repeatedly complained of short shooting on the part of the 4.5-in howitzers—nothing very original in that! It was difficult to bring it home to any particular battery, because every group always assured us that they were not firing at the time we complained of. Tudor was up as usual one day when our howitzers were indulging in their nasty little habits. Making us clear the trench he went forward into a sap; the next shells buried him. He was then perfectly satisfied that our howitzers were shooting short!42
Lieutenant Colonel W. D. Croft, 11th Royal Scots, 27th Brigade, 9th Division
It was all too apparent that generals also risked their lives on a daily basis on the Somme battlefields.
THE BRITISH FOURTH Army generals considered their tactical approach at length at a Fourth Army conference on 13 October. The meeting examined the reasons for recent failures and found a disconcertingly large number of cogent explanations. These included a total lack of surprise, not helped by using the same start times for successive attacks, a tactically difficult start line for the assaulting troops, the short and inadequate preliminary bombardment, and the increasing use of deep-lying German machine guns. The solutions proposed were largely wishful thinking: a heavier and longer bombardment, the usual dreaded preliminary minor actions to improve the tactical position of the start line, a deeper creeping bombardment to take out the machine guns, the greater use of smoke-screen barrages to cover the attack and better communications all round. These things were far easier to conceive than to achieve in the Somme wastelands when faced by a resurgent German Army.
The next important attack was launched at 0340 on 18 October. It, too, was a total disaster. The fate of one battalion can well serve to illustrate the nature of the fighting that day. The 9th Norfolks made some slight progress in taking Mild Trench in front of Le Transloy, but at what cost and to what point was dubious indeed.
I clambered over the top and walked slowly forward till I fell in a shell hole. I crawled out of the shell hole, then walked blindly forward again until I came to the Boche trench, shattered and with many dead. There was one live German in that trench, a few yards from me, with a bomb in his hand; but when our boys came over the parados and leaped into the trench, up went his hands and he shouted, ‘Kamarad! Kamarad!’ I felt exceedingly tired and would have liked to have slept, but we’d got that trench and I wasn’t keen on losing it. The Boches were coming down the communication trench towards us, but my little party of bombers—only seven strong—bombed them back, three being killed in doing it. That left me with one lance corporal and seven men to hold the trench. Picking up captured German rifles (our own being caked with mud and it raining in torrents) we sniped over the parapet. I called for a volunteer to take a message back to headquarters for reinforcements. Within five minutes one was on his way. I saw an officer and four men crawling towards the under heavy fire; two of the party were killed, but the officer, Lieutenant Blackwell, got here with the other man. He took over, and I went to sleep in the mud.43
Lieutenant Terence Cubitt, 9th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment, 71st Brigade, 6th Division
Under constant artillery fire and repeated German bombing attacks the small party managed to hold out until they were relieved a day later.
The new tactics had not failed—they had not been tried. The artillery barrage was substantially the same, and as such it was inadequate for the changing nature of the battlefield. There was no smoke barrage; there simply weren’t enough smoke shells available to make a decent smoke screen blanketing the area under attack. More seriously there were not enough ordinary shells, as it proved impossible to get sufficient forward in time to feed
the ever-voracious mouths of the guns. The Decauville light railways had not been pushed far enough forward and they did not serve the whole front. This was a concrete example of the importance of logistics, for the lack of shells meant that the creeping barrage could not be extended to sweep across the areas well behind the front line to encompass the lurking deep-sited machine guns. The barrage was also substantially inaccurate since the observation problems that had plagued the previous attacks had not been resolved. In particular, the continuing bad weather had given the RFC no chance to carry out any detailed photographic reconnaissance or comprehensive artillery registration of identified targets. Only a prolonged Indian Summer could give the army cooperation aircraft a realistic chance to catch up with all they needed to do. As the rain continued to pour down it did not seem to be a likely prospect.
The last week of October was marked by repeated rainstorms and intermittent offensives. Both were utterly predictable. The rain just got heavier, the water could not drain away and there was no chance of the drying sunshine that might have evaporated away some of the army’s problems.
The whole night was continuous heavy rain and all day today. The weather conditions are so bad that the push is out of the question at present and so we have another day’s reprieve, thank goodness. From what we can hear it is going to be a short and sweet affair, but damned hot while it lasts—chiefly on the Schwaben Redoubt, so rumour says! We are jolly glad it is off today, as the prospects of marching 10 miles in the rain and then pitching tents on sodden ground is not exactly cheerful. It rained today the whole time and everything is filthy—mud on one’s food, blankets and kit—in fact mud everywhere and it tastes rotten.44
Captain Arthur Hardwick, 59th Field Ambulance, 19th Division
Water and mud surrounded the men when they were awake; it filled their horizons and penetrated the fastness of their dreams at night.
It started to rain and for 36 hours without a break the skies did their worst, so a description of our doings on a really wet day might amuse. Maclean and I sleep in the mess, and we woke up to find a vast pool at the ends of our bed bags; also, as usual, the trench outside had had a landslide, which on this occasion thoroughly blocked the exit from the mess. After breakfast we waded about in mud over our knees, trying to repair things. The back of No. 1 gunpit had fallen in, half burying the gun, and No. 2 pit seemed to have bred a spring during the night and was nearly a foot deep in water. We spent the morning rescuing ammunition from the worst of the water and patching up the dugouts and gunpits. Hickey, my servant, and I baled out the mess with cigarette tins, and dug a sump hole under the table to collect the water.45
Major Neil Fraser-Tytler, D Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
The much maligned staff officers tried their best to plan the next attacks. On 23 October the 11th Brigade of the 4th Division was required to attack from Lesboeufs towards the village of Le Transloy. Brigadier Rees and his headquarters staff tried their best to consider every eventuality and to ensure that it was catered for.
This was one of the occasions where any defects in the capacity of the brigade staff would make the completion of the arrangements nearly impossible. I was never better served from the two staff officers down to the brigade chief clerk, who came away as if he was recovering from a severe illness. It was not necessary to dot the ‘i’s or cross the ‘t’s for any of them. To suddenly increase an attacking force by five times its original strength, in trench warfare and on a narrow frontage, requires time and multitudinous matters of detail settling. For instance, headquarters for battalion commanders, extra ammunition, bombs, water, rations, telephonic communication, allotment of assembly trenches, timetable for moving into trenches, boundaries, spheres of command, liaison with neighbouring troops, prisoners, reserves etc. Add to this the reports of the situation and fighting activity of two battalions holding the front line, who have to be relieved by the assaulting battalions. Intelligence reports and aeroplane photos may cause a change in the plan at any moment. One lives at very high pressure on occasions.46
Brigadier General Hubert Rees, Headquarters, 11th Brigade, 4th Division
The attack was to be made by the 1st Hampshires and the 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who had been attached to Rees from the 10th Brigade. They were the right-hand unit of the British Army and would be accompanied in the assault by elements of the neighbouring French Sixth Army. On the morning of the attack there was an immediate complication.
The morning of the 23rd was foggy for which I was duly grateful as I was by no means satisfied that the large numbers of men assembled would have enough cover to escape observation until 11.30 a.m., the hour of the attack. I should not have been sorry to attack in the fog, but the authorities thought otherwise apparently, for the time of the attack was altered to 2.30 p.m. We only just had time to get the alterations through to the troops before 11.30.47
Brigadier General Hubert Rees, Headquarters, 11th Brigade, 4th Division
His men went forward but they were soon stopped dead in their tracks. Detailed planning at brigade level was all very well, but it could not cope with the ground conditions. One could not plan a way through deep liquid mud covered by machine guns. Brigadier General Rees went forward to see what was happening for himself.
I started off up the line to see the conditions. I was soon convinced that further operations were hopeless. Where the mud wasn’t up to one’s knees, it was so slippery one couldn’t stand and one slid off the brink of the shell holes into a foot or so of mud and water every few minutes. The only communication trench to battalion headquarters was being shelled and nearly impassable from the festoons of telephone wires hanging across it every few yards. My orderly and I were plastered with mud and drenched to the skin before we returned four hours later. The rain came down in a steady stream and, even for the Somme, it was an awful night.48
Brigadier General Hubert Rees, Headquarters, 11th Brigade, 4th Division
There would be two more attacks on 28 and 29 October. Small-scale local attacks, with an inadequate bombardment and exposed to the combined fire of every German gun that could reach them. The attacks were a tragic sight to men watching.
The attack was on—the noise concussion and smell of powder fumes was fearful, and the whole ground rocked and quivered to the shock of the guns and bursting shells. ‘Fritz’ was putting a deluge of shells on our infantry who were advancing on the Redoubt. I got up and peeped over the parapet and I was glad I did. One could see men like ants moving steadily forward, many falling never to rise again, until they were lost to sight in the shell fire from ‘Fritz’ batteries which was raising the earth in clouds in No Man’s Land where his defensive barrage was smashing down in a thick wall in front of his trenches.49
Signaller Ron Buckell, 1st Artillery Brigade, Canadian Expeditionary Force
The German artillery were beginning to operate in parity with the British gunners. Major Fraser-Tytler found that the sunken road position, which had served him so well, had finally been identified by the Germans. Now he was really for it in his exposed forward positions.
I saw an ominous sign—four huge craters—and realized that we had been registered by an 8-in howitzer battery. On the previous day hostile aeroplanes at a low altitude had circled round our position, and it looked as if our number was up. A Hun 8-in battery, evidently directed by an observation balloon began shelling our positions, and, after about four rounds short and over, they got the range of the road, and then the trouble began. Trouble only for material however, because we had made every plan for evacuating the position, as we knew that sooner or later we would get knocked out. We had already fitted up an emergency telephone exchange in a dugout, which was 200 yards to the flank of the battery, and where there was also accommodation to shelter all the men. At an order from the officer at the guns every man left the doomed position and assembled at the flank dugouts, the limber gunners carrying their dial sights, and everybody else their most p
recious belongings. From my OP in the front line, I could see the fall of every shell in the position, and the exploding one by one of our many ammunition dumps. After the usual two hours struggle through the mud I got back to the battery to find everybody busily engaged in attempting to clear up the mess. The bombardment lasted just over an hour and a half, in which time the Hun fired 120 8-in shells. His shooting really was wonderful, but luckily he had mistaken for gunpits two large ammunition dumps to the flank of the battery, and therefore his fire only extended over one half of the position, Every ammunition dump except one had been blown up, No. 4 gunpit had been hit three times—the gun literally had disappeared. No. 3 gunpit was empty, its inmate had been slightly damaged the previous day and sent back the same night. It got hit twice and all the men’s dugouts had been completely destroyed. The officers’ mess and telephone dugout were the only ones that escaped. The sunken road itself had been hit about twenty times and it was impossible for any vehicle to pass along it. Our position being now known to the Hun, it was no use attempting to carry out our game from that spot any longer, so we got orders from the brigade to retire.50
Major Neil Fraser-Tytler, D Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
As conditions worsened in the front-line areas, feelings began to run high. Medical Officer Lieutenant Lawrence Gameson, who had been posted by this time from the 45th Field Ambulance to the 73rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, was thrown into a state of veritable apoplexy when he received a communication on the subject of trench feet from Colonel Bruce Skinner, the Deputy Director of Medical Services of the II Corps.