All day and during the night of 6 June 80,000 assaulting troops moved into position, covered by artillery and machine-gun barrages. A hot meal was served out at midnight, and the usual spoonful of rum was issued at 0230 hours. At 0310 hours the mines were blown. Nineteen went up with a deafening roar, and in Lille, twelve miles away, the German authorities thought it was an earthquake. One, the Spanbroekmolen mine, in the centre of the objective, exploded some twenty seconds late, and a few British soldiers who had just started to move from their jump-off positions were killed by falling rocks. Nine divisions, supported by seventy-two Mark IV tanks, moved forward towards the ridge behind a creeping barrage. To the north X Corps (23, 47 and 41 Divisions) attacked through Saint-Éloi; in the centre IX Corps (19, 16 (Irish) and 36 (Ulster) Divisions) went straight up the ridge at Wijtschate, while in the south II ANZAC Corps (25th, the New Zealand and the 3rd Australian Divisions) were responsible for Messines.
Using fire and movement, the first wave took the German forward line, which had been badly mangled by the bombardment and was now but lightly held. The second wave passed through and drove on up the slope. The 16th Irish and the 36th Ulster Divisions attacked side by side, their objective being Wijtschate village with the church as the interdivisional boundary. The Ulster Division had long since given up wearing orange sashes, and relations between the divisions representing the two opposing traditions in Ireland were now extremely good. Shortly after the taking of the first German line, Willie Redmond was badly wounded. His commanding officer had ordered him to be part of the ‘left out of battle’ party, but he protested, and was eventually allowed to accompany the attack on the understanding that he returned after the first line had been taken. The Irish Nationalist MP was tended and carried off the field by Protestant stretcher-bearers of the Ulster Division, but died of his wounds shortly afterwards. When the battle was over, the Nationalist Party in Dublin opened a memorial fund for Willie Redmond; Major-General Oliver Nugent, commanding the Ulster Division, who had known Redmond and liked him, made a donation from his division’s welfare funds. This led to uproar in Belfast, where the division’s welfare committee, composed of hard-faced civilians who had done well out of the war, protested that Nugent had misappropriated money raised for the welfare of Protestant troops. Nugent was safe – he had consulted his Protestant soldiers before making the donation – but the incident showed that however well the different faiths cooperated in war, there was precious little reconciliation at home.9
By 0530 hours the second wave of attackers had reached the crest, and the New Zealand Division captured Messines itself. There was then a pause while the ridge was secured and guns moved forward, and by 1200 hours the third German line, on the reverse slope, was taken. Now three fresh divisions – 24, 11 and 4th Australian – were brought up and at 1510 hours they were hurled at the Germans’ final defence line, the Oostaverne line, which was now overlooked by the British on Messines Ridge. By midnight it was firmly in British hands.
The attack had been a huge success. In one day the British had advanced over three miles on a five-mile front, and even more ground was made on 11 June when the Germans pulled back another mile to the Warneton Line. German casualties are estimated at 25,000, including 7,300 prisoners and 10,000 missing – many of whom were never found, or were blown to bits by the mines. The total of German dead was probably in the region of 8,000. Total British casualties were 24,500, including 3,500 killed. A disproportionate number were from the ANZAC Corps, some of whose losses were ‘own goals’ when the men crowded onto the ridge and overtook their own artillery barrage. Of the seventy-four tanks employed, eleven were knocked out by German fire or broke down, a far better record than that of the year before. As the attacker is calculated always to take more casualties than the defender, and as the average mortality in the twelve divisions taking part (nine in the assault on the ridge, three on the capture of the Oostaverne Line) was 292 per division, or less than three per cent, this was not only an outstanding victory but a cheap one too.
The comparison between the Somme and Messines is obvious. Instead of an inexperienced force where all ranks were learning their trade and where tactics were only as sophisticated as the leaders and the led were capable of executing (i.e., not very), this was an army that had learned from 1916, that had refined its tactics and methods and honed them in the Arras battles earlier in 1917, and in which every man knew what he had to do and had confidence in his capacity to achieve it. It was a triumph of all-arms planning – there was excellent cooperation between engineers, infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft – and of detailed briefing of all ranks with clearly distinguishable objectives and sensible use of phases. It is true that the morale of the Germans on Messines Ridge was not as high as it had been the previous year, and that their staff work fell below its usual high standards; but this was still the highly competent, well-trained and well-equipped German army, and it had been resoundingly beaten.10
With the capture of Messines Ridge the British now had far more freedom to move unobserved in the south of the Ypres salient and behind their new front line. Now was the time to strike, while the German army was still reeling from its defeat. It was not to be, and there was a six-week delay before the next phase could start. Partly this was due to political interference. Lloyd George, only slightly mollified by the recent success and its refutation of his opinion regarding British leadership on the Western Front, still had to be convinced that the BEF should continue on the offensive, particularly as virtually no French support would be available. There was now less pressure from the Admiralty to strike for the Belgian coast, as it had emerged that the U-boats were operating from home bases and not, after all, from Channel ports. Winston Churchill, now Minister for Munitions, was increasingly of the view that the British army should hold, and continue to hold throughout 1918, until the Americans could take the field. Haig knew better. Aware that in the short term it was only the BEF that could keep France in the war, he knew that a major offensive had to happen. The French generals were insistent: the restoration of the French army’s will to fight was still a long way off. Even Lloyd George’s alternative sources of military advice – Sir John French and Sir Henry Wilson – sided with Haig, and eventually, late in July, the Cabinet sanctioned further offensive operations by the BEF.
There was another factor, however, that prevented Haig from dealing his next blow hard on the heels of that struck at Messines. The British army simply did not have the assets to conduct two major operations at once. The engineering effort for Messines had left little over for the rest of the salient, and the guns had to be moved, the ammunition stockpiled and the men trained on mock-ups of the German positions. The next phase of the offensive was to be a series of hammer blows all around the Ypres salient, and was the responsibility of General Sir Hubert Gough, commanding the British Fifth Army. At last, by 31 July, he was ready.
On the 30th the weather broke, and when nine British infantry divisions attacked behind a creeping barrage at 0350 hours the next day between Zillebeke and Boesinghe, they did so in mist and driving rain; conditions worsened as the day wore on. In the north progress was good, and the Guards, 38 and 51 Divisions advanced about two and a half miles, well beyond the Pilkem Ridge, just short of Saint-Julien and almost to Langemarck. Next door, 39, 55 and 15 Divisions got even further, to the Langemarck–Zonnebeke road by 1300 hours, before being pushed back to the Steenbeek brook by last light. South of the Ypres–Roulers (Flemish Roeselare) railway progress was not so good, but significant advances were made.
The Germans too had been learning. They were now organising their defences in depth and basing them not on lines of trenches alone, but on concrete strongpoints linked by trenches. The idea was to exhaust the attacker by drawing him further and further into successive zones of elastic defence, and when he was exhausted to counter-attack with specially formed counter-attack divisions. The weather deteriorated progressively, and off-road movement, particularly of guns, was becomin
g very difficult for the British. It was to be the wettest summer for seventy-five years. On 10 August Westhoek was captured by 74 Division, and on 16 August in the Battle of Langemarck eight divisions went into action, with the 16th Irish and 36th Ulster once more side by side. But the ground was terrible; the drainage system had broken down completely as a result of constant shelling, the tanks could hardly move and the attack was a failure. South of the salient, Hill 70, north of Lens, was captured by the Canadian Corps on 15 August and there were minor advances south of Langemarck between 19 and 22 August, but even so the offensive was in danger of becoming bogged down (in many places literally). Haig now decided that a fresh approach was needed. He called a temporary halt and handed the battle over to Plumer and his Second Army. While the pressure on the Germans was kept up all along the line, no major attacks were launched for three weeks. As the weather improved, the ground began to dry out and the troops trained and rehearsed. On 20 September two Australian and four British divisions attacked either side of the Menin road, and once more the British tasted considerable success. Further advances culminated in the capture of Polygon Wood on 26 September.
The British were now consuming German divisions faster than they could be replaced. The advent of the counter-attack divisions had been a shock; but the British quickly adapted, using bite-and-hold tactics, whereby a limited objective was captured and then speedily put into a state of defence to await the counter-attack. When the counter-attack divisions appeared they were being repulsed with very bloody noses. At the Battle of Broodseinde on 4 October the British advanced one and a half miles and captured Poelkapelle, Zonnebeke and Broodseinde. There followed a series of frenzied counter-attacks, all beaten off with heavy German losses, and then the British advanced again. Ludendorff described 4 October 1917 as‘the black day of the German army’.11
The British were now poised to take Passchendaele, the last ridge before the plains and the last line of German defences around the salient. The chances of a breakthrough and breakout were now recognised as remote; but if the Passchendaele Ridge could be captured before winter set in, the BEF would have good, well-drained land for their front lines and – for the first time in the Ypres salient – it would be they, and not the Germans, who would hold the commanding heights. At this point, however, the weather broke again. In the entire month of October there were only seven days without rain, and they were overcast with no opportunity for the ground to dry. Rainfall for the month was only just over four inches, which may not seem much; but in a low-lying area where the drainage was bad and the water-table high at the best of times, and when the rain was continuous rather than delivered in short, sharp bursts, it had an increasingly adverse affect on operations.12 While lurid tales of men drowning in mud are mostly fiction (although it did happen, and wounded men who fell into waterlogged shell holes had to be pulled out quickly), the degeneration of the ground slowed everything, from the delivery of rations to the moving-forward of guns, to the speed at which infantrymen could cover open ground.
Had things on the Western Front been normal – whatever that may be in a war – Haig might well have decided in early October that his men had done enough, and closed the offensive down. His main task, however, was to keep the Germans away from the French, and Pétain still needed time before the French army could be fully operational again. Between 4 and 12 October Tyne Cot was captured across a sea of mud, but it was another three weeks before Passchendaele was taken by the Canadians on 7 November; three weeks of fighting in appalling conditions with temperatures rarely above fifty degrees Fahrenheit (but, contrary to received opinion, never below freezing).13 With the taking of the Passchendaele Ridge the Third Battle of Ypres ended. Now the French mutinies had stopped, courts martial of the ringleaders were in full flow, conditions had been improved, and the French army was once more ready to play its part in the war, although morale remained brittle until the end.
Third Ypres cost the BEF a quarter of a million casualties, of whom around 53,000 were killed, and gave rise to the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the world, with 12,000 graves. That more was not accomplished on the ground was due to political dithering, delay after Messines Ridge, and the weather, but there was genuine achievement. Considerable ground was gained, and the British were in a far better position after the battle than they had been before it. The Germans saw it as an unmitigated disaster for their army. Third Ypres pulled in eighty-eight German divisions, over half the total on the Western Front, and all, including the special counter-attack divisions on which the German generals had placed so much hope, were severely mauled. They could not move any divisions eastwards to face the Kerensky offensive, Russia’s last attempt to fight in this war. Their butcher’s bill was enormous, far higher than that of the British, and it was this savaging, coupled with the knowledge that the American army was coming on stream, that persuaded Ludendorff to chance all on the ‘Kaiser’s offensive’ of 1918 – a decision that cost Germany the war. But more important than anything else, by launching the Third Battle of Ypres, and by continuing it in the face of political opposition, mounting casualties and appalling conditions, Haig and the BEF kept the Germans away from the French. The French front was untroubled throughout the British offensive, and this gave the French generals the time they needed to reconstitute their army. For this reason, if for no other, Third Ypres had to be fought and had to be persisted with, whatever the cost to the British themselves.
Given that the conditions under which the British were attacking – mounting casualties, worsening conditions, gains less than expected – were not dissimilar to those that had precipitated the French mutinies, those who do not know the British soldier might ask why it was that the British army did not also dissolve into amutinous rabble. At no time during Third Ypres, or at any other time in the war, was there anything approaching collective indiscipline in the British army, nor was there ever a crisis of morale. One reason was the British practice of regular and frequent rotation through firing, reserve, support lines and billets, whereas the French tended to put a division in the line and leave it there until it was exhausted. British welfare facilities and food were much better than those of the French, the pay was much better, leave was more generous and the arrangements for men to take leave worked. British medical services were always able to cope, and men knew that if they were wounded they would receive attention.
It was not that the French generals were uncaring or callous, but rather that their long experience of a conscript army had bred an outlook in which there was no need to worry about such things: since the Revolution at least, Frenchmen did their time in the army whether they liked it or not, and whatever conditions were provided. The British had always had a volunteer army, which men would not join unless the terms were acceptable, and in which they would not remain unless they felt that they were being properly looked after. A large conscript army can afford to be profligate with men’s lives; a small regular army has to be husbanded. The BEF was now a mixture of regulars, wartime volunteers and conscripts, but the pre-war paternalistic attitudes remained.
As has been said, French officers at unit level led from the front – literally – many of them still donning white gloves before going ‘over the top’, but once the battle was over they left everything to the NCOs.14 They were, perhaps, not as closely in touch with their soldiers as were their British counterparts, whose men might moan at being constantly under the eye of their officers, but could not, and did not, claim that the latter were not interested in them.
The British army came out of the Third Battle of Ypres in good order, hardened, its morale undamaged, and ready in 1918 to be the only army capable of taking the offensive against the Germans.
NOTES
1 Jour J was the day on which an operation started. The British called it Z-Day, later changing it to D-Day.
2 A French infantry division was divided into two brigades, each brigade having two regiments. Each regiment had three battalions.
3 There is no equivalent of the Gendarmerie Nationale in Britain or in the USA. Usually thought of as police, they were and are part of the armed forces and come under the Ministry of Defence (Ministry for War in 1914–18). They do carry out some of the functions of a national police force but are also formed into battalions for garrison duty overseas.
4 See Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La Grande Guerre des Français 1914–1918, Perrin, Paris, 1994, pp. 202–06.
5 John Williams, Mutiny 1917, Heinemann, London, 1962.
6 Russia supplied the French with two divisions, each of two brigades. One division went to Salonika, where it stayed until January 1918 when it was disbanded; those soldiers who wished were repatriated. The other division, 22,000 men in all, arrived in Marseille in the spring of 1916. In the Nivelle offensive of 1917 they were part of General Mazel’s army and fought well from 16 to 20 April, taking 4,500 casualties killed, wounded and missing. When the news of the abdication of the Tsar (on 15 March 1917) came through, the men split into factions and a mutiny that broke out in the 1st Brigade on 17 September was put down by the French, assisted by the 2nd Brigade. Twelve Russians were killed. The brigades were then separated and put into camps well away from the fighting. After the second Russian Revolution, in October 1917, which brought the Bolsheviks to power and was effectively the end of Russian participation in the war, the surviving Russian troops were given a choice: internment in French North Africa or enlistment into the French army. Most opted to go to North Africa, where they were interned in Algiers and repatriated through Odessa in 1919. The remainder, about a battalion’s worth, were formed into the Russian Legion, under French officers, and incorporated into the Moroccan Division. They fought well enough in 1918, and after the war were part of the French occupation force in Germany. Most then became émigrés in Paris. Until fairly recently British officers on the Russian language course spent a year with one of these families, thus becoming fluent in a form of Russian understood in the USSR only by the very old or by priests in hiding.
Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military) Page 41