by Robin Prior
Briefly the ruins of Montauban came under ferocious enemy artillery fire. The response of the British who had captured the village was to push forward and take Montauban Alley to the north.56 From this position, the most advanced captured by the British that day, 30 Division troops could see the Germans flooding back towards their second line.57
11 Reflections on 1 July
The account of the first day of the Somme given here is in agreement with all other accounts on the two most vital matters: the great number of casualties suffered by the British army (57,000) and the small amount of ground gained (three square miles).
In most other ways our account is so at variance with the conventional story that it is necessary to indicate why this is the case before providing a summary of our own findings.
The conventional account of 1 July 1916 is as follows. At 7.30 a.m. the British infantry, reduced to a walking pace by their 66-pound packs, were ordered by a doltish command to walk shoulder to shoulder across no man's land. Obeying this order to the letter, they were slaughtered like sheep by the German machine-gunners who emerged from their dug-outs in sufficient time to man their weapons. This is the story of the so-called ‘race for the parapet’, a race which the British army lost, according to one arresting phrase, by three minutes. The implication of all this is that, had these three minutes been erased, the result of the day would have been victory, not defeat.
Apart from newspaper accounts, which contain only the sketchiest detail of the events of the first day, John Buchan's book The Battle of the Somme, published in 1917, seems to have set this scene. In describing the attack Buchan wrote:
The British moved forward in line after line, dressed as if on parade; not a man wavered or broke rank, but minute by minute the ordered lines melted away under the deluge of high explosive, shrapnel, rifle and machine-gun fire.1
Buchan, as might be expected in a book written in wartime, emphasises the courage and steadiness of the soldiers rather than the inappropriateness of the infantry tactics employed. Later writers, however, especially those from the late 1920s onwards, made essentially the same point as Buchan, but laid great stress on the deficiencies of the high command. In the forefront of these authors was Liddell Hart. In 1930 he wrote:
Battalions attacked in four or eight waves, not more than 100 yards apart, the men in each almost shoulder to shoulder, in a symmetrical well-dressed alignment and taught to advance steadily upright at a slow walk.2
He also added:
each man carried [a pack of ] about 66 lbs, over half his own body weight, which made it difficult to get out of a trench, impossible to move quicker than a slow walk or to rise and lie down quickly ... even an army mule, the proverbial natural beast of burden, is only expected to carry a third of his own weight.3
Ever since Liddell Hart, this grim depiction of British infantrymen reduced by their own commanders to worse than pack animals has held sway.
It might be thought that the publication in 1932 of the relevant volume of the British official history of the battle would modify this account. After all, its author, Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds was the first to see the combat records of the campaign. Surprisingly, Edmonds did little more than confirm the by now well-established view:
the assault on the 1st July was ... carried out at a ‘steady pace’, and with the direction that each line of assaulting troops must leave its trenches simultaneously and make the assault as one man.4
These early accounts set the pattern up to the present day. For example, C.M.F. Cruttwell in 1934 wrote of the infantry:
straightened out into long lines advancing shoulder to shoulder ... laden like beasts of burden.5
Even defenders of the high command such as John Terraine accept the dominant paradigm. In his biography of Haig written in 1963 Terraine uses the alleged eyewitness account of Sir Edward Spears to describe the opening moments of battle:
the British rigid and slow, advancing as on Aldershot parade in lines that were torn and ripped by the German guns.6
It might be thought that the opening of the official military records in 1965 would have brought forth a reappraisal of the first day. But with one partial exception this has not come to pass. Martin Middlebrook in 1971, Corelli Barnett in 1979, Paul Kennedy in 1988, and a recent BBC documentary of the Great War have all accepted the conventional view.7
The partial exception is Anthony Farrar-Hockley. In 1970 he wrote a small book on the Battle of the Somme. It is clear from a close reading that he by no means accepted that all the attacking infantry walked to their doom shoulder to shoulder at a steady pace. He produced examples which demonstrate units formed up in no man's land and not at the edge of their trench; that others advanced at the double and yet others adopted various complicated infantry formations designed to reduce the effect of the German machine-gunners.8 Yet the impact of these revelations on future accounts was nil, partly because of the tenacious hold of the established view and partly because Farrar-Hockley himself drew no conclusions from what he had written. Later in the same year he wrote a chapter on the Somme in a history of the British army. In it he reverted to the usual view of rigid waves slowly walking into German machine-gun fire.9
It will be apparent that the account of the first day of the Somme given in the four preceding chapters challenges the conventional story. Certainly around 20,000 men were killed and about 40,000 wounded on the first day. But the vast majority did not meet their fate by advancing shoulder to shoulder at a slow walk. Nor did the high command order them to do so.
In the first instance, Rawlinson in his ‘Tactical Notes’ laid down no particular doctrine about the best method of advancing. Indeed his statements were notable for their ambiguity: at one point he states the need for ‘celerity of movement’; at another that troops proceed at a ‘steady pace’ (except in certain unspecified circumstances which required a ‘rapid advance of some lightly equipped men’). Most infantry commanders presumably concluded that they had carte blanche. Nor did Rawlinson lay down the formations in which the advance should be made. Instead he noted that ‘there can be no general rule as regards the best formations for attack’.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that, as our account reveals, the battalion commanders, who seem to have been the key decision-makers in these matters, did the choosing. They adopted whatever attack formations they deemed appropriate and they decided on the speed with which these formations should advance.
It needs to be reiterated that their decisions on the best method to cross no man's land and come to grips with the enemy were many and various. So in the north the attack brigade of 31 Division moved into no man's land before zero and lay down ready to rush the German line when the barrage lifted. Further south some units of 4 Division such as the King's Own Regiment started from their own parapets but adopted complex formations led by skirmishers and snipers. In the 29 Division on their flank, some battalions ‘marched’ up to the enemy wire, others such as the Lancashire Fusiliers rushed forward from advanced positions already dug into no man's land.
All along the front these large variations are apparent. In X Corps the Ulstermen formed up close to the German wire and rushed forward at zero. So did some of the battalions from 32 Division and 8 Division in the centre. It is possible that the other division of the centre Corps (III) walked in stereotypical manner, as did many battalions from the successful XV and XIII Corps in the south.
In summary, for the 80 battalions that went over the top in the first attack on 1 July, 53 crept out into no man's land close to the German wire before zero and then rushed the German line, while ten others rushed the line from their own parapet. This leaves just 17 battalions, 12 of which advanced at a steady pace and five for which no evidence exists.
There is a further complicating factor here. At least some of the battalions who walked across no man's land at a steady pace did so because they were following a creeping barrage. These were some of the most successful units of all on the fir
st day.
Yet despite the variety of tactics employed, the pattern of death in prohibitive numbers applied to most of the front. The reason is plain. As long as most German machine-gunners and artillerymen survived the British bombardment, the slaughter of the attacking infantry would occur whatever infantry tactics were adopted. To rush German machine-guns might slightly increase the rate of survival over those who walked towards them, but the difference was not significant. A hail of bullets (on some occasions, as noted, to the scale of 6,000 per minute) would wreak havoc on human bodies no matter what expedient was adopted or how sophisticated the tactics. In the south, significantly, where the 30 Division seemed to adopt no particularly innovative tactics, success was ensured because the British artillery had dealt such severe blows to the German gunners and trench-dwellers. In other words, if the artillery had done their job it mattered little if the infantry walked or ran or executed the Highland fling across no man's land.
Another point should be made. Unsubdued machine-guns and artillery could decimate formations well behind the British line. Thus the follow-up formations of 93 Brigade, so graphically described by our eyewitness (see pp. 75–6), were wiped out before they reached their own parapet. The same applies to units of 4 Division, 29 Division, the Tyneside Irish of 34 Division and, even if to a lesser extent, to the relatively successful brigades of 18 and 30 Divisions. Although the exact number of casualties suffered by the British behind their own front line cannot be calculated, it was probably around 30 per cent of all British casualties suffered on 1 July. For those men the opening engagement was anything but a race for the parapet. The only parapet towards which they were ‘racing’ was their own; and in many cases, they lost. The killing zone then did not just encompass the width of no man's land, it continued back some thousands of yards into British positions. Death in battle is terrible whatever form it takes and in whatever location it occurs. But there does seem something especially melancholy about death inflicted in a so-called friendly zone, long before the enemy front line comes into view.
What all this confirms is that the determinant of victory in industrial war is the prevalence and effectiveness of killing-machines – in this case predominantly machine-guns and artillery. It is not the specific tactics or attack formations adopted by the infantry. In essence this should not be all that surprising. The infantryman with his rifle and bayonet had long since ceased to be able to compete with the distant and high-intensity fire of weapons such as machineguns and quick firing artillery. What must be deemed surprising, rather, is the fact that for over 80 years historians have turned this story on its head. They have argued as if the skill, or lack of it, evident in the tactics supposedly imposed from above on the infantry really did, on the first day, make the difference between winning and losing.
All of this raises two historiographical questions concerning the first day of the Somme. Why has the image of the infantry plodding shoulder to shoulder to their doom exercised such an iron grip on our vision of the battle? And exactly why do historians think that, above all else, it was the behaviour and experience of the infantry that determined the outcome of this day's endeavours?
The first question suggests several answers. Of all the observers watching the deployment of the infantry on 1 July, probably only one group actually had a view of the advance not obscured by smoke and dust. This group was in Albert, and what they were observing was the Tyneside Irish marching towards their own front line in close order formation and then being cut down in large numbers. In other words they were not witnessing an attack in rigid formation across no man's land, as at least some of them probably thought. They were watching the deployment of a unit well behind the British front line. As for Edward Spears and other so-called eyewitness observers, they were too distant to observe anything with precision and no doubt lapsed into conventional language and imagery to describe a failed attack.
As for the second question, it is fairly clear that the established portrait of the battle was derived from Buchan and other early writers on the Somme. The portrait seemed to them particularly appropriate because it resonated with their view of the virtues possessed by the British infantry – steadiness under fire and unflinching bravery in the face of disaster. The first day on the Somme, in short, was the foot soldiers' equivalent of the charge of the Light Brigade.
This picture also resonated with that later group of historians characterised by Liddell Hart. For them, however, the conventional image was not associated with the bravery of the infantry. It centred on the stupidity of the high command and on the needless slaughter of an innocent rank and file by those whose duty it was to safeguard them.
So for all these groups, the patriots and the perplexed, the Haig haters and the Haig admirers, for the ‘westerners’ and for those for whom the Western Front was a synonym for a bloody shambles, the first day of the Somme became the necessary image of the war. By the time later writers made their appearance the conventional image was so strongly embedded that it possessed the status of an established fact, beyond criticism or investigation. When, rarely, an historian did gain an inkling of the real story (as with Farrar-Hockley) he seemed reluctant to believe what he had found, and re-embraced the received wisdom as swiftly as possible.
The mystery of all this is the devotion of military historians to the notion that the outcome of even the largest conflicts is determined by the skill and heroism of the rank and file infantry. Whatever truth this notion may have had in earlier wars, it was clearly inappropriate for the large episodes of industrial war of 1914–18. Plainly, it was the mass-produced, long-range killing-machines that now dominated the battlefield. As Omar Bartov noted:
The Great War with its depersonalised, industrial killing, should have spelled the end of the heroic image of the warrior yet nothing of the kind happened. The image of heroic individuals on whose supreme qualities [the outcome of battle depends] remained intact.10
There is an obvious explanation for this focus on the infantry. Notwithstanding the war-changing impact of industrialisation in battle, it is still the infantry who put their lives on the line. It is the foot soldiers who are required to go over the top and enter the killing zone. So we may understand why historians feel obliged to look upon the terrible experiences of the rank and file with compassion and awe. It is not a large step (even though it may be largely specious) from this position to ascribe to the ordeal of these common men primacy in the outcome of battle.
Furthermore, if ‘colour’ or ‘human interest’ is to be added to accounts of war, then again, in the main these elements can only be provided by the infantry. What seizes the imagination are heroic deeds accomplished, tales of machineguns overcome, and mates who make the ‘supreme sacrifice’.
Bartov adds another, more disturbing factor. He argues that we have an in-built need for the heroic image in war and that as war becomes ever more depersonalised this need has actually grown. The historian's approach to 1 July 1916 demonstrates this. A best-selling book on the subject is Martin Middlebrook's First Day on the Somme. Its focus is on the heroism of individuals, while it gives little sense of why such heroism proved largely in vain. If the warrior is to be reinstated as war-winner, then it is necessary that what he does is paramount. And when his endeavours prove futile, as they did on 1 July, again the matter must be reduced to the personal. The explanation has to lie, not clearly where it belongs, in the insufficiency of killing weapons to facilitate such an attack, but in the faulty tactics imposed on the infantry by their commanders. Let it be stressed that there were command errors aplenty on the first day of the Somme. But the most profound misjudgements lay elsewhere. Only an abundance of guns and shells on the Western Front could create the conditions whereby rank and file infantry might operate on the battlefield with any chance of success. When the guns proved insufficient and were employed inappropriately (as happened in the north) the infantry also failed, with great slaughter. When the guns were employed with sufficient numbers and skill (as in the
south) foot soldiers were placed in an environment where they could display their skills and gain a modicum of success. None of this may seem glamorous or heroic, but it more nearly represents the reality of 1 July 1916 than any obsessive focus on infantry tactics.
12 ‘Ill-Considered Attacks on a Small Front', 2–13 July
I
If the first day of the Somme was the most disastrous day of battle in British history, no sense of doom or despair appears to have penetrated the minds of the high command. During the day Haig remarked that ‘on a sixteen-mile front of attack varying fortune must be expected’.1 Even on the 2nd, when the casualty lists were coming in, he maintained his equanimity, commenting merely that over 40,000 casualties ‘cannot be considered severe in view of numbers engaged’.2 Rawlinson showed similar sang-froid. He noted without comment at 7.30 p.m. on the 1st that the casualty total was 16,000.3 On the 2nd the figure had risen to over 30,000, a total he was prepared to admit was ‘heavy’, but he remained unconcerned as there were ‘plenty of fresh divisions behind’.4
One matter was not discussed by the high command. No mention at all was made of how far short of expectations the achievements of the day had fallen. Rawlinson quietly dispersed the cavalry during the night.5 No mention at all was made of Bapaume or points east.
So, with an insouciance that was perhaps a necessary façade in the face of the lamentable results achieved, Haig and Rawlinson set about planning the next stage of the campaign.
Several choices seemed to confront them. Would they attack all along the original front, as Rawlinson proposed, to bring the British line to within striking distance of the second German position? Would they, as Haig favoured, confine themselves to further advances in the south, the only area in which gains had been made? Or would they make a second attempt to obtain the commanding heights of the Thiepval Ridge?6