Passchendaele
Page 6
On 7 May, just three days after the Paris conference, Haig held a meeting with his army commanders at Doullens and briefed them on how he saw the campaign proceeding. Now that Nivelle’s offensive had been terminated, it was essential to consider what other operations should be conducted for the rest of the year. Haig made it clear that he was now absolutely focused on operations in the north to free the Belgian coast. He had decided that the attack in Flanders would be split into two phases. The first would be the capture of the Messines Ridge on or around 7 June, which would secure the southern flank for any subsequent offensive. Once this had been completed, a second and decisive main attack would go in. This ‘northern operation’ would attack the high ground east of Ypres, shatter the German defensive position in Flanders, and allow for a major advance, which would take place ‘some weeks later’. Meanwhile, operations at Arras would be brought to a halt, while guns and men were gradually sent north, in preparation for what Haig hoped would be the decisive blow.19
But who would command the assault? Haig decided to leave Plumer in charge of the preliminary operation at Messines. Second Army knew the ground, and ever since the trenches had solidified in 1915, work had begun on a series of huge mines about 80–120 feet under the German lines. Over the next two years, twenty-five mines were planted, laboriously and at great risk, through a deep layer of blue clay, right under the noses of the German defenders. These would be essential in any assault on such a commanding position, and Plumer was hopeful that they would be highly effective if properly coordinated with artillery and infantry.20 This was exactly the kind of operation that Plumer excelled at and Haig was happy to let him get on with it. As for Rawlinson, doubts about his competency, his failure to secure a clean breakthrough on the Somme the previous summer, and his penchant for preferring limited attacks to more decisive operations meant that Haig was never entirely convinced of his suitability for the main attack. There was, as he saw it, only one commander left who could possibly mount the kind of breakthrough he desired: Hubert de la Poer Gough, commander of the British Fifth Army, and a man very much in Haig’s mould. A week before Haig briefed his army commanders at Doullens, he informed Gough that, following Plumer’s attack at Messines, he would command the main ‘northern operation’ in Flanders. Surely if anyone could break out of the Ypres Salient, it would be Gough.
For Haig, the decisive moment had now arrived. For the first time, the British Army had a chance to seize the initiative and escape from the shadow of her allies, and he was determined to take it. But the idea of mounting such an ambitious series of operations did not meet with universal acceptance. Although Smuts had raised the possibility of an attack in Flanders on 1 May, other senior British politicians looked upon it with considerable unease. Lloyd George later claimed that the Government could in no way be blamed for what subsequently happened. He had not seen detailed plans until the attack on Messines had already taken place, and, in any case, there was no formal agreement that a major effort should even be made in Flanders. His understanding was that the conference in Paris had merely committed them to maintaining pressure on the Western Front, while reserving the right, at some future point, to reconsider other operations. Therefore Haig’s eagerness to get started in Flanders was of his own making and directly against the guidance he received from London.21
In truth, the subject of a Belgian offensive had been widely mooted in Whitehall since the close of 1916 and had periodically resurfaced in conversations with GHQ ever since. Work to improve the transportation links between the northern ports and Flanders had even been ordered in December 1916, presumably to support any future offensive in the region. But Lloyd George preferred to look the other way, interpreting the meeting in Paris as being in line with his strategic vision, and assuming that he would always be able to control his generals. The problem was that Haig did not see it this way. From his perspective, the Prime Minister had authorized his commanders to get on with things as they saw fit, and this was exactly what they were doing. Because Haig was not someone who would dawdle or play for time; he was, on the contrary, a man in a hurry.22
Lloyd George’s interpretation of events may have been questionable, but Haig had an equally tough job persuading his chief allies that his plan was sensible. It had been assumed throughout that the French would play some part in the attack, even if just mounting operations to draw off German reserves (as had been agreed at Paris several days earlier). Yet over the coming weeks this assumption gradually fell away. As outbreaks of mutinies and indiscipline began to spread, rumours reached GHQ that something was very wrong in the French Army. When Haig met Pétain on 18 May, he asked him bluntly:
‘Did the French intend to play their full part as promised at the Paris Conference? Could I rely on his whole-hearted co-operation?’
Nodding slowly, the French Commander-in-Chief gave Haig his full assurances that the French would continue to attack. He was planning, he said, four minor operations, including one scheduled to take place at La Malmaison, on the Chemin des Dames, on 10 June. He had also agreed to send six divisions, under General Paul Anthoine, to Flanders to cooperate on the left of Haig’s forces.23
Pétain did, however, express a murmur of concern. He was afraid that Haig would repeat the mistakes of General Nivelle. The objectives for the ‘northern offensive’ were too deep, too far into the German line, too ambitious. He suggested that they should be shorter and more limited, although, of course, that was up to the British Commander-in-Chief to decide.24 It was a warning though: a clear call to rethink some aspects of Haig’s plan; to look again at the viability of a major breakthrough and to learn lessons from Nivelle’s failure. It was a warning that Haig would have been well advised to heed. But, fossilized in his own certainties, he took no notice of it. He had confidence in his own army, because, after all, his men were improving their effectiveness all the time, as shown in their recent operations at Arras, where British and Dominion forces had supported Nivelle’s main thrust with a series of powerful preliminary attacks. Moreover, their morale remained high and they were showing little or no signs of the indiscipline that was eating away at the French. For Haig, Pétain was a pessimist, and pessimists never won wars.
Much of Haig’s confidence about what could be achieved for the remainder of the year stemmed from his profound faith in the ability of the men he commanded. By May 1917 the BEF was approaching its peak; it was split into five armies, which held the front from Boesinghe, in Flanders, down to the city of Saint-Quentin, in the rolling hills of Picardy. With over 1.8 million men under arms and supported by an impressive array of weaponry and equipment, it was, by some considerable margin, the most powerful army Britain had ever raised.25 The original expeditionary force had been manned by long-service regulars–the legendary ‘old contemptibles’–who could fire twenty-five aimed rounds per minute and put the fear of God into the German Army at Mons in 1914. Yet three years later, most of them had gone: either killed or invalided home; their ranks thinned on the murderous fields of Ypres and Aubers Ridge, Loos and the Somme.
The loss of most of Britain’s regular soldiers meant that the Army of 1917 would be a radically different organization. The ranks of the BEF had initially been bolstered by a combination of territorials and reservists, before the legions of Kitchener’s volunteers–those who had joined the colours after the outbreak of war–began deploying to France from the summer of 1915. However, the continuing expansion of the Army, combined with heavy losses at the front, meant that the British Government had to resort to more direct methods to keep up the strength of Britain’s forces. On 27 January 1916 the Military Service Act became law. This ordered the conscription of single men between eighteen and forty-one (exempting conscientious objectors or those unfit) and was followed four months later by the second Military Service Act, which extended its provisions to include all men, married or single. Thus, the Army that fought at Third Ypres was closer to being a ‘nation in arms’ than at almost any point in Britain’s hi
story.26
Haig’s army reflected the nature of the society it came from: solid, dependable, patriotic, but also light-hearted with a self-deprecating sense of humour. Perhaps it was not as effective or as glamorous as other armies, it had a certain stuffiness to it that contemporaries noted, and many of its key positions were still held by old regulars who had never been entirely happy with the rapid expansion of the Army in 1914 and 1915. Yet it was difficult to beat, tenacious and determined in defence, and increasingly effective in attack–and it brought with it the tremendous industrial and economic power of the British Empire, which was then reaching its zenith. Hundreds of thousands of men from the great Dominions of the empire would come to the Western Front during the war: Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans; and all would find themselves drawn to the Flanders battlefield in that fateful summer of 1917.
Fighting at Arras continued, fitfully and in gradually worsening conditions, until 17 May, when operations were finally brought to a halt. The battle may have opened with great success on 9 April, but the last operations had a familiar, Somme-like quality with poor ground conditions and murderous trench warfare that consumed divisions at an alarming rate. At Bullecourt, a nondescript and by now ruined village southeast of Arras, two brutal battles were fought as British and Australian troops tried to push forward against sections of the heavily defended Hindenburg Line. In charge of the operation was General Sir Hubert Gough–the man who would make the main assault at Ypres–and Bullecourt would offer his critics further proof, if any were needed, of his aggression and stubbornness. After two weeks of heavy fighting, the village of Bullecourt was evacuated by the enemy, but it hardly felt like a victory. In this one sector alone, the BEF had sustained 14,000 casualties, with the dead lying in clumps on the battlefield.27
Gradually, as operations at Arras were shut down, British battalions began their move to Ypres. In the warm spring air, units marched, or were bussed, to their new billets, swapping the undulating uplands of the Somme or the coke-smeared industrial zone of Lens, for the flat, ominous landscape of Flanders. Undoubtedly the Somme could be beautiful at times, particularly in the summer when the air buzzed with skylarks, but Flanders–the ‘wet Flanders plain’, as the novelist Henry Williamson put it–was always a dreary, shell-plastered wasteland and Ypres, its capital, was always a city of the dead.28 By 1917 ‘Wipers’, as the British called it (being chronically unable to get the Belgian pronunciation correct), had become a byword for the perils of trench warfare. On other sectors Tommies could look forward to months of ‘live and let live’, enjoying regular periods of peace and quiet, and perhaps organizing a series of mutually beneficial ‘arrangements’ with the enemy, but this was never the case at Ypres. Troops coming into the line knew they were entering a perilous place where shelling and sniping were constant dangers–made even worse by the grandstand view the enemy had of all your movements. ‘Here “Fritz” was right on top of you.’29
Few soldiers looked forward to going there. Lance Corporal H. S. Taylor, an NCO with the Liverpool Scottish (1/10th King’s Liverpool Regiment), remembered coming into Ypres that spring, travelling from Poperinge in a small passenger train that was shunted up in the darkness. The mood among the men was phlegmatic and depressed at the prospect of going into the Salient, knowledge that was evidently too much for one of his platoon–a young private who ‘shattered the index finger of his right hand with a bullet from his own rifle’ during the journey. From the station they took what would become a familiar rite of passage: marching through the ruins of Ypres before taking their positions at the front. The worst part, according to Taylor, was traversing the large expanse of the Grande Place, feeling ‘very exposed’ as they sidled past what remained of the Cloth Hall. It was ‘an eerie experience for me, and I have no doubt many others’, he wrote, ‘as it was frequently shelled at night with shrapnel and high explosive. One felt an irresistible urge to hurry into the nearest side street where there might be a little shelter. Shell-holes were endlessly being filled in… for the benefit of the night transport.’30
While Ypres would remain the focus for the remaining months of the summer and autumn, for the time being the Messines Ridge took centre stage. Plumer’s attack would illustrate many of the developments that were transforming the BEF’s way of war. As had been seen on 9 April, the British were rapidly evolving a tactical system that could break into almost any position on the Western Front, and do so at an acceptable cost. The problem was that infantry on their own could not cross no-man’s-land–that blasted wasteland between the opposing sides–without exposing themselves to heavy gunfire, from rifles and machine-guns, that could shatter the cohesion of the attacking waves. They were also extremely vulnerable to pre-planned enemy barrages that were zeroed in on no-man’s-land and came down within minutes of an assault, thus preventing any supports or reserves from coming up. Even if they were able to close with the enemy trenches, the attacking waves would then run into rows of barbed wire that funnelled them into killing zones or stopped their progress dead. The battles of 1915–16, the barren years of suffering and trial and error, were littered with episodes that made survivors shudder: of rows of corpses in no-man’s-land; of entire companies ‘hanging on the barbed wire’; of great hopes lying shattered in the mud.
Artillery fire seemed to offer the obvious solution to the dilemma of trench warfare. If enough shellfire was concentrated on the right target, then it could cut barbed wire, neutralize the defending garrison (at least temporarily), and destroy enemy batteries. The problem, however, lay in the detail: in getting the artillery to hit the correct target at the right time (and with a suitable weight of shellfire). In earlier years, British guns had simply not been up to the job. They were frequently inaccurate. Their shells were often unstable, meaning that a considerable proportion failed to explode (perhaps as many as a third on the Somme).31 Even the type of shell mattered as tests showed that shrapnel–the most widely available munition–was frequently ineffective against thick wire entanglements, with many units preferring high explosive (which was only available in limited quantities). In addition, it was always difficult to locate enemy gun batteries. They moved regularly and were usually hidden behind ridges or woods and, in any case, offered only a very small target.
The solution to all of this took years to develop and perfect. After the ‘shells scandal’ of 1915–when shortages of vital munitions had caused a grave political crisis–a Ministry of Munitions had been formed that was instrumental in energizing British industrial production. Although it took some time for new factories to be built and become operational, by 1917 the effects of this revolution were being felt. The BEF now had access to many more guns (including the vital ‘heavies’) and shells were being produced in almost unlimited quantities (and were generally much more reliable). Pioneering efforts were also being made to locate enemy batteries through the techniques of ‘sound ranging’ and ‘flash spotting’. Essentially, this entailed recording the sound waves of passing shells through a series of microphones, and then working out where they came from. Observers were also tasked with watching out for the muzzle flash of enemy guns and locating their position through a process of triangulation.32 Moreover, by the time the British fought at Arras, there had been a ‘huge increase’ in the technical skills of the Royal Artillery. Gunnery officers were now making much more effort to fire accurately, by taking measurements of the wind and air pressure, and the effects of shell weight and propellant, and then adjusting the range and bearing accordingly. This was a long way from the approach of 1914, which had been based on guesswork: open fire, see where the shell landed, and then adjust.33
Yet being able to deluge targets with sustained and accurate shellfire was only one element of the Army’s increasingly combined approach. The Royal Flying Corps took on a growing role in artillery spotting and ‘contact patrols’ throughout the war. Aircraft ranged over the lines photographing or bombing targets and attacking enemy aircraft. But this was
never easy. In the spring of 1917 the RFC had faced its toughest test in the skies above Arras. In what become known as ‘Bloody April’, the British struggled to deal with superior German aircraft (such as the Albatros D.I, D.II and D.III) that were faster and able to outclimb their machines. Organized into Jastas, and led by elite pilots such as Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the German air force enjoyed a period of remarkable success.34 In April alone, 275 British aircraft were shot down, causing the death of over 200 pilots and observers. It was even estimated that many of those who died had barely 100 hours’ flying time before they came under the guns of Germany’s elite fighter squadrons.35