First day of the Somme

by Andrew Macdonald

  The story goes that talented staff officers were appointed to III Corps to offset Pulteney’s muddling, which was all about ill-thought-out operations and buck-passing when they turned sour.8 Eventually it would get him sacked, but not until 1918. Later he served as Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, and his 1941 obituary said he had never been ‘known to make a mistake in the ritual and ceremonies of Parliament.’9 Pulteney’s bent for ‘ritual and ceremonies’ was all about hiding behind a mask of competence.

  Pulteney planned to break the Ovillers and La Boisselle stronghold with a frontal and uphill assault towards Pozières Ridge. Success here was central to Haig’s strategy, and would open the way to Bapaume then Arras for the cavalry, and then the infantry of General Sir Hubert Gough’s Reserve Army. Failure would bust Haig’s Somme plans. Pulteney committed two whole divisions to the attack: the 8th and the 34th, with 19th (Western) Division in corps reserve. Third Corps had a total nominal strength of 94,460, but the estimated number of infantrymen actually involved in the battle, along with elements of various other units, was about 16,700.10

  Mash Valley, which holds the Albert–Bapaume road, was the demarcation line between the two attacking divisions, the 8th’s area being to the north and the 34th’s to the south. They were to advance to a total depth of 2500–3700 yards behind the German front line. The 34th, its infantrymen wearing yellow-coloured triangles on their backs so they could be seen by observers, would attack in four distinct columns. Its 101st and 102nd (Tyneside Scottish) Brigades formed the vanguard, followed by 103rd (Tyneside Irish) Brigade.11 To his credit, Putty opted to try to pinch off the salient at the head of La Boisselle Spur, with the two columns of the 102nd taking it and the village that sat atop it from either side. There were two big mines in the 34th’s sector to help its infantry: Y-Sap and Lochnagar mines respectively totalled 40,600 and 60,000 pounds.12 Y-Sap mine was to erase the Blindarm, a small grouping of German trenches overlooking Mash Valley, and Lochnagar was to obliterate the strongpoint Schwabenhöhe overlooking Sausage Valley and no-man’sland. By contrast, the 8th was spread out over a much wider frontage, with its three brigades — north to south, the 70th, 25th and 23rd — attacking abreast. While some of the 8th’s and 34th’s lead battalions would attack directly up Ovillers and Fricourt Spurs, most were condemned to advance along the death traps of Mash, Sausage and Nab Valleys.

  Everything hinged on the ability of III Corps’ artillery to shell the German positions and resistance into submission. Pulteney had a comparatively rich concentration of artillery that included 98 heavy guns and howitzers, or about one to every 40 yards of attack frontage, and about 175 field guns, or roughly one to every 23 yards.13 A dozen attached French guns would fire gas shells. But there were significant problems with the artillery’s pre-battle work: too many dud shells, a lack of ammunition and shellfire diluted over a wide area undermined its efforts to break down German defences and resistance, both in the front line and further back.14 Moreover, Pulteney did not have anything like the number of guns required to produce a German collapse and open the way for Gough’s army. His own gunners warned that their attempts to cut the enemy’s more distant wire defences would likely be unsuccessful.15 Even so, Ovillers and La Boisselle were razed, trenches collapsed and wire was mostly pared away. As one German soldier said, ‘Whoever went above [ground] as a sentry could barely still recognise the position. Instead of well-developed trenches he saw one crater alongside another; the last wall remnants of La Boisselle became crushed into powder in these days of innumerable shells.’16 Yet, even as a pulverised warren, the Ovillers and La Boisselle moonscape was defensible by German soldiers who were holed up in dugouts and listening to muffled explosions 30–40 feet above. They just had to race up from their bunkers, take positions in the shellfire-torn wasteland and open fire.

  None of this squared with Pulteney’s belief that the ruined villages and Schwabenhöhe would be untenable and the enemy wiped out.17 Not everyone agreed. Lieutenant-Colonel John Shakespear, 18th Northumberland Fusiliers,* was well aware that La Boisselle’s garrison was ‘very much on the alert.’18 Lieutenant-Colonel Godfrey Steward, 27th Northumberland Fusiliers, was astounded by the optimism at Pulteney’s headquarters: ‘Their Intelligence must have been atrocious.’19 Captain Reginald Leetham, 2nd Rifle Brigade,† said the bombardment of Ovillers was impressive, but pondered whether it was ‘doing us much good’ given that most German soldiers were safe underground.20 Major James Jack, 2nd Scottish Rifles, also doubted whether German infantry in Ovillers had been cowed.21 While Pulteney optimistically believed the bombardment was fit for purpose, several battalion and company commanders whose men would be involved in the attack held significant doubts.

  As it turned out, German morale withstood the bombardment, which caused few casualties. The 2570-strong RIR110 had anticipated the attack after ‘long days and nights of unbearable tension.’22 One soldier claimed he felt ‘extreme joy that the deep dugouts constructed by us with hard work also protected us against the heavy calibre shells.’23 Another said British hopes that life in the German trenches would be extinguished were ‘very false.’24 One officer in the roughly 2800-strong IR180 alleged that the mood in its dugouts was ‘exceedingly’ encouraging:25 ‘The bombardment can’t last for too long; we expect the attack from one day to another.’ Another officer, Oberleutnant-der-Reserve Heinrich Vogler, IR180, recalled nearly 55 years later that while his ‘men’s mood was low,’ they were not lacking in ‘courage or determination.’26 So it was that the soldiers of IR180 and RIR110 waited deep underground, with rifles to hand and the flickering light of candles playing across their stubbly faces as they waited to exact bloody payback.

  These soldiers knew full well that the British attack would begin early on 1 July. Late on 30 June, an underground Moritz listening device in the La Boisselle salient had intercepted a British message suggesting the attack was due the next day.27 This news was forwarded to Second Army and thereafter circulated among front-line regiments, which notified their companies two to three hours before Zero.28 As Schütze Christian Fischer, a machine-gunner in IR180 opposite the increasingly splintered ruins of Authuille Wood, remembered:

  Early in the morning of 1 July word filtered through to us that the enemy would attack that morning. . . . Some of us said the English would attack at 7.30 a.m. At 5.30 a.m. the Vizefeldwebel stood at the dugout entrance and waited for the enemy’s attack, while we stood ready with our guns in the dugout. We all looked at the clock and waited anxiously for the enemy attack. We wanted to get back at the Englishmen.29

  Those brave lookouts who ventured up into the trenches found them destroyed, wrote another soldier, but across no-man’s-land ‘everything was full of life and the British trenches were a mass of steel helmets.’30 Most everyone had an ear cocked for the audible moment when the British shellfire moved further back, confirming the infantry attack was beginning.31

  From 6.25 a.m., III Corps’ artillery and mortars spiked to a crescendo, raining shells onto the German front line. The barrage should have been maintained consistently until Zero or, as Brigadier-General John Pollard, 25th Brigade, preferred, co-ordinated with the attacking infantry.32 That would at least have forced enemy soldiers to remain underground while Pulteney’s crossed no-man’s-land. It did not happen. After just 35 minutes the heavy guns stepped their fire back, leaving only the field artillery’s lighter shells to play over the German front trench until 7.30 a.m.33 This dilution of shellfire gave Württemberg and Baden soldiers further notice, and ample time to rush some men into ground-holding positions. Several German machine guns began firing at 7 a.m.34 Twenty-eight minutes later the mine blasts sent shock waves pulsing through the subterranean German city, and two minutes later the field guns lifted their fire further back.35 This confluence of factors pinpointed the attack almost to the minute. At 7.30 a.m., ‘The Swabians poured forth out of every mined dugout. The trench was barely still able to be recognised, but each man, each group, each platoon knows their
place and their defensive field. Nestled behind the destroyed breastworks and in shell craters, they awaited the superior strength of the approaching enemy.’36

  Worse still, 26th Reserve and 28th Reserve Divisions’ artillery in this area was far from destroyed. In nominal terms the 26th had at least 29 guns directly supporting the Ovillers sector and providing close defensive fire for IR180, plus a further 28 nearby that could shoot into this area if needed. Divisional commander Generalleutnant Franz Freiherr von Soden had insisted on preserving his limited artillery resources through fire restraint, which meant many of his batteries went undetected by RFC and artillery spotters, and survived counterbattery shoots. A large portion remained intact, concealed and good to open defensive fire when the British attack began. Generalleutnant Ferdinand von Hahn’s gunners in the 28th had not shown the same restraint. Many of its estimated 60 barrels behind La Boisselle and the summit of Fricourt Spur had been knocked out, leaving an estimated 42, of which many were apparently useless.37 But Hahn’s guns in this part of the line remained capable of supporting the front-line infantry, according to British battle accounts,38 although never to the same extent as Soden’s.39 While large portions of IR180’s and RIR110’s positions were flattened, the garrisons were intact and their supporting artillery was ready to lay down close defensive fire, stopping enemy infantry from crossing no-man’s-land and also sealing off any breaches of the German lines.

  In the event that any enemy infantry did break into the German positions, someone had circulated a pamphlet through the dugouts and gun pits of RIR110 outlining several phonetic translations of useful English-language phrases. The obviously English-speaking writer had a sense of humour:

  Hands up you fool! (Honds opp ju fuhl!). . .

  Hands up, come on Tommy! (Honds opp, kom on Tomy!)40

  ‘JUST BEFORE ZERO hour, I was sat on a fire step, three of us pressed close together,’ recalled Lance-Corporal Archibald Turner, 10th Lincolns, of a conversation about the shellfire in 34th Division’s sector.41 ‘Chap on one side said: “If there’s a bugger for you, you’ll get it.” Just then a shrapnel shell burst just above us and he got a shrapnel ball through his helmet and was killed outright.’ The third man’s leg hung by a sinew. ‘He asked me to cut it off but I only had a knife and I didn’t want to give him gangrene and, anyway, it was time to go over.’ Private William Senescall, 11th Suffolks, recalled German shellfire — ‘Wouf, Wouf, all around’ — and the throaty crackle of machine guns. ‘I now for some reason began to feel panicky. I just felt like bolting or something.’42 Private Michael Manley, 26th Northumberland Fusiliers, wanted the ordeal over. ‘You know it’s going to be rough. I was scared when the shells came over it didn’t half put the wind up you.’43 Private William Corbett, 15th Royal Scots, recalled ‘the expression of expectancy on the faces of these men standing side by side with thoughts of home and their loved ones whom most of them would never see again.’44

  Walk around the duckboard track circling Lochnagar crater today and the military value of the German redoubt that once stood here is plain to see. From this place — Schwabenhöhe — you have a more than 180-degree panorama over 34th Division’s assembly trenches from Sausage Valley around to Avoca Valley, which runs between the Albert–Bapaume road and Bécourt Wood. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Somerset, 11th Suffolks, said that, unless destroyed or suppressed, this redoubt would inflict heavy casualties as infantry crossed the grassland expanses of no-man’s-land.45 That was why III Corps opted to blow it sky high — the trenches, machine-gun posts and dugouts occupied by a company of RIR110 vaporised in one fell swoop — and send the infantry in once the debris had settled. Nobody knows how many the blast killed, but the number was not great, probably a couple of dozen.46 ‘When the English infantry began their mass attack with the huge explosion at the 5th Company [sector] . . . we immediately made ourselves ready to be deployed,’ said Vizefeldwebel Theodor Laasch, RIR110,47 whose platoon was in reserve dugouts just behind La Boisselle and would participate in the fighting against both 8th and 34th Divisions.

  Thirty-fourth Division’s lead battalions were mostly swept down by machine-gun fire. They each moved forward on a frontage of 250–400 yards. To the north, the 102nd attacked either side of La Boisselle Spur, some battalions up Mash Valley and others between the village and Lochnagar crater. Further to the south, 101st Brigade attacked along Sausage Valley and along the northern slopes of Fricourt Spur. Each of these brigades had two battalions of the 103rd attached. Within 10 minutes 80% of the men in the leading battalions — from left to right, 20th,* 23rd† and 21st Northumberland Fusiliers,‡ 10th Lincolns§ and 15th Royal Scots,¶ all of which advanced in linear waves48 — were casualties. This was the result of ready-and-waiting German machinegunners and riflemen generally winning the race for their parapets and spraying no-man’s-land with tens of thousands of bullets.49 There were no fewer than 30 machine guns with interlocking fields of fire spread across RIR110’s sector.50 Follow-up battalions moved forward — 22nd Northumberland Fusiliers,** 11th Suffolks†† and 16th Royal Scots‡‡ in the second wave in extended order,51 with the 103rd’s 25th,* 26th,† 24th‡ and 27th Northumberland Fusiliers§ in the third and deployed in waves of columns of platoons.52 The result was multiple battalions concertinaed in no-man’s-land, confusion, failing command structures and appalling casualties.

  In the 101st’s right column, 15th Royal Scots moved within 200 yards of the German line before the barrage lifted and, with a skirling of bagpipes, was over and beyond the flattened enemy parapet on the southern slopes of Sausage Valley, and soon atop Fricourt Spur. It was followed forward by 16th Royal Scots. Private Frank Scott, 16th Royal Scots, found the German trenches to be ‘absolutely battered to bits, practically just chalk heaps and hardly anybody in it. Those left were so demoralised that they hadn’t a fight left in them but surrendered right away.’53 A Royal Scots officer watched the attackers from the assembly trenches: ‘They move about deliberately, taking steady aim at the foe crowning the slope [of Fricourt Spur], and pushing upward slowly but surely. . . . The little clusters of men gradually fall into the [trench] line towards the top of the slope.’54 Both battalions suffered under machine-gun fire in Sausage Redoubt and La Boisselle, briefly veered into the neighbouring XV Corps’ sector and were pushed from their most advanced gains, which were around Birch Tree Wood and a trench running northeast towards Peake Wood.55 Scots Redoubt was taken. Sausage Redoubt remained defiant; flame throwers incinerated a small party trying to storm its defences. A few groups of the following battalion, 27th Northumberland Fusiliers, made it across no-man’s-land behind the Royal Scots. The 101st’s right column had done well to force an entry to the German line, but come noon its most advanced line was a 250-yard-long stretch of Wood Alley trench between Scots Redoubt and Round Wood atop Fricourt Spur.

  Incredibly, some small groups of soldiers progressed much further, towards Contalmaison, roughly 2000 yards behind the German front line. A mixed bag of 15th and 16th Royal Scots and 27th Northumberland Fusiliers, along with some 10th Lincolns and 11th Suffolks, whose ordeal will soon be discussed, had fought determinedly to hold the trench between Birch Tree Wood and Peake Wood, which was on the approach to Contalmaison. They were forced to retire after desperate close-quarter fighting.56 Corporal George Lowery, 27th Northumberland Fusiliers, came face to face with a German officer in the enemy trenches: ‘He fired at me with his revolver and missed me. Just as he was going to fire a second time I threw the bomb, which blew his head off.’57 Private Tom Hunter, 16th Royal Scots, saw a friend killed as he peeped round a trench corner. ‘I threw my bomb round the corner and the lads followed up with the bayonet. It [the ensuing fight] did not last long.’58

  One small band of 16th Royal Scots actually entered Contalmaison,59 the furthest advance achieved on 1 July. A few of the 27th Northumberland Fusiliers also reached the shellfire-damaged village, while several of the 24th Northumberland Fusiliers almost made it that far, too.60 Roughly 14 wounde
d soldiers from several of these units were captured and held in Contalmaison until they and the village were liberated several days later.61 One of these soldiers later described his experience:

  There were eight or nine other Englishmen, all wounded, lying there; and I was in front, right in the mouth of the [German] dugout, where I could see the trench, where a lot o’ Boches was sitting, smoking cigarettes, an’ talking in their own lingo. By an’ by a German officer comes along. I knew he was coming by the way these chaps jumped an’ dropped their smokin’ and talkin’. They came to attention pretty smart; I’ll say that for ’em.62

  The 101st’s left column, meantime, suffered heavily as it advanced along Sausage Valley. Tenth Lincolns and the following 11th Suffolks were swept down by machine-gunners in Sausage Redoubt and around La Boisselle; they were destroyed as effective units within 30 minutes.63 ‘In spite of the fact that wave after wave were mown down by machinegun fire, all pushed on,’ wrote 11th Suffolks’ war diarist.64 ‘We often saw entire platoons bunch together so long until one after the other was shot down,’ wrote one German observer.65 Precious few from the leftflank platoons made it to the Lochnagar crater and adjacent ground.66 Some 24th Northumberland Fusiliers, coming forward behind the 11th Suffolks, now went forward under ‘intense machine gun fire’ and, while a number did get across no-man’s-land, the battalion’s attack was otherwise halted.67 A few hundred soldiers from all three battalions had snatched a limited footing in and around the crater, but further up Sausage Valley the formidable Sausage Redoubt, which had wreaked so much havoc, remained resistant and deadly.