Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military)

by Gordon Corrigan

  The 41st Division of Infantry had been in the line continuously from 28 January to 12 May 1917. They had taken a large number of casualties and were brought out of the line into billets for a rest. The billets were overcrowded and unheated, and when the men were warned for a return to operations on 1 June, revolt flared. The trouble started in the 23rd Regiment of Infantry, billeted near Ville-en-Tardenois, and spread to the other regiment of the 1st Brigade, the 133rd Regiment of Infantry in nearby Chambrecy. A noisy column formed, red flags were produced and themen left camp to march to Ville-en-Tardenois singing the ‘Internationale’. General Bulot, the Brigade Commander, and a colonel tried to reason with them. The general was stoned and the stars of his rank torn off his uniform. The mutineers were reported to have shouted, ‘Murderer – drinker of blood – death to you – up the revolution – peace at any price –we are fed up with the war!’4 If this sounds rather dramatic – comical even – to English ears, it is a lot more bloodthirsty in French. Those men who would talk to the officers said that the blacks (les noirs) at Firminy and the Annamites at Saint-Denis were violating French women and then shooting them. Revolution had broken out in Paris, said the mutineers, and the Louvre was ablaze. This was, of course, largely nonsense, but there was considerable resentment against colonial troops who had taken over duties in rear areas to free up French troops for the front. At last the divisional commander, General Mignot, arrived. He promised the men that they would not be sent back to the trenches, and things quietened down. A hundred of the ringleaders were locked up in the mairie while transport was arranged for the rest. Next day, 2 June, there was another demonstration when at 1800 hours around 1,000men marched round the town with red flags, but that was the end of it for the 1st Brigade. On 3 June both regiments were taken away, and after the subsequent courts martial nine soldiers were sentenced to death, of whom five were actually executed. There was no trouble at all in the division’s 2nd Brigade.

  These two incidents were fairly typical. In all there were outbreaks of mutiny in sixty-five divisions on the Western Front, or in about two-thirds of the army. In most cases divisions in the trenches remained in position, with the exception of a battalion of the 66th Regiment of Infantry which abandoned its sector, chased away its officers and camped in the woods behind the lines. Anecdotal evidence says that the Commander Tenth Army, General Duchêne, surrounded them with cavalry and gendarmes and then ordered one of the battalions to be decimated – one in every ten men to be shot summarily without trial.5 This salutary tale was widely believed, and is still believed, in France and in England; but a recent study by the French academic G. Pedroncini, who had access to military archives not previously released, produces convincing evidence that it was never ordered and never happened, although a number of men of the battalion were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Other regiments at the front assured their officers that while they would not advance, or agree to any attacks, neither would they allow the Germans to advance. That the most serious mutinies occurred in units out of the line may be partly accounted for by that catalyst for indiscipline in all armies: drink. The French army paid its men in arrears, usually when they came out of the line, and there were always purveyors ready to exchange large quantities of cheap red wine for wads of francs. Many of the mutinies broke out in the evening, after the soldiery had spent the day imbibing the local pinard, and ended early in the morning when hangovers had reduced revolutionary ardour.

  The two Russian brigades under French command – part of a ‘troops for arms’ swap agreed in 1915 – had also mutinied, but this was due to events at home and was unrelated, except chronologically, to what was happening in the French army. The movement was put down by firm French action, assisted by loyalist Russians.6

  Over the next few months the mutinies spread, as did desertion by individuals. The 38th Infantry Division had seventy-three cases of desertion to the interior (i.e. not to the enemy) between 1 January and 16 April 1917. In the month of May alone there were forty-six desertions and for June the number rose to eighty-eight, and the 38th was a relatively well-behaved division. For the whole French army on the Western Front, desertions to the interior dealt with by military courts had been running at an average of 370 a month in 1916. The incidence dropped slightly in early 1917 when from1 January to 15 April there was a total of 775 desertions. In the second half of April, that is from the start of the Nivelle offensive to the end of the month, there were 618 desertions to the interior; in May there were 1,291, in June 1,619, in July 1,147 and in August 784, before settling down again in September to 410. Those were the deserters who were apprehended and dealt with; there would have been many more who were never caught. Desertions to the enemy also rose. Prior to the attack on 16 April these were averaging sixty a fortnight; in the second fortnight in April there were 289 desertions to the Germans.7 If even the ‘normal’ rate of desertion to the enemy seems very high to British eyes, it must be remembered that many of the French soldiers came from areas occupied by the Germans, and were no doubt trying to get back to their families rather than seeking to aid the enemy.

  It was noted that trains carrying those who had managed to get some leave were packed with soldiers chanting anti-war slogans, expressing approval of the Russian Bolsheviks. (After the Tsar’s abdication in March 1917, Russia was, until October of that year, under the control of the Menshevik provisional government which was trying to stay in the war, whereas the Bolsheviks wanted out.) Soldiers on leave were chanting that named politicians and generals should be ‘done away with’ (à bas and even à la lanterne). Some units dissolved into bands of brigands, others began to march on Paris to present their grievances, others went home, some stayed at their posts but elected their own officers, and a sizeable minority remained steadfastly loyal and untroubled. Although there were calls for peace and for revolution, the mutineers’ most often repeated demands concerned not the direction of the war but pay, rations and – above all – leave. The mutinies would rumble on until August, and for France, and indeed for the alliance, it was the crisis point of the war. If the Germans knew what was happening, they would launch an offensive augmented by divisions released from the Eastern Front – an offensive that the French army was in no state to resist, and against which the British army was too small to defend along the whole front. On 4 June the French government was informed that between Soissons and Paris there were only two divisions that could be relied upon.

  The first priority was security. Strict censorship was imposed and very little leaked out. The Minister of War was not told until the mutinies were well under way and the French government was never told the full extent of the trouble until it was over. The British Cabinet knew almost nothing and even Haig, commanding the BEF, was only made aware of the true extent of the collapse on 2 June when the new Chief of Staff of the French Field Army, General Dubeny, briefed him and explained that General Pétain was frightfully sorry, but the French army could no longer assist with the next phase of the offensive due to start on 10 June – in fact, said Dubeny, (no doubt crossing his fingers behind his back as he delivered what he must have known to be a whopper), they could do nothing at all for at least a month.

  The French government, stung by the report of the Commission de l’Armée, which not only castigated the generals but also the saboteurs behind the scenes, began to act. The Bonnet Rouge was closed down and its editor, Duval, put on trial charged with treason for trading with the enemy (the Bonnet Rouge was found to be subsidised by German money). He was found guilty and later executed. The Minister of the Interior, Louis Malvy, who had inexplicably been unable to curb the activities of anti-war agitators and the Communist and anarchist press, was also arrested, as was Director Leymarie of the Sûreté (the French internal secret service), who, it was discovered, had covered up for Duval. Both were lucky. Malvy, who had undoubtedly encouraged unrest in the army and tolerated the existence of desertion agencies, got away with five years’ banishment, and Leymarie was sent to prison. Per
haps they knew too much. Ribot could not remain as Prime Minister (President of the Council in French terms) and was replaced on 12 September by Painlevé, who in turn gave way to Clemenceau on 16 November.

  It seems that the Germans never did discover the extent of the mutinies. They certainly received fragmentary reports of what was going on, from agents in place and from escaped German prisoners, but they do not seem to have believed them. The French security blackout worked.

  It was now for the British to distract the attention of the Germans while Pétain tried to restore the French army to something like a fighting force. It would take until the winter of 1917, and even after that the French army was never the same again. Pétain was a very different man from his predecessor, Nivelle. The latter was an aggressive, energetic, articulate proponent of the offensive; Pétain was of peasant origin, stolid, secretive, a thinker and a specialist in the art of defence, as he had shown at Verdun. He firmly believed that the de Castelnau school of offence à l’outrance was wrong, and that what mattered was guns. Although a Catholic, he was politically acceptable as he was reputed not to have been to mass for forty years. A fifty-eight-year-old colonel in 1914, he had done well at the First Battle of the Marne and was promoted to général de brigade in the field. When Joffre, as Commander-in-Chief, sacked two out of five army commanders, ten of the twenty corps commanders and forty-two of the seventy-four divisional commanders as a result of the First Battle of the Marne in 1914, Pétain’s rise was rapid. By late 1916 he had commanded in turn a division, a corps and an army, before commanding the GAC in Nivelle’s offensive and then replacing him.

  Pétain’s policy for the restoration of the army to its allegiance was one of severe punishment for ringleaders, forgiveness and better conditions for the rest. His first acts were to send nearly half of the whole army on leave, and then to institute measures to improve pay and rations. He made frequent visits to units and talked to the men. As he was untainted by the debacle of the April attacks, the soldiers trusted Pétain, and gradually matters began to improve. Courts martial were quickly set up and the trials began. The French code of military justice required all death sentences to be referred to the President of the Republic. From the beginning of the war to the events of 1917 there had been an average of twenty-two or twenty-three condemnations to death every month, of which the President pardoned fifteen or sixteen. Now, by a decree of 8 June 1917, the President renounced his powers of pardon for condemned soldiers, leaving the matter entirely up to the military. Some French historians accept that swift and exemplary justice was needed, others are more cynical and think that the reason for this renunciation was to allow the government to evade responsibility if it all went wrong. In fact the presidential pardon continued in practice if not in law, as many French deputies (members of Parliament) were serving in the army and would intercede with the President or the War Minister on behalf of their constituents or of soldiers under their command. Many of the contemporary documents are missing or were destroyed, and exact figures are hard to come by; but the most convincing account is that of Pedroncini who calculates that 476 men, nearly all private soldiers, were condemned to death for offences connected with the mutinies, and that thirty of them were actually shot. There may have been more executions, and there is some anecdotal evidence that at the beginning of the troubles men were shot summarily, leaving no trace in the archives.8 Many incidents that have passed into legend are, however, doubtful at best. At one stage it was claimed that a rebellious Senegalese division was herded out into no man’s land and shelled into submission by French artillery. A colonial division was indeed shelled by its own artillery, but this was in the early days of the offensive in April, and was the fault not of over-zealous enforcers of military discipline but of a straightforward miscalculation by the gunners. (One of the problems found during the offensive was that liaison between infantry and artillery was poor.) Even if as many as forty-eight mutineers were shot, which some French historians think is possible, it is a very small number for actions that amounted to a complete disruption of the military system and that could have led to losing the war.

  The French generals were convinced that the ringleaders were out-and-out bad hats: political agitators, Communists, anarchists, German agents, men deliberately setting out to bring down the French army. In fact there seems to be no evidence for this. Of those condemned to death, that is those considered most culpable, the majority were good soldiers with no previous record of political activism or of civil or military offences. The largest civilian profession represented was peasant farmer (cultivateur) (eighty-eight), followed by employees of tradesmen (nineteen). There were also twelve miners, twelve mechanics, ten bakers, ten labourers, two students, one policeman and one lawyer’s clerk. Neither in age, profession, social class, education or place of residence or birth is there any indication that this was a concerted movement by any one group. The conclusion must be that the mutinies of 1917 were a spontaneous reaction to poor conditions, lack of welfare facilities and the dashing of hopes raised too high, with discontent being aggravated by deliberate anti-war propaganda and incitement from sections of the home front.

  In a book that deals with British participation in this war I make no apology for devoting half a chapter to the events of 1917 in the French army, for all that happened to the British in the ensuing Third Battle of Ypres is directly attributable to the state of the French. The condition of the French army made it imperative, if France was to stay in the war and the Germans were not to win it, for the British to mount a major offensive unaided, and to continue that offensive, whatever the cost, until such time as the French army was once more ready to take the field. Staying on the defensive and waiting a year for the Americans was no longer a viable policy.

  It had always been the intention of the British to begin their post-Nivelle attack in early June. The aim had been to break out of the Ypres salient, that flat, waterlogged bit of western Flanders where the British had spent over two years constantly overlooked by the Germans, and then to drive into the Douai plain and get back to mobile war. A further imperative was now urged: unrestricted submarine warfare had been again declared, and the Royal Navy wanted the army to break through to the Channel coast and prevent the Germans from using the Belgian ports as bases from which their U-boats could raid Allied commerce. While there would now be little or no French help, much could still be achieved, even if it was only to gain the high ground around the salient so that the British could overlook their enemy and not vice versa.

  Before anything much could be done from the salient, the Messines Ridge, held by the Germans since 1914, had to be taken. At the bottom (south) end of the salient the British firing line ran east to west through Saint-Éloi, the scene of much mining and countermining throughout 1915 and 1916. West of Saint-Éloi the British line turned south. South of Saint-Éloi and east of the British front line a long, narrow ridge ran north to south, running up to the village of Wijtschate (known to British soldiers as Whitesheets) and along to Messines, where it sloped back down to meet the British front line again at Ploegsteert (Plugstreet). This ridge – about three miles long from north to south and three-quarters of a mile wide from east to west – overlooked the southern end of the Ypres salient, and the British front line down as far as Armentières. It was what soldiers call vital ground.

  The British had always wanted to take out the Messines Ridge, but up to now there had been other priorities. Mines had, however, been in place under the German defences for a year, checked regularly by men of the tunnelling companies Royal Engineers to ensure that they had not been discovered and that the fuses and detonators would still work. Altogether twenty-one mines were dug and one million pounds of explosive put in position. On the Messines Ridge feature were six German divisions, totalling 75,000 men, and 630 guns. Their defences were based on three lines of bunkers, sited in depth and connected by trenches covered by wire obstacles. The first line was on the forward slope, the second on the ridge itself,
the third on the reverse (east) slope, and a final line – the Oostaverne Line – about three miles east of the ridge. The Germans knew an attack would come; the British aim was to conceal when it would be.

  The attack on Messines Ridge was the responsibility of the British Second Army, commanded by General Sir Herbert Plumer. Plumer’s portly figure and large white moustache (his hair had gone completely grey since 1914) made him the model for the cartoonist Low’s ‘Colonel Blimp’, but he was a superb and detailed planner, and a great believer in limited, easily identifiable objectives – ‘bite and hold’ tactics. It was decided to attack on 7 June 1917, a few days earlier than originally planned, and the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service established complete air superiority, bringing back air photographs of the German positions and denying German aircraft opportunities for observation. A seventeen-day artillery bombardment began on 21 May, with three and a half million shells being fired in the last seven days alone. On the evening of 4 June the 16th (Irish) Division, John Redmond’s Irish Volunteers, held an officers’ dinner at Locre. Lieutenant Colonel Buckley of the Royal Leinster Regiment proposed a toast to the division and to its success in the forthcoming operation, which was replied to by Major Willie Redmond, MP, 6th Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment, younger brother of the Nationalist leader and at fifty-seven probably the oldest company commander on the Western Front.