Fourteenth Reserve Corps’ gun losses during the bombardment are known to some extent. The corps, as noted earlier, had roughly 570 field and heavy guns spread across 147 batteries.265 One of the worst-hit divisions was the 28th in the southern part of the battlefield. Its supporting artillery was reduced by about 10 (30.3%) batteries to just 23 during the 24–30 June bombardment, but among those guns left were many ‘useless’ weapons, implying the rate of attrition might have been considerably higher, perhaps even 40–50%.266 Moreover, these weapons were ‘unable to provide sufficient support,’ either being substandard or temporarily broken.267 Twelfth Infantry Division’s guns behind Montauban and Curlu — about 25 batteries totalling 95–100 barrels — suffered much the same fate, if not worse.268 Between Gommecourt and Serre, 2nd Guards Reserve Division and 52nd Infantry Divisions are thought to have lost few of their combined 50 batteries, totalling 186 guns. Twenty-sixth Reserve Division, which had a nominal 39 batteries totalling 154 guns spread between Serre and Ovillers, possibly lost about 20–30% of its guns, although one artillery group lost half of its 28 barrels.269 In practical terms, XIV Reserve Corps had an estimated 450 nominally active guns at dawn on 1 July, but in actuality that number could have varied between 400 and 500, and those batteries deployed behind Fricourt, Mametz and Montauban had suffered much greater losses than those between Ovillers and Gommecourt.
Below, commander of Second Army, was troubled by his gun losses; his reaction had a lot do with the central role they played in his defensive scheme. ‘The enormous enemy superiority in heavy and long-range batteries, which the Army has so far been unable to counter, is proving very painful. Our artillery would have been adequate to respond to an assault launched after a one-day heavy bombardment of our trenches.’270 Without doubt Below considered his artillery losses heavy, and was concerned — perhaps unduly, with the benefit of hindsight — about whether or not they would be able to lay down a thick curtain of defensive shellfire when the expected British attack came.
HAIG ACKNOWLEDGED none of the problems with the bombardment and instead focused on the positive. He said his men were in splendid spirits and several had told him they had never before been so well instructed and briefed on an upcoming operation.271 ‘The wire has never been so well cut, nor the artillery preparation so thorough.’272 In the two days before battle Haig spoke to his corps commanders — Lieutenant-Generals Henry Horne, William Pulteney, Thomas D’Oyly Snow, Morland and Congreve — who were apparently all brimming with confidence.273 Of those responsible for the northern part of the battlefield, where question marks surrounding the artillery’s effectiveness were greatest, Morland was ‘quietly confident of success’ and Pulteney was ‘quite satisfied with the artillery bombardment and wire cutting.’274 Hunter-Weston — who expected success, but added that this was ‘in the hands of God’275 — was, in Haig’s words, ‘quite satisfied and confident.’276 Pulteney later said he believed the German trenches ‘obliterated.’277 Snow thought all the German soldiers ‘will have been killed by our artillery barrage.’278 Further south, where the shellfire was more effective, Horne was ‘very pleased with the situation’ and ‘in high hopes.’279 Congreve and ‘all about him expressed themselves full of confidence.’280 Everyone was telling Haig what he wanted to hear: everything was going very well, actually, and a positive outcome was to be expected.
Haig was not entirely without reservations. He apparently sent Charteris to Hunter-Weston’s headquarters not long before battle with authority to cancel VIII Corps’ attack. ‘It had little chance of complete success and there was a certainty of many casualties. But even partial success might mean much to other parts of the line,’ wrote Charteris.281 He decided to let VIII Corps proceed, and his rationale — cruel as it seems with knowledge of subsequent events — provided the ever-profligate Hunter-Weston with a bespoke excuse. Charteris’s claim must be treated with caution. Eighth Corps’ job had always been to provide flank support for Fourth Army and, while Haig might have considered limiting part of its operation, cancellation of its role so close to battle, as Charteris suggests, seems highly improbable.
Haig and Rawlinson were nevertheless cautiously confident on the eve of battle. ‘I feel that everything possible for us to do to achieve success has been done,’ wrote Haig on 30 June. ‘Whether or not we are successful lies in the Power above. But I do feel that in my plans I have been helped by a Power that is not my own. So I am easy in my mind and ready to do my best whatever happens tomorrow.’282 By ‘success,’ Haig was referring to a breakthrough battle and deployment of Reserve Army. He continued: ‘With God’s help, I feel hopeful for tomorrow.’283 Rawlinson, too, was generally pleased with Fourth Army’s preparations, but his operational hopes were considerably more measured than Haig’s. On the eve of battle he confided in his private diary:
What the actual results will be no one can say, but I feel pretty confident of success myself though only after heavy fighting. That the Bosche will break, and that a debacle will supervene, I do not believe; but should this be the case I am quite ready to take full advantage of it. The weather has greatly improved and all looks hopeful but the issues are in the hands of the Bon Dieu God.284
Haig and Rawlinson were rightly anxious going into their first major battle as C-in-C and army commander respectively, but it was altogether more troubling that their operational expectations were still very much polarised after seven days’ shellfire and just hours before the infantry went in.
FAR BEYOND POZIÈRES Ridge senior German commanders were also assessing the state of their defensive positions. General-der-Infanterie Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of General Staff, Supreme Army Command, was still chiefly focused on the offensives in Verdun and Galicia. He acknowledged Second Army’s positions astride the Somme had been flayed, but attached less strategic value to these and thus remained sparing with reinforcements of men, guns and aeroplanes.285 By contrast, an increasingly worried Below had predicted a major combined Anglo-French attack either side of the river, and was troubled that the bombardment resembled the ‘tactics of wearing down and attrition.’286 The ‘enormous enemy superiority in heavy and long-range batteries, which the Army has so far been unable to counter, is proving very painful,’ he said, noting the loss of men and materiel, and damage to his defensive positions.287 Six months later he would appraise the shellfire, referring to 28th Reserve Division at Fricourt–Mametz, 12th Infantry Division at Montauban and XVII Army Corps further south.288 With hindsight, and in reference to these areas, he would write of insufficient artillery, the loss of air superiority, a failure to properly distribute infantry in depth, inadequately constructed defence-in-depth positions, and the general damage caused by days of shellfire.289 His concerns about the artillery and aeroplane shortages predated the bombardment by weeks, but on the other points his position in late-June 1916 was less clear. At the time Below well knew his army was reliant on stretched resources in defending the Somme battlefield, but there is nothing to suggest he realised how vulnerable XIV Reserve Corps’ left flank was to a concerted Anglo-French attack.
Stein and the other tactical-level commanders were far from bullish in their outlooks. Stein was silent on the period 24–30 June in his fauxbreezy memoir,290 but probably shared Below’s worries. His post-war writings suggest he was concerned by the damage to his defences and British aerial supremacy, but was confident that his men would hold their positions.291 At Gommecourt, Generalleutnants Richard Freiherr von Süsskind-Schwendi and Karl von Borries, commanders respectively of 2nd Guards Reserve and 52nd Infantry Divisions, were prepared for a defensive battle and realised the looming attack on the salient would be an attempted British diversion from operations further south. An out-oftime Generalleutnant Ferdinand von Hahn was rightly bothered by the quality and depth of his 28th Reserve Division’s just-inherited defences, more so around Fricourt–Mametz than at La Boisselle, and was almost certainly troubled by his severe gun losses in the former. Generalleutnant Martin Châles de Beaulieu,
12th Infantry Division, was so worried about the state of his front-line infantry at Montauban that he foolishly revolved in last-minute replacements, but appears to have been less concerned by gun losses and his pulverised trenches. Soden was by far the most confident of the divisional commanders: he simply expected his 26th would hold its ground between Serre and Ovillers by repulsing any attack.292 He wrote in a divisional order of the day dated 26 June:
The effort and work in the course of the last two years that were made in the extension of our positions, may already have to endure a powerful test in the next few days. Now it requires everyone to be firm, to courageously persist, to do your duty, to shun no sacrifice and no exertion, so that the enemy is refused victory. And everyone must be conscious that it is necessary that we hold the bloody embattled ground and that no Englishman or Frenchman who penetrates into our lines might remain unpunished. I know that I am united in these convictions with the entire division and I look forward to the coming events with full confidence.293
Stein must have known his generals’ views, but he never commented on them, or on his failure to construct corps-wide defences of uniform depth and strength. Instead, after the war, he reverted to stating the obvious: ‘After extensive preparations the enemy believed he had made the [German] positions defenceless and could step forward over them unhindered.’294
COLUMNS OF equipment-laden British soldiers trudged along trafficclogged roads late on 30 June and into the early hours of 1 July before filing through the crowded trench maze towards their jumping-off lines. ‘All the valleys were filled with troops moving softly up to the assembly trenches, their winding ranks looking like grey-green snakes at a distance,’ wrote Lieutenant Kelly.295 Many had penned a few words in case they died on 1 July, perhaps a last note to somebody back home or a will bequeathing their few worldly possessions. ‘I am writing a letter home, Sir, it will be my last,’ a grim-faced Ulsterman told Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Crozier, 9th Royal Irish Rifles, the night before battle.296 Equipment had been checked and rechecked. Water bottles were full, bayonets sharpened, rifles cleaned and oiled, ammunition pouches rammed and haversacks bulging with rations. Some strapped an entrenching tool across their chest as a crude form of body armour; others struggled under the added dead weight of trench mortars, machine guns, stretchers, wooden ladders for scaling parapets and 101 other apparently essential items. Each man knew exactly the part he had to play; jittery platoon commanders briefed their men once more. But, now, just hours from battle, there was no sign of any overt optimism.
‘No one got, or tried to get much sleep, but there was no sign of nervousness or apprehension; we just talked . . . through the night,’ wrote Lieutenant Heath, the trench mortar officer.297 Another officer said he ‘sat in a shelter with some of my men and tried to keep up their spirits by playing my tin whistle to them. But it was a long night.’298 Second-Lieutenant Liveing, the 1/12th Londons (Rangers) officer, pondered whether the next day he would be lying out ‘stiff and cold in that land beyond the trees.’299 Second-Lieutenant Laporte, the artillery subaltern, was in the trenches opposite La Boisselle. As night faded into the dawn of 1 July he watched a string of Northumberland Fusiliers squeeze past knots of soldiers in a narrow communication trench behind Tara and Usna hills:
In single file they went steadily by, silently save for the sound of equipment knocking against the trench and of their feet on the soft earth, burdened with rifles, belts of ammunition, bombs, picks, shovels, iron rations, water-bottles, haversacks, gas-bags and tin helmets. . . . At intervals there were halts as they were held up ahead. Hardly a word was spoken. Some by slight nervous movements showed signs of strain, but most were steady-eyed enough. Then they were gone.300
CHAPTER 5
Hunter Bunter’s Folly
VIII Corps’ pre-ordained failure at Serre and Beaumont Hamel
‘You see for young lads like me, those that were left, it was like a bad dream. We couldn’t take in what was happening around us. The shock of it hit us later.’1
— Private Noel Peters, 16th Middlesex
HAWTHORN MINE BLEW like a giant earthen carbuncle, heaving great slabs of clay and chalkstone skyward, along with one-score German soldiers. Debris flopped to the ground within about 20 seconds, leaving clouds of fine grey dust and smoke billowing over Hawthorn Ridge. All that remained of the redoubt that once stood there was a crater that measured 130 feet wide and 58 feet deep, including an 18-foot-high lip of chalkstone spoil that tapered off into the surrounding land. ‘The field was white, as if it had snowed,’ wrote Leutnant-der-Reserve Matthaus Gerster, of Reserve Infantry Regiment 119 (RIR119), adding the gigantic divot ‘gaped like an open wound in the side of the hill.’2 The blast of 40,600 pounds of ammonal collapsed nearby German dugouts, crushing occupants and entombing others. Some clawed their way out; others suffocated. Above ground several German soldiers were stunned by a cocktail of concussion and fear. The eruption, wrote Gerster, heralded the start of the anticipated British attack.
Lieutenant Geoffrey Malins, a British army cinematographer and shameless self-promoter, immortalised the moment with a hand-cranked movie camera. Moments before 7.20 a.m., he worried about how much film he had left. Then the ground convulsed. ‘It rocked and swayed. I gripped hold of my tripod to steady myself. Then, for all the world like a gigantic sponge, the earth rose in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible, grinding roar the earth fell back upon itself.’3 British soldiers nearby watched in awe. Many felt the shock waves ripple through their trenches.4 Several German soldiers felt the judder in their dugouts more than a mile away and wondered if it was an earthquake.5 Some in the Newfoundland Regiment mistakenly thought the village of Beaumont Hamel had been razed.6
Stand at the edge of the Hawthorn Ridge crater today and you can see for miles around. Its tactical value back in 1916 is obvious. German machine-gunners here could sweep no-man’s-land and the British assembly trenches from the Beaumont Hamel–Auchonvillers road valley around to the northern edge of today’s Newfoundland Memorial Park.
This danger was recognised by Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston and his VIII Corps headquarters. Their concerns were centred on whether German infantry would occupy the crater first, something they had form in. But, in effect, the timing of the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt blast at 7.20 a.m. served as a giant clapperboard that signalled the pending attack 10 minutes before it began. ‘Hunter Bunter’s folly’7 — as the blast timing became known — would have devastating consequences for VIII Corps’ infantry, which explained why pretty much everyone involved in the decision-making later scrambled for cover.
Fifty-two-year-old Hunter-Weston had served on the Indian North-West Frontier and in Egypt and South Africa before the First World War. He fought in France in 1914, and then at Gallipoli in 1915. He liked horses and hunting, wore a bushy moustache and occasionally used a walking stick. He liked posing for formal photographs, but often made candid snaps look awkward. He saw himself as a ‘plain, blunt soldier,’8 and never shied from imparting pearls of wisdom to subordinates: ‘I was given the power to strike the right note & to enthouse [sic] the men.’9 Some thought Hunter-Weston intelligent and rich in human sympathy.10 More said he was over-optimistic, often patronising or brutal in tone, unable to delegate and — the most extreme view — a charlatan.11 His penchant for inspecting latrines was no more coincidental than the ‘magnificent, gleaming’ boots and buttons at his headquarters.12 The moniker ‘Hunter Bunter’ had much to do with his pushy, self-important character. Hunter-Weston’s personality was authoritarian; he was obsessed with order, control and hygiene.13
Hunter-Weston carried a well-earned reputation for bloody daylight attacks that lacked imagination and artillery support. That dated back to Gallipoli, when the Scot was said to have been willing to ‘contend in open debate that, provided the objective was gained, casualties were of no importance.’14 This ‘logician of war’ saw few shades of grey when it came to j
ustifying casualties in successful attacks, but, as we shall see, saw many more when it came to accounting for industrial-scale military failure and its cost.
Eighth Corps opposed a trinity of formidable German defensive networks crisscrossing the high ground north of the River Ancre. From above, the German front line looked a bit like an oversized ‘L’. The down-stroke of the L blocked the uphill approaches to Serre village at its top end, and thereafter meandered southwards across a series of low-lying ridges and road valleys before arriving at Beaumont Hamel, which sat in the angle formed by the horizontal bar, then headed east to the river valley fens. No-man’s-land was 200–600 yards across, the distance generally narrower north of Beaumont Hamel than south. As we shall see, each of the attacking divisions — north to south, 31st, 4th and 29th — used a variety of tactics to help them cross the open ground between the opposing lines. Forty-eighth (South Midland) Division, less two battalions attached to the 4th, was in corps reserve.
The strength of the German defences lay in their co-ordinated redoubts and fortified villages. In the front-line system, Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt (Weissdornfeste), Ridge Redoubt and the Bergwerk covered the northern approaches to Beaumont Hamel, while Y-Ravine (Leiling Schlucht) blocked access from the south. Heidenkopf — known to the British as the Quadrilateral, and more an elbow of trenches that jutted out into no-man’s-land as a defensive feature than a redoubt — was nestled in a natural amphitheatre just south of Serre. Further back 1000–2000 yards, the intermediate position, known to the British as Munich Trench, was on higher ground again. It included Soden (Feste Soden), Grallsburg and Beaucourt (Feste-Alt-Württemberg) Redoubts, along with the fortified villages of Serre and Beaucourt. Back another 1000–2000 yards, but mostly the latter, was the second position, or Puisieux Trench, which included more redoubts and Grandcourt village on the southern bank of the Ancre. These layered defences were designed to stop any enemy attacks with a significant volume of co-ordinated machine-gun and rifle fire.
First day of the Somme Page 18
