Somme
Page 57
It was a very rotten job. Approaches to the line were completely waterlogged, and one was continually meeting stretcher parties and walking wounded which made going up a very slow and tedious business. C and D Companies, taking over the front line, experienced a heavy barrage after passing the Pimple. This barrage set on fire an ammunition dump near company headquarters and we thought that another Boche attack was coming. However, some of us went ahead and found things all right, and after what seemed an awful long time we were able to send ‘relief complete’ to battalion headquarters.17
Lieutenant Herbert Green, 1/5th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, 150th Brigade, 50th Division
The signs of battle were all around them. This was the battlefield as a flooded charnel house. Bodies were everywhere. Some were ‘fresh meat’, many others were definitely not.
Snag Trench was full of mud and water with bodies sticking out all along. It is in fact no exaggeration when I say that in our part we had to tread from body to body to get past. Dead from all regiments were there, including our division, South Africans, and Jocks of the 9th Division, and hands, arms and legs were sticking out of parados and parapet where the dead had been hastily buried.18
Lieutenant Cuthbert Marley, 1/5th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, 150th Brigade, 50th Division
The front was in a state of complete confusion with stragglers coming in and several wounded soldiers still trapped out in No Man’s Land.
But all that night, whilst trying to reorganise and make a fairly continuous front line, one came across isolated posts of the outgoing battalions who knew nothing of the relief. No Man’s Land was an equally weird sight. Patrols came across wounded men and men just sitting there exhausted and unable to move.19
Lieutenant Herbert Green, 1/5th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, 150th Brigade, 50th Division
Surrounded by corpses and shattered bodies, enduring the relentless pouring rain and the cold that froze them to the very marrow—it seemed nothing could make the situation worse. But it could....
The last straw was when one of the company commanders gallantly arrived at the posts with the rum jar—imagine everyone’s horror when he ‘dished’ it out and the first man who tasted it said it was whale oil.20
Lieutenant Herbert Green, 1/5th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, 150th Brigade, 50th Division
The casualties of this ‘insignificant’ action are difficult to determine, but each and every one caused pain somewhere. It has been estimated that the 1/6th Durhams lost 11 officers killed, wounded or missing, with 34 other ranks dead, 114 wounded and 111 missing—which, of course, usually meant dead. The 1/8th Durhams lost 9 officers killed, wounded or missing, 38 other ranks dead, 100 wounded and 83 missing. Worst of all the 1/9th Durhams paid the full penalty for ‘success’ losing 17 officers killed, wounded or missing, 30 other ranks dead, 250 wounded and 111 missing presumed dead. The 151st Machine Gun Company who accompanied them lost 3 dead, 20 wounded and 8 missing. The dreadful total for the 151st Brigade was nearly 1,000 casualties. So why in the end had the Durhams failed? Lieutenant Colonel Roland Bradford was emphatically not a man to pull his punches. His views were made characteristically plain.
There were many reasons why the 9th DLI was unable to hold its ground. The failure of the troops on the right to reach their objectives and the fact that the division on our left was not attacking caused both flanks of the battalion to be in the air. The positions to be held were very much exposed and the Germans could see all our trenches and control their fire accordingly. It was a local attack and the enemy was able to concentrate his guns on to a small portion of our line. The ground was a sea of mud and it was almost impossible to consolidate our posts. The terribly intense German barrages and the difficult nature of the ground prevented reinforcements from being sent up to help the 9th DLI. Four hundred yards north of the Butte the enemy had a steep bank behind which they were able to assemble without being molested. The terrain was very favourable to a German counter-attack.21
Lieutenant Colonel Roland Bradford, 1/9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, 151st Brigade, 50th Division
It was Bradford’s contention that it was not so much that they had failed, as that the task had been impossible for an isolated battalion within a narrow-front attack against superior forces. After the battle Bradford looked back to see if he could make sense of it all, of why so many lives had been sacrificed in vain.
On looking back at the attack of the 5th of November it seems that the results which would have been gained in the event of success were of doubtful value, and would hardly have been worth the loss which we would suffer. It would have been awkward for us to hold the objectives which would have been badly sited for our defence. The possession of the Butte by the Germans was not an asset to them. From our existing trenches we were able to prevent them from using it as an observation point. The Butte would have been of little use to us for purposes of observation. But the Butte de Warlencourt had become an obsession. Everybody wanted it. It loomed large in the minds of the soldiers in the forward area and they attributed many of their misfortunes to it. The newspaper correspondents talked about ‘that Miniature Gibraltar’. So it had to be taken. It seems that the attack was one of those tempting, and unfortunately at one period frequent, local operations which are so costly and which are rarely worthwhile. But perhaps that is only the narrow view of the regimental officer.22
Lieutenant Colonel Roland Bradford, 1/9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, 151st Brigade, 50th Division
He would receive some personal compensation for his disappointment shortly afterwards when he was awarded a Victoria Cross for his earlier exceptional courage and leadership during an attack in October. Promoted to brigadier, one of the youngest ever in the British Army, he did not live long to enjoy his new rank as he was killed in 1917. He was just 25 when he died.
Actions like the attack of the 151st Brigade on the Butte de Warlencourt on 5 November had no real importance within the context of the huge Somme offensive. However, they surely contained a seed of truth within them—this kind of attack was achieving nothing but swollen casualty lists.
However unpleasant it is to think about, there is one thing that is certain and that is that Napoleon’s ‘fifth element’ viz: ‘mud’ is now victorious and that we shall have to go into winter quarters. By that I don’t mean that we are to sit down and do nothing, but that an offensive on a large scale is out of the question. It is now a great labour to get supplies up to the men in the front trenches, to say nothing of the ammunition for the guns. Guns cannot be moved at all. Men fall into shell holes full of liquid mud and are drowned. Horses stick in the mud and have to be shot. As regards the wounded, it is terrible. They cannot be got back by day in some places and so their sufferings are increased many times. People can have no conception of what this warfare means. We shall win through however in time and this is the one consolation.23
Brigadier Archibald Home, Headquarters, Cavalry Corps
Any change in tactics would be too late for the gallant Durhams. Their wooden commemorative crosses afterwards marked the top of the Butte de Warlencourt, but the choice of the words used may not readily be seen as appropriate; ‘Duke et decorum est pro patria mori.’ After all the horrors and the countless disillusionments of the Somme, it seems that with unintended irony the dead of the Durham Light Infantry were to be considered as an advertisement for the glories of war.
While men died in futile local attacks the main offensive remained stalled by the weather. Every time a new date was set the resumption of rain forced a rethink and the date slipped well into November. Haig was worried by the ever-deteriorating ground conditions and he decreed that Gough’s main attack should not be launched until the ground was dry enough to let the infantry advance with relative freedom of movement, thereby, of course, enabling them to keep pace with the all-important creeping barrage. Not only that, but the weather forecast must also hold the reasonable prospect of fine weather for the
two days following the assault. Finally, after a meeting with Haig’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Launcelot Kiggell and a conference with his corps commanders on 8 November, Gough took the plunge and provisionally scheduled the attack for 13 November—with the proviso that no more heavy rain fell in the interim. During this period Gough was under considerable pressure of the ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ persuasion. Haig was urging Gough forward by pointing out the huge benefits of ending the Somme operations with a crowning success, but at the same time he warned of the serious consequences of failure.
I rode to Toutencourt and saw General Gough. He had been round all the divisions and most of the brigades detailed for the attack. Their commanders all now thought that we had a fair chance of success. He himself recommended that the attack should go on. I told him that a success at this time was much wanted—firstly, on account of the situation in Romania, we must prevent the enemy from withdrawing any divisions from France to that theatre. Next the feeling in Russia is not favourable either to the French or to ourselves. We are thought to be accomplishing little. The German party in Russia spreads these reports. Lastly on account of the Chantilly Conference which meets on Wednesday. The British position will doubtless be much stronger (as memories are short!) if I could appear there on the top of the capture of Beaumont Hamel for instance, and 3,000 German prisoners. It would show, too, that we had no intention of ceasing to press the enemy on the Somme. But the necessity for a success must not blind our eyes to the difficulties of ground and weather. Nothing is so costly as a failure! But I am ready to run reasonable risks. I then discussed with Gough what these risks were, and why he thought our chances of success were good. Finally, I decided that the Fifth Army should attack tomorrow.24
General Sir Douglas Haig, General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force
So it was that after two relatively dry days, Gough fixed the time of the attack for 0545 on 13 November. The II Corps, under the command of Lieutenant General C.W.Jacob, was to drive forward from the Schwaben Redoubt attacking north towards St Pierre Divion and thereby to clear the south bank of the river Ancre. The V Corps (3rd, 2nd, 51st and 63rd Divisions), commanded by Lieutenant General E.A. Fanshawe, was to attack along the front from Serre to Beaucourt north of the river Ancre where it would establish a common front line with the II Corps. This seemed an awesomely difficult proposition. They were facing the very defences that had withstood all that could be thrown at them on l July.
How had the situation changed? What hope could they have of success at this late date in the campaign? There was, in truth, a certain amount of the usual optimism in the preconceptions of Gough and his commanders. It was assumed that the Germans, battered by their collective experiences on the Somme over the last five months, would not be capable of mounting a stern resistance. The artillery barrage would encompass all that had been so painfully learnt with the creeping barrage and counter-battery arrangements at the centre of British plans. In addition, assiduous sapping had drastically narrowed the width of No Man’s Land while the Royal Engineers had revisited their old haunts opposite Beaumont Hamel and Serre. New mines were driven out to the old mine crater on Hawthorn Ridge while the Russian saps across No Man’s Land were rebored and once again ready for use. This time all would be well....
The divisions designated for the attack prepared themselves as best they could for the task in hand. When units arrived on the Somme front late on in the campaign, it was as if they were coming to a strange new world. For the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division, which really was fresh from the very different horrors of Gallipoli, this change was even more marked, and there was a prolonged period of acclimatisation before it was considered ready to be properly deployed in action. The veterans of the war against Turkey were stunned at the relative largesse encountered as they entered the war on the decisive front as opposed to their previous sideshow.
Then came the first revelation of what had been going on while we were starving in Gallipoli. We had come to a land of plenty. From tip to toe we were re-equipped; new transport, new machine guns, new rifles, new uniforms, new generals. At Gallipoli we had made our own bombs out of jam tins; in France we were given whole cases of new and deadly bombs, not more than 10 per cent defective, to play with. France was not the East—we were told proudly, and again and again. Everything had to be done properly or not at all. No hurried rush to the line, but a steady progress of training behind the lines, with courses for officers and instructional visits to the line. Then, in due course, we might be allowed to hold a small piece of the line of our own. But only if we were very, very good.25
Captain Douglas Jerrold, Hawke Battalion, 189th Brigade, 63rd (Royal Naval) Division
The madness of the Somme had crept up on the men serving there month in and month out. The incremental developments of total war in its rawest form had slowly changed their views of what was normal or acceptable. The newcomers looked on the battlefield with baffled amazement.
The Somme area was a God-forsaken battleground created by earnest staff officers now slightly hysterical about their still incomplete labours. An atmosphere of over-elaborated brusque inefficiency pervaded the hinterland of slaughter. Too many men, too many officers, far too many generals, and a thousand times too many jacks-in-office, railway transport officers, town majors, assistant provost marshals, traffic control officers, laundry officers, liaison officers, railway experts and endless seas of mud. And no more estaminets. This was war.26
Captain Douglas Jerrold, Hawke Battalion, 189th Brigade, 63rd (Royal Naval) Division
When its original divisional commander was wounded the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division was given a new man rooted in this strange new world. It is fair to say that Major General Cameron Shute did not make a good impression with his new charges. There was an immediate cultural clash between what he, as a long-standing regular soldier considered acceptable, and the distinctly slapdash naval traditions of the Royal Naval Division. Shute had never been a man to suffer fools gladly and certainly never courted popularity, as his officers in his previous command of the 59th Brigade in the 20th (Light) Division could easily testify.
Shute was another of those men who had the misfortune to soldier in the wrong sort of army. Had he been a German or Frenchmen he might have become Commander-in-Chief, whereas it was only his indomitable tenacity coupled with unquestionable military ability, which enabled him with difficulty to overcome unpopularity. What a strange man he was; brutal and merciless with fools, he rarely allowed merit to pass without praise or reward. Always sure of himself, knowing exactly what was wanted, he was never at a loss for a decision even in the moments of the greatest stress. One felt that as long as the brigade was in his hands no harm would come to it. It is a pity we do not have more generals like him.27
Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Bodley, 10th Battalion, Rifle Brigade, 59th Brigade, 20th Division
The Royal Naval Division had originally been formed from naval reservists by the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill in 1914. Although most of the original reservist sea-dogs had long since departed, eroded away by the severe casualties in Gallipoli and the inevitable recalls to sea service, they still affected a large number of nautical habits in a manner guaranteed to infuriate any ‘landlubber’. It was a situation that might have been designed to irritate the choleric Shute, who considered them not only pretentious but also dangerously inefficient and in this he may well have been right. Although it had lost many of its ‘glitterati’ in the Dardanelles, the RND still had several louche young officers who regarded themselves as the cultural elite of their generation. Captain Douglas Jerrold, the adjutant of the Hawke Battalion, was one such literary gentleman, with his allegiances tending to the New Georgian School. There was also the wonderful light poet and all-round intellectual Captain A.P. Herbert, and the insouciant figure of Captain George Peckham, who seems to have specialised in ‘winding up’ those in authority to deadly effect. Peckham was a man who truly deser
ves to be remembered by posterity.
I was standing in a communication trench talking to George Peckham about everything in the world except the war, when we were surprised by the general’s arrival. Foolishly, we were standing in a blind corner and there was no avenue of escape. A rain of questions descended, which we were fortunately able to answer, and all seemed to be going well. Alas, the general had a habit when standing still of striking the ground rather forcibly with the point of his walking stick. Our trenches were innocent of duckboards and more than ankle-deep in mud. The general’s stick went in deeper and deeper, till suddenly it struck something hard. Instantly there was an ominous bristling. After much kicking and scraping a perfectly good box of small-arms ammunition was revealed. ‘Ammunition boxes lining the communications trenches,’ the general exclaimed, drafting out loud another report to corps headquarters on the iniquities of the Navy. ‘Good God, Sir,’ cried George Peckham, with a credible imitation of pietistic, but tolerant horror, ‘I believe you’re right!’ He stood looking at the general, who was now quite white with rage, as if he were a lunatic to be humoured and then, on some pretext or other, shown off the premises. And you were deliberately standing there trying to conceal it from me. It’s a damned disgrace!’ ‘Good God, Sir,’ says George with a broad smile, ‘If I’d known you were coming, this is the last place on earth where I should have been standing!’ 28
Captain Douglas Jerrold, Hawke Battalion, 189th Brigade, 63rd (Royal Naval) Division
Major General Shute was not to be deflected by such insults. When it eventually emerged that the entire communication trench was paved with ammunition boxes he was almost incandescent with fury. In Captain Jerrold’s considered view the boxes must have been dumped by some Army working party. The row that ensued went on for some time. Shute made an only slightly better impression on the men of the Hood Battalion when he inspected them.