There was, of course, an immense amount of preparatory work to be done. Ammunition for the artillery was only one of the myriad problems facing the British staffs. Each field battery of eighteen-pounder guns carried with it, or in its own ammunition columns, 354 rounds per gun. This would be nothing like enough for the forthcoming attack, and it was decided that the requirement would be 1,000 rounds to be dumped beside each gun, with a further 250 rounds per gun in divisional dumps. The figures for the six-inch howitzers were 650 rounds by the gun and another 200 in the corps dump, with 500 rounds dumped beside each eight-inch howitzer. To move all this would take between seven and ten trainloads per day from 8 June onwards in the British sector alone, to say nothing of the effort required to manufacture and deliver so much ammunition. Roads in France were not good, even by the standards of the time. Most main roads had only three inches of tarmac above a chalk base and were not designed for military traffic, particularly the weight of traffic involved in supporting a major offensive. Side roads were little more than tracks. In a traffic census carried out at Fricourt, three weeks into the Somme offensive, it was found that in one twenty-four-hour period, 26,536 men on foot, seventy-six guns and gun carriages, 1,806 motor vehicles, 617 motor cycles, ten tracked vehicles, 3,756 horse-drawn vehicles, 5,404 men on horseback and 1,043 bicycles had passed along one narrow road.7 Admittedly this was during the battle, but traffic during the preparatory period cannot have been much less. If the mass of material needed to permit an attack on the scale intended was to be delivered to the front, and resupplied throughout the offensive, then new roads had to be constructed and existing ones improved, repaired and widened, and passing places built. There was a shortage of gravel and of steamrollers, and roads already damaged by shelling could in many cases only be ‘darned’ – as the expression was – and have their potholes filled in. Nevertheless, the Royal Engineers and the infantry labour and pioneer battalions worked wonders. Working day and night, often under desultory shelling, they improved the roads and built new ones, many of ‘corduroy’ (tree trunks) or planks laid on level ground.
One of the great problems facing all armies of the time was communications. Divisions would have a wireless station to communicate with corps headquarters and with aircraft, but these were not mobile, and most communication behind the firing line would be by telephone. As a heavy howitzer shell could penetrate to a depth of five feet, telephone line was ordered to be buried to a depth of six feet. Signals staffs arranged for the burying of 7,000 miles of cable, and for the installation of 43,000 miles of cable above ground in rear areas where the risk of cutting by artillery was less.
Five days’ rations were delivered to the front-line units, with another three days’ held in brigade and divisional stores; gun positions had six days’-worth of rations dumped by the gun, and copious supplies of water were pre-positioned in metal tanks, barrels and used petrol tins. Medical units set up extra casualty clearing stations and medical stores; small-arms and mortar ammunition was dumped as close to the front line as possible, and the soldiers’ personal effects and greatcoats were stored well behind the battle area in the charge of one man per battalion.
While the fact that a major offensive was in the offing could not be hidden entirely from the Germans, prodigious – and largely successful – efforts were made to conceal the exact place and time. Dumps of shells and ammunition so close to the firing line were dangerous, and they were skilfully camouflaged. The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service flew throughout the day – and increasingly by night – to prevent German aviators from seeing or interfering with preparations. During the entire preparatory phase hardly a single German aircraft got anywhere near the area, and the only interference was from a bomb dropped by mistake from a Royal Navy aircraft.
Besides the administrative effort, the troops had to be briefed, trained, equipped and moved ready for the attack, now agreed as starting on 29 June 1916. It was a huge task, and it all had to be organised and supervised by the staff – those chinless wonders in shiny boots so beloved of those who criticise the conduct of the war. Between August 1914 and June 1916 the BEF had expanded from four infantry divisions to fifty-eight, to say nothing of all those units and formations that did not even exist in 1914. The staff had not expanded commensurately. In 1914 there were twenty-two general staff officers at GHQ of the BEF. Now there were thirty. The Engineer-in-Chief’s staff at GHQ had admittedly increased ninefold, but as there was only one staff officer in 1914, nine in 1916 was hardly excessive. In 1914 the headquarters of the various administrative services had forty-five staff officers, whereas now they had 129; and a corps headquarters had grown from nineteen staff officers to twenty-four. Staff officers at division and brigade headquarters had not increased at all. It was an immense operation, carried out pretty well as planned, by officers who got little sleep for months and had in many cases been only hastily trained. It would have been an impressive achievement in peacetime; in war it was nothing short of miraculous. The staff earned their dry beds, not that they spent much time in them.
After much discussion amongst and between the various GHQ, Fourth Army and corps staffs as to exactly how the agreed Franco-British (or now perhaps, more properly, Anglo-French) attack along the Somme should take place, General Sir Douglas Haig issued an order to the Commander Fourth Army. Dated 16 June 1916, it laid down the aim of the offensive: ‘The Third and Fourth Armies will undertake offensive operations on the front Maricourt to Gommecourt in conjunction with the French Sixth Army astride the Somme, with the object of relieving the pressure on the French at Verdun and inflicting losses on the enemy…’ (author’s italics).8
There is no mention now of a breakout. The British have, faute de mieux, accepted that the aim of the attack has changed: the pressure must be taken off the French, and Joffre’s battle of attrition is, at least officially, accepted. It is clear, however, that Haig had not altogether abandoned hope of being able to break out of the German defence lines and restore movement to the war. The Fourth Army is instructed that in the first phase of the operation they are to seize and consolidate positions along Pozières Ridge, between Montauban and the River Ancre, with good observation to the east, and also positions between Serre and the Ancre in order to cover subsequent operations south of that river. The implication here is that once the initial positions had been taken, thus getting the British on to the high ground, subsequent operations would probably be mounted between the Ancre and Montauban.
The Commander-in-Chief explained that the second phase of the offensive would depend upon the situation. Should German resistance collapse, the cavalry would be passed through with a view to their swinging north and rolling up the German flanks in rear; alternatively, should the German resistance continue to be fierce, it might be better to shift the weight of the attack away from the Somme area altogether, to some other portion of the British front. If all this seems a little vague, in fact it makes good sense. The Commander-in-Chief was giving direction to the Fourth Army, not telling it how to do its job. No tactical plan survives the first contact with the enemy, and while the execution of the first phase – the initial attack – was spelled out in great detail, subsequent operations could only be expressed in very general terms at this stage: it all depended on the enemy.
The main British attacking force would be the Fourth Army, of sixteen divisions and nearly half a million men. The Third Army (Allenby), to the north, would assist with diversionary attacks, and the Reserve Army (Gough) would stand by to reinforce and to roll up the German flanks if breakthrough was achieved. Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps would be responsible for the area between Serre and the River Ancre, while X (Morland), III (Pulteney), XV (Horne) and XIII (Congreve) Corps would attack between the Ancre and Maricourt, just north of the Somme.
To the right (south) of the Fourth Army was the French Sixth Army, commanded by the sixty-two-year-old General Émile Fayolle.9 This army would be astride the Somme, with XX Corps, nicknamed the ‘Iron
Corps’ from its performance at Verdun, of four divisions, to the north of the river, and I Colonial Corps, with three colonial divisions and one territorial, and XXXV Corps of four divisions to the south of it. In reserve would be II Corps. In addition to their field artillery, XX Corps would have thirty-two batteries of heavy artillery, I Colonial Corps sixty-five heavy batteries, and XXXV Corps thirty-two. In contrast the British XIII Corps had eighteen heavy batteries.
Of the eleven British divisions of General Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army which would attack on the first day of the Somme offensive – now agreed as 30 June 1916 – three (4, 8 and 29 Divisions) were composed of regular battalions, five (18, 31, 32, 34 and 36) were New Army formations and three (7, 21 and 30) were a mix of regular, Territorial Force and New Army battalions. The Territorial Force battalions had little experience, the New Army ones virtually none and even the regulars had been brought up to strength by recruits recently out of training, and with officers and NCOs two or three ranks higher than they had been in 1914. It was a very inexperienced and undertrained army. Few of the New Army (or ‘pals’) battalions had seen a shot fired in anger, and when two New Army divisions – 21 and 25 – were employed in the Loos battle of September 1915 they had collapsed in disorder.10 The men of these battalions had, of course, been in the army for at least a year, many of them since August 1914, but it is one thing to train private soldiers and quite another to furnish the officers and NCOs to lead them. If all the peripherals are cut out, it was and is possible to train a man to a standard where he can take his place in a rifle section in a few weeks. In the Great War he needed to be able to march, to shoot and to perform tactical manoeuvres directed by his officers and NCOs. To produce those officers and NCOs takes far longer. They cannot be made; they must be grown, and growing takes time. With only two or three officers and perhaps half a dozen NCOs with any experience in a battalion of 1,000 men, only the simplest of tactics could be employed – the battalions were just too inexperienced for anything more complex. The Territorial Force was little better, and even the regulars were not the men of Mons and Le Cateau, the Marne and the Aisne, or even of First Ypres. While pre-war soldiers – regular and Territorial Force – were expected to be able to fire fifteen aimed shots a minute when rapid fire was ordered, and some could manage twenty, a rapid-fire shooting competition in the BEF prior to the Somme produced a winner who could fire only twelve.
General Haig and his army, corps and divisional commanders knew all this only too well, but the lack of experience and consequent inflexibility of the troops could be compensated for. If the German defences were subjected to sustained and intense artillery bombardment prior to the attack, then they would be so disorganised and their defensive positions so damaged that the British infantry would be able to close with them before any serious resistance could be mounted. The engineers and the gunners did their sums, and calculated that four days of bombardment all along the front of the projected attack would collapse German dugouts, knock out machine-gun positions and blast holes in the German wire. Some naïve junior officers told their men that when the whistles blew it would be little more than a stroll in the park. General Haig was concerned when told by the Fourth Army that a four-day bombardment was needed. He pointed out that ammunition was short and that guns firing for that length of time could become so worn that their ability to provide fire support thereafter would be jeopardised. Finally, however, after the calculations had been revised, he agreed to five, not four, days, and the staff got to work to provide the necessary guns and ammunition. It was this decision to concentrate all available artillery and ammunition in the Somme area that made it less likely that Haig’s earlier idea of a move to another part of the British front could actually be realised.
For the artillery bombardment the Field Artillery would provide 808 eighteen-pounders and 202 4.5-inch howitzers. There would be a total of 182 heavy guns of various types and 245 heavy howitzers. In addition there were available twenty-eight heavy and 288 medium trench mortars. The French would lend sixteen 220-mm howitzers, twenty-four 120-mm guns and sixty 75-mm field guns converted to fire gas shells. All along the British front of attack there would be one field gun for every twenty-one yards and one heavy gun per fifty-seven yards. On the French front it was one heavy for every thirty-six yards. The bombardment plan was carefully laid down and agreed between Headquarters Fourth Army and GHQ BEF. Tasks were allocated to the various artillery units and included cutting gaps in the German wire, destruction of German defence works and machine-gun posts, shelling of German ammunition and stores dumps, bombardment of crossroads and communications behind the German lines, counter-battery work and deception.
The German lines were protected by belts of barbed wire, up to forty feet deep in places, in which gaps had to be blown to enable the attacking infantry to close with the enemy. This task was to be achieved by the Field Artillery eighteen-pounders. The heavy guns and howitzers would take on redoubts and machine-gun nests, stores and communications and billets, and would also engage in counter-battery work (the engagement of German artillery positions). Each day, at a different time, there would be one particularly intense period of firing, lasting eighty minutes. This was intended to lull the Germans into thinking that eighty minutes was the standard time for a ‘hate’, during which they would evacuate their forward positions and take cover in underground shelters, emerging when the eighty minutes was up. On the last day, just before zero hour, the maximum-intensity bombardment would begin as usual but would cease after sixty-five minutes, when the infantry would advance and, it was hoped, take the German forward positions before they could be reoccupied by the defenders.
Included in the bombardment programme was registration, the process of establishing the exact range and elevation required to be set on a particular gun to hit a particular target. As well as keeping German aircraft away, the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service would over fly German-held territory, spot for the Allied artillery and bring back air photographs to indicate how the artillery were doing. There would be a lull in the firing to avoid hitting our own aircraft. British aircraft would also take on German observation balloons.
The bombardment began at 0600 hours on 24 June. As air photographs came in, targeting was adjusted to ensure that all targets laid down were shelled, and to include any new ones found by aircraft. As the 24th was cloudy and aircraft could not observe all the results of counter-battery work, and as the 27th and 28th were cloudy and misty, Haig and Joffre agreed on a forty-eight-hour postponement. Zero hour would now be at 0730 hours on 1 July, and the bombardment would now last seven days rather than five. First light in France in July is at around 0345 hours GMT, or 0545 hours British Double Summer Time (or French Summer Time), to which the Allies were working. Some commanders would have preferred to make their assault then, but the artillery commanders advised that daylight was needed for the artillery observation officers to make their final adjustments, and when Foch, commanding the French Northern Group of Armies, insisted on a daylight attack, this was accepted. The French XX Corps, on the British right and north of the Somme, would attack at the same time as the British; but for the French troops south of the river, zero hour would be two hours later – 0930 hours – in order to lull the Germans into thinking that there was no offensive planned south of the river and thus catch them unawares.
Altogether, from 0600 hours 24 June until 0600 hours on 1 July, the British artillery fired a total of 1,508,652 shells, seventy-one for every yard of front. Guns fired in a roster to give time for crews to be relieved and barrels to cool, and artillery observation officers were changed over every two hours, day and night. While the artillery thundered, the infantry was being brought into position within marching distance of the jump-off line and final briefings were taking place.
In order to find out what effect the British bombardment was having on the German lines, trench raids were mounted nightly, with the bombardment being lifted from that portion of the opposin
g trench to be raided. Reports were mixed. In some areas the raiders reported the wire to be blown away, in others to be ‘passable’, in yet others to have gaps in it. In some cases reports were conflicting, but these reports, coupled with the evidence of air photographs, seemed to indicate that the wire was being cut. Haig was sceptical of the value of reports coming in from VIII Corps, north of the Ancre. He said that the staff of that corps had little experience of the Western Front (true – they had been in Gallipoli) and he had doubts as to whether their trench raids and patrols were reporting accurately. Nevertheless, fires were seen to be raging in the areas of German stores dumps and all in all the signs were good.
At British-soldier level, the plan for the first phase – the assault on the German forward defences – was straightforward. Prior to the assault, the troops would cross no man’s land and get as close as they could to the trenches they were to attack, while the British artillery bombardment gave them cover and pounded the German firing line to prevent it being manned. There was discussion as to how close the safety distance should be: that is, how close to their own artillery fire could the men be without being themselves in danger. Some thought forty yards would be safe, but the general consensus was 100 yards, and that was the order given. The safest way to approach the bombardment across noman’s land would be to dig communication trenches out towards the German lines, but there were objections that this would tell the Germans exactly where an attack was coming. This drawback could, of course, be obviated by digging out all along the front, and by making preparations for feint attacks elsewhere. Eventually it was left up to corps commanders to decide whether or not they would dig out across the intervening space. Some did, others did not.
Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military) Page 30
