by Nick Lloyd
38 Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command 1914–1918 (2 vols., London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), II, pp. 702, 703.
39 TNA: CAB 24/27/GT2143, Decypher Sir A. Hardinge (San Sebastian) to Lord Hardinge, 19 September 1917.
40 TNA: CAB 23/16, ‘War Cabinet, 239(a)’, 27 September 1917, and ‘Cypher Telegram to His Majesty’s Representatives, 8 October 1917’.
41 See D. R. Woodward, ‘David Lloyd George, a Negotiated Peace with Germany and the Kuhlmann Peace Kite of September, 1917’, Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1971), pp. 75–93, and D. French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 144–7.
42 J. T. B. McCudden, Flying Fury. Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps (Folkestone: Bailey Brothers & Swinfen, 1973; first publ. 1918), p. 195.
43 AWM: AWM4 14/2/2, Chief Engineer I ANZAC Corps, War Diary, 19–30 September 1917.
11. ‘War with a Big W’
1 IWM: Documents 17248, S. Roberts, ‘The Glorious Sixth’, p. 151.
2 TNA: WO 256/22, Haig diary, 21 September 1917.
3 Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, p. 280.
4 TNA: WO 256/22, Haig diary, 23 September 1917.
5 AWM: 2DRL/0277, S. E. Hunt, ‘The Operation at Polygon Wood’, pp. 5–6.
6 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (13 vols., Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941–2), IV, p. 813.
7 AWM: 2DRL/0277, S. E. Hunt, ‘The Operation at Polygon Wood’, pp. 6–7.
8 AWM: AWM4 23/66/16, 49/Battalion, ‘Report on Operation 25–27th September, 1917’.
9 AWM: AWM4 1/48/18 Part 2, ‘Report on Operations Carried Out by 4th Aus. Division on 26/9/1917 and Subsequent Days’.
10 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 288.
11 The German attack on 25 September was conducted by two regiments, 229 Reserve and 230 Reserve (of 50th Reserve Division), and was able to make some limited gains between the southern edge of Polygon Wood and the Menin Road. It was supported by twenty heavy and forty-four field batteries, an almost unprecedented amount of artillery for such a modest operation. Tellingly, 33rd Division’s history states that they were attacked by ‘no less than six Divisions’. See Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 283, n. 2, and G. S. Hutchinson, The Thirty-Third Division in France and Flanders 1915–1919 (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2004; first publ. 1921), pp. 67, 72.
12 S. Snelling, VCs of the First World War. Passchendaele 1917 (Stroud: The History Press, 2012; first publ. 1998), pp. 166–74.
13 TNA: WO 95/853, ‘39th Division. Report on Operations of Sept. 26th 1917’.
14 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. 191–3.
15 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 292, n. 1.
16 Caspari, in J. Sheldon, The German Army at Passchendaele (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007), pp. 169–71.
17 F. von Pirscher, Das (Rheinisch-Westfälische) Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 459 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1926), pp. 83–4, 89.
18 TNA: WO 95/748, V Corps, ‘Report on Attack of 26th September, 1917’.
19 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 293, n. 3.
20 R. Prior and T. Wilson, Passchendaele. The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996), p. 131. Prior and Wilson (incorrectly) claim that the casualty rate at Polygon Wood was 50 per cent higher than at Menin Road.
21 C. R. Simpson (ed.), The History of the Lincolnshire Regiment 1914–1918 (London: The Medici Society, 1931), pp. 264–6.
22 IWM: Documents 22718, E. V. Tanner diary, 26 September 1917.
23 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. 77.
24 A. Wiedersich, Das Reserve-Infanterie Regiment Nr. 229 (Berlin: Verlag Tradition Wilhelm Rolf, 1929), p. 106.
25 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 292, n. 1.
26 TNA: WO 95/983, I ANZAC Corps War Diary, September 1917, Appendix H, ‘Notes on the Situation’. See also 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), p. 85, and TNA: WO 157/118, Second Army Daily Intelligence Summary, 24 September 1917.
27 Thaer diary, 28 September 1917, in A. von Thaer, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der O.H.L. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), pp. 139–40.
28 Ibid., p. 140.
29 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. 303.
30 E. Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story. August 1914–November 1918 (2 vols., New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1919), II, pp. 102–3.
31 The machine-guns would be grouped in four- and eight-gun batteries. These tactical changes are discussed in 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), pp. 316–18.
32 Group Ypres would mount the attack, known as Operation ‘Hohensturm’ (‘Storming Heights’), with four battalions, led by 212 Reserve Infantry Regiment (45th Reserve Division) and supported by 4th Guard Infantry Division, which would hold the sector from where the attack would take place. By recapturing this ground, particularly a rise known as Tokio Spur, it would provide better observation, allow them to dig in on higher, dryer ground, and strengthen morale. See TNA: WO 95/3256, 2nd Australian Division Intelligence Summary, 6 October 1917, and K. Gabriel, Die 4 Garde-Infanterie-Division. Der Ruhmesweg einer bewährten Kampftruppe durch den Weltkrieg (Berlin: Verlag von Klasing & Co., 1920), p. 100.
33 T. T. Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine. The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine during the First World War (Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1981), p. 66, n. 116.
34 Fourth Army Operation Order, 30 September 1917, in Sheldon, Passchendaele, pp. 184–6.
35 W. Beumelburg, Flandern 1917 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1928), pp. 120–21.
36 TNA: WO 95/3256, ‘Translation of Captured Documents’ in I ANZAC Corps Intelligence Summary, 6 October 1917. A number of divisional commanders raised major objections to the massing of troops in this manner, but were overruled. Ludendorff argued subsequently that he only agreed to this because of the opinion of experienced officers at the front, but this seems unlikely. See Beumelburg, Flandern, p. 124, and Sheldon, Passchendaele, p. 233, n. 2.
37 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 296.
38 TNA: WO 256/22, Haig diary, 28 September 1917.
39 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 297.
40 Haig diary, 2 October 1917, in G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig. War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 331.
41 Sir C. Harington, Plumer of Messines (London: John Murray, 1935), pp. 314–17.
42 AWM: 3DRL/2379, H. A. Goddard, ‘Tour of a Company in the Front Line’, pp. 1–2.
43 AWM: 3DRL/2316, letter, 1 October 1917, in ‘War Letters of General Monash: Volume 2, 4 March 1917–28 December 1918’.
44 C. Edmonds [C. Carrington], A Subaltern’s War (London: Anthony Mott, 1984; first publ. 1929), pp. 104–6.
45 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 299–301.
12. ‘An Overwhelming Blow’
1 Monash, cited in G. Serle, John Monash. A Biography (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2002; first publ. 1982), p. 293.
2 The use of jumping-off tapes was because of the lack of ‘regular or continuous trenches’ from which the attack could be launched. H. Stewart, The New Zealand Division 1916–1919. A Popular History Based
on Official Records (Auckland: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1921), p. 258.
3 The exact time of the German barrage differs across accounts. In Sir J. Edmonds, Military Operations: France & Belgium 1917 (3 vols., London: HMSO, 1948), II, p. 303, it is 5.20. Bean has it at 5.27. C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (13 vols., Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941–2), IV, p. 843. The war diaries of the divisions involved put it later (between 5.40 and 5.45 a.m.). See AWM: AWM4 1/42/33, Part 1, 1st Australian Division War Diary, 4 October 1917, and AWM4 1/44/27 Part 2, 2nd Australian Division War Diary, October 1917.
4 AWM: AWM4 1/46/12 Part 2, 42/Battalion Report, 4 October 1917.
5 C. Carrington, Soldier from the Wars Returning (London: Hutchinson, 1965), pp. 191–3.
6 AWM: AWM38 3DRL 606/254/1, H. G. Hartnett diary, 4 October 1917.
7 AWM: AWM4 23/1/27, ‘1st Australian Infantry Brigade. Summary of Intelligence. From 0600, 4th October to 0600, 5th October, 1917’.
8 See O. E. Burton, The Auckland Regiment (Auckland: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1922), p. 173.
9 S. Snelling, VCs of the First World War. Passchendaele 1917 (Stroud: The History Press, 2012; first publ. 1998), p. 184.
10 Peeler, cited in ibid., p. 182. Both men were in action again on 12 October 1917, when McGee was killed.
11 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. 184, 203.
12 TNA: WO 95/98, I Tank Brigade, ‘Report on Tank Operations 4th, October 1917’.
13 TNA: WO 95/952, ‘Operations of 4th Oct. 1917’, in XVIII Corps War Diary, October 1917.
14 IWM: Documents 1933, Account of W. A. Rappolt, pp. 94–5.
15 K. Gabriel, Die 4 Garde-Infanterie-Division. Der Ruhmesweg einer bewährten Kampftruppe durch den Weltkrieg (Berlin: Verlag von Klasing & Co., 1920), p. 103.
16 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 305, n. 2.
17 TNA: WO 95/276, Second Army Summary of Operations, 27 September–4 October 1917.
18 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 315–17.
19 See for example ‘Broodseinde. Greatest Victory of the War’, Taranaki Daily News, 25 October 1917.
20 AWM: AWM4 1/44/27 Part 2, 2nd Australian Division War Diary, Appendix XXI, ‘Second Army Summary’, 6 October 1917.
21 Lord Birdwood, Khaki and Gown. An Autobiography (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1941), pp. 315–16.
22 Lloyd George, cited in Bean, The Official History of Australia, IV, p. 877. See also L. Wolff, In Flanders Fields (London: Longmans, 1960), p. 195, and R. Prior and T. Wilson, Passchendaele. The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996), pp. 137–9.
23 Bean, The Official History of Australia, IV, pp. 833, 875. See also N. Steel and P. Hart, Passchendaele. The Sacrificial Ground (London: Cassell & Co., 2001; first publ. 2000), p. 253, and A. Ekins, ‘The Australians at Passchendaele’, in P. Liddle (ed.), Passchendaele in Perspective. The Third Battle of Ypres (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), pp. 220–21.
24 German Official History in J. Terraine, The Road to Passchendaele. The Flanders Offensive of 1917: A Study in Inevitability (London: Leo Cooper, 1977), p. 281.
25 Rupprecht diary, 5 October 1917, in Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1929), II, p. 267.
26 BA-MA: MSG 2/5960, Dieffenbach to Grandfather Balser (letter no. 5), 9 October 1917.
27 See ‘Fourth Army Daily Report’, 4 October 1917, in J. Sheldon, The German Army at Passchendaele (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007), p. 206, which reported the loss of only ‘a narrow strip of territory’.
28 TNA: WO 159/119, Second Army Daily Intelligence Summary, 11 October 1917.
29 Gabriel, Die 4 Garde-Infanterie-Division, p. 107.
30 A. Macdonald, Passchendaele. The Anatomy of a Tragedy (Auckland: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 167.
31 AWM: AWM4 1/44/27 Part 2, 2nd Australian Division War Diary, Appendix XXI, ‘Extracts from 2nd Army and 1st ANZAC Intelligence Summaries’, 6 October 1917, and W. Beumelburg, Flandern 1917 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1928), p. 131.
32 AWM: AWM4 1/46/12 Part 2, 37/Battalion Report, 4 October 1917.
33 Beumelburg, Flandern, p. 122. Emphasis added.
34 E. Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story. August 1914–November 1918 (2 vols., New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1919), II, p. 104.
35 German Official History in Terraine, The Road to Passchendaele, pp. 281–2. The line Army Group Rupprecht selected ran from the Yser north of Dixmude, past Merckem, west of Roulers and Menin, and passing the Lys at Deûlémont. 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), p. 81.
36 Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story, II, p. 104.
37 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. 85.
38 Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army, 9 October 1917, in Sheldon, Passchendaele, pp. 226–7. Original emphases. See also Beumelburg, Flandern, p. 124.
39 Rupprecht diary, 12 October 1917, in Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch, II, p. 271.
40 Haig diary, 4 October 1917, in G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig. War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), pp. 332–3.
41 G. S. Duncan, Douglas Haig as I Knew Him (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), pp. 64–5. Emphasis added.
42 J. Charteris, At G.H.Q. (London: Cassell & Co., 1931), pp. 257–8.
43 Steel and Hart, Passchendaele, pp. 261–2; G. Harper, Massacre at Passchendaele. The New Zealand Story (Brighton: FireStep Books, 2011; first publ. 2000), pp. 52–4; and Prior and Wilson, Passchendaele, pp. 138–9 and 160–61. Edmonds (Military Operations: 1917, II, p. 325) cites a conference on 7 October in which both Plumer and Gough told Haig that they would prefer it if the campaign were closed down. Prior and Wilson dispute Edmonds’s findings and argue that at no point did either general urge a cancellation of future operations.
44 TNA: WO 256/23, Haig diary, 5 October 1917. Apparently, Haig told one senior officer that ‘When we get the Ridge, we’ve won the war.’ 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), p. 17.
45 Edmonds, Military Operations: 1917, II, pp. 323–5, and TNA: WO 95/276, Second Army G.311, 6 October 1917.
46 Sir C. Harington, Plumer of Messines (London: John Murray, 1935), pp. 111–12, and Tim Harington Looks Back (London: John Murray, 1940), pp. 63–4.
47 Godley, cited in Macdonald, Passchendaele, p. 53.
48 See G. Sheffield, The Chief. Douglas Haig and the British Army (London: Aurum Press, 2011), pp. 245–6; T. Cook, Shock Troops. Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917–1918 (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008), p. 317; and N. Cave, Battleground Europe. Ypres. Passchendaele: The Fight for the Village (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007; first publ. 1997), pp. 9–10.
49 J. Terraine, Douglas Haig. The Educated Soldier (London: Cassell & Co., 2000; first publ. 1963), pp. 367–8.
50 See the report by VIII Corps in M. LoCicero, A Moonlight Massacre. The Night Operation on the Passchendaele Ridge, 2 December 1917: The Forgotten Last Act of the Third Battle of Ypres (Solihull: Helion & Company, 2014), pp. 52–7. This refutes the idea that holding on to the Passchendaele Ridge was ‘comfortable’. It concludes that there was very little point in holding the ridge unless as a jumping-off point for a spring offensive in 1918. When Sir Henry Rawlinson inspected the positions on 10 November, he readily admitted that Passchendaele was ‘untenable’ against ‘a properly organized attack’. Prior and Wilson, Passchendaele, pp. 180–81. I am grateful to Dr K. W. Mitchinson for discussing this question with me and sharing his
knowledge of the ground.
51 TNA: CAB 23/4 ‘Conclusions of an Anglo-French Conference, Held in the Train at Boulogne, on September 25, 1917, at 3.15 p.m.’
52 Haig diary, 3 October 1917, in Sheffield and Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig, p. 331.
53 TNA: CAB 24/28/GT2243, General Headquarters, British Army in the Field to CIGS, 8 October 1917.
54 Robertson to Haig, 9 October 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), p. 234.
55 D. French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 154–5. See TNA: CAB 27/6, ‘Eighteenth Meeting of the Cabinet Committee on War Policy’, 3 October 1917.
56 Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command 1914–1918 (2 vols., London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), II, pp. 711–12.
57 Robertson invited Major-General A. A. Lynden-Bell (former Chief of the General Staff, Egyptian Expeditionary Force) to the War Policy Committee on 8 October to discuss the logistical challenges of the Palestine theatre of operations and the difficulty the British would face in reaching the Jaffa–Jerusalem line. TNA: CAB 27/6, ‘Cabinet Committee on War Policy’, 8 October 1917.
58 Robertson’s withering dismissal of the medical analogy can be found in his Soldiers and Statesmen 1914–1918 (2 vols., London: Cassell & Co., 1926), II, p. 257.