The Somme

by Robin Prior

  Meanwhile the follow-up formations had been trying to reinforce their assault troops. This proved impossible. Just after 9 a.m. the German machinegunners in the Leipzig salient, having beaten off their assailants from 32 Division, turned their attention to the area of 70 Brigade. One of the unlucky British units described the result:

  It was impossible to stand at all in No Mans Land and the Battalion crawled forward on hands and knees to the help of the Battalions in front.14

  A second attempt by these units failed; a third made by just 50 men met the same fate. In all, out of a strength of 27 officers and 710 men one unit suffered 529 casualties without reaching their comrades holding out in the German front line.15 The other reinforcing battalion lost 50 per cent casualties and had ceased to exist as a fighting formation even before it had reached its own front line.16

  From 10 a.m. in the 70 Brigade area all communication across no man's land had ceased because of enemy shelling and machine-gun fire. All messages instructing the artillery to bring back the barrage were never delivered. Eventually, even the British who had penetrated the German front line were driven out or killed. By the end of the day not a square inch of German territory was held by the brigade.17 Of the 2,720 men who had moved to the attack, less than 600 could be mustered the next day.18

  The story of the remaining two brigades of 8 Division, which contained some of the last units of the British Regular Army, can be quickly told. Almost complete disaster overtook them. On only two sections of the front were lodgements made in the German positions, and these were temporary. In every case the battalions were hit by a hail of machine-gun and rifle fire as they attempted to cross no man's land. Even the expedient of forming into small groups and rushing the German line availed them little.19

  So the 25 Brigade were shot down by fire from Ovillers, the 23 by cross-fire from the two villages. The two small lodgements in the German front in Mash Valley and just north of Ovillers were quickly dealt with by enemy counterattack.20 Except in one case the support battalions were not spared. Indeed, some of them suffered the heaviest casualties of the day as the German guns found the range and added a deluge of shells to the hail of machine-gun fire scything down the British.21 The percentage casualties suffered by the assault battalions of 23 and 25 Brigades tell a bleak tale.22

  Battalion Percentage casualties

  2 Royal Berkshire 53

  2 Lincolnshire 62

  1 Royal Irish Rifles 64

  2 Middlesex 92.5

  2 West Yorkshire 70

  2 Devonshire 50–60

  In all, just over 3,000 men became casualties in this attack for precisely no gains. If these figures are added to the toll taken on 70 Brigade, they amount to the destruction of 8 Division as a fighting unit. Indeed, it was not until October that this division returned to the Somme.

  The disaster which overtook 8 Division did not go unremarked at the time. Brigadier-General Tuson, commanding the 25 Brigade, included the percentage casualties for all his battalions to ‘explain why ... the Brigade failed to reach its allotted objective’.23 He then went on to make some acute observations. He noted that throughout the attack, his brigade had been ‘deprived of artillery support’ and that it was futile bombarding distant objectives ‘if we are ourselves unable to maintain our hold on the enemy's front line’. His solution was to make the artillery timetable absolutely dependent on the advance of the infantry, thus to some extent anticipating the creeping barrage of artillery shells which would be the main method of infantry protection for the last two years of the war. In concluding his remarks he contrasted his proposed deliberate method with the impractical artillery timetable implemented by III Corps which saw the distant Pozières being bombarded at the very moment that 8 Division was being wiped out in no man's land.

  I have seen the ‘hooroosh’ [artillery] time-table programme tried upon several occasions in this war, and I have never seen it successful beyond the first two or three trenches. And never expect to.24

  Whether anyone higher up the chain of command managed to digest this wisdom is another matter.

  II

  The slaughter of 8 Division was not to be redeemed by any actions of 34 Division on its right. There were a number of curious aspects of the plan made by Pulteney and his staff for this unit, which have already been mentioned but deserve repetition here. The first was that as all units would advance at zero: there would be no reserves. The second was that, as with 8 Division, the heavy guns would lift from the German front line at zero, leaving just the inadequately equipped field artillery to fire on the German trench systems and the fortified villages.

  This meant that the men of 34 Division would have to encounter all the difficulties faced by the 8, but with one additional factor. The village of La Boisselle, as we have noted, occupied a small ridge directly in the line of the British advance. No infantry attack was to be made on this place, the troops relying on smoke candles to screen them from it. So at zero the La Boisselle machine-gunners would be assailed not with a heavy bombardment or an infantry attack but with candle smoke.25

  These problems might have been offset by one advantage: the mine explosion was intended to coincide with the infantry advance. But the 34 Divisional staff had difficulty in integrating the two events. The mine under the German front line (south of La Boisselle) was only some 100 yards from the British. It was timed to explode at two minutes before zero which, given the narrowness of no man's land at this point, might have provided the attackers with some chance of occupying the crater lip ahead of the Germans. However, the command had instructed the infantry to delay their advance until five minutes after zero so as to allow the debris to settle. Thereby all chance of taking advantage of the shock of the mine discharge was lost.26

  At 7.30 a.m. the 34 Division attack commenced. The smoke screen on La Boisselle was nowhere to be seen, the wind having failed to oblige by blowing in the right direction. What this meant to the north of La Boisselle was catastrophic. The two assault battalions were forced to cross a no man's land of 800 yards in full view of the German defenders in the village and surrounding trenches. Worse, the enemy knew the exact timing of the attack because one of their listening posts had picked up a message between 34 Division headquarters and one of the forward battalions to the effect that an attack was imminent.27 Yet more lamentably for the British, the Y Sap mine had been discovered by the Germans and its garrison evacuated.28 Consequently, the 20 and 23 Northumberland Fusiliers, as they commenced their slow walk over 800 yards of cratered ground, were confronting an alert enemy, spared the shock of the mine explosion and lining their parapets with riflemen and machinegunners. Both battalions were wiped out within a few minutes. The 20 suffered 661 casualties out of the 800 men deployed. As for the 23, only 120 men from their original 820 were assembled the following day.29

  To the south of La Boisselle, the stunning effect of the larger Lochnager mine explosion allowed some troops on the left to advance past the village. They were soon counter-attacked but a few clung on in the German second trench for the remainder of the day.30 Further south still, the battalions attacking the crater five minutes after the initial attack had commenced were predictably annihilated. As the 11 Suffolk reported, ‘wave after wave were mown down by machine gun fire ... very few reached the German line’.31 Within a few minutes the battalion had been destroyed. Of the 800 who had attacked 691 became casualties.32 The gap caused by the destruction of these units and heavy flanking fire from the village forced the most southward battalions to veer away from La Boisselle. Casualties in these battalions were horrific – 9 in 10 who attacked were either killed or wounded. But at least for the survivors there was some succour. As they drifted south they found fresh troops from the flanking XV Corps dug in and in numbers. With these men they found at least a semblance of safety.33

  At the exact moment that the lead brigades of 34 Division were being destroyed, calamity was also befalling the reserve brigade. There was however a certain difference.
This brigade ceased to exist as a formation even before it reached its own front line. It perished, that is, without a chance even to do any fighting.

  The 103 Brigade (the Tyneside Irish) left its position on the exposed slopes of the Tara-Usna Hills at 7.40 a.m. and advanced with its four battalions abreast towards the front. Because of a fold in the ground, none of them could see even their own front line and as all communication with the front had ceased, no one from the brigade was aware of the débâcle ahead. The attacking force had gone only far enough to shake out into regular waves when it ran into a heavy and accurate German artillery barrage.34 This was soon accompanied by scything machine-gun fire. Even so, in the words of one account, ‘the forward movement was maintained until only a few scattered soldiers were left standing’.35 ‘Glorious’ is a word often mentioned in accounts describing the martyrdom of the Tyneside Irish.36 It is hardly appropriate. This episode scarcely amounted even to battle. By the time some units of this brigade had arrived at their own front line they had suffered 70 per cent casualties.37 Two years in the making, the Tyneside Irish lasted just 80 minutes as a fighting formation.

  Amazingly, a few of them managed to reach not only their own front line but that of the enemy. And a handful did penetrate some distance further, reaching the edge of Contalmaison near the German second line. They were never seen again.38 Accurate casualty figures for the brigade are hard to establish but at the very least 2,200 out of the 3,000 attacking were either killed or wounded.39

  These losses were some of the most visible of the whole war. An official photographer captured line upon line of their dead and wounded. Traditionally, they are represented as having fallen in no man's land. That is a misconception. They lay on the bare slopes of the Tara-Usna Hills well behind their own front line. It needs to be recognised, that at the time of the Somme no photographer ever trespassed into no man's land and none would have survived had he done so.

  The attack of 34 Division cost over 6,000 casualties for a derisory amount of ground gained. Indeed, so desperate was the position that elements of the corps' reserve division (19) were rushed forward lest the Germans attempt to take advantage of the carnage to advance on the unprotected ruins of Albert.

  The attack of III Corps was meant, at least in the minds of the command, to clear the way for the cavalry by capturing the German defences as far back as Pozières. Instead 12,000 from the corps were dead or wounded and 99 per cent of the German front line was securely in enemy hands. The plans made by III Corps command certainly reflected little imagination or subtlety. But in the light of the comprehensive failure of the artillery bombardment even the most cunning of plans was doomed to failure. It is sometimes said that Haig's cavalry plans mattered little because they had no chance of ever succeeding. In the case of III Corps this was far from the truth. They mattered because they spread the artillery fire of the corps over such a wide distance and against such a multitude of targets that the German front line defenders were not adequately dealt with. And these defenders proved quite capable unaided of stopping the British attack in its tracks.

  XV Corps, 1 July

  10 ‘Cowering Men in Field Grey’: XV and XIII Corps on 1 July

  I

  To the south of La Boisselle the front line turned sharply to the east around Fricourt, thus presenting the British with a difficult right angle to attack. In addition some of the factors which had proved ruinous to attacks further north also applied here. In particular two villages, reduced to rubble but amply provided with cellars to shelter machine-gunners, stood athwart the line of advance. At the apex of the right angle stood the considerable village of Fricourt. Enfilade fire from its ruins could sweep to the north and east of the British line. Of all the villages incorporated by the Germans into the Somme defensive system, Fricourt was the largest and for the attackers the most awkardly placed. Then, after the front had turned due east the smaller village of Mametz lay directly in the path of any attacking force.

  In other ways however the situation which faced the XV Corps was more favourable than that which applied in the north. First the geography of this area favoured the British. This section of the line was on the lower, forward slopes of the ridge and immediately behind the British front the ground sloped upwards to form the Morlancourt–Maricourt Ridge. This meant that from many areas of British-held territory there were excellent views of the German positions as far back as Mametz Wood. Moreover, because of the right angle, Allied artillery to the south of Fricourt could enfilade the German line to the north and allied artillery around Bécordel could enfilade it to the east.

  These factors of improved observation and opportunities for enfilade fire meant that the bombardment of the enemy front line was far more effective than had been the case in the north. Hence the German machine-gun and rifle fire facing the British forces attempting to cross no man's land was considerably reduced.

  There was a further factor which contributed to this situation: the employment, if only in embryo, of firing a creeping barrage in front of the advancing troops. In time this procedure became a very sophisticated form of infantry protection by the artillery. The barrage would by then be of sufficient depth to fall both in the area of no man's land just ahead of the advancing troops and on the enemy front line, forcing the German defenders either to remain in their dug-outs or to risk death and injury in the attempt to man the parapets.

  As applied on 1 July, the bombardment only fell on the German front line at the outset and moved beyond it at too fast a rate (100 yards in two minutes) for the troops to keep pace. Further, it did not contain the density of shells which would later be a feature of the creeping barrage. The consequence was that enemy defences were sufficiently subdued to allow some of the attackers to make progress but it was by no means sufficient to knock out or keep down all the enemy machine-gunners and riflemen. Nevertheless, by keeping the heavy artillery bombardment on the German front line until zero hour and instructing their troops to move into no man's land before zero and then cling as close to the creeping barrage as safety would allow, the XV Corps staff undoubtedly helped to minimise the casualties inherent in this perilous crossing.1

  In another matter concerning artillery XV Corps were more lucky than skilful. It has been shown that, in the planning phase, no other corps devoted fewer resources to counter-battery than XV Corps. This had one positive aspect – more of XV Corps' heavy artillery was available to fire on German dug-outs and machine-gun posts in the front trench systems. However, it also might have had a considerable negative aspect. As the situation in the north revealed, unhindered German batteries could wreak havoc on an attack and fatally impede any attempts to reinforce an initially successful advance. Two factors prevented this situation from applying to XV Corps. The corps adjoining it, Congreve's XIII Corps, gave a particularly high priority to counter-battery. And the French, more lavishly supplied with heavy guns than the British, also stressed the importance of counter-battery and directed many of their heavy guns into the general Mametz–Montauban area because they feared that German batteries here might hinder their efforts to advance in the Maricourt salient on the right of XIII Corps.2 The combination of counter-battery fire from both the XIII Corps and the French wiped out the German guns in the area facing XV Corps during the preliminary bombardment. And on 1 July fire described as ‘devastating’ kept down the response from those German batteries which survived.3 On the day, therefore, the men of 21 and 7 Divisions would face far less artillery fire than confronted VIII, X, and III Corps in the north and centre, even though XV Corps had failed them in the matter of counter-battery.

  The final factor assisting XV Corps concerned German defensive arrangements. In this area, most of the deep dug-outs had been constructed under the first trench system. There were very few further back. These dug-outs were not as robustly constructed as those in the north but contained a greater proportion of the German garrisons than elsewhere. So the defence in this area lacked depth and the troops were more vulnerabl
e to British shell fire.

  The great defensive strength of Fricourt loomed large in the XV Corps' plans. It was not to be attacked directly. The 21 Division would attack to its north, the 7 Division to its east. They would link up only when the village had been bypassed. If the flanking attacks were progressing satisfactorily a direct attack might then be launched on the village to hasten its evacuation. Three small mines were to be blown up at zero in front of Fricourt in order to distract the defence and form crater lips which would shield the troops moving immediately to the north of the village. In addition Fricourt would be deluged with smoke to screen the flanking troops.4

  In contrast with the British operations which have been described so far XV Corps' operations were a partial success. The overall pattern was that the further the units were from Fricourt, the greater the chance of their achieving their objectives.

  Even in areas of success, however, advances did not come cheaply. In the extreme north of the XV Corps area the British bombardment had not proved consistently accurate so as the attack battalions left their trenches at 7.25 a.m. to position themselves close to the barrage they were met with heavy rifle and machine-gun fire before they had gone 25 yards. In one unit, 19 of the 24 officers became casualties in no man's land. Then as the barrage lifted from the German front line, enemy soldiers occupied the parapet and opened fire.5 Nevertheless, a sufficient force made it across to take the first German system. There they were soon joined by the two follow-up battalions and, in the words of the brigade report, ‘all four battalions passed on and the leading lines (now much bunched) appeared to have reached their first objective – Crucifix Trench – Round Wood – close behind the artillery barrage’.6 So in the space of 45 minutes the combination of the creeping barrage and the relative paucity of German troops behind the front line had enabled 64 Brigade to advance well to the north of Fricourt .