by Nick Lloyd
Much depended on the artillery. While tanks had been employed in numbers for Gough’s operations, they would have little role in Plumer’s plan. I Tank Brigade was tasked with securing a series of strongpoints on the Saint-Julien to Poelcappelle road, but elsewhere the infantry would make do without them.42 Instead, they would rely on a formidable preliminary bombardment to ‘break down obstacles which are impassable for infantry’ (while, as far as possible, not creating new ones); to isolate the enemy’s front-line troops and batteries from their supplies (particularly food); to teach the enemy ‘to lie at the bottom of his shell holes or dugouts whenever any barrages are going on’; and to ‘carry out observed destructive shoots on hostile batteries’. When Zero Hour came, five creeping barrages–about 1,000 yards in depth–would cover the advancing troops, sweeping the ground in front of them with an invincible wall of shrapnel and high explosive. Once their objectives had been secured, standing barrages would be fired on enemy counter-attacks or possible approach routes to ensure German reserves were wholly engaged.43 In order to achieve this, Second Army would need a prodigious amount of guns and ammunition. For the seven-day preliminary bombardment, and to ensure the attack was thoroughly supported, General Plumer requested (and then received) over 1,800 guns (principally 18-pounders, but also significant numbers of heavier howitzers to take on German bunkers) and upwards of 3.5 million shells.44 Gough’s haphazard thrusting was now to be replaced by order and method. Firepower would trump manoeuvre. The first step would go in on 20 September.
9.
‘An Introduction to Hard Work’
The physical capability of the infantry depends undoubtedly not so much on the distance traversed as on the intensity of the hostile fire to which they are subjected.
Sir Herbert Plumer1
6–19 September 1917
Fresh troops were now coming into the line. Watts’s XIX Corps was relieved by Sir Edward Fanshawe’s V Corps on 7 September, while further south X Corps and I ANZAC Corps relieved Sir Claud Jacob’s battered divisions, and occupied the front between Westhoek and Shrewsbury Forest. British and French troops had opened the attack on 31 July and fought throughout August, but the next phase of the battle would be spearheaded by troops from Australia and New Zealand. After being given their ‘baptism of fire’ at Gallipoli, the Anzacs had gradually been concentrated on the Western Front throughout 1916. Now they were organized into two corps, I and II ANZAC, which were commanded by Lieutenant-Generals Sir William Birdwood and Sir Alexander Godley respectively.
Like all those who came into the Salient, the Anzacs did so with mixed feelings. While they had, for the most part, enjoyed a long period of rest and training since the spring and were ready to go into action, some units grumbled about the amount of hard fighting they had endured. 4th Australian Division, in particular, was struggling to absorb over 9,000 new recruits after being heavily engaged at both Bullecourt and Messines, with reports of young soldiers running in the face of the enemy or going absent without leave.2 Edward Lynch, a nineteen-year-old from Sydney, was serving with the ‘Fighting Fourth’ and complained about being in the line constantly. ‘When word came about the move, some of the men very decidedly voiced their opinions that the army heads had broken faith with our division’, he wrote. In a sober, disgruntled mood, they moved by motor-bus to Westhoek, where they went into reserve.3
The fragile mood in 4th Division was not particularly widespread, but it was often said that the Anzacs were poorly disciplined. A British Royal Engineer, Arthur Sambrook, remembered sharing a camp with the men of 3rd Australian Division at Neuve Eglise. ‘This camp could not be mistaken for an establishment of His Majesty’s Brigade of Guards’, he noted sourly. Apparently the only person ‘who kept up the Guards’ tradition in behaviour and smartness’ was their Company Sergeant Major, John Mitchinson, ‘whose blood pressure went up every time he saw the Aussies on parade’:
Our turnout was better than that of our camp maters [sic]: we always went on parade with all our uniform on. Our Australian companions came on half-dressed, and stood in some sort of a line, with pipes and cigarettes and plenty of conversation going on; their company officers never walked up and down the ranks inspecting them, having a good idea what they looked like from the first glance at the front rank. With the smoking and tobacco chewing indulged in there was more spit than polish, and when they were required to march off the officers just said, ‘OK chaps, we’ll get going.’4
To make matters even worse, the Australians were–at least when compared to their British cousins–very well paid. Tommies looked upon the Australians’ six shillings a day with jealousy and envy (no doubt doing so while they jingled what was left of their shilling a day wage in their pockets).
For their part, the Australians prided themselves on their sometimes slovenly appearance: a loose-fitting jacket with their traditional felt hat looped over the left side. Charles Bean, who wrote the official Australian history of the war, noted that the uniform of the AIF may have struck some people as dull–a pea-soup shade of khaki with brass buttons oxidized to a drab black to prevent reflection–but it was ‘designed for one subject only–that of being serviceable for war’.5 The same could have been said of the ‘diggers’ themselves. They were, to a man, convinced that they were better fighters than their brethren from the Mother Country, and regarded the British obsession with ‘spit and polish’ as mere unnecessary ‘bull’ that was more trouble than it was worth. And while the Australian soldier would gain a reputation for ill-discipline and insubordination, even Haig was forced to admit that the BEF had few better fighters than the men from the southern hemisphere. When the Commander-in-Chief reviewed 2nd and 5th Australian Divisions on 29 August, he was at pains to stress how pleased he was with their demeanour, noting that they could not have marched any better ‘if they had received years of peace training’.6
Second Army had issued a pamphlet on the enemy’s new defensive methods and this formed the basis of a ‘progressive method of teaching’ whereby platoons and sections ‘were practised constantly in the new formations and tactics’. ‘Concurrently with the musketry training, careful attention was paid to training in discipline and in the use of the auxiliary platoon weapons–the bayonet, Lewis gun, rifle grenade, and hand grenade.’7 In 4th Australian Division, training was ‘energetically carried out’ throughout September, mainly in how to deal with the shell hole defence they were coming up against. Long route marches through the countryside, close-order drill, tactical training and musketry all kept the men busy.8 Lieutenant Ben Champion, a native of Stanmore, New South Wales (serving with 53/Battalion), who had rejoined his battalion at Poperinge, saw for himself how much was being done. ‘As an introduction to hard work… we had a 15-mile route march with packs up, and now the Battalion is in splendid condition’, he wrote. It would be the same across the two Anzac corps.9
A curious lull now seemed to fall upon the ragged Flanders battlefield. The endless columns of trucks and infantry, despatch riders and working parties, still came up and down, and Ypres remained a bustling centre of activity–even if it was still being shelled and bombed from the air–but the intensity of the previous months had gone. While small-scale attacks still continued in places–such as XIX Corps’s operations at Borry Farm on 6 September and 6th Division’s attack on Hill 35 four days later–all minor operations were cancelled by GHQ on 10 September.10 More encouragingly, the weather had steadily improved since late August. Warm winds and clear skies meant that, finally, the sodden battlefield could begin to dry out. ‘In appearance it changed from a morass to a desert’, wrote Charles Bean. Westhoek Ridge, in particular, with its shattered farm buildings and battered pillboxes, even reminded some Anzacs of the craggy Libyan Desert, where they had trained prior to deploying on the Western Front.11
Behind the lines, in fields covered with white canvas bell-tents, British and Dominion troops enjoyed a temporary respite from the offensive. Charles Carrington, a junior officer with 1/5th Royal War
wickshire Regiment (48th Division), spent September near Saint-Omer, ‘in rich rolling country with golden harvest weather and comfortable billets’. ‘We spent long happy easy days luxuriating in the sun, glad to be alive, more concerned with the Divisional Football Cup than with the war, but quite concerned with incorporating our drafts of new recruits–conscripts now and just as good soldiers as the old volunteers.’12 ‘If it had not been for the growl of the guns, an occasional shell in Poperinge while we were bargaining for greengages, or the perseverance of the enemy airmen, who dropped bombs somewhere in the neighbourhood each fine night, we might have forgotten the war completely’, recorded W. H. L. Watson, who was serving with the Tank Corps. ‘There were walks through the pinewoods, canters over the heath, thrilling football matches against our rivals, little expeditions to Bailleul for fish, or Cassel for a pleasant dinner in the cool of the evening.’13
It was an old joke that the sun always shone in the Salient whenever the British were not attacking, and September 1917 was no different. ‘The weather during this time was simply glorious,’ remembered Captain James McCudden of 56 Squadron, ‘and we always had plenty of spare time, so we thoroughly enjoyed it.’ When not airborne McCudden and his fellow pilots spent their time either in the mess playing cards and listening to the gramophone or outside hitting a tennis ball around a pole–a game known as ‘bumple-puppy’. When it was hot they would bathe in a stream near their aerodrome, and if it rained they would catch lifts into nearby towns, principally Saint-Omer, and spend their wages in the teashops on filling French pastries.14 Such an existence may have sounded idyllic, but the life of a pilot on the Western Front could sometimes be measured in hours. On 6 September, while flying his SE5, McCudden encountered two new types of enemy aircraft, the Fokker Triplane and the Pfalz Scout. Although nothing came of this encounter (‘we manoeuvred around for a while, and the Huns did most of the shooting’), he was disappointed with the performance of his Lewis gun and spent the next few days trying to get the interrupter gear to work properly.15 He was right to be concerned; five days earlier Manfred von Richthofen, flying one of the newly arrived Triplanes, shot down a British observation aircraft somewhere over Zonnebeke. On 3 September Jasta 11 recorded 11 kills in a single day–a stark illustration of how costly it was to maintain a continual air presence against such formidable opponents.16
Squadrons of German bombers also carried out regular sorties over the British lines. The number of dead and wounded from these raids may have been relatively inconsiderable–particularly when compared to the scores of casualties coming from the battlefield–but the loss of control of the air over the rear areas was an increasing concern to RFC headquarters. Over 600 tons of bombs were dropped by German aircraft against targets as far west as Saint-Omer between July and November 1917.17 Camouflaged tents were ordered by Second Army on 15 September–in place of their highly visible white ones–and Major-General Hugh Trenchard authorized day-bombing of German aerodromes, as well as an intensive effort against German railway communications and troop accommodation, in the days before the renewal of the offensive.18 When commanders complained about the air raids, Haig and Trenchard were nonplussed. Both were convinced that the aggressive aerial posture taken by the RFC was the right one and should be maintained at all costs. It was very difficult to detect incoming aircraft, particularly at night, and they felt that precious resources should be directed against enemy infrastructure rather than defensive patrols. The British just had to get on with it.
Despite daily losses in the air, the work of the Corps squadrons of the RFC continued unabated as they prepared to support the renewed offensive. Every day, hundreds of aerial photographs were taken of the battlefield, processed, analysed and then sent off to the corps and divisional headquarters for dissemination. In September alone the RFC exposed over 14,500 photographic plates and distributed almost 350,000 prints.19 Trenchard, who regularly updated Haig on ‘the work of the Flying Corps’, was extremely proud of what his squadrons were doing. He visited Montreuil on 28 August and impressed the Commander-in-Chief with the latest photographs. Haig wrote in his diary:
Our photographs now show distinctly the ‘shell holes’ which the Enemy has turned into a position. The paths made by men walking in rear of those occupied, first caught our attention. After a most careful examination of the photo, it would seem that the system of defence was exactly on the lines directed in General Sixt von Armin’s pamphlet on ‘The Construction of Defence Positions’…20
This was the reality of the front line in the Ypres Salient–rough positions strung between shell holes and anchored around pillboxes–presenting the attacker with a much more complex problem than the old linear defences had done earlier in the war.
Three weeks were set aside for the renewed attack and it was prepared with all the care and attention to detail that was Second Army’s hallmark. The huge transfer of guns from Fifth Army meant that new roads and paths had to be built, while light railways were constructed to bring up tons of supplies from the railheads all the way to the front.21 In I ANZAC Corps, dumps of road metal and road planks were made every 100 yards, with larger dumps every 1,000 yards, and all roads were divided into sections under suitable officers. ‘The whole terrain consists of a mass of shell craters and as the German liquid [mustard] gas clings in these craters for 24 hours or more, we have had more men knocked out by this gas than by shell fire, which practically never ceases’, recorded I ANZAC Corps’s Chief Engineer, Brigadier-General A. C. Joly de Lotbinière.22 Nevertheless, by 18 September most of the key sections of road and track had been laid–providing firm foundations for the subsequent attack.
In the attacking units, orders were thorough and wide-ranging, laying out in frequently exhaustive detail how the attack was to proceed.23 In I ANZAC Corps, the front had been thoroughly reconnoitred and all ranks were familiar with the contours of the ground over which they would advance. A large model of the battlefield had been constructed behind the lines at the village of Busseboom and battalions were shunted in to see it throughout the month. ‘Every detail is marked to exact size, Fritz trenches, cement pillboxes and dugouts marked, and the likely positions of machine guns’, remembered Ben Champion who saw the model on 6 September. ‘This huge scale map has been compiled from thousands of aerial photographs and has taken engineers a month to construct. We had it explained to us by competent officers and thoroughly memorised it and can now visualise the area when reading our maps.’24 Message forms (with helpful maps printed on the back) were also distributed down to company level, while pioneers worked tirelessly to put up the thousands of signposts and lay the miles of tapes that would guide the battalions into the right positions. For the attacking infantry, coloured patches were even fixed to soldiers’ helmets to denote which objective–red, blue or green–they had been assigned to take.25
All attacking units were routinely briefed on the nature of the artillery support they would receive, because timing needed to be perfect. At Zero Hour (5.40 a.m.) a creeping barrage would crash out 150 yards in front of the leading waves and begin to advance after three minutes. It then ‘walked forward’ exactly 200 yards, taking eight minutes to do so, before slowing down and moving at a rate of 100 yards every six minutes until the Red Line (the first objective, on the other side of Glencorse Wood and along the Hanebeek stream) was reached. There it would halt for forty-five minutes to allow the attacking brigades enough time to consolidate their gains, ‘mop up’ their sectors, and make sure the ‘leapfrogging’ battalions were ready to go. At the appointed time, it would advance on to the Blue Line (the second objective, which ran along the western edge of Polygon Wood and included most of the Wilhelm Line), covering 100 yards every eight minutes. There it would halt, as Plumer had decreed, for a longer period of time (two hours) before pushing on to the Green Line (the final objective, a shorter advance further into Polygon Wood) at the standard rate of 100 yards every eight minutes. At each halt smoke would be fired to shield the attackers from ob
servation and allow time for officers and men to reorganize.26 Nothing would be left to chance this time.
In contrast to the frenetic activity on the British side of the line, there was a sense of suspended animation among the German defenders. ‘My deepest conviction is that the Battle of Flanders is at an end’, wrote General von Kuhl on 15 September. He had telephoned Sixt von Armin at Fourth Army and briefed him on the latest intelligence reports. German observers had detected the movement of an English division, with supporting artillery, away from the coastal sector–indicating that no attack from Nieuport was imminent. Surely if an offensive was to be continued from the Ypres Salient, then the British would need to remain in strength along the coast? A captured RFC pilot who crash-landed near Lille had also declared that the Flanders offensive was all but over. Although von Kuhl could not say for sure, and he insisted that ‘caution should still be exercised’, he was confident that they had seen through the worst of the summer offensive.27
By September 1917 German intelligence was drawn from a variety of sources, some more reliable than others, including aerial reconnaissance, spies and agents in France and Belgium, and wireless intercepts. Prisoner interrogation remained–like it did in the British Army–the easiest and most direct method of gauging enemy intentions. On 11 September, Albrecht von Thaer recorded a new process for the interrogation of British personnel which may not have been ‘exactly dignified and chivalrous’, but was ‘practical’ and seemed to work: