Thirteenth Corps ran up 6126 casualties on 1 July. This included 1740 dead, 4275 wounded, 99 missing and 12 prisoners.245 Opposing units of 12th Infantry and 28th Reserve Divisions suffered exceptional losses of about 2116 officers and men. In other words, XIII Corps suffered about 2.9 casualties for every one German, a ratio that reveals just how casualtyheavy the fighting was for Congreve’s men in achieving their objectives.
Congreve’s XIII Corps had turned in a stunning success. Prior to battle his gunners had swept away most of the German wire, levelled many trenches and strongpoints, broken communication links and almost entirely neutralised the hostile artillery. All of these factors helped the 18th’s and 30th’s well-rehearsed soldiers. The morning mist, along with smoke discharges, obscured advancing infantry, but their supporting artillery barrage was too quick. The 18th’s slower advance was due to the artillery’s failure to suppress resistance at the Carnoy craters, allowing German defenders there and further back time to organise and to hold out. Pockets of resistance were eventually outmanoeuvred and bombed into submission, mopping-up teams following behind. Meantime, too many German soldiers of the 12th Infantry and 28th Reserve Divisions were jammed into the forward area and the garrison had been foolishly reorganised at the last minute. In truth, the Mametz–Montauban defences, unlike those in XIV Reserve Corps’ other divisional sectors, became weaker with each successive line. Châles de Beaulieu was primarily responsible: he was short on foresight and did not drive defensive development with the same verve as other divisional commanders in XIV Reserve Corps. Stein should have picked up on this, but did not. For this and allowing BRIR6 to be revolved into the line at the last minute he, too, must bear responsibility. Thus, Congreve’s success owed much to his artillery’s effectiveness, the lie of the ground, implementation of an intelligent attack scheme by infantrymen who knew their jobs, and tactical blunders by German commanders in organising Montauban’s defence.
It was these factors that Captain Grove-White referred to when he attributed Congreve’s victory to thorough preparations prior to battle:246 ‘The success of the XIII Corps in contrast to the failure of other Corps was in my opinion . . . due to the extreme care that was taken to foresee and provide for every possible eventuality and not to rely solely on a set piece attack worked out according to programme.’247 It was a fair assessment.
Congreve penned an open message to his men late on 1 July. Unlike his other corps commanders further north, he did not have to lie or window-dress defeat as some kind of moral victory. He somewhat unusually just had to write the truth, and even then he was sparing with words: ‘Please convey to all ranks my intense appreciation of their splendid fighting which has attained all asked of them.’248 Nothing else needed to be said. Congreve was to the point and sincere, and his men loved him for it.
CHAPTER 10
‘This Tragic Adventure’
VII Corps’ clinical destruction at Gommecourt
‘I just hate to think of it all, and am afraid, if I think more, that I should have a nervous breakdown. Sorry, I can write no more of it.’1
— Rifleman Noel Lockhart, 1/5th Londons (London Rifle Brigade)
‘IT IS DOUBTFUL if any point in the line in France was stronger than this point of Gommecourt,’ wrote poet laureate John Masefield after walking there in 1917, as wildflowers took root and slivers of metal crunched underfoot. It was an overstatement, of course, as German positions all the way south to La Boisselle had been just as formidable and deadly to the attacker, in some places more so. But Masefield’s silky mind and untrained eyes were on a flight of poetic licence. ‘There is nothing now to show that this quiet landscape was one of the tragical places of this war.’2 Not quite then, not quite now, as it happens.
Walk along the old battle line outside Gommecourt salient today and the metal of war is still there: slivers of rusted iron that flake away in your palm, and the brass of bullet casings and shrapnel both oxidised to green. Look closely enough just after a rainstorm, with a bit of wind and luck and just the right light, and it can appear as if someone has cast a few handfuls of emeralds into the plough lines.
Back in the summer of 1916 this elbow of land nine miles north of Albert belonged to the ruthlessly minded Generalleutnant Richard Freiherr von Süsskind-Schwendi, commander of 2nd Guards Reserve Division. Sixty-one-year-old, Württemberg-born Süsskind-Schwendi was a Prussian Staff College graduate, and one-time personal adjutant to Prince Alexander of Prussia. Every inch the polished guardsman, he exercised daily to keep fit.3 He was a practical man and appreciated bespoke defensive schemes that made the best use of ground, machine guns and artillery.4 His top-flight division had inherited the Gommecourt fortress in late-May 1916.5 Until then, 61-year-old Generalleutnant Karl von Borries had been estate manager, and his 52nd Infantry Division still held the salient’s southern flank.6 Borries was another Prussian Staff College alumnus, and everything about the Gommecourt earthworks reflected his dynamic character and ever-critical eye. Süsskind-Schwendi liked Borries’ work because it conformed with his own grim mission statement: ‘It is not a question of merely repelling the enemy’s attack; the object should be to annihilate him.’7
This position’s strength lay in the mutually supporting defences of the salient’s head and shoulders, which were held by at least 12,000 men. The snout, where the northwest- (Gommecourt North) and southwestfacing (Gommecourt South) front lines met, was bounded by the roads from Gommceoucrt to Foncquevillers and Hébuterne. Just behind was Gommecourt Park, a large stand of trees laced with strongpoints and trenches, then Kernwerk, a redoubt of earthworks, fortified buildings and dugouts enveloping the core of the village. A head-on tilt here was guaranteed to be a bloody slog over bough and brick. The adjacent stretches of no-man’s-land — respectively north and south of the two roads — had been converted into machine-gun and artillery shooting galleries laced with thick pickets of barbed wire. Behind were the serried trenches of the front-line system, all with excellent fields of fire.8 The trenches further back were sited to blunt break-ins from either side.9 Multiple machine guns were housed in trenches, redoubts, strongpoints and fortified woods, among them Schwalbenneste (The Z and Little Z Redoubts), Gommecourt and Pigeon Woods, Nameless Farm and also The Maze and Quadrilateral groupings of trenches. If the strength of the salient’s apex was daunting enough to provoke flanking attacks, its shoulders were equally tailored to repulse them.
Artillery positions were further back, secreted away in valleys and folds in the ground, and among pockets of foliage. Second Guards Reserve Division was supported by about 80 field, heavy and captured guns.10 Half (Gruppe Süd) were deployed behind Gommecourt North and the salient head, with the remainder (Gruppe Nord) around Essarts, closer to Monchy-au-Bois. Gruppe Nord’s guns could enfilade no-man’sland opposite Foncquevillers, along with those batteries of 111th Infantry Division around Adinfer Wood, also near Monchy-au-Bois. Gommecourt South was backed by up to a third of 52nd Infantry Division’s estimated 100 artillery barrels.11 Further south, around Puisieux, artillery supporting Infantry Regiment 66 (IR66), another third of the 52nd’s complement, could enfilade no-man’s-land facing Hébuterne if called upon, as well as that before Serre.12 Most of these guns survived the sevenday British bombardment and their crews waited patiently to loose off a tornado of defensive shellfire and destroy the expected British attack.13
The job of cracking the Gommecourt fortress belonged to Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow, the portly 58-year-old at the helm of Third Army’s VII Corps. To some, the square-jawed, white-haired general was ‘Snowball.’ Others gave him the suggestive moniker ‘Slush.’ He had scraped out his career as an infantry subaltern on the African continent, first in South Africa against the Zulus, then in Sudan and Egypt. Promotion and Staff College, Camberley, were tailed by more time in Egypt, Sudan and then India. By the outbreak of the First World War, the perennially upbeat Snow — whose stock phrase was ‘all goes well’ — was back in England commanding 4th Divis
ion, which he took to France in August 1914 before taking the helm of 27th Division. Snow fought the retreat of 1914 at Le Cateau and Marne, and also commanded his division in 1915 at the Second Battle of Ypres. Several times he was nearly killed or injured by German fire.14 Early in the war he was seriously injured when a horse rolled on him, which was why he returned to Britain frequently for treatment. He was promoted to corps command in July 1915.
Snow professed awareness of the challenges posed by fighting on the Western Front, namely adapting to a war of materiel, static positions, the growing importance of artillery and tactical cohesion between artillery, infantry and engineers. Nevertheless, Snow also confessed that he and other senior British officers suffered from ‘a total lack of imagination’ when it came to actually breaking the tactical impasse.15 Come 1916, Snow was a long-serving campaigner whose moments of acute professional introspection promised much when it came to his ability to adapt to the nature of fighting stalemate warfare on the Western Front.
The problem was that Snow habitually talked a better game than he delivered. Field-Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery, who was Brigade Major of 104th Brigade in 1916, later said Snow did not really have a grasp on what was afoot at the front.16 That might have had something to do with his occasionally contemptuous opinion of the average fighting man: ‘Unless driven to it by his officers, wrote Snow, the British soldier would sooner die than dig, but whether the reason for this was stupidity, lack of imagination or laziness I don’t know, but probably it was a little of all three.’17 As a corps commander the work he put into planning and preparing operations was said to be ‘quite useless.’18 At Arras in 1917, he ‘merely told his Divisions to get on with it’ and provided no corps-tailored, co-ordinated artillery plan.19 Snow’s speciality was frontal assaults with little effort made to reduce casualties.20 Others criticised the profligate general as being more frightened of GHQ than the enemy.21 His diary reveals a man unduly concerned about his seniors’ perception of him, and whether or not he would be fired as a result:22 ‘One was never sure whether for some particular action one would be promoted or stellanbosched [i.e. sacked].’23 At best there were significant questions surrounding Snow’s abilities as a corps commander; he undoubtedly lacked empathy, confessed to a lack of imagination and was more concerned about appeasing General Sir Douglas Haig than husbanding his men’s lives in battle.
This explains why Snow did not stand behind his valid concerns about Gommecourt’s being a poor location for a diversionary operation on 1 July. He and Third Army commander Lieutenant-General Sir Edmund Allenby warned Haig about the salient’s formidable defences and artillery.24 They proposed attacking further north at Arras, where German positions were weaker, the terrain more favourable and enemy infantry and artillery reserves more likely to be drawn in.25 Their words fell on deaf ears. Haig briefly flirted with Monchy-au-Bois as a location but soon settled on Gommecourt. He told the duo to help Fourth Army by ‘diverting against itself the fire of the artillery and infantry which might otherwise be directed against the [neighbouring] left flank of the main attack near Serre.’26 Haig was being literal and eager-to-please Snow acquiesced; any hope of implementing a feint on 1 July, rather than a diversion, was lost.
By early June Snow had unsurprisingly swapped his initial concerns for optimism. Gommecourt was now a ‘favourable’ spot for a pincer operation to snip off the salient because the geography and opposing trench lines were ideal for artillery preparation. Snow now watered down his and Allenby’s earlier reservations to a set of lesser disadvantages, which suggested they would be easily overcome. Gains made by his corps would not be exploited. In effect Snow had agreed that VII Corps would take a hit for ‘Team Haig’, and hopefully facilitate the progress of the neighbouring VIII Corps by soaking up any slack in the German shellfire and drawing in any enemy infantry reserves that might otherwise be deployed closer to Serre.
Critics were everywhere. Brigadier-General Sir Archibald Home, a senior staff officer in 46th (North Midland) Division, confided in his diary at the time that a diversionary operation at Arras would ‘probably have been the best.’27 He believed the Gommecourt plan too ambitious, and thought Snow a ‘fusser’ whose pre-battle conferences were ‘futile.’28 He added that VII Corps’ headquarters ‘wants ginger [livening up] badly’ and ‘it ought to take the thing in hand and issue quite definite orders as to what it wants. They will not take responsibility.’29 Snow’s reputation at Third Army headquarters was worse. Brigadier-General Spencer Hollond, an officer on Allenby’s staff, said that Snow’s ‘arrangements for this attack were monstrously bad.’30 Hollond’s character assassination continued:
He never co-ordinated the plan of his divisions, neither did he supervise their individual arrangements. He went on [health] leave to England for ten days during the preparation and arrived back only a few days before the attack. I thought his supervisions so bad that I tried to get Allenby to degommer [i.e. sack] him, but Allenby wasn’t sure of getting G.H.Q. support.31
It boded ill for VII Corps’ operation that two senior staff officers directly involved in the planning believed Snow unfit for command, and that he and his headquarters were not up to the job.
Snow proposed a three-phase operation to pinch off the salient and straighten the line. There would be no direct attack on the salient head, with the ground opposite it separating 46th (North Midland) and 56th (1st London) Divisions and held by 1/4th Lincolns* and half 1/3rd Londons.† The first phase would see 46th and 56th converge after breaching the salient’s flanking defences with unimaginative head-on attacks that conformed with Haig’s orders for the diversion. The second would see them link behind Gommecourt village, isolating it, Kernwerk and Gommecourt Park. The infantry had just 30 minutes from 7.30 a.m. to achieve these objectives. Shellfire would cut the German wire for the infantry, which would be covered by a smoke discharge from just before Zero. There would be no underground mine blasts to obliterate key German strongpoints and redoubts; time was too short to tunnel across. Capture of the salient’s core would start at 10.30 a.m. after VII Corps’ biggest howitzers had pulverised it for three hours. Snow anticipated quick completion of the flanking phases, followed by a breather then a mop-up of the shattered salient head; everything hinged on the British artillery getting infantry into the German lines and allowing it to consolidate gains.
‘This looked such an easy, simple operation, especially on the map in an HQ some 20 miles behind the line,’ said Lieutenant Aubrey Moore, 1/5th Leicesters.32 ‘Whether it would lead to success or failure, it had been a colossal feat of organisation.’ Lieutenant-Colonel Lionel Southam, Royal Field Artillery (RFA), thought Snow’s orders were ‘inspired with unusual optimism and did not provide for any hitch. I have some recollection of the ease with which it was anticipated the clearing of the particularly formidable [Gommecourt] park would be affected [sic].’33
The first difficulty was getting infantry across the wide no-man’slands. In late May, the 56th’s most advanced trenches were pushed forward until 250–400 yards from the German front line, from 600–800 yards previously. Even then, the 56th’s commander, Major-General Sir Charles Hull, thought the distance should have been cut to 150–250 yards, but time was too short.34 Subsequent weeks saw a latticework of trenches link these advanced ditches back to the old front line. On the 46th’s front, no-man’s-land was 400–500 yards wide, but soft ground, wet weather and hostile shellfire meant attempts to tunnel out and dig an advanced assembly trench beyond a bramble of old French wire produced mediocre results. At best it was just three to four feet deep. Rain in the week before 1 July turned these and other defiles into barely negotiable mires, but they would nonetheless be used as jumping-off lines for most of the 46th’s leading attack battalions. On the first day of battle, 1/1st Monmouths* were to improve and dig communication trenches. For the meantime, the deadly ground between the opposing front lines had been narrowed, but Snow’s infantry still had to travel at least two-and-a-half end-on-end foot
ball fields before even reaching the German parapet.
Seventh Corps’ artillery was supposed to have cut the wire, run up enemy casualties, silenced hostile artillery and blasted a path for the infantry. For this it had 84 heavy guns, or one for every 47 yards of its 4000 yards sector, which included the not-to-be-attacked salient head.35 Its 148 field guns and howitzers equated to one every 27 yards.36 These ratios were consistent with Fourth Army’s. But more than a third of the heavy guns did not have the range to hit German batteries opposite,37 and certainly not those in adjacent sectors.38 Those enemy batteries within range had suffered few gun losses prior to 1 July. Worse yet, the corpscontrolled artillery produced varied results with its shooting, which had a lot to do with the shellfire’s composition. The 56th’s gunners, for instance, had allocated nearly three times more 18-pounder shells for wire-cutting than the 46th.39 Many of these and numerous trench-mortar shells failed to detonate. In places across the corps front the wire was cleared — more so in the 56th’s sector than the 46th’s — but in some others it was intact, or had merely been cleaved into tangles that remained obstacles.40 Moreover, the 46th’s commander, Major-General Edward Montagu-Stuart-Wortley, had alarmingly decided not to shell the German front line opposite as he wanted it taken intact. German accounts reveal that numerous trenches were damaged by the shellfire but not rendered indefensible, and that, as elsewhere, deep dugouts mostly protected their occupants.41 German casualties totalled about 200 for the whole salient during the bombardment.42 Snow’s gunners could hardly have done any worse: German artillery remained active, wire-cutting was inconsistent and enemy infantry was safe underground waiting for the attack to begin.
First day of the Somme Page 39