It is probable that Rawlinson’s actual understanding of progress was much bleaker than his personal diary suggests. In addition to normal army–corps communications, he was in private telephone contact with his subordinate corps commanders. What they told him of progress between Serre and La Boisselle, ‘unofficially, as one comrade to another, seems to have been more disturbing than their official reports.’36 The post-war memoir of Sous-officier Paul Maze tends to support this. The French liaison officer, attached to the staff of General Sir Hubert Gough, commander of Reserve Army, was in Rawlinson’s operations room at Querrieu that day: ‘Great tension was reigning in the office. I didn’t envy the Generals their responsibilities as they pored over maps and messages, and faced at every moment the taking of grave decisions.’37 And the key element of Maze’s observations: ‘At noon we knew that in front of Thiepval and Beaumont Hamel we had been severely checked. Of that, there was no more doubt — the attacks on the whole of the left front [being VIII and X Corps, and possibly including III Corps too] had failed. The casualties were very serious. The Reserve Army stood awaiting further developments.’38 Gough was at Querrieu too: ‘We could get as clear a grasp of the situation as was possible.’39 It must be noted that Maze had the benefit of writing 15 years after the fact. However, at the time, Rawlinson wanted to believe 31st Division had made progress around Serre and that XV and XIII Corps had advanced around Fricourt–Montauban, but the lack of progress around Ovillers and La Boisselle led him to doubt whether Reserve Army would be deployed.
Proof of this can be seen in Reserve Army’s orders to 3rd Cavalry Division either side of midday. At this time Reserve Army was taking orders from Rawlinson even though it was under Gough’s command.40 At 11.30 a.m., 3rd Cavalry Division was told that there was ‘no chance’ of it being ‘required to move till 2 p.m. at earliest.’41 This was followed by another order at 1.20 p.m. that said 3rd Cavalry should ‘not make preparations to move till a warning message reaches them.’42 These orders revealed that in the early afternoon Rawlinson doubted the cavalry would be sent into battle, suggested a decision on their deployment would be made mid-afternoon, but pulled up well short of actually standing these units down.
There were, broadly speaking, four ways in which battlefield gains could have been exploited. The first was for Rawlinson to decide whether or not to push Gough’s Reserve Army — comprising 19th (Western) and 49th (West Riding) Divisions, plus three cavalry divisions — through a break in the German front-line system created by III and X Corps and thence on towards Bapaume, their flanks supported by VIII Corps and XV Corps’ reserve 17th (Northern) Division. The second and third were for either Rawlinson or his corps commanders to use divisions in corps reserve locally, namely, north to south, 48th (South Midland), 49th (West Riding), 19th (Western), 17th (Northern) and 9th (Scottish) Divisions. Fourth, Haig had the authority to enact all the previous three options, envisaged them occurring and had previously told Rawlinson he anticipated a rapid-advance attack.43 He expected subordinates to capitalise on emerging battlefield opportunities rather than let them slip.44 By contrast, Rawlinson, whatever lip service he gave Haig prior to 1 July, always doubted a breakthrough and in particular lacked confidence in Congreve’s 30th Division. He had already decided that use of Reserve Army’s cavalry depended on the German front-line system falling before noon on 1 July, and saw little likelihood of corps reserves being deployed at all.45 As it turned out, neither Rawlinson, nor his corps commanders, nor Haig would deploy any reserves to exploit any of the several opportunities that opened up.
By 3.15 p.m., Rawlinson had unsurprisingly decided Reserve Army’s cavalry was highly unlikely to be deployed at all. ‘On the South things are satisfactory on the North less so and there is of course no hope of getting Cavry [sic] through today,’ he noted at this specific time.46 The time stamp on this diary entry is critical to unravelling British command decisions on 1 July, as we shall soon see. At this time, Rawlinson was well aware that German infantry still held the vast majority of its trenches opposite VIII Corps, and that X Corps was still fighting in Schwaben Redoubt, was planning more attacks towards Thiepval and had a limited footing at Leipzig Redoubt.47 He also believed III Corps had reached the outskirts of Contalmaison, but importantly had not taken Ovillers and had ‘suffered heavily’ in front of La Boisselle.48 XV Corps was close to surrounding Fricourt, while XIII Corps had apparently reached all of its objectives.49 In short, Fourth Army’s proposed drive up Pozières Ridge was not progressing at all to plan, which meant Rawlinson was correct in recognising there was ‘no hope’ of getting the cavalry through, but, by 3.15 p.m., he still had not ordered these units to stand down.
Even against a backcloth of widespread disaster there were two places where Fourth Army had opportunities to develop break-ins. The first was at Schwaben Redoubt above Thiepval, where 36th (Ulster) Division had driven a deep wedge into the German line as part of the operation by Morland’s X Corps. The second was around Fricourt–Mametz–Montauban, where XV and XIII Corps were making good, but in places slow, progress. Fourth Division’s incursion at Heidenkopf, near Serre, was an epic in its own right, but never had potential for development. In the event, the break-ins at Schwaben Redoubt, Fricourt, Mametz and Montauban slipped by, regardless of Haig’s guidance that his subordinates actively seek to capitalise on such opportunities as and when they arose.
Thirty-six (Ulster) Division’s break-in came shortly after 7.30 a.m., when it captured a slice of land around Schwaben Redoubt and briefly reached 26th Reserve Division’s second defensive line. This was the vital ground for Stein and Soden, an acknowledged lynchpin of their defences and thus potentially for Second Army, too. It was no surprise that Soden’s artillery and machine guns quickly made no-man’s-land impassable with a tempest of defensive fire, while counterattack battalions began retaking the lost ground. By about 10.30 p.m. the Ulstermen had been essentially evicted. Morland’s focus for most of the day was elsewhere. He wanted to restart 32nd Division’s mostly failed attacks around Thiepval, discarding any notion of consolidation, let alone exploitation, at Schwaben Redoubt. He still blindly hoped for a nice, neat linear advance across his corps’ frontage, did not cotton on to the value of the 36th’s gains and wasted time. Rawlinson apparently had no quibble with Morland’s Thiepval myopia.50 In any case, 49th (West Riding) Division, in corps reserve, was too far back to be deployed at anything like the speed required, and was subsequently frittered away piecemeal. Additionally, Morland’s artillery scheme lacked the flexibility for a redeployment to even partially subdue the German defensive fire. The only hope was if the unsupported 36th could hold on to its gains or push east behind Thiepval, but Stein and Soden had different ideas. Only in the early evening did Morland realise the break-in’s potential, but by then it was too late and the 36th was already being pushed steadily back. Without doubt the 36th’s gains severely tested Stein and Soden, and probably Below too, but Morland let them off the hook. If Morland had been minded to win a lasting footprint around Schwaben Redoubt, it might just have provoked a series of German command decisions that produced an alternative short-term Somme narrative.
Further south, the potential of XV and XIII Corps’ gains around Fricourt–Mametz–Montauban have been overcooked by historians. That Horne’s corps was heavily engaged at Fricourt–Mametz into the night, along with his failed afternoon flutter to force the capture of Fricourt, ruled out any corps-level exploitation in that area. Around Montauban, Congreve’s 30th Division captured its objectives by 10.30 a.m., but closer to Mametz his 18th (Eastern) Division lagged and only pulled up alongside the 30th on the Mametz–Montauban ridge early evening. Congreve, aware of Fourth Army’s failure further north, was not nearly as interested in an exploitative operation as has often been suggested, and there is no immediately available evidence to suggest he either went forward on 1 July or subsequently lobbied Rawlinson for consent.51 These factors ruled out a combined secondary operation by the casualty-thinned 18th and 30th,
while 9th (Scottish) Division was still hours away in corps reserve. None of these divisions were warned on battle day that they might have to participate in such an operation because Congreve was focused on achieving his primary objectives and then consolidating them to defend against an expected German counterattack.
It is now the vogue to argue that the Bazentin-le-Grand–Longueval–Bernafay Woods line was open for the taking, potentially providing a base for future operations and saving lives later lost in taking it. But this is a straw-man argument based purely on XIII Corps’ gains, specifically the 30th’s, which hints at opportunity lost and paints Haig as a victim of his subordinates’ decisions. Neither was the case, as we shall soon see. An additional operation in the Montauban area would never have been a simple matter: there were at least 2000 German soldiers from cobbledtogether infantry, machine-gun and ancillary units holding the Bazentinle-Grand–Longueval–Bernafay Woods line, plus two reinforcement regiments on their way forward. Any infantry exploitation by XIII Corps needed to be carefully planned, co-ordinated and supported by artillery, all of which took considerable time, and even then its outcome had rather a lot to do with some German chaps across the way.
German divisional commanders mostly developed their positions to a defensive doctrine that emphasised front-line retention with essential fire support from artillery and machine guns further back. The idea was to stop the enemy in a no-man’s-land killing zone of direct and enfilade fire. Where there were break-ins, artillerymen and machinegunners could block no-man’s-land with a tornado of shrapnel and high-explosve shells, as well as bullets, and isolate the incursion. At the same time, concentric infantry counterattacks would seek to retake the lost ground. Soden and Generalleutnants Ferdinand von Hahn and Karl von Borries relentlessly drove their men in 26th Reserve, 28th Reserve and 52nd Infantry Divisions, respectively, during 1915–16 to convert their positions into fortresses. Generalleutnant Richard Freiherr von Süsskind-Schwendi took a similar approach when his 2nd Guards Reserve Division arrived at Gommecourt in May 1916. These generals were experts in defensive tactics, understood the ground and how to best use it, drew on the lessons from fighting in 1915, and demanded performance. Soden was well known for his frequent inspections of defensive positions, as were Borries and Süsskind-Schwendi. The exception was Generalleutnant Martin Châles de Beaulieu, commanding 12th Infantry Division in the Montauban–Curlu area. Hahn had the misfortune of inheriting Châles de Beaulieu’s below-par work around Mametz just before battle. Below and Stein must be held to book for the consequences of overseeing development of a corps-wide defensive scheme that turned out not to be of uniform depth and strength.
The German artillery order of battle reflected the value Below and Stein apportioned to the ground held by each division. Twenty-sixth Reserve, 28th Reserve and 52nd Infantry Divisions possessed about 390 (68.4%) of the corps’ roughly 570 guns north of the River Somme. This was because Below and Stein correctly expected the focal point of the British attack to broadly fall between Serre and Ovillers. Here, for example, the guns of 26th Reserve Artillery Brigade were divided into three large groups, with fire control centralised, ammunition stockpiled and detailed target zones worked out to the yard. The flanking 2nd Guards Reserve and 12th Infantry Divisions had a combined 180 (31.6%) guns, but crucially Borries and then Süsskind-Schwendi had spared no defensive effort at Gommecourt, whereas Châles de Beaulieu had been considerably more laissez faire between Mametz and the river. With the exception of Mametz–Montauban, Haig’s plan directed his infantry into bespoke killing zones of bullet, shrapnel and explosive to attack an engineered defensive scheme backed by most of XIV Reserve Corps’ artillery. It was thus no surprise, wrote one German historian, that ‘despite localised successes, the enemy’s intention of breaking through on a wide front had failed.’52
HAIG KNEW NONE of this when his dust-speckled motorcade pulled into Querrieu after lunch on 1 July. The drive from Chateau Valvion to Querrieu would have taken roughly 30 minutes in ideal conditions, but it probably took Haig longer given the traffic-clogged roads of 1 July. We do not know exactly when he arrived at the pulsing heart of command for the British army’s first day of the Somme, but according to Rawlinson’s time-stamped diary it was certainly after 3.15 p.m.53 The precise amount of time Haig spent at Fourth Army headquarters is also unknown, but it cannot have been much more than an hour, as he subsequently drove about 30 minutes to be at Villers-Bocage by 5 p.m., meaning he must have left by about 4.30 p.m.54 Haig’s diary simply states that he ‘saw’ Rawlinson, the latter briefly noting the C-in-C’s presence after 3.15 p.m.55 When Haig arrived at Querrieu, Rawlinson well knew that battlefield events were not going remotely to plan between Serre and La Boisselle, and while he had already decided there was no hope of deploying cavalry that afternoon he still had not issued any orders to that effect.56
No notes of the discussion between Haig and Rawlinson in the hour to about 4.30 p.m. are known to exist. But subsequent events make it apparent that Rawlinson briefed Haig both on the battlefield situation, and on his non-deployment of Reserve Army’s infantry and cavalry. The British official historian later explained their discussion:
Without giving a definite order, he [Haig] expressed [to Rawlinson] the wish that the attack of the Fourth Army should be continued on the 2nd [of July]: the situation was as yet too obscure for any radical change of plan: the best that could be done for the moment was to keep up the pressure on the enemy, wear out his defence, and with a view to an attack on his 2nd Position, gain possession of all those parts of his front position and of the intermediate lines still in his hands. In particular, the Commander-in-Chief desired that Fricourt, already enveloped on both flanks, should be captured.57
What followed was a series of orders that both put the objectives decided at this meeting into effect, and sanctioned a series of formation and unit moves. Haig then drove to Villers-Bocage and gave II Corps the orders pertaining to his GHQ reserve divisions at 5 p.m., while Fourth and Reserve Armies circulated theirs at the same time. These orders guaranteed there would be no Fourth or Reserve Army development of gains between Fricourt and Montauban on 1 July, or anywhere along the line, and revealed that at this time Haig and Rawlinson were very much collaborating when it came to deciding on their next Somme step.
In practice, this all meant that GHQ and Fourth Army conceded that the rest of 1 July would be spent consolidating such gains as there were, and deploying reserves ahead of operations restarting on 2 July. From about 4 p.m., 12th (Eastern) Division was placed at the disposal of III Corps to relieve the casualty-depleted 8th Division, and 25th Division was moved nearer to X Corps.58 At 5 p.m., and not a minute earlier, 1st Cavalry and 2nd Indian Cavalry Divisions were ordered by Reserve Army, still under Rawlinson, to return to their concentration area near Querrieu, and about three hours later these, along with 3rd Cavalry Division, were told they were highly unlikely to be used on 2 July.59 Haig’s visit to II Corps headquarters at Villers-Bocage saw 23rd and 38th (Welsh) Divisions ordered to move closer to the front at 7 p.m.60 The 23rd moved up behind XV and III Corps to the area vacated by the 12th, while the 38th replaced the 25th behind X and VIII Corps.61 The 23rd and 38th were now at Rawlinson’s disposal, and Haig gave his Fourth Army commander a ‘hint not to use them up too soon.’62 In Haig’s and Rawlinson’s minds, all the pieces were in place to resume the offensive on 2 July, just as they had agreed that afternoon, but tellingly neither saw any immediate role for the cavalry. It was in the light of this that Congreve decided on consolidation. Rawlinson, far from wrecking Haig’s plans on 1 July,63 did not stand the cavalry down too early, and in actual fact collaborated closely with the C-in-C on this matter and in deciding how they might together develop the offensive going forward.
‘I see now that General Haig realised the situation,’ wrote Lieutenant-Colonel William Norman, 21st Manchesters, in 1930 with the benefit of 14 years’ hindsight. This was in stark contrast to his battle-day thinking. On 1 July, Norm
an was at Mametz, and like many others, at the time and on the spot, had been initially unable to ‘understand why advantage was not taken of what was obviously a far-flung success [in and around that part of the battlefield].’64
That night, at about 10 p.m., Rawlinson issued orders for operations on 2 July.65 He believed, almost certainly paraphrasing Haig, that a ‘large part of the German Reserves have now been drawn in and it is essential to keep up the pressure and wear out the defence.’66 Important tactical points in the German front- and intermediate-line defences needed to be secured with a ‘view to an ultimate attack on the German second line.’67 Congreve’s XIII Corps was told to continue consolidating its gains and prepare for an operation in conjunction with Horne’s XV Corps against Mametz Wood. Fifteenth Corps was also to take Fricourt and the wood behind it, and push up Willow Stream valley to Bottom Wood. It was to make contact with III Corps, which was falsely still believed to be in Contalmaison. Pulteney’s III Corps was to renew its attempt to take La Boisselle and Ovillers and secure Contalmaison. Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps and Morland’s X Corps, both now allocated to Gough’s Reserve Army, were to capture the whole German front-line position and advance to the intermediate line beyond. Haig’s grand plans for the offensive were now devolving into something much less than he had hoped for, but they were still in keeping with the more conservative aspects and stated objectives in his pre-battle operational orders.
First day of the Somme Page 45