Predictably, the selection of rich, fresh food available behind the lines had consequences for stomachs no longer used to it. Veterans later politely told of suffering from diarrhoea as a result, but at the time they had — in the coarse language of farms and factories — a dose of the ‘squirts,’ ‘shits,’ or ‘trots.’129 That placed a demand on latrines, which were banks of long-drops without doors for privacy, or, as an unimpressed Rifleman Lockhart experienced, ‘simply a deep trench with a pole across.’130 When full, said latrines were topped with earth and new ones dug.
As well as the behind-the-lines bunkum of parades and inspections of various types — including the occasional ‘dangle’ parade for detecting venereal disease — there was weapons and fitness training, route marches and frequent trips to the musketry range. Then there were fatigues, the bane of every soldier, more so given a manpower shortage meant infantrymen were co-opted as labourers. Thirty-second Division, for instance, dug new assembly and communication trenches and more than 50 emplacements for trench mortars, and also piped a water supply system up to the front line. Its soldiers dug about 19.6 miles of trenches for burying communication cables, and laid about 160 miles of wiring. It also erected 28 bridges across trench systems for artillery guns, built some 72 emplacements for gas cylinders and then lugged 671 of these cylinders up to the front. The division’s men also constructed numerous shell-proof shelters and dugouts for soldiers and storing ammunition.131 Fatigues meant being put to work on any one of a thousand often back-breaking jobs.
While fatigues were part and parcel of active service, they were also disliked for their around-the-clock nature and the physical strain they placed on already exhausted bodies and minds.132 Private England whiled away hours making fascines to bolster trench walls: ‘Supplied with a coil of wire, some pliers and a quantity of brushwood, you tied the latter into bundles — like peasticks. Given a fine day this was considered “cushy”. Sometimes the job would be the more hum-drum one of peeling potatoes — “spud bashing.”’133 For Corporal Arthur Durrant, 18th Durham Light Infantry, it was repairing or digging trenches,134 while for Private Brookes it was guard duties and night-time carrying parties.135 Lieutenant Capper’s platoon was sent to the Chipilly sawmills, which, despite the demanding work of felling trees with cross-cut saws and axes, ‘cheered me very much as it meant an interesting job & comfortable quarters.’136 Brigade-Major Alexander Johnston, 7th Brigade, was one of several staff officers who noted the knock-on problems this work caused. ‘High Command appear unable to understand that troops in the front line get practically no rest during their tour of four to six days there, and that they must have a little rest on coming out if they are to be physically and mentally fit for the intense strain of battles.’137 It was a valid concern, but with the offensive near and deadlines wafer-thin, it was always destined to fall on deaf ears.
Providing labour for mining was another drain on already tired soldiers. Mining had long been a staple of trench warfare on the Western Front. The Somme was no exception. The mine corridors, often deep underground and hundreds of feet long, were the domain of specialist tunnelling companies comprising men recruited from the pits back home. Their work involved burrowing listening galleries to gather intelligence, digging tunnels to locate and blow up rival German passages; carving dozens of shallow trenches known as ‘Russian Saps’ under no-man’s-land (which would be opened on 1 July for use as trenches, communication lanes or emplacements for machine guns and mortars); and engineering lengthy galleries whose heads were packed with massive explosive charges to obliterate above-ground German defences. Eight of these galleries — two at Mametz, three at Fricourt, two at La Boisselle and one at Beaumont Hamel — were packed with enough ammonal explosive to gouge out craters of such breadth and depth that sightseers to the two surviving Somme voids are still left in awe. Eleven smaller mines were also sunk, nine around Mametz and two at La Boisselle.138 All of this subterranean work represented an important element of Fourth Army’s attack plans, with the explosive-packed mines designed to help infantry cross noman’s-land at key points.
Fourth Army had five tunnelling companies attached. The 252nd operated between Hébuterne and Beaumont Hamel, the 179th from just south of the latter village to La Boisselle, the 178th before Fricourt, the 174th opposite Mametz and the 183rd in the Carnoy–Maricourt sector.139 Each numbered 344–570 officers and men,140 and, by the time infantrymen-cum-labourers were added, could total more than 2000 soldiers, or roughly two battalions.141
Tunnelling work was high-stress and claustrophobic, and was completed in pitch darkness or the flickering glow of air-starved candles. All engaged in this work risked gas poisoning, tunnel collapse or oblivion if enemy miners detonated a camouflet, a small underground blast. At the tunnel leading to Lochnagar mine near La Boisselle, Private England fretted about ‘whether the whole [show] would suddenly go up with a bang.’142 Rifleman Frederick Williams, 1/9th Londons (Queen Victoria’s Rifles), was in the narrow mines — the corridors were just 24 inches square — inherited from the French on Hill 110, near Fricourt. Handdrawn bellows pumped air down the shaft, he said, but ‘even so the air was not good, the temperature was very warm, [and] the light from the candles was reduced to a mere glimmer.’143 Lieutenant Norman Dixon, attached to 178th Tunnelling Company, was in the shafts that later formed the multiple Tambour explosions near Fricourt. He listened for sounds of German mining activity oscillating through the chalkstone: ‘If they were making an explosive chamber to put the charge in, you could hear a much more hollow sound and then, following that, you would hear the sinister sliding of bags of explosives into the chamber, and following that, you got out . . . if you could . . . otherwise there would have been no following that.’144 All knew that silence was essential to secrecy and longevity. That meant no wild swinging of pick or spade. The clay, chalkstone and flint tunnel had to be wetted, sliced out with a spade or bayonet and passed back in sacks for disposal. By the end of June the tunnellers had finished their work and laid the charges. Only repair gangs remained to keep the sap and mine entrances open.
Back above ground, the railway lines feeding Fourth Army’s mining and other units with supplies of materiel, ammunition and guns were barely sufficient.145 Just two track lines approached the battle front between the River Somme and Arras. These spurs converged on Albert and were offshoots of the Amiens–Doullens–St Pol–Bethune and Amiens–Abbeville–Calais lines. The chief difficulty was that these lines catered to competing demands. Rawlinson inspected portions of the railway system in early April 1916: ‘I also went to the station to look at the junction and rail head. It is cramped and wants attention.’146 About 50 trains a day plied these tracks with cargoes of coal for the railways, munitions factories and the city of Paris.147 In addition, Fourth Army required 31 trains daily — 11 full of miscellaneous supplies, 14 bearing ammunition, and six carrying reinforcements, remounts and engineering stores.148 Third Army needed about 28 trains daily. ‘These numbers,’ wrote the official historian, ‘might be expected to rise in times of stress, when there were many wounded, to 70 [for Fourth Army] and 58 [for Third Army] trains respectively.’149 The only way to achieve this capacity was to cut trains carrying stone to improve roads.150 Additional track lines were laid at Rawlinson’s demand, including a line to a large ammunition dump at Contay, west of Albert. Other improvements included extra railheads — there were 13 in total151 — and sidings. These railheads were all less than 10 miles from the front, which meant motor- and horse-drawn vehicles were able to transport the freight to more advanced supply dumps.152 There can be little doubt that the railway network was overburdened, and only just able to provide Fourth and Third Armies with the resources they needed daily and to stockpile for the offensive.153
Roads from the railheads into the forward area were too few and of poor quality. Those leading to the pre-war rural service centres just behind the front line — Foncquevillers, Hébuterne, Auchonvillers, Martinsart, Authuille, Aveluy, Albert,
Bécourt, Meaulte, Bray, Carnoy, Suzanne and Maricourt, along with others further back — had to suffice. None was designed for either heavy or intensive traffic. Their surfaces were three inches of gravel on a soft chalkstone base and lacked camber for drainage. Brigadier-General Acton Schreiber, Chief Royal Engineer (CRE), III Corps, said this surface disintegrated when penetrated by water and became a gooey slick,154 causing many a vehicle to slip-slide crazily along. Dirt side roads failed faster. In summer the surfaces held, but in the waterlogged months there was no hope. The laying of hefty planks to form a stable corduroy-like tarmac occurred in places, but mostly not, and there was a distinct lack of shingle, trucks and rollers for the carriageways, which needed widening and turning bays in places. Then there were the rival tasks of supply columns and maintenance gangs. They learned to work around one another.155 Schreiber said it was ‘impossible to exaggerate’ the difficulties of maintaining the roads across his and other corps, adding that ‘the situation was nothing but a continuous state of insufficient material, transport and men.’156 Rawlinson left much unsaid when he noted the ‘roads and approaches have been carefully prepared.’157 Everything else suggests the state of the road network was a source of anxiety for Rawlinson before battle, but traffic control and repair prioritisation avoided a breakdown.
Traffic censuses for the Somme reveal the burden on the road network. At Chateau Gate, in the 24 hours to 7 p.m. on 27 June, the traffic included eight infantry battalions, 486 motor cars, 501 lorries, 399 motorcycles, 64 ambulances, 8 water-tank lorries and wagons, 230 men on horseback, 162 general service wagons, 178 bicycles and 11 limbers and wagons belonging to Royal Engineers.158 Another census was taken at Fricourt cemetery in the 24 hours to 9 a.m. on 22 July. It included 26,536 soldiers, 63 artillery guns, 13 gun carriages, 898 light motor cars and ambulances, 95 buses and light tenders, 617 motorcycles, 813 motor lorries, 3756 horse-drawn wagons, 5404 horses, 1043 bicycles, 10 bulldozers and 8 machine guns.159 Not all of this traffic was headed in the same direction or at the same speed, which made controlling the flow much more difficult for those tasked with the job.
Traffic-control policy to avoid gridlocked lanes was comprehensive. Supply dumps, refilling points and roads were sign-boarded. Maps showed the respective routes vehicles heading to and from the forward area had to use. Control posts were set up at the entrances and exits of villages and towns, along with crossroads, to regulate traffic flow. The ‘duties thrown on the traffic control staff were far heavier than those in a great city,’ more so as the offensive neared.160 Traction engines towing large artillery guns, lorries and horse-drawn wagons laden with ammunition and materiel, and long columns of infantry all converged on the logistics network bound for some destination or another on some kind of essential work. ‘Although there were often blocks owing to breakdowns, and delays due to the bad state of the roads,’ wrote the official historian, ‘the general circulation was never seriously impeded; but it was sometimes slowed down, and transport was long hours on the road.’161 The system and rules were enforced by military police, which allowed the logistics network to remain open and the flow of resources forward — although frequently touch-and-go where foot and wheel traffic converged — continued.
Staff Captain Geoffrey Codrington, 63rd Brigade headquarters, explained traffic control on the single-lane road to Bécourt Valley. Nightly in June this road in XV Corps’ area was plied by at least 60 three-ton lorries. It was ‘controlled on the Railway block system and only a certain number of lorries were admitted to each section at a time. This system was rigidly enforced by a control post on the road. . . . The ordinary nightly supply work — rations and R.E. stores — was worked in with the lorries delivering stores for the offensive, on a regular time table, and all lorries had to be clear by daylight.’162
These stores and ammunition were accumulated at camouflaged and concealed dumps throughout each divisional sector. Main divisional dumps were about two miles behind the front line and supplied brigadecontrolled advanced dumps about three-quarters of a mile from the trenches. RE supply dumps were about 500 yards behind the line. These dumps held all manner of materiel, from timber to corrugated iron, barbed wire to telephone cable, hand grenades to small-arms ammunition (SAA) and flares, screw pickets to sandbags, and tools to food. Ammunition dumps followed a similar format, but due to their explosive potential these were constructed some distance from railheads and roads, and reached by dedicated corduroy carriageways of sturdy timber planks. SAA, grenades and artillery ammunition were stored in boxes or sheds and camouflaged to avoid the prying eyes of enemy bombers. These payloads were then transported forward by lorries and horse-drawn wagons. By 20 June the allocation of ammunition to the guns was all but complete. Thereafter projectiles were stored at the railhead dumps. The dumps were laden with materiel and ammunition by late June, but only time and the outcome of the offensive’s initial stages would reveal whether or not they held sufficient.
The perennial difficulty was how to get materials from the forward supply dumps into the front line.163 Roads and tracks close to and leading into the trenches were often open to direct enemy observation by day and searching artillery fire by night. Transports foolish enough to use them would be shelled and probably destroyed. The solution was, as mentioned earlier, to use resting infantry as night-time carrying parties, but that was not without problems, noted Captain George Fenton, 151st Field Company, RE: ‘Working parties and carrying parties were provided to assist, but the materials, especially the barbed wire, rapidly dwindled in transit up, as the bearers floundered in the mire, and then tipped the troublesome load into the nearest shell-hole rather than carry it further.’164 Private Charles Binstead, 1st Hampshires, knew carrying duty well:
Sometimes it was food in sandbags, water in petrol tins or ammunition, wire and post for wiring. . . . It was hard work as the ground was thick with mud and the communication trenches a quarter filled with water and where the duckboards have floated away from over the sump holes it would be about 4 ft deep, many a night we would walk on the top [out of the trench] and take a chance on what the Germans threw over.165
While there was undoubtedly some loss of materiel lugged forward, the vast majority of soldiers knew first-hand the importance of their work and toiled hard to keep the front line supplied.
Providing water for men, mules and horses was a high priority. As more divisions arrived on the Somme so the demand for drinking, washing, bathing and laundry water rose. Water supplies were organised by Fourth Army and implemented by each of its army corps. Responsibility for the network of pumps, filtration units, storage tanks, bore holes and a complex network of 4- and 6-inch pipes leading close to the front line belonged to corps engineers. Each corps possessed 80 water carts with 200-gallon tanks, while Fourth Army retained a fleet of 303 water lorries, with tanks that each held up to 550 gallons. Water points near the trenches consisted of 2000-gallon waterproof canvas tanks on the ground with refilling hoses and taps for supply. Looking ahead, Brigadier-General George Cartwright, CRE, VIII Corps, noted ‘arrangements for pushing forward water supplies in the event of an advance was deemed to be of vital importance as in this chalk country the wells were slow filling and gave but a limited supply.’166 For the moment there was enough water to slake demand, and specifically to quench the thirst of thousands of soldiers exhausted by endless training for the Somme.
FOURTH ARMY’S assault divisions underwent battle training well behind the lines in May–June 1916. Each battalion completed about two weeks of manoeuvres, which were based on best-practice, or doctrinal, pamphlets issued to officers by GHQ. SS109: Training of Divisions for Offensive Action, for instance, was designed to ensure uniform standards of tactical proficiency across battalions and corps. It was expanded on by Fourth Army Tactical Notes. ‘Mid-June, 1916,’ wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Crozier, ‘sees us back near Forceville, polishing the book of words of the “Acid Test.”’167 These pamphlets gave guidance on all manner of subjects, from trench-to-trench
attacks, the setting of and consolidation of captured objectives, use of Stokes mortars and Lewis guns, communication with other units, headquarters and aeroplanes, and importantly the actual formation of attack. Both emphasised the infantry’s role over that of the artillery.168 ‘Troops once launched to the attack,’ stated SS109, ‘must push on at all costs till the final objective is reached.’169 Of course there would be heavy casualties, it said, but ‘the magnitude of the interests at stake necessitate the greatest self-sacrifice from one and all.’170
The advance into and beyond the enemy front line was to be achieved by old-school linear attacks, or wave after wave of infantry pressing forward. This linear-wave structure was widely adopted — albeit, as will be seen in later chapters, with some variance between battalions, brigades and divisions. Objectives for each wave were to be clearly defined, with each adding fresh impetus to the advance of the one preceding it.171 ‘The attack must aim at continuity and must be driven home without intermission, so that the attack gradually works forward till the endurance of the enemy is broken.’172 Units were to practise dealing with localised hold-ups on the battlefield, but these were portrayed as little more than temporary impasses and certainly nothing akin to the outright failure of an attack.173 Four-wave attacks were considered ideal and most likely to produce results, three-wave attacks less so, with two- and one-line enterprises thought likely to fail.174 Each battalion was to be proficient in leap-frogging others in order to achieve its own more distant set of objectives.175 Captured ground was to be quickly consolidated and flanks protected against counterattack. In brief, the attack structure was that of an irrepressible, multi-layered infantry juggernaut, but nowhere, if all went wrong, was the potential for multiple battalions to be concertinaed in no-man’s-land and shot to pieces considered.
First day of the Somme Page 9
