Passchendaele

by Nick Lloyd

  While the staff of Rupprecht’s Army Group pondered on whether to mount offensive operations, their final defensive arrangements were being completed. German reserves had now been deployed into position and given their orders on when and how they were to move forward. One German soldier, serving with 62 Infantry Regiment (part of 12th Division–one of Group Wytschaete’s Eingreif divisions), recorded his thoughts as his battalion made their way, via a series of railway journeys, from Hamburg to Tourcoing. The day they reached Courtrai was particularly depressing. ‘Hospital train after hospital train meets us. Damaged guns are carried homewards to remind people of the war.’ Any Belgian citizens they met were sullen and silent, stubbornly gazing at the hated conquerors as they rolled by. And then finally they reached the front. ‘We saw flashes of the guns in the sky, and many a one felt his courage melt away.’ Inevitably it was raining so they hauled on their packs and set out on the long and perilous march into the trenches near Gheluvelt. ‘All night the district is illuminated with fire.’47

  During the last days of July, the counter-battery struggle grew in intensity. British and German gunners were now engaged in a merciless duel for control of the Salient; for whoever mastered the guns would dominate the ground. It would be one of the most brutal artillery battles of the war, with British batteries, parked in exposed low-lying ground, exchanging fire with Germans guns, most of which were shielded by the ridgelines. Artillery spotting from the air certainly helped, but low cloud and poor weather prevented the RFC from being as effective as Trenchard would have liked, and the British came under heavy retaliatory fire almost every day. As the war diary of Group Ypres noted on 29 July: ‘Our artillery continued to fight enemy batteries and battery positions with vigour… Again and again, particularly in the early hours of the morning, the enemy trenches and assembly areas sustained a combination of armed attacks and waves of destructive fire.’48

  Behind the front the final movement orders were being received and long files of troops, bowed down with equipment, were making their way into the trenches as the guns, now more angry than ever, pounded their targets. The offensive had been scheduled to begin on 28 July, but a further three-day postponement was eventually sanctioned because Gough’s preparations were still incomplete. Charteris recalled that Haig was ‘very moody, but once a decision is made he will not give it another thought’.49 There was nothing left but to trust in God and hope that the bombardment would work. Yet the weight of firepower that Gough was relying upon to unlock the German defences had one drawback: it was, quite literally, destroying the landscape. The delicate drainage system of Flanders, which kept water at bay, had already been badly damaged by three years of heavy fighting. But now, with what Gough was throwing at it, it was beginning to fail. Whatever else the British needed, they urgently required a period of dry weather in which to break out of the Salient. Unfortunately, fate conspired against them. As Gough’s divisions were readying to go forward, heavy clouds were already beginning to form over the battlefield and weather reports were warning that rain was on the way. Perhaps it was already too late to start such an enormous campaign. Maybe Charteris had been right after all–maybe it was too late to accomplish anything?

  6.

  ‘A Perfect Bloody Curse’

  The first strike is always the worst.

  Albrecht von Thaer1

  31 July–5 August 1917

  In the early hours of 31 July, Fritz von Lossberg ascended his observation tower and peered out at the darkened horizon, which flickered with the bright flashes of artillery fire. The preliminary bombardment, which had been going on for the last fortnight, seemed to be reaching a climax. Lossberg had seen much as a soldier, but this was, without doubt, the heaviest display of firepower he had ever witnessed.2 At the front, German soldiers, crouched in their trenches and dugouts, awaited the oncoming storm. Johann Schärdel, serving with 6th Bavarian Reserve Division, would never forget that night, which was ‘burned indelibly’ in his mind. He was sleeping in a bunker along the Menin Road, but woke, feverish and restless. ‘The usual rolling of the front had increased enormously,’ he wrote, ‘and it penetrated the thick walls of the concrete block like the thundering of passing express trains. Barely a word was spoken. Everyone just listened in tense anticipation to what was happening. Outside on the road [was] the splintering crash of grenades. Now the chamber was full of men who did not belong to us. They stood and crouched there motionlessly, probably waiting until they could go out again.’3

  At that moment two French and four British corps, with another three under Plumer’s command in Second Army, were poised to move forward. Zero Hour was what they had all been dreading for weeks now; men with grey faces under tin helmets that had been carefully plastered with mud to dull any reflection, tightly gripping their rifles, bayonets fixed. Zero Hour would be 3.50 a.m. The decision to opt for such an early start–to try to offset the advantages possessed by the enemy in observation–meant that the battlefield was in darkness when the attack went ahead. The weather was overcast and misty, with thick banks of cloud down to 500 feet in places, which remained stubbornly in place all day. Unfortunately, this meant that the RFC was unable to play a major role in the battle. Selected bombing and strafing missions did go ahead, but the main programme for ‘continuous offensive patrols’ at 8,000 feet had to be scrapped. Thus the approach routes to the battlefield, those that would be used by Germany’s reserves (and which had been identified beforehand by RFC headquarters), went unobserved.4 Therefore, one element of Gough’s plan had already been nullified even before his divisions were out of their trenches. It was an ominous start to the grand offensive.

  As soon as the creeping barrage roared into life at Zero Hour–a dark-blue wall of smoke and earth, splashed with red–the first attacking waves scrambled out of their trenches or filtered past breastworks and advanced towards their objectives. ‘There had been firing all the night, but at the moment of Zero every gun began to speak’, wrote Lieutenant W. B. St Leger of 2/Coldstream Guards (Guards Division). ‘The whole horizon to the north east, east and south east, was lit up by one continuous dancing flame composed of jagged flashes of bursting shells.’5 Across most of the central and northern sections of the Salient–from Westhoek up to Steenstraat–the attacking waves quickly overran the German outpost positions. On the left flank, two French divisions cleared their objectives without prohibitive casualties–the extra time and effort spent on bringing up more guns paying off as the poilus secured the northern flank.6 Likewise, Lord Cavan’s XIV Corps took its objectives on time, aided by the collapse of the German position east of the Yser Canal several days earlier. As a result, the Guards Division was able to move on to its second objective by as early as 5 a.m.7

  In the centre it was much the same story. The two attacking divisions of Sir Ivor Maxse’s XVIII Corps were able to follow the creeping barrage and secure their objectives without prohibitive loss. On the left, the men of 51st (Highland) Division made excellent progress, finding the enemy front-line trenches in most cases ‘almost obliterated’ by the artillery. Isolated strongpoints posed little problem. ‘Whenever a point of resistance disclosed itself,’ wrote the divisional history, ‘it was attacked immediately by the troops with great dash–not, however, by wild frontal expensive charges, but by the skilful use of ground and their weapons, in accordance with their training.’8 A young subaltern, Edmund Blunden, serving with 11/Royal Sussex (39th Division), remembered how ‘We rose, scrambled ahead, found No Man’s Land a comparatively good surface, were amazed at the puny tags and rags of once multiplicative German wire, and blundered over the once feared trench behind them without seeing that it was a trench.’ Fortunately, the German front line–what was left of it–seemed to have been abandoned, so Blunden’s men cautiously crept forward. ‘German dead, so obvious at every yard of a 1916 battlefield, were hardly to be seen.’9

  Things were not, however, always so promising. Some of the fiercest fighting that day took place on the front of He
rbert Watts’s XIX Corps, which extended the attack between Wieltje and the Ypres–Roulers railway. Here the ground was open, gradually rising to the Pilckem Ridge, and was dotted with fortified farm buildings and dull grey pillboxes. Again two divisions would make the assault, 55th and 15th, supported by forty-eight tanks. The attack largely succeeded in reaching the second objective on time, although the village of Frezenberg and the Pommern Redoubt held out.10 In its report on the action of 31 July, 55th Division complained that it faced pillboxes that ‘were quite undamaged in spite of the bombardment by heavy artillery. The concrete was scarcely chipped. A direct hit by a 5.9 on the back of Uhlan Farm failed to make any impression.’11 Because they had not been destroyed, they would have to be taken out, one at a time, by the infantry using a combination of fire and movement tactics. As the Highland Division had already shown, if specially trained sections were able to suppress and then outflank each pillbox, then they could be neutralized without affecting the pace of the advance. But this always relied upon the gallantry and initiative of officers and men, and the campaign in Flanders would be littered with examples of individuals taking on pillboxes on their own; usually by creeping up to them and throwing grenades through the firing slit, while bayoneting any Germans that tried to escape. Of the sixty-one Victoria Crosses that were awarded for conspicuous gallantry during the battle, more than forty were given to individual attacks on enemy pillboxes or machine-gun nests.12

  The fight for the first objective was, on the whole, an infantry battle, but 136 tanks had been deployed to support the advance on to the Black and Green Lines. Although only two failed to reach their deployment areas in time for Zero Hour–something of a minor miracle given the ground conditions and incessant shellfire–tanks struggled to make an impact that day. In a report on the action of III Tank Brigade, which supported XIX Corps, the ground was described as being ‘as bad as it could have been for a Tank operation’, thus confirming the worst fears of the Tank Corps. ‘The rain on the 29th July on the top of the heavy “crumping” turned the ground into an absolute swamp with no firm bottom to it… Even if a Tank gets over this ground it can only do so at its slowest speed.’ Nevertheless, one machine, Crusader, helped a battalion of Gordon Highlanders advance to the Black Line by ‘dealing with snipers, concrete MG emplacements and strongpoints, which were very numerous… Many concrete emplacements were dealt with by 6-pounders, which drove the enemy into the open where our infantry were ready for them with Lewis Guns.’ Another tank, Challenger, patrolled parts of the Black Line all day, opening fire ‘on anything that looked like a MG emplacement’.13

  Tanks were particularly useful if gaps appeared in the artillery barrage and allowed German troops to recover or if barbed-wire entanglements remained intact. Lance Corporal H. S. Taylor of 1/10th King’s Liverpool Regiment (55th Division) went forward that morning only to find his battalion ‘hung up’ outside their first objective, Capricorn Trench:

  This was still occupied, the wire intact, and there was a machine gun firing from a pill-box immediately in front of us, the combined [effect] of which made any further progress extremely doubtful. The situation was remedied only a few minutes later when a Tank arrived and… disposed of the machine gun and the occupants of Capricorn, at the same time flattening two tracks in the barbed wire, but after crossing over in our direction it was knocked out by a field gun when only a few yards to our left on the slightly higher ground.14

  Such an experience was typical. Mark IVs had a top speed of 4 mph, but the boggy ground brought their already leisurely pace to a wounded crawl and made them highly vulnerable. Indeed, 31 July would be one of the worst days in the history of the Tank Corps. About half of the total number of tanks fought with some success that day, but the rest became casualties, from either mechanical failure, getting ditched or being knocked out by shellfire.15

  The problem of coordinating infantry and armour was especially acute at the most crucial point of Fifth Army’s attack–on the Gheluvelt Plateau. Indeed, the ground on the southern sector was probably the worst on the entire battlefield. Sir Claud Jacob’s II Corps had to take a series of German lines that lay close together and were well supported by artillery batteries on the reverse slope of the ridge. Given the difficulty of the task, Jacob deployed three of his divisions (8th, 24th and 30th) in the firing line, hoping to mass as much combat power as possible. He was also able to call upon ‘A’ and ‘B’ Battalions of II Tank Brigade, with forty-eight tanks (and another twenty-four in reserve), to help them secure the second, third and (if possible) fourth objectives. Yet the assault of II Corps was only able to make relatively minor gains; the tanks, in particular, being unable to get very far. Because of the awful ground, it was only possible to use three ‘narrow avenues of approach’, which left them at the mercy of entrenched German gunners and observers. Of the sixteen vehicles that were to be launched at Zero Hour, three ‘were knocked out by shell fire, either at the Starting Point, or before reaching it, and one had mechanical trouble and could not start’. Of the remaining twelve, only four machines were able to engage the enemy, the other eight either suffering direct hits or being ditched.16

  Only on the left was the attack able to make any sizeable progress. 8th Division overran its first objective on schedule, before setting off for the Black Line on the Westhoek Ridge, only to be stopped by flanking fire from its right.17 What had happened was that 30th and 24th Divisions, which should have captured Sanctuary Wood and Shrewsbury Forest, had been stopped dead. One after-action report mentioned bogs in ‘which men in some instances fell waist high’, causing them to ‘lose’ the creeping barrage. By the time they had secured their first objective and were ready to move on to the second, the artillery support was too far away to recall.18 Throughout the day, repeated efforts were made to get forward. The experience of 21 Brigade (30th Division), which faced the southern edge of Sanctuary Wood, was symptomatic of what went wrong. One of the assaulting battalions, 19/Manchesters, was caught by enemy fire as it tried to leave its assembly trenches, with grave consequences for the subsequent attack:

  Almost immediately after Zero these entrances became choked by wounded men and others trying to get into the tunnel. The out-going troops were very much hampered in their movements and were only able to get out by ones and twos at a time; this made the assembly in the open difficult, especially as it was still dark and there was a heavy barrage on the British Front Line. Small parties pushed out into No Man’s Land in order to get out of the enemy’s barrage line, the result was that these two companies were unable to form up in their battle formations and cohesion was lost from the start.

  By this point, the battalion was trying to make up for lost time, but heavy shellfire blocked its progress, and allowed the enemy enough time to re-man their strongpoints and machine-gun posts.19 A reserve division, 18th, was sent forward to secure the Green Line, but found it impossible to reach its forming-up trenches and the attack was abandoned.20 Unfortunately, the objectives of II Corps, which had been critical to the whole plan, were now–for the moment–out of reach.

  Behind the German lines, scraps of information and wild rumours were circulating about what was happening. Johann Schärdel, still sheltering in his concrete bunker, watched in horror as it began to fill up with casualties, ‘who lay and stood in the narrow corridors in blood-soaked bandages’:

  It was impossible to get outside without stepping over casualties and pools of coagulated blood. The survivors of a direct hit on a bandaging station that had been jam-packed with casualties and medical staff were brought in on stretchers. Most of them were severely wounded, and [their rescuers] had risked their own lives to pull them out of the rubble of the station. Now the rescued men lay splinted and rebandaged [sic] in front of the regiment’s combat bunker, barely protected by the concrete side walls. Clumps of dirt and the dust from impacts trickled down continuously from above on to the wounded and dying through the brushwood mesh, which served only to shield them from the view of aircraf
t.

  The wounded were eager to talk about what they had seen and heard. It was said that a Prussian unit, sent to relieve the Bavarians, had failed completely and given themselves up, but no one knew whether it was true or not. ‘One talked about a new type of grenade that hurled burning liquid and made all resistance impossible… A machine gunner, who was covered in dirt all over, came with what remained of his weapon, in which a grenade splinter had ripped a large hole in the cooler.’21

  All morning the defenders had been engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. The foremost trenches had been garrisoned very lightly, often by just a handful of machine-gunners, with the majority of the defending troops echeloned in depth and deployed in a kind of ‘chequerboard’ pattern, with each strongpoint offering mutual support.22 As soon as the British bombardment opened, red flares began fizzing into the sky, as German units urgently requested protective barrages, but in the murky fog many could not be seen, leaving the infantry on their own. Across most of the front the advanced outposts could do little to stem the attacking onslaught. Around Hooge, the men of 17 Reserve Infantry Regiment (6th Bavarian Reserve Division) endured heavy drumfire at Zero Hour, forcing the weak companies in the front line to make a fighting retreat to their reserve position.23 At Westhoek, the front-line positions were ‘simply overwhelmed’ by the attackers. No officer of II Battalion, 95 Infantry Regiment (38th Division), came back from the front line and only a handful of battered survivors were able to find their way back to the regiment’s main position, reporting the ‘heroic struggle’ in the outpost zone.24