The Great War
Page 43
Private Louis Barthas, 296th Infantry Regiment
The ordinary French soldiers were becoming war weary. In ordering them forward for yet another great new offensive, Nivelle was risking more than he realised.
One key feature of the offensive was to be surprise; but surprise proved impossible. Nivelle was himself less than discreet in discussing his plans in front of civilians and security was further compromised by an assortment of French deserters. All this provided General Max von Boehn, commander of the German Seventh Army, with a fairly clear picture of what was going on, which was confirmed when the preliminary bombardment opened on 9 April. The German defences were primed and ready when, at 06.00 on 16 April, nineteen divisions of French infantry attacked on a wide front supported by 5,350 guns all along the Chemin des Dames front stretching from Soissons to Rheims. To make matters worse for the French, the barrage was ineffective as their observation flights had been dogged by the severe wintry weather, while the Germans were protected from much of the shelling by their plethora of deep shelters, supplemented by deep quarries scattered around the sector. On top of the Chemin des Dames above the Aisne River the French at first made only trivial gains.
Both sides were using new weapons. Technology was on the march and the Germans had developed a lighter version of the original Maxim 1908 machine gun. Instead of the heavy-sled mounting that had rendered it almost unmoveable in battle conditions, the new MG08/15 had a bipod mounting, wooden stock and pistol grip for firing, all of which made it relatively lightweight. Although not a great weapon, it was present in increasing numbers and gave the Germans appreciably greater firepower than the French might have expected. The parameters of battle were changing all the time.
The French had also taken a step forward and were using tanks for the first time. Their Schneider CA (Char d’Assaut) tank was armed with a 75 mm gun and two Hotchkiss machine guns, had a crew of six and a theoretical speed of 5 miles per hour. In all eight battalions consisting of 132 Schneider tanks were employed in the assault on Berry-au-Bac, but they suffered heavy losses from the German artillery. Although these imposinglooking machines raised the spirits of the long-suffering poilus, the tanks had not yet been properly integrated into French tactical doctrine and they had not been tested on the battlefield. This made it doubly unfortunate that the Schneider CA design had a fatal flaw: its petrol tanks were not only inadequately armoured but, worse still, they were positioned at the front of the vehicle. Any direct hit by a shell would cause a disastrous fire, spraying the crew members with burning petrol.
The tank on the left suddenly becomes an inferno. In front of it is the still smouldering shell which set it alight. Two torches escape: two torches making a mad, frenzied dash towards the rear, two torches which twist, which roll on the ground. A tank blazing to the right; another one behind. And on our left, it looks as if someone is setting our line of steel tanks alight like a row of flares. Fires, explosions. All at once the tanks are enveloped in flames, and immediately, with a terrible crackling sound, everything is blown apart, thrown up into the sky. Sixty shells exploding and thousands of bullets!12
Lieutenant Charles-Maurice Chenu, 4th Battery, 5th Special Artillery
In all, fifty-seven French tanks were put out of action by the German guns and a further nineteen broke down. Modifications were set in train but the Schneider CA remained an ineffectual tank incapable of coping with the wide German trenches introduced after the British launched their tanks on the Somme in 1916.
As the Nivelle Offensive continued, some gains were made over the next few days. Such a huge concentration of armies, the mass deployment of artillery, the millions of shells and the sheer determined effort: all of this could not be held back everywhere. Indeed, on the left, the Sixth Army ultimately advanced up to four miles as the Germans retired from exposed positions. But such gains as were made still came at great cost. The aims of the operation had to be scaled down, with no more wild talk of ending the war, but rather of completing the far more localised objective of capturing the Chemin des Dames Ridge. Further progress was made and, by 10 May, the French had taken the Ridge, along with an impressive 28,500 prisoners and 187 guns. In many ways Nivelle’s Offensive was not a disaster per se, but it seemed so because of the damaging hyperbole he had used to promote it. The 48-hour pledge in particular made him a hostage to fortune. The French politicians were, of course, horrified. This was not the outcome they had intended when they had dismissed Joffre. Waveringly, as an interim step, they appointed the cautious Pétain as Nivelle’s Chief of General Staff on 29 April. There was immediately friction between Nivelle and Pétain. Pétain was intent on pursuing a far more defensive strategy than Nivelle, sensibly influenced by the collapse of the Russians on the Eastern Front and the desire to let Britain and the new ally, America, take their share of the burden. This in turn caused a degree of consternation in the British High Command, which feared the consequences of the French taking a back seat for up to a year. After a locking of horns at a conference of military leaders (Haig, Nivelle, Pétain and Robertson) on 4 May, it was agreed that, although the overall strategy remained offensive, the methodology of wearing down German resources would be best served by attacks that used artillery to the maximum degree while seeking only limited objectives to reduce the investment of their own men in the attack. Essentially this was a version of ‘bite and hold’. It was also agreed that the British would carry forward the offensive role for the rest of 1917, while Haig was relieved of direct control by Nivelle. On 15 May Pétain was appointed Commander in Chief of the French Army, while the ebullient Foch was appointed as Chief of General Staff.
Nivelle’s ultimate fall was probably inevitable. Under his tenure, the French Army had finally reached the end of its endurance. Too many Frenchmen had already died for their country and, if the war continued, many more would share their fate. In just over a week from 16 April another 30,000 had been killed, 100,000 wounded and 4,000 were missing. One of them was Second Lieutenant Jean-Louis Cros, who had the misfortune to be hit by shrapnel and was lying abandoned in a shell hole on 16 April 1917 when he painstakingly wrote a last card to his family. He had not been particularly lucky in life; two of his three daughters had died of tuberculosis and only one, Lucie, survived. His last note is a poignant document.
My dear wife, my dear parents and all I love, I have been wounded. I hope it will be nothing. Care well for the children, my dear Lucie; Leopold will help you if I don’t get out of this. I have a crushed thigh and am all alone in a shell hole. I hope they will soon come to fetch me. My last thought is of you.13
Second Lieutenant Jean-Louis Cros, 201st Infantry Regiment
Very shortly afterwards he died, probably as a result of a haemorrhage. When his corpse was found, his stiffened fingers were still clutching the card. It was sent on to his grieving family. More than a million French families had been thrown into mourning by the war; millions more had to face the return of their badly wounded sons.
Even in the months leading up to the Nivelle Offensive, morale had not been good in several regiments, particularly in the infantry, who had borne the brunt of the carnage. Now many poilus looked abroad to the recent Russian Revolution for inspiration as to what could be done.
These Slavic soldiers, until just yesterday enslaved by an iron discipline and going to their slaughter like lemmings, had broken their yoke, declared their freedom and imposed peace on their masters – their persecutors. The whole world was stunned, petrified of this revolution, the collapse of the vast ancient empire of the Tsars. These events had repercussion on the French front blowing a wind of revolt through almost every regiment. There were, besides, reasons for the unrest: the painful failure and frightful carnage of the Chemin des Dames offensive, the prospect of more long months of war with no guarantee of a decision and finally the long wait for leave – it was that I believe that most irritated the troops.14
Private Louis Barthas, 296th Infantry Regiment
As the Nivelle Offensive fell apa
rt, the French Army began to boil over. Discontented mutterings and vehement complaints led to incidents of indiscipline that contravened all military regulations. The level of desertions increased rapidly, with thousands of individuals absenting themselves from the line. In the 296th Infantry Regiment, in which Private Louis Barthas served, the mass disobedience, or mutiny, began in a fairly typical manner. At night the men had taken to giving enthusiastic renditions of revolutionary songs and shouting slogans. But then events took a more serious turn.
At noon on May 30 there was even a meeting outside the village to form a Russian style ‘Soviet’ composed of three men from each company to take control of the regiment. To my amazement they offered me the presidency of the Soviet, that is to say to replace the Colonel, no less! Of course I refused, I did not want to know the power of the firing squad to ape the Russians. However, I resolved to give a veneer of legality to these revolutionary demonstrations. I drew up a manifesto to convey to our company leaders in protest against the delay in our leave. It began, ‘The day before the offensive General Nivelle had an order read to the troops saying, “The time has come for the sacrifice!” We have offered our lives as a sacrifice for our country but we in turn say that the time has come for our vastly overdue leave!’ The revolt was thus put into a context of law and justice. This manifesto was read by a poilu in a sonorous voice, perched astride an oak tree branch and wild applause greeted the last lines. This didn’t flatter my vanity much, because we learned afterwards that whoever wrote this protest, moderate though it was, their fate would be clear: a certain court martial and very likely twelve Lebel bullets destined to dispatch me to another world before my destined time.15
Private Louis Barthas, 296th Infantry Regiment
He was lucky that no one gave away who had written the ‘manifesto’. Soon most of the French Army was affected. When the crackdown began in early June there were mass courts martial at which 23,385 men were convicted for various degrees of mutinous behaviour, of whom around 500 were given death sentences, although the vast majority of these were commuted. Pétain favoured a reasonably moderate approach as he sought to repair the morale of the long-suffering poilus by the twin means of ending large attacks – at least in the near future – and introducing regular, longer and more equitably distributed leave. A fair amount of tact was needed in handling the recalcitrant units.
The powers that be deemed it prudent to isolate the three battalions of the 296th Regiment from each other and we were quartered in widely separated locations. Our battalion was placed in barracks 4 kilometres from Sainte-Ménehould. It was only when we got there that we realised we were missing the other two battalions. The next evening at seven o’clock, we gathered to start off for the trenches. Noisy demonstrations took place: shouting, singing, screaming, whistling and, of course, the singing of ‘The Internationale’. If the officers had made a gesture, or said a word against this noise, I sincerely believe that they would have been ruthlessly massacred, so high was the tension. They took the most sensible course, waiting patiently until calm was restored. You cannot shout, whistle and scream for ever and there was no leader among the rebels capable of making a decision, or of giving us direction. So we ended up heading off towards the trenches, although not without grumbling and griping. Soon, to our great surprise, a column of cavalry reached us and we walked alongside them. They accompanied us to the trenches like slaves being led off to hard labour! Greatly upset and suffocated by the dust raised by horses, it was not long before there were altercations between the infantry and cavalry. Fights soon broke out – there were even a few blows with rifle butt on the one hand and the flat of the sword on the other. To avoid a real battle, we had to get away from the cavalry – which probably did not displease them.16
Private Louis Barthas, 296th Infantry Regiment
Pétain saw the summer of 1917 as a period of healing and rebuilding; but the French Army was not yet broken and, under his careful stewardship, it would regain much of its martial ardour within a matter of months.
As part of this process Pétain sought to revitalise its operational efficiency. He adopted a system of defence in depth, ensuring that the main line of resistance was set back beyond the range of the German field artillery, while reserve divisions were held back ready to counter-attack any serious incursions. The developments in German tactics were being closely studied and, where necessary, mimicked; in war there is no disgrace in copying ideas no matter where they come from. The divisions holding the line would also be rotated more frequently to allow them time both to rest and train. Petain accepted that an entirely defensive posture would benefit only the Germans. But offensives in future would be strictly limited, relying heavily on artillery and designed to incur the minimum losses possible.
Development work also continued on the tank. The first tanks the French Army had introduced, the Schneider CA and the St-Chamond, had both proved disappointments, mechanically unreliable and incapable of dealing with the demands of trench warfare. But the French were also pushing ahead with the concept of a light two-man tank, armed with a machine gun or 37 mm cannon, which could be manufactured cheaply and quickly in large numbers. The design was revolutionary, with a central rotating turret which prefigured the ‘classic’ shape of the tank for much of the twentieth century. Relatively light, this new tank, the Renault FT, had a speed of just under 5 miles per hour and was capable of crossing a 6-foot trench. The idea was to have swarms of these tanks which collectively would provide a far more difficult target to the German gunners than their lumbering predecessors. A thousand were ordered in April 1917, eventually rising to nearly 8,000. More were manufactured in the United States, although the inevitable delays meant that it would be mid-1918 before large numbers reached the front. The French were edging towards a new method of waging war
Over to the British
The failure of the French offensive freed Haig from the formal shackles of Nivelle’s leadership. Yet at the same time he was left with little option in his immediate course of action. Although he may have wished to conserve assets for his long-cherished offensive at Ypres, the sheer scope of the French defeat, coupled with the scale of the mutinies, forced his hand. Pétain had been less than forthright in his descriptions of the scale of the problem, but the British had their own intelligence sources and rumours filled the gaps. It was evident that the British must fight on at Arras in order to help give the French Army time to recuperate. The attacks continued and the casualty lists expanded dramatically as the fighting raged on for another fortnight. The difficulties of combining the theoretical necessities of good generalship with the draining, insistent pressure of events are neatly demonstrated by the planning process for the Third Battle of the Scarpe and Second Battle of Bullecourt, both launched on 3 May. The conference to discuss the plans was only held on 1 May – just two days before. The requirement for a long bombardment was now forgotten, there was no time for detailed operational planning. The larger strategic situation demanded an immediate offensive from the British at Arras; so, ready or not, over the top they went at 03.45 on 3 May on a 16-mile front from Vimy Ridge to Bullecourt. The collated experience of the Western Front hitherto would have left few doubts as to the likely outcomes of illprepared attacks on strong defensive positions.
Our orders didn’t get through until the last minute and then they were all garbled. No one, including our officers, seemed to know what we were supposed to be doing, or where we were going. Officers were supposed to have synchronised their watches in so far as it was possible at that time of day. At a certain time, our barrage was supposed to lift and we were to climb out of the trenches and go forward. Well, we did – but it wasn’t all at the same time! We were given false information and told the artillery had smashed the enemy defences and we would get through the wire – did we hell! 17
Sergeant Jack Cousins, 7th Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment
Even where there were localised successes, the high casualty meant that such vic
tories were pyrrhic indeed.
The Battle of Arras marked a midpoint in the development of British offensive tactics. They had learnt a great deal but they still had much to discover. Although the artillery was rapidly expanding with more of the crucial heavy batteries and promising advances in munitions, collectively it still had not perfected all the complex techniques that they would need. And there were still not enough guns to allow the smooth switching of offensives up and down the front; the batteries had to be laboriously moved into place. The time would come when each of the five armies of the BEF had enough artillery to launch a major offensive using its own artillery resources, but that time had not yet arrived in 1917. The infantry tactics also needed work, and much more had to be done to augment their firepower in the form of more Lewis guns, Stokes mortars and rifle grenades. Despite all the promises, the BEF remained desperately short of tanks, as production lagged behind requirements. In the sky, however, the lot of the RFC was beginning to improve with the advent of large numbers of the new corps machine, the RE8. It was still relatively slow and unmanoeuvrable, but it was a good deal better than the tottering BE2 C. The new generation of scouts that could match the German Albatros were also coming on stream; too late for the Battle of Arras, it was true, but the success of the Sopwith Camel and SE5 A boded well for the future.
And what of the cost? The Battle of Arras was an exceptionally painful experience for the BEF. It had begun so well but then the desperate flailing to distract attention from the French failure lead to terrible losses of around 150,000. In fact, the BEF’s average daily casualties for the duration of the battle would prove to be the highest of the war – worse, even, than the Battle of the Somme. Nivelle’s attempt to win the war at a stroke had failed and on 1 May Haig had restated his views on the underlying situation on the Western Front.
The guiding principles are those which have proved successful in war from time immemorial, viz., that the first step must always be to wear down the enemy’s power of resistance and to continue to do so until he is so weakened that he will be unable to withstand a decisive blow; then with all one’s forces to deliver the decisive blow and finally reap the fruits of victory. The enemy has already been weakened appreciably, but time is required to wear down his great numbers of troops. The situation is not yet ripe for the decisive blow. We must therefore continue to wear down the enemy until his powers of resistance has been further reduced. The cause for General Nivelle’s comparative failure appears primarily to have been a miscalculation in this respect, and the remedy now is to return to wearing down methods for a further period, the duration of which cannot be calculated.18