SOMME

by Lyn Macdonald

  Considering the total strength of the Australian force, considering that the AI F had sustained five and a half thousand casualties at Fromelles, considering their losses in the six days since they first launched their strength into Pozières, one thousand men seemed a very large number to have been swallowed up by the maw of the war machine as it ground inexorably towards the end of Bloody July.

  On that very day, 29 July, while Haig was in conference with Generals Birdwood and White a letter to the Commander-in-Chief was being written in London. It came from Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and after the initial euphoria of the ‘Big Push’ and the heroic stories which had stirred the imagination of the British public, it reflected the unease which was beginning to be felt at home. It was all very well to bandy about the names of villages and ridges as if they were places of metropolitan importance; it was all very well to talk in glowing terms of ‘advances’, ‘leaps forward’ and ‘captures’; it was right and proper that the troops should be praised for their endeavours, for no praise was high enough, but maps were being published alongside communiqués from the front and the maps were drawn to scale. Assiduous newspaper readers did not have to be geographers or military experts in order to realize that, in terms of distance, if not in terms of strategic importance, the advances were small and that, in some cases, gains of as little as thirty yards were being hailed, in print, with as much enthusiasm as if Berlin itself had fallen to the Allies.

  It was equally obvious that the price was high. The whole country had been virtually mobilized to cope with the streams of wounded arriving from the Somme. There had not even been enough ambulances to transport them and even now huge numbers of casualties were being nursed in an extraordinary assortment of temporary premises ranging from village schools and church halls to private houses. They had been pressed into service as temporary hospitals when the civilian and military hospitals had been swamped by the ceaseless convoys of wounded, and every day the Rolls of Honour, those long lists of soldiers reported missing or killed, were growing ever longer.

  The letter from Sir William Robertson hinted at the doubts of the powers-that-be and invited the Commander-in-Chief to reply to some pointed questions:

  Will a loss of three hundred thousand men really lead to great results? If not should we revise and limit our plans?

  Why did it seem that the British were now bearing the brunt of the fighting and the French seemed to be doing little?

  Has the primary object of relieving the pressure of Verdun not, at least to some extent, been achieved?

  The Commander-in-Chief carefully phrased his reply and sent it immediately to London. Yes, the pressure on Verdun had been relieved. In addition the enemy had been prevented from transferring troops from the Western Front to the Eastern, thereby aiding Russia. He stressed the ‘public-relations angle’. The Somme Offensive had proved to the world that the Allies were capable of a vigorous offensive and of ‘driving the enemy’s best troops from the strongest positions’. This must certainly have shaken the faith of the Germans and those who sided with Germany. It must also have ‘impressed on the world, England’s strength and determination, and the fighting power of the British race’. The offensive must be maintained and would eventually result in Germany being overthrown.

  The Commander-in-Chief was not persuaded by the casualties. In his view they were not inordinate. Making careful calculations on the expected ‘natural wastage’ of trench warfare from shelling and skirmishing, he was satisfied that the casualties in the July fighting were only ‘about one hundred and twenty thousand more than they would have been had we not attacked’. This, in Haig’s opinion, could not be regarded ‘as sufficient to justify any anxiety as to our ability to continue the offensive’.

  He made it perfectly clear that he intended to continue it and that he expected to be able to maintain the offensive ‘well into the autumn’.

  General Haig had omitted to take into consideration the fact that the casualties, which the Army was pleased to refer to as ‘normal wastage’, contained a very much higher proportion of wounded to killed than had been experienced on the Somme since the First of July. By the end of the month the casualties amounted to one hundred and sixty-five thousand. The casualties alone were almost double the entire strength of the British Expeditionary Force which had set off in August 1914 to meet the Germans at Mons. And forty thousand of them were dead.

  Chapter 16

  At Abbeville, many miles from the front, the lock gates on the River Somme refused to open and divers sent down to investigate found that they were jammed by the bloated bodies of French soldiers carried along by the current of the river as it flowed through to the sea. They had been dead for many weeks.

  Although precise casualty figures for each stage of the fighting had not been disclosed, it was common knowledge that they had been heavy. In Britain, parents who had been rather proud of schoolboy sons who had lied their way into the Army, began to bombard the authorities, literally brandishing birth certificates in their anxiety to have under-age soldiers sent back from the front. The Army, while unwilling to remove any of its sadly depleted forces from the line, had no choice, but they had no intention of sending the enthusiastic juveniles home again, still less of discharging them from the Army. Some were, after all, within months of their nineteenth birthday when they would officially come of military age, and, in the meantime, they could be usefully employed at various base camps where every day a thousand or more reinforcements were arriving from Britain in transit to the front. They were flooding into France to replace the early casualties of the Somme and, in the great tract of land that stretched between the Somme battlefield and the coast, the weary battalions which had been struck hard in the first few days’ fighting were being rested, revitalized and brought up to strength with new drafts of men. The trouble was that, in the opinion of the Kitchener’s Battalions, they were the wrong men.

  In the flag waving days of August 1914, when local battalions surged into being on the tide of national enthusiasm, when local boys from Cornwall to John O’Groats had marched arm in arm to join their ranks, almost every battalion had its unique local identity. Now, with a hotchpotch of new arrivals sent to fill the gaps in the ranks of the Kitchener’s Battalions with what the troops looked on as arbitrary disregard for their spirit and origins, resentment began to grow. After their ordeal at Gommecourt, the Queen Victoria’s Rifles were particularly incensed when the very train that brought a draft of ‘strangers’ to reinforce them also carried a contingent of men of their own regiment bound for an entirely different unit. The Queen’s Westminster Rifles were amused when they were joined by a large batch of the undersized Bantam soldiers and good-humouredly scrounged for empty ammunition boxes to raise the firesteps of their trenches to a more convenient height, but they were infuriated when their own comrades, coming back to the front on recovering from their wounds, were posted to ‘foreign’ regiments. Trevor Ternan was equally enraged when precisely the same thing happened to the remnants of the Tyneside Scottish.

  The Army allowed it to become known that it was anxious, in the future, to cultivate an ‘Army Spirit’ rather than the old-fashioned regimental or battalion loyalty. But there were more cogent reasons behind the decision. After the holocaust of the July attacks, local newspapers all over the country were carrying page after page of photographs of local boys who had been killed, casualty lists that were a terrible litany of familiar names, and story after pathetic story of brothers or cousins of one family who had been lost in a single attack. There were rumblings in Parliament where MPs, whose constituencies had been particularly hard hit were beginning to ask awkward questions, and, despite the country’s brave acceptance of what amounted to a mass bereavement, the policy of diluting what was left of Kitchener’s Battalions, of spreading the risk by splitting up the ranks of boys who all hailed from one town or area, smacked strongly of deliberate political policy.

  It was the
Scots who took it as a personal insult. It was bad enough when their own Scottish drafts were sent to English regiments, but it was even worse when Scottish battalions were forced to receive ‘foreigners’ into their ranks and it was particularly resented in the kilted battalions. A large draft of the 51st Division had been relegated to khaki-trousered ignominy in the ranks of the York and Lancaster Regiment, while their Scottish Division was augmented by a contingent of reluctantly kilted warriors who were actually Barnsley men in disguise. Once they had got used to the unaccustomed ventilation of their lower regions, they were not entirely displeased with their metamorphosis. It was a well-known fact, as the Argylls were quick to inform them, that the Germans referred to the ‘Kilties’ as the Ladies from Hell and that the very sight of the tartan put the fear of God into them.

  But, as a Cockney born and bred, Bill Turner found the kilt a distinct embarrassment and, ‘Ladies from Hell’ or not, was inclined to feel at times that he would just as soon be fighting the Germans in the trenches, than his comrades of the 4th Highland Light Infantry in the only slightly less belligerent territory contained within the walls of Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow. The Scots were of the opinion that the masquerading Englishmen were fair game, an opinion which was not shared by Bill Turner nor by his friend George, who suffered the additional impediment of the surname ‘England’. They became philosophical about being the butt of rough jokes. In the barrack room they quickly learned to judge just how far they could go in an argument and to dodge the flying boots and less savoury missiles that were hurled at their heads if they miscalculated. They became resigned to the fact that they were the first to be picked on by the Sergeants, could rely on being on Defaulters’ Report as often as three times a week and that the only way to get off fatigues was to empty their pockets and bribe the Sergeant with all the money they had. But the Cockney contingent did not, on the whole, look forward to Friday evenings when the Highlanders invariably got drunk and, in their cups, considered it great sport to chase the lads with their ‘dirks’. Being younger, lither and sober, they usually managed to escape with no more than a volley of imprecations and, once at a safe distance, hurled back taunts of, ‘Who won at Bannockburn?’ and, ‘What about Flodden?’ But this they would only risk when at a very safe distance indeed.

  It hardly seemed fair. Bill Turner had not asked to be in the Highland Light Infantry. He had joined the Royal Artillery, and, strictly speaking, at the age of seventeen, he had no right to be in the Army at all, and here he was – not only a serving soldier but, what was more, a Regular.

  After a dozen attempts to join up, after a dozen recruiting sergeants had turned him away with a smile as patronizing as a pat on the head, it had seemed to Bill like the answer to a prayer when, passing Wandsworth Town Hall, he saw an announcement of a special enlistment scheme for boys under nineteen to join the Royal Field Artillery.

  Corporal Bugler William Turner, No. B.21097, 15th Highland Light Infantry (City of Glasgow Corporation Tramways Battalion) 32nd Division

  First thing off, I was sent to Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow. We was up there three months in the riding school and then we got called out on the parade ground. It was just after the Battle of Loos and the Highland Regiments had got badly cut up there, so they wanted seventeen hundred volunteers to join to refill them. Hardly anybody volunteered. In the afternoon we was called out on the square again and the CO says, ‘Right. As I call your names and numbers out, fall in over there.’ Blow me, he called out practically everybody’s name and number! I was in a bunch of three hundred and fifty that was transferred to the Highland Light Infantry. And that was that! It was real hell for us Cockneys! You was picked out for the least thing. Up the Orderly Room, three days CB. We were never out of the Orderly Room!

  I managed to work myself into the band. It was a pipe-band, of course, but they trained me as a bugler and drummer. It had advantages in the band, and it had disadvantages too! The worst thing was that we weren’t a kilted battalion, but the band was all dressed in the kilt. We didn’t like it at all. Of course, being young things, we were after the girls, but we were frightened to go out to meet the girls wearing these things. We weren’t allowed to wear anything underneath and it was cold. We felt half-naked – embarrassed as much as anything – and we knew the girls would see our white knees and that would give away that we were rookies. Even when we could get a pass to go up into the town, we didn’t go for weeks. We used to stay in and get hold of some cold stewed tea, or get some permanganate of potash from the chemist and sit there trying to stain our knees to look as if we’d just come down from the Highlands. Then, when we thought we looked respectable, out we went.

  I got to like the kilt very much. It was McKenzie tartan and there was eight and a quarter yards of material in it with pleats. They were lovely after a time and really kept you warm when you got used to them. By the time we moved down to Haddington, I felt a real swell and my knees were really brown by then. What with playing in the band and swinging around in the kilt, I was a real Cock of the North. I got off with a lovely girl called Maggie Gaffney. She was just about my age and I got very fond of her.

  Then came the Battle of the Somme and I was put on a draft to go overseas to replace the casualties of the 15 th Highland Light Infantry, which was the Glasgow Tramways Battalion, and they’d got very badly cut up on the First of July. So off I went home to London on four days draft leave. I was all spruced up in my kilt – a real Highland Soldier! There was a well-known tattooist on Waterloo Bridge, name of Birkett, and a lot of the other chaps, the older soldiers especially, they’d got the regimental badge tattooed on their arm. So when I got to Waterloo Station, I went across the bridge and popped in there and took off my tunic, rolled up my shirt sleeve and got this chap to tattoo the Highland Light Infantry badge on my arm. I got home, proud as Punch in my highland uniform, kilt and everything. I took my tunic off and rolled my sleeves up and was flashing my arm about. My mother caught sight of it and she says, ‘What’s that you’ve got on your arm?’ I says, quite nonchalant, ‘That? That’s the Highland Light Infantry badge, same as I wear on my hat.’

  I didn’t half come down to earth then. My mother laid into me. ‘How dare you?’ she said. ‘How dare you get a thing like that put on your arm! Making yourself common!’ I said, ‘I’m proud of that badge!’ ‘I’ll give you proud!’ she said. And she did too! She gave me a good hiding! She really did. Army or not, soldier or not, Highlander or not, she gave me a damn good hiding! And she kept nagging me about my leave. It was well-known that you got four days before you went abroad. She kept saying, ‘Is it draft leave?’ Of course I kept saying it wasn’t – but she went on and on about it.

  All in all, Bill’s leave had not come completely up to his expectations. He was not sorry to say goodbye and to set off back to Haddington and the charms of Maggie Gaffney. Maggie was on the station platform two days later when the draft left for France. Almost the whole population had turned out to see the lads go. There were many girls like Maggie who claimed a last clinging embrace before the troops piled into the train, slung their kit and rifles on to the racks and struggled in a ten-deep mass behind the open carriage windows in a concerted, futile attempt to shout individual farewells. The shouts were inaudible. A pipe-band, drawn up in front of the train between the soldiers and the tearful tiptoeing civilians, was playing at the pitch of its breath the plaintive strains of Will Ye No’ Come Back Again? Such of the civilians as were not entirely overcome, were mouthing the words and were disconcerted when the band droned to a halt in the middle of a bar as the train began to move out of the station. It had hardly moved a yard before it came to a jerking halt.

  Now the Sergeant-Major was walking up and down the train and calling at the top of his voice, ‘LANCE-CORPORAL TURNER!’ At the fourth or fifth call, Bill Turner managed to squeeze his way to the window to answer the summons.

  Corporal Bugler William Turner, No. B.21097, 15th Highland Light Infantry (City of Glasgow Corporation
Tramways Battalion), 32nd Division

  He said, ‘Fetch your kit and your rifle and come on out here.’ I still didn’t know what was happening, but I got my stuff and got out and he said, ‘Come with me!’ He took me up to an officer who had some papers in his hand and the officer said, ‘Turner? How old are you?’ I said, ‘Nineteen.’ He said, ‘Don’t tell lies! I’ve got a letter here from your mother. You’re under age. Get your equipment on, and get back to your billet.’

  Maggie Gaffney, interrupted in the full flood of an emotional farewell, was unsure whether to laugh or cry. Plodding back, humiliated and ashamed, with the sound of the cheering and the band and the hoot of the train growing fainter behind him, Bill himself could have wept with disappointment. Six months later, when he had wangled his way on to another draft for France, he made very sure that his mother would not have the least suspicion. This time he had missed his chance, and what galled him most was that he had missed it by just two minutes.

  Some under-age boys had joined up with the approval of their mothers. In the case of Jim Dwelly the approval had been strictly conditional on his joining a ‘safe’ unit, and he had dutifully enlisted in the Army Service Corps. In ribald mockery of its initials the ASC was popularly known in the Army as Ally Sloper’s Cavalry. Ally Sloper was a fictional character, of dubious behaviour, the blundering hero of a popular comic strip.