by Robin Prior
25 July: All goes well – The Germans counterattacked last evening but in a very half hearted way & did not press home. I do not think they could face the heavy artillery fire we put on them. They have brought up a good deal more artillery themselves and the shelling is much heavier. I hate seeing the German shells falling amongst our batteries ... but the continuous overcast sky & ground haze prevents our aeroplanes from directing our fire on to the German batteries. A couple of clear days would allow us to make a great difference.
26 July: I have not got the whole of High Wood yet. I had another try for a corner of it last evening but it did not come off. We are a bit stuck here. The overcast weather has been favourable to the Germans. We have not had a clear day for a long time. Today is very thick again.... The German artillery has much increased and the thick weather prevents us dealing with it by aeroplane observation. The German digs away like a mole & his trenches are getting much stronger.... We keep pressing away and some progress has been made at Pozières. We cannot expect to keep on going the pace we did at first.36
These letters are a curious mixture. Horne is quick to appreciate that the Germans have recovered from the disorganisation of early July, that their new positions are strong, that the reverse slope on which they are situated has made aerial direction of his guns a crucial factor, that no such direction can be obtained in overcast weather, that some days of bright weather are required to get full value out of the air observation, and that a pause might be essential in the battle until this happy event occurs. At the same time he is hammering away at High Wood almost daily despite the adverse factors which are thwarting his efforts. His only comment is that this constant ‘pressing’ is essential and that he must do the best he can and trust in God. In other words his considerable tactical insights make not a jot of difference to the way in which he is conducting the battle. He is, in truth, the corps equivalent of Rawlinson and Haig. Of course it may have been that orders from above required the constant, futile attacks which he was undertaking. Yet there is not the slightest sign in his letters that he is under such pressure or that left to his own devices he would be doing things differently.
IV
While Horne was cogitating on his difficulties with High Wood and the operation at Delville Wood was being planned and executed, the British command was deciding on what to do next. Haig seemed reasonably certain of the way forward. On the 23rd he told Rawlinson that he should consolidate his left and concentrate on his right to try to capture Guillemont in co-operation with the French.37 There was much wisdom in this. Quite apart from the fractured start times which blighted the 23 July operation, Rawlinson's plan had made little tactical sense anyway. For if any advance had been accomplished, his rightward and leftward troops would have diverged. By concentrating on the right he would straighten out the angle around Delville Wood, which would make that position easier to hold and the planning of future operations more straightforward.
But as so often with Haig, he then went on to muddy the waters. As if unaware of what he had just written, he told Rawlinson that ‘We must press the enemy in the way we have been doing’ and that there must be no ‘delay to organise a great attack which will take time to prepare’.38
This made the overall intent of Haig's instructions quite obscure. Was the Fourth Army commander to concentrate on operations with the French, which would certainly take time to co-ordinate, thus negating one of Haig's imperatives: that there be no delay while great attacks were organised? Or was Rawlinson to continue to operate in the way he had been doing – which rather begged the question of what that was. It might be the large-scale broad-front attacks of 14 and 22/23 July. Or it might be the narrow-front attacks which characterised the intervals between them. What Haig's later statement would certainly not do was to confine operations to the right. Attacks were going on across the entire front, be they small or large in scale.
Rawlinson's interpretation of the Commander-in-Chief's views needs to be noted. He seems to have endeavoured to meet all of Haig's wishes. So he engaged in whatever joint actions could be arranged in short order with the French, but at the same time he delivered a handful of tiny operations designed to gain ground on the left. The latter certainly ran counter to one of his chief ‘s wishes (concentrate on the right) but no doubt seemed to Rawlinson to be in accordance with another (‘to press the enemy in the way we have been doing’).
The largest operation in the period following the débâcle of 22/23 July was certainly on the right flank in co-operation with the French. Its main target was Guillemont, which had been captured briefly by the British before the flanking machine-guns drove them out. The threat to this operation posed by the new tactics employed by the enemy machine-gunners remained unrecognised by the British command, with the result that they merely repeated on the 30th their mistakes of a week before. That is, the British troops advanced into Guillemont, assisted on this occasion by heavy mist, and were driven out by flanking machine-gun fire when the mist lifted. The cost was high. In one leading unit (2 Royal Scots Fusiliers), of the 770 officers and men who went in just 120 returned.39
Of the other operations on the left carried out on the 30th little need be said. A few battalions went forward against Intermediate Trench and High Wood with a general lack of success, except in one singular instance. A section of Intermediate Trench was captured by a unit advancing close behind a creeping barrage.40 Although of no great significance in the day's operations, the artillery aspect of this small success deserves attention.
As early as 16 July GHQ had issued an instruction regarding the creeping barrage. It enjoined all units to adopt it, noting:
It is ... of the first importance that in all cases infantry should be instructed to advance right under the field artillery barrage, which should not uncover the first objective until the infantry are close to it (even within fifty or sixty yards.41
Yet it is clear from the barrage maps that even on 30 July most units did not adopt the creeping barrage. Why was this? Perhaps the answer can be found in the comments of a 35 Division artilleryman whose guns were supporting the 30 Division that day. He noted that the French on his right were using a creeping barrage which he contrasted favourably with the jumping barrage used in the British area. Although relatively new to the front, this gunner appreciated the advantages of this form of infantry protection.
I favour the creeping method.... The bursts on percussion act as a guide to the advancing Infantry and the depth of the barrage screens them and ... may enable the infantry to get so close up to the hostile line that the final assault interval under rifle and machine gun fire is reduced to a minimum.42
However, he went on, ‘the limitations to our own equipment at the moment, namely worn guns and difficulties in ammunition supply’, prevented the British from adopting the creeping barrage.43
This perceptive comment draws attention to an important fact. Haig's insistence on large-scale attacks in the immediate future was simply not appropriate. GHQ was pressing for the artillery to fire the creeping barrage, yet for the moment Haig's army did not possess the unworn guns or quantities of ammunition (or, it may be speculated, the required expertise on the part of many of the gunners) to fire the sort of barrage which alone might fulfil his purpose. The imperative was therefore to call a halt to all but the smallest probing operations or trench raids until the artillery position improved. But Haig had a different imperative, namely to attack and keep on attacking without regard to whether the infantry could be adequately protected. In the next few weeks the British soldiers would pay a high price for this orientation.
The two weeks between the success of the night attack and the failure at Guillemont is a curious episode in the Battle of the Somme. What seems clear is that the British command could not decide on the best way of proceeding. Would they conduct wide-front attacks and pay the price of delay while these operations were prepared? Or would they perpetuate the disjointed attacks which characterised the period between 2 and 13 J
uly? Or would they hold on the left and eliminate the awkward angle around Delville Wood by advancing arm in arm with the French on the right? In the end they attempted all of these things and consequently failed everywhere.
What the command never grasped was that it was facing a different situation both from that prevailing between 2 and 13 July and from that on 14 July. The small, high-cost, bludgeoning attacks of the first period would no longer gain ground, because the German defence had recovered from the shock inflicted upon it in the south on 1 July. The Germans were now well organised into their divisional units and able to offer a coherent and stubborn defence. Moreover, many of the localities they were defending, such as the Switch Line and Wood Lane, were – unlike the objectives attacked in the first two weeks of July – out of direct British artillery observation. And on account of generally poor weather, the British could not use their aerial superiority. Nor, because of the wear on the guns, could creeping barrages be fired across a wide front or the heavy artillery maintain the accuracy needed to hit the German defences with any reliability.
Finally, the British command had not yet grasped the import of the change in German machine-gun tactics around Guillemont and did not realise that they lacked the artillery resources to deal with them. All of this added up to a complete inability of the command to cope with the situation which confronted their soldiers. The auguries for August did not look promising on the Somme.
15 ‘Something Wanting in the Methods Employed’, 1 August–12 September
I
In the last two weeks of July British operations on the Somme failed comprehensively, save for the precarious hold on Delville Wood. Even Haig's optimism was momentarily dented by this period of non-achievement. So on 2 August he responded with a long memorandum designed to give direction to the future conduct of the battle.
The paper began sensibly with the observation that the Germans had recovered from their disorganised state and were now ‘too formidable to be rushed without careful and methodical preparation’.1 The Germans, he opined, might even be capable of mounting strong and well-organised counter-attacks.
What, in his view, was the consequence of the enemy recovery for the future conduct of the battle? Haig wrote:
To enable us to bring the present operations (the existing phase of which may be regarded as a ‘wearing out’ battle) to a successful termination, we must practise such economy of men and materiel as will ensure us having the ‘last reserves’ at our disposal when the crisis of the fight is reached, which may – and probably will – not be sooner than the last half of September.2
This represents something of a transition from the optimism of early July, when Haig imagined that the Germans were already down to their last reserves and that their collapse was imminent. He now acknowledged that it would require both time and caution to reach a situation where the Germans had indeed expended their forces for the Somme battle, opening the way for a climactic action in late September. Breakthrough remained his ultimate goal, but its occurrence would now be delayed.
What, then, of the operations in August and September which would precede the climax of the battle? Here, Haig's instructions degenerated into such a welter of contradiction and muddle that it must have been difficult for Rawlinson and Gough to appreciate what was required of them.
August
Haig stated that the ‘first necessity’ was to swing the right flank forward in co-operation with the French, while making ‘no serious attack’ on the left (defined as running from Munster Alley to Delville Wood). Haig had said this earlier and it made sense now for the same reason as it had then: it would eliminate the right angle around Delville Wood and make subsequent operations easier to stage. However, as he had also done earlier, he now proceeded to qualify this good sense out of existence. The trouble started when Haig expanded on what he meant by the statement that no ‘serious attack’ should be conducted on the left. He said that this statement was not to be taken to mean that no operations at all should be carried out in that area. He merely wanted them confined to the capture of ‘important posts held by the enemy within easy reach’. With this qualification, disaster beckoned. The ‘important posts’ held by the enemy on the left were Intermediate Trench, the Switch Line, High Wood, and Wood Lane. While all were close to the British front line, they could hardly be said to be within ‘easy reach’, as two weeks of futile and expensive operations against them had already demonstrated. What Haig was doing therefore, was giving licence for operations to be carried out on the right and on the left, that is for a repetition of the formula which had failed so badly in the last weeks of July.
But this was not the end of confusion. In the document quoted above Haig had called for ‘careful and methodical preparation’ for any attacks against the strengthened German defences. He reiterated this point later in the document, even repeating the phrase ‘careful and methodical’. Yet he then went on to insist that preparations ‘be pushed forward without delay’, thus ensuring that they would be anything but careful and methodical. Here too was a blueprint for continuation of the hastily planned and poorly executed attacks of late July.
Worse was to follow. In one of the most starkly contradictory statements in the entire document, Haig laid down that all operations were to be conducted with a wise ‘economy of men and materials’. This dictum, which was stated no fewer than three times in the course of the memorandum, was designed to give the British the ‘last reserves’ which would carry out the breakthrough in late September. But it made no sense. The only way of economising on men and munitions was not to attack at all or to attack infrequently. To conduct attacks in which munitions were husbanded was to deny to the troops the only method of protecting them against enemy machine-guns and artillery.
As to what might constitute a ‘wise economy of men and munitions’ Haig offered the following: ‘operations ... are to be carried out with as little expenditure of fresh troops and munitions as circumstances will admit of, but in each attack a sufficient force must be employed to make success as certain as possible’.3
So to summarise, Haig was asking for careful and methodical operations to be conducted in haste: to concentrate on the right flank but to attack on the left as well; to use as few troops as possible but in sufficient numbers to succeed; and to economise in munitions which would result, as Western Front fighting had demonstrated over the course of two years, in a prodigality of casualties.
Of course, Haig's document could merely be written off as an exhortation unrelated to any consequent action. After all, it might be thought unlikely that his subordinate army commanders would subject it to the detail of analysis given above. Unfortunately for the troops, this speculation seems ungrounded. There is good evidence that the army commanders did at least attempt to make sense of Haig's missive, and – to the extent that they could understand it – put its wishes into effect.
So Rawlinson's operations in the wake of this document were not at all at odds with Haig's directions. The weight of attacks made on the right flank exceeded those made on the left, which seemed to be in accord with the directions to concentrate on bringing this flank into line. But in number, attacks on the left flank exceeded those on the right, which was in accord with the instruction to seize posts ‘within easy reach’ in that area. As regards munitions, many fewer shells were fired in August than in July, even if the huge quantities fired on 1 July are discounted.4
II
The actual operations conducted in this period cannot be described in detail. However, a typical example carried out on the left flank will suffice to illustrate what Haig's instructions meant for the troops.
On the night of 4/5 August the 13 Durham Light Infantry from 23 Division were ordered to attack Torr Trench, just to the east of Pozières. The enemy trench was 200 yards from their own front line and certainly fell within the definition of a post ‘within easy reach’. Their attack was unsupported on the right and left flanks, perhaps in line with the need to economise on
men. It was supported by a derisory amount of artillery fire, possibly to economise on ammunition. In any case the small number of shells that were fired missed their targets comprehensively while areas outside the immediate attack zone were not subjected to any bombardment at all.
As a consequence, the leading waves were raked with machine-gun fire from the undisturbed defenders in Torr Trench, while fire from the unbombarded Munster Alley on the left hit the attackers in flank. The follow-up waves had the same reception. Remarkably, a few men actually entered Torr Trench but they could not be supported and were eventually captured or killed. Meanwhile a third contingent tried to bomb up Munster Alley towards their objective and so avoid the open ground where their comrades had been cut down. Machineguns in the Alley stopped this attack before it had proceeded 30 yards.
Eventually, the commanding officer of the battalion made his way to the front and cancelled any further frontal attacks. Instead he tried to outflank the Germans in Munster Alley by ordering a bombing party to swing around this trench from the right. Most of this party were immediately hit by defenders on the unattacked portion of this part of the front. A second attempt at this type of manoeuvre was thwarted by the British artillery which, while failing to inflict any serious damage on the enemy, on this occasion hit the Durhams with great accuracy. Yet another attack was ordered, but most men from the designated unit failed to appear and those who did had to be prevented from fleeing by officers with drawn revolvers. Finally the attack was cancelled and the battalion relieved. So for no result, in an operation that even if successful could have gained only 200 yards, the 13 Durhams lost four officers killed, four wounded, 10 other ranks killed, 91 wounded, 11 missing, 12 suffering from shell-shock, and one with a self-inflicted wound. In short, 132 casualties had been suffered and a platoon reduced to mutiny.5