Passchendaele
Page 41
29 KA: (WK) 2523, ‘Nachrichtenblatt für 31.7.17’.
30 Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg, p. 307.
31 These were 2nd Guard Reserve in the north, 50th Reserve and 221st Divisions in the centre, and 207th, 12th and 119th Divisions in support of Group Wytschaete. See Sheldon, Passchendaele, pp. 71–2, and Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 171, n. 1.
32 KA: (WK) 1789, Gruppe Ieperen. Kriegstagebuch, 31 July 1917.
33 E. Riddell and M. C. Clayton, The Cambridgeshires 1914 to 1919 (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1934), p. 107.
34 P. Maze, A Frenchman in Khaki (Kingswood: William Heinemann, 1934), p. 245.
35 TNA: WO 95/2903, ‘55th (West Lancashire) Division. Report on Operations, Ypres. July 29th to August 4th, 1917’.
36 TNA: WO 95/959, XIX Corps War Diary, 31 July 1917.
37 E. R. Hooton, War over the Trenches. Air Power and Western Front Campaigns 1916–1918 (Hersham: Ian Allen, 2010), p. 182.
38 IWM: Documents 3980, J. S. Walthew to ‘my dear Uncle Tom’, 2 August 1917.
39 Wohlenberg in Sheldon, Passchendaele, pp. 79–80.
40 Riddell and Clayton, The Cambridgeshires, p. 118.
41 Boraston and Bax, The Eighth Division, p. 134. For Coffin see Snelling, Passchendaele 1917, pp. 27–30.
42 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 171–4, and F. Zechlin, Das Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 60 im Weltkriege (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1926), pp. 129–31.
43 KA: (WK) 1789, Gruppe Ieperen. Kriegstagebuch, 31 July 1917.
44 See for example Zechlin, Das Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 60, p. 132.
45 A. Farrar-Hockley, Goughie. The Life of General Sir Hubert Gough (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1975), pp. 221–2.
46 Gough ordered a Court of Inquiry to investigate why 30th Division had been unable to capture the Black Line. It concluded that ‘there was neither failure nor neglect’ in the handling of the attacking brigades, and that they had suffered from the difficult ground, which caused them to lose their creeping barrage. See TNA: WO 95/2312, ‘Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry Assembled at Headquarters 30th Division on the 10th day of August, 1917’, and J. Beach, ‘Issued by the General Staff: Doctrine Writing at British GHQ, 1917–1918’, War in History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2012), pp. 480–81.
47 H. Gough, The Fifth Army (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1931), p. 201.
48 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 177–8.
49 Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium, 1916. Sir Douglas Haig’s Command to the 1st July: Battle of the Somme (London: Macmillan & Co., 1932), p. 483.
50 C. Carrington, Soldier from the Wars Returning (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 189.
51 C. H. Dudley Ward, History of the Welsh Guards (London: John Murray, 1920), p. 157.
52 KA: (WK) 1789, ‘Kriegstagebuch während der Zeit des Einsatzes als Gruppe Ieperen. 1.7.17–31.7.17’.
53 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. 82.
54 Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg, p. 308.
55 Thaer diary, 1 August 1917, in Thaer, Generalstabsdienst, p. 131.
56 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. 65.
57 W. Volkart, Die Gasschlacht in Flandern im Herbst 1917 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1957), p. 57.
58 Rupprecht diary, 1 August 1917, in Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1929), II, pp. 232–4.
59 Haig diary, 1 August 1917, in G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig. War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 308.
60 Haig diary, 2 August 1917, in Sheffield and Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig, p. 310.
61 IWM: Documents 7003, A. H. Roberts diary, 3–4 August 1917.
62 TNA: WO 95/14, ‘Daily Values of Rainfall’, July–August 1917. The accusation that such rainfall could have been foreseen seems to have come from John Charteris. In his biography of Haig, he states that GHQ knew ‘that in Flanders the weather broke early each August with the regularity of the Indian monsoon’. See Field-Marshal Earl Haig (London: Cassell & Co., 1929), p. 272. These remarks have led some writers (David Lloyd George, Basil Liddell Hart, Leon Wolff and Gerard De Groot) to criticize Haig for launching an offensive so late in the year when the possibility of wet conditions should have been anticipated. However, there seems little truth in these allegations. The historian John Hussey, who has analysed meteorological data, shows that Third Ypres ‘was not a reckless gamble on a rainless autumn’. The weather was extraordinary and unexpected. August and October were abnormally wet. Furthermore, Ernest Gold, who headed the Meteorological Section at GHQ, stated that Charteris’s statement was ‘so contrary to recorded facts that, to a meteorologist, it seems too ridiculous to need formal refutation’. See J. Hussey, ‘The Flanders Battleground and the Weather in 1917’, in P. Liddle (ed.), Passchendaele in Perspective. The Third Battle of Ypres (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), pp. 140–58.
63 J. Charteris, At G.H.Q. (London: Cassell & Co., 1931), p. 241.
7. ‘Like the Black Hole of Calcutta’
1 IWM: Documents 12332, ‘The Journal of John Nettleton of the Rifle Brigade 1914–1919’, p. 100.
2 IWM: Documents 14196, G. Carter diary, 6 August 1917.
3 IWM: Documents 12332, ‘The Journal of John Nettleton of the Rifle Brigade 1914–1919’, pp. 87–8.
4 TNA: WO 95/520, ‘Notes on Conference Held at Lovie Chateau on 7th August’.
5 Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, pp. 185–6.
6 IWM: Sound 717, K. Page (interview, 1975).
7 TNA: WO 95/662, ‘Daily Progress Report’, 4 August 1917.
8 G. H. F. Nichols, The 18th Division in the Great War (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1922), pp. 216–17. According to the divisional history, to capture Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood under such conditions would have been a ‘military miracle’ (p. 218).
9 Guinness diary, 10 August 1917, in B. Bond and S. Robbins (eds.), Staff Officer. The Diaries of Walter Guinness (First Lord Moyne) 1914–1918 (London: Leo Cooper, 1987), pp. 167–9.
10 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 189–90, and TNA: WO 95/14, ‘Daily Values of Rainfall’, August 1917.
11 See Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 190–201.
12 IWM: Documents 12332, ‘The Journal of John Nettleton of the Rifle Brigade 1914–1919’, pp. 93–7.
13 TNA: WO 95/2947, ‘Operations Carried out by 167th Infantry Brigade from 12th to 17th August 1917’, p. 2.
14 TNA: WO 95/2947, GA 896, Headquarters, 56th Division, 19 August 1917.
15 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 194–5.
16 C. Falls, The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division (London and Belfast: M’Caw, Stevenson & Orr, 1922), p. 116.
17 N. Steel and P. Hart, Passchendaele. The Sacrificial Ground (London: Cassell & Co., 2001; first publ. 2000), p. 154.
18 IWM: Documents 982, R. J. Clarke to his mother, 21 August 1917.
19 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. 68.
20 According to the official history of the RAF, the weather was misty with cloudy patches. German smoke shells, which spread over the battlefield, also hindered observation. The infantry’s reluctance to signal their position through the use of flares may also have contributed to this failure. 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. 172–3.
21 A. Karl Reber, Das K.B. 21. Infanterie Regiment. Groß
herzog Friedrich Franz IV. von Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Munich: Verlag Max Schick, 1929), pp. 216–17.
22 P. Kilduff, Richthofen. Beyond the Legend of the Red Baron (London: Arms & Armour, 1993), p. 146.
23 W. Beumelburg, Flandern 1917 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1928), p. 90.
24 Rupprecht diary, 16 August 1917, in Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1929), II, p. 246.
25 DTA: 3502.1, R. Lewald diary, 14 August 1917.
26 Ibid., 16 August 1917.
27 KA: (WK) 2523, ‘Nachrichtenblatt Nr. 33 (für die Zeit 15.8 mit 16.8.17)’.
28 TNA: CAB 23/3, ‘War Cabinet, 204’, 3 August 1917.
29 TNA: CAB 24/22/GT1621, ‘Report on the Battle of 31st July, 1917, and Its Results’, 4 August 1917.
30 Robertson to Haig, 9 August 1917, cited in D. R. Woodward, Lloyd George and the Generals (London: Associated University Presses, 1983), p. 193.
31 Haig to Robertson, 13 August 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. 215–16. Original emphasis.
32 G. W. L. Nicholson, Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War. Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914–1919 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1962), p. 297.
33 T. Cook, Shock Troops. Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917–1918 (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008), pp. 305–7.
34 TNA: WO 256/21, Haig diary, 19 August 1917. Original emphasis.
35 Haig to Robertson, 13 August 1917, in Woodward (ed.), The Military Correspondence of Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, pp. 215–16.
36 J. Beach, Haig’s Intelligence. GHQ and the German Army, 1916–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 250–54.
37 J. Charteris, At G.H.Q. (London: Cassell & Co., 1931), pp. 245–7. Original emphasis.
38 Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command 1914–1918 (2 vols., London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), II, p. 702.
39 D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (2 vols., London: Odhams Press, 1933–6), II, pp. 1313–15, for the ‘tactics of deception’.
40 TNA: CAB 23/3, ‘War Cabinet, 203’, 2 August 1917.
41 TNA: CAB 23/3, ‘War Cabinet, 217’, 17 August 1917.
42 Hankey, The Supreme Command, II, p. 693.
43 J. Grigg, Lloyd George. War Leader 1916–1918 (London: Penguin Books, 2003; first publ. 2002), p. 220. Smuts’s report, which recommended the creation of an independent air service, the Royal Air Force, can be found in TNA: CAB 24/22/GT1658, ‘War Cabinet Committee on Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids’, 17 August 1917.
44 TNA: CAB 24/24/GT1814, ‘Report on Operations in Flanders from 4th August to 20th August, 1917’, 21 August 1917.
45 See R. Prior and T. Wilson, Passchendaele. The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996), pp. 104–5.
46 TNA: WO 95/520, ‘Notes on Army Commander’s Conference Held at Lovie Chateau on 17th August, 1917’. In fairness to Gough, he was also keen to hear from commanders, down to brigade level, about how best to tackle the German defensive system. This sudden urge for agreement and consensus was, however, too little, too late. J. Beach, ‘Issued by the General Staff: Doctrine Writing at British GHQ, 1917–1918’, War in History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2012), pp. 480–81.
47 H. Gough, The Fifth Army (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1931), p. 205.
48 Steel and Hart, Passchendaele, p. 155.
49 For Gough’s continuation of small-scale, ‘penny-packet’ attacks, see Prior and Wilson, Passchendaele, pp. 108–10.
50 IWM: Documents 6993, M. W. Littlewood diary, 3–28 August 1917.
51 P. Gibbs, Now It Can be Told (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1920), p. 476.
52 Falls, The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division, p. 122.
53 M. Hardie, cited in A. Watson, Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 153.
54 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 202, and TNA: WO 95/520, ‘Notes on Army Commander’s Conference Held at Lovie Chateau on 17th August, 1917’.
8. ‘A Question of Concentration’
1 Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command 1914–1918 (2 vols., London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), II, p. 693.
2 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. 295.
3 Rupprecht diary, 20 August 1917, in Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1929), II, p. 248.
4 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), pp. 82, 87. For German losses see Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, p. 230.
5 E. Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 236–40.
6 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. 212.
7 Ibid., pp. 218–21. See also J. and E. Wilks, Rommel and Caporetto (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2001), pp. 8–12, and E. Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story. August 1914–November 1918 (2 vols., New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1919), II, pp. 97–100.
8 TNA: WO 95/951, XVIII Corps War Diary, Appendix C, ‘Narrative of Operations of 19th August, 1917’. According to J. F. C. Fuller, this ‘very memorable feat of arms’ produced the ‘most remarkable results… for instead of 600 casualties the infantry following the tanks only sustained fifteen!’ J. F. C. Fuller, Tanks in the Great War 1914–1918 (London: John Murray, 1920), pp. 122–3.
9 TNA: WO 95/98, ‘“G” Battalion. Tank Corps. Report on Operations–19/8/1917’.
10 Elles and Fuller, cited in J. P. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks. British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 103.
11 TNA: WO 95/104, ‘Report on Tank Operations with XIX Corps–22nd August, 1917’.
12 So determined were the Germans to maintain their hold on this important location that they conducted at least three counter-attacks and even deployed fearsome flamethrower teams to drive the British out of the woods. See G. C. Wynne, ‘“The Other Side of the Hill”. The Fight for Inverness Copse: 22nd–24th of August 1917’, Army Quarterly, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (January 1935), pp. 297–303.
13 TNA: WO 95/1871, ‘Notes on the Attack by 43rd Light Infantry Brigade. 22nd August 1917’.
14 IWM: Documents 22753, G. N. Rawlence diary, 23–25 August 1917.
15 TNA: WO 95/1871, 43 Brigade, ‘Lessons from the Attack’, 29 August 1917.
16 KA: (WK) 2523, ‘Nachrichtenblatt Nr. 36 (für die Zeit 23.8 mit 24.8.17)’.
17 Rupprecht diary, 23 August 1917, in Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch, II, p. 249.
18 Ibid., 25 August 1917.
19 Thaer diary, 23 August 1917, in A. von Thaer, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der O.H.L. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), pp. 133–4.
20 KA: (WK) 2233, ‘AOK 4, 26 August 1917. Wichtigste Erfahrungen der Kampf-reserven der Armee aus den Schlachten am 31.7 und 16.8.17’.
21 Lloyd George to Robertson, 26 August 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. 219–20.
22 M. Thompson, The White War. Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915–1919 (London: Faber & Faber, 2008), p. 243.
23 TNA: CAB 23/3, ‘War Ca
binet, 224’, 27 August 1917.
24 TNA: CAB 23/13, ‘War Cabinet, 225 A’, 28 August 1917.
25 D. French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 137–9; Haig diary, 4 September 1917, in G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig. War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), pp. 321–2; and TNA: CAB 23/13, ‘War Cabinet, 227c’, 4 September 1917.
26 TNA: WO 95/951, XVIII Corps, ‘Narrative of Operations of 27th August, 1917’.
27 TNA: WO 95/3034, 61st Division War Diary, August 1917.
28 A. G. Lee, No Parachute. A Fighter Pilot in World War I (London: Jarrolds, 1968), p. 105.
29 TNA: WO 95/520, ‘Summary of Operations of Fifth Army, for Week Ending 6 p.m., 24th Aug., 1917’.
30 TNA: WO 95/520, ‘Notes on Conference Held at Lovie Chateau, 25th August, 1917 [issued on 26 August 1917]’, and Fifth Army to corps, 28 August 1917.
31 TNA: WO 95/2540, Gough to Fifth Army, 2 September 1917. Every commanding officer received a copy of this letter. Gough was apparently angry with the two Irish divisions, telling Haig that their failure to hold on to their gains was because ‘the men are Irish and did not like the shelling’. Haig diary, 17 August 1917, in Sheffield and Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig, p. 317.
32 For an example of Gough’s petulance and aggression towards subordinates see his treatment of Major-General E. S. Bulfin (GOC 28th Division) at the Battle of Loos. Between 27 September and 5 October 1915, Bulfin’s division was repeatedly ordered to make a series of hopeless advances across no-man’s-land without sufficient artillery support. See N. Lloyd, Loos 1915 (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), pp. 192–7.
33 An amphibious landing on the Belgian coast had been considered by British war planners since at least December 1914 and periodically resurfaced over the next two and a half years. Haig tasked General Sir Henry Rawlinson with planning the operation, and envisaged 1st Division landing along the coast from Westende Bains to Middelkerke, and then linking up with an attack from the Yser bridgehead, pushing towards Ostend. The landing seems to have been planned with thoroughness and care. Andrew Wiest argues that it was ‘a real and viable option… that could have liberated much of the Belgian coast’. This is debatable, however. The German historian of the MarineKorps, which defended the coastal sector, gives it short shrift. ‘Given the advanced state of the Flanders defences, it seems highly unlikely that the British landing would have been anything other than a disaster.’ See Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 116–17; A. Wiest, Passchendaele and the Royal Navy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1995), p. xxiii; and M. D. Karau, ‘Wielding the Dagger’. The MarineKorps Flandern and the German War Effort, 1914–1918 (London and Westport: Praeger, 2003), p. 161.