Passchendaele

by Nick Lloyd

  Out at the front, German front-line battalions, and their supports, tried to stem the advance, mounting local counter-attacks through curtains of artillery splinters, barrages of long-range machine-gun fire, and predatory passing aircraft. That day there were countless acts of reckless bravery, including the example of Anton Liedl, serving with 17 Reserve Infantry Regiment, who was awarded a Silver Military Merit Medal. He volunteered to maintain contact between his company and battalion headquarters, and made the journey four times, ‘heedless of danger and fatigue’, until he collapsed from exhaustion.25 On the Westhoek Ridge, Lieutenant Schmeichel took command of his battery (after his commander was killed) and, almost singlehandedly, destroyed three tanks. Similarly, another junior officer, Lieutenant Heimann, distinguished himself by holding on to his guns, despite being surrounded by attacking infantry. Further to the north, at Pilckem, 23rd Reserve Division was on the point of being relieved when the attack was launched. Major Johannes Scheffer (Commanding Officer III Battalion, 392 Reserve Infantry Regiment), his Adjutant, and Captain Himstedt (1 Lehr Regiment) were all killed after leading a counter-attack armed only with hand grenades.26

  Supporting units were fed into the fighting as soon as they became available, and did much to slow the British advance, despite suffering from communication and coordination problems brought on by the collapse of the signal networks across the battlefield. At Langemarck, 3rd Guard Division had been sent to relieve 23rd Reserve Division, but had only completed part of its deployment when British troops broke through the Albrecht Line. By ‘continuous close quarter fighting’, the division was able to hold its ground for most of the morning until shortages of ammunition left them with no choice but to fall back.27 On the crucial southern sector at Gheluvelt, 52nd Reserve Division had been moved forward as early as five o’clock to reinforce Bavarian troops on the Menin Road. During the advance it sustained ‘heavy losses’, and ‘it was only with difficulty that the waves were able to get through the heavy fire and gas-filled hollows and reach the west edge of the Herenthage Park [the grounds of a ruined chateau southeast of Hooge], where the 4th Company entered the battle…’ Fighting continued for several hours, but the advance began to slow, ‘the enemy having to pay in bloody sacrifices for every inch of ground gained’. Here the Germans ran out of ammunition and hand grenades, and by the time they had re-established communication with their supporting artillery batteries the British had already begun to entrench.28

  As the morning wore on, news gradually trickled back to the German Fourth Army on the progress of the battle. Although the situation remained confused, with fog and low-lying cloud blanketing much of the battlefield, German aircraft were able to identify the approximate location of their front-line units and provide Fourth Army with a reasonably accurate picture of what was going on.29 It was evident that the main assault had been delivered, with enemy forces breaking into most of their front-line positions along Groups Wytschaete, Ypres and Dixmude, although in most cases the second line remained intact.30 German commanders instinctively recognized that now was the moment to deploy the Eingreif divisions that lay poised behind the battlefield, ready to intervene, in line with their defensive doctrine.31 In the north, 2nd Guard Reserve Division was given a warning order at 5 a.m., before moving out to their assembly areas, south of Houthulst Forest, an hour later. In the crucial central sector commanded by Group Ypres, two Eingreif divisions were available–50th Reserve and 221st–and shortly after midday they were ordered to move against the flanks of the British advance between Zonnebeke and Langemarck. In addition to the two regiments from 119th Division (behind Group Wytschaete), which were despatched to Group Ypres, an additional division (79th Reserve) was sent off in the direction of Westroosebeke, and would begin to arrive around five o’clock that evening.32

  With German reserves moving up, the crisis of the battle was now approaching. A key element of Gough’s plan was to try and push as far as possible into the German defences, and shortly after 8 a.m. three reserve brigades from XVIII and XIX Corps began to ‘leapfrog’ on to the German third position. Yet just getting through the wreckage of no-man’s-land was extremely difficult, with the attacking battalions having to run the gauntlet between flurries of shellfire and strongpoints that seemed to spring to life again after not being properly ‘mopped up’ earlier in the day. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Riddell (officer commanding 1/Cambridgeshires, 39th Division) recorded that as they approached the second objective (the Black Line)–the men shaken out into ‘artillery formation’ to prevent them from bunching up–they were ‘getting it hot and strong, guns and machine-guns’:

  But the men never wavered. The officers led on. A signal, and the platoons split up into sections in file and headed on for St Julien, now lost in the smoke of the shell-burst, now coming in view again; shaken for the moment as shells exploded amongst them, then reforming, but ever advancing steadily and slowly as if nothing unusual had happened.33

  Worryingly, by the time they reached their objectives, the reserve brigades were exhausted and dangerously exposed. With II Corps coming under intensive counter-attack, it was unclear how long they would be able to hold their ground.

  By midday the battle began to tilt–noticeably and irrevocably–in Germany’s favour. Paul Maze went forward to find out what was going on, and managed to cross the Steenbeek before running into a heavy barrage. ‘The fight had now definitely developed into a new phase’, he wrote. ‘I felt the pressure of German counter-attacks coming from several quarters, where obviously the progress of our troops was checked, particularly round St Julien, where the fighting was most severe.’34 Unfortunately, the difficulties of communicating on the battlefield meant that British divisional commanders had only a patchy understanding of what was going on. In 55th Division, communications ran back to Wieltje, and as it was impossible to use visual signalling, runners had to be employed–taking between one and two hours to carry messages the 3,000 yards to the nearest signalling station.35 Ominously, at one o’clock XIX Corps reported that enemy troops were ‘reinforcing [the] Green Line and a large number of infantry [were] going along the Passchendaele Ridge’. Evidently the Eingreif divisions were beginning to arrive on the battlefield.36

  Crucially the contact aeroplanes of the RFC–those despatched to locate infantry positions–were seldom seen and could offer little warning of the impending counter-attack. In any case, infantry were understandably reluctant to mark their positions with flares for fear of attracting enemy aircraft or artillery, giving those few aircraft that did make it over the battlefield an almost impossible job.37 Lieutenant J. S. Walthew, a pilot with 4 Squadron, was ordered to discover where ‘two Divisions had got to’ but found flying conditions to be almost impossible. ‘I was unable to fly at even a respectable height owing to the clouds, in fact most of the time I was up at about 500 feet. As soon as we got over the lines, where an extraordinarily intense barrage was being put up, we were under continuous machine-gun fire from the Huns.’ Walthew had only been in the air for ten minutes when a bullet pierced his fuel tank, and, with petrol flooding all over his legs, he was fortunate to land at a nearby aerodrome without bursting into flames. ‘It was a great misfortune having a bad day as otherwise the whole push could have been greatly improved’, he wrote afterwards.38

  As the British had already found out, deploying units on to the battlefield, and then trying to manoeuvre around it, was not easy. British artillery was still trying to seal off the Salient with long-range barrage fire and this badly interfered with the progress of German reinforcements. Personal accounts of those soldiers who served in the Eingreif divisions that day are replete with the confusion of battle, and the horror of trying to move forward into what must have been a terrifying and lethal environment. Moreover, they had almost no information on their precise objectives and little coordination with the units already in the line. For example, Reserve Second Lieutenant Alfred Wohlenberg of 77 Reserve Infantry Regiment, part of 2nd Guard Reserve Division (which w
as assembling on the northern edge of the battlefield), tried to conduct a mounted reconnaissance that afternoon–to sketch out where his division was to counter-attack–but the whole thing was hopeless. His horse (‘a miserable looking nag’) was terrified of the shelling and reared up constantly; one of his party got stuck in a shell hole and lost his horse; his map dissolved in the mud and rain; and he eventually stumbled into the wrong regimental headquarters having got hopelessly lost.39

  Despite the difficulties of deploying on the fire-swept battlefield, the Eingreif divisions found themselves up against opponents in an equally precarious situation. In the crucial central sector, the British advance had bogged down around midday, with the reserve brigades scattered by heavy shelling and dislocated by growing enemy pressure. 1/Cambridgeshires (118 Brigade) gallantly held off a number of counter-attacks; the first, shortly after midday, was repulsed ‘thanks to stout hearts, well-sited trenches, and the number of Lewis and machine-guns salved from tanks’. Yet this would be only a temporary reprieve, and by the late afternoon the entire brigade was beginning to retire.40 On the Westhoek Ridge, the positions of 8th Division–the only division of II Corps to meet any kind of success–gradually crumbled in the face of renewed attacks, despite the best efforts of Brigadier-General Clifford Coffin (GOC 25 Brigade), who won a Victoria Cross for his gallantry that day. Forty-seven years old and recently promoted, Coffin provided a remarkable example of leadership and courage. ‘With a coolness and intrepidity which put new life and resolution into all he met, he went about from shell-hole to shell-hole, organizing the defence of the position gained and urging on his troops to new and willing efforts’, wrote the divisional history.41

  British battalions showed remarkable tenacity trying to hold on to their advanced positions, but once one began to pull back, it was inevitable that the others would have to do the same. When they got into position, the Eingreif divisions from Group Ypres (50th Reserve and 221st Divisions) were able to make significant progress, retaking sections of the Wilhelm Line, ‘with the bayonet and grenade’, and sweeping the British back, in most cases, to the line of the Steenbeek, the sluggish stream that ran parallel to Fifth Army’s front line.42 By late afternoon it was known that they had retaken the German third line (the Wilhelm Line) and were pursuing the retreating enemy back towards the second (Albrecht Line). Although some battalion commanders wanted to keep going, to throw the enemy back even further, Freiherr von Stein at Group Ypres thought better of it. Casualties had been heavy, the troops were exhausted, and he had few reserves left to feed into the battle. Accordingly, he ordered his men to hold the line of the Steenbeek up to Saint-Julien and dig in on the Albrecht Position. For the moment at least, the battle had ended.43

  Sometime around 4 p.m. the sky clouded over and it started to rain. Soon large drops of water were splashing off tin helmets and forming in puddles on the blasted ground. German regimental histories recall the troops pressing their attacks up to their knees in mud.44 Yet the Eingreif divisions had done their work and played a crucial role in blunting Fifth Army’s attack. Gough’s corps commanders met their chief at La Lovie at a quarter to eight that evening, with Neill Malcolm welcoming them inside. The men came in, took off their caps, and shook the rain from their capes. Shortly afterwards Gough entered the room. He looked around at their glum faces and sat down, his first words summing up the disappointment on their faces.

  ‘What a perfect bloody curse this rain is!’45

  Outside it was raining heavily. Long streams of water streaked down the windows of the chateau and squalls battered against the glass as daylight began to fade. The meeting lasted an hour. Gough asked his commanders to tell him how the day had gone, and Jacob, who began, stated that 30th Division had been unable to capture its first objective.46 Moreover, there was little chance his other divisions would be able to make further gains at the moment. The best that they could hope for was to recover the ground lost in counter-attacks over the next few days. The other corps had fared better and it was decided to try and push them on to the Green Line (the third objective) by 4 August.

  Gough had achieved a success, of sorts. Despite his gloom over the weather, the Fifth Army commander was encouraged by what they had achieved. The attack was ‘decidedly successful’, he felt, only spoilt by the arrival of the rain, which ‘soon destroyed all hopes of success’.47 It was evident that things had not gone to plan on the right, where II Corps had struggled, but elsewhere Fifth Army had advanced about 3,000 yards, taking its first and second objectives on time and without what seemed like prohibitive casualties. Once returns from the battlefield had been collected, total casualties in Fifth and Second Armies (between 31 July and 3 August) amounted to 31,850.48 Heavy enough certainly, but mercifully much fewer than had greeted the infamous first day on the Somme the previous year, the greatest disaster in the British Army’s history, when 57,000 casualties had been sustained, including over 19,000 dead.49 This was really where the good news ended, however, and the series of assumptions upon which Gough had planned his assault had proved incorrect, or, at least, seriously flawed. His attempt to drive as deep as possible into the German line had not proved feasible and any troops that had pushed on further than the second objective had been swept back by the Eingreif divisions. Thus it seemed that John Davidson’s warnings prior to the attack had proved correct and that some other way was required. There was simply no chance that infantry could move, at speed and at distance, through such a layered defensive position. It needed to be bitten off, one trench at a time.

  For the troops who fought there, the difficulties at Ypres seemed, in some ways, greater than those of 1916. ‘It was the Somme over again, except that a Somme battle fought knee-deep in marsh was so much the worse’, wrote Charles Carrington, a veteran of both battles.50 According to the historian of the Welsh Guards, C. H. Dudley Ward, the men found the experience of fighting in the Salient uniquely depressing. From their point of view, seizure of ground did not bring an end to their troubles, only new ones, or, as he put it, ‘the capture of one ridge always exposed another on which the enemy was firmly established’.51 And there was something else, another factor, that made Ypres more dispiriting than the Somme (and something which Edmund Blunden had noticed too): there were fewer dead Germans to be seen on the battlefield–proof that the bulk of their manpower had not been in the front trenches at the time of the attack. Gough may have tried to deliver the knockout blow on 31 July, but that evening there was a sense that, somehow, the Germans had evaded it.

  For the German Army, on the contrary, the mood could not have been more different. At the headquarters of Army Group Rupprecht in Courtrai, a full review of the situation was held at midnight. ‘The first day of major combat was over’, reported Group Ypres. ‘Its end result was this: the major offensive that had been prepared with the utmost care for months and equipped with all available resources, and which was carried out with unprecedented force with double superiority in infantry and triple superiority in artillery, had failed utterly.’52 The British may have managed to penetrate up to three kilometres on a front of sixteen kilometres, but the appalling weather conditions and the continued hold on the Gheluvelt Plateau ensured there was little possibility of a breakthrough. Although not all counter-attacks had been successful and losses had been ‘severe’, General von Kuhl was confident that the ‘momentum of the assault had been broken’.53

  Lossberg prepared a detailed brief that evening and was pleased to report ‘the favourable outcome of the first great defensive struggle’. ‘The attack met with strong resistance’, he noted. ‘A bloody melee, swaying back and forth, but in which our plucky infantry, well supported by our brave artillery, won the upper hand.’ After continuous, heavy combat, their troops fought with ‘dogged courage’; whenever ground was lost, much of it was soon retaken.54 In Group Wytschaete, the staff officer Albrecht von Thaer was also pleased. As far as he could tell, they had only lost ‘insignificant ground’. ‘In any case,’ he added, ‘in
light of the huge efforts on the part of the enemy, it has generally proceeded well and we can thank God if it continues in the same vein.’ He continued:

  Of course there is always lots to do, day and night. One gets dead tired. The heavy rain today is a godsend for our troops because the soft, sodden ground hampers the English offensive considerably; it is more of an impediment for the English than it is for us and we could do with the break, to reorganize our groups, replace worn troops with fresh ones. However, it is of course awful for our soldiers to lie there in the water out in the open, especially for the countless injured whose return transport is only happening little by little.55

  German losses had been heavy. Between 21 and 31 July Fourth Army sustained about 30,000 casualties, including 9,000 missing in action, with thirty-five guns being lost.56 It had also been extremely expensive in munitions. Field batteries would have fired (on average) about 300 rounds per day during July, but on the first day of the offensive, this soared to over 1,200.57 It was estimated that on 31 July Fourth Army’s batteries fired off the equivalent of twenty-seven ammunition trains–almost quadruple what had been regarded as heavy consumption on the Somme. This was the reality of the Materialschlacht.58