The Great War

by Peter Hart

  The failure of his spring offensives did not alter Joffre’s overall perspective of the war. In his view the situation had not changed: the French and British still had to bear their burden on the Western Front in order to help Russia on the Eastern Front. He saw the British fixation with the Gallipoli Campaign, which had begun in 1915, as a costly distraction which contributed nothing to the fight against the real prime enemy, Germany. Russia was different: she was deploying hundreds of thousands of troops against the Germans and must be supported, as the French Minister of War made clear in a letter of 14 August.

  The Russian Army has now been retreating for 3 months, during which the daily battle losses have been stupendous. All the officers returning from the front state that it is impossible to picture the horrors of this continual struggle, in which the artillery is without ammunition and the infantry without rifles. Our offensive is, therefore, awaited with utmost impatience. I am assured that the same question is being asked everywhere: what are the French doing?22

  Minister of War Alexandre Millerand

  This was one of the exigencies of alliance warfare, and Joffre was determined that France could not – and would not – let Russia down. The British were dragged along on the coat-tails of the French, their contribution generally unenthusiastic in tenor, distracted, still largely symbolic and of peripheral importance.

  The Autumn Offensives, 25 September 1915

  In planning for his autumn offensives Joffre tweaked his operational ideas to reflect what had been learnt in the earlier campaigns. The lessons were by no means clear and there was wide disagreement within the French High Command as to the best way to proceed. Joffre now sought, not an easily plugged breakthrough on a narrow front, but a wide-ranging series of mutually supporting major offensives to promote confusion in the German High Command, prevent the concentrated deployment of German reserves and precipitate a wholesale rupture of the lines at the decisive point. Foch, however, favoured more restrained processes of methodical attack, somewhat similar in concept to ‘bite and hold’, consisting of a series of carefully planned and prepared steps, delineated by the range of the field artillery batteries. The far less senior, but increasingly highly respected Pétain saw the war in terms of attrition. To him victory would belong to the last man standing, and so he advocated a largely defensive strategy designed to conserve manpower with only limited well-prepared attacks to avoid excessive losses. The French tragedy would be that while none of these approaches was wrong per se, nor did they offer a coherent solution to the problems of waging a successful offensive in the conditions on the Western Front in 1915. Week by week, month by month, the German lines became stronger: more trenches and barbed wire; the advent of deeper dugouts, concrete fortifications and self-contained redoubts. A whole second trench system was established, a couple of miles behind the first, out of field artillery range and, where possible, sited on a reverse slope to avoid direct observation. The German artillery had also begun to refine its tactics, preparing different types of barrages to counter the different stages of the French attacks. Thus there was a barrage ready to fall on the forming-up trenches, the whirlwind bombardment of the French front line and finally a curtain barrage across No Man’s Land to break up the attack and isolate any troops fortunate enough to break into the German front line.

  The German numbers may have fallen on the Western Front, thanks to the despatch of units to bolster the Eastern Front offensives, but those that remained were increasingly well dug in. Joffre had his own answer to the augmented German defences: to blast them from the face of the earth. He demanded ever more heavy artillery, with the intention of achieving a rough parity of numbers with his field artillery. As a result, by the summer of 1915 the French had 4,646 field guns and 3,538 heavy guns. These were intended to act like an old-fashioned battering ram in the new version of siege warfare.

  After a root and branch analysis of the options by his staff, Joffre decided to launch the autumn offensives in the Artois and Champagne on 25 September. The lure of the Vimy Ridge in Artois and the railway junctions tucked just behind the German lines at Mézières in the Champagne region was as strong as ever. This time the main attack would be carried out by the Fourth Army in Champagne, with significant ‘secondary’ attacks to be launched on the same day by the Tenth Army in the Artois and by the British First Army at Loos. These, it was fondly hoped, would suck in German reserves away from the main attack. Ultimately, Joffre had his eye on the Artois and Champagne offensives squeezing out the so-called Noyon Salient pointing towards Paris. In July 1915, at a conference held at Chantilly with the intention of establishing a common Allied policy, Joffre expressed his strategic preferences and the British, while refusing on principle to accept his direct command, none the less eventually fell into line. The British Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, and Sir John French would have preferred to have waited until 1916 when they believed all the Allies would be ready to attack at full strength, but such prevarications were overwhelmed by the continuing deterioration of the Russian position. For the British the Loos Offensive would be characterised as the ‘Big Push’, the moment when their ‘New’ Armies would at last begin to play a major role in the war; for the French it was just more of the same.

  The German defences facing the French Tenth Army in the Vimy Ridge area were exceptionally strong and the attacks launched at 12.25 on 25 September had little success. It was an excruciating business for the advancing French infantry, coming to terms with their own mortality in a matter of moments.

  ‘En avant!’ The command was passed rapidly as if transmitted by an electric current. Without hesitation we leapt over the parapet. Immediately men were hit and fell back heavily into the trench. Straining every sinew, the survivors threw themselves towards the enemy, screaming. The firing redoubled in intensity; a roaring fire of rifle and machine guns. The bullets come from everywhere. I hear the rattle in my ears, an endless banging. One bullet cuts the ‘Zero’ from my tunic collar, others pierce my greatcoat and shred the handkerchief in my trousers. The barrage of artillery shells fall close around us. The noise was indescribable, terrifying explosions erupt everywhere, and acrid smoke rises up. All around me, our assaulting wave is crumbling, falling apart; men tumbling on top of each other. The Adjutant ran behind me, he was wounded in the forehead and blood trickled down his cheek. He shouted, ‘The bastards! They’ve punctured my brandy flask! En avant! En avant!’ brandishing his revolver, apparently indifferent to his wound, but another bullet finishes him off. For a few appalling seconds, I run on, with fixed bayonet. How far have I got: 50 metres, 100 metres? I don’t know. Suddenly, I am brutally brought up short and fall full length to the ground without letting go of my rifle, A bullet or shrapnel ball has hit me, but at the time, I don’t know what it was, or where I have been hit. I got up immediately and went forward looking for a hole in which to hide. At the same time I did not let go of my rifle. How could I go on? I un-sling all my kit, my belt, my bandolier and threw myself into a shell hole. This will save me. Barely hidden behind in this shallow hole, I can draw breath and reflect. I can feel that I have been wounded in the left buttock; blood flows but it doesn’t bother me – I want to save my skin and completely forget the pain. The bullets continue to hiss past, the shells fall and the last remnants still standing are soon killed.22

  Sergeant Émile Morin, 60th Infantry Regiment

  While some gains were made on the Lorette Spur towards Souchez, further south the tale was one of unrelieved slaughter with nothing gained. Further thrusts over the next day brought the capture of Souchez and significant gains on Vimy Ridge, but Joffre was losing faith in the operations and came to consider them as more of a demonstration to encourage the British attacking further north at Loos before the operations were suspended on 30 September.

  The focal point of Joffre’s plans was the assault by the Second and Fourth Armies in the Champagne area on a front once again stretching from Auberive to Massiges and with su
pporting attacks with the centre facing the grim killing ground of the hills of the Bois de Perthes. At 09.15 on 25 September an enormous force of eighteen divisions attacked the German positions. Wave upon wave of troops advanced across No Man’s Land. In places they broke through, employing specially trained soldiers to mop up German resistance, while the assault troops pushed on to the next trenches. In places three German lines were over-run and there were genuine hopes of a real breakthrough. But lurking a further one and a half to two miles behind this front line system was the second set of German trenches, inviolate on reverse hill slopes, providing an obstacle to further advances. Over the next few days the French would try to break through, but found it difficult to move sufficient artillery forward, while the Germans brought up their reserves to allow them to launch stinging counter-attacks whenever, and wherever, lodgements were made. Further attacks brought sharply diminishing returns and vastly increased casualties until Joffre was again forced to suspend the offensive, on 30 September.

  Thus the great Artois and Champagne Offensives were both ignominiously closed down, with brief reprises in October achieving nothing but more casualties. The battlefields of Champagne had become places of dread to the French troops, as its desolate landscape bleached of hope sucked them in and surrounded them.

  The Champagne battlefields had a strange appearance! Moist soil, chalky, white and grey. A little vegetation at the camp exit – some clumps of meagre trees – followed by the great sad and desolate plain, like a vast cemetery for the living. After an hour’s march in the open, we advanced in single file through communication trenches filled with water and white mud, freezing cold and glutinous. Ever since we set off it rained non-stop, like melted snow. After marching for 3 long hours we at last reached the trenches, but what a pitiable state of utter filth! The rain never stopped falling. We occupied the front line trench and found the Germans were about 100 metres from us. Apart from surprise attacks, it was no longer a war of bombs and grenades; the artillery was the real threat. The sector, for the moment, was pretty quiet. The temperature was totally freezing, the rain had stopped, but what mud! We were covered from head to foot! That evening, my half-section was not on duty. When night fell, we divided into ten two-man dugouts about 2 metres deep underneath the parapet. We were obliged to bail out the water that flooded our shelters, to a depth of about 50 centimetres: water seeping down the chalk walls. We used a canvas bucket and made a chain, passing it back to throw the water behind the parapet. After half an hour of this toil, we wrapped ourselves in our soaking wet blankets, heads resting against the walls – luckily our helmets protected us from some of the damp. We tried to get some sleep, but the cold made it impossible. Moreover, the water seeped in and soon forced us to repeat the operation. A few shells bursting from time to time reminding us of the reality of our position.23

  Corporal Henri Laporte, 2nd Battalion, 151st Infantry Regiment

  The French had fired nearly 5 million shells in pursuit of the elusive breakthrough, with their combined losses in the Artois and Champagne offensives totalling a vast 191,795. Yet all for nothing, when confronted with the vastly improved German defence works and tactics.

  The Battle of Loos

  As part of the French autumn offensive, the British were required to launch a full-scale attack on the widest possible front at Loos on 25 September 1915. The late summer months had featured a good deal of attempted backsliding by the British, using a variety of excuses, but Sir John French was kept to the mark by the obdurate Joffre, who was resolute that the BEF would attack alongside the Tenth Army in the Artois. Yet there were plentiful causes for concern. The attack would be carried out by the IV Corps, led by Rawlinson, and the I Corps, led by Lieutenant General Sir Hubert Gough, of Haig’s First Army. But the BEF lacked the guns and shells for a bombardment on such a wide front, with only 533 guns to carry out a 11,200-yard frontage of two strongly fortified German trench lines. In desperation, it was decided to use a release of cloud gas for the first time to cover the gaping chasm between ambition and reality. There could be no hurricane bombardment as at Neuve Chapelle; that was simply impossible. Instead, a four-day preliminary bombardment to grind down the German defences would precede the release of gas and the infantry assault across No Man’s Land. Soon preparations were underway for the gas attack.

  On the 19th the gas cylinders were brought up: no vocabulary could express the men’s thoughts of those cylinders as they struggled and sweated up the narrow trenches, festooned with detached telephone wires that gripped sometimes the throat, sometimes the feet. The men were then instructed in the method of working the gas cylinders, in what to do in case they became casualties, or in the case of a direct hit on one of the cylinders both prior to and during that attack. By the 20th everything was ready. The cylinders were all in position. The long, double, rectangular nozzles that were to discharge the gas clear of the parapet were ready to be joined up. With the approach of Zero Hour on the 25th September we were ready. The nozzles had been screwed on to the cylinders, and we were standing by in our gas masks. At 5.30 am the gas was released. On the front of our division the wind was in the right direction and the right strength – the gas went over well. When the cylinders were exhausted, a smoke screen was put down, the trenches were bridged over with duckboards, and the infantry, wearing their gas masks, went over at 6.30 am.25

  Lieutenant H. G. Picton Davies, 4th Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  The British infantry, wearing their ‘P’ gas helmets to protect them from their own gas, were generally inexperienced and their accounts of going over the top often betray a certain casualness borne of naivety.

  I remember having difficulty in breathing and was stumbling along. After a few minutes of this I thought I would sniff the air, it didn’t seem too bad to me so I took my helmet off. I thought I was completely alone in No Man’s Land but then I started to stumble on wounded men – three of them. From them I collected a shovel, a pick and an artillery disc. So, weighed down with all this extra kit I carried on towards the German lines, then when I got to within about 20 yards of their wire, I realised there may still be some Germans there and I wouldn’t be able to fight with all this extra kit so I threw it aside. I got to the German front line and it seemed much deeper than our trenches and I thought it was unoccupied, although very quickly other members of ‘D’ Company appeared and we started work in consolidating the position. There was soon a shortage of sandbags so a working party was organised to scrounge these from men in the old No Man’s Land. Then one of my soldiers said to me, ‘Corporal, there’s some Germans in this dugout!’ So I said, ‘Well, get them out!’ The reply came back, ‘Corporal, they won’t come out!’ So I then said, ‘Well, we’ll see about that!’ It seemed that there were two entrances/exits to this particular dugout so I posted two men at one of them and I went down the other with one other man. I led with my bayonet fixed and he had a grenade ready. I shouted down, ‘Anybody there?’ A reply came in reasonable English, ‘Yes!’ I said, ‘How many?’ The response to this question was ‘Two!’ So I ordered them to come out one at a time and we retired to the dugout entrance. Eventually nine Germans appeared and we took possession of their very fine helmets.26

  Lance Corporal Reginald Thorpe-Tracey, 1/6th London Regiment

  Although the British had some early success, capturing the town of Loos, they could not break through the German second line. Also, the deployment of the reserve divisions was disrupted by problems in command and control, as Sir John French had held them too far back to be deployed when needed, causing a loss of momentum. The fighting lasted several days, but even as fresh British troops were brought into battle, so the Germans moved in their own reserves and the battle degenerated into the usual round of attacks and counter-attacks. Final British casualties at Loos approached 50,500, while Germans losses stood at around, 20,000. Continental warfare was finally beckoning for the BEF.

  IT WAS EVIDENT AS 1915 DREW TO A CLOSE that, although the Allies had made consi
derable advances in their tactical thinking, the Germans had made substantive defensive developments which trumped that progress. Relatively speaking, the German tactical rollercoaster was in the ascendant: multiple lines of well-constructed trenches; the introduction of deep dugouts; the depth and complexity of barbed wire entanglements; the deployment of more machine guns with deadly interlocking fields of fire; the use of villages and farms to form strongpoints; the massed artillery batteries waiting to destroy anything and everything that showed itself above ground. In France, whisperings had begun about the command of Joffre. After all, by the end of 1915 the French had suffered over 2 million casualties, of which 730,000 were dead. Joffre’s failure to gain success despite the sacrifice of so many French lives had done his reputation serious damage, although his status as the victor of the Marne protected him for the moment.

  His British counterpart was not so lucky. It may not have been fair, but the failure of the British 1915 offensives – and in particular the debacle at Loos – demanded a scapegoat and Field Marshal Sir John French was the obvious candidate. In truth French, although an able cavalry leader in the Boer War, had never been up to the demands of his role in this frightening new military landscape. He had floundered tactically, failed to establish the necessary rapport with his French counterparts, lacked the administrative grip required in such a nightmarish logistical situation, and had no underlying vision of the war to guide him through the horrendous challenges his troops faced on a daily basis. Above all, Sir John French had lost the confidence of his political masters and, after some unsavoury manoeuvring, he was replaced as Commander in Chief by General Sir Douglas Haig on 19 December 1915. As the BEF moved forward into 1916, it was clear that the Battles of Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos in which it was involved were mere skirmishes when compared with the battles fought by the French Army in 1915. The French had continued to bear the brunt of the strain of facing the German Army on the Western Front and their casualties had been excruciatingly high. It was only their blood sacrifice that had given the BEF the time to gather its resources and train its men in the basic language of war.