Somme
Page 8
Throughout the artillery planning process, much thought was given to the question of the manner of movement of the barrage line of exploding shells during the actual assault. In general it was considered that this should lift directly to the next German line of trenches when the British infantry emerged from their trenches and set off across No Man’s Land. But there was an emerging interest in new theories introducing a much more sophisticated form of barrage which would start in No Man’s Land and move up to and over the German front line, covering and carrying with it the attacking infantry who would be close behind. This would then creep forward to the next objective in the same manner. The idea was that shells would continue bursting between the attacking infantry and the Germans leaving the defenders no time to wreak their havoc on the British infantry following up. This form of barrage would become know as the ‘creeping barrage’ and it was to become the fulcrum of British attacks for the next two years. However, these were early days. Many of the gunners were worried by the daunting task of preparing and firing accurately such a barrage; the infantry did not really see the point and certainly many divisional and brigade commanders did not understand why the barrage had to start in front of the German lines. As the artillery plans were left to the corps and divisional commanders most preferred to stick with what they knew.
The end result was that in the majority of cases the preliminary bombardments followed the old pattern—building to a crescendo in the lead up to Zero Hour before lifting abruptly to drop on to the next identified German trench. The infantry, who were meant to have crept into No Man’s Land about 100 yards from the back of the barrage line of bursting shells prior to the lift, would then move forward to seize the German front line. Then, according to a timetable, they would move into the gap between the German trenches and await the next lift to the next German line. It was intended that this process would be repeated several times in accordance with the timetable. This optimistic approach, which allowed nothing for hold-ups and the general confusion of war, was based on the belief expressed by both Haig and Rawlinson that the bombardment would sweep everything before it and that the infantry would be faced with minimal opposition.
As there was not going to be any opposition there was, therefore, no need for any haste. According to the tactical instructions issued by the Fourth Army the advance across No Man’s Land would be made at a steady walking pace in long lines of men just 2 or 3 yards apart. This would ensure that the relatively untrained troops did not lose their alignment and would thereby arrive upon the German line at exactly the same time. There would only be 100 yards or so between waves: if there was some kind of a hold-up it was hoped that these closely following waves would add their weight to the assault to overcome the blockage swiftly and get them back on ‘timetable’. The first wave was not intended to mop up the German front line but was to keep going to their deeper objectives, while the following waves mopped up and then pushed on behind the first wave. The men would carry with them everything that they might need on the first two days to allow them properly to consolidate their imagined gains. This, as we shall see, was a considerable undertaking in that the weight of all their kit and equipment (66 lbs) would inevitably restrict the mobility and speed of the men across any kind of broken ground.
The Fourth Army tactical instructions were for guidance and some formations developed their own subtle variations but, for the most part, there was a fair degree of uniformity in tactics all along the British line. More complex tactics of small columns, advance infiltration patrols and the use of lightly equipped parties of men to race ahead across No Man’s Land to surprise the Germans right on the heels of the barrage were almost completely eschewed. Fundamentally the British Army commanders did not feel that their men were sufficiently well trained to be trusted in any form of tactic that needed either brains or skill. Yet in a sense this was a pessimistic stance as in the battles of 1915 the territorial divisions had responded well under the stimulus of battle.
As the battle approached the British began to tire of the French chopping and changing their plans and commitments on the Somme. Dismissive remarks are frequently found in letters and diaries from men who could have had no conception of the nature of the fighting at Verdun. They would soon learn for themselves just how bad war could be.
I wonder what the French are playing at—from the little I hear I think they are at their old game, they do not want us to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. They growl when we do not attack and growl still more when they think we are going to be successful—that may be exaggerated, but certainly the date was put forward to please them and now it is delayed again.9
Brigadier Archibald Home, Headquarters, 46th Division
There was certainly a degree of exasperation in Haig’s diary account of his meeting with Joffre on 17 June. He certainly felt that the British plans were being threatened by the French dithering:
We discussed the date for starting our offensive. He wished it to be 1 July. I pointed out that we had arranged to be ready on the 25th to please him. The 29th ought to be the latest date; in my opinion it was unwise to run the risk of the enemy discovering our area of concentration and then attacking where our lines were thin and ill provided with artillery. Finally we agreed that the attack should be fixed for 29th but Rawlinson and Foch will be given power if the day is bad to postpone the attack from day to day till the weather is fine.10
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, BEF
Despite his own reservation about the state of training of his troops and his oft-stated personal preference for an offensive in Flanders fields, and despite the inability of the French to play their original role, Haig was willing to risk his army for the greater good of the alliance—the Anglo-French Alliance, which offered the only feasible way of winning the war. Ready or not the British were coming.
EARLY IN 1916 the headquarters staff of the BEF and Fourth Army had begun the awesome task of achieving the deployment of some 400,000 men, over 1,000 guns and 100,000 horses ready for the battle that was at the heart of the Allied plans. They were immediately aware that the Somme area was by no means the ideal place for the concentration of such an unprecedented amount of men, horses, equipment, stores and munitions. The Somme had been chosen because that was where the British and French sectors adjoined each other and could attack together. There were no particular strategic reasons other than this contiguity and, indeed, the Somme was an agricultural province that was almost devoid of a modern road and rail network. This presented a nightmare for the planners. Before they could even begin to move the military pieces into place in the battlefield jigsaw they had to create an infrastructure almost from scratch. War in 1916 was simply not possible without a thorough grasp of the theory and practice of the science of logistics.
Overall communications were poor and the paucity of the railway network linking Albert at the heart of the Somme to the rest of the French rail network was a particularly severe problem. Only freight trains had anything like the physical capability to move the huge quantities that were required for the offensive in the given timescale. Industrious staff officers calculated that every single day the Fourth Army would need fourteen trains to carry ammunition, a further eleven trains for supplies and six trains to carry the reinforcements, horses and general stores. This meant that all in all some thirty-one trains per day were needed just to service the Fourth Army and when the offensive began it was reckoned that this might rise to seventy trains. As only two lines served the Albert area and one of those was of an inconveniently non-standard gauge, it was obvious that something drastic would have to be done if this capacity was to be met. It is a testament to the scale and importance of the operations being planned that it was decided without further ado to construct two new standard gauge lines, which would provide a much-increased number of railheads for the battle-front. Further rail spurs and sidings were built to service ammunition and supply depots, while stations were expanded and developed with more and
longer platforms. Understandably, while this major construction project was going on, light railway systems to extend forward from the railheads were not considered a priority, although the tracks already installed by the French were taken over and extended as appropriate.
This was perhaps unfortunate as the inevitably rural character of the area meant that the roads were not robust enough to withstand the heavy demands that would be placed upon them by a veritable army of feet, hooves and grinding wheels. Even the few metalled main roads were not constructed to sufficiently stringent standards and were liable to break up once the surface had been cracked open to expose the chalk rubble that lay below. Side roads were essentially little more than rough tracks and soon became so muddy that they were all but indistinguishable from the neighbouring fields. Efforts were made to improve and widen the roads leading directly from the railheads and bridges were strengthened as necessary, but these efforts were insufficient to resolve the problem. A widespread programme of road construction could have been undertaken, but that in turn would have only massively increased the burden placed on the already struggling railways, as there was no local source of the huge quantities of stone necessary for road foundations. So in the end patchwork repairs, carried out only as and when the road surface collapsed, would have to suffice.
Behind the British lines small country villages and local farms that would have struggled in peacetime to provide sufficient billets for a couple of hundred men were soon swamped. Bivouacs, tents and huts were the obvious answer and imposing camps were soon erected all around the villages and woods.
It was decided that Ville-sous-Corbie should be company headquarters on the Somme. The billets consisted of one large barn with a large and absolutely barren field. Within a fortnight Major Philpotts had made comfortable beds of timber and wire netting for everyone, cookhouses and stables. At the lower end off the yard he had improvised a band-saw, two circular saws, a drilling machine, lathe and grindstone—all driven from one shaft by two 10 hp steam engines and a small petrol engine—and at very little cost for practically all the machinery was salvaged from damaged French factories at Albert. A party of men worked in the woods which lie close to Ville in the Ancre marshes, cutting down suitable trees and lopping off branches. A pair of horses dragged the trees to the workshop, where another party of men barked them and they were then lifted by the crane, another home-made patent of the Major’s, up to the band-saw, from there to the circular saws, cut to the required size and loaded straight on to the wagons, which were parked within a few feet, and up the line the same night.11
Sergeant Frank Aincham, 97th Field Company, Royal Engineers, 21st Division
Water supplies that had been adequate enough for the existing population were soon overwhelmed by demand. Thirsty men also needed water to wash themselves and their uniforms, and the thousands of horses seemed to drink their own weight in water on a regular basis. Even the lorry radiators needed plentiful water. New wells had to be dug, pumping equipment installed and miles of piping laid to ensure that proper high-capacity water points were available as near as possible to the front lines. Overall the effort required from the British Empire to drag this segment of rural French countryside—the Somme valley—into the twentieth century was a truly monumental undertaking. It was deeply ironic that it was being modernised solely to facilitate the prosecution of a battle that would eventually reduce much of it to mud, splinters and rubble.
Even the deceptively simple problem of moving the infantry and guns forward was a nightmare of complexity. Roads had to be assigned for the move, signposts erected, control posts established at major crossroads and military police used to control the burgeoning traffic. Clear instructions had to be given to everyone concerned. A million mind boggling details had to be resolved by a chain of command that was at times stretched gossamer thin. The roads were packed with traffic that ranged from the huge howitzers, churning up the pavé, tail-to-tail convoys of motor traffic, horse transport of myriad varieties and, of course, the endless column of infantry. There was little or no margin for error.
The whole of the roads for the 5 miles I travelled were filled with artillery, infantry, motor lorries, ration carts, ammunition wagons, etc., in one unbroken line—going up to the lines full, and being met by a similar continuous stream of empty vehicles returning, like Oliver Twist, for more. Blocks were frequent and it took the over two hours to get to Etinehem, I estimated I saw not less than 3,000 vehicles—all with six horse teams—no Lord Mayor’s Show was in it at all.12
Lieutenant William Bloor, C Battery, 149th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Division
A traffic census13 taken on one vital thoroughfare discovered that in just one day some 26,536 soldiers; 63 guns; 568 cars; 617 motorcycles; 5,404 riding horses; 813 lorries and a frankly incredible 3,756 horse wagons passed by. In these circumstances there were of course delays, blockages and confusion but in the main the process worked relatively smoothly.
Everybody seemed lively on the march and we swung along to some of our favourite marching songs such as ‘Blighty Land’ and ‘I want to go Home’. Great scenes were to be seen along the roads and long streams of ammunition columns and motor lorries were making their way to the scene of operations. The guns were now heard distinctly and the crump of our big guns encouraged us greatly, for we infantrymen always like to know that we have got good artillery behind us.14
Lance Corporal Sidney Appleyard, 1/9th Battalion (Queen Victoria’s Rifles), London Regiment, 169th Brigade, 56th Division
To the Germans, watching from their lines along the ridges, the sight of the whole strength of the British Army steadily amassing below them was ominous. No one knew for certain what was happening but they could be sure that the British meant them no good.
The preparation of the coming great offensive had begun long ago. Day and night we heard trains roll across the valley of the Ancre and speculated what they were transporting. Three months later we should get the answer to our queries.15
Lieutenant F. L. Cassel, 99th Infantry Reserve Regiment, 26th Reserve Division, German Army
As the day of the offensive drew ever nearer the units occupying the front line began to dig trenches in No Man’s Land. This was fundamentally intended to cut down the distance across No Man’s Land, to minimise the distance they would have to cross under fire when the great day finally dawned. In front of the village of Gommecourt the gap between the lines was an excessive 800 yards, which would have left any assaulting troops under fire for far too long. It was decided that it was worth running the risk of exposing thousands of men digging a new line in the middle of No Man’s Land. This would have the additional benefit of clearly demonstrating an intention to attack—and, after all, the assault on Gommecourt was a diversion.
Firstly, the new trenches were marked out and then the work proper began on the night of 26 May. It was an enormous undertaking for some 2,900 yards of trenches were required, serviced by a further 1,500 yards of communication trenches. The digging men were covered by darkness, but extraordinarily vulnerable to an outbreak of German machine-gun fire or shell fire should the alarm be triggered. As a precaution every British artillery unit in the sector was placed on alert ready to plaster the German lines and batteries. Despite the risks, all went well and good progress was made as the shallow new lines began to take shape before the dawn suspended their digging. Over the next couple of nights the 1/9th London Regiment were amongst those sent forward to finish the task. With only half-dug, shallow trenches for shelter they were still considerably exposed.
The enemy was very quiet, not a shot nor the boom of a gun, and the stillness was oppressive. From previous experience I knew that something was coming—and it did. We started to dig at ten o’clock, but we hadn’t started two minutes before the enemy bombarded us like fury with shells of all sizes, they crashed and splintered all around us. The din was terrific and the flashes from bursting shells blinding. All we could do was to lay flat down in the
bottom of the shallow trench. For ten minutes the shells fell thick and fast, striking the parapets and burying many with earth. One shell crashed into the top of the trench above my head, but fortunately didn’t explode. All this time the enemy’s machine gun spouted bullets at us, but by providence no casualties occurred. Soon the bombardment ceased and we resumed work again. During the enemy’s bombardment our artillery had been very quiet, but within half an hour of our resuming work the artillery burst forth in a deafening crash on this wood and the trenches surrounding it. The crash of our shells as they fell in the wood was a sight terrible but wonderful. The wood appeared to catch on fire. Our men stood up head and shoulders above the trench to see the effects, but even that must end, and soon everything was quiet again.16
Private Reuben Stockman, 1/9th Battalion (Queen Victoria’s Rifles), London Regiment, 169th Brigade, 56th Division
Next night Stockman was assigned to the covering party sent out in front of the new trench system in No Man’s Land to provide a defensive screen while the barbed wire was installed. They were there to prevent the wiring party being surprised by a German fighting patrol.
When darkness came we were waiting in the trench and when all was ready we creep out in a single file towards the German trenches. Through a gap in a hedge we pushed as silently as possible, and every man ready to drop flat in the event of a machine gun being turned on us. Arriving about 80 yards in front of our trenches the first man takes up his position laying flat on his stomach with his rifle well forward and hand near the trigger. The man behind comes up on his right or left and does the same thing at an interval of 3 yards and so the whole company proceeds until a human barricade has been formed between the Germans and our trench. Behind us another company is swiftly but silently fixing up the barbed wire and it’s this party that we are protecting. To try and explain one’s feelings while lying there is utterly impossible. My own feelings were awful. My heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer and my whole body was on a shiver. For upwards of an hour we lay so. Then the enemy must have heard the wire party, for immediately in front of us a star shell was sent up lighting everything around for a hundred yards or so. All we could do was to lie perfectly still. Two more star shells in quick succession follow, and my heart stood still as it seemed impossible that they couldn’t discover us. I think it must have been a signal to the artillery, because within fifteen seconds of the last star light burning out their artillery burst out. Those shells seemed to burst all around us, but fortunately they burst too much to our rear, and so on, till it was quiet again, except for a machine gun that tried to get us, but was aiming too high. In an hour’s time the same thing was repeated and much nearer, yet still we had no casualties. Still they weren’t satisfied for at half past twelve again the shells came and this time they got us. Shrapnel burst right above our heads—pieces of shells whizzed across our backs, and I thought I was for it. But no, when it was all over, I was still unhurt, but bathed in cold perspiration. I could hear several groans on my right.17