First day of the Somme

by Andrew Macdonald

  Haig wanted to keep the pressure on the enemy and still saw opportunities ahead. It was this that his chief of intelligence referred to when he wrote late on 1 July that the ‘present situation offers great possibilities, if we can grasp them.’68 He continued: ‘On the whole, our interpretation of the information received has been fairly good.’69 Gough disagreed. Late that night he found his new command, VIII and X Corps, in such a poor state that he cancelled Rawlinson’s orders for them.70 It was this, plus a growing awareness of the north–south battlefield divide, that led Haig, on 2 July, to focus his attentions on developing gains south of the Albert–Bapaume road, while limiting those to the north of Leipzig Redoubt. Haig thus told Rawlinson that day to take Fricourt and neighbouring villages so as to ‘reduce the number of our flanks, and then advance on [the] Enemy’s second line [in that area].’71 Rawlinson reverted to ‘bite-and-hold’ type and placed undue emphasis on the former two elements. He told Haig he was not in favour of pressing on in the Montauban area.72 The result was two frustrating weeks of smallscale, bloody operations to straighten Fourth Army’s lines, which cost no fewer than 25,000 casualties, before the German second position was successfully attacked on 14 July. Come lunchtime on 2 July, though, Gough was reorganising the two shattered corps of his Reserve Army, Rawlinson was bent on imposing step-by-step linear order to his front, and the first kernels of frustration were seeded in Haig’s mind as any hope of maintaining operational momentum in the southern part of his battlefield began to fade.

  That night Haig sent a telegram to Rawlinson, Gough and Allenby:

  The enemy has lost heavily and is severely shaken. We have not yet completely broken down his resistance on the front attacked, and there is still hard fighting to be done, but we have gone a long way towards beating him, and a considerable success is within our reach. He has few reserves available while we have many, and his power to resist successfully a continued and determined prosecution of our attack is limited.73

  In brief, Haig had revisited his four-stage operational thinking, and, at this time, saw the Somme as very much a wearing-out battle, one of attrition. Gone for the moment were his hopes of a decisive blow that would ultimately lead to victory, but they would resurface again later in 1916.

  For Gough this marked a disappointing shift in thinking: ‘In one day my thoughts and ideas had to move from consideration of a victorious pursuit to those of rehabilitation of the shattered wing of an army.’74 Keep in mind these words were penned by Gough, a man described by Haig’s chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Sir Launcelot Kiggell, as a ‘thruster’ and widely regarded as one of the most bullish, attack-minded generals on the Western Front.75

  By contrast, there was optimism aplenty among the top brass of the French Sixth Army. Contrary to the overall British experience, the French had made excellent gains astride the Somme. Fayolle’s army had benefitted from a prolonged preparatory barrage that destroyed many German defensive works and artillery batteries and had inflicted heavy casualties. North of the waterway, the French XX Corps had advanced immediately south of Congreve’s men. Suffering about 1398 casualties,76 it had claimed a roughly 1500-yard-deep slice of land between Hardecourt and Curlu, capturing the latter village from Châles de Beaulieu’s 12th Infantry Division. To the south, 1st Colonial and XXXV Corps had begun two hours later. Thanks to overwhelming artillery supremacy they had pushed 1800–2650 yards east against 121st Infantry Division and elements of 11th Infantry Division, capturing the villages of Bequincourt, Dompierre and Fay, but pulling up short of Frise, Herbécourt, Assevillers and Estrées. They suffered no fewer than 4337 casualties, probably around 4500.77 The timing and strength of this attack surprised German defenders. Neither General-der-Infanterie Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of General Staff, Supreme Army Command, nor Below believed the Verdunweakened French had either the manpower or resources to launch a meaningful attack on the Somme. They were proved very wrong.78 By 9.45 p.m. Fayolle’s army had seized its objectives and was within reach of the German second defensive line. The contrast with Haig’s performance in the northern half of the coalition battlefield was striking.

  Grand-bellied General Joseph Joffre, France’s C-in-C, turned up at Fayolle’s headquarters that afternoon to get the news first-hand. Fayolle said ‘Papa’ Joffre was soon beaming,79 but his elation was tempered by reports that the main British attack had faltered. It was this that prompted Joffre to tellingly assess that the ‘British do not yet have the skill.’ He continued:

  The Germans did not believe that the French, just emerging from the Verdun battle, would be capable of starting an offensive on the Somme. . . . They had therefore taken more precautions along the line facing the British, and this accounts for the more violent reactions which took place on their part of the line. The British also suffered from the fact that their artillerymen were less skilful than ours and their infantry less experienced.80

  As far as simple military explanations went, and despite an obvious reluctance to give any credit to the German defenders, Joffre was pretty much bang on the money.

  GERMAN COMMANDERS WERE severely rattled by events on 1 July, particularly the stronger-than-expected blow from Fayolle’s army and more generally the ground lost between Mametz and Estrées. Below was at his St Quentin headquarters all day. He had predicted the location of the Anglo-French attack. Early reports from his subordinates — Stein north of the River Somme, and to the south General-der-Infanterie Günther von Pannewitz of XVII Army Corps — confirmed his forecast as correct.81 Below quickly told Falkenhayn the Anglo-French offensive was afoot. Early on, it appeared the most threatened parts of the line were Schwaben Redoubt, potentially Fricourt, also Mametz and thereafter the defences running from Montauban, across the Somme and down to the Amiens–St Quentin road.

  Even before midday Below began committing his reserves to meet the threat. North of the Somme, 12th Reserve Division was dispatched forward to the Ginchy–Combles area, where 12th Infantry Division was in the process of being mauled. The 185th Infantry Division was committed from around Bapaume towards 26th Reserve Division’s sector, where the Schwaben Redoubt scrap was in full flight, and 11th Reserve Division began moving in behind XIV Reserve Corps’ battle front from Marcoing. South of the river, 22nd Reserve Division and the composite Division Frentz were moved into the line. Fifth Infantry Division was entrained from St Quentin, but was held up for 18 hours after several of its train carriages were destroyed in a bombing raid. If Below was uncertain about the fine detail of the fighting to midday, the headlines from Stein and particularly Pannewitz told him that from at least Mametz south his Second Army’s front-line system had been overrun in places, particularly south of the Somme, and that locally organised fightbacks were afoot.82 Everything about Below’s actions late in the morning revealed an anxious but quick-thinking general focused on propping up the tottering portions of his line to avoid the Anglo-French attempt at a breakthrough he had long feared.

  Below established a more reliable narrative of events throughout the afternoon. Between Gommecourt and La Boisselle, Stein’s corps had blocked the British attack, barring the troubling Schwaben Redoubt incursion and several smaller break-ins here and there. South of there — and then more south of Mametz than Fricourt — he viewed the situation as considerably more serious.83 Here the forward-most divisions — the 12th under Châles de Beaulieu, and the 121st — had yielded their entire front-line positions to the Anglo-French offensive on a front of about 12.4 miles, to a depth of about 1.6 miles. They had suffered numerous casualties and lost most of their artillery. Stein’s corps recorded 109 (19.1%) of its roughly 450 remaining field and heavy guns were ‘lost’ on 1 July,84 in addition to the 120 destroyed during the preparatory bombardment, and then mostly between Mametz and Curlu. South of Péronne, almost all of 121st Infantry Division’s remaining guns, from an estimated 130, were ‘put out of action’ on 1 July.85 ‘The situation west of Péronne [between Mametz and Estrées] was very uncertain,’ wrote the German
official historian.86 Throughout the afternoon Below was anxiously clockwatching as his reserves slowly worked their way forward. What Below did not know, and could not know, was that he had plenty of time to shore up his buckled defensive line thanks to Haig and Rawlinson’s lateafternoon decision against any British attempt at exploiting their few limited gains that day.

  Below’s first reserve divisions arrived forward around Montauban before dusk. During the afternoon, 12th Reserve Division advanced up to Châles de Beaulieu’s rag-tag new front line southeast of Ginchy and Combles. The division’s three regiments would launch a bloody, mostly failed counterattack to reclaim the lost ground on 2 July. As part of this operation, Reserve Infantry Regiment 51, from Second Army reserve, and Bavarian Infantry Regiment 16, the last of Stein’s corps reserves, arrived forward at the Bazentin-le-Grand–Longueval–Bernafay Wood line between about 9 p.m. and midnight.87 Further north, Reserve Infantry Regiment 121 finally erased 4th Division’s bridgehead at Heidenkopf. Thirty-six (Ulster) Division’s gains at Schwaben Redoubt were lost to counterattacks by Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 8 with assistance from other regiments. All that remained of the British initial gains on 1 July were death-sated bridgeheads at Leipzig Redoubt, Schwabenhöhe near La Boisselle, Fricourt Spur and Hill 110, plus the land between Mametz and Montauban, including the red-brick ruins of both villages. It would be three testing days before Below properly stiffened his second position with more men and artillery guns; until then he was reliant on an improvised, casualty-depleted but increasingly organised defensive line.

  German losses for 1 July are difficult to pin down precisely. Partly this is because of the way in which unit casualty statistics were compiled, and also because surviving records are fragmentary and in some cases no longer exist.88 Nevertheless, available data reveals XIV Reserve Corps reported no fewer than 15,000 (15.8%) of its nominal 95,000 men as killed, wounded or missing in the period from 23 June to at least 3 July, with up to about 12,000 (12.6%) on 1 July and roughly 3000 (3.2%) of these killed. Unsurprisingly, XIV Reserve Corps’ casualties were skewed to the southern Fricourt–Curlu area, where Anglo-French gains were greatest and numerous soldiers in 28th Reserve and 12th Infantry Divisions were captured.

  FALKENHAYN’S MEMOIRS SUGGEST a commander of calmness and objectivity, which was quite different from the puce-faced general who went looking for a scalp late on 1 July. On the chopping block was Below’s chief of staff, Generalmajor Paul Grünert, who had approved chronically ill Pannewitz’s request that day to shorten his defensive line south of the Somme.89 This contravened Falkenhayn’s doctrine of stubbornly clinging to ground. Pannewitz kept his job, but probably received a ticking off. Stein might have been rebuked, too, by Falkenhayn or Below, for approving the withdrawal of one regiment from besieged Fricourt, although there is no evidence of this. Grünert’s replacement was Oberst Fritz von Lossberg, a Hesse-born, no-nonsense defensive expert who quickly set to work appraising Second Army’s resources and positions. It is revealing that he first assessed the area attacked by Fayolle’s army, rather than Rawlinson’s, before divining the overall position of Second Army as ‘extremely serious.’90 One divisional commander at Péronne summed up the situation succinctly: ‘Well, dear Lossberg, we constantly find ourselves in places where the shit is flowing in streams.’91 Over time, Lossberg drove the implementation of a more elastic style of defencein-depth on the Somme and across the Western Front, providing Allied commanders with more tactical questions to answer in 1917–18.

  For the moment Verdun-obsessed Falkenhayn, who in the preceding months had ignored Second Army’s pleas that more resources of men and guns and aircraft be diverted to the Somme front, was taking stock of the battle. As he saw it, the Anglo-French offensive had arrived with unanticipated ferocity; he had seemingly forgotten Below’s numerous warnings. Falkenhayn appraised 1 July in goading language:

  With this superiority [in guns and men] it was inevitable that the enemy, when, on 1st of July, the storm at last broke, should score the initial successes. The gains of the English were even less than usual. North of the Bapaume–Albert road they did not advance a yard, south of the road not appreciably beyond the first German line. The French gains were greater: the whole of the German first line from Fay south of Hardecourt, north of the Somme, was lost. In several places the attack penetrated the second line. Even in this sector there was no question of the intended breakthrough having succeeded.92

  Falkenhayn rightly concluded that overall, the Anglo-French attempt to produce a breakthrough had miscarried. But this was a complex man, talented at presenting himself and his decision-making favourably while marginalising enemy achievements. On the other hand, his actions revealed a general deeply troubled by the initial Anglo-French progress. No fewer than 15 German infantry divisions were routed towards the Somme front within 10 days of 1 July. This was tacit admission that Falkenhayn believed the Haig–Joffre offensive retained breakthrough potential in its earliest days. In short, Falkenhayn recognised the looming danger, that his Somme defences were almost threadbare thanks to Verdun, and actively intervened.

  Falkenhayn probably decided to reinforce the Somme some time late on 1 July, maybe even earlier that day, when he was in contact with Below. The necessity for this was emphasised by 48-year-old Lossberg the next day. At midnight on 2 July, stern-faced Lossberg turned up at Supreme Army Command’s Mézières headquarters, and there spoke to a sleepy Falkenhayn, who had been woken for his star man’s arrival:

  I told General von Falkenhayn that the 2nd Army was much in need of reinforcement divisions, artillery, aeroplanes and other ordnance for carrying out the enormous and heavy defensive struggle that lay ahead. Sufficient reinforcements for 2nd Army, however, were only available if the attack at Verdun was discontinued immediately. . . . Only in this way would the supply of sufficient reinforcements to the Somme be possible, where the very broad and deeply indented French–English attack [between Fricourt and Estrées] was expected to continue with the objective of securing a breakthrough.93

  It was on the strength of this assessment by Lossberg that Falkenhayn initially began dispatching limited numbers of artillery and infantry from Verdun.94 Soon after, around 11 July, Falkenhayn introduced a ‘strict defensive’ policy on the Meuse, as opposed to ending the offensive there altogether, which allowed more resources to be committed to the Somme with a view to curbing the enemy’s breakthrough hopes.

  In this light, Below, who was distracted by stomach cramps and thrombosis during 1–3 July, was said to have viewed the situation ‘very seriously indeed, but also confidently.’95 Context is king. Everything about Below’s rapid deployment of his Second Army reserves and quick communication with Supreme Army Command, given the scale of the Anglo-French offensive, revealed another German general deeply troubled by what course events might yet take, and how he might achieve a favourable outcome. His concerns centred on the Anglo-French gains between Fricourt and the Somme being steadily extended and gradually rendering Second Army’s line between La Boisselle and Serre untenable. An enemy breakthrough in this general area purposefully driven towards Arras would have ‘far-reaching consequences’ for Second Army’s tenure on the Somme,96 and necessarily also for Kronprinz Rupprecht of Bavaria’s Sixth Army, which would be caught on its exposed southern flank. Below’s uptick in confidence only followed Falkenhayn’s limited allocation of reinforcements, Lossberg’s appointment and the arrival of reserves.

  It was these factors that prompted Below to state on 3 July that the outcome of the war, no less, depended on Second Army’s holding firm, irrespective of the enemy’s superiority in numbers and materiel. Lost ground would be retaken by reinforcements: ‘For the time being, we must hold our current positions without fail and improve on them by means of minor counterattacks. I forbid the voluntary relinquishment of positions. Every commander is responsible for making each man in the Army aware about this determination to fight it out. The enemy must be made to pick his way forward over c
orpses.’97 Here, Below was parroting Falkenhayn’s hard-line defensive doctrine. More than that, though, he was signalling that for Supreme Army Command and Second Army the Somme was no longer just a defensive battle, it was officially and swiftly moving towards an offensive of attrition and all of its implied horror.98

  On the British side, Haig’s grand plans for a breakthrough towards Arras were always too ambitious, as were the objectives set down in orders to facilitate this. Third and Fourth Armies simply did not have the resources to achieve their stated objectives. Meanwhile, German commanders predicted the British attack between Serre and Fricourt, but misread the strength of the French component. The lesser value they attached to the ground between Fricourt and the River Somme merely reflected this evaluation, as did the strength of their defences. It was this that led to the north–south dichotomy in the British artillery–infantry performance between 24 June and 1 July, and meant Haig threw the majority of his force at the most robust part of the German line. Break-ins that mattered at Schwaben Redoubt and, to a lesser extent, Montauban went unappreciated, and any potential they might have had was soon lost. Rawlinson, who harboured justifiable reservations throughout the planning process, made sensible command decisions on 1 July, particularly in collaborating with Haig that afternoon on the non-deployment of Reserve Army’s cavalry and infantry. Haig’s failure to achieve anything near his stated and hoped-for outcomes was due to a dislocation in his mind between his bullish strategic expectations and an under-appreciation of the tactical-level commitment needed to achieve them. Haig set the tactical parameters of battle between Gommecourt and La Boisselle in favour of Below and Stein, but they and Châles de Beaulieu reciprocated between Fricourt and Montauban, and the bittersweet tactical outcome to Britain’s first day of the Somme merely reflected this failure in command on both sides of the hill.