Passchendaele

by Nick Lloyd

  7 Appendix XV, ‘Memorandum Dated 26th June, 1917, by Br.-General J. H. Davidson’, in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 436–9.

  8 TNA: CAB 45/140, General Sir Hubert Gough, ‘Marginal Notes. Chapter VIII’.

  9 Appendix XV, ‘Memorandum by General Sir Hubert Gough’, in Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 440–42.

  10 TNA: CAB 45/140, Gough to Edmonds, 2 February 1944. In the letter Gough incorrectly referred to the night attack on the Somme as taking place in August 1916 (when it was actually fought on 14 July).

  11 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 129–32.

  12 See R. Prior and T. Wilson, Passchendaele. The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996), chs. 7–8.

  13 136 machines would start on the first day. See Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 148, and J. P. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks. British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 102.

  14 J. F. C. Fuller, ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Spectator, 10 January 1958. See also J. Terraine, Douglas Haig. The Educated Soldier (London: Cassell & Co., 2000; first publ. 1963), p. 342, and C. Campbell, Band of Brigands. The First Men in Tanks (London: Harper Perennial, 2008; first publ. 2007), pp. 288–9. According to John Terraine, there is no evidence that Haig ever saw such ‘swamp maps’.

  15 Sir James Edmonds dealt with this point in the Official History. There was, he wrote, ‘no good reason to abandon the strategic advantages of the Flanders sector and relinquish the chance of freeing the Flanders coast in order to provide harder ground for the mass employment of tanks’. Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 380. See also N. Steel and P. Hart, Passchendaele. The Sacrificial Ground (London: Cassell & Co., 2001; first publ. 2000), p. 88.

  16 TNA: WO 95/104, ‘Employment of Tanks’, 19 July 1917.

  17 W. H. L. Watson, With the Tanks 1916–1918. Memoirs of a British Tank Commander in the Great War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2014; first publ. 1920), p. 99.

  18 Ministère de la Guerre, Les Armées Françaises dans La Grande Guerre, Tome V, Vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937), p. 653.

  19 J. P. Harris, Douglas Haig and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 360–61. See also TNA: WO 95/519, ‘Notes on Conference at Lovie Chateau’, 16 June 1917.

  20 TNA: WO 95/912, ‘Corps Commander’s Conference with Divisional Commanders’, 5 July 1917.

  21 Ludendorff, cited in Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, XIII, pp. 1–3. Ludendorff’s comment on keeping one’s nerve was somewhat ironic. He would suffer a nervous collapse in September 1918. See N. Lloyd, Hundred Days. The End of the Great War (London: Viking, 2013), pp. 177–80.

  22 E. Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story. August 1914–November 1918 (2 vols., New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1919), II, p. 51.

  23 Hindenburg to Bethmann Hollweg, 19 June 1917, in E. Ludendorff, The General Staff and Its Problems. The History of the Relations between the High Command and the German Imperial Government as Revealed by Official Documents, trans. F. A. Holt (2 vols., New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920), II, pp. 446–9.

  24 W. Görlitz (ed.), The Kaiser and His Court. The Diaries, Note Books and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, Chief of the Naval Cabinet, 1914–1918 (London: Macdonald & Co., 1961; first publ. 1959), p. 276.

  25 Bethmann Hollweg to Hindenburg, 25 June 1917, in Ludendorff, The General Staff, II, pp. 449–52.

  26 Ludendorff to the Kaiser, 12 July 1917, in Ludendorff, The General Staff, II, p. 461.

  27 F. Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967; first publ. 1961), pp. 394–6.

  28 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, XIII, p. 11. See Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, p. 401. Michaelis did not last long. He was forced to resign on 31 October 1917 and was replaced by Georg von Hertling, a 74-year-old Bavarian politician. Although Hertling seemed a more suitable choice for the left and centre deputies, his age and natural conservatism meant that he was little more than a mouthpiece for OHL. See A. Watson, Ring of Steel. Germany and Austria–Hungary at War, 1914–1918 (London: Allen Lane, 2014), p. 484.

  29 Görlitz (ed.), The Kaiser and His Court, p. 285.

  30 M. Nebelin, Ludendorff. Diktator im Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2010), p. 339.

  31 BA-MA: MSG 2/13418, J. Schärdel, ‘Flandernschlacht 1917’, pp. 3–5.

  32 Rupprecht’s father, King Ludwig III, was cousin to King Ludwig II, the legendary ‘Swan King’ of Bavaria, whose love of architecture and long-standing friendship with the composer Richard Wagner attracted both worship and derision. He drowned mysteriously in 1886. His brother, Otto, was declared insane in 1875. See C. McIntosh, The Swan King. Ludwig II of Bavaria (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012; first publ. 1982).

  33 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, XIII, pp. 54, 63. German sources seem to have over-exaggerated the strength of British battalions as well as the number of guns.

  34 R. Pawly and P. Courcelle, The Kaiser’s Warlords. German Commanders of World War I (Botley: Osprey, 2003), pp. 27–8. In the German Army, the Chief of Staff was the ‘pivotal figure’ in the whole chain of command. A kind of ‘super-operations officer’, a German Chief of Staff could appeal up the chain of command if he disagreed with his commander. He was, simultaneously, a subordinate of his own commander, but also the High Command’s liaison officer to that commander. See D. T. Zabecki (ed.), Chief of Staff. The Principal Officers behind History’s Great Commanders (2 vols., Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008), I, pp. 9–11.

  35 Rupprecht diary, 19 June 1917, in Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1929), II, p. 202.

  36 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, XIII, p. 54.

  37 F. von Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1939), pp. 295–302. The order is reproduced (in English) in G. C. Wynne, If Germany Attacks. The Battle in Depth in the West (Westport: Greenwood, 1976; first publ. 1940), Appendix 1, pp. 332–40.

  38 R. McLeod and C. Fox, ‘The Battles in Flanders during the Summer and Autumn of 1917 from General von Kuhl’s Der Weltkrieg 1914–18’, British Army Review, No. 116 (August 1997), p. 79.

  39 Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg, p. 304. See also M. D. Karau, ‘Wielding the Dagger’. The MarineKorps Flandern and the German War Effort, 1914–1918 (London and Westport: Praeger, 2003), pp. 150–51.

  40 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 118–22.

  5. ‘Under Constant Fire’

  1 Kuhl, in J. Sheldon, The German Army at Passchendaele (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007), p. 52.

  2 S. Marble, British Artillery on the Western Front in the First World War. ‘The Infantry Cannot Do with a Gun Less’ (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 187.

  3 C. Falls, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: Macmillan & Co., 1940), I, pp. 177–9.

  4 Marble, British Artillery, p. 173, n. 77. For Haig’s ‘bold’ comment see p. 174.

  5 The devastating bombardment prior to the German Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918 could probably lay claim to being the last great preliminary bombardment of the war. However, the crucial difference with Third Ypres was that it was concentrated into a short period of time–just five hours–and aimed at neutralizing enemy defences without sacrificing surprise. See D. T. Zabecki, Steel Wind. Colonel Georg Bruchmüller and the Birth of Modern Artillery (London and Westport: Praeger, 1994).

  6 Artillery statistics and frontages taken from Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, p. 138, n. 2. There seems to be some confusion about the length of front bombarded during the battle. Sanders Marble cites 13,200 yards (7.5 miles), and Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson claim that the frontages of attack at Arras, Messines and Ypres were ‘not greatly different’. Both, therefore, seem to underestimate the length of front at Third Ypres. See Mar
ble, British Artillery, p. 189, n. 153, and R. Prior and T. Wilson, Passchendaele. The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996), p. 82.

  7 Exact figures for the number of German guns are not available. The German Official History records 389 batteries in Flanders (approximately 1,556 guns), with Edmonds citing a total of 1,040 guns opposite Fifth and Second Armies. A later reference in the German account describes 1,162 guns, so the truth is probably somewhere in between. Confusingly, Prior and Wilson claim that the number of German guns was seriously underestimated by Fifth Army intelligence (by up to 50 per cent). Given that GHQ intelligence had arrived at the reasonably accurate figure of 1,500 guns, this would seem to be incorrect. In his examination of British intelligence, Jim Beach finds that ‘the picture of German forces provided before Third Ypres was fairly comprehensive’. See 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. 54, 63; Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 136, n. 2; Prior and Wilson, Passchendaele, p. 84; and J. Beach, Haig’s Intelligence. GHQ and the German Army, 1916–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 249.

  8 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 137, n. 3.

  9 See V. E. Inglefield, The History of the Twentieth (Light) Division (London: Nisbet & Co., 1921), p. 145.

  10 TNA: WO 95/520, Captain G. W. Monier-Williams to Headquarters, Fifth Army, 14 July 1917.

  11 Further gas bombardments followed throughout the month, including on 15 July (when 1,000 rounds were fired on the Ypres–Menin road); 17 and 27 July (when gas targeted British lines of communication and barracks behind Ypres); 20/21 July (battery positions south of Ypres); and 28/29 July (when Armentières and Nieuport were shelled with mustard gas). W. Volkart, Die Gasschlacht in Flandern im Herbst 1917 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1957), pp. 51–2.

  12 J. H. Boraston and C. E. O. Bax, The Eighth Division 1914–1918 (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2001; first publ. 1926), p. 124.

  13 IWM: Documents 15758, Account of Colonel F. W. Mellish, pp. 27–8.

  14 H. Gordon, The Unreturning Army. A Field-Gunner in Flanders, 1917–18 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1967), pp. 52–4.

  15 IWM: Documents 8214, F. A. Sclater, ‘His War’, p. 8.

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

  17 I. F. W. Beckett, ‘Operational Command: The Plans and Conduct of the Battle’, in P. Liddle (ed.), Passchendaele in Perspective. The Third Battle of Ypres (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), pp. 110–11.

  18 There were 508 British aircraft, plus 200 French, 40 Belgian and another 104 Royal Naval Air Service planes (operating out of Dunkirk). H. A. Jones, The War in the Air. Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force (6 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922–37), IV, p. 142.

  19 Ibid., pp. 145–6.

  20 IWM: Documents 3215, ‘Recollections by A. Sambrook’, p. 60.

  21 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), pp. 25–6.

  22 E. R. Hooton, War over the Trenches. Air Power and Western Front Campaigns 1916–1918 (Hersham: Ian Allen, 2010), p. 164.

  23 Robertson to Haig, 18 July 1917, in D. R. Woodward (ed.), The Military Correspondence of Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, December 1915–February 1918 (London: Bodley Head for the Army Records Society, 1989), pp. 203–4.

  24 Haig to Robertson, 21 July 1917, in Woodward (ed.), The Military Correspondence of Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, pp. 205–6.

  25 Similar scenes of operational confusion were not unique to Third Ypres. The Battle of Loos in September and October 1915 was badly hampered by a lack of clarity over whether it was a limited or unlimited attack. See N. Lloyd, Loos 1915 (Stroud: Tempus, 2006).

  26 ‘The Peace Resolution of the Reichstag of July 19, 1917’, in E. Ludendorff, The General Staff and Its Problems. The History of the Relations between the High Command and the German Imperial Government as Revealed by Official Documents, trans. F. A. Holt (2 vols., New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920), II, pp. 475–6.

  27 J. Charteris, At G.H.Q. (London: Cassell & Co., 1931), p. 237.

  28 Beach, Haig’s Intelligence, pp. 246–7.

  29 KA: (WK) 1789, Gruppe Ieperen Kriegstagebuch, 17 July 1917.

  30 KA: (WK) 1789, Gruppe Ieperen Kriegstagebuch, 25 July 1917. Other divisions received less charitable assessments. 8th, 39th and 55th Divisions were classed as ‘average’, 25th as ‘good average’, while 38th Division was only ‘mediocre’.

  31 F. von Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1939), p. 307.

  32 W. Beumelburg, Flandern 1917 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1928), p. 30.

  33 Prior and Wilson, Passchendaele, p. 87.

  34 Rau in Sheldon, Passchendaele, p. 41.

  35 Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army Which Participated in the War (1914–1918) (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1920), pp. 725–6.

  36 TNA: WO 157/213, Fifth Army Summary of Information, 2 August 1917.

  37 Marble, British Artillery, p. 189.

  38 TNA: WO 95/642, II Corps Summary of Information, 25 July 1917.

  39 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, XIII, p. 61.

  40 DTA: 3502.1, R. Lewald diary, 9 August 1917.

  41 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 138, n. 1.

  42 R. Binding, A Fatalist at War, trans. I. F. D. Morrow (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1929), p. 176.

  43 BA-MA: MSG 2/13418, J. Schärdel, ‘Flandernschlacht 1917’, pp. 8–10.

  44 Beumelburg, Flandern, p. 30.

  45 Rupprecht diary, 28 July 1917, in Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1929), II, pp. 230–31.

  46 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, XIII, p. 62.

  47 TNA: WO 157/23, Advanced GHQ Summary of Information, 24 August 1917.

  48 KA: (WK) 2523, ‘Nachrichtenblatt für 29.7.17’.

  49 Charteris, At G.H.Q., p. 237.

  6. ‘A Perfect Bloody Curse’

  1 Thaer diary, 1 August 1917, in A. von Thaer, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der O.H.L. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), p. 131.

  2 F. von Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1939), p. 307.

  3 BA-MA: MSG 2/13418, J. Schärdel, ‘Flandernschlacht 1917’, pp. 13–14.

  4 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air. Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force (6 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922–37), IV, pp. 160–62. See also Appendix CII, ‘V Brigade R.F.C. Order No. 53 for 31st July 1917’, pp. 421–2.

  5 IWM: Documents 20504, W. B. St Leger diary, 31 July 1917.

  6 See Ministère de la Guerre, Les Armées Françaises dans La Grande Guerre, Tome V, Vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937), pp. 670–75.

  7 See C. Headlam, History of the Guards Division in the Great War 1915–1918 (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2001; first publ. 1924), pp. 243–5.

  8 F. W. Bewsher, The History of the Fifty First (Highland) Division 1914–1918 (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2001; first publ. 1920), p. 205.

  9 E. Blunden, Undertones of War (London: Penguin Books, 2010; first publ. 1928), pp. 154–5.

  10 Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, pp. 157–8.

  11 TNA: WO 95/2903, ‘55th (West Lancashire) Division. Report on Operations, Ypres. July 29th to August 4th, 1917’.

  12 S. Snelling, VCs of the First World War. Passchendaele 1917 (Stroud: The History Press, 2012; first publ. 1998), p. 11.

  13 TNA: WO 95/104, ‘Summary of Tank Operations. 31st July, 1917. 3rd Brigade, Tank Corps’.

&
nbsp; 14 IWM: Documents 4755, H. S. Taylor, ‘Reminiscences of the Great War 1914/1918’, p. 13.

  15 TNA: WO 95/104, ‘Preliminary Report on Tank Operations 31st July, 1917’.

  16 TNA: WO 95/101, ‘2nd Brigade Tank Corps. Report on Tank Operations. 31st July 1917’.

  17 J. H. Boraston and C. E. O. Bax, The Eighth Division 1914–1918 (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2001; first publ. 1926), pp. 128–30.

  18 TNA: WO 95/642, ‘Narrative of Operations on July 31st, 1917 by II Corps’, p. 2.

  19 TNA: WO 95/2328, ‘Report on Operations between Zero Hour 31st July and 5 a.m. 3rd August 1917. 19th Bn Manchester Regiment’.

  20 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 154–6.

  21 BA-MA: MSG 2/13418, J. Schärdel, ‘Flandernschlacht 1917’, p. 17. The Prussian unit mentioned was 52nd Reserve Division, which moved up that morning to support 6th Bavarian Reserve Division. For the difficulties of this relief see J. Sheldon, The German Army at Passchendaele (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007), pp. 51–2.

  22 TNA: WO 157/213, Fifth Army, Summary of Information, 4 August 1917.

  23 A. Grossmann, Das K.B. Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 17 (Munich: Kriegsarchivs, 1923), pp. 79–80.

  24 A. Buttman, Kriegsgeschichte des Königlich Preußischen 6. Thüringischen Infanterie-Regiments Nr. 95 1914–1918 (Zeulenroda: Verlag Bernhard Sporn, 1935), p. 234.

  25 A. Grossmann, Das K.B. Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 17 (Augsburg: D. Eisele & Sohn, 1926), p. 116.

  26 KA: (WK) 2523, ‘Nachrichtenblatt für 31.7.17’.

  27 Sheldon, Passchendaele, pp. 57–8.

  28 KA: (WK) 8319, ‘Gefechtsbericht der am 31. Juli und 1. August 1917 bei der 6. Bayr. Res. Div. eingesetzten Infanterie-Teile der 52. Res. Division’.