by Nick Lloyd
In Flanders, preparations for what seemed like an inevitable Allied offensive continued apace. ‘Never before had we seen such masses of aircraft and air combat as at the front above Ypres’, wrote the German soldier Johann Schärdel, who gazed at the aerial duels that took place every day; ending–as they always did–with pilots falling from burning aircraft with no parachutes to save them. He was tasked with helping to maintain the telephone lines that ran between brigade and regimental headquarters, which was not easy given the intensity of the shelling. It was a dangerous game: dodging between the glare of white and red alarm flares; trying to find the ends of severed wires amid the wreckage of shell craters, often under violent shelling. He was not alone in noticing that the military cemeteries behind the line were getting bigger. His men watched militia troops laying out corpses in mass graves, wearing gas masks to protect themselves from the ‘obnoxious odour of decay’. Every day the tension seemed to increase. ‘A feverish restlessness lay on everything…’31
At his headquarters in Courtrai, Crown Prince Rupprecht, the commander of Germany’s northern Army Group, was convinced an enemy attack was coming–the tell-tale signs were all there–and awaited events with a sense of resignation born of long experience. The son of Ludwig III, the last King of Bavaria, Rupprecht was a calm and competent soldier, seeming to have inherited little, if any, of his family’s legendary eccentricity.32 As a member of the Bavarian Royal Family, Rupprecht would inevitably be given a key role in the war and he did not disappoint. He had been involved in some of the heaviest fighting of 1914 as commander of Sixth Army and had been on the Western Front ever since. Apart from the great invasion of France, most of Rupprecht’s time had been spent on the defensive, shuffling his divisions around to hold off the increasing Allied attacks. He may have wanted to go on to the offensive, but the larger strategic situation ruled this out. His task was simple: to hold on, whatever the cost.
Rupprecht was promoted to Field Marshal in August 1916 (when he assumed command of his Army Group). He was now responsible for the Western Front between the North Sea and the Oise River–perhaps the most critical part of the line. His Army Group consisted of sixty-five infantry divisions and a cavalry division, which were divided into three armies. While on paper this seemed equal in strength to the Allied forces opposite him–the Belgian and French forces in the coastal zone near Nieuport and a considerable chunk of the BEF–he knew his forces were numerically weaker. British divisions had twelve battalions of (roughly) a thousand men, while German divisions had only nine battalions of around 750 men each. British artillery was also considerably more powerful than that of its opponents, with over 3,000 barrels against just 1,100 German guns.33 Rupprecht dealt with the pressure remarkably well. Usually to be found wearing the drab grey uniform of a Bavarian general (complete with silver collar patches), Rupprecht avoided the opulent displays of royal power favoured by the Kaiser. He was wise enough to leave much of the operational control of his forces to his impressive Chief of Staff, General Hermann von Kuhl, who had served him loyally since 1915.34
Working diligently and efficiently, Kuhl gradually readied Rupprecht’s divisions for battle. He recorded that from the beginning of July, ‘there were increasing signs that an attack was imminent’:
Railways were extended, battery positions increased, the trenches were manned with greater numbers. But still no attack followed. The situation in Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Army Group was serious and caused its commander considerable worry. With anxiety he had to look at other sectors of the front, to the areas of Lens, Arras and St Quentin, where an enemy attack could be expected at any time, even if it took the form of a secondary attack.
All spare men and guns had been sent north to Flanders, but the Crown Prince watched his whole sector carefully. Ominously Sixth Army (which held the front opposite Arras) was reporting the arrival of railway guns and a detachment of tanks, leading them to conclude that they too would face an attack. Nevertheless, Rupprecht felt that Flanders would remain the principal focus of British efforts for the time being. A reliable agent in Amsterdam had reported that a ‘general attack’ would begin soon. He watched and waited.35
On 21 June, Ludendorff arrived at Courtrai for a meeting with Kuhl and the other senior officers. Using the large map that was pinned to the walls, Lossberg briefed them on the general situation. There were fifteen German divisions in the line as opposed to twenty enemy ones. They had twelve divisions behind the front–including those used to mount counter-attacks–while they estimated that another fifteen or so enemy divisions were in reserve. On the sectors that were most under threat (particularly the canal zone at Boesinghe), they had only left small detachments to hold the front line. In terms of artillery, they possessed 389 batteries against over 700 enemy ones–a clear disadvantage, but one which Ludendorff believed did not count for too much. ‘The munitions situation was not splendid’, he admitted, ‘but if it came to battle, the Army would be supplied with everything it needed; nothing then needed to be kept back.’ He also knew that they had far fewer aircraft than their opponents, but once the battle began further reserves could be sent to the front as required.36
Lossberg issued his defensive orders on 27 June. The key problem was trying to avoid the deluge of enemy shellfire that would herald any attack. ‘The strength of the defence lies in concealment from enemy observation’, he stressed. ‘It is not possible to hold trenches, shelters, fixed machine-gun nests, and battery positions during a preliminary bombardment prior to a big offensive. To attempt it exhausts the troops, causes heavy losses, and is only work in vain.’ Therefore, Lossberg wanted the defenders to understand that dugouts were merely ‘man-traps’, and as soon as a bombardment began, German units were to evacuate them and, if possible, move forward and be ready to fight in the open. Given the depth of German positions, counter-attacking at the right time was essential. ‘The quicker the counter-attack is delivered, the greater the advantage given.’ Once the enemy had established a workable defence and was supported by artillery, counter-attacks would usually fail. Therefore, it was imperative to deliver them independently and without waiting for orders from above. This was the essence of what Lossberg called ‘the offensive defence’.37
More discussions continued over the coming days. At a meeting on 30 June, Rupprecht considered the possibility (that his staff officers had raised) of withdrawing in order to ‘avoid the first blows’ of any British offensive. However, when this was examined–with the Field Marshal and his staff poring over maps of their front–it was realized that to do this successfully, Fourth Army would have to give up its entire position, in all its depth, including much of the precious high ground, which Rupprecht was not minded to do. Their rearmost line (Flanders III) was, in any case, still incomplete. ‘The local commanders’, recorded Kuhl, ‘agreed that the present trench system was suited to defence by artillery and infantry and that the collaboration of both arms and the plan for engaging the reserves had been well prepared. The advantages to be expected from a planned withdrawal were not found to be so many as to outweigh the disadvantages to our defence organisation which might have resulted.’38 Therefore, the matter was settled: they would stand their ground.
The decision to hold fast did not mean, however, that the Germans would await their fate impassively. As the warning signs of an offensive in Flanders became more urgent, Lossberg realized that if Allied forces could seize a bridgehead over the Yser and drive along the coast–as Haig was indeed planning–then there was a danger that the whole German front could be, as he put it, ‘unrolled’. It was decided to mount a spoiling attack to throw the enemy back east of Nieuport, and thus secure the coastal zone. At 5.30 on the morning of 10 July, under a heavy artillery and smoke bombardment, assault detachments of German marines surged forward.39 Within three hours, they had broken into the British line, killed or captured most of the defenders, and wiped out the bridgehead over the Yser River, which would have been the jumping-off point for an offensive al
ong the coast. Orders were rapidly issued for a British counter-attack, but once the blood had cooled, it was mercifully cancelled–the local commander protesting vigorously that such a rushed reaction would usually result in heavy losses for no result. While Haig brushed off concerns that this had damaged his offensive plans–telling Robertson that his artillery would soon blow the enemy ‘out of his position as effectively as he blew us out of ours’–it was a stark reminder of how dangerous the Germans remained in this sector. The Battle for Flanders had well and truly begun.40
5.
‘Under Constant Fire’
This was not just drum fire; it was as though Hell itself had slipped its bonds… It was as though the enemy was announcing to the world: Here we come and we are going to prevail.
Hermann von Kuhl1
16–30 July 1917
Considering how important the preliminary bombardment was, it is surprising that it did not even make the agenda of General Gough’s first meeting in late May.2 What kind of bombardment would precede the attack was one of the most vital questions that faced British commanders on the Western Front. Several months earlier, prior to the Battle of Arras, General Sir Edmund Allenby, Third Army commander, had argued vigorously with Haig about diverting from their long-established lengthy artillery preparation. He was of the opinion that they should fire a much shorter, so-called ‘hurricane’ bombardment spread over just forty-eight hours, thus gaining the element of surprise. It would aim not to destroy the German defences, but to neutralize them for long enough to get the infantry across no-man’s-land. But Haig, worried lest this fail to suppress the enemy defences or prove too much of a strain on the guns, would not risk it and they opted for a more conventional four-day bombardment instead.3
As for Gough, his thoughts on artillery remained aligned to Haig’s. At the army conference in which Allenby unveiled his plans for the ‘hurricane’ bombardment, Gough apparently ‘expressed doubts’ about the wisdom of veering away from longer preparation, and prior to Third Ypres he never seems to have considered anything else.4 Perhaps the depth and strength of the German position in Flanders, as well as the impossibility of surprise, meant that a ‘hurricane’ bombardment was never a viable alternative anyway. Gough originally wanted a nine-day bombardment; beginning on 16 July and reaching its climax just before his attack went in on 25 July. However, because of repeated postponements to the offensive, it would eventually stretch to two weeks–the longest preliminary bombardment in the BEF’s history. Millions of shells would be fired in a brutal, pulverizing display of firepower that would be the last great preliminary bombardment of the Western Front.5
The scale of Gough’s artillery resources was staggering. In the weeks leading up to the attack, nearly 3,000 guns were brought up to the front: over 2,000 field guns (mainly 18-pounders and 4.5-inch howitzers), 718 medium pieces and 281 heavy guns. They were supplied with over 4.2 million shells.6 In theory, such a preponderance of artillery should have been sufficient. On the Somme the previous year, the British had only been able to muster half as many guns, with a critical shortage of heavy howitzers with which to support the attack. In Flanders the BEF could boast not only many more heavy guns and an almost unlimited supply of shells, but they were also employing state-of-the-art gunnery techniques. Yet the length and depth of front that Gough’s artillery had to bombard were considerable. Taken with Second Army, which would extend the attack to the south, the front was fifteen miles long–Messines had been just over nine miles–and in most places the defences were several miles deep. Suppressing or destroying such a vast zone of defences, including hundreds of almost indestructible pillboxes, would be very difficult. Moreover, they had to do all this while dominating or driving away the German batteries that ringed the Salient. In all, the Germans could muster somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 guns–not as many as their opponents certainly–but enough to pose a serious threat to any attacking infantry.7
Getting all the guns into position was an engineering problem of the highest order. Artillery had to be deployed at night, while teams of pioneers worked tirelessly to construct the timber platforms that prevented them from sinking into the soft Flanders mud. They had to do this under harassing fire from the German batteries and their eagle-eyed observers who scanned the Salient for any signs of movement.8 Batteries were hidden, as far as possible, in the myriad small copses or farm buildings that dotted the front, while those in the open had to make do with camouflage screens that were erected to try and block muzzle flashes, which would have given their position away.9 To complicate matters further, mustard gas made its first appearance on 12 July, during what seemed like a routine gas bombardment of Ypres. When Fifth Army’s Chemical Adviser, Captain G. W. Monier-Williams, investigated the scene, he found shell fragments from German 77mm field guns painted with unusual green and yellow crosses. The symptoms of those affected by this new gas were equally novel:
First, a tendency to sneeze, with gradually increasing nose and throat irritation. Later on, in some instances as much as six or eight hours after exposure to the gas, intense and very painful irritation and inflammation of the eyes, accompanied by free discharge of mucus from the nostrils and occasional fits of vomiting.
When Monier-Williams examined many of the wounded, they all shared ‘intense and painful irritation of the eyes’, with the skin being blistered in places. Furthermore, officers who had handled fragments of shell were also suffering, having developed painful blisters and swelling of the hands within six hours of exposure. Monier-Williams did not know what weapon had been employed, but it would not take long for troops to christen it ‘mustard gas’ after its pungent smell.10 Sadly this would only be the first of an increasing number of gas bombardments at Ypres.11
For an offensive on this scale, almost everything needed to be done: roads constructed; supplies moved up; telephone wires laid; cables buried, and so on. For the drivers who were the lifeblood of the Army, the Ypres Salient was, without doubt, the most unpopular sector of the Western Front. Almost every major road had been zeroed in on by enemy guns and the key junctions–such as Birr Crossroads and Hellfire Corner–soon became pockmarked by shell holes and littered with dead horses and burnt-out wagons. Because the ground was so flat, most of the supplies had to move up at night, which meant that after dark the roads around Ypres became jammed with transport, lorries and trucks all trying to get to their destinations, and back again, as soon as was earthly possible. The Ypres–Poperinge road was one particularly lethal section. Straight and narrow ‘as the way to heaven, to those who ran the gauntlet in the shell-riven darkness it seemed rather the road to hell’, remembered one officer. ‘Abandoned wagons, corpses of men, dead and wounded horses and mules lined the scenes of their labours; limbs and bodies sticking in rigid and grotesque pathos out of the mud of the shell-holes were the grim companions of their toil.’12
The sight of Ypres with its ruined Cloth Hall blanched white in the moonlight, and its abandoned streets haunted by shadows, would always stick in the memory of those who saw it. Frank Mellish, a subaltern with the RFA, remembered that Ypres was ‘never a healthy place to linger in’. ‘If one wanted a nerve-tonic one could get it at any time by taking a trip through the Menin Gate and once one decided on doing this there was no standing on the order of going–one went! I have run faster through that City than [Roger] Bannister ever did the mile, and that complete with gas-mask on chest and tin-hat on head!’13 Another junior officer, Huntly Gordon (serving with 112 Brigade RFA), had only recently arrived in France–Passchendaele would be his first battle–but he quickly grasped what they were up against. At the appointed time (11 p.m.) he led a convoy of a dozen wagons up to the front, loaded down with ammunition, creaking under the strain. The traffic was heavy as usual; ‘G. S. wagons, ambulances, lorries, water-carts, buses full of infantry, guns, everything imaginable’. After being shelled and running into ‘a nasty belt of gas’, the convoy, minus three horses–all killed by shell splinters–finally arrived in
Ypres. But Gordon did not tarry. He led his men swiftly past the Menin Gate (which had long since been destroyed, existing merely as a gap in the stone ramparts of the town) and then, setting off at hundred-yard intervals at a brisk pace, the column went along the Menin Road into the belly of the Salient.14
At the same time as hundreds of tons of supplies were moved up to the front and issued to the men, many other tasks remained to be completed. Communication equipment, including thousands of miles of cable, needed to be taken up the line and then connected to the telephone exchanges. Captain F. A. Sclater, a signal officer with XIV Corps at Boesinghe, looked after the cable that linked up the artillery batteries. On his sector there were eight routes, buried six feet under ground and, with a bit of luck, immune to everything but the biggest shells. Shortly before the preliminary bombardment was about to begin, one of his heavy-artillery exchanges (camouflaged in a ruined cottage) came under heavy and sustained shelling. With up to eighty lines of cable running into the exchange, its destruction might have made the forthcoming bombardment extremely difficult. Fortunately, the circuits survived intact. They had been buried under a floor of concrete, and despite taking many direct hits (with the house rolling about ‘like a ship’) the exchange was still functioning on 31 July when the attack went in.15