by Robin Prior
Gough clearly understood that unless the weather was atrocious he would have to attack. So he called a conference of his three corps commanders to discuss possibilities. A strong wave of realism swept over this meeting. It was decided that the maximum that should be attempted was the capture of the first objective of the scaled-down operation, entailing an advance of just 1,000 yards. Fanshawe and Congreve, who would be making the northern attack, opined that if this was captured, then the next objectives – Serre and Beaucourt – could also be taken. Jacob, commanding the southern advance, and presented with a final objective of only 1,000 yards, promised to conform to either option.17
During the next two days opinion at Fifth Army headquarters fluctuated. Although only a small amount of rain fell the weather remained overcast and misty. Nevertheless, the ground was drying fast. Gough therefore decided to attack on the 13th.
Messages emanating from GHQ were decidedly mixed. On the morning of the 12th Kiggell assured Gough that the last thing Haig would need was a battle ‘in unfavourable tactical conditions’.18 Then the Commander-in-Chief himself arrived. Haig reiterated the difficulties of ground and weather and unhelpfully added that ‘nothing was so costly as a failure’.19
But at the same time he told Gough that ‘a success at this time was much wanted’. This was for three reasons – to give heart to the hard-pressed Romanians, to convince Russia that its allies were active, and
lastly, on the account of the Chantilly Conference which meets on Wednesday. The British position will doubtless be much stronger (as resources are short) if I could appear there on top of the capture of Beaumont Hamel, for instance, and 3000 German prisoners.20
There was much sophistry in all this. It is difficult to imagine that the fall of Beaumont Hamel would energise the Romanians or prove to the Russians that Haig had the Germans by the throat. His third reason was more to the point. But even this requires comment. ‘The British position’ at an inter-Allied conference would hardly be much strengthened by the capture of the heap of rubble that was Beaumont Hamel. Nor was Haig's position likely to be much improved by the capture of a village 116 days after it had been scheduled to fall.
Yet Haig was desperate for anything he could describe as a success. He knew that the atrocious weather was placing out of court his aspirations to go on attacking all through the winter. Consequently Gough's November operation constituted his last throw. Had Gough not even told him that if the operation did not go ahead there would be nothing for it but to shut down the battle? So anything that could be described as a success, even if it was an advance of just 1,000 or 2,000 yards, would serve as a positive end to the campaign. No one was going to remind Haig that Beaumont Hamel had been an objective for the first day. Members of the War Committee attending Chantilly were bound to have collective amnesia on this point – after all, they had presided over the 116 days of the battle. And success was important to Haig – the Battle of the Somme must be seen as having some sort of triumphant conclusion.
So the question hanging over this last phase of the campaign was: could even the capture of Beaumont Hamel be accomplished in such unfavourable conditions?
III
The preliminary bombardment began on the early morning of 6 November. Most of the guns were concentrated on the area which had given so much trouble on 1 July – that around Beaumont Hamel and St-Pierre Divion. High-explosive shells deluged both localities. In addition, steps were taken to subdue the machine-gunners on the crest behind Beaumont Hamel who had taken such a toll on the first day. As the enemy machine-gunners were not in concrete emplacements but concealed in shell holes and other natural features, it was decided in this operation to blanket the whole ridge with machine-gun fire. No fewer than 40 guns were used for this work and as a result not one enemy machine-gun on this ridge came into action during the entire attack.21
It also appears that the Fifth Army had realised the crucial nature of the creeping barrage. A typical operation order for the battle stated:
THE ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE is that the leading infantry should follow so closely on the heels of the barrage that the enemy has no time to recover or man his machine guns before they are on him.
In all the most successful attacks of recent months the assaulting infantry had crept TO WITHIN 50 YARDS of their own barrage, ready to rush in the moment it lifts off the objective.
This principle will be assiduously impressed on all ranks both by lectures and in practice attacks, so that every man thoroughly understands that his safety lies in getting close up to the barrage and that he must wait for no orders to advance the moment the barrage lifts.22
The attack commenced at 5.45 a.m. – that is, in the dark. Even after the sun rose, visibility did not substantially improve for some time because of the thick fog.
On the extreme left of the attack it was soon discovered that not even the most accurate creeping barrage could protect the infantry if conditions were such that they could not follow it. On the very flank of the attack the same division (31), but certainly not the same men, advanced against the same objective (Serre) as on 1 July. The results were also pretty much the same. The ground was so bad that the ‘men sank up to their waists’ in mud and so lost the protection of the barrage. One unit declared the ground ‘impassable to Infantry with their war equipment’ and said that ‘it would have been difficult for a man in running costume, under peace conditions’ to traverse it. They were met by heavy machine-gun fire and although some penetrated as far as the third German line they were soon isolated and driven back by counter-attack.23
The next division on the left fared no better. At the end of the day they had gained precisely no ground at a cost of over 1,000 casualties. One of the battalions involved listed the reasons for failure, which may serve as a useful summary for the failure of them all:
1. loss of direction in the dark and fog
2. loss of most officers in the early phase of the attack because of unsubdued machine-guns
3. the broken and muddy ground
4. uncut wire
5. the invisibility of the barrage in the mist
6. the strength of the German Second line which had been missed by the barrage
7. Rifles becoming clogged and therefore useless because of the mud.24
The left of the next division (2) also failed for much the same reasons: uncut wire, boggy ground, and loss of the barrage, all of which meant that Gough's great blow had entirely failed on the northern third of its front.25
Fortunately for the British, the southern two-thirds of the attack fared some-what better. The right of 2 Division found the going firmer and the mist lighter. So they could see the barrage and follow close behind it. As a result they were able to jump the German dug-out dwellers as they emerged, and capture the German line. Follow-up battalions pressing close behind them passed through and on to the German third line, which by 6.15 a.m. was in British hands.26
The key to the battle, however, lay to the south, where Beaumont Hamel and St-Pierre Divion were to be attacked. The first of these objectives lay in the area of 51 Division, which was to assault Beaumont Hamel and advance to the strong German trench beyond. In this sector a mine was blown near the same area as that of the Hawthorn Redoubt on 1 July and for the same purpose – to prevent German machine-gunners in the salient formed by the redoubt from enfilading troops advancing to its right and left. On this occasion the expedient was successful. The 30,000 pounds of ammonal was blown at zero and the troops (who had moved into no man's land beforehand) occupied the mine crater.27
Beaumont Hamel still proved difficult. Even though the machine-gunners on the ridge behind it had been killed or neutralised and ‘there was scarcely a square yard in the village which was not torn up by shellfire, the deep dugouts ... escaped’.28 Machine-gunners emerging from these dug-outs stopped the attack on the western outskirts of the village. On this occasion, however, because of the success of the mine explosion to the north, reinforcements could be sent to take
the defenders of the village in flank. By 10.45 a.m. Beaumont Hamel, which had defied Haig's armies since July, had fallen.29
That was in fact the sum total of 51 Division's success on that day. An attempt was made around noon to advance on the second objective – the trench due east of the village. It failed. By this time the protection of the creeping barrage had been lost. And there were just too few troops remaining to constitute a weighty and coherent attack. The capture of Beaumont Hamel had exacted a fearful toll on the assault battalions. The Seaforth Highlanders had suffered over 50 per cent casualties, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders 40 per cent, and many others were of the same order.30 Corps headquarters wisely cancelled the projected follow-up, calculating that with their main objective captured further advances could await the new day.31
While 51 Division was capturing Beaumont Hamel, the 63 Division to its south was making the largest gains of the day. This division had bizarre origins. It commenced life as the Royal Naval Division, when in 1914 the navy discovered that it had men surplus to requirements for its ships. These were then supplemented by some army units to bring the division up to strength. It saw service in such Churchillian adventures as the Antwerp expedition of 1914 and Gallipoli in 1915. In 1916 it was transferred to France and renamed the 63 Division, though it retained its naval connection by having battalions named after admirals, such as Hood, Drake, and Anson.32 This was its first battle on the Western Front.
Essentially the 63 succeeded in its initial advance for the same reasons as the 51. The fog aided surprise and blinded the enemy artillery. The wire was well cut and the creeping barrage carried the troops to the outskirts of the German third line. One detachment, under the leadership of Lt.-Col. Freyburg, even pushed on to the outskirts of Beaucourt. Then German resistance stiffened. The artillery had missed sections of the third line and the defences of Beaucourt were still intact. After several hastily arranged and botched attempts at further advances, the corps ordered a halt until the 14th.33
South of the Ancre only the 39 Division was to make a substantial advance. Here the main obstacle was St-Pierre Divion with its ‘highly developed system of dug-outs and tunnels’.34 Owing to some excellent artillery arrangements that assigned a 4.5-inch howitzer to every known dug-out and tunnel entrance, the village was captured. The German garrison fled but ran straight into the path of the other assault battalions. The result was that for once the number of prisoners taken (1,380) exceeded the casualties (587).35
On the 14th, with Haig on his way to the Chantilly conference, operations to press on and capture the original objectives were undertaken by all divisions. All failed. The artillery were now uncertain as to the exact location of the forward troops, units were disorganised, and attacks could not be coordinated. No ground was gained.36
Nevertheless, despite these barren results, Gough issued orders that operations were to continue on the 15th. But Haig was now at Chantilly, where a vigorous debate was proceeding about whether more troops should be sent to Salonika. (The Russians, Romanians, and Serbs were in favour, the British and French military were against, their governments sat on the fence.) That night Haig dined with Asquith who he reported, was ‘very pleased with our successes’.37 After this meeting, Haig sent Gough, with whom he was in touch by courier, the following order:
[you] are not to undertake any attack on a large scale until after the return of the Commander-in-Chief.38
Clearly the battle had served Haig's purpose and he was worried that Gough might jeopardise his position by launching further attacks about which Mr Asquith might not be so pleased.
But Gough was not giving up easily. He sent another message to Haig on the evening of the 16th saying that both corps commanders thought ‘the proposed operation had very good prospects of success’.39 By this time the conference was over. Its main decisions had proved very satisfactory to Haig. The Allies had decided that the Western theatre was decisive, that the British and French would ‘press’ the enemy through the winter as far as climatic conditions permitted, and that they would resume the offensive in the New Year.40
Haig now felt less constrained. He gave Gough approval for strictly limited operations ‘if the weather remained satisfactory’.41 In the event it did, at least to the extent that no further rain fell. On the 18th operations resumed. On the left the newly introduced 32 and 37 Divisions gained some ground to the south of Serre and Freyburg's force captured Beaucourt.42 To the south of the Ancre the 19, 18, and 4 Canadian Division also made some rather inconsequential gains.43 But the cost of these efforts was exceedingly high. The 32 and 37 Divisions suffered about 5,000 casualties between them, the divisions of II Corps around the same.44
The bitterness caused by the conditions under which these attacks were made reverberated for years. In 1936 an officer who took part in the II Corps attack wrote to the Official Historian:
This was the only occasion in which I saw men dead from exhaustion from their efforts to get out of the mud. At Passchendaele I saw men mud bound but they could be dragged out, but at the Ancre at this time, we were pitch-forked into the quagmire in the dark and there was no possibility of a man helping the one next to him.... It was the very worst instance I came across of what appeared to be a cruel useless sacrifice of life and the climatic conditions alone made it clear ... to the very stupidest brain that no success could possibly result.45
The loss of 10,000 men for no important gain had a sobering effect on Haig. At Chantilly, he had agreed to resume the offensive on the Somme in the following year. And he was already in receipt of a letter from Rawlinson warning him that unless operations halted there might be insufficient men to conduct operations of any magnitude in the spring.46 The commander-in-chief therefore finally decided to wind down the battle. This did not mean that all activity on the Somme ceased. As the Australians, who had just entered the front line in the Fourth Army sector, were to discover, trench raids and minor operations of a more or less purposeless nature would continue all winter. But as for major attacks, this was the end. To all intents and purposes, the Battle of the Somme concluded on 18 November.
The operations around Beaumont Hamel in November 1916 reveal a number of interesting facets about the high command and the nature of the battle. First, they demonstrated that if the end result was important enough – in this case Haig's standing with the government and the Allies – objectives could be limited to the practicable, and the wherewithal in terms of artillery support could be found to ensure a high chance of success. Haig was quite capable of turning his attention to a limited ‘bite and hold’ operation if the circumstances required it. Second, it revealed just how many resources were required, especially in adverse weather, to make any kind of advance on the Somme. As much ammunition was expended in this attack as had been on the much longer front on 1 July. Yet for all the success proclaimed for the Beaumont Hamel operation, the results were in fact very meagre. The maximum advance was just over 2,000 yards and the amount of territory gained inconsiderable. And for this effort, no fewer than 11 divisions had been used, at a cost to V Corps of around 15,000 men and to II Corps of at least half that number. In other words over 22,000 men, or the infantry of two divisions, had been consumed for no great purpose.
Furthermore, the battle showed that if Haig was so minded he could follow its progress in close detail and call it off immediately the advances were not deemed commensurate with the cost. This may be contrasted with his behaviour during August. Then, after being slow to appreciate that the battle was drifting, he seemed incapable of or unwilling to impose his will upon it. This effectively disposes of the notion that, during the Somme campaign, Haig acted as he did (or failed to act) because events had gone beyond his control.
27 Reflections on the British at the Somme
I
In the long history of the British army, the Battle of the Somme was its bloodiest encounter. Between 1 July and mid-November 1916, 432,000 of its soldiers became casualties, or about 3,600 for every day
of battle. Set out in a table of the divisions which fought at the Somme the casualty list is in some ways more sobering even than these stark totals reveal.
Division Casualties Division Casualties
30 17 374 14 7 643
18 13 323 55 7 624
21 13 044 47 7 560
5 12 667 4 Aust. 7 248
17 12 613 39 7 215
56 12 333 Guards 7 204
34 12 036 6 6 966
25 11 239 2 Can. 6 876
12 11 089 20 6 854
33 10 787 1 Can. 6 555
9 10 538 23 6 282
4 10 496 51 6 202
1 10 451 24 6 119
3 10 377 48 6 115
7 10 237 41 5 928
19 9 830 31 5 902
NZ 9 408 36 5 482
8 8 969 32 5 272
11 8 954 15 4 877
49 8 461 35 4 663
2 Aust. 8 113 16 4 330
50 7 902 4 Can. 4 311
1 Aust. 7 883 63 4 075
2 7 856 38 3 876
29 7 703 46 2648
1 Can. 7 469 37 2 000
In addition the cavalry suffered 71 casualties.
It is worth repeating that the nominal infantry strength of a division at the Somme was about 12,000 men but that the average strength was closer to 10,000. What the table reveals then is that 15 divisions of the 52 engaged in the battle lost their entire infantry strength or in some cases more. In addition the table reveals that the average casualty bill for a division was 8,500 or between 70 and 85 per cent of the divisional infantry strength.
Of the 432,000 casualties probably 150,000 died and another 100,000 were too seriously wounded to serve again as infantry (or in most cases in any other capacity). That is, the Somme destroyed for ever the fighting capability of 250,000 men, or the infantry strength of 25 divisions. One out of every two British soldiers who fought on the Somme never fought again.