None of this stopped Haig from placing Rawlinson at the helm of Fourth Army in early 1916. Both had studied military history, possessed enquiring minds and had collaborated together as army and subordinate corps commander throughout 1915, as well as earlier in their careers. Haig saw Rawlinson as the best man to command Fourth Army:53 he was an experienced campaigner with proven staff skills and, particularly after Haig saved him from being sent home following the Davies incident, appeared to be compliant and controllable. It was at Haig’s behest that Rawlinson began planning Fourth Army’s attack on the Somme.
Rawlinson had long seen artillery as central to securing battlefield victory for his infantry. This was the case ahead of Neuve Chapelle, for instance, when Rawlinson wrote: ‘An undertaking such as that which is under consideration depends for its success almost entirely on the correct and efficient employment of the artillery. It is primarily an artillery operation and if the artillery cannot crush and demoralise the enemy’s infantry by their fire effect the enterprise will not succeed.’54 But Haig had intervened with much more ambitious goals for Neuve Chapelle and then later on Loos. While both battles were failures, they very much confirmed to Rawlinson that the correct path forward was applying ‘bite-and-hold’ tactics to seize and defend limited portions of enemy territory.55 This exercise would then be repeated time and again, slowly grinding the enemy back and forcing him into costly counterattacks. ‘If we had not tried to do too much [at Neuve Chapelle] our losses would have been one quarter what they were and we should have gained just as much ground[,] but the idea of pushing through the Cav[alry] . . . was the origin of our heavy losses.’56 Rawlinson saw these repeated bite-and-hold battles as the solution to the Western Front conundrum, ahead of Haig’s preponderance for operations with much wider objectives, and realised this type of fighting required scientific gunnery, ample ammunition and meticulous planning, and even then was unlikely to bring about an end to the trench deadlock swiftly.57
Rawlinson was far from alone in this thinking. His views were shared by General Marie-Emile Fayolle, commander of the French Sixth Army, who had arrived at the following conclusion:
We have understood that we cannot run around like madmen in the successive enemy positions. Doctrine is taking shape. If there are so many defensive positions, there will need to be as many battles, succeeding each other as rapidly as possible. Each one needs to be organised anew, with a new artillery preparation. If one goes too quickly, one risks a check. If one goes too slowly, the enemy has time to construct successive defensive lines. That is the problem, and it is extremely difficult.58
As it turned out, though, Rawlinson’s operational thinking going into 1916 differed strikingly from Haig’s, despite it being based on the same battles.
Haig had taken a very different set of lessons from the bigger British battles of 1915, Neuve Chapelle and Loos, which together had run up about 70,000 British casualties against total German losses of at least 36,000. In both cases Haig had favoured more ambitious objectives than Rawlinson. Ahead of Neuve Chapelle, for instance, Haig commented in his diary that the battle was a ‘serious offensive movement with the object of breaking the German line and consequently our advance is to be pushed vigorously. Very likely an operation of considerable magnitude may result.’59 Around the village of Neuve Chapelle, in March 1915, four divisions of Rawlinson’s IV Corps, in Haig’s First Army, broke into the German defensive line, and came within an ace of breaking through it.60 Loos, six months later, was the British army’s first truly large-scale offensive operation. It comprised six British divisions of Haig’s I and IV Corps. Once again, the initial British break into the German positions went undeveloped. At both battles the initial progress was slowed by casualty-heavy, localised fighting as the enemy’s defensive line stiffened, which eventually led to the calling off of the attacks. At Loos, for example, Haig believed that but for the mishandling of reserves by Field Marshal French — they had been too far back to exploit the initial success and used in a piecemeal fashion — it would have been possible to break through the German positions and into the open ground beyond. Instead, the enemy was allowed time to reinforce and strengthen his defensive lines.61 Going into 1916, he concluded Rawlinson-style biteand-hold battles would not produce an end to the Western Front stalemate in and of themselves. Haig firmly believed the German front defensive line could be pierced, given appropriate planning and artillery, and that thereafter speed of advance and commitment of reserves to exploit initial successes were the keys to defeating the enemy.62
On this latter point, Haig envisaged that battle would develop through four successive stages. It would begin with manoeuvring for position, followed by wearing out the enemy and drawing in his reserves, then delivering a decisive blow to break the enemy’s resistance and finally winning victory.63 Whereas Rawlinson held the opinion that fighting on the Western Front was still at the wearing-out stage, Haig very much believed that the time for decisive action was at hand.
RAWLINSON MOVED INTO his new headquarters — a chateau at Querrieu, about five miles east of the city of Amiens — as a veil of snow descended on the village’s white-walled cottages and surrounding fields. He immediately began work on his Somme attack plan. Even before arriving, Rawlinson and his retinue of staff officers had been out and about, assessing Fourth Army’s positions on the Somme and, from afar, those held by the German army opposite. He wrote in his diary:
We do not want to waste our strength in minor and premature operations, but to save up all the troops and ammunition for a really big effort in the summer, when all the Allies can strike simultaneously, and with their full power. Our new front consists of fine rolling country, rather like Salisbury Plain. It has great possibilities, and is a very pleasant change from the mud flats of Flanders.64
Rawlinson was initially upbeat about the ground north of the River Somme and its suitability for a large-scale attack in mid-1916. Artillery observation was ‘excellent’ and there was ‘an unlimited number of artillery positons well covered from view — within 2000 yards of our present line & the facilities for assembling the assaulting infantry columns behind the trench line are the best I have seen anywhere.’65 The barbed-wire coils protecting the German front-line position were of good quality, though those fronting positions further back were weaker.66 There was also great potential for artillery enfilade into the German lines.67
The British army’s positions north of the Somme crisscrossed about 15 miles of gentle spurs and valleys. Lieutenant-General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Third Army looked across at the sharp Gommecourt salient. To the south, a die-straight road running from Albert northeast to Bapaume passed obliquely through the sector held by Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, crossing its front line at roughly the halfway mark, between the villages of Ovillers and La Boisselle. To the north, past the willow-lined banks of the marshy River Ancre valley and long before Gommecourt, the red-brick villages of Serre and Beaumont Hamel were hemmed in by the German lines, with gently rising land beyond. South of the slowmoving Ancre, the terrain climbed sharply into the Thiepval–Morval ridge, in places 500 feet above sea level, which ran northwest–southeast for over eight miles. This ridge was entirely in German hands and was crowned by Pozières village on the old Roman road linking Albert and Bapaume, which was trod by Julius Caesar’s legions in 54 BC. Fourth Army’s front-line trench followed a slightly oblique line to the ridge as it progressed southeast from around Thiepval, the gap between it and the ridge steadily widening with each successive yard. Rawlinson’s southern-most positions were almost entirely on or facing the ridge’s lower foothills, and overlooked by the enemy’s front line, which ran over the Thiepval, Ovillers, La Boisselle, Fricourt and Mametz Spurs, at the western end of the Mametz–Montauban ridge, and into the valleys between, and incorporated the fortified farming hamlets after which they were named. Any British attack on the Somme was guaranteed to be uphill, against German positions that overlooked all approaches.
Haig later reflected
on the German defences facing his armies:
The first and second [trench] systems each consisted of several lines of deep trenches, well provided with bomb-proof shelters and with numerous communication trenches connecting them. The front of the trenches in each system was protected by wire entanglements, many of them in two belts forty yards broad, built of iron stakes interlaced with barbed wire, [with the core] often almost as thick as a man’s finger.
The numerous woods and villages in and between these systems of defence had been turned into veritable fortresses. . . . The salients in the enemy’s line, from which he could bring enfilade fire across his front, were made into self-contained forts, and often protected by mine fields; while strong redoubts [defensive fortifications equipped with numerous machine guns] and concrete machine-gun emplacements had been constructed in positions from which he could sweep his own trenches should these be taken. The ground lent itself to good artillery observation on the enemy’s part, and he had skilfully arranged for crossfire by his guns.
These various systems of defence, with the fortified localities and other supporting points between them, were cunningly sited to afford each other mutual assistance and to admit of the utmost possible development of enfilade and flanking fire by machine guns and artillery. They formed, in short, not merely a series of successive lines, but one composite system of enormous depth and strength. Behind his second system of trenches, in addition to woods, villages and other strong points prepared for defence, the enemy had several other lines already completed; and we had learnt from aeroplane reconnaissance that he was hard at work improving and strengthening these and digging fresh ones between them, and still further back.68
These were impressive, carefully sited defences with formidable firepower that required considerable thought, preparation, materiel and men even to be broken into, let alone broken through.
Rawlinson’s initial optimism about a Somme offensive was now tempered by a gloomy Kitchener, who was suspicious of shifting French intentions in light of Verdun. They met in Paris at the end of March, Rawlinson having just recovered from a bout of influenza. The French refusal to wind down operations in Salonika had annoyed Kitchener, who was convinced the French wanted to palm off the main burden of Western Front fighting on the British.69 Kitchener — who would meet a watery North Sea death in June when the Russia-bound HMS Hampshire struck a mine off the Orkney Islands — was opposed to a big attack on the Somme and preferred limited offensives that would run up German casualties. He doubted the war would be over in 1916, and said it would be unwise for Haig’s armies to launch a large-scale offensive alone and incur heavy casualties in the process.70 ‘There is a good deal in what he says,’ noted Rawlinson later, adding that Kitchener would have to ‘talk strongly’ to Haig, who had already ‘set his mind on a large offensive here north of the Somme.’71 The next day, 31 March, Rawlinson returned to Querrieu and found that his chief of staff, Major-General Archibald Montgomery, had drafted a plan for a bite-and-hold offensive, which was sent to Haig on 3 April. Rawlinson explained his thinking:
All my Corps Commanders are opposed to the unlimited [objective style of attack favoured by Haig]. After what K[itchener] said yesterday I am inclined to think that we should be wiser to adopt the limited [objective] one and to look to winning the war in 1917, not in 1916. If K[itchener] cannot replace our losses we should be foolish to incur them without a certainty of success which I cannot guarantee.72
Rawlinson’s preference for bite-and-hold operations always influenced his Somme thinking, and was reinforced by Kitchener’s caution, a growing appreciation of the German defences opposite his army and valid concerns over the potential costs involved without any certainty of securing success.
Rawlinson’s proposal was for an advance on a frontage of about 20,000 yards (11.4 miles) to a depth of 2000–5000 yards.73 These figures were determined by the 200 heavy artillery howitzers available, according to a ratio of one barrel for every 100 yards.74 Rawlinson selected the undulating ground between Serre and Maricourt — essentially the entire frontage of his army — as suitable, also taking into account observation over the German front defensive position, the number of troops and reserves available and required, flank protection and the extent of the enemy’s defences.75 As the plan stated: ‘The high ground about Pozières is most important, as it gives the enemy a marked advantage in command and observation and covers from view a considerable part of his second line of defences.’76 Rawlinson noted the string of fortified villages built into the German first defensive position, along with the wire entanglements fronting it, and that these were not so well developed before the second defensive position. ‘The latter is at a distance varying from 2000 to 5000 yards behind the front system. Parts of it, though not actually out of range of our guns, will be difficult to deal with, as they are only observable from the air.’77
Rawlinson’s plan was based on his earlier assessment of the potential battlefield, the pitfalls he likely saw at that time and the lessons he had taken forward from 1915.78 At the heart of his pitch were the questions of attack structure and artillery preparation. The first considered whether to rush the enemy’s defences in a single attack, as at Loos, or deliver a two-phase operation. The second was whether to precede the attack with an intense bombardment of 5–6 hours, or a longer one of 48–72 hours.79 After ‘careful’ consideration, and after weighing up the relative merits and weaknesses of either proposition, Rawlinson opted for a two-phase attack prefaced with a 50–60-hour bombardment.80 He saw a rush-style attack as risky and akin to a gamble.81 He then, in his proposal to Haig, paraphrased Kitchener’s argument for a wearing-out battle:
Our object rather seems to be to kill as many Germans as possible with the least loss to ourselves, and the best way to do this appears to me to be to seize points of tactical importance which will provide us with good observation and which we may feel quite certain the Germans will counter-attack. These points to be, not only one of special tactical importance with a view to a further advance, but to be such that the Germans will be compelled to counter-attack them under disadvantages likely to conduce to heavy losses, which we can only ensure if these tactical points are not too far distant from our gun positions.82
Rawlinson was unsurprisingly espousing a bite-and-hold operation, a plan attuned to the operational thinking of cigar-chomping Foch.
Although favouring an attack north of Arras, Foch had got on with planning an operation south of the Somme involving 35-plus divisions, as instructed by Joffre.83 The silver-headed general, who like Joffre hailed from the Pyrenees, had learned much from the Artois and Champagne battles of 1915. Reversing his pre-war love affair with the power of the offensive, he now believed the limitations of offensive technology meant that breaking through the German lines — as opposed to breaking into them — was not immediately possible.84 Foch, like Rawlinson and Generals Fayolle and Philippe Pétain (the latter the commander of the French Second Army at Verdun), further believed offensives of attrition needed to be progressed in methodical, limited-objective steps.85 All four had concluded that robust artillery support was essential to the infantry’s success, from deciding the breadth of the attack, to the depth of objectives and the batteries’ roles in either destroying or suppressing German gunners before and during battle.86 Foch insisted artillery be applied according to tactical tasks and where it was needed most, rather than being spread thinly across a wide area to a somewhat crude ratio of yards per barrel, as Fourth Army did.87 Foch and Rawlinson saw more value in repeated break-in battles than in those that chased a breakthrough from the outset, but differed when it came to the best method of deploying artillery to support an attack.88
As it turned out, Rawlinson’s plan did not survive first contact with Haig, who wrote:
I think we can do better than this by aiming at getting as large a combined force of French and British across the Somme and fighting the Enemy in the open! With this end, a manoeuvre on the part of Fourth Army is nece
ssary. Roughly, the plan should be: establish our left on the ridge about Serre, and operate eastwards to capture Pozières–Combles Ridges. . . . If we are lucky in surprising and capturing Serre fairly rapidly, then mounted troops and machine-guns should at once be sent to occupy Miraumont and Grandcourt, and operate so as to take the enemy’s defences towards Thiepval in reverse.89
Haig thought Rawlinson and Montgomery’s plan showed no thought of reasoned distribution of troops, strategy or surprise.90 He was really saying that in his eyes they lacked imagination and their idea was not ambitious enough. A more optimistic Haig — inspired by Joffre, who, contrary to his own generals, believed the German front and second positions could be pierced in a first assault — contemplated a breakthrough, followed by a wheel and sweep (clean-up) behind the German front.91 By contrast, Rawlinson was pushing for an operation comprising deliberate stages and resembling the slow and sure nature of siege warfare.92 Haig further thought the proposed long bombardment would signpost an attack to the enemy, and preferred the surprise and morale-busting qualities of a much shorter one. This divergence in thinking between Haig and Rawlinson was nothing less than fundamental, but the C-in-C was calling the shots and immediately demanded a rewrite from his Fourth Army commander.
HAIG AND JOFFRE spent much of March and April thrashing out the strategic details of the offensive, and how their armies might best co-operate. Joffre favoured a combined attack in both time and place, which threw the importance of the British capture of the Mametz–Montauban–La Briqueterie ridgeline into relief for its value as flank protection for Fourth Army at the southern end of its sector, and in facilitating the French advance between there and the River Somme. Subsequent attacks would push the line towards the Bapaume–Péronne road, about five miles behind the German front line and also beyond the Thiepval–Morval Ridge.
First day of the Somme Page 4
