by Robin Prior
17 Summary: 15 July–12 September
What was the effect of operations from 15 July to 12 September and what does this period tell us about the overall competence or otherwise of the British command?
On 15 July British forces were occupying a section of Delville Wood, Longueval, and High Wood. Sixty days later this was still the case. In those areas hardly an inch of ground had been gained. Moreover, those gains which had been made in other areas (particularly around Guillemont and Ginchy) had taken until the last few days of the period to accomplish. So over a period of 60 days the British line had advanced just 1,000 to 1,500 yards on a 12,000-yard front (an area of 6 square miles). And the cost of these tiny advances had not been cheap. In all, 32 divisions of the British army had attacked on the Somme during this period. The casualty bill was approximately 126,000 – or about 4,00 per division,1 that is one third of the strength of every division engaged. But even this conceals yet greater disasters. The 5 Division, in a series of attacks around Delville Wood, lost the equivalent of its entire infantry strength, some 11,000 men. The 1 Division in fourteen attacks lost 10,000. Two other divisions (3 and 33) lost over 8,000. Six others lost between 5,500 and 7,500.2
The import of these figures needs to be grasped. On the first day of the Somme 60,000 casualties were incurred in securing 3 square miles of territory. From 15 July to 12 September 126,000 were suffered in gaining 6 square miles. In other words, in terms of casualties for ground gained, the middle battles on the Somme are no less of a tragedy than the first day. Only the fact that the slaughter was not encompassed within a single day has concealed its dramatic impact, both at the time and from historians since.
Clearly something had gone terribly wrong since the optimistic forecasts had emanated from Rawlinson's and Haig's headquarters following the achievements of 14 July. In general terms the command failed to exercise any real grip on the battle, a deficiency which manifested itself in a number of ways.
The first of these command failures is revealed in the nature of operations conducted in the period. On 50 of the 60 days under scrutiny, the Fourth or the Reserve Army launched at least some action against the German defences. The number of troops available for an attack throughout this period was remarkably consistent. The Fourth Army always consisted of three army corps, with at least six and occasionally seven divisions in the front line. The active portion of the Reserve Army usually comprised two army corps with just two divisions in the line. That is, the British armies on the Somme had on average eight divisions available for attack on almost every day of our period. Yet when we look at the figures for the number of battalions within divisions which actually did attack we discover that nothing like the full complement of troops was being employed. For example:
1. On just two occasions (23/23 July and 3 September) were more than 50 per cent of the available battalions committed to the attack.
2. On only two other occasions (30 July and 18 August) were more than 24 per cent of the available battalions committed to the attack.
3. On just two occasions (22/23 July and 3 September) was a major attack by Fourth Army made to coincide with a major effort by the Reserve Army, and on the second of these occasions the attack by the left of the Fourth Army diverged by seven hours.
4. On an average day just under six battalions (less than 10 per cent of the total available) engaged the enemy.
5. On 37 occasions the Fourth Army attacked with less than 10 battalions, including 22 attacks that were made with less than five.
6. In the Reserve Army area, only once did the strength of attack exceed 10 battalions.
7. On 10 days out of the 60, British attacks were made by only one or two battalions.
The overwhelming chacteristics of the attacks were that they were constant, small-scale, and narrow-front. This method of proceeding allowed the German troops to concentrate the maximum artillery resources against the small number of attacking troops and on each occasion inflict on the attackers a high percentage of casualties.
The second command failure is the random way in which the available divisions were used. For example the length of time divisions were in the line varied widely – two days in the case of 30 Division; eight days in the case of 56; 16 days for 51; 24 days for 5; and 42 days for 1 Division.3 Casualties also varied, from a staggering 500 per day for 5 Division to less than 100 per day for 23 Division. The number of operations launched by these divisions was also random. The much-used 1 Division attacked on 14 occasions, the 5 attacked on nine, the 3, 7, 24, 25, 2 Australian, and 4 Australian attacked on seven. Others such as the 16, 17, 18, 30, 35 and 39 attacked just once.4
In some instances this disparity has a simple explanation. The 18 and 30 Divisions were used sparingly in this period because they had been heavily engaged between 1 and 14 July. In most cases, however, there is no such obvious explanation. Divisions were kept in the line, and used repeatedly or sparingly in attacks, apparently at whim.
The third command failure relates to the objectives chosen for attacks. At the end of the fighting on 14 July, the British line resembled a right angle with the apex around Delville Wood. This left the Germans in an ideal situation to concentrate artillery fire on the angle and to enfilade it from the north and east. Fourth Army Command was not unaware of this situation as their aerial superiority allowed them to locate the major groupings of the German batteries with some accuracy.5
Common sense required that some effort be made to flatten out this right angle. The evident way of accomplishing this was by concentrating major attacks on the southern section of the British battlefront. On several occasions Haig tried to induce Rawlinson to do this. Yet when we look at the locations of attacks in this period, we find that 29 were made on the left of the right angle, 21 at its apex, and 20 on its right. So it is not only the small scale of the attacks that makes no sense but the direction in which they were pointed.
Nor does the picture become any less random when we go down a further step in the structure of divisions. Each division on the Somme contained 12 battalions. When we look at the way in which they were used we find the following:
164 battalions attacked once
46 battalions attacked twice
24 battalions attacked three times
7 battalions attacked four times
1 battalion attacked five times
1 battalion attacked six times
That is, no sort of investigation makes sense of the middle period of the Battle of the Somme. There was no pattern in the direction of the attacks, no pattern in the time that divisions spent in the line, no pattern in the frequency or infrequency with which divisions (or battalions within divisions) were called upon to attack. In these circumstances it is difficult to argue that the commanders were fulfilling their clear duty to impose some order on what is of necessity the disordered occupation of waging war. There is another duty required of command: to ensure that the troops under them are being husbanded in a manner that will allow them to be used to optimum efficiency. A well-thought-out battle of attrition (such as Haig in his memorandum of 2 August claimed to be fighting) demands that these matters are given the utmost consideration to ensure that the enemy is worn down more than a commander's own armies. Yet in the welter of small, disjointed attacks into which divisions and battalions were being thrown willy-nilly no one at the higher levels of command appeared to be keeping a check on these matters. The vital question in attritional warfare, namely which army will finish the stronger at the end of battle, was being left to chance. No one in authority on the British side, evidently, was keeping careful watch upon how the divisions of their army were being used, or assessing whether at the end of the day they would emerge stronger or weaker than their opponents. As an officer commented later after receiving a draft copy of the Official History:
It is all very sad reading with the hundreds of little disjointed attacks by Battalion[s] and even Companies repeated day after day to try to capture some small feature or 50 yards of
trench with appalling casualties. I am afraid History must condemn the battle of the Somme as a ghastly waste of men and material.6
Exactly why the command failed to ‘grip’ the battle in this period and allowed it to drift in the ways specified does not admit of an easy answer. Perhaps it is simply that a battle on the scale of the Somme was so far from the experience of Haig (a commander of a small army in 1914) or Rawlinson (a divisional commander in the same period) or Gough (the commander of a cavalry division of just 6,000 men at the outbreak of the war) that executing a battle with a force 10 times that of the peacetime army was beyond them.
The British army's ‘philosophy of battle’ in the form of Field Service Regulations was of little use. No doctrine written in 1909 (which anyway amounted to little more than a series of platitudes) could have anticipated the nature of warfare to be found on the Western Front in 1916. The only section of FSR that was remotely relevant to their situation was Section 99. It offered contradictory advice. On the one hand it advocated persistent attacks while on the other hand it suggested a more deliberate approach may be needed ‘on occasion’. Such woolly thinking in fact sanctioned any and every approach to battle.7
There is of course another side to all this. The incessant attacks made by Haig's forces, however ill conceived, could not but have a considerable effect on the German army. The 32 British divisions engaged in this period fought 28 German divisions, some more than once. It is extremely difficult to obtain precise casualty statistics for individual German divisions from this period but of the 28 engaged we have 20 that at least reported on the scale of their casualties. Only one described them as ‘light’. The others range from percentages (none less than 50 per cent), to such generalisations as ‘terrible losses’, ‘very heavy losses’, ‘considerable losses’, and ‘exhausted’.8 These comments are hardly surprising when we consider the number of shells the British were throwing at the Germans. From 15 July to 12 September they amounted to 7.8 million.9 The German Official History does not seek to conceal the fact that such a weight of shelling was wearing down the German forces to a significant degree.10
Further, it is not only on the British side that we witness inadequacies of command. For most of this period the German command held to a policy of seeking to regain by counter-attack every yard of ground lost to the British, no matter whether the ground was of any tactical value. So while the British during these weeks carried out some 150 attacks in battalion strength and above, the Germans counter-attacked on no fewer than 90 occasions. We have no way of calculating the cost of these endeavours but it cannot have been small.11 So if there was any factor which helped balance the enormous casualties Haig was causing to his own forces, it was the actions of his counterparts on the other side of the hill. Attrition may have been the outcome but it was a form of attrition over which the commanders of neither side were exercising any real control.
18 The Politicians and the Somme Campaign, July–August
I
In the weeks following the inception of the battle, the nation's leaders found themselves in a dilemma. The central issue of strategy was now settled. A great Western Front campaign was now under way and was expected to deliver large results. The civilian leaders, apparently, would have no deciding to do until the extent and nature of these results expressed themselves.
Yet certain realities intruded. Almost from the outset it became evident that the Somme campaign was not, at least in the short run, transforming the military situation. As early as 3 July, the Secretary of the Committee, Sir Maurice Hankey, reported a meeting between Lloyd George and Balfour where concern had been expressed at the high level of casualties.1 Robertson was also worried, although there is no evidence that he shared his anxieties with the War Committee. On the 5th he cautioned Haig to limit his ambitions to ‘moderate objectives, and to forbid going beyond those objectives until all have been reached by the troops engaged’ and said that even this could only be accomplished by powerful artillery action.2
Then at a meeting on 11 July, the War Committee was informed that British forces had sustained casualties of 80,000, and that the Germans had more than doubled their military personnel in the area of the offensive. Such hopeful news as the War Committee received – for example that British forces had occupied two-thirds of Mametz Wood and that the supply of ammunition was ‘holding out very well’ – was hardly of an order to suggest that a mighty Allied victory was at hand.3
A missive sent to this meeting by the Commander-in-Chief provided aspirations and expectations, but few concrete achievements:
He considered that when the present offensive had been developed and exploited they would be in a good position[;] it was as important to the French as to ourselves, as it would enable them to cross the Somme and would place us and the French in a good position for a considerable further advance.4
Haig was anticipating an advance to the Thiepval Ridge, and expecting strong German counter-attacks for which he hoped to make the enemy pay dearly. ‘[The British] have inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans, and signs of demoralization were evident’ – signs which, it might be noted, Haig, with less than compelling cause, would manage to detect many times thereafter. His conclusion was anything but specific:
So much had been done already, but they must be prepared to carry on for some weeks, therefore they must have reserves and the necessary flow of drafts.5
The War Committee, evidently, was expected to wait and see.
Quite apart from the fact that the offensive was scarcely fulfilling large expectations, there were other developments requiring consideration. These were occurring in the Balkans. Certainly the War Committee, in endorsing the offensive on the Somme, had decided firmly against anything but a defensive stance at Salonika. But the situation there appeared to be changing in ways warranting a reconsideration of strategy. The striking successes of the Russians, admittedly not against the Germans on their northern sector (where any advance would have amounted to a lot), but anyway against the Austro-Hungarians in the south, were having a positive effect. The government of Romania was reconsidering its position of strict neutrality.
To all appearances, Austria-Hungary might, in face of the Russian assault, soon collapse utterly. If Romania was to share in the spoils of dismemberment, it would have to act swiftly. But, the Romanian government was reluctant to proceed without double assurance. It required, as the price of its entry into the war, offensive action not just by the Russians against Austria-Hungary but by the French and British against Bulgaria. (As a result of the outcome of the Second Balkan War of 1913, Bulgaria nursed severe animosity towards Romania.) So, within days of the initiation of the Somme campaign, Britain's leaders found themselves under pressure to reconsider their decision against an offensive out of Salonika.
The War Committee approached this matter warily. For one thing, the potential new ally was requiring action by the British and French against the Bulgarians in advance of any formal commitment by Romania. Britain's leaders harboured doubts about Romania's military competence and the state of its army's equipment. And they suspected that the Romanian authorities might, even yet, wriggle out of participation in the war. So on 6 July the War Committee reasserted, at least for the moment, its decisions for action on the Somme and inaction at Salonika. However, it acknowledged that a clear commitment by Romania to the Allied cause might create a new situation. Action out of Salonika, in short, must await Romania's ‘effective entry into the field’.6
As July proceeded, differing opinions about these potentially rival offensives developed. On the one hand the War Committee was heartened by the British action on the Somme on 14 July, ‘a wonderful performance for 4 divisions’, according to Robertson. ‘Such a force,’ he observed, ‘had never been moved by night before.’ Also, munitions were holding up well, and captured documents showed ‘how great the German losses had been’. On the other hand, ‘The Germans had withdrawn only one division from Verdun, where they had gained ground lately
, and were only three miles away.’7
Events on the Western Front, therefore, remained ambiguous, while developments in the Balkans seemed to be making large promises. The War Committee was informed that the Russians and Romanians had fixed upon a joint offensive against both Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria for 8 August, and that General Sarrail, who exercised principal command at Salonika, was planning an offensive against Bulgaria for a week earlier, ‘to prevent hindrance to the Roumanian mobilization’. That seemed to constitute a strong case for British action in the Balkans.8
The issue that developed in the War Committee was how substantial that participation should be. As against the apparent conviction among Britain's allies that a great offensive should be launched on the Salonika front, Balfour argued that action there should only be sufficient to hold the Bulgarians in place and so enable the Romanians to devote their full attention to the Habsburg forces. And Robertson expressed disbelief that an Allied offensive from Salonika would actually pierce the Bulgarian lines. He also objected to the commander of British forces in Salonika being placed under Sarrail's authority, and doubted that Romania would be ready or equipped for intervention by the assigned date. More than that: ‘We must keep our eye on the West, where we were doing very well.’ He agreed to the proposal for action at Salonika, but warned: ‘we must go very carefully or we should be depriving ourselves in France’.9