by Nick Lloyd
For headquarters staff there may have been less physical toil than endured by the Tommies up the line, but the imminent offensive produced its own kind of pressure. According to Paul Maze, La Lovie was now ‘charged with tension’. Every night he lay in his tent and listened to the ‘rattle of lines of men trailing howitzers to their positions’; and the ‘incessant roar of lorries’ driving up to the front weighed down with ammunition.16 Gough’s Chief of Staff, Neill Malcolm, estimated that at one point his office was dealing with over 500,000 words a day over telegraph wire, and he himself took a couple of flights over the Salient, both of which were marred by what could have been potentially fatal accidents. In his first flight his aircraft was forced down by engine failure, and on the second a strut broke on landing.17
In the air the Allies enjoyed a notable numerical advantage. From Armentières to the sea they could muster over 800 aircraft–against about 600 German machines (only a third of which were single-seat fighters).18 Major-General Hugh Trenchard, commanding the Royal Flying Corps, on 7 July issued his orders for the forthcoming battle. The main task was to make sure that as few enemy aircraft as possible were allowed to fly over the British front lines–so he authorized aggressive offensive patrols right across the Salient, pushing back any enemy fighters, and providing space for his other aircraft to complete their reconnaissance duties unimpeded. At the same time specially selected squadrons were tasked with bombing enemy targets: aerodromes and headquarters; railway junctions and roads; trenches and dugouts–all in line with his offensive policy that he was convinced would give them mastery of the skies above Ypres.19
By the time the bombardment began on 16 July, Trenchard’s air offensive was already several days old. His squadrons attacked enemy ground targets and tussled with the German Air Service in large-scale, whirling dogfights that were watched by troops right across the line. One day, Arthur Sambrook, serving in the Royal Engineers at Messines, recorded seeing Jagdgeschwader 1, led by the legendary Baron Manfred von Richthofen (then on fifty-two kills). His aircraft ‘were conspicuous in their scarlet coloured wings and fuselage, and fights between them and the de Havilland machines of our Air Force were frequent and exciting to watch’. He also witnessed the destruction of a number of enemy observation balloons that towered over the Salient. ‘At first would be seen a wisp of black smoke, then a small flame from the balloon, which would begin to crump up and sink, until the whole was a flaming mass, plunging earthwards, leaving a pillar of black smoke which remained upright in the air for several minutes… The conditions were ideal for this sort of activity: a lot of white fleecy clouds drifting slowly along, hiding the aircraft while they stalked their targets.’20
The Germans understood how vital the coming days would be. On 19 July, Major-General von Hoeppner, commanding the German Air Service, issued a general order acknowledging the seriousness of the situation. ‘In the last few days, enemy fighter pilots have appeared in overwhelmingly superior strength, against which our Jagdstaffeln have been unable to act.’ He was confident that the ratio of kills to losses was still in Germany’s favour, but the coming offensive would undoubtedly be a stern test. ‘I have confidence in the entire German Air Service and in this: that the airmen of the Fourth Army, above all the Jagdgeschwader and the Jagdstaffeln, will thin the ranks of the enemy squadrons and defeat them.’ Orders were issued on the urgent need to shoot down enemy observation balloons and ‘keep the attack zone free of enemy aircraft’.21 Accordingly, German air strength was gradually increased in the Flanders sector. In mid-May there had been only thirteen air squadrons in Fourth Army, but by the time the offensive opened at the end of July, this had been increased to eighty.22
In London, War Cabinet wrangling over the Flanders offensive continued almost to Zero Day. Robertson wrote to Haig on 18 July updating him on the meetings of the War Policy Committee, which had still given no formal approval to the attack. ‘I understand however that the War Cabinet are now in favour of your plans’, the CIGS hastened to assure Haig, ‘and I have daily been expecting that they would tell me so, but up to the present they have not done so.’ Unsurprisingly Lloyd George remained inflexibly opposed to a new offensive in France and continued to look towards his ‘Italian venture’. Robertson had twice told him that time was ‘running short’ and that Fifth Army’s preparations would soon be complete, but this produced little urgency from the Prime Minister. Evidently there were still concerns about the ambition of what Haig was proposing and a ‘fear’, as Robertson explained, that ‘you might endeavour to push on further than you were justified pending further artillery preparation’. He reminded Haig that ‘it is well understood that the extent of the advance must, roughly speaking, be limited by the assistance of the guns until such times as a real breakthrough occurs’ and that if this ‘step by step system of advance’ was maintained, then there would be real support for his operations.23
Haig replied, impatiently, three days later, a tone of frustration and anger detectable in his words. ‘It is somewhat startling at this advanced stage of preparations to learn that the War Cabinet had not then yet determined whether my attack was to be permitted to proceed.’ He reminded the CIGS that the importance of this operation had been recognized by the War Office as early as November 1916, and the urgency of clearing the Belgian coast was communicated to him directly on 1 December. Evidently, thought Haig, the Cabinet ‘do not understand what is entailed by preparation for an attack under existing conditions, or what the effect–material and moral–would be of altering plans once preparations are in full swing’. Moreover, he regretted to learn that his judgement and knowledge of conditions (‘even on the depth to which each advance should be pushed’) were not trusted; it was, he felt, very important that ‘such matters should be left to the Commander on the spot’.24
Haig and Robertson’s correspondence was, for both men, unsatisfactory and frustrating, as they circled each other without dealing with the other’s point. Robertson had tried, yet again, to remind Haig that support for his operation was directly conditional on how it was being conducted and that the Cabinet would only consent to a ‘step-by-step’ advance being undertaken to avoid unnecessary losses. Haig–who envisaged a swift breakthrough à la Nivelle–failed to spot this distinction and referred back to decisions made in November and December 1916 about the need to attack in Flanders. Because he felt, instinctively, that how the operation was conducted was none of the Cabinet’s business, he seemingly failed to appreciate what Robertson was saying. Thus it came back to the unresolved issues over how the attack was to be conducted. Was it to be a major breakthrough, a decisive ‘battle of rupture’ aiming to push the infantry through the deep belt of German defences in a matter of hours, or was it to be a limited, ‘step-by-step’ attack on the lines of Messines?25 Haig seems to have either fudged it or failed to spot the distinction. He urged Gough to make a decisive advance, while at the same time telling the War Cabinet that his attack might unfold in a series of stages, and to Lloyd George’s eternal shame he did not press the matter. Meanwhile the offensive, now seemingly with a life of its own, crept ever closer to fulfilment.
In Germany, the political crisis had not been solved by the appointment of Georg Michaelis as Imperial Chancellor. On 19 July, three days after Gough’s artillery had begun pounding the German front line, the Reichstag formally passed its Peace Resolution. ‘Germany took up arms to maintain her freedom and independence and to defend her territorial possessions. The Reichstag is striving for a peace of understanding and the permanent reconciliation of the nations.’ It demanded an end to the ‘embitterment of nations’ and called for freedom of the seas and economic cooperation, while promising that the German Government would work towards the establishment of ‘international legal machinery’. However, as long as Germany was threatened ‘with robbery and oppression’, it would ‘stand together as one man and endure and fight on until her right and that of her allies to life and freedom’ was secure.26
When GHQ’s
intelligence department got wind of the political developments in Berlin, hopes were raised that Germany was on the verge of collapse. Not much was known about the new man in charge (Charteris admitting that they were ‘rather at sea about Michaelis’), but it did not prevent optimism from rising, once again, at GHQ.27 Charteris’s intelligence summary for 22 July confidently predicted that Michaelis would be forced to seek some kind of ‘compromise peace’ before the end of the year. Yet GHQ seemed to miss the real lesson of the political troubles in the Reich, which was the growing polarization of politics in Germany and the takeover of key positions by those on the right who rejected any so-called ‘peace of understanding’.28 The appointment of Michaelis was not a symbol that Germany was ready to modify her war aims; it was, on the contrary, an indication that the military rulers of Germany would do whatever was necessary to continue to prosecute the war with all the ruthless aggression they could muster.
The political machinations in Berlin would have seemed a long way off to those German troops in the Salient as they prepared–once again–to face the Materialschlacht. Gough’s batteries were now bringing down a curtain of shellfire on the German lines, columns of smoke and dust rising from the landscape like small, smouldering volcanoes. ‘The increased activity of enemy artillery in recent days, the increase in systematic destructive fire and batteries being moved to within close proximity all point to the imminent start of the attack’, recorded the war diary of Group Ypres on 17 July. ‘Our front line–particularly in the sector of the 17th Infantry Division–has become a crater field. The enemy has systematically shelled the rear positions, command posts and batteries, and they have homed in on roads and important positions in the rear areas… The battle in Flanders has now begun.’29 Within days German intelligence had identified the opposing British divisions and warned its units of what it would be facing, including 29th (‘a very good attack division), 51st (an ‘elite Scottish division’), and 11th and 15th (‘first-class attack divisions’).30
Every day Fritz von Lossberg ascended an observation tower that had been constructed in the grounds of his headquarters where he could survey the battlefield. Through the lenses of his binoculars, he could clearly make out the enormous preparations for the coming offensive. ‘In many places the enemy artillery were wheel to wheel’, he wrote, with ‘tremendous ammunition dumps’ stacked near their gun positions. His defensive arrangements were not yet complete, so he requested a further two heavy and four light ammunition trains from OHL. Once they had been shunted up, he directed his guns to engage British artillery, and do everything they could to disrupt their preparations and make life as difficult as possible for them.31 Between 13 and 19 July the German Fourth Army fired 583,000 shells. The following week its consumption would hit 870,000–causing nervous staff officers some unease about how much ammunition they were firing off.32
Day after day, night after night, the impact of thousands of shells rocked the Flanders battlefield, bursting in thudding explosions that sent showers of earth up into the air. Men who had long got used to the endless rumbling of artillery fire at the front felt that something different was happening now: the bombardment was bigger and more frightening than anything they had ever experienced. In the front German defensive zone–up to 3,000 yards in–the fury of the bombardment was at its worst. Most of the barbed wire was torn to pieces and many of the front-line trenches were pulverized beyond recognition.33 One soldier who saw the destruction was Reserve Second Lieutenant Rau, of the 6th Company, Grenadier Regiment, which held the line around Hooge:
Not a single communication trench was passable, the concrete pill-boxes all stood out clearly, making marvellous targets for the enemy. This meant that we had to move out of them and take cover in the craters, which themselves were under constant fire. Unfortunately the water table was so high that they soon filled with water, ruling out all thoughts of a rest, no matter how short. Ceaseless rain, gas attacks, constant raiding and patrol activity, the need to lug forward stores and build wire obstacles by night wore our men out physically and lowered their morale badly.
Getting supplies, and even orders, to the men in the trenches was almost impossible. Telephone lines were invariably cut, which meant that the front battalions had to rely on runners, who often became casualties of the ‘iron rain’ that swept across the battlefield. For those in the front line there would be no relief until the attack came.34
German casualties during the bombardment were not inconsiderable. Within days of reaching the front, 235th Division, which held the line southeast of Saint-Julien, had sustained such severe losses that it was withdrawn on 1 August.35 One witness, a soldier from 455 Infantry Regiment, vividly described the horrors they encountered when they moved up to the front. ‘The situation is melancholy. Our company has suffered heavy losses during the one day we have been here. At the present moment we are in the support trench, a few hundred metres behind the front line. The English shell the entire area incessantly with the heaviest guns and the ground is one mass of shell holes, some of them large enough to build houses in.’ His company were due to move up to the front line the following day, but they were already exhausted, having to survive on one water-bottle each for a week because no supplies could reach them through the shellfire. ‘Death lies in wait for us’, he wrote, ‘like a fox for its prey.’36
Despite the furious bombardment, much of the German defensive position remained stubbornly intact. Pillboxes were impervious to all but the heaviest calibres and forced the British to bring up special armour-piercing ammunition to try and crack them open.37 In the tangled, broken woodland of the Gheluvelt Plateau, many of the pillboxes remained hidden or protected by fallen trees and undergrowth, so the British found it almost impossible to target them all. Their garrisons may have been shocked and stunned by the intensity of the shelling, but crucially they would still be able to resist whenever Zero Hour came. More ominously, the German batteries massed on the reverse slope of the Gheluvelt Plateau remained highly active. II Corps’s Intelligence Summary, dated 25 July, recorded that the enemy artillery observation was ‘very keen, and any movement in the front and support lines draws heavy shelling immediately’.38
In spite of the disadvantages British guns laboured under, and the casualties that rose every day, Fifth Army’s gun crews gradually gained an edge over their opponents. ‘Under the enemy’s powerful artillery and mortar fire, the German infantry suffered terribly, but the artillery was also in a difficult position’, recorded the German Official History. ‘Due to the persistent, greatly increased action, towards the end of July the signs of exhaustion could be observed in a greater number of batteries. The losses in men and equipment were considerable. Amongst the heavy field howitzers, the losses amounted to 50 per cent.’39 In Group Wytschaete, Reinhard Lewald’s battery (part of 12th Division) had been ‘shot to pieces’ by 28 July, with all their guns being knocked out by accurate British counter-battery fire. It was, he recorded, ‘incredibly hard work’ getting ‘the shattered guns out in two nights of pouring rain and heavy shelling’.40 On 25 July, Crown Prince Rupprecht was handed a report from Karl Dieffenbach (GOC Group Wytschaete) calling his attention to the loss of guns from British counter-battery fire. Half their heavy guns, 30 per cent of their howitzers, 17 per cent of their mortars and 10 per cent of their 10cm guns had already been destroyed.41 There was nothing left to do but keep up as much counter-battery and harassing fire as they could, while, wherever possible, pulling batteries out of range to save them for the forthcoming push.
The difficulties experienced by the British in bringing guns and supplies up to the battlefield were mirrored on the German side. ‘However many new guns we send up–and we do so every night; however many we repair–and we repair them night and day–we cannot keep up to the number which we ought to have’, complained a German soldier, Rudolf Binding.42 For Johann Schärdel, part of a signalling company in a concrete bunker just off the Menin Road, the intensity of artillery fire was almost indescribabl
e. The worst scenes, he remembered, were around the high ground at Gheluvelt, where many field batteries were deployed and attracted much enemy fire.
We could not imagine how it was possible to bring up ammunition on this heavily shelled approach road–it could certainly only have been in frantic, life-or-death journeys. An ammunition wagon that had been shot to pieces lay in front of the bunker in the middle of the road, and in front of that, there were horses, still in their traces with their bodies ripped open, and the fallen drivers. In the ditches of the road, there were bodies who had been horrendously mutilated. One of the dead had his face severed from the back of his head by a grenade splinter, in such a way that it was only hanging on from his chin and stared back at us, a horrifically contorted, bloodless yellow mask. How can one endure such a sight for weeks on end? Dying loses its horror when it is one’s constant companion every day and night.43
Working furiously, in between the breaks in the firing, Schärdel and his men roved over the ruins of Gheluvelt trying ‘to mend the wires that were repeatedly shredded, and which led to the regimental command post’. When they were not in search of broken wires, they returned to the telephone exchange in their cramped bunker and plugged calls in, waiting for the day of the assault.
The intensity of the shellfire increased inexorably as the day of attack drew near, straining men’s nerves to breaking point. 28 July was one of the worst days. According to German sources, the Trommelfeuer (‘drumfire’) continued without end, with shells being targeted at the front line, as well as at German field headquarters and artillery dumps–even moving trains–while the skies were filled with British pilots scouring the landscape for anything to bomb.44 Fourth Army did what it could. That day (28 July) its guns fired off the contents of nineteen ammunition trains. Crown Prince Rupprecht described the artillery activity on his front as being of ‘extraordinary violence’. Even at the height of the Somme fighting the previous summer, a German army would not have used more than eight ammunition trains per day, and here they were using more than double–such was the intensity of shellfire in the Salient.45 At a meeting in Courtrai that day, the Chief of Staff of the neighbouring Sixth Army, Major Stapff, argued that they should make a spoiling attack on the right flank of the enemy, from the German positions at Estaires over the River Lys. But Kuhl, surveying the maps at Fourth Army Headquarters, was unconvinced. In order to produce a stunning blow it would be necessary to attack further north, perhaps around Bailleul or Hazebrouck, but he doubted whether there were sufficient forces available.46