Breakdown

by Taylor Downing

  Despite the loss of their commanding officer, the remaining men of the third wave still advanced: ‘We was singing “John Peel” like mad … an’ cheerin’ to raise the dead.’ As he moved forward the private received the first of his wounds. ‘I got a bullet in me arm – here – directly I was on the parapet, an’ somehow it made me stumble like an’ I fell. But I went on as quick as I could; me havin’ the bombs ye see … It was just past their first line I got this one in me hand. A bit sore like that was, more’n the arm, but not so very bad but what I got on all right till this third one got me here [in the thigh] an’ I fell in a shell hole near the second line.’ The private had clearly succeeded in reaching the Leipzig Redoubt, where he handed over his bombs to a lance corporal. He remained in the shell hole, bleeding and no doubt in great pain, until the evening when stretcher bearers came out, although the Germans continued to rake the area with machine gun fire. The private crawled into a trench and across a pile of German corpses, finally reaching British lines. ‘T’was after dark I got in and the MO at the dressing station he said, “You’re all right, lad,” he said like that, an’ he gave me a cigarette.’

  Stretcher bearers took the wounded man back to a field ambulance unit from where he was evacuated. But despite the destruction of his battalion, his final comment to the local paper was one of defiance: ‘Our boys is all right. Ye see they’re not afeared o’ the Boche – not at all.’10

  For the rest of X Corps, the day proved typical of 1 July 1916. There were some tremendous achievements but they were frittered away during the long and bloody day. For the men of the 36th Division, almost entirely Protestants who had been members of the Ulster Volunteer Force before the war, the advance fell on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, the great victory of William of Orange over the Catholic armies in 1690.11 They went forward with unbounded optimism and confidence, shouting the old Ulster battle cries ‘No surrender’ and ‘Remember 1690’. Some even wore Orange sashes and ribbons as they advanced, ‘with rifles sloped and the sun glistening on their fixed bayonets, keeping their alignment and distance as well as if on ceremonial parade, unfaltering, unwavering’.12 Despite heavy losses, the 9th and 10th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, supported by the Royal Irish Rifles, broke right through the German front line and got into the Schwaben Redoubt on the reverse side of the ridge, in the German second line. Four hundred prisoners were taken. The Inniskillings almost fought their way to the next redoubt but being by now, ironically, ahead of schedule, they were shelled by the British artillery, who did not know they were so far forward. As a consequence the Ulstermen got no further than the Schwaben Redoubt, although it soon proved impossible to reinforce those who were holding the position because of intense and accurate enemy shelling. Once again, groups of attackers who had penetrated the enemy lines found themselves isolated from reinforcements and steadily running out of water and ammunition.

  Meanwhile, the 32nd Division had little success beyond the Highlanders’ capture of the western edge of the Leipzig Redoubt. The ruins of Thiepval proved impossible to storm. The machine guns hidden in the cellars of the ruins swept the approach up the hill to the spur with deadly fire, causing tremendous losses. The situation was confused when an Allied pilot reported seeing what he thought were khaki uniforms moving about in the village, so the artillery were told to cease their bombardment. The corps and divisional commanders had no reliable information all day as to what was happening as the usual fog of war descended on the battlefield. Accordingly, the reserve division of X Corps, 49th Division, which could have made a real difference at either the Schwaben Redoubt or at the Leipzig salient, was instead broken up, separate battalions being dispatched to different parts of the front where they were too small to have an impact.

  Intense fighting continued all day long and by afternoon the Germans were counter-attacking heavily, although their reserves were held up by British artillery fire. Of the Schwaben Redoubt, the German commander announced that it was a ‘point of honour for the division to recapture this important point today’.13 By late that evening they had overwhelmed the remnants of the Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Irish Rifles, who had tried desperately to hold on to the position but were now killed or forced to surrender. The commander of the 9th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles described the scene as a ‘field of gore’ where ‘seven hundred dead and wounded lie around in perhaps a quarter of a mile square’.14

  By the end of the day British forces had been pushed back everywhere and their only gain was the Leipzig Redoubt, rushed by the Highlanders in the first minutes of the battle. The 32nd Division had lost 3,949 men, including the Lonsdales; 36th Division had lost 5,104 men killed, wounded, missing and taken prisoner. But the glory of the attack on the Schwaben Redoubt would live on in Ulster history.

  It took some time for the senior commanders to take stock of what had happened on the first day of the battle. Haig seems to have been the first to grasp that victory had been achieved in the south and that this was the area in which to press forward over the next few days. But once again he was at cross-purposes with Rawlinson who, still clinging to his ‘bite and hold’ strategy, hesitated for several days waiting for German counter-attacks. Haig failed to press Rawlinson into action and the time lost was critical. The German army had known an offensive was coming, but had been surprised by the scale of the assault and the width of the front under attack. Their losses had been severe. In the seven-day bombardment the Germans had suffered about 7,000 casualties, while about 10–12,000 men had been killed, wounded and taken prisoner on the first day.15 Although German losses amounted to barely one-third of those sustained by the Allies, this was still serious, and on parts of the front the Germans were reeling. The woods along the southern tip of the Thiepval ridge, at Delville, Trones and Mametz, were almost empty of German troops and a determined attempt to seize them would have captured important parts of the German second line, saving tens of thousands of lives that would be lost trying to take them in the coming weeks.

  However, Haig did make some changes at senior level. The commander of the 46th (Midland) Division, Major-General the Hon. Edward Montagu-Stuart-Wortley, had failed to press his attack at the very northern end of the battlefield in the diversionary action at Gommecourt. The other division involved in this action, the 56th (London) Division, having fought well but suffered heavy losses, had been supposed to meet up with the men of the 46th behind Gommecourt Wood, thereby cutting it off. But Montagu-Stuart-Wortley had called off his attacks in the afternoon when he realised they had been unsuccessful, leaving the Londoners of the 56th isolated and exposed. Haig called for a court of enquiry to investigate the failure, but before its conclusion he dismissed Montagu-Stuart-Wortley and sent him home in disgrace for failing to show the appropriate fighting spirit, a procedure known as ‘degumming’. Even though, by calling off his attack, the general had saved the lives of many hundreds if not thousands of his men, Haig was making it absolutely clear that he would not allow units or commanders to fail to show the right fighting spirit.16 Major-General Thomas Pilcher, commander of the 17th (Northern) Division, was also sent home in disgrace a few days later, accused of lacking initiative and drive, even though one of the division’s battalions had suffered the highest casualty rate on 1 July. Montagu-Stuart-Wortley and Pilcher were not the last generals to be sent home in disgrace from the Somme, but their examples were there for all to see, just as Haig intended.

  The other significant change Haig made was to split Fourth Army. He wanted to promote his protégé General Hubert Gough, whose Reserve Army had stood about during 1 July with nothing to do. In fact Rawlinson had stood down the reserves at lunchtime, just at the point when they could have made a real difference in the south. Haig wanted to bring Gough’s aggressive spirit to bear on decision-making. So the two corps to the north of the Albert–Bapaume road were reassigned to Gough and his Reserve Army. The men of 32nd Division, including the Lonsdales, now had a new army commander, although very few of them woul
d have been aware of this, or cared much if they had known. But his appointment would later prove to be critical for them.

  For the 250-odd survivors in the Lonsdales, the days after the massacre of 1 July proved particularly gruelling. They were withdrawn from the front and put into the reserve line for a week. But there was not much rest to be had. The survivors were formed into two incomplete companies and placed under the command of two young second lieutenants, Ross and Welsh, who had not taken part in the failed assault. Both men had been in OTCs two years before. Captain Palmer from the 2nd KOYLI was given temporary command of the battalion. But effective leadership of the dazed survivors was now in the hands of a handful of NCOs.

  For several days the men had to sort out the kit of those who had been killed and personal effects were sent to their families. Then they were told to carry rations up to the front-line troops. This was a slow, frustrating business, hampered by incessant German shelling of the communication trenches. Most unpleasantly of all, the survivors had to dig out the dead bodies of their own pals and those of other units; according to a later report, they lived for several days ‘in the atmosphere of decomposed bodies’.

  No descriptions of this gruesome week by members of the battalion have survived. But Gerald Brenan of the 5th Gloucesters, who was put on similar duty at exactly the same time, later recalled how ghastly it had been when he ‘was brought face to face and in the most repellent way with the consequences of the battle’. Brenan described the task he was given: ‘My platoon was detailed for a burying party. The bodies of our men who had been mashed to pieces in the assault trenches had been brought up by night on a trench railway and bundled out onto the ground. Legs had broken off from trunks, heads came off at a touch, and nauseous liquids oozed out of the cavities. The stench was overpowering. Our job was to cut off the identity disks and bury these decomposing corpses in shallow trenches. After a few hours of this the fear of death had so entered into me that if I had been ordered to go over the top next morning I should not have been able to.’17

  On the evening of Saturday 8 July, the two half-companies of the Lonsdales were sent back to the front line. They immediately came under shell fire from German artillery. What happened next was later recorded in detail.18 A few hours after arriving back in the trenches, the MO, Lieutenant George Kirkwood, diagnosed nine men with Shell Shock W. On the following day, Sunday 9 July, the temporary battalion commander, Captain Palmer, who had not yet had time to get to know his men, received an order from Brigadier Jardine that there was to be a bombing assault that night on the enemy trenches. The Lonsdales were to cross No Man’s Land and capture about 200 yards of German front line, bombing the Germans out of their dugouts. This was part of an attempt to ‘straighten the line’ in advance of a new offensive in a few days’ time. Palmer instructed Second Lieutenant Ross to organise his troops for an assault.

  For the men, whose memories of witnessing the slaughter of the bulk of the battalion were only a week old, it was the last straw. At 9 p.m. on Sunday evening, three and a half hours before the raid was due to take place, several men went to see Ross and told him they were sick ‘as their nerves could not stand’. They asked to see the MO. Ross said, ‘I thought that if I allowed this all the men of the party would do the same as their nerves were in the same condition. I therefore refused the request.’ This was reported back to Captain Palmer, who expressed surprise: the young officers had earlier been confident that they could organise the men for an attack. At 10.45 p.m., Palmer decided he should send for the MO, and Lieutenant Kirkwood was dispatched from his aid post into the forward trenches.

  Kirkwood, who had been with the battalion since its training days in England eight months before, knew the men well and was a popular MO. On his way up to the front through the communication trench, several men said they wanted to see him, but he refused to stop and hurried forward. When he reached the forward trench the Germans had started to shell it again and Captain Palmer was ‘prostrate’, so the temporary adjutant, Second Lieutenant Lowthian, who had been the battalion machine gun officer before 1 July, asked Kirkwood to carry out a medical inspection of the men to see if they were fit to fight. Kirkwood immediately saw what should have been obvious to any experienced officer. The men were at their nerves’ end. The heavy shelling had no doubt brought fears that even more death and destruction was to follow the nightmare of the previous Saturday.

  Kirkwood came quickly to his conclusion. He decided the whole unit was ‘unfit’. As it was now only an hour or so before the attack was due to take place, Kirkwood wrote a short report which Lieutenant Ross himself immediately took back to brigade headquarters. It stated: ‘In view of the bombing attack to be carried out by 11th Border Regt, I must hereby testify to their unfitness for such an operation as few, if any, are not suffering from some degree of shell shock. 9 July 1916. Signed George H Kirkwood, Lieutenant RAMC.’

  At 11.45 p.m., Brigadier Jardine told Ross that he did not believe the MO’s report and the attack was to go ahead as planned. Ross pleaded for a delay, but this too was denied. He went back to the front and ordered the men to follow him. He would lead the party and 2nd Lieutenant Twynam, the other infantry officer who had survived the 1 July attack, would bring up the rear. The core of the attacking party would be formed by four experienced sergeants who had also survived the massacre a week before.

  The bombing party prepared to head into a sap in No Man’s Land, but the attempt to launch the attack was a fiasco. Several men got lost in the trenches, which had been rebuilt after recent shell fire. Others took a wrong turning. As they passed the bomb store where they were to pick up grenades to throw into the enemy lines, many men failed to collect bombs. Others simply refused to go over the top. It became clear to Ross that he could not lead his men forward; as he later said, ‘I knew that there was great lack of the offensive spirit in the party.’ As he could not get the men to advance, Ross bravely decided to use his own initiative, and he abandoned the assault soon after 1 a.m.

  This was clearly a collective act of disobedience. It was not a mutiny, as the men continued to act, or at least pretend to act, in a combat role. But they were evidently opposed to going over the top again, for they had failed to pick up grenades from the bomb store and had become lost in the trenches. Two crucial elements of unit cohesion had collapsed in the 11th Borders. They had lost their esprit de corps after the massacre of 1 July and the death of the commanding officer. The morale of the battalion was at rock bottom. And the remaining junior officers had neither sufficient status with the men to motivate them, nor the ability to intervene and protect them from what they thought were bad orders. The duty of care junior officers usually showed towards the welfare of their men was entirely missing.19

  When Brigadier Jardine heard of the failure of the attack he was furious. He ordered the arrest of the four sergeants on a charge of cowardice. The officer commanding the 32nd Division, General Rycroft, announced on the following morning that a court of enquiry would be held to investigate what had gone wrong. Clearly, the high command was on edge. In the view of senior officers, distant as they were from the men in the front trenches, the incidence of shell shock was getting out of hand. Was this a case of mass malingering, or had shell shock infected all the remaining men of the battalion? Whatever was happening, it had to be stamped on. Someone had to be blamed for the fiasco of the night before. Most importantly for army discipline and morale, an example must be set.

  The court of enquiry was quickly convened and took place three days later on 13 July. It was not a court martial but was intended to find out exactly what had happened. But everyone who attended knew how serious this was. First to give evidence was Captain Palmer, the temporary battalion commander. He tried to blame Ross, saying that he should have told him in advance about the condition of the men. Ross then gave his evidence, accepting responsibility for calling off the assault but saying ‘the men were not ready’ to fight. Clearly he had sympathy with those under his command. W
hen Lieutenant Twynham gave his evidence he said that ‘one or two dozen’ men had come to see him during the course of the Sunday saying they were suffering from shell shock. He said he had tried to reason with them and told them ‘to pull themselves together’, advising them to get ‘as much rest as possible as they had been carrying up equipment all day’. In his evidence, Lieutenant Lowthian, the temporary adjutant, clearly felt that Palmer bore some responsibility for not knowing how bad the situation was.

  Then came the turn of Lieutenant Kirkwood, the MO. Knowing that army courts of enquiry often dismissed the evidence of MOs, he had prepared a certificate outlining in full why he had decided the men were not in a fit state to go over the top. Having already sent this certificate to brigade headquarters, he stood by it during the court proceedings. It makes for fascinating reading.

  Kirkwood wrote:

  I gave my opinion that the men were unfit, and that opinion was based on the following,

  The attack on 1st July when the battalion lost all its officers and more than half of the men had had a most demoralizing effect and the men had not recovered their mental equilibrium.