By now the Nordwerk machine-gunners had returned their focus to Nab Valley. Their fire sweeping over the northern slope of Ovillers Spur and the valley bottom was so intense that all communication between the British assembly trenches and 70th Brigade’s soldiers in the German lines was lost. Oberstleutnant Vischer saw 150–200 British soldiers ‘mowed down’ on the Nab Valley–Thiepval road. In no time the 70th’s footing was besieged by machine-gun and rifle fire, while hastily organised German bombing parties forced its men back with co-ordinated counterattacks closing from multiple directions. It was here, in Nab Valley, that Vizefeldwebel Albert Hauff, IR180, led one such group of bombers forward, as one of his men later recalled:
Now it was time to drive the enemy out. We went in over piles of corpses and used hand grenades to clean up the position. Those Englishmen who weren’t dead or wounded crept back into the shell holes [of no-man’s-land]. Any sign of resistance from them was showered with grenades. . . . Immediately we began to dig out collapsed shelters and make the trench defensible again. Some reinforcements came forward.174
Hauff was decorated for his bravery, but was killed in September 1916. Meanwhile, by 3 p.m. the 70th’s survivors had pulled back into the Nab Valley no-man’s-land. ‘I brought my machine gun back into position and shot at the fleeing English,’ wrote Schütze Fischer.175
‘Well, Martin, we will have lunch in the German trenches,’ said Lieutenant Billy Goodwin, 8th York & Lancasters.176 The 23-year-old, Tralee-born Corpus Christi College graduate was liked by subordinates because he ‘always looked after them before he looked after himself,’ said Private Patrick Martin, same battalion. Before the war Goodwin had enjoyed golf, tennis, rugby and racing around leafy country lanes on his motorcycle. But in Nab Valley on the warm morning of 1 July those days came to an abrupt end, as Corporal George Booth, 8th York & Lancasters, explained: ‘He advanced towards the German lines — was shot and fell on the barbed wire (German). . . . He seemed quite fearless in the attack. I went over the top at the same time, was slightly wounded and lay in the open for about 12 hours. Lt. Goodwin was still on the wire when I got away.’177 Goodwin’s body was found and he is today buried at Blighty Valley Cemetery, Authuille Wood, where 227 of the 491 identified burials are for 1 July. Schütze Fischer remembered another horribly wounded British soldier snared in the entanglement: ‘He shot at me a few times but the bullets just missed my head.’178 Fischer does not state this soldier’s fate, but he was likely shot.
Attempts to renew 8th Division’s attack amounted to nothing. Shortly after 9 a.m., Brigadier-Generals Harry Tuson of the 23rd and John Pollard of the 25th asked divisional headquarters to bring the barrage back to the German reserve trench line and Ovillers as a defensive measure:179 ‘It could not well be turned on to the front system, which the Germans had manned again at most places, as our men were lying close up to it, even where they were not thought to be in it.’180 Divisional commander Hudson sanctioned a half-hour shoot, and told Tuson and Pollard to organise a fresh attack. They and the 70th’s Brigadier-General Herbert Gordon said they had too few men — his portion of the British front line was held by fewer than 100 men as well as the 15th Field Company, RE — given that the German trenches were now fully manned, also noting a fresh bombardment would likely hit British infantry sheltering nearby in no-man’s-land.181 This was relayed to III Corps’ Montigny headquarters at 12.15 p.m.182 Pulteney, aware the 23rd and 25th were ‘hung up’, but believing more favourably that the 70th was ‘holding’ the German front line,183 decided to rejuvenate the attack north of Ovillers at 5 p.m., prefaced with 30 minutes’ shellfire. The 70th would continue its advance in conjunction with 19th (Western) Division’s 56th Brigade closer to Ovillers.184 The decisive factor in Pulteney’s thinking was the 70th’s presence in the German lines that afternoon, which led him to believe that regrouping and applying fresh troops would produce results.
It is not clear whether Hudson challenged Pulteney’s decision on the basis of his brigadiers’ refusal, but it seems improbable. Hudson lacked the ‘personality to be insubordinate & refuse’ pressure from higher office.185 Events rendered the matter moot: the 70th’s eviction forced Pulteney to cancel the planned attack. The field companies of 1st and 2nd Home Counties (Territorial Force), RE, were sent up to help hold the British front line, and were later put to work bringing in wounded. ‘Wiser counsels,’ wrote the official historian somewhat cryptically of Pulteney’s fruitless attempts to renew the attack, had ‘prevailed.’186
Eighth Division ran up 5121 casualties, including 1927 dead, 3095 wounded, 86 missing and 13 prisoners.187 ‘The experience of this day had been bitter, and its losses terrible,’ wrote the division’s historians.188 Ten of its 12 infantry battalions lost more than 374 men each, with the six that led the attack off suffering an average of 505 men killed, wounded and missing.189 Schütze Fischer, the machine-gunner, later said British dead lay thick in no-man’s-land outside Authuille Wood: ‘Not only were they laying [sic] side by side but also one on top of the other.’190 Several battalions lost all their officers, while seven battalion commanders became casualties — two of them killed, two died of wounds and three more wounded.191 Second Middlesex was worst hit, with 623 (92.6%) of the 673 officers and men who went into battle becoming casualties. Only 50 turned up at roll call the next day. Its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Sandys, was wounded and evacuated to England. Two months later the 40-year-old shot himself dead: ‘I have come to London today to take my life. I have never had a moment’s peace since July 1.’192
IR180’s casualties totalled 280, or about 10% of its nominal strength, including 83 dead, 184 wounded and 13 missing.193 For every one German casualty there were about 18 British, this ratio reflecting IR180’s total dominance across its battle sector: ‘The losses of the enemy were atrociously heavy. Fifteen hundred to 2000 corpses were mown down in entire rows lying there in the evening in front of the sector of the Württemberg regiment. On the other hand, the losses of the regiment were fortunately small,’ wrote one German historian.194
‘I drove like the wind,’ wrote Fahrer Otto Maute, IR180, of his evening journey towards the front line with an ammunition-laden wagon and under shellfire.195 He was on the Albert–Bapaume road and showered by shrapnel fragments the ‘size of your fist.’ Maute pondered the consequences of being wounded: ‘What would it be like to receive a direct hit from a ship’s thirty-centimetre gun?’ He dumped the ammunition in a forward collection zone and raced back to Warlencourt, where the walking wounded were already filtering back with predictably alarmist stories: ‘Our regiment had heavy losses in the attack, but [on Thiepval Spur, the neighbouring] Regt. 99 [RIR99] came off worse, they say fifty per cent.’ He wrote to his family of the devastation: burning and smashed villages, and aircraft shot out of the sky. ‘At home you simply have no idea of what war is like.’
From Soden’s viewpoint, the fighting between Leipzig Redoubt and Ovillers paled in comparison with the danger caused by 36th (Ulster) Division’s break-in above Thiepval. His attention rightly lay on that latter part of the battlefield, which was the most tactically important feature within the 26th’s entire defensive scheme. Soden’s thinking was based on battle reports that showed IR180 had quickly gained control of its sector, with any break-ins either already ejected or in the process of being evicted. The few short-lived enemy incursions into IR180’s territory were never going to unravel Soden’s southern-most regimental position, let alone test Pozières Ridge further back. Soden knew his Nab Valley–Ovillers defence-in-depth scheme had been battered by shellfire, but crucially that mutually supporting redoubts, strongpoints and trench systems remained functional and defensible. Most of IR180’s infantry and machine-gunners had survived the bombardment and responded quickly to the lifting of the British barrage. Moreover, 26th’s artillery provided effective defensive fire as required. ‘The enemy’s plan of attack was thwarted,’ wrote Soden in a crisp summary of the fighting around Ovillers, also noting the artiller
y’s ‘outstanding achievements’ in helping secure the victory.196
SUCH INSIGHTS WERE lost on Pulteney who, in the 1930s, coughed up a facile explanation. ‘The main thing overlooked was the fact of the trenches being obliterated giving no cover for the attackers when reached, no one realised the depth of the German “Dug Outs”, our own Dug outs were miserable attempts, the ground was absolutely strewn with our own 8-inch dud shells.’197 Fair enough, there were too many dud shells. But it was risible to state that ‘the main thing’ behind III Corps’ failure was obliterated German trenches, as well as the unrealised depth of the German dugouts. Pulteney’s corps had known of the deep dugouts since early June. And what had he expected from the seven-day bombardment — scores of dead German soldiers and pristine trenches awaiting new tenants? He was also well aware of the functional German defence-in-depth scheme, the failure of his counter-battery fire, faulty intelligence and the numerous unsuppressed machine guns. These factors were all addressed in the British Official History, which does not directly apportion blame. ‘I heartily congratulate you on the work, I can find nothing to criticise,’ a grateful Pulteney enthused to the official historian after critiquing a draft copy.198 It was not much of an admission, but it was the closest Pulteney came to conceding that he had turned up for battle unprepared and been wholly outclassed by Soden and Hahn before Ovillers and La Boisselle.
Proof lay in the butcher’s bill. Pulteney’s III Corps racked up 11,501 casualties.199 This included 4407 killed, 6682 wounded, 380 missing and 32 prisoners. By contrast, Soden’s and Hahn’s regiments opposing 8th and 34th Divisions suffered at least a combined 1183 casualties, including 327 dead and 856 others wounded and missing.200 That equated to about one German casualty for every 9.7 British, a grim ratio by anyone’s maths.
Pulteney tried to gloss over the tragedy at the time by feting the 34th’s survivors with tributes.201 As Lieutenant-Colonel Somerset bitterly told it, four days after battle Pulteney ‘inspected the remnant of the 101st Brigade & complimented them on their bravery & tenacity.’202 Lieutenant-Colonel Shakespear continued:
He [Pulteney] specially referred to valuable service that they had performed in guarding the left flank of the 21st Division, which, had our small isolated detachments not held firmly on to the positions they had seized, might have been seriously endangered, and in fact the whole attack would have been in jeopardy, and all our line down to the French might have been rolled up.203
Pulteney was dealing exaggeration and lies. The 21st’s flank was not exposed to anything like the kind of danger Pulteney suggested, and XV and XIII Corps’ gains were never going to be rolled by a German counterattack from III Corps’ sector. Hahn and Soden did not have the resources for such a stroke, and never considered it.204 But in Pulteney’s mind pretty much anything could be dressed as its own opposite; his after-battle pep talk was all about hawking black as its own inverse and the outright defeat his corps had just suffered as nothing less than an aspect of victory.
Survivors knew the truth. In 8th KOYLI, for instance, just 25 of its 685 officers and men who went into battle turned up at the quartermaster’s depot afterwards. As Corporal Murray recalled, ‘The quartermaster was an acting captain, and he said “Is the battalion on the march back?” A lance corporal was in charge, and he said, “They’re here.”’205 The rest were dead, wounded, missing or stragglers yet to turn up. Walk over the fields and among the headstones at Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries around Ovillers and La Boisselle and the dead are still there, still mute witnesses to Pulteney’s incompetence.
CHAPTER 8
Fluttering for Fricourt
XV Corps, the Fricourt–Mametz salient and a complex attack
‘The enemy’s superiority was great, but the English wasted an enormous amount of large and smallcalibre ammunition, and one must wonder why greater devastation wasn’t caused by such superior firepower.’1
— Feldwebel Robert Hauschild, Reserve Infantry Regiment 111
JOURNALIST PHILIP GIBBS’ typewriter rattled steadily towards the midnight hour as he belted out one paragraph after another, in utter exhaustion of body and brain.2 At dawn that morning, 1 July, the scribe and other pressmen were motored to an observation post on a hillock near Albert that afforded sweeping views of the Thiepval–Morval ridge, which was where the first day of the Somme would be fought out. At first mist and smoke shrouded the ground, and Gibbs said he ‘stood like a blind man, only listening.’3 The veil broke; the gilded statue of the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus atop Albert’s basilica leaned at a near-horizontal angle and sparkled in the sun. It had hung that way since being hit by a shell in January 1915. British soldiers believed that when the statue fell the war would end. It eventually toppled in April 1918, with the Armistice following after much more fighting in November 1918. All that, though, was in the future; for the moment Gibbs watched as aeroplanes darted across the azure sky, artillery shells slamming into the German lines.4 Nobody spoke much. Gibbs confessed to feeling an ‘unreal sense of safety.’5 The seasoned hack planned to get an overview of the battle from afar and then move forward to gather colour from the soldiers of XV Corps. By day’s end he knew Mametz and Montauban were captured, and Fricourt threatened.6 He also knew his coverage was partial at best; battlefield visibility had been limited and reports from the front were incomplete.7 His jaunty copy conveyed events seen from a distance and alleged British-soldier interviews:
‘They went across toppingly,’ said a wounded boy of the West Yorkshires, who was in the first attack on Fricourt. ‘The fellows were glorious,’ said another young officer who could hardly speak for the pain in his left shoulder, where a piece of shell struck him down in Mametz Wood. ‘Wonderful chaps!’ said a lieutenant of the Manchesters. ‘They went cheering through machine-gun fire as though it were just the splashing of rain.’8
‘Toppingly,’ ‘glorious,’ ‘wonderful’ and ‘cheering’. Rot. Who spoke like that? Gibbs’ colour looked false because it probably was; the propagandist had finally vanquished the pressman. As Gibbs later confessed, he and other uniformed wordsmiths were not only ‘subject to the general rules of censorship’ at the time, but shockingly ‘were in agreement’ with them.9
Fifteenth Corps faced a German-held salient that skirted the fortified villages of Fricourt and Mametz. It was split by the southwest-running Willow Stream. Both villages were nestled among the tangle of spurs either side of the stream valley in the sleepy southern foothills of the Thiepval–Morval ridge. Fricourt, to the north, was within a few hundred yards of the German front line, with Fricourt Wood immediately behind. To the south, about 1000 yards further up the valley, Mametz lay exposed on the western tip of the Mametz–Montauban ridge and just behind the German front line in the Mametz–Carnoy valley. The curve of the salient meant approach routes to Mametz and Fricourt were an awkward mix of up-hill-anddown-dale, studded with a handful of increasingly shot-through copses. The battle for this bulge and the villages it contained would be fought out on the main ridge’s gentle southern fells rather than its highest ground.
Drive northeast along the road from Bécordel-Bécourt towards Fricourt and soon enough the latter’s rooftops and church spire appear over the lush paddocks. The village sits in the cleft formed by two low-lying rises. Off to the front left are the gentle inclines of Fricourt Spur, with the Albert–Bapaume road some distance beyond and out of sight. To the front right is the high ground of Hill 110, topped with a shock of trees that is Bois Français and looks like an ill-fitted toupee, with Mametz hidden beyond. Fricourt stands mute guard at the mouth of Willow Stream valley, which provides access to a string of other villages and woods that ultimately lead to High Wood and Longueval more than three miles away on the main ridge. Whichever side held the high ground around Fricourt overlooked and controlled the village; for the British, this would potentially open the way to subsequent German defences, and then, with time, planning and sufficient infantry and artillery resources, the way to Bapaume and
Arras beyond.
The German 28th Reserve Division’s defences here differed from those of 26th Reserve Division further north. Generalleutnant Ferdinand von Hahn’s 28th enjoyed none of the mutually supporting spurs that characterised the 26th’s positions and were ideally suited to a co-ordinated defence-in-depth scheme.10 More worryingly, the re-engineering of defences in this area had not been driven forward with anywhere near the same urgency as the 26th’s.11 Hahn’s men were less than pleased at having only just inherited these under-developed positions from Generalleutnant Martin Châles de Beaulieu’s 12th Infantry Division, and had no time for meaningful improvements before Fourth Army’s seven-day bombardment began. The 28th’s positions, particularly the deep dugouts to protect soldiers from shellfire, were insufficient, largely confined to the front-line system and crammed with soldiers.12
The ruins of Fricourt and Mametz were nevertheless converted into machine-gun fortresses to bolster the front-line system. Between 1000 and 2000 yards back, the first intermediate line supported the forward battle zone, and blocked advances up the Willow Stream and the Mametz–Carnoy valley. This line took in a handful of woods and Fricourt Farm, all of which held or could hold machine-gun strongpoints. Roughly 1000 yards further on, the fragmented second intermediate position was sited to seal off any breach of the first two. The striking omission in the 28th’s defences was a network of carefully sited redoubts and strongpoints with anything like the firepower that would wreak so much carnage further north between La Boisselle and Gommecourt.
First day of the Somme Page 30