Passchendaele

by Nick Lloyd

  10 Haig diary, 14 March 1917, in G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), pp. 276–7.

  11 See P. Simkins, ‘Herbert Plumer’, in I. F. W. Beckett and S. J. Corvi (eds.), Haig’s Generals (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2006), pp. 141–63.

  12 TNA: WO 158/214, ‘Army Instructions for Main Offensive on Second Army Front’, 12 December 1916.

  13 Appendix V, ‘GHQ Letter to Second Army’, 6 January 1917, in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 406–7.

  14 Appendix VI, ‘GHQ Instructions for the Formation of a Special Sub-Section of the Operations Section of the General Staff’, 8 January 1917, in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 407–9. A memorandum, subsequently produced by the Operations Section, argued for simultaneous assaults at Messines and Pilckem up to the German second line. Two days later a ‘body of tanks’ would go on to capture Broodseinde. Although Haig seems to have been pleased with this memorandum, it was quietly dropped after objections from the Tank Corps. See Appendix VII, ‘Memorandum by Operations Section, General Staff GHQ’, 14 February 1917, in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 410–16, and R. Prior and T. Wilson, Passchendaele. The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996), pp. 45–8.

  15 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 15–18.

  16 See T. Travers, How the War was Won. Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2005; first publ. 1992), and ‘A Particular Style of Command: Haig and GHQ, 1916–18’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1987), pp. 363–76.

  17 For the influence of the ‘structured battle’ in 1915 see N. Lloyd, Loos 1915 (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), pp. 55–7.

  18 See R. Prior and T. Wilson, Command on the Western Front. The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), ch. 15, and H. Sebag-Montefiore, Somme. Into the Breach (London: Viking, 2016), ch. 3.

  19 Sir J. Davidson, Haig. Master of the Field (London: Peter Nevill, 1953), p. 14.

  20 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 37–8.

  21 D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (2 vols., London: Odhams Press, 1933–6), II, pp. 1249–56.

  22 This point is dealt with in J. Terraine, Douglas Haig. The Educated Soldier (London: Cassell & Co., 2000; first publ. 1963), pp. 319–21.

  23 Haig diary, 18 May 1917, in Sheffield and Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig, p. 294. The attack at Malmaison would actually take place between 23 and 27 October 1917.

  24 Davidson, Haig, p. 15.

  25 See Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War. 1914–1920 (London: HMSO, 1922), p. 64 (iii). The strength of the BEF peaked on 1 August 1917 with an estimated complement of 2,044,627 men.

  26 P. Simkins, ‘The Four Armies 1914–1918’, in D. G. Chandler and I. Beckett (eds.), The Oxford History of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; first publ. 1994), pp. 250–51.

  27 C. Falls, Military Operations. France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: Macmillan & Co., 1940), I, pp. 479–80.

  28 See H. Williamson, The Wet Flanders Plain (London: Faber & Faber, 2009; first publ. 1929).

  29 T. Ashworth, Trench Warfare 1914–1918: The Live and Let Live System (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 21.

  30 IWM: Documents 4755, H. S. Taylor, ‘Reminiscences of the Great War 1914/1918’, p. 9.

  31 M. Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme (London: Penguin Books, 1984; first publ. 1971), p. 88.

  32 A. P. Palazzo, ‘The British Army’s Counter-Battery Staff Office and Control of the Enemy in World War I’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 63, No. 1 (January 1999), p. 63.

  33 S. Marble, British Artillery on the Western Front in the First World War. ‘The Infantry Cannot Do with a Gun Less’ (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 163–4.

  34 J. H. Morrow, Jr, The Great War in the Air. Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993), p. 215.

  35 P. Hart, Bloody April. Slaughter in the Skies over Arras, 1917 (London: Cassell & Co., 2006; first publ. 2005), p. 11.

  36 J. T. B. McCudden, Flying Fury. Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps (Folkestone: Bailey Brothers & Swinfen, 1973; first publ. 1918), pp. 174–5.

  37 Shortly before his death in September 1917, the German ace Werner Voss complained that ‘All English single-seaters are superior to the German fighter aircraft in climb, handling, and dive capabilities, and most of them are also superior in speed.’ K. Bodenschatz, Hunting With Richthofen. The Bodenschatz Diaries: Sixteen Months of Battle with JG Freiherr von Richthofen No. 1, trans. J. Hayzlett (London: Grubb Street, 1996), p. 46.

  38 The Mark IV weighed 28 tons and was powered by a Daimler six-cylinder engine. It came in two versions: a male, with two 6-pounder guns and four machine-guns; and a female, with just six machine-guns. Each vehicle had a crew of eight. See D. Crow (ed.), AFVs of World War One (Windsor: Profile Publications, 1970), pp. 45–52.

  39 The winter of 1916–17 was a watershed in British tactical development. SS 135, Instructions for the Training of Divisions for Offensive Action, was published in December 1916. This was followed by SS 143, Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action (February 1917), and SS 144, The Organisation of an Infantry Battalion and the Normal Formation for the Attack (April 1917). Platoons would now be split into four ‘fighting sections’: one with grenade-throwers, another with a Lewis gun, a third with riflemen and snipers, and a fourth with rifle grenades. The platoon was thus ‘a complete and independent tactical unit’. The historian Paddy Griffith argues that SS 143, in particular, was ‘a vital milestone in tactics, marking a changeover from the Victorian era of riflemen in lines to the twentieth-century era of flexible small groups built around a variety of high-firepower weapons’. P. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front. The British Army’s Art of Attack 1916–1918 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 77–8.

  40 See P. Harris and S. Marble, ‘The “Step-by-Step” Approach: British Military Thought and Operational Method on the Western Front, 1915–1917’, War in History, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2008), pp. 17–42.

  41 Rawlinson, cited in Harris and Marble, ‘The “Step-by-Step” Approach’, p. 20.

  42 Haig continually prodded Plumer to go deeper into the German lines at Messines. Initially Plumer wanted to advance just 1,500 yards and capture the ridge in two days, but Haig squashed this, telling him to do it all at once. While this was a sensible and appropriate intervention, Haig proved unable to help himself, and in early May urged Plumer to go further, securing not only the villages of Wytschaete and Messines on the ridge, but also marching down the far side of the high ground out to Oosttaverne. This extension would have serious consequences and cause Second Army increased casualties on the afternoon of 7 June. Prior and Wilson, Passchendaele, pp. 57–8.

  43 I. Passingham, Pillars of Fire. The Battle of Messines Ridge, June 1917 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 29–34.

  44 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 32–49.

  45 Haig diary, 22 May 1917, in Sheffield and Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig, p. 295.

  46 Sir C. Harington, Plumer of Messines (London: John Murray, 1935), p. 84.

  3. ‘A Great Sea of Flames’

  1 W. Beumelburg, Flandern 1917 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1928), p. 27.

  2 Sir C. Harington, Plumer of Messines (London: John Murray, 1935), pp. 79, 100, 103.

  3 AWM: 2DRL/0260, Account of R. C. Grieve (‘Messines’), pp. 8–10. Grieve would win a Victoria Cross for his actions that day. See G. Gliddon, VCs of the First World War. Arras and Messines 1917 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), pp. 185–8.

  4 AWM: AWM4 1/32/16 Part 1, II ANZAC Corps War Diary, 7 June 1917.

  5 IWM: Documents 11080, A. Johnson to his father, 10 June 1917.

  6 Guinness diary, 7 June 1917, in B. Bond and S. Robbins (eds.),
Staff Officer. The Diaries of Walter Guinness (First Lord Moyne) 1914–1918 (London: Leo Cooper, 1987), p. 156.

  7 Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations. France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, p. 71.

  8 I. Passingham, Pillars of Fire. The Battle of Messines Ridge, June 1917 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 127–32.

  9 TNA: WO 157/115, ‘Second Army Summary of Intelligence, 1st to 15th June 1917’.

  10 Reitinger in J. Sheldon, The German Army at Passchendaele (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007), pp. 7–9.

  11 Twenty-five mines had been planted, but two were lost to counter-mining (at Peckham Farm and Petit Douve). On the southern edge of the battlefield, a cluster of mines were abandoned shortly before the battle began. One of these (at Birdcage III, northeast of Ploegsteert Wood) exploded in 1955 during a heavy thunderstorm. See A. Turner, Messines 1917. The Zenith of Siege Warfare (Botley: Osprey, 2010), pp. 44, 55.

  12 E. Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story. August 1914–November 1918 (2 vols., New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1919), II, p. 31.

  13 Rupprecht diary, 9 June 1917, in Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1929), II, p. 191.

  14 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 88.

  15 Thaer diary, 11 June 1917, in A. von Thaer, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der O.H.L. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), pp. 125–6.

  16 G. C. Wynne, If Germany Attacks. The Battle in Depth in the West (Westport: Greenwood, 1976; first publ. 1940), p. 283.

  17 Rupprecht, cited in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 142.

  18 BA-MA: MSG 2/13418, J. Schärdel, ‘Flandernschlacht 1917’, p. 1.

  19 DTA: 3502.1, R. Lewald diary, 13 June 1917.

  20 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918, XIII. Die Kriegführung im Sommer und Herbst 1917. Die Ereignisse außerhalb der Westfront bis November 1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1942), pp. 32–3, 50.

  21 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 143.

  22 IWM: Documents 12512, G. Brunskill diary, 12 August 1917.

  23 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, XIII, p. 56.

  24 Lossberg was known as the ‘Lion of the Defensive’ and ‘directed virtually all the major German defensive battles on the Western Front from the autumn of 1915 to the end of 1917’. See D. T. Zabecki, ‘Fritz von Lossberg’, in D. T. Zabecki (ed.), Chief of Staff. The Principal Officers behind History’s Great Commanders (2 vols., Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008), I, pp. 176–86. Evidently some senior officers resented Lossberg’s predominance. When Albrecht von Thaer telephoned Ludendorff’s Chief of Operations, Georg Wetzell, on 11 June, and told him that Lossberg should be sent to Fourth Army immediately, Wetzell shrugged. ‘But that would look like the German General Staff only had one man who could lead a defensive battle. Thankfully this is not the case!’ ‘Dear Wetzell’, Thaer replied, ‘if you are so sure of final victory that you can afford to lose the forthcoming battle in Flanders, then just forget about your number one man!’ Thaer diary, 11 June 1917, in Thaer, Generalstabsdienst, pp. 125–6.

  25 Account taken from F. von Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1939), pp. 294–5.

  26 Sheldon, Passchendaele, pp. 40–41; Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 145–6; Beumelburg, Flandern, p. 29.

  27 W. Volkart, Die Gasschlacht in Flandern im Herbst 1917 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1957), pp. 20–22. A sixth Eingreif division (2nd Guard Reserve) lay on the northern sector of the battlefield as part of Group Dixmude.

  28 Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg, p. 294.

  29 Thaer diary, 14 June 1917, in Thaer, Generalstabsdienst, p. 126.

  30 P. Maze, A Frenchman in Khaki (Kingswood: William Heinemann, 1934), p. 227.

  31 H. Gough, The Fifth Army (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1931), p. 193.

  32 See A. Farrar-Hockley, Goughie. The Life of General Sir Hubert Gough (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1975).

  33 This view has been echoed widely. Even John Terraine, who was the most eloquent and dogged defender of Sir Douglas Haig, admitted that ‘The decision to entrust the main role in the Flanders battle to the Fifth Army under General Gough must be regarded as Haig’s gravest and most fatal error.’ J. Terraine, Douglas Haig. The Educated Soldier (London: Cassell & Co., 2000; first publ. 1963), p. 337.

  34 G. Sheffield and H. McCartney, ‘Hubert Gough’, in I. F. W. Beckett and S. J. Corvi (eds.), Haig’s Generals (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2006), p. 93.

  35 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (13 vols., Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941–2), IV, p. 351.

  36 Farrar-Hockley, Goughie, p. 218.

  37 Gough, Fifth Army, p. 192.

  38 R. Prior and T. Wilson, Passchendaele. The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996), pp. 70–77.

  39 Appendix XII, ‘Memorandum on the Present Situation and Future Plans Written for the War Cabinet by the Commander-in-Chief’, in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 423–7.

  40 For Haig’s over-optimism in 1915 see N. Lloyd, Loos 1915 (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), and ‘“With Faith and Without Fear”: Sir Douglas Haig’s Command of First Army during 1915’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October 2007), pp. 1051–76.

  41 J. F. C. Fuller, ‘Introduction’ in L. Wolff, In Flanders Fields (London: Longmans, 1960), p. xiv.

  42 For a comprehensive examination of Haig and Charteris see J. Beach, Haig’s Intelligence. GHQ and the German Army, 1916–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Beach concludes that the legend of Charteris as a ‘malign intelligence officer’, misleading his chief with over-optimistic intelligence, is something of a caricature. More likely, Charteris realized that he was dependent upon Haig’s patronage and ‘it is not difficult to imagine an almost unconscious process whereby Charteris moulded his assessments to fit with what he believed were Haig’s opinions’ (p. 322). See also J. M. Bourne, ‘Charteris, John (1877–1946)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/57800, accessed 20 Aug 2015].

  43 Haig diary, 2 June 1917, in G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig. War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 297.

  44 Appendix XII, ‘Note on the Strategic Situation with Special Reference to the Present Condition of German Resources and Probable German Operations’, in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 427–31.

  45 D. French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 86.

  46 I. Castle, London 1917–18. The Bomber Blitz (Botley: Osprey, 2010), p. 23. On some of the later raids, the Gothas were joined by one or two R.VI ‘Giants’. These were enormous four-engined strategic bombers capable of carrying a 1,000kg bomb.

  47 J. Grigg, Lloyd George. War Leader 1916–1918 (London: Penguin Books, 2003; first publ. 2002), pp. 246–8. See TNA: CAB 23/3, ‘War Cabinet, 163’, 14 June 1917, in which it was agreed to draw upon plans for the further development of aircraft.

  48 Robertson to Haig, 13 June 1917, in Grigg, Lloyd George, p. 163. Original emphasis.

  49 It was one of Haig’s most unappealing character traits that he was always something of an intriguer–indeed he had more in common with Lloyd George than either of them would have credited. When Robertson heard of this suggestion he flatly refused to go. Nervous of the ramifications of forcing a move, Lloyd George quickly dropped the matter. J. P. Harris, Douglas Haig and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 352–4.

  50 Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command 1914–1918 (2 vols., London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), II, p. 682.

  51 D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (2 vols., London: Odhams Press, 1933–6), II, pp. 1272–6. Original emphasis.

  52 Haig diary, 19 June 1917, in Sheffie
ld and Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig, p. 300. Original emphasis.

  53 Lloyd George, War Memoirs, II, p. 1277.

  54 TNA: CAB 27/6, ‘Cabinet Committee on War Policy’, 21 June 1917. Lloyd George’s objections are also discussed at length in War Memoirs, II, pp. 1280–87.

  55 Jellicoe’s influence on the decision to approve Third Ypres remains contentious. According to Andrew Wiest, Jellicoe was not particularly worried about the number of U-boats based at Ostend and Zeebrugge (about twelve), but rather the dangers that continued German occupation of the Belgian coast would pose against their crucial line of communication. See A. Wiest, Passchendaele and the Royal Navy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 106–11; J. Terraine, Douglas Haig. The Educated Soldier (London: Cassell & Co., 2000; first publ. 1963), pp. 333–4; and S. W. Roskill, ‘The U-Boat Campaign of 1917 and Third Ypres’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, Vol. CIV, No. 616 (November 1959), pp. 440–42.

  56 Milner, cited in French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, p. 117.

  57 TNA: CAB 27/6, ‘Cabinet Committee on War Policy’, 21 June 1917.

  58 TNA: CAB 27/6, ‘Cabinet Committee on War Policy’, 25 June 1917.

  4. ‘Have We Time to Accomplish?’

  1 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918, XIII. Die Kriegführung im Sommer und Herbst 1917. Die Ereignisse außerhalb der Westfront bis November 1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1942), p. 55.

  2 J. Charteris, At G.H.Q. (London: Cassell & Co., 1931), p. 231.

  3 P. Maze, A Frenchman in Khaki (Kingswood: William Heinemann, 1934), pp. 228–30.

  4 H. Gough, The Fifth Army (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1931), pp. 197–8.

  5 Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, pp. 126–8.

  6 Gough, The Fifth Army, p. 198. Contained in this account is a curious recollection in which Gough states that he would have preferred to limit his advance to the Black Line and not go ‘all out’ for the Green Line. Apparently, both Haig and Plumer disagreed and urged that the Green Line should remain as the main objective. This is highly questionable. At no stage during the planning of the battle had Gough wanted a more limited attack. He remained a firm believer in going as far as they could on the first day. See Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 127–8.