Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  Ego’s grave was lost and he was commemorated on the Jerusalem Memorial along with 3,298 other men, including five more Etonians, all of whom were lost in the campaign in Sinai and Palestine before the end of the war. Patrick Shaw-Stewart never told Letty what he thought of Ego because he found it hard to articulate his feelings. ‘She might perhaps not think it flattering.’ But he thought that he was much like Charles Lister. ‘Fools to the world and philosophers before God’, neither had yet achieved great things in the conventional sense of the word. But perhaps they had the last laugh and knew what life was really all about. ‘They formed, for me,’ he wrote, ‘a little sect apart from the hustling, intriguing, lusting, coveting, money-loving herd of us.’

  Notes

  1 Michael Hugh Hicks-Beach, Viscount Quenington.

  2 Captain George Robert Wiggin and Lieutenant Sir John Henry Jaffray. Neither man was recovered and both are commemorated on the Jerusalem Memorial.

  12

  ‘To Hugh or Blighty’

  At the onset of 1916 the BEF was some ten times bigger than the initial contingent that had been dispatched in August 1914. Regulars and territorials had been joined by a multitude of personnel, from New Army men to troops from all over the empire. At the end of 1915 a crucial change occurred. The failure at Loos was devastating and did not come without consequences. On 19 December 1915 Sir John French was removed from command and replaced by one of his subordinates, Douglas Haig.

  Despite the large numbers of troops now at his disposal, like his predecessor, Haig was still expected to conform with the French command, which was of the opinion that the British should be shouldering more of the burden on the Western Front. Shortly before Haig assumed control a conference was held at which it was established that a joint Anglo–French offensive would commence in summer 1916. Haig himself favoured a push in Flanders, where if it was successful they could eradicate the German presence from the Belgian coast, but General Joffre was insistent on another path. Planning began for an attack in Picardy at a point where the British and French lines met by the River Somme. For all the organisation now underway on the part of the Allies, the German Army was not idle. It had been making its own offensive preparations.

  On 21 February 1916 the German Army launched a colossal assault on the fortress at Verdun which dragged France to the brink. Joffre’s men suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. By the time the Germans were finished, there was no way that the French were able to launch a full-on assault alongside the British on the Somme. In fact, it became more realistic to describe the assault as a British offensive to ease the pressure on the French further south.

  The Germans had been digging themselves in on the Somme since 1914. The front line incorporated several fortified villages with names that would become synonymous with British hardship during the battle. The front line itself was actually a whole system of trenches and strongpoints that had been massively fortified with elaborate dugouts installed to protect their occupants. Behind this was another system and beyond that yet another had been begun so a formidable task lay before the Allied troops. To take up the task, Haig picked two subordinates, both OEs, to plan the offensive: 53-year-old Hubert Gough was the elder brother of ‘Johnnie’, the Victoria Cross-winning Etonian general who had been so adamant that the Germans would not break through at Ypres in October 1914. Hubert had left Eton in 1888 and embarked on a cavalry career. It was curtailed by his threat of resignation during the Curragh incident of 1914 but he had been steadily climbing the ranks since the outbreak of war. In July 1916, in command of a reserve army, Gough would be waiting with his men to capitalise on the anticipated success. But the man charged with smashing through the German trench systems in the first place was his fellow Etonian, General Henry Seymour Rawlinson.

  Rawlinson was born in 1864, the eldest son of a famous Assyriologist whose deciphering of ancient texts was only outdone by the translation of the Rosetta Stone. ‘Rawley’, as he was known to certain friends, arrived at Eton in 1878, high-spirited and good at games. He had a passion for horses inherited from his father and a corresponding one for art and sketching that came from his mother, whose family was descended from that of Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII.

  Rawlinson was placed in command of the Fourth Army, which was in fact a unit aimed at breaking up the administration of the now huge BEF rather than an independent organisation. By the time the summer offensive commenced he would have at his disposal some half-a-million men. Rawlinson was to lead the planning himself. He opted for caution. What he came up with was a series of stages to be executed with pauses to reposition the artillery for maximum effectiveness. All of this was based not only on his own tours of the area but on experience honed throughout the war so far.

  Unfortunately Haig threw it out straight away as a soppy effort to kill a few Germans and gain a bit of ground. He wanted much, much more; namely the first and second German trench systems taken in one swoop with a diversion further north chucked in. He wanted to smash the enemy and overrun them. Haig was relentless, but Rawlinson did not challenge him sufficiently and so Haig got his way. Rawlinson’s huge force would be responsible for a main assault whilst men of another army attacked at Gommecourt, further north. Rawlinson’s half a million men, along with over a thousand guns, would try to decisively break the Germans north of the River Somme. The preparations were elaborate and the Germans watched huge numbers of troops and masses of equipment arriving on the front in the weeks running up to the opening day of the attack, knowing that all of it was about to be thrown at them.

  Hugh, Guy and Harry Cholmeley were the three surviving sons of a solicitor from St John’s Wood. Following the loss of two baby boys both named Robert, Hugh was born in 1888, Guy followed in 1889 and Harry, the youngest, was born in 1893. All three boys passed through Mr Somerville’s house at Eton. Hugh arrived in 1901 but suffered from rather severe asthma. Forbidden from taking part in games he indulged his passion for music instead. Instead of university, their parents sent him off travelling to try to improve his constitution. He returned to London to be articled to the family firm where he was due to be made a partner when war was declared.

  His brother followed a different path. On leaving Eton in 1908 Guy followed the century-old Cholmeley tradition of going up to Magdalen College, Oxford, where their father had been a contemporary of Oscar Wilde. Whilst studying architecture he joined a number of young men at the college who had joined up as territorials in the London Rifle Brigade. His despatch to the front, therefore, was swift and Guy arrived in Flanders in November 1914.

  Harry, the youngest, left Eton as late as 1912 and followed Guy to Oxford. He had decided to take Holy Orders when his studies were complete so the idea of seeking a commission might have seemed odd. Nonetheless he had spent time in the OTC and decided not to return to his college in the autumn of 1914; instead joining one of the university and public school battalions of the Royal Fusiliers.

  Hugh ‘wistfully’ watched his brothers join the war effort. He shared their sentiment, but had failed a medical with the Guards. He joined the Inns of Court OTC, however, and eventually, by way of a special medical board, managed to convince the Grenadiers that he was fit for overseas service. He proved as good as his word, for apparently not a trace of his asthma was seen once he got to the front.

  By the time Hugh got to the front his two brothers had already seen plenty of action. Guy had witnessed the Christmas truce of 1914 before getting himself a ‘Blighty’. He had been wounded and shipped home in 1915 from Le Gheer where a German sniper had hit the trench periscope he was holding. He returned to France in the summer, but Harry had by then been sent home in far worse shape.

  After joining the Royal Fusiliers with the intention of getting some extra training under his belt as an officer cadet and undergoing what turned out to be a rather dubious ‘Course of Instruction’ at Shoeburyness, Harry had been commissioned into the Border Regiment on 31 October 1914. He disembarked in France on 11
January 1915 with a draft of poorly equipped men. He was sent off to join the 2nd Battalion, which was languishing in reserve with only a handful of its original numbers after having had a torrid time on the salient in the battle for Ypres the previous autumn. When he reached his company Harry found that aside from himself there was only one other officer. The colonel had sent a batch of them back to England, claiming that they were ‘diseased’ and complained ‘very bitterly’ about the standard of men coming out from home. Having been completely unimpressed by the organisational structure of their despatch, the lack of preparation of the men arriving to fight and the quality of the course he had completed, Harry was not at all surprised.

  At the end of January 1915 he arrived in a sector that was in a truly awful state. Less than 100 yards away from the Germans, they were sniped at in miserable weather. The men were far better than their officers, he thought. ‘They all do nothing but grumble.’ He remained completely unimpressed at the standard of officers. Even if they were inexperienced in tactics ‘they should know,’ he wrote, ‘what the men are supposed to do in the trenches and be really good disciplinarians before they come out here.’

  Harry had arrived just in time for the assault on Neuve Chapelle. Sat in the pouring rain, he continued to articulate his concerns about the inexperience of the officers, including himself. ‘I should like to have been one of those who had some decent training and valuable experience … I consider that a great deal could be taught to people before they come out … There are new forms of attack now and new ways of digging oneself in … Also the power of shell fire and its danger should be taught.’ Leading a platoon on 10 March, the opening day of the assault, Harry advanced towards Neuve Chapelle itself. He and his men dropped into a trench that had just been vacated by the enemy and had now come under heavy enfilading fire. Initially ordered to cross a portion of open ground with his men to try to extend the British line, they had no supporting fire and so instead were ordered to lie down.

  Baffled by the change, Harry decided to dash back and ascertain what his orders really were. He was running when he felt one arm go stiff and something hit his chin. He got into a trench and lay there for several hours until friends stumbled across him and helped him limp, with his jaw shot away, to a dressing station. Within a few weeks Harry was spied at Magdalen ‘with his face and head bandaged up and a plate in his mouth’ but it was to be a long path to recovery. Not until February 1916 did he arrive back in France, patched up and ready to fight once more.

  Just as the third Cholmeley returned to the Front, tragedy befell the family. Hugh had undergone a period of training and become machine-gun officer for his brigade. On 7 April he was standing by a dugout when a shrapnel shell screamed overhead and exploded. One officer was wounded in the shoulder, another fatally in the leg; a guardsman was killed and sixty men wounded. Hugh was killed instantly when a shard of shrapnel penetrated his chest. He was 27 years old. At the threshold of the infamous Battle of the Somme two of the Cholmeley brothers now remained in the firing line.

  Henry Rawlinson’s ‘army’ was divided into corps and four of them would attack on 1 July. In the very south, where the British sector met the French, one would be attacking Montauban and the surrounding area. To the north of them, another corps would be attacking La Boiselle and Ovilliers to the right of a third who had been allocated the daunting Thiepval Ridge. On the far left of Rawlinson’s army, VIII Corps was to attack the area around a fortified village named Beaumont Hamel. Amongst its number was Harry Cholmeley. The man in charge of this assault, Aylmer Hunter-Weston had had a disastrous campaign in the Dardanelles and this was his return to action.

  By now Harry was in the 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment, which had been moved to France after the doomed Gallipoli campaign. Harry would be advancing straight across the valley that contained the village of Beaumont Hamel, then attempting to climb uphill to attack the Germans’ second set of defences. To aid them on their way the Royal Engineers had put a mine underneath a particularly strong German position known as the Hawthorn Redoubt in front of the village. Some 40,000 pounds of explosives were ready to go up in front of the battalion as it went over the top.

  To the north of Harry his brother Guy found himself part of the attack that fell outside Rawlinson’s jurisdiction and was intended as a diversion. The London Rifle Brigade would not be trying to obliterate the Germans and send them running for the hills. Their task would be to court the enemy artillery fire and the attention of troops at Gommecourt which might otherwise concentrate on the northern part of Rawlinson’s attack.

  The London Rifle Brigade was part of a well-respected division of Territorials from the capital; it was to attack around the southern edge of the village. Gommecourt had been chosen as an objective because it formed a salient and stuck conspicuously westwards from the rest of the German line. A division from the Midlands was going to attempt a similar move to the north of the village. The London Rifle Brigade would first reach Gommecourt Park, which was in fact a wooded area swarming with enemy troops and all manner of weaponry. Also in the way was a strongpoint known as ‘The Quadrilateral’ which contained ‘veritable nests of machine guns’. Behind that lay the village itself and here they were to join up with the Midlands division.

  Attacking with the London Rifle Brigade was another battalion of the London Regiment nicknamed the Kensingtons. Amongst their number was another OE, Major Cedric Charles Dickens. ‘Ceddy’ as he was known had followed his brother to Eton in 1903, yet another of Mr Brinton’s boys and a grandson of the famous writer. There he was remembered as a diminutive boy who played the cello in music recitals with exquisite skill and emotiveness. Having gone up to Cambridge he had then become a solicitor in London and, like Guy Cholmeley, was a keen pre-war terrier.

  Like Guy’s outfit, the Kensingtons had been at the front since November 1914. Cedric had been wounded during the winter and the battalion had gone on to see action at Neuve Chapelle and Aubers Ridge. They were eventually re-routed to the Gommecourt area in May 1916; making themselves at home in previously French lines. Their trenches ran through orchards and gardens on the outskirts of the town and they found that much improvement was needed.

  The Kensingtons were fully aware that a large scale offensive was coming. Dumps of ammunition kept springing up in the area and discreetly camouflaged guns could now be picked out in the overgrown fields to the rear. The battalion was employed ceaselessly to prepare for the forthcoming offensive. In addition to improving their positions ready for the big push, the Kensingtons also underwent further training to get ready for the attack. They were marched to the tune of a fife and drum to Halloy for intensive practice in trenches that had been modelled on the German front line in their sector. Nothing was left to chance; everything was rehearsed in detail including the use of smoke clouds to veil their advance.

  The Cholmeleys were not the only Etonian family who had been devastated by the war already. Towards the southern end of Rawlinson’s army one of the New Army battalions of the West Yorkshire Regiment had as its second in command Major James Knott of a prominent Northumbrian shipping family. At the outbreak of war James had been the managing director of the Prince Line. His brother, Henry, several years younger, was also following in their father’s footsteps as a shipowner, colliery owner and merchant. Having left Eton in 1910, Henry had immediately applied for a commission on the outbreak of war and having joined the Northumberland Fusiliers had died of wounds in September 1915 at the age of 24.

  James and the 10th West Yorkshires had left the Armentières area at the end of May for a period of training and joined Rawlinson’s force in mid June. Their objective on 1 July was to be Fricourt, another fortified village where a supposed weak spot had been identified. They would be making a frontal attack and then forming a defensive flank to protect the troops coming up on their right.

  A massive amount of firepower had been collected to participate in the preliminary bombardment. More than 1,500 guns would be f
iring shrapnel and high explosive shells to cut German wire, put enemy batteries out of action and to smash the German front, thus making an easier path for the assaulting British troops. The bombardment was to last for days until zero hour when the barrage would, broadly speaking, bunny-hop across the battlefield on a timetable, pounding German objectives whilst the infantry followed in its wake. This, of course, depended on the barrage wiping out anything that might hold up the assault and that the advance itself would go exactly according to plan. If not, the timetable would be irrelevant.

  On 24 June the bombardment opened and it was earth shattering. There were so many guns packed along the front that the noise could be heard in London and some guns were firing over the heads of other terrified crews in front of them. The Germans, so it appeared, were doomed. In front of the West Yorkshires, the enemy trenches were pounded day after day and then again at night when it was thought that they might be trying to relieve the troops in the front lines. In front of Cedric Dickens and the Kensingtons the barrage ‘burst into a roar of sound’. In the days running up to the attack, as the Germans clearly knew they were about to be attacked, smoke was discharged in an attempt to ‘cry wolf’.

  One OE who was destined to become Governor-General of New Zealand, reported that it was ‘very hot-stuff here’, but unfortunately for the British, the Germans had remained largely safe in their deep dugouts whilst their surroundings were smashed to pieces. Despite the heaviest artillery barrage the world had ever seen – a million-and-a-half shells fired in seven days – the length of the front had diluted the impact and the result was patchy and short of expectations.This and heavy rain led to a delay in the grand offensive, so as the day, now fixed as 1 July approached, the bombardment began to slacken.