At one point during the day a wounded German officer captured at Nonne Boschen was being escorted to the rear when he asked a BEF artillery officer, 'Where are your reserves?' The battery commander pointed mutely to his guns. Unable to accept this amazing response, the German officer asked, 'And what is behind them?' On receiving the reply 'Divisional Headquarters', he said only, 'God Almighty'- as well he might. The BEF was hanging on to its position by its fingertips; had the Prussian Guards any real idea of the situation, had it been possible to restore any order to the fighting in the woods, one last coordinated attack would have broken through. As it was, the chronic problem of battlefield communications, common to all armies on both sides at this time, was taking effect yet again. The German attack was disintegrating and could not be put back together.
At noon the battle was still in the balance but it now appeared that the German advance had halted all along the front. The best intelligence seemed to imply that only one outstanding penetration remained, that of the Prussian Guard units in Nonne Boschen. In the early afternoon orders were therefore issued for the 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry to clear this wood, supported on the right by the 2nd Highland Light Infantry, which would drive the enemy out of the ground between Nonne Boschen and Polygon Wood.
Four companies of the 'Ox and Bucks' duly entered the Nonne Boschen wood at around 1500 hours and went through it at the double, driving the Prussian Guards before them: 'big men, some in helmets and some in caps, pell mell before them and killing or capturing all who resisted'. (13) These men proved to be from the 1st and 3rd Guards Regiments, and as the survivors emerged from the woods in full retreat they were fired on by the men of the Northampton and Cameron Highlanders in Glencorse Wood and exterminated. The Ox and Bucks suffered practically no casualties in this attack, and after a brief pause on the edge of the wood advanced again and took over the old trenches on the left of the 1st (Guards) Brigade. The account concludes: 'Although there were some gaps in it, the British line was now however secure, and every German who had crossed it in the morning had been accounted for.' (14)
The month-long Battle of First Ypres was effectively over when the Prussian Guard fell back from Nonne Boschen that night, but the fighting went on until the end of the month and the losses continued to mount. The First Battle of Ypres slowly petered out as winter drew on in December, more from sheer exhaustion and casualties than from any lack of will to continue.
During First Ypres, between 14 October and 30 November, BEF losses amounted to 58,155 men, with 614 officers and 6,794 British and 522 Indian other ranks being killed in the fighting. Those listed as 'missing' included men taken prisoner, but the bulk of the 'missing' died, their bodies never found. Their remains disappeared in the mud of Flanders and their names are now recorded on those monuments that dot the landscape in every part of the old salient.
To these BEF losses must be added those of their French and Belgian comrades who fought at their side and took over more of the line as BEF strength declined. On 31 October, after two weeks of fighting, the British held 19 kilometres (12 miles) of the front, the French 24 (fifteen miles), the Belgians 10 (6 miles). By 5 November the French share had risen to 29 kilometres (18 miles) and the British share had shrunk to 14 (9 miles). Since the French had more men and all the reinforcements this is hardly surprising, but it should not be overlooked; if the defence of Ypres in 1914 was glorious, there is plenty of glory to spare.
German losses were very high: 134,315 German soldiers are listed as killed, wounded or missing between 15 October and 24 November. (15) The number of German soldiers killed during this period comes to 19,230, almost three times the BEF total. Given the massive losses sustained during those frontal assaults against entrenched British infantry, this may be an accurate figure; in August alone, German losses in the early battles along the frontiers exceeded 250,000 men, many more than the BEF could put into the field at this time.
First Ypres was only the first of three terrible battles that would take place around Ypres in the following years; the Second took place in 1915 and saw the first use of gas; the Third, in 1917, is better known as Passchendaele. None of these battles can be described as a victory, and the result of First Ypres was stalemate or at best a draw. Both sides were attempting a breakthrough, neither succeeded and both paid a terrible price in the attempt. However, since the Anglo-French and Belgian forces succeeded in hanging on to Ypres after going on the defensive, they might be awarded the palm of victory here- though retaining Ypres was to prove a great drain on the British Second Army in the hard years ahead.
And so they ended, the first four months of this four-year-long catastrophe that was to change Europe for ever- and kill no fewer than 9 million soldiers before it petered out in November 1918.
First Ypres is remembered as the graveyard of the original BEF, the old Regular Army. The battle left little room for generalship, strategic plans or much tactical skill. First Ypres was a 'soldier's battle' for the regular soldiers of the BEF and especially for the junior officers and the men in the ranks. The outcome depended, quite simply, on their ability to hang on and keep fighting; if they could stand their ground, keep their weapons clean and keep fighting, Ypres might be retained and Germany's only real hope of victory in this war would be extinguished.
The strategy of Foch, French and their subordinates boiled down to hanging on, doing one's best, putting in what men there were to 'putty-up' the front, trusting to the skill and courage of the soldiers; neither quality was in short supply. If those ragged, hungry men in those hastily dug trenches lacked reinforcement and artillery support, the fault lies with those pre-war politicians who had failed to anticipate the nature of this coming war and build up an army in peacetime.
The Germans had quantities of artillery and- most of the time an abundance of shells, and yet they sent their men in mass attacks against entrenched British infantry and saw them cut to pieces time and time again by rapid and accurate rifle fire. These German attacks, all the way from Mons to First Ypres, usually had great weight, but there is little evidence of sensible tactics; it soon became clear that the German commanders also had a lot to learn about twentieth-century warfare. The tactic of battering the opposing line with shellfire and sending in massed infantry attacks was not sufficient to cause a breach; defence was master of the attack in this war and would remain so for some time to come. First Ypres was an example of the years of slaughter that would follow.
Now winter was coming to the Western Front. The men in the line had more hanging on to do, waiting in water-filled trenches for whatever fortune would bring them in the spring. On both sides of the line, those reservists who had rushed to the Colours back in August, expecting to be home 'by the time the leaves fall' or thinking that the whole business would be 'over by Christmas', could look across the drenched fields of Flanders and see beyond the opposing trench line the prospect of only more of this long, hard war.
Epilogue
He looked, and saw wide territory spread
Before him -towns, and rural works between,
Cities of men with lofty gates and towers,
Concourse in arms, fierce faces threatening war,
Giants of mighty bone and bold emprise.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667
The enduring attraction of the First World War to military historians is, it might be argued, largely due to the sense of what it cost. This cost cannot be measured only in terms of blood and treasure, though both were wasted in great quantity. The cost must also include the loss of the illusion, an end to the notion that man is perfectible, that humankind is capable of finding some way to settle disputes that does not involve the wholesale slaughter of brave young men. Nine million soldiers died in that war and a world died with them.
The nineteenth century, marked by decades of human progress in Europe, with advances in the arts and science, even in politics, between 1815 and 1914, finally foundered in the mud of Flanders and-
again, it might be argued- such advances have never risen again. Follow the path of the BEF from Mons to the Marne and then north again to Ypres and you will pass a great number of graveyards on the way; the final emotion is one of great sadness and a sense of loss.
As for the human cost, the British Official History (1) gives the casualties from the start of the campaign in August 1914 to the end of First Ypres in November as 89,864 men, killed, wounded or missing. It notes also that 'the greater part of this loss had fallen on the infantry of the first seven divisions, which originally num bered only 84,000 men'.
German losses around Ypres from 15 October to 24 November are harder to compute but the Official History (2) estimates them at 134,315. This figure excludes the other losses since August; the total German casualties in the first five months of the war were in the region of half a million men, French losses on a similar scale. By the end of 1915 the opposing armies- British, French and German - had racked up over 2 million casualties. By the end of 1916, this total had risen to 4 million.
With the exception of Kitchener, all the main characters in this book survived the war, if not always for long. Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson- as he eventually became- was appointed CIGS at the end of the war, and was murdered in London by the IRA in June 1922, soon after retiring from the army.
Horatio Herbert, Lord Kitchener, was drowned in June 1916 when the cruiser HMS Hampshire, in which he was travelling to Russia, struck a mine off the Orkneys. His work as Secretary of State for War in 1914 and 1915, not least in realizing that this would be a long war requiring large armies, has not always been appreciated.
Ferdinand Foch became Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies in France in April 1918. After the war he was showered with honours by the Allied nations, including appointment to the rank of field marshal in the British Army. His statue outside Victoria Station in London recalls his comment that 'he was as conscious of having served Britain as he was of his own country'. He died in 1929.
Field Marshal Sir John French was sacked as commander of the BEF after the disaster of Loos in 1915 and replaced by General Sir Douglas Haig. He spent the rest of the war as C-in-C, Home Forces, and later as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Awarded an earldom- of Ypres- for his war service, he died in 1925.
Joseph Cesaire Joffre was sacked as generalissimo and Commander-in-Chief of the French Army in 1916, after the losses of Verdun and the Somme. Raised to the rank of Marshal of France, he had largely been forgotten by 1918 and died in 1931.
Had Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien not been finally brought down by Sir John French early in 1915, he, and not Douglas Haig, might have succeeded French as commander of the BEF the following December. Smith-Dorrien's career never recovered from his abrupt dismissal from the command of the Second Army. He was posted to a command in East Africa and went on to a series of secondrank appointments before the war ended. In 1919 he was officially refused permission to reply to the numerous libels made against him in French's memoir, 1914 - though he was one of the pallbearers at French's funeral in 1925. He died in 1930 as the result of injuries sustained in a road accident.
General Sir Douglas Haig commanded the British armies in France from December 1915 until the end of the war. After the war he was instrumental in founding the British Legion and the Poppy Day appeal-once known as the Earl Haig Fund for Soldiers. He died in 1928 and has since been the vector for all the allegations true and false - made about the competence of the British Army commanders of the First World War.
Helmuth von Moltke, the German commander on the outbreak of war, was dismissed in September 1914 and died two years later, in 1916. His successor, Erich von Falkenhayn, lasted a little longer but was destroyed by the terrible losses sustained by the German Army at Verdun in 1916. Sacked from the High Command in September 1916 and replaced by von Hindenburg and Ludendorff, he took command of the Ninth Army in Romania in 1917 and was then sent to command in Mesopotamia. He died in 1922.
As for the old British Army - the BEF - that, says the Official History, 'was gone past recall by the end of 1914, leaving but a fragment to train the new Armies; but the framework that remained had gained an experience that made those Armies invincible'. (3)
Chapter Notes
Chapter 1: The Continent Goes to War, 1871-1914
1. As featured in The Prisoner of Zenda, published 1894.
2. The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman (London, 1966), p. 340.
3. History of the First World War (London, 1970), p. 49
Chapter 2: The British Go to War, 1898-1914
1. Conflict on the Nile: The Fashoda Incident of 1898 by Patricia Wright (London, 1972), Introduction, p. ix.
2. The Times, 27 September 1898, p. 9
3. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, p. 247
4. The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham (London, 1992), p. 581.
5. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, p. 67.
6. The phrase was coined by Lord Goschen, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1896.
7. The Chiefs: The Story of the United Kingdom Chiefs of Staff by Bill Jackson and Edwin Bramall (London, 1992), p. 28.
8. France and the Origins of the First World War by John Keiger (London, 1983), p. 19.
9. The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 by Paul M. Kennedy (London, 1980), p. 464.
10. ibid., p. 191.
11. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, p. 316.
12. Kennedy, The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 250.
13. August 1914 by Barbara Tuchman (London, 1962), p. 16.
14. ibid., p. 16.
15. ibid., p. 17
16. ibid., p. 17.
17. Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1911, Vol. CCCIII, Cmd. 5969.
18. British Official History 1914, Vol. I, p. 18.
19. ibid., p. 21.
20. ibid., p. 19.
21. The Esher Report, Part I, p. 3
22. Britain and her Army by Correlli Barnett (London, 1970), p. 359
23. The Supreme Command 1914-1918, by Lord Hankey (London, 1961), p. 62.
24. ibid., p. 62.
25. ibid., p. 62.
26. The Western Front, 1914-1918 by John Terraine (London, 1964), pp 51-4.
27. Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 42.
28. The World Crisis by Winston S. Churchill (London, 1923), Vol. I, p. 32.
29. Tuchman, August 1914, pp. 61-2.
30. Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, pp. 42-3.
31. Hankey, The Supreme Command, p. 68.
32. ibid., p. 70.
33. A History of Germany 1815-1990 by William Carr (London, 1991), p. 196.
34. ibid., p. 197
35. Churchill, World Crisis, Vol. I, p. 37•
36. ibid., p. 36.
37. Haldane of Cloan; His Life and Times 1856-1928 by Dudley Sommer (London, 1960), p. 189.
Chapter 3: Wilson at the War Office, 1910-1914
1. Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson by Major-General Sir C. E. Callwell (London, 1927), p.189.
2.Hankey mss quoted in essay by Keith Wilson in 'Hankey's Appendix' in War and History, November 1994, pp. 85-6.
3. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 79
4. ibid., pp. 79-80.
5. ibid., pp. 78-79•
6. CID Paper, 109-B.
7. Sommer, Haldane of Cloan, p. 213.
8. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 89.
9. WO 339/14401.
10. This is an error: WF means simply 'with France'.
11. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 91.
12. ibid p. 91.
13. ibid p. 91.
14. ibid p. 91.
15. Churchill, The World Crisis, Vol. I, p. 43
16. ibid, p. 44
17. Memoirs of David Lloyd George, Vol. I (London, 1928), p. 26.
18. The Politics of Grand Strategy by Samuel R. Williamson Jr (Cambridge, MA, 1969), p. 174.
19. British Documents on the Origins of the First World War by Gooch and Temperley, Vol. X
(London, 1923), p. 629.
20. Tuchman, August 1914, p. 60.
21. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 99
22. ibid., p. 99
23. ibid., p. 99
24. Bramall and Jackson, The Chiefs, p. 46.
25. ibid., p. 47
26. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 102.
27. ibid., p. 104.
28. Terraine, Mons, p. 18.
29. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 106.
30. Tuchman, August 1914, p. 63.
31. Military Needs of the Empire, CID Paper, 109-B.
32. Tuchman, August 1914, p. 104.
33. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 153.
34. Tuchman, August 1914.
35. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, pp. 158-9.
36. ibid., p. 106.
37. Williamson, The Politics of Grand Strategy, pp. 140-1.
38. Bramall and Jackson, The Chiefs, p. 46.
39. British Official History, 1914, Vol. I, pp. 10-11.
Chapter 4: Mobilization, Transport and Logistics, 1911-1914
1. PRO Files; WO 339/14401. Undated but clearly written after April 1922, when the first volume of the Official History was published.
2. White Heat: The New Warfare 1914-1918 by John Terraine (London, 1982).
3. PRO Files: WO 106/49A/2, Appendix I.
4. 'Ready for the Greater Game: The role of the horse in the First World War', by Robert Grey, The Field, November 2002, pp. 89-90.
5. British Official History, 1914, Vol. I, p. 19.
6. Grey, 'Ready for the Greater Game', p. 90.
7. Interview with Robin Neillands, May 2003.
8. Information supplied by Lt.-Col. Will Townend, RA, Royal Artillery, Woolwich.
9 This information differs from that given in the Official History, Vol. I, p. 30, namely 120,000 horses in twelve days.
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