The Somme

  There were even more dangerous aspects of ‘support’ than this. Troops in close support could in various ways be drawn into the actual fighting. On 20 July the 8 Royal Berkshires were in close support in the OG lines some 400 yards from the front. On the 21st they received orders to support an attack on the Switch Line on 22/23 July by the 10 Gloucesters and 1 Camerons. As the attack commenced, two companies of the Berkshires moved up to the front with the other two in reserve near the Cutting. The operation proved such a disaster (the three assaulting battalions suffered about 400 casualties) that the remaining Berkshire companies were rushed forward to reinforce those in the front line in case the Germans counter-attacked. They were required to hold that line until relieved on the 25th.

  Even units which had just been in battle could be sent back to the front from support positions. The 2 Royal Sussex were in the line at High Wood from 14 to 17 August during which time they had carried out two attacks, one successful, one not, both costly.31 On the 18th the battalion was relieved and on the 19th bivouacked at Mametz Wood, on the way back to Albert. Then in the early morning news came from High Wood that a German counter-attack had driven in the British line. Orders to the Sussex were revised and they sent two companies forward to assist in re-establishing the position. That attack failed so the remaining two companies were sent forward for a second attempt. That too failed and finally the battalion, now reduced to four officers and 160 men from a strength of 20 officers and 650 men when it entered the battle, was withdrawn to reserve.32

  Forward of the support positions of course lay the front line system of trenches – the area of the most acute danger. At the Somme these positions consisted of a front trench, usually protected by barbed-wire entanglements, and several lines of other trenches some 50 yards in rear of the front line and parallel to it. At right angles to these trenches ran interconnecting communication trenches to allow rearward troops relatively safe access to the front. Most trenches were zigzagged to confine the explosive force of a shell to a relatively small area.

  There was danger for troops wherever they were in this system. Any attempt to leave the safety of a trench could produce a hail of machine-gun bullets from across no man's land, which could be as narrow as 50 yards. Even trenches did not protect from shells landing close by. Shell fragments ricocheting at high velocity around the narrow confines of a trench could wound or maim or dismember a soldier unlucky enough to be in the wrong place. Nor, as far as shelling was concerned, were the rear lines much safer. Artillery shells fired from the same gun on the same trajectory would not all land in the same place. What the spread of fire meant was that a soldier 100 yards behind the front had an equal chance of being hit by a shell as one in the front line.

  The most dangerous activity was a tour of duty in the front line, even when the tour did not actually involve an attack.

  An example of such a tour of duty is provided by the 2 Welch in the August phase of the Somme battle. Their progress to the front followed the usual pattern. On 17 August they were in Bécourt Wood. On the 18th they were ordered forward to support positions around the Quadrangle. On the 20th they moved into the front line, between High Wood and Bazentin-le-Petit. They were to remain in this position until the 27th. From the moment they arrived the War Diary comments on the severity of the shelling. It is described as ‘heavy’ on 20, 22, and 23 August, as ‘very active’ on the 24th, and as ‘slackening’ on the 26th and 27th. The erratic nature of the shelling was also noted:

  22/8/16 Hostile artillery again kept up heavy barrage especially across the main communication trench, almost all day and night.... During the shelling the three companies in rear [of the front line] suffered rather heavily from many shells.

  But the Welch troops required more than edurance under fire. For the eight days of their stay at the front they were obliged to dig trenches at right angles to the front line into no man's land. The idea of this ‘sapping’, as it was called, was to join up the ‘saps’ at a later date and thus advance the line by some tens of yards. It was a dangerous business, always likely to be interrupted by enemy patrols. In the case of the Welch there was an additional hazard. They had succeeded in pushing the line forward to such an extent that they came under enemy enfilade machine-gun fire from adjacent parts of the front. In addition they were required to undertake patrols into no man's land. From these they might glean information about the German defences to be passed back to the brigade intelligence officer and the artillery, or capture prisoners to help establish the enemy order of battle in that part of the line.

  All this activity took its toll. On the 28th when the Welch were in billets in Albert, roll-call revealed that one officer had been killed and three wounded, while 41 other ranks died, 170 were wounded, four were missing, and 46 were suffering from shell-shock and incapable of further duties. In all, 265 men (or 30 per cent of their strength) had become casualties in a seven-day spell in the line which did not contain one major episode. One point to note about this is the relatively low officer casualties, a figure which would have been much higher if the battalion had attacked: junior officers invariably led these attacks making themselves conspicuous to their troops and, as an unhappy by-product, to the enemy.33

  The most dangerous task of the infantry was actually to leave the shelter of their trenches and attack across no man's land

  The experience of the troops conducting these attacks could be very different. Some idea of different experiences can be gleaned from the casualty statistics. For those attacks for which we have statistics, casualties for battalion attacks range from 28 for 1 Gloucesters on 17 July to 306 for 1 Cameron Highlanders on 3 September, though it is possible that even higher casualties were suffered in other operations.34

  Moreover, the accounts show that most attacks failed. Of the 36 carried out by 1 Division in this period 22 gained not a single yard of ground. The causes of these failures were various.

  Occasionally failure could be ascribed to the poor arrangements made for the attack at a higher level. On 9 September, 10 Gloucesters were loaned to 3 Brigade for an attack on High Wood. So little advance notice was given to the Gloucesters that their assaulting companies arrived in position just before zero. With no time to reconnoitre their objective, and attacking in the dark, the result was a predictable failure. The two companies participating lost 127 casualties for no result.

  More often than not it was the failure of fire support which was the major factor. Sometimes this might not be the distant guns but the trench artillery under the command of the infantry. On 24 August the 2 Munster Fusiliers were ordered to attack a section of Intermediate Trench where the German defences were shaped like three sides of a rectangle. The furthest trench was to be bombarded by the field artillery but the flanking positions were left to the Stokes mortars. As an account of the action by the commanding officer of the Munsters states:

  On launching the attack it soon became evident that ... [the Stokes mortars] had failed either to knock out the enemy, destroy his morale or injure his machine guns. The assaulting parties followed each other without hesitation but in both cases were met with very heavy machine gun & rifle fire at point blank range, the survivors being bombed on reaching bombing distance. It is doubtful if a single man actually reached the enemy trench in either case, tho several officers & men fell on the enemy parapet.35

  Occasionally the artillery could be more foe than friend, as the 8 Royal Berkshires found on 18 August:

  At 12 noon the heavy artillery commenced a bombardment of the Intermediate Line. Unfortunately one gun was firing short and its shells fell on our own front line just at the time when the relief was taking place. The effect of these shells was that many of our men were buried and the trench was so badly blown in that inter-communication between our portion of the trench and another was impossible. This caused a good deal of confusion and the companies were scarcely in position by the time they had to attack.36

  Nevertheless, despite the generally dismal aspect of
the Somme campaign, and the infinitesimal amount of ground gained by 1 Division in 80 days, not all attacks were disastrous or ill-planned. On 17 July, just after they had entered the line, the 1 Gloucesters were required to take part in a night attack on a series of German trenches just to the south-east of Pozières, which stood between the British and the Switch Line. Before the attack started it was discovered by the divisional artillery that the German positions could be enfiladed by batteries located around Montauban. So all through the day the guns fired on the enemy trenches, cutting the wire, and it may be imagined, making the defences very difficult to inhabit for the German garrison.37 The 1 Gloucester War Diary takes up the story close to zero hour at midnight:

  At 11.40 the Battalion advanced [into no man’ as land] and after 150 yards deployed.... At 11.50pm the artillery commenced an intense bombardment of enemy's front and support lines. The battalion continued to advance until within 150 yards of enemy line. At 12 midnight artillery lifted on to the support line and till 12.5 am intensely shelled it. B and D companies marched through the [cut] wire and over the German line, the enemy on our approach hastily retired. A Company coming up behind seized the line, bombed the dug-outs and at once commenced consolidating, and got into touch with Munsters on left.

  B & D Companies continued their advance and crossed the enemy's Support line. The enemy had by this time fled. At 12.50am a red flare was burnt to show that our objective had been gained.38

  For their part in an operation, which due to careful artillery planning captured two lines of trenches some 1,200 yards long,39 1 Gloucester had suffered just two men killed, 25 wounded, and one missing.

  It was the unfortunate lot of 1 Division to take part in many of the failures of the Somme campaign but none of its notable successes. This was a matter of bad luck and timing rather than lack of endeavour on its part. It was also bad fortune to be called on to attack three positions (Switch Line, High Wood, Wood Lane) which were out of direct observation of the British artillery. At this stage of the battle the gunners could very rarely hit such targets with any regularity. Accuracy depended on continual adjustments to the range of a gun telephoned back from a forward observation officer who was directly observing the fall of shot. When the artillery could not see the target, slow adjustments had to be made from directions given by aerial observers (when available) or they had to be attacked using map co-ordinates from maps which were often inaccurate. This last method was by far the most common and accounts for much of the inaccuracy of the guns during this period. Furthermore, as the campaign went on the incidents of short shooting (friendly fire, it would now be called) increased as the gun barrels wore out. The effect of wear on the barrels was not fully grasped at this time and so only crude attempts were made to correct it. It was also the misfortune of 1 Division to be engaged at a time when the determination of the command to launch incessant narrow-front attacks was at its height. As already noted, this gave the units involved minimum chance of success.

  Yet despite its many misfortunes 1 Division remained a viable fighting unit, as the minor successes obtained by some of its battalions on 26 and 27 September demonstrate. How are we to account for this? Partly the reason can be found in the fairly lengthy periods spent resting and training out of the line. Despite the inadequate nature of much of the training, the rest and recreation did much for morale and ensured that some kind of esprit de corps was maintained.

  Nevertheless, on average only one soldier in two who had been present at the commencement of the battle would have been present at the end. The remainder consisted of drafts received during the battle who had blended into the battalions in the rest periods. But if the South Wales Borderers are representative, the training of these recruits ranged from the elementary to the farcical. In the light of these facts it is hard to believe that training was a major determinant of success in battle. As the Battle of the Somme wore on it became obvious to many that it was the artillery which determined whether an action succeeded or not. There were two major ways in which the guns could achieve this end. The creeping barrage, which was fired by all the divisional artilleries from 15 September, could protect troops advancing across no man's land until they were close enough to overpower the defenders. And the larger guns could suppress or destroy enemy batteries and disorganise trench defenders by destroying either their dug-outs or their morale, or both. As we will see, this is what happened on 25 September. In other words what was required of the infantry was not so much the skill needed in manoeuvre warfare, which (General Pulteney notwithstanding), the 1 Division was not fighting, as the ability to stick close behind a barrage as it moved from trench to trench. This the men of 1 Division could do. The bravery required to carry out this task should not be underestimated. An artillery barrage, even a friendly one, could be terrifying, especially if some guns were shooting short. Moreover, the infantry always required that obedience to authority without which no attack could be made. This is a factor which is largely absent from the accounts, no doubt because it was taken for granted. Indeed, what Churchill described as the ‘wonderful tenacity’ of the British infantry at the Somme could always be taken for granted. It was this quality then rather than superior training which, we can surmise, saw 1 Division through its ordeal on the Somme.

  20 ‘An Operation Planned on Bolder Lines’: Tanks and the 15 September Plan

  I

  In his memorandum of 2 August Haig had foreshadowed a major battle: perhaps the climactic episode of the Somme campaign if not of the entire war. He knew that by mid-September a new weapon of war, in the form of the tank, would be available to him. He was under the impression that the French would also have this novel instrument at their disposal until inquiry revealed Foch was completely unaware of its existence.1 On the 16th Haig informed Rawlinson that the tanks would be on hand for the next battle and the Fourth Army might be called on to attack in mid-September with the objective of capturing the three German lines which faced them ‘and possibly the gun positions beyond’.2 He envisaged that Rawlinson, who had never seen a tank, might have between 36 and 42 machines and Gough, whose Reserve Army would act in a supporting role, should have between 18 and 24. Haig expected that the infantry would work close behind the tanks, that the manner of how tanks and artillery would work together required careful consideration, and that the tanks should be given simple objectives as they were very hard to manoeuvre.3

  On 19 August Rawlinson was asked to submit plans to ‘seize the last line of the prepared [German] defences between Morval and Le Sars with a view to opening the way for the Cavalry’.4

  Before submitting his plan Rawlinson, along with Haig, Gough, and senior staff officers, visited the tank training ground at St Riquier. There the tanks demonstrated how they could cross trenches, climb parapets, and even knock down small trees. Haig thought the day ‘encouraging’.5 Rawlinson's impressions were mixed. He noted that two of the six tanks on show broke down and that an officer fainted while driving. He thought the crews green and in need of much practice. Nevertheless, overall he pronounced himself ‘rather favourably impressed’.6 So he agreed to incorporate the tanks into his plan but, as he wrote in his diary, ‘I am in favour of using them cautiously and not doing too much in one bound.... If we attempt to do too much we run the risk of doing nothing’.7 He added perceptively: ‘D.H. won't like this’.8

  Indeed, when Rawlinson's first plan arrived at GHQ on the 29th the Commander-in-Chief did not like it. Far from picking up on Haig's remarks that the Fourth Army should aim for the third German line and possibly the gun positions beyond to open the way for the cavalry, Rawlinson had discounted the third German line and the horsed soldiers. He observed that the enemy systems were less formidable than those which faced the Fourth Army on 1 July, but that nevertheless capturing all three would be impossible. All the lines had some dug-outs and were protected by belts of wire, some of which could not be seen by direct observation from the British front. Moreover the Germans had incorporated no fewer than five
fortified villages – Martinpuich, Flers, Gueudecourt, Lesboeufs, Morval – into their defences. The first and second lines were in places some 2,000 yards apart, a formidable distance for attacking troops to traverse. Taking all this into consideration, he came up with a cautious plan that fell well short of Haig's expectations.

  Rawlinson thought that the first line could be captured and the presence of tanks might make it possible to seize points of tactical importance, such as Flers and Martinpuich. A foothold in Flers in particular would enable the remainder of that line to be rolled up with the assistance of tanks directed towards Eaucourt l'Abbaye within 24 hours of the original attack. He gave no consideration to the capture of the third German line as it was ‘out of range of the large majority of our guns and howitzers’.9 The tanks, having operated entirely at night, would then be withdrawn, thus maintaining their mystery. The Fourth Army could then proceed to attack the final German line within a further 24 hours. In all, six divisions would be employed.10

  This plan has a familiar ring. It resembles very closely Rawlinson's first thoughts for the first day of the Somme – the seizure of the enemy's front line and important tactical features beyond, then the rolling up of the second line, then further operations against the remaining defences. Unfortunately for Rawlinson, Haig's reply also has a familiar ring. After studying Rawlinson's plan he then noted in his diary:

  In my opinion he is not making enough of the situation with the deterioration and all-round loss of moral[e] of the enemy troops. I think we should make our attack as strong and as violent as possible, and plan to go as far as possible.11