Passchendaele
Page 27
Neville Hind was one of the lucky ones. He had a prized ‘blighty’ wound that would take him out of the war, but for thousands of others on that dark morning of 9 October, there would be no escape. 49th Division, which had somehow managed to get its attacking battalions into position via a single duckboard track (No. 5 track south of the Wieltje–Passchendaele road), marched into a killing zone. Attacking infantry failed to notice the artillery lifts every fifty yards (an indication of how unimpressive the creeping barrage was), while the German defenders were not forced to shelter in their dugouts, meaning that they could hold their shell holes in strength. The main obstacle across the front–the Ravebeek–was waist deep and impossible to cross under heavy fire. Rifles and Lewis guns were rendered ineffective by the liquid mud; communication to the forward battalions broke down; and effective German sniping caused a great deal of demoralization among the attackers.16
On the right, 66th Division experienced similar problems, with the approach march taking, in places, up to ten hours. When the attack finally went ahead, the division managed to get forward further than the units on its left, but the unsuppressed German defences on the higher ground at Bellevue, which had torn 49th Division’s attack to pieces, began to enfilade its lines and cause heavy loss.17 ‘The whole world seemed to have erupted like a volcano: one had to fix one’s mind on the necessity of going forward to reach the objective at all costs’, wrote P. R. Hall, a private in 2/6th Manchesters. ‘The whizz of bullets was startling but you knew that the ones you heard had already gone past. Shells one could hear coming and judge roughly how close they were–if very close just duck and carry on. The Minenwerfers were the worst. We did not hear them coming and they seemed to explode almost beneath one’s feet.’18 Although elements of the division managed to secure the Blue Line (the second objective), with parties even making it as far as the village of Passchendaele, local counter-attacks forced a retirement to the first objective by the early afternoon, leaving II ANZAC Corps with virtually nothing to show for such an enormous effort. Total casualties for the attacking divisions had been over 5,700 men–virtually destroying them as fighting formations.19 Although the attack had met with more success in the north, with XIV Corps and the French First Army advancing, successfully, towards the southern outskirts of Houthulst Forest (where the ground was much less cut up by shellfire), elsewhere the attack had stalled. This was not ‘bite and hold’; it was more like rush and grab.
German morale rose after the events of 9 October–the first real victory the Army had achieved since late August. Its defence had been thoroughly planned and ruthlessly executed, with the reintroduction of tried-and-tested tactics being totally vindicated. Indeed the events of the day offered further evidence that a more cautious approach offered the best chance of conserving German strength in the face of the numerical superiority of the enemy.20 The defenders had to endure days of harassing fire, little food or water, and the risks of exposure and exhaustion in the cold, wet weather, but when they got their chance they extracted a terrible revenge. On the northern sector, 86 Fusilier Regiment (18th Division) found itself coming under intense attack, so three heavy machine-guns were hoisted on to the top of a bunker and loaded with ammunition. From there they could enfilade the whole line of advance. After waiting until the attacking infantry closed to within 500 metres of their positions, they opened fire, driving apart the attacking lines and forcing them to take cover in no-man’s-land. In the course of the day those three machine-guns fired almost 16,000 rounds.21
Elsewhere there was close combat as the attackers broke into the main German position. West of Passchendaele, the men of 5 Jäger Regiment (195th Division) were in the line, desperately trying to hold off a furious onslaught. ‘The weak line of defence in the section of the battalion is almost completely shot to pieces’, noted its history. ‘The assault of the English infantry surges across it in a rapid succession of waves… Isolated groups penetrate through the large gaps in the security line but are then stopped by autonomous and automatic fire from the infantrymen and machine-gunners that operate from the main line of defence. The coordinated attack dissolves into fierce fighting. All company sections battle with great tenacity.’ In such a confused battle, it was essential that reserves were moved up quickly, but heavy harassing fire had all but isolated the front-line battalions, severing all telephone connections to the rear. Fortunately, after the heroic efforts of a signal section at the regimental command post, which had managed to flash out an emergency message before smoke obscured the whole battlefield, supporting units were able to move up and reinforce this crucial sector, sealing off any enemy penetrations.22
German artillery fire had also been highly accurate. One of those involved on 9 October was the battery officer Reinhard Lewald, who, by his own admission, was an uncommonly lucky soldier. He had been sent on a gunnery course shortly before the offensive began (thus missing the heavy fighting on 31 July) and had also received a fortnight’s leave in late September (allowing him to escape the carnage of Plumer’s first three steps). Yet his luck was changing. On the afternoon of 7 October he stepped off a train in Belgian Flanders, before rejoining his battery just in time for Poelcappelle. Although this would be an extremely hard-fought engagement, it was a clear-cut German victory. In the pouring rain, across shell-churned ground, they deployed their guns and were in position on the morning of 9 October, when Plumer’s attack went in. That day the British fired ‘an indescribable barrage’ that heralded yet another major battle. ‘Our losses are heavy, but the enemy breakthrough is destroyed’, he wrote. ‘They can only occupy a strip of muddy terrain.’23
Notwithstanding these encouragements, there was little sense of celebration at Army Group headquarters in Courtrai. Crown Prince Rupprecht worried constantly about his ability to maintain such an exhausting defence and reported to OHL (on the morning of 11 October) how difficult things were becoming. The intensity of operations between 4 and 9 October had put his Army Group under almost intolerable pressure. The contents of twenty-seven ammunition trains had been fired off at Poelcappelle, and Rupprecht worried about the overburdened railway system, which was struggling to keep up with the regular relief and reinforcement of front-line units.24 Moreover, ‘bringing the divisions up to strength was becoming more difficult. Fourth Army must adapt itself to manage with less strength.’ Consequently, it might even be necessary to conduct a significant redeployment; giving up much of the coast and, presumably, the vital railway junction at Roulers. He issued orders that divisions that had not lost more than 1,800 men were to be kept in Flanders for the duration of the battle. For the moment, at least, relief was out of the question.25
The Germans may have successfully held their ground, but the intensity of the fighting wore units down. Group Ypres bore the brunt of the losses. In October its divisions sustained 3,851 dead, 15,202 wounded and 10,395 men missing in action. Of particular concern were the disproportionate losses in officers, with some regiments losing their commander, two battalion commanders and up to nine captains.26 North of Poelcappelle, 18th Division, from Schleswig-Holstein, had failed badly, with none of its regiments being able to counter-attack properly.27 Around Passchendaele, 195th Division suffered over 3,200 casualties between 7 and 13 October.28 ‘You, dear schoolboys who read about deeds of heroism; Germans sitting around tables enjoying a beer,’ wrote Major Ludwig von Menges, the commanding officer of 4/Reserve Jäger Battalion (which had been in support that day), ‘just think of all the blood that flowed; all that had to be performed whenever the Army Communiqué read: “Today, too, our troops beat off all British attacks in the Passchendaele area; their meagre gains of ground were recaptured from them.”’29
The attack on 9 October may have been disastrous, but Plumer’s fifth step would go ahead, as planned, on 12 October. Preparations for what would become the First Battle of Passchendaele were little better than they had been at Poelcappelle. The three-day interlude was in no way sufficient to give the attacking brigades a fig
hting chance of getting through and the artillery situation remained on the point of collapse. In II ANZAC Corps, most of its field batteries were now ‘operating at half strength or less’, with guns being either out of position, clogged in mud or starved of ammunition.30 On 11 October, Major F. J. Rice’s battery took over new positions in the wasteland about half a mile south of Langemarck. ‘At this time these positions appeared to be undiscovered, but, as always in Flanders, digging down was impossible owing to reaching water so quickly, and the only protection was sandbags and corrugated iron.’ The roads leading up to the position were in a ‘terrible state’, but further on, out towards the front line, they got even worse. ‘Infantry officers told us more than once that they doubted if they could have dragged their way to their objectives even if there had been no enemy, the mud was so deep, and one heard stories of men, wounded and unwounded, being stuck in waterlogged shell holes for more than a day.’31
The attack on 12 October should never have gone ahead. While Haig and his commanders could, perhaps, be forgiven for ordering their divisions forward on 9 October–flush from the success of Broodseinde–there was no excuse for trying again just seventy-two hours later.32 Haig, optimistic as ever, needed little encouragement to urge his generals on, and his diary for this period contains wildly inaccurate information on the results of the attacks. Even the offensively minded General Gough–whose Fifth Army continued to offer flanking support–thought that Second Army’s objectives for the next offensive were ‘too far distant’. When he warned Haig, the Commander-in-Chief was unimpressed, telling him bluntly that ‘the enemy is now much weakened in moral[e] and lacks the desire to fight’.33 Sadly, further down the chain of command, there was a similar, depressing lack of realism. While Birdwood at I ANZAC Corps counselled Plumer against any further advances, others seem to have had few concerns, with over-optimistic reports about how much ground had been taken doing much to cloud the issue. Alexander Godley, the commander of II ANZAC Corps, suffered from what the historian Andrew Macdonald has called a ‘Passchendaele fixation’: an obsession to take the high ground, safe in the knowledge that it was what Haig wanted, and its capture would surely result in his promotion. He told Sir John Monash, the commander of 3rd Australian Division–which would make the main assault–that it was his ‘sacred duty’ to fly the Australian flag from the ruins of the village.34
For his part, Monash was much less enamoured of the prospect facing him. ‘Things now rushed. No time to prepare, refer to orders as we go along’ was one instruction he dashed off to his brigadiers.35 Not only was it almost impossible to bring up the number of guns and tons of ammunition they would need, but they also had to attack more formidable positions than had been the case on 4 October. It was evident that if the New Zealand Division failed to capture the Bellevue Spur on their left, the Australians would be exposed to deadly enfilade fire and cut to pieces (as had happened to 66th Division). On 11 October, Monash pleaded with his superiors for a delay, perhaps just twenty-four hours, to give them more time to get ready for the assault. But it got him nowhere. Godley was all for pushing on, confident that his divisions would take the high ground. As for Plumer–for so long the Apostle of order and method on the battlefield–he was convinced that conditions were favourable and turned Monash’s request down. They would attack, as scheduled, on 12 October.36
The role that Plumer played in this tragedy remains curious. He must have known that conditions were steadily deteriorating and that there was not enough time to prepare attacks properly. He had requested three weeks to mount his push on the Menin Road on 20 September, but now he was sanctioning attacks with intervals of five days and then, incredibly, just three days. Why he did not tell Haig, as he had done before, that there was no use pushing divisions forward without artillery supremacy and until all preparations had been completed remains unclear. He left no personal papers or memoirs, and, in any case, Tim Harington insisted they had done the right thing.37 Possibly confusion or incomplete intelligence was to blame–it would have taken days to clarify exactly which positions were held and where units were situated–and it has been suggested that he was ‘swept along by the tide of false optimism’ that emanated from GHQ in its urgency to take the high ground.38 Yet Plumer had never been one to take anything for granted. He had always been a ‘soldier’s general’, steady and clear in his own mind about what needed to be done and fully aware of the lethality of the modern battlefield. So his failure to stand firm on the timing of the attacks, and the essential need for more preparation, can only have been down to a temporary and fateful loss of nerve; a tragic character flaw. Harington never admitted as much, but he was always highly sensitive to any accusation that they had been at fault at Third Ypres, which perhaps betrayed a lingering sense that something had gone wrong. So in those crucial, rushed days, their principles–which had proved so successful all year–were abandoned; trampled in the mud by a Commander-in-Chief who would simply not let go. Far from mounting considered and organized ‘bite-and-hold’ attacks, Haig had once again cast them aside in his elusive, quixotic quest for a breakthrough.
12 October dawned with high winds and a forecast of rain, which came in later, deluging the already sodden battlefield. Most of those at the front knew it was going to be a difficult day. Brigadier-General G. N. Johnston, artillery commander in the New Zealand Division, was so frustrated with the tiresome delays in getting men and material forward, and in deploying his guns, that he reported to both corps and division on 11 October that ‘they could not depend on the artillery for the attack on the following day’.39 Patrols had also discovered that the enemy defences were much less damaged than had been anticipated. At 5.30 a.m. on 11 October–just twenty-four hours before Zero Hour–Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Smith, Commanding Officer of 2/Otago Regiment, despatched a worrying report to his brigade warning them of the strongly held blockhouses and swathes of barbed wire that confronted his battalion. Here the enemy held the high ground and manned (on his sector alone) six pillboxes, and no-man’s-land was ‘three parts filled with water’. He urgently requested a heavy artillery bombardment to clear the way, but this only went ahead during the afternoon, and then with negligible results.40
What followed on the morning of 12 October was a brutal lesson in warfare. A combination of poor artillery support, awful ground conditions, exhausted infantry and a formidable defence stopped the attacks just as effectively as they had on 9 October. The left flank of the main assault was supposed to be secured by men of 9th (Scottish) Division of XVIII Corps, but they progressed barely further than their start line. An after-action report listed a range of sobering conclusions. ‘Brigades attacked on a much wider front than they have been accustomed to lately. The consequence was an increased difficulty in forming up correctly and in keeping correct direction.’ Because the ground was so treacherous, the waves of infantry became strung out and ‘lost’ the barrage, thus suffering the ‘usual consequences’ of attacking without artillery support. Throughout the day communication almost entirely broke down. ‘Wires were cut and visual [signalling] was difficult owing to gun flashes. Pigeons could not fly against the wind and the men in charge of the dogs became casualties.’ Runners–those that were not killed–took hours to get from the front-line battalions to brigade headquarters, but the main problem, and one that other divisions noted, was the ‘thinness and raggedness of the barrage’:
Batteries, moved forward since the last attack, encountered great difficulties and had many guns stuck in the mud. The exhausted state of some of the Brigades owing to casualties and severe weather undoubtedly militated against a good barrage. The lesson seems to be that too much stress cannot be laid on the necessity of constructing roads and railways expressly for the guns.41
Yet, in Flanders in October 1917, this was easier said than done. Across the front that day similar horrifying scenes were recorded and similar damning conclusions were drawn.
The main assault of II ANZAC Corps was to seize the highest par
t of the ridge, with Monash’s 3rd Division taking the village while the New Zealanders, on their left, attacked the blood-soaked Bellevue Spur. Incredibly their orders demanded an advance, in places, of around 2,500 yards, and included those objectives that had been assigned on 9 October and which should have already been captured by 49th and 66th Divisions. They were supposed to push forward in three bounds: 1,000 yards to the Red Line; another 550 yards to the Blue Line; and a final advance of between 500 and 900 yards to the Green Line (which would take them to the outskirts of Passchendaele). The infantry were to be covered by a creeping barrage moving at an initial rate of 100 yards every four minutes, before slowing down, but even this would be too quick. As had been the case with most of the attacking units, preparations were sketchy and incomplete. In 9 Australian Brigade, for example, no buried cable had been laid further than brigade headquarters (over 2,000 yards from the firing line); there were no forward dumps of food, water and ammunition; and no operation orders had been written, leaving everything to be done face to face and at the last minute.42
In such appalling conditions, that the attack failed was hardly a surprise, more a foregone conclusion. The worst scenes were witnessed in front of the Bellevue Spur, where the New Zealand Division found itself unable to cross broad belts of barbed wire that had been left largely untouched by the bombardment. Given how wet the ground was, many of the shells sank into the soft mud, which dissipated the force of their explosions or prevented them from going off entirely. The New Zealanders had to pick their way over the detritus of the fighting of 9 October–including dead bodies, broken equipment, and the wounded–and do so while dodging their own shells, which frequently fell short and went off among their own struggling lines of infantry. When they had crested the main rise, they were met with vicious bursts of unsuppressed machine-gun and rifle fire, which cut down scores of men. The barbed wire, still uncut, was an impenetrable obstacle, leaving the survivors, alone and exposed, in a death-trap. ‘Hun machine guns and snipers play havoc’, recorded Private Ernest Langford of 2/Otago Regiment. ‘Absolute Hell… Brigade practically wiped out.’43