Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  There were limits to Lady Ottoline’s radicalism. ‘Gerald Shove thought it necessary to try and organize a Union among the farm labourers,’ she recalled. ‘But the old hands merely shook their heads and thought they were well enough off as they were. It was hardly a suitable action for him to do, considering that he himself did the minimum of work and received good wages and a comfortable house.’50 Shove, presumably, had noted the less comfortable conditions in which those who really were doing farm work had to live; his success in starting an anti-capitalist revolution was as successful as his poultry management. Not all the conscientious objectors made a point of being idle, like the Bloomsberries: one, a baker by trade whose pacifism was rooted in his devoutly religious views, went at five o’clock each morning to help at the village bakery before his day on the farm. Apart from him, the other Garsington refugees ‘were naturally unpopular in the village’, and in the autumn of 1916 a reporter arrived, intending ‘to write an article exposing these “slackers” and “bogus” farm workers.’ He was seen off by the threat of a libel action from Morrell, who spent much of his time giving evidence to tribunals for such as the Stracheys, Bunny Garnett and Duncan Grant, questionable conscientious objectors whose self-obsession was sufficient armour against any sense of shame that they were relying on millions of other men to keep German bayonets out of their bellies.

  III

  The decision to launch a great offensive on the Western Front in the spring or summer of 1916 had been taken on 28 December 1915, to allow a morale-boosting British initiative after the debacle in the Dardanelles. Among those directing the war there was no unanimity that it should happen: according to Hankey, ‘Kitchener, in January, did not intend, if he could help it, that a great and prolonged offensive should be embarked upon.’51 The then war secretary wanted ‘attrition’ to wear Germany down and grind it into submission. However, the remorseless German assault on the French at Verdun forced the issue: the fire of the German army would be drawn by an attack in the British sector. Thus, on 7 April, Asquith sanctioned Haig to implement what, on 1 July, became the Battle of the Somme. Kitchener informed Haig in person when the General visited London on 14 April.

  Haig was a scion of the Scottish whisky firm; his father drank himself to death. He had spent three years at Oxford (he left without a degree, but with a reputation as an accomplished horseman) and passed out first from Sandhurst. He had joined the cavalry and served in India, the Sudan and South Africa, and entered the Staff College at his second attempt. Some of his biographers have blamed the Staff College’s doctrinaire teaching for Haig’s inability to think originally, and all that would entail when he ran the BEF. He spent three years in Whitehall from 1906 to 1909 on the General Staff, where he learned to be an office politician and, in the view of some of his peers, exerted a surprisingly strong influence over French, his senior by some years. Thinking along tramlines, he was hard for the subtle Asquith to fathom; always immaculate in turnout and with the quality of capax imperii, he was too smooth and sure of himself for Lloyd George, who disliked him but was beguiled by him. He distrusted politicians, yet saw the need for an impressive victory to get them off his back – and win the war.

  Haig’s planned attack has been seared into the British collective memory: days of preliminary bombardment to smash the German trenches, wire and machine-gun posts to smithereens: then an ‘army of pursuit’ marching through the wreckage, destroying enemy communications, putting it to flight and ending the stalemate of trench warfare.52 Haig was so sure mobile warfare would resume that he urged Robertson to reopen recruiting for the cavalry.53 Some military planners pinned their hopes on the development of the tank, which they predicted would change warfare and allow a breakthrough with less loss of life. However, the tank project, despite the enthusiastic support of Lloyd George, was nowhere near sufficiently advanced for these machines to join the required early offensive. They were first used on the Somme on 15 September, but to little effect. Around fifty were deployed in the first instance, but only thirty-two made it to the action; fourteen of those broke down and of the remaining eighteen only nine could go fast enough to keep up with the infantry. When it came it was another setback, and increased what had by then become severe tensions between Whitehall and the General Staff, who, it was felt, had used them in unsuitable conditions.

  Robertson had consulted Haig in France on 25 May 1916 about whether Britain should accede to a request from the French to attack in early July, to relieve pressure on Verdun. The alternative was waiting until mid-August, when more trained men would have been sent to France. Haig said unequivocally that support for the French had to come sooner rather than later. Joffre believed the latest feasible date was 1 July. Hankey recalled that critics were ‘derisive’ of Haig’s plans to attack the entrenched German army on the Somme; but such derision as was voiced was, tragically, insufficient to prevent the offensive’s execution.54

  Lloyd George had cited Ypres, where a general ‘had massed the men in the front trenches and the Germans simply slaughtered them with shell-fire without their being able to do anything.’55 Early in June Churchill, like Lloyd George, had told Scott he was ‘strongly opposed to our undertaking a great offensive.’56 His reasons were that ‘we could not get through the elaborately prepared German positions. We might create a salient; with good luck we might convert the salient into “a sleeve”. But when we advanced up this “pipe” we should be met at the end by fresh positions and fresh troops and be attacked at the same time from both flanks.’ He thought it would be far better to encourage the Germans to advance, and then entrap them.

  Haig told Joffre an offensive would be ready from 15 June, and the initial plan was to launch it on the 29th; it was postponed by two days because of a better weather forecast. The bombardment designed to smash the German trench system began on 24 June; but despite its length and intensity, it used just 500 heavy guns, and much of the ordnance fired was shrapnel, not high explosive. On 28 June, reflecting concern at home, Esher wrote to Haig: ‘You must, my dear Douglas, stimulate a little Press Propaganda here, while these great operations are in progress. Some intelligent young fellow should be turned on to telephone through … every night giving a resumé of operations … every two or three days a Liaison officer should bring down some rather extended little story, which can be deftly used here.’57 Esher had a dim view of the domestic propaganda operation – ‘no one knows where it is, or who has charge of it’ – and warned Haig that ‘it may at any moment be tainted by views that are not yours.’

  On the evening of 30 June Haig noted that ‘with God’s help, I feel hopeful.’ At 7.30 a.m. on the sunny morning of 1 July, the British offensive opened on the Somme. The pessimistic predictions based on Ypres were proved correct; history would repeat itself on a catastrophic scale. Haig’s God was absent; and although when the battle ground to a halt four and a half months later the German war machine had suffered serious damage, it began with the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. The effects changed the political course of the war. It finished without Haig having achieved his objectives, and, whatever damage it had inflicted upon the Germans – Ludendorff wrote that by the end of 1916 ‘the German Army had been fought to a standstill and was utterly worn out’ – the British Army was badly crippled.58

  The bombardment could be heard in Kent, on Hampstead Heath and as far away as villages in north Essex. ‘All morning the Flanders (as it is supposed) guns have been booming forth, making the house quiver at times and shaking window sashes,’ Andrew Clark recorded in his diary, from his parish between Braintree and Chelmsford. Bulletins announcing the offensive and claiming a British advance were put up in post offices later that Saturday. Monday’s papers spoke of up to 3,000 enemy prisoners taken and the battlefield littered with German dead; they quoted Boy’s Own Paper platitudes from official reports of British progress, without mention of British deaths. The public’s initial impression was that the fighting was fierce, but the Germans were on the
run. On 4 July a Times correspondent wrote that ‘an exceptionally large proportion of our casualties are very slight wounds’, but he did add that the infantry had sustained ‘considerable losses’ where the bombardment had not broken the barbed wire.59 ‘There can be no praise too high for the gallantry of our men,’ he added. In fact, Haig’s belief that the barbed wire outside the German trenches would have been shredded and the machine guns knocked out was wrong. The guns wiped out line after line of British soldiers.

  Within a week the public realised the Battle of the Somme had entailed great loss of life. As some towns heard rumours of whole battalions being wiped out, local newspaper offices had soldiers’ families turning up seeking further news. The rumours too often had substance: the Accrington Pals lost 585 men – 235 killed and 350 wounded – out of 700 who went ‘over the top’ on 1 July; around 2,250 of the Tyneside Scottish were killed, wounded or missing out of about 3,000; the 1st and 2nd Bradford Pals, around 2,000 men, suffered 1,770 casualties in the first hour of fighting. Newspapers could not print the details. Correspondents were confined by state censorship; they could mention British wounded, but that was as bad as it got. Philip Gibbs of the Daily Chronicle recorded: ‘My dispatches tell the truth. There is not a word, I vow, of conscious falsehood in them … but they do not tell all the truth.’60 Nor was it just the censor he was considering. ‘I have had to spare the feelings of the men and women who have sons and husbands still fighting in France.’ As the horrors multiplied, men on leave, or home wounded, censored themselves for similar reasons, so the public were slow to understand how terrible matters were.

  It is believed that on the first day alone 19,026 men were killed and another 38,200 wounded, roughly one-seventh of the total casualties in 140 days of the battle.61 Even beforehand politicians had been concerned about the effect of the number of casualties under Haig’s command. Long had written to Law on 7 May: ‘Have you noticed the steady and appalling increase in the death roll in France? Due no doubt in part to the increase in our front: but not wholly. I never believed that Sir D Haig was the right man to be C-in-C, and I told the PM so at the time.’62

  Haig himself, writing on 1 July, seemed clueless about how dreadful British losses had been. Early reports, he noted, seemed ‘most satisfactory’.63 A visit to a casualty clearing station the next day found the wounded in ‘wonderful spirits’. Even though his staff had no idea of the total casualties – the Adjutant General’s estimate of 40,000 by the second day was an underestimation of at least 20,000 – Haig remained remarkably sanguine. Forty thousand, he wrote, ‘cannot be considered severe in view of the numbers engaged, and the length of front attacked.’ He was habitually optimistic, used to boosting morale; either his subordinates joined in a collective delusion, or they simply could not compute, in the literal and metaphorical sense, the sheer scale of the disaster.

  Esher, in France, gripped reality better than Haig. He wrote on 9 July that ‘the total casualties in the first day were about 67,000 [men] and 3,000 officers. Laurence [Burgis, Esher’s former secretary], who came from Hermaville to lunch at Amiens and tea here [Beauquesne, north of Amiens, where Esher was based], asked about casualties, and quoted the above figures. I said no-one here mentioned such things, and he might say that I told him that anyone who spoke of casualties would probably be degomméd. This is the rock ahead in London, where there must be much gossip on this subject.’64 Highly protective of Haig, Esher worried that if there was such talk in London people would ask: ‘Whose fault is it?’ It is no surprise that H. G. Wells would write in 1918 that ‘the British army is at present commanded by oldish men who are manifestly of not more than mediocre intelligence, and who have no knowledge of this new sort of war that has arisen.’65

  On 3 July – the day before Asquith confirmed his appointment – Lloyd George discussed the offensive with Hankey and Balfour. Hankey noted that it ‘appears to have almost completely failed, with very heavy losses.’66 There was no doubt in his mind why. ‘To deliver a frontal attack on an entrenched force provided with every possible defensive organisation violates every military principle.’ The tactics had been to send closely packed ranks of men towards the Germans, moving relatively slowly as each carried 66 pounds of kit, offering an easy target for the proliferating German machine guns. Lloyd George agreed with Hankey, and it would flavour his estimate of Haig for the rest of the war. Haig was too stubborn to change tactics, so the dead kept piling up. Robertson warned him on 7 July that his interests would be served by sending the CIGS ‘a short letter which I could read to the War Committee’ outlining the successes so far.67 Some politicians were less convinced of this so-called success, taking events as an argument – which would continue until the Armistice – to seek a strategy other than defeating Germany on the Western Front. Churchill told Riddell the Somme was another example of the government’s pitiful management of the war. ‘They have engaged in the offensive on the West because they can justify the proceeding by saying we were compelled [by the French] to act as we did.’68

  The bad news dripped through as the thousands of telegrams (for the families of officers) and letters (for those of NCOs and other ranks) went to the army of bereaved across the kingdom throughout July. On 7 July The Times published a list of forty officers killed on 1 July, and an account of the heroics of the Ulster Division – Carson’s Ulster Volunteers of 1914 – that included the admission that ‘the Ulster Division has lost very heavily’.69 This was a rare mention of the effect of the battle on the British Army: the coverage was dominated by accounts of the drubbing Fritz was taking. There was then a separate list of some Ulster officers who had died.

  Soon the lists lengthened, and there was room only to list those with commissions; either stunned or resolute, the public generally held its nerve. A Miss Llewellyn of Sheffield, a schoolgirl at the time, recalled: ‘There were sheets and sheets in the paper of dead and wounded with photographs where they could get them of men. Of course everybody rushed to the paper every day to see if there was anyone they knew … There were numerous services in churches. It was a very, very sad time – practically everybody was in mourning. People were in deep black, the men if they couldn’t wear black wore black armbands as a mark of respect.’70 Over the next four months the ubiquity of death left no one in doubt of what the nation had suffered, even if the government remained deliberately vague about the calamitous losses. The Revd Andrew Clark would note on 30 October that a Chelmsford department store, J. G. Bond, ‘said this forenoon that the mourning orders during the last three months had been overwhelming. They cannot get in materials fast enough to meet the demand.’71

  By 14 July, two-thirds of a page of The Times was devoted to the names of a thousand other ranks who had been killed, and half a page of small print recorded casualties among officers. Censored news reports remained misleadingly upbeat. By the following week the lists of casualties from other ranks numbered around 2,000 names a day: they ran without comment on their scale, but no one could doubt that the great offensive had had a cost unprecedented in the conflict, or indeed in any other. On 31 July The Times’s casualty list included 580 officers and 5,770 men, covering two pages of the broadsheet in tiny print: during August there were lists of 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 casualties a day.

  Why were the public so resilient to this slaughter – to the hecatomb of sons, brothers, husbands and fathers who, suddenly, were never coming home? Part of the reason was that ever since the Marne in August 1914 the relentless roll of casualty lists had hardened nerves. Now, although the lists were on an unprecedented scale, people were at least used to seeing them. As early as May 1915 The Times, printing almost daily casualty lists from France and the Dardanelles, had warned its readers against losing a sense of perspective about the sheer numbers of dead through becoming inured to them.72 The misleadingly optimistic tone of the heavily censored news also prevented morale from fracturing. However, even Gallipoli and the debacle at Loos had been inadequate preparation for the sheer scale of w
hat was now, day by day, being reported from the Somme.

  Countless letters from soldiers at the front testify to another reason why the public found it so hard to take in the scale of the horror on the Somme: that comparatively few were honest in their descriptions of what went on. Mail was censored, so there were limits on what could be put on paper. Even had there not been, it appears to have been the instinct of many soldiers to spare their families the details of what they had witnessed. Also, because most soldiers saw only a small section of the front, they were often themselves ignorant of how bad matters were over many sections of trenches and a number of miles: such awareness was confined to their senior officers. There was a reluctance – though this often declined over time – to talk too candidly to friends and family when home on leave, similarly to spare their sensibilities, but also because of an incipient doubt that those who had not been in the trenches could ever understand what it had been like: much of it was beyond the abilities of even the most articulate of soldiers to convey, as many of those who wrote about the war in the years after it were at pains to stress. There was also a contemporary culture of manliness, which many soldiers felt they had affirmed and endorsed by volunteering (and the army on the Somme, at the start of the battle, was entirely volunteers), and from which for their own morale and self-esteem they were reluctant to depart, especially with those closest to them, for fear of deepening their family’s worries.

  Perhaps, too, those who would die had prepared their families, as well as themselves. Stephen Hewett, an Oxford classicist, writing to his former tutor ‘Sligger’ Urquhart on 15 July 1916, a week before he was killed, said, as his regiment marched towards the line: ‘We shall soon be earning either a big head-line or a place in the casualty-list.’73 Writing to another friend the next day he observed that ‘without disclosing any military secrets, I may say that we have arrived at a time when anyone who has outstanding debts of letters must settle up, and that at once.’74 Four days before he died he told one of his sisters that ‘if we have to suffer the heaviest losses, and even have a hard time for the rest of our lives, we should not consider ourselves unlucky … we have proved our own age equal in heroism and romance to any age in history’.75 He wrote to another sister that if death came the action preceding it would be ‘one moment of glory’.76