Deborah and the War of the Tanks
Page 27
A century later, and far from the fears and horrors of the battlefield, it is hard to comprehend what could have driven the men to commit this act of betrayal, which completely overshadowed the earlier revelations of Sergeant Sam Phillips in terms of its military significance. Part of the reason no doubt lay in the men’s feeling that they had been abandoned in No Man’s Land. They told their captors about the sequence of events leading up to the raid:
On the morning of 17 November the sergeant, together with ten men from his company, was ordered to hold a sap about 400 metres in front of the fire-trench until the morning of the 19th. They were given provisions for two days, but on the other hand to their amazement no Lewis gun and crew were assigned to them, although this sap … was normally always held with one and sometimes even two Lewis guns. In addition, it was usual until then for around 30 men to hold these saps. The prisoners could only conclude from the strange circumstances surrounding their mission that the supposed imminent relief of their division was to remain concealed from the enemy in the event of a forcible German reconnaissance. The prisoners had the feeling they were being sacrificed, and were very bitter about this.4
However, the German report also reveals a darker side to the story. Of the six men captured, four were Irish, including two Catholics – one from Londonderry and the other from southern Ireland. It was a time of turmoil in Ireland, and some of the prisoners were motivated by hostility to British rule. The interrogation report noted:
The political situation in Ireland seems to have strongly affected the morale of the Irishmen who are still present in the division in large numbers. A great animosity prevails towards England, with no interest whatsoever in her war aims … The Irishmen among the prisoners are thoroughly war-weary and speak badly of the English. They say if an uprising takes place in Ireland, they would take up arms against England without more ado. Such an uprising was only a matter of time. It now had a much greater chance of success, as a great deal had been learned from the mistakes of the last rebellion in Easter 1916.5
It might be claimed that the information was extracted under duress, though this was expressly denied by an officer of the 84th Infantry Regiment who was himself captured a few days later: ‘I would like to briefly comment here, how much the treatment of the prisoners [from the raid] contrasted with the way the English later dealt with us. Nothing was taken from them, although their handsome equipment aroused a good deal of envy, particularly their long rubber boots. They were not mistreated in any way, but rather people regarded them with respect.’6
This is borne out by a singular piece of evidence. Some time after their capture, the Germans took a photograph showing four of the prisoners posing with their guards. The men, wearing greatcoats and one with a bandaged hand, appear sombre but calm. A gaunt, lanky man wearing a cloth cap must be the corporal who was said to be ‘as tall as a tree’, while the other three are presumably some of the private soldiers. Behind them are two of their captors, one of whom is smiling, and it is hard not to notice the relaxed, companionable way in which his hand rests on the shoulder of the prisoner in front.7
* * *
The men who were captured have never been named, and in doing so we should be careful not to accuse any individual over what happened. The interrogation report is an aggregate of statements from all six prisoners, and in most cases there is nothing to identify the source. There is a clear focus on the grievances of the Irish, and attention must therefore focus on the four private soldiers, though two were from the Ulster Protestant community which has traditionally been loyal to Britain. The fact is we do not know who said what, and none of us should point the finger of blame unless we have experienced a similar desperate situation for ourselves.
The main prize for the Germans was the sergeant in charge of the squad, who was described as an ‘Offizierstellvertreter’, or ‘trainee officer’. The interrogation report gives a detailed account of his military career, but despite this it would be impossible to identify him were it not for the records compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland, and now available online.8 A search through several thousand pages reveals the names of six men who were captured in the Trescault area on 18 November, and among them is Sergeant William Harold Whitaker.
By a stroke of fate, Sergeant Whitaker’s service record has survived, and this precisely matches the account of his career given in the German report. The records also show he put up a fight, having been shot and bayoneted in the shoulder and hand during the raid.9 In fact, examining Sergeant Whitaker’s military record, it is hard to believe he could have committed any act of disloyalty. He had been born in North London and was just twenty years old at the time of the raid,10 though he told his captors he was twenty-two.11 He had joined the Territorial Army in 1913, and a month after the outbreak of war he was posted to Malta with 3rd Bn London Regiment to free up regular soldiers guarding the island. The battalion moved to France at the start of 1915,12 and Private Whitaker soon excelled himself and was mentioned in dispatches for gallantry.13
He suffered a sprained knee in early 1916, but this proved an unexpected boost to his military career, for on recovery he was posted to GHQ at Rouen to work as a clerk in the so-called Third Echelon.14 As he explained to the Germans: ‘This department handles personnel issues and maintains lists of every single member of the British Expeditionary Force in France from the moment they are posted from the reinforcement depot at home. Well over 1,000 people work in the department.’ Asked about relations between the British military and the French authorities and local residents, he said these were ‘completely harmonious’.15 By now he had been promoted to acting sergeant and was in line for a commission, but first he had to serve with a front-line battalion and was therefore attached to 1st Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers.16
Although Sergeant Whitaker gave the Germans a detailed account of his career, there was nothing in it that could have been of military value to them. They were not so interested in the other prisoners, commenting merely that ‘with one exception they were born in Ireland, and were manual labourers by trade. Two of them belonged to the Special Reserve before the war, the others joined up as Kitchener men in 1915.’17 Again it is necessary to scour the Red Cross records to find out more, and these enable us to identify five members of D Company, 1st Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers, whose details match the relevant date and place of capture.18
One of them was Lance-Corporal Frederick Charles Rowe, and photographs suggest he may have been the corporal who the Germans said was ‘as tall as a tree’.19 Lance-Corporal Rowe was also an Englishman, having been born in Hertfordshire, where his father was the foreman of a sewage farm. Frederick worked as a council labourer before joining the Bedfordshire Regiment and going to France with them in January 1915.20
Of the four Irishmen, one was actually English by birth, namely George Reginald Ball, listed variously as a private and corporal, who had been born in the garrison town of Aldershot nineteen years before. However, he was raised in Belfast where his father was a printer and a member of the Salvation Army. Private James Cope was slightly older at twenty-five, and a Belfast Protestant born and bred. He seems to have had unimpeachable Loyalist credentials, and the records suggest his father had joined the Royal Irish Rifles in 1886, and later signed the Ulster Covenant pledging support to the British crown. James himself had been in France since December 1914, while Rifleman George Cope, believed to be his brother, had been killed fighting with the Royal Irish Rifles in early 1917.21
The other two prisoners were Roman Catholics, and may therefore have had a more contentious relationship with the British state and its institutions. Private Neil McCauley was the twenty-eight year-old son of a council labourer from Londonderry, though his family roots were in County Donegal. The records are hard to interpret, but it appears his cousin Private Cornelius McCauley joined the Royal Munster Fusiliers before the war and died of wounds in Gallipoli in 1915. If so, this could easily have fed any sense of anger and dis
illusionment that Neil may have felt. Finally, Private Laurence O’Brien was a twenty-six year-old from County Wicklow in southern Ireland, who joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers in October 1914 and had been in France since August 1915. He was wounded in the hand and thigh during the raid, showing he also put up a fight to avoid being taken prisoner.22
* * *
However angry some of the men were about the situation in Ireland, and about their thankless posting to ‘E’ Sap, it still seems extraordinary that they could have passed on such sensitive information to the enemy, knowing it would endanger the lives of their own friends and fellow countrymen, apart from anyone else. It seems all the harder to believe that this betrayal emanated from 36th Division, whose heroism on 1 July 1916 has made it an enduring symbol of loyalty and sacrifice. However, the interrogation report claimed the division had changed beyond all recognition, and only half its members were even Irish. According to the German report:
The division does not seem to have been brought back to its full fighting strength following heavy losses in Flanders. The good reputation the division has enjoyed up to now can no longer be sustained with the inferior reinforcements now arriving. Firstly, for months the reinforcements have not been completely made up of Irishmen. They now mostly consist of people from all parts of England together, including many convalescents who have been wounded two or three times before, and in the view of the prisoners are not physically up to the demands of war. Also an increasing number of conscripts are arriving who lack any front-line experience … In view of these conditions, the current military value of the 36th Division cannot be rated highly.23
The poor quality of reinforcements was tragically underlined a few weeks before the raid, when a twenty-six year-old soldier in 1st Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers was court-martialled for desertion. Private George Hanna from Belfast had previously been sentenced to death not once, but twice for deserting or attempting to desert, first at Gallipoli in 1915 and then in Salonika the following year. Each time the sentence was commuted to imprisonment and then suspended so he could return to service, but with such a chaotic record it was unlikely he would ever make an effective soldier.24
A court martial on 19 October heard he had gone missing shortly after being ordered into the trenches for the first time with 1st Battalion, and gave himself up three days later in Amiens. His defence was pitiful but unconvincing: ‘I had absolutely no intention of deserting. If I had not been detained I should have returned to camp. I have been three years on service; two of my brothers have been killed in France, and one at sea. I was refused leave to go and see my people. My last leave was in December 1914. I absented myself because I was upset at not being able to get leave, & I had heard from my sister to say that she had been expecting me home & when I did not come, it upset her & she was not well.’25
Private Hanna had been given enough chances, and the verdict was formally announced on 5 November: ‘The death sentence on No. 12609 Pte. G. Hanna was promulgated at Barrosa Hall Metz … This was the first death sentence ordered to be carried out in this Battn. since its arrival in France. Pte. Hanna was only about 5 hours with the Battn. He having joined with a draft but when warned for the trenches, disappeared. Firing Party, under Lieut. G. Reeve, M.C. proceeded to [Divisional Headquarters].’26 Private Hanna was shot at 6.43 the next morning in the village of Ytres. Along with other men who suffered a similar punishment, he was pardoned in 2006 ‘as recognition that he was one of the many victims of the First World War and that execution was not a fate he deserved’.27
Of course this was an isolated incident, and after three years of war perhaps the most surprising thing is that there were not more of them. Whatever the Germans wanted to believe, 1st Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers, along with the rest of 36th (Ulster) Division, remained a potent force which would go on to fight gallantly in the Battle of Cambrai, and for the rest of the war.
At the same time, the political situation in Ireland was clearly having an effect, as demonstrated a few weeks later when four men from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers slipped away from their trenches south of Cambrai and gave themselves up to the enemy. This was a more deliberate form of desertion than the aimless drifting that had cost Private Hanna his life, and the German interrogation report provides a lengthy exposition of Irish hostility to British rule and support for Sinn Fein. It concludes with an extraordinary message, which they asked to be sent to their former comrades and signed with their own names:
To all good Irishmen of the 16th Division.
Dear Chums
You are all a lot of fools to be staying there in these God dam dirty trenches. There is no such thing as shooting you. They Germans is nicest people I ever met we are getting plenty of bread and no such thing as bullybeef for your dinner. 2 blankets and a fine straw bed to lie on if I could only get back to tell you the life we have here is better than Blity [sic]. Take my advice and come over and not be fighting for England any longer.28
* * *
Whatever the combination of desperation, discontent and devil-may-care that led the captured Royal Irish Fusiliers to give away details of the coming operation, the Germans only had a few hours in which to react, and there was considerable uncertainty at the highest levels about whether the prisoners’ revelations were accurate, and how best to respond.
The mention of tanks brought to mind a mystery that had exercised the Germans for some weeks. At the end of October, they had found the corpse of a British soldier in No Man’s Land between Trescault and Ribécourt. He had obviously been killed while on patrol, and on examining his body, they found a Tank Corps badge in his wallet. It was a perplexing discovery in such a quiet sector, and suggested the dead man might have belonged to a tank crew, or at least come into contact with one that was visiting the area to prepare for an attack.29
In fact, a meticulous search of British and German records has revealed that the mystery had an innocent explanation. The body was that of Rifleman Samuel Walker, who was in 12th Bn Rifle Brigade and was killed during a night patrol on 20/21 October. He had previously spent several months as a gunner in D Battalion of the Tank Corps, and the badge which aroused so much suspicion was therefore a souvenir of his own service in the tanks. Although he had inadvertently set alarm-bells ringing, the Germans could draw no firm conclusions from their find, and Rifleman Walker’s memento did not expose his former comrades to any additional danger. However, it was to have tragic consequences for his own family, since the Germans notified the Red Cross that they had found his body, but incorrectly reported him as belonging to the Tank Corps. As a result the news failed to reach his parents in Lincolnshire, who were told it was ‘quite possible’ that he had been captured. Samuel was eventually presumed dead in August 1918, and his grave was finally identified in the 1920s.30
However, the prisoners had now given more definite evidence of the threat facing the Germans. They could draw some comfort from the knowledge that any attack on Havrincourt would run into a determined defence, with the village itself occupied by 1st Battalion, 84th Infantry Regiment and the 2nd Battalion manning the line to their left (from the German viewpoint), and their supporting artillery dug in behind the Flesquières ridge. The position was already a strong one, but to be on the safe side the Germans now rushed both infantry and artillery reinforcements into the area to resist any possible advance.
This was helped by the arrival of thousands of men who were returning from the Eastern Front following the collapse of Russia. By coincidence, units from 107th Division had already begun arriving in Cambrai on the morning of 19 November, the plan being to let them find their feet on the ‘silent front’ before they plunged into any real fighting.
There should have been plenty of time to gather themselves and their equipment after the five-day rail journey, and then to familiarize themselves with the terrain and the other units around them. On 25 November they were due to replace a unit of the Landwehr, older reservists who were holding a section of the front line in front of the village
of Ribécourt, south-east of Flesquières. The Germans were well aware that the Landwehr were a weak link, but they were only holding the line temporarily while 27th Reserve Infantry Regiment was withdrawn for training.
Artillery support for the incoming 107th Division was provided by 213th Field Artillery Regiment (FAR), and on the day of arrival its officers attended a briefing given by Generalleutnant (i.e. Major-General) Oskar Freiherr (i.e. Baron) von Watter, commander of 54th Division which held the entire sector including Havrincourt and Flesquières. With his white hair and moustache, von Watter bore a certain resemblance to ‘Uncle’ Harper, his opposite number in 51st (Highland) Division, and they also shared a nickname: his men referred to him fondly as ‘Onkel Oskar’. Von Watter’s own officers often stressed how vigorously he had responded to the warning of an attack, but one of the newly-arrived artillery officers told a different story, recalling the words of his briefing: ‘Gentlemen, you have arrived in a completely quiet sector. The English are not planning anything. It may be they’ll try to capture this outpost here, they have done something like it before, but I think even that is unlikely.’31
It was a reassuring message, and afterwards the battery commanders set off on horseback to inspect the area. When they returned to their billets a few hours later, the place was in turmoil. The information given by the prisoners had been flashed across the front and a heightened state of alert was ordered for the night ahead. The travel-weary men of 213th FAR had been ordered to deploy immediately to reinforce Flesquières, even though the sector was unknown to them.
Six batteries, each of three guns, were positioned in an arc behind the ridge of Flesquières and in front of the neighbouring village of Graincourt. The disused gun positions they took over varied greatly in strength – some were well built with protective shelters for the guns and interconnecting bunkers, while others had little cover for the guns and the dugouts had only one entrance, making them a death-trap under bombardment. Most worryingly of all, some of the positions were surrounded by old shell craters, showing their location was already well known to the enemy.