The Great War
Page 46
Plumer’s ‘bite and hold’ tactics had certainly achieved their aim of capturing the Gheluvelt Plateau; but the drawbacks of this attritional method of warfare were also becoming apparent. The limited scope of each advance meant that there was never a chance of over-running and capturing significant numbers of German guns. Therefore the threat posed by the German artillery remained relatively constant – every battle needed the same tremendous attention to detail and thorough counter-battery bombardment. The casualties suffered were also painful, even though the balance was in favour of the BEF. As a method of warfare it only had relevance in circumstances as at Ypres – where the Germans could not retreat without exposing important tactical and strategic objectives. But there was a further problem: time was running out for the BEF as they continued the offensive deep into October. Gradually the overall objectives shrivelled to reflect the changing situation. It was clear that Roulers and the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend were out of reach. The only option left was to wear down the Germans, thereby also deflecting attention from Britain’s faltering allies – for by late 1917 the French, Italian and Russian forces were all wilting under the intense strain of war. As a localised tactical objective Haig resolved to complete the capture of the Passchendaele Ridge which would allow his troops to winter in a strong defensive position. There is no doubt that the British sacrifice was to some extent effective.
The wastage in the big actions of the Fourth Battle of Flanders was extraordinarily high. In the West we began to be short of troops. The two divisions that had been held in readiness in the East, and were already on the way to Italy, were diverted to Flanders.35
General Erich Ludendorff, General Headquarters
The German experiment of strengthening the front zone had proved a disaster and Ludendorff ordered yet another rejig of defensive tactics to counter the massed British guns. This time they would simply expand the forward defensive zone, with the most advanced area only lightly held and relying on barbed wire and the artillery to prevent the attacking British infantry from getting through.
Yet even as the Germans reorganised their defences, it once again began to rain over Flanders – although there could be no real surprise at rain in October. But the effects, once again, were catastrophic: as the shallow valleys flooded, the morass spreading inexorably via the linked shell holes that covered almost the entire battlefield. The Royal Artillery once again found themselves crippled: they couldn’t get their guns and ammunition forward, the gun platforms were unsteady, ruining accuracy, and the work of the RFC was stymied as the aircraft either could not get aloft or the visibility was so poor that they could not do their job. In contrast, the massed guns of the Germans were sited on higher, drier ground that had not been furrowed regularly by shells. As British counter-battery fire lost its accuracy the German guns regained their influence on the battle.
Ypres became a hell on earth for the men condemned to fight there and that dreadful experience has come to symbolise the whole of the war. All around them were the mangled corpses of their erstwhile comrades. Lieutenant Richard Dixon was a forward observation officer. He was incredulous at the horrors that surrounded him.
All around us lay the dead, both friend and foe, half in, half out of the water-logged shell holes. Their hands and boots stuck out at us from the mud. Their rotting faces stared blindly at us from coverlets of mud; their decaying buttocks heaved themselves obscenely from the filth with which the shell bursts had smothered them. Skulls grinned at us; all around us stank unbelievably. These corpses were never buried, for it was impossible for us to retrieve them. They had lain, many of them, for weeks and months; they would lie and rot and disintegrate foully into the muck until they were an inescapable part of it to manure the harvests of a future peace-time Belgium. Horror was everywhere.36
Lieutenant Richard Dixon, 14th Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery
The British were caught in a bind. Stuck in front of the Passchendaele Ridge, either they could go forward or they could go back to the Pilckem Ridge. Tactically they could not stay in the swamps down below the German lines.
The Germans too were suffering, but they still had the military resources and determination to cling on. Yet it is difficult to blame Haig for his determination to test the German resolve on the Passchendaele Ridge. He himself had commanded the I Corps as it struggled to hold back the Germans in 1914. The BEF had been staring defeat in the face when the German attacks had stopped in November 1914. Haig was resolved not to make the same mistake, but to press on, try to capitalise on German exhaustion and trigger a collapse in their resistance. Indeed, the next attack, the Battle of Poelcapelle, was actually brought forward a day to 9 October even as the rain teemed down. But the German Army proved to be nowhere near to accepting defeat: fresh divisions had moved forward, the artillery batteries had been replenished. The result was a terrible slaughter.
The approach to the ridge was a desolate swamp, over which brooded an evil menacing atmosphere that seemed to defy encroachment. Far more treacherous than the visible surface defences with which we were familiar, such as barbed wire; deep devouring mud spread deadly traps in all directions. We splashed and slithered, and dragged our feet from the pull of an invisible enemy determined to suck us into its depths. Every few steps someone would slide and stumble and, weighed down by rifle and equipment, rapidly sink into the squelching mess. Those nearest grabbed his arms, struggled against being themselves engulfed and, if humanly possible, dragged him out. When helpers floundered in as well and doubled the task, it became hopeless. All the straining efforts failed and the swamp swallowed its screaming victims, and we had to be ordered to plod on dejectedly and fight this relentless enemy as stubbornly as we did those we could see. It happened that one of those leading us was Lieutenant Chamberlain, and so distraught did he become at the spectacle of men drowning in mud, and the desperate attempts to rescue them that suddenly he began hysterically belabouring the shoulders of a sinking man with his swagger stick. We were horror-struck to see this most compassionate officer so unstrung as to resort to brutality, and our loud protests forced him to desist. The man was rescued, but some could not be and they sank shrieking with fear and agony. To be ordered to go ahead and leave a comrade to such a fate was the hardest experience one could be asked to endure, but the objective had to be reached, as we plunged on, bitter anger against the evil forces prevailing piled on to our exasperation. This was as near to Hell as I ever want to be.37
Private Norman Cliff, 1st Grenadier Guards
Some meagre advances were made towards the German fastness at Houthulst Forest, but overall the Battle of Poelcapelle was an utter failure.
Still the offensive ground on, but increasing desperation led Plumer, under pressure from Haig, to abandon many of the principles that had previously brought him success. With the weather outlook still grim, the British were running out of time if they were to secure the Passchendaele Ridge before winter arrived. Without the proper ‘bite and hold’ methodology, this was a recipe for disaster, which was accordingly delivered at the First Battle of Passchendaele on 12 October – at a cost of another 13,000 casualties. When Lieutenant Walde Fisher of the AIF moved back into the front line the next day he was greeted by a dreadful situation.
Our units sank to the lowest pitch of which I have ever been cognisant. It looked hopeless – the men were so utterly done. However, the attempt had to be made, and accordingly we moved up that night – a battalion ninety strong. I had ‘A’ Company with twenty-three men. We got up to our positions somehow or other – and the fellows were dropping out unconscious along the road – they have guts, my word! That’s the way to express it. We found the line instead of being advanced, some 30 yards behind where we had left it – and the shell stricken and trodden ground thick with dead and wounded – some of the Manchesters were there yet, seven days wounded and not looked to. But men walked over them – no heed was paid to anything but the job. Our men gave all their food and water away, but that was
all they could do. That night my two runners were killed as they sat beside me, and casualties were numerous again. He blew me out of my shell hole twice, so I shifted to an abandoned pillbox. There were twenty-four wounded men inside, two dead Huns on the floor and six outside, in various stages of decompositions. The stench was dreadful.38
Lieutenant Walde Fisher, 42nd Battalion, AIF
The dismal nature of the failure at least meant that it was decided to postpone further attacks until the weather had ameliorated sufficiently to allow proper artillery preparations. The exhausted I and II ANZAC Corps were withdrawn and the newly arrived Canadian Corps, under Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie, was given responsibility for one last attempt on Passchendaele. Currie took his time, planning staged attacks and reverting entirely to the methods of ‘bite and hold’. On 26 October the Second Battle of Passchendaele began with a successful advance of just some 500 yards along the ridge. But elsewhere the attack by the Fifth Army on Houthulst Forest achieved nothing. The whole exercise was repeated after more careful preparations on 30 October, with similar results: a small but controlled advance by the Canadians after vicious fighting. By the beginning of November the great Third Ypres Offensive had shrunk down to the narrow frontage of the Canadian Corps’ attempts to gain Passchendaele village on the tortured summit of that benighted ridge. The situation at this time was complicated by the collapse of the Italian Army in the face of the Caporetto Offensive launched by the Austrian Army on 24 October – indeed, Haig was forced to send two of his divisions to help the Italians on 28 October. Haig was also beginning to turn his mind to the planned raid using tanks at the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917.
At 06.00 on 6 November the Canadian Corps resumed battle with the successful seizure of Passchendaele village. After one last attack on 10 November carried out in order to secure the position, the long agony was finally over. The British had achieved their minimal tactical objective, but had been denied any of their wider aims. Both sides knew that they had been in a tough fight.
On 26 and 30 October and 6 and 10 November the fighting was again of the severest description. The enemy charged like a wild bull against the iron wall which kept him from our submarine bases. He threw his weight against Houthulst Forest, Poelcapelle, Passchendaele, Becelaere, Gheluvelt and Zandvoorde. He dented it in many places, and it seemed as if he must knock it down, but it held, although a faint tremor ran through its foundations. The impressions I continuously received were very terrible. In a tactical sense, everything possible had been done. The advanced zone was good. The effectiveness of our artillery had considerably improved. Behind almost every division in the front line there was another in support; and we still had reserves in the third line. We knew that the enemy suffered heavily. But we also knew he was amazingly strong and, what was equally important, had an extraordinarily stubborn will.39
General Erich Ludendorff, General Headquarters
The Germans were suffering from the prolonged attritional warfare on the Western Front and the people at home were undoubtedly war-weary. But, as a nation, the Germans were not yet down and out.
So in the end Haig was wrong. The Germans did not collapse in the late autumn of 1917. But at the same time this was just one of the whole spectrum of possibilities that Haig had envisaged from the Flanders campaign. Haig’s more ambitious strategical aims – to over-run the Roulers rail junction or liberate the Belgian ports of Antwerp and Ostend – were surely always near-impossible scenarios without the collapse of the German Army. But the BEF had certainly succeeded in attracting German resources that might otherwise have been expended to more deadly effect on Britain’s tottering allies. The cost to the British was atrocious, with some 275,000 casualties, while the German losses numbered something like 200,000. But that was the price of alliance warfare. To abandon your allies was to lose everything. The risk can be illustrated by the collapse of Russia in November 1917 that allowed the Germans to concentrate their forces on the Western Front in 1918. The Third Battle of Ypres had seen the BEF develop a murderously efficient method of making small-scale gains, based on the raw power of the guns and subverting, at least in part, the German defence in depth. It was a method of fighting based on restricting all ambition to the achievement of small advances of less than a mile. Yet the war would not be won in this way; ‘bite and hold’ promised only a never-ending torment. A better way would have to be found.
The Battle of Cambrai
The underlying impetus for what became the Battle of Cambrai was provided by an artillery specialist called Brigadier General Hugh Tudor, who conceived a plan to capitalise on the vast improvements in artillery tactics and techniques, combined with the potential to use tanks, to reintroduce surprise attacks to the Western Front battlefields. Accurate surveying of the Western Front had been completed by 1917 and this enabled a battery position and its target to be pinpointed on the map. This was then combined with the careful calibration of every gun to enable the gunners to make the correct adjustments to allow for defined error. All this meant that the artillery could suddenly open fire with a reasonable degree of accuracy. This ‘shooting off the map’, or predicted fire, could be done without previously registering the targets – something which had previously alerted the Germans to an imminent attack. Tudor was unknowingly following a path of development similar to that of his German opposite number, Lieutenant Colonel Georg von Bruchmüller, who was engaged in similar experiments on the Eastern Front. This innovation was then combined with the proven ability of tanks to flatten barbed wire, thereby avoiding the need for prolonged barrages to cut the wire for the infantry with shrapnel or 106-fuse HE shells. This scheme and another idea for a 48-hour tank raid emanating from the staff of the Tank Corps were swiftly welded together by the staff of the Third Army holding the Cambrai front. Haig’s support was easily secured, as he was not only in need of a morale boosting success after the Third Ypres Offensive, but he also recognised that the German forces would have been thinned out at Cambrai to reinforce the Ypres area. The ultimate scheme was ambitious, embracing the capture of both the German First and Second Line Systems, the crossing of the St Quentin Canal, all followed by a cavalry advance to take the railway junction at Cambrai and the tactically significant Bourlon Ridge which glowered down on the whole sector. Secrecy and speed would be all important for the assaulting force of six infantry divisions of the II, III and IV Corps, three tank brigades (476 tanks) and five cavalry divisions of the Cavalry Corps. After forty-eight hours the operations would be closed down if results were not satisfactory. There were no available reserves and this shortage of resources had been exacerbated, with the despatch of two British divisions and heavy artillery batteries to the Italian Front.
Although the 1,003 guns amassed for the barrage would be the key to success, another early focus of attention was inevitably the mass use of tanks. A workable system had to be hammered out to get the tanks across No Man’s Land and the gaping trenches of the Hindenburg Line. One crucial advance was the reinvention of the fascine for the mechanical age – a huge roll of tightly bundled brushwood carried on the roof of the tank which could be dropped ahead of it to provide safe passage over a German trench. The infantry had to be trained to work in conjunction with the tanks and vice versa, communication still being a problem.
A day came when we moved from our camp to a battle front in miniature – a series of trenches defended by rows of barbed wire. Several tanks were already there in attacking position. We lined up behind them and followed them to see, to our astonishment, these massive new and mysterious machines stride over the wire, crushing it into the ground as if it was so much waste paper. Then as we continued to follow, our amazement increasing, they surmounted the huge trenches, without effort, turning to bring their deadly quick firing guns and their Lewis guns to bear upon the defenders. Of course, there were no defenders, but the lesson was clear. No defences, however strong, no machine-gun fire or small arms fire, etc., would stop these thickly armoured monste
rs, driven forward by their powerful engines whose deep throbbing was music to our ears. Only a direct hit by shell fire would stop them as it would stop anything.40
Private William Kirkby, 2/6th West Yorkshire Regiment
When the British opened up their barrage at 06.20 on 20 November, it crashed down on the German lines and artillery batteries, while the creeping barrages preceded the advance of the infantry and the rumbling tanks.
A wounded man from 7th Company approached us from the right and gasped a few heavily charged words, ‘The British have got tanks!’ A cold shiver ran down my spine; the effect of this information on the morale of my men was plain to see. They, who had just been pouring scorn on the British, saying that they would all be tearing their trousers on our barbed wire, suddenly looked disconcerted. All of a sudden there was a muffled shout from a neighbouring sentry post. Everyone rushed to the parapet and then we saw, looming out of the swirling fog, a dreadful colossus heading straight for us. Every single one of us could almost hear his heart beating in his chest! However, we were seized only momentarily by leaden indecision. With weapons tucked into our cheeks we fired shot after shot at the enemy. Unfortunately, this affected them not in the slightest. Slowly, but unstoppably, they drew closer. Firing also began left and right of us. As I pulled myself up to look over the parapet, I could see a whole chain of these steel monsters advancing towards our trenches. The tank to our front was barely a hundred metres away by now. The light machine gun had fired off its last belt of ammunition without visible effect. What was to be done?41