Sources of intelligence improved. These included radio intercept and listening in to telephone conversations by means of the installation of ‘Moritz’ and ‘Arend’ stations. All the time that the enemy was unaware of the potential of these stations, we were in a position to listen in to every enemy order and we got to know every company commander by name.179
Soon enough XIV Reserve Corps built up a detailed picture of the British units and their activities. Command structures, orders and instructions, military routine, officer names and inter-unit reliefs were all part of the intelligence jigsaw. But, even after months of surveillance, there were still gaps. By 23 June, Stein and Below still only had a general idea of when the British attack would be launched.
Grubby, sleep-deprived soldiers in the trenches joined the dots of their own accord. Near Thiepval in late-March 1916, Leutnant-der-Reserve Friedrich Kassel, RIR99, heard ‘trains roll across the valley of the Ancre and speculated what they [the British] were transporting. Three months later we should get the answer to our queries.’180 At Mametz, Vizefeldwebel Frisch, RIR109, said while soldiers were given no explanation of the expected offensive, everyone ‘could draw the correct conclusions from his own observations. Everyone felt that decisive events were nearing.’181
THESE SAME SOLDIERS were exhausted by chronic night-time labouring, daily military bunkum and the rigours of living in a ditch. ‘I remember my first day in the trenches,’ wrote Unteroffizier Wilhelm Munz. ‘I moved here and there very cautiously, avoiding every puddle and carefully removing immediately every tiny piece of mud from my uniform. Yet now when I see myself covered from head to toe with earth and filth I am content and happy, for it is better “camouflage” than our field-grey.’182
Infantrymen lived and slept in their numerous dugouts when off duty. Hot food was lugged forward in metal canisters by ration parties, but was often tepid by the time it arrived forward. Fahrer Maute said the fare was simply ‘adequate,’ suggesting much room for improvement.183 Each soldier was issued a loaf of bread every two days; limited spices were available to add taste to thinly peeled potatoes and a daily meat ration of 288 grams.184 Grenadier Emil Goebelbecker, RIR109, explained: ‘We had one hot meal a day. It consisted of beans, peas, lentils and dehydrated vegetables. These were cooked with meat and tasted very good. We also had bread with jam and made coffee and tea in the trenches. We also had emergency rations — canned meat, bottled [mineral] water and first-aid supplies.’185 Downtime was spent shucking lice from clothing seams, or cleaning weapons and equipment. Vizefeldwebel Karl Schuler, a 20-yearold in RIR110, wrote home that ‘we have an awful lot of “pets” here. Those lousy lice are eating us up completely.’186 Shaving and haircuts were group affairs, four or five men at a time with cutthroat razors and scissors. Entertainment was had from chatting with mates, card games, writing home, reading, and playing or listening to the music made with a meagre few instruments such as harmonicas, zithers and violins. Here and there makeshift altars were carved into dugouts and trench walls. Boredom was rife and many a grimy soldier became an inveterate smoker as a distraction from the mundane.
As Leutnant-der-Reserve Friedrich Conzelmann, RIR121, explained:
We old soldiers grumble about this and that. On one occasion it is about women, then our children, or possibly even about the money we should have. This is all ridiculously small in relation to what we have experienced and endured outdoors. Our homes [in Germany] seem like paradise. We often do not cope well with little things when we have overcome so much.187
As with British soldiers a few hundred yards away, nobody got used to the plump corpse rats lurking in and around the trenches and dugouts. Leutnant-der-Reserve Franz Demmel, Bavarian Infantry Leib Regiment, was revolted by the plague of pink-tailed rats. ‘They came creeping up to sniff around for anything edible in our knapsacks, which we used as pillows. They were not shy about using our faces as a shortcut. They scrabbled their way up the sleeves of our jackets and began to nibble away wherever they liked. These bloody creatures could drive a man to despair.’188 Unteroffizier Albrecht Munz, IR180, said the deep underground dugouts were a ‘playground for rats’ and that ‘hatred for them rose to gigantic proportions.’189 He decided to do something about the plague in his small corner of the front and suspended a loaf of bread from his dugout ceiling, just a couple of inches above a water-filled tin pot. Soon enough, ‘I heard the squealing as the rat frantically tried to climb up the smooth metal [pot] walls. A sharp French bayonet brought his swimming lesson to an end. . . . The night ended with another two of these rodents in the same water bath and now we had our 750 grams of bread for our own use.’190
The wettest months of the year turned the German soldiers’ daily ordeal of toil, boredom and rats into one of degradation.191 They referred to these months as a so-called ‘mud offensive,’ reflecting their ongoing stuggle against the elements. Leutnant Fiedel said the surfeit of rainwater resulted in numerous trenches becoming knee-deep sloughs.192 Trench walls lined with wicker revetments held their form longer than those without, but inevitably slithered into the ditch.193 Stein complained that this filthy weather quickly destroyed weeks of labouring work.194 Soldiers stuck fast in the gloop — it ‘clung to boots in great clumps that looked like an elephant’s feet’195 — had to be dug free. Leutnant-der-Reserve Vulpius remembered that the ‘damp, west wind, which has been blowing gas back over us, obstinately refused to slacken.’196 Life in the trenches was dismal, wrote Oberleutnant Reymann, adding ‘many dugouts ran so full of water that they could no longer be used.’197 Some trenches had crude sumps; in others water was splashed out with pails or squeaky hand pumps. Uniforms were sodden for weeks on end, and soldiers became ill.198 In January 1916, RIR99 sent a total of 200 men to hospital suffering from influenza, colds, upset stomachs and leg cramps.199 More were ill but stayed with their units.200 It was some consolation that ‘the Englishman is no better off. At various points in his position we could watch him bailing the water out.’201 War-fighting and labouring ebbed in the October–March period, but snipers, shellfire and gas still claimed lives.
It was with this in mind that Gefreiter Otto Klinkerfüss, Field Machine-gun Platoon 55 in 28th Reserve Division, wrote to his sister-inlaw in November 1915: ‘I don’t know whether the war will end soon. I would like to know as I’ve had enough. We all hope it will be next year, when the enemy has overplayed his game. Then they will stop.’202 As it turned out, Klinkerfüss was quite wrong. Behind the lines, XIV Reserve Corps’ infrastructure network was centred on the rural service centre of Bapaume and its satellite villages. By late 1915 there were corps and divisional slaughterhouses, bakeries, cookhouses and mineral-water bottling plants to meet the corps’ daily demands. Produce and livestock were acquired locally, or freighted in from Germany. There were also corps and divisional workshops, ironmongers and repair depots, dumps for all manner of materiel and ammunition, parks for vehicles and wagons, and schools converted to hospitals.
For soldiers out of the line, Bapaume, along with other villages nearby, became a rest centre where they could refresh body and mind.203 There were shops selling civilian goods, sparsely stocked military canteens, cinemas, estaminets, and bars with German-brewed beer. Reservist Wilhelm Keller, IR180, complained that one bar was ‘fun, but a bit thin on the spirits so I went for drinks with another guy elsewhere.’204 Hauptmann Johann Heyberger, IR180, recalled bawdy nights in an officers’ bar at Courcelette, which ‘thanks to the care of my paymaster . . . never lacked a good drop of beer.’205 Meantime, funeral services were held in regimental and divisional cemeteries, and church services in local chapels and billets. Concerts were staged periodically, often by musicians from the ranks, and supplemented by travelling opera and theatre companies. By early 1916, XIV Reserve Corps was almost entirely selfsufficient.
Unteroffizier Eugen Kaisser, Württemberg Reserve Dragoon Regiment, spent nine days out of the line in Bapaume in late-May 1916:
The whole regimental staff had been b
illeted quite nicely in a brewery building and farmyard. It’s a little cramped, but that doesn’t matter. Nearby there’s a nice garden, which I use in my free time, so I am there at the moment. I made a table and chair from some wood in a workshop and so now I am quite alone and undisturbed, which is a real treat.206
Time out of the line was also used to train battalions in the latest infantry tactics, particularly from January 1916 as the expected Allied offensive neared. Regiments were revolved out of the line for seven- or eight-day periods during spring for this purpose. Reservist Friedrich Bauer, IR180, described the training as a ‘holiday’ from the trenches, adding ‘we have been busy practising all sorts of things.’207 He and others repeated bayonet exercises, gas-mask drills, and practised responding to attack and gas alarms, throwing live hand grenades and deploying machine guns at speed. Heyberger recalled a grenade training accident: ‘One [soldier] died immediately with ghastly injuries. Another man’s hands were cut off at the wrist and he lost both eyes.’208 Rehearsals in quickly exiting dugouts and manning trench parapets were run through time and again, usually under the eye and stopwatch of an unforgiving NCO or subaltern.209 Dummy trench systems were used to practise counterattack drills, one platoon playing the part of defenders and another that of the enemy. These exercises were replicated at platoon, company and battalion levels to ensure co-ordination, and would be repeatedly seen in XIV Reserve Corps’ defensive tactics on 1 July.
Soldiers sending postcards home to families, sweethearts and friends generally revealed little of life at the front, as the cards might be read by anyone. Musketier August Opielka, IR23, penned a few lines to his girlfriend from a trench near Mametz: ‘I am well and with all my heart I wish you the same.’210 But, in an unusually direct comment, Opielka also said he feared a disfiguring wound: ‘One does not know what will happen from one day to the next. Hopefully I won’t be wounded like one man I saw.’211 Bauer also wrote home after returning from leave: ‘It’s a shame that the holiday came to an end so quickly.’212 He was killed at Ovillers on 3 July 1916. Unteroffizier Gotthilf Harr, RIR119, was ‘healthy and so far alright in the trenches.’213 Kanonier Heinrich Hartung, RFAR20, was pleased to receive parcels with sweets and tobacco: ‘They arrived just at the right time. We are now labouring hard at night in the gun trenches.’214 Ersatz-Reservist August Stegmaier, IR180, who was killed at Thiepval on 28 September 1916, apologised to his girlfriend for forgetting to write: ‘You will certainly be a bit miffed as I didn’t send you any news, but I totally forgot.’215 Reservist Keller, who was lightly wounded on 1 July 1916, said he sent postcards home mostly ‘as a sign of life. I’m still healthy and merry, thank God.’216 These and other men obviously self-censored their words; they were doing well and were healthy, wanted family news from home, and were grateful for parcels of food, tobacco and socks and underwear.
Nevertheless, comforts from home and occasional reminders of life back in Germany provided only brief respite from trench-life drudgery and homesickness. Musketier Gustav Öschle, IR180, unexpectedly bumped into an old acquaintance while trench-digging at Serre. ‘You can imagine the joy that was, two old school friends meeting one another in a place like this.’217 Nearer Mametz, Opielka eagerly awaited his girlfriend’s letters, but in May 1916 revealed that troubling thoughts were playing on his mind: ‘Please don’t forget me in these horrid far away shores from yours.’218
COME 23 JUNE, Second Army and XIV Reserve Corps had run out of time to finish preparing their defences for the anticipated British attack. If Falkenhayn remained distracted by Verdun and Galicia, Below and Stein were entirely focused on the Somme. The latter two generals had correctly — albeit late in the piece — anticipated an Anglo-French offensive on either side of the Somme. North of the waterway, they attached considerable tactical value to the ground between Fricourt and Serre, more specifically that between Ovillers and Serre. They also held hypothetical concerns that a breakthrough would be driven vigorously towards Arras, potentially undermining the German army’s tenure of the Somme. Below and Stein had spent about 18 months converting Second Army’s positions into a defensive fortress of barbed wire, earthworks and fortified villages. These, along with the infantry and artillery present, had been seamlessly integrated into a defensive system designed to stop any enemy attack with a tremendous weight of co-ordinated artillery and machine-gun firepower. The weak area was further south at Mametz–Montauban, because it was seen as less tactically important and it had consequently gone under-developed. Below, Stein and their subordinates were as ready and prepared to meet the Anglo-French offensive as they could be, but — in contrast with Falkenhayn — retained concerns about the adequacy of resources at their disposal to do so.
A day before the British bombardment began Soden was again in the forward area at Thiepval, chatting with his officers and inspecting his defensive positions. It was 23 June, and Soden knew he and his men now had to steel themselves for battle. As he told one officer, ‘Good luck.’219
CHAPTER 4
Ballad of the Blind Gunners
The British preparatory bombardment, 24–30 June 1916
‘It was as if the devil incarnate wielded the baton with diabolical delight in this hellish concert.’1
— Major Max Klaus, Reserve Field Artillery Regiment 26
‘BOOM! ABSOLUTE SILENCE for a minute. Boom! Followed quickly by a more distant report from a fellow-gun,’ wrote Second-Lieutenant Edward Liveing, 1/12th Londons (Rangers).2 The bombardment had begun; hundreds of artillery guns cracked forth from behind the British lines in a concerted roar, belching muzzle flashes and smoke as they lobbed life-stealing shells over no-man’s-land. Pillars of flame, chalkstone, clay and smoke of all colours rose and fell along the German line. Barbedwire entanglements jangled and snapped, and shattered wooden trench revetments were tossed about. German soldiers scurried into their yardsdeep engineered dugouts to escape the metal storm. The ground heaved and quaked and minute waterfalls of chalkstone dust trickled between dugout joists. ‘Our whole line,’ wrote Feldwebel Karl Eiser, Reserve Field Artillery Regiment 29, a lookout in Contalmaison’s church spire, ‘was lit up as innumerable lightning flashes soared over, a hissing and howling, gasping, splintering and exploding — all this filled the air.’3
British gunners belted out one shell after another to an exacting timetable, day in, day out. Lieutenant Frank Lushington, Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA), said the ‘whole of life seemed to merge into one clanging, clashing, roar of sound. Covered with sweat and grime, the slaves of the gun toiled and laboured, ate, lay down and slept, and toiled and laboured again, to the roar and rush and scream of hundreds of hurrying shells. Their horizon was bounded by the vast and insatiable engine which they continuously fed. Their minds were numbed and deafened by the neverending clamour of their gods.’4
The bombardment was supposed to have lasted five days, 24–28 June, these known to planners respectively as U, V, W, X and Y. The attack was to have gone in on Z day, 29 June. Rain and poor visibility saw the shellfire extended two days — officially Y1 and Y2, 29–30 June — with the attack deferred until 1 July. Weather conditions were far from perfect. Of the five-day period only one was fine; the rest — along with the two additional days — saw rain, mist and low cloud. Bad weather or not, the artillery’s job was to smash German defensive obstacles and mechanisms, kill or otherwise subdue the enemy garrison, destroy or neutralise the hostile artillery, and break or harass German communication lines and logistics networks.
In practice, the first two days of the bombardment were for wirecutting and registering the guns on selected targets to ensure accuracy of shot.5 They were followed by three more, subsequently extended to five, for wire-cutting and the systematic destruction of defences such as trenches, fortified localities, strongpoints, observation posts and machine-gun emplacements, along with the targeting of billets, lines of communication and villages. The rump of the destructive fire was the responsibility of the heavy guns and howitzers, because
of their greater range and larger shells.6 However, the late arrival of many batteries meant that time was lost registering their fire for accuracy, and that most of their shellfire was weighted to the second half of the bombardment. Of the field guns, 18-pounders were to cut wire, and sweep trenches, villages, woods and hollows with their fire. The 4.5-inch howitzers were tasked with destroying trenches and assisting in the bombardment of villages and woods, and with completing the destruction of machine-gun emplacements. The British gunners, wrote Leutnant-der-Reserve Friedrich Kassel, Reserve Infantry Regiment 99 (RIR99), ‘wanted to be sure of overkill. Nobody should be alive when their infantry left their trenches.’7
Haig had 1769 artillery guns and howitzers to support his two attacking armies. Fourth Army, responsible for the lion’s share of the operation, had 1537 artillery pieces spread more or less evenly along a frontage of about 25,000 yards (14.2 miles). There was one field gun for every 21 yards, while the heavy barrels equated to about one to 57 yards.8 The 232 guns spread across the 4000 yards of VII Corps’ net battle front equated to about one field gun per 27 yards and one heavy for every 47 yards. Two-thirds (1158, or 65.5%) of the total gunstock was field artillery — 18-pounders and 4.5-inch howitzers — with the rest heavier guns and howitzers (511, or 28.9%) and French artillery pieces mostly for firing gas shells (100, or 5.6%).9 Among the 511 barrels comprising the heavy ironmongery were 60-pounder guns (140, 27.4%), plus 4.7- (44, 8.6%), 6- (22, 4.3%), 9.2- (3) and 12-inch (1) guns.10 Additionally there were 6- (132, 25.8%), 8- (64, 12.5%), 9.2- (84, 16.4%), 12- (13, 2.5%) and 15-inch (8, 1.6%) howitzers.11 This concentration was impressive to those who had not seen the like before.12
Fourth Army allocated its artillery about 3 million shells for the bombardment and attack, most for 18-pounders (2.6 million shells) and 4.5-inch howitzers (260,000). About half, or 1.5 million, were loosed off on 24–30 June.13 Average daily expenditure was 215,521, ranging from 138,118 on 24 June to 375,760 on 30 June.14 General Sir Henry Rawlinson, commander of Fourth Army, said this worked out at roughly 150,000 shells each day, with a further 50,000 nightly.15 His data showed that, between 24 June and 1 July, Fourth Army fired 1.64 million shells.16 Of these, 1.29 million (78.8%) were fired by the army’s field artillery and 348,603 (21.2%) by its heavy guns. He noted that ammunition accumulated for the five-day bombardment alone totalled 40,000 tons, and reckoned there ‘should not be much left of his [the enemy’s] defences at the end of it.’17 The problem was the vast majority of Fourth Army’s stockpiled ammunition was for field artillery not suited to laying destructive shellfire of the type needed to obliterate German-engineered dugouts, fortified villages and formidable redoubts.
First day of the Somme Page 14