In mid-August the British finally began the next phase of their great offensive in the Ypres Salient, now generally referred to as the Battle of Passchendaele, and the full brilliance of the German defensive strategy was revealed. Unable to construct a conventional trench system in the swampy terrain, they had opted for a flexible system of defence in depth, with the front positions held by isolated units whose job was to disrupt the advance, and their main forces further back, beyond the range of most artillery fire and ready to counter-attack when the time was right. To create a series of forward outposts, they had transformed the farmhouses that dotted the area into a network of concrete bunkers which were the only truly solid features in this liquid landscape. Since these seemed all but indestructible, even by artillery, their machine guns now held fearful dominion over the blasted plain across which the British had to advance.
Three-and-a-half miles (or five-and-a-half kilometres) north-east of Ypres, near the central axis of their offensive, the British had seized what had once been a village called St Julien,1 through which flowed what had once been a stream called the Steenbeek. The village had been more or less blown off the face of the earth, and the Steenbeek had disappeared just as completely, though its filthy waters still skulked through an ever-shifting morass of shell craters. Half a mile east of St Julien, what had once been a road traversed the quagmire between the devastated villages of Langemarck (to the north-west) and Zonnebeke (to the south-east), and the farmhouses lining this road had been converted into a chain of bunkers and pillboxes which formed the first bastion of the German defences.
Ironically, the British had seized a number of these strongpoints at the high point of their surge forward on 31 July, before the German counter-attacks swept them back and left them clinging, like drowning men, to the wreckage of St Julien. Now the same positions would have to be taken all over again, and it was clear this was going to be a bloody and protracted business.
In theory tanks offered an ideal solution, since they were largely immune to machine-gun fire and could manoeuvre round to fire on the blockhouses from the rear, demoralising the defenders and forcing them to surrender or withdraw. But this was to ignore the appalling nature of the ground, which severely limited the tanks’ powers of movement and left them ditched, and sometimes half-submerged, the moment they strayed off the shattered roads.
These difficulties were exposed when the offensive finally resumed on 16 August. Twelve tanks from G Battalion left their forward positions to support the attack, but as they travelled towards the start-line they became repeatedly bogged down despite heroic efforts by the crews with their unditching gear, and by the tanks which towed each other free, and by the Royal Engineers who laboured to dig them out. Not one arrived in time and the infantry were left to advance unsupported. Not surprisingly they made limited progress, leading even the normally upbeat Colonel Baker-Carr to dismiss it as a ‘ghastly failure’.2
For those who had doubts about tanks, this fiasco added to the sense that they would never be a viable weapon of war. The Tank Corps was increasingly seen as a costly luxury which tied up thousands of men and drained resources from factories that were straining to feed the guns with ammunition. The products of all this ingenuity and expense now lay scattered across the Salient for anyone to see, in varying states of destruction and often sinking up to their sponsons in mud.
And then, on 19 August, as if the sun had broken out over the battlefield, the whole prospect suddenly changed.
* * *
The occasion for this transformation was a small-scale operation against a cluster of strongpoints to the north of St Julien. Rather than repeat their previous mistake of travelling cross-country, the tanks of G Battalion were ordered to keep to the roads, or what was left of them. Furthermore, they were given a leading role in the operation and the infantry were ordered not to move forward until the positions had been taken.3
Eight tanks took part in the attack against a series of positions known as the Cockcroft, Maison du Hibou, Triangle Farm, Hillock Farm and the Gun Pit. The attack was originally conceived on a much larger scale, and the orders issued only two days beforehand included the capture of a further series of strongpoints stretching away to the south called Vancouver, Springfield and Winnipeg – recalling the presence of Canadian troops who had borne the brunt of the first poison gas attack here in April 1915. Tanks had reached some of these positions on the opening day of the offensive, only to be driven back by the German counter-attack. It is not clear why the latest operation was scaled back, though perhaps the available resources were felt to be inadequate against so many objectives.4 As it was, the plan revolved around surprise, with the tanks advancing along the roads under cover of a sudden barrage, and smoke shells saturating any higher ground from which they could be observed. Once the tanks had subdued the strongpoints, the infantry would then move forward to occupy them.
To the delight, and it must be said astonishment, of the attackers, the Germans fell back almost immediately when the tanks approached, abandoning their positions and leaving the infantry to move in unopposed. This was achieved at a cost to the Tank Corps of two men killed and sixteen wounded, as well as the loss of three tanks which became ditched and had to be abandoned by their crews.5 A report in the files of Lieutenant-General Sir Ivor Maxse, the commander of XVIII Corps which conducted the operation, summarized the results: ‘ …our line was carried forward on a front of one mile and to a depth of 400 yards. We had captured five strong points and inflicted on the Germans a loss of seventy-five casualties. The total casualties to our infantry were only fifteen instead of 600 as estimated. Thus it will be seen the tanks on this occasion won a battle and saved British lives.’6
A wise person has remarked that success has many parents, and among those who sought to take the credit was Lieutenant-Colonel John Fuller, a staff officer at Tank Corps headquarters, who described how he had devised the method of attack based, apparently, on one used by the ancient Greeks. He told how ‘the Fifth Army, which detested tanks and seldom had a good word for them, accepted my tactics’.7 Fuller’s Napoleonic aspirations meant he was widely known as ‘Boney’, and it was not surprising that the man he liked to call ‘the Murat of the Corps’8 should also seek to take the victor’s laurels. The commander of 1st Tank Brigade, Colonel Christopher Baker-Carr – who shared a certain flamboyance with the erstwhile Marshal of France, Joachim Murat – left no doubt in his memoirs that he was the real driving-force behind the attack. At the same time, he was careful to acknowledge the support of Maxse, who he described as ‘a kind of god-father to the tanks’.9 He told how Maxse had ignored the ‘contemptuous silence’ of the divisional commanders and informed them that ‘this was “Baker-Carr’s battle” and that any demands I made were to be met’.10
Maxse was also no slouch when it came to taking credit for the success, as he showed in a letter to his wife, an equally formidable figure who he addressed as ‘Tiny’:
This last little operation was run on a new plan invented, partially, by myself. At any rate, if it was not invented by me it was carried out for the first time by this corps at my instigation … I need scarcely tell you who know me too well that my plan was simplicity itself and was just obviously the thing to be done, in fact mere common-or-garden reasoning … When the results became known yesterday my Corps [Headquarters] became a centre of interest, from G.H.Q down to the humblest platoon commander!! Kig. [i.e. Sir Douglas Haig’s Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant-General Launcelot Kiggell] for the first time in the war phoned to ask ‘how it was done’? as if one could explain common-sense down a telephone to some one who has never commanded even a humble company!’11
Maxse was so much the model of a modern general that he even had a ‘spin doctor’ back home in the form of his brother Leo, whose father had bought him an ailing periodical called the National Review to run. Against the odds, Leo Maxse had turned this into a highly influential journal, and was therefore well placed to keep his brother updated on political developments at home. One of Leo’s contacts was the industrialist Frank Dudley Docker, chairman of the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company which was a leading producer of tanks, and after a visit to their factory in the West Midlands, Leo told his brother how he had extolled the ‘recent brilliant little operation in your Corps when the tanks showed their marvellous life-preserving effectiveness’. Leo proposed using this to motivate the workers: ‘I could not help wishing that an account of it might be posted up all through the Works for the benefit of the employees, whose co-operation is just as essential to beat the Boche as that of the fighting men.’12
The media also did their bit, and back at La Lovie the officers of G Battalion had a visit from the correspondent William Beach Thomas, who filed a jubilant account for the newspapers: ‘Yesterday’s operation was practically a trial of strength between our movable landships and the stationary concrete forts, and the latter were hopelessly outmatched … In several of the forts the tank crews found the Germans just about to begin breakfast, and our men sat down and ate the meals gratefully.’13
After so many setbacks, the tank crews finally had something to celebrate; indeed Major Clough Williams-Ellis, who had played his part as reconnaissance officer of 1st Tank Brigade, implied that this ‘brilliant little exploit’ had helped to assure the future of the Tank Corps.14 But for those involved in the operation, there was a frustrating sense that much more could have been achieved. One of the tank commanders, Second Lieutenant Douglas Browne, felt there had been nothing to stop them taking Vancouver, Springfield and Winnipeg as originally planned. ‘The Germans were then completely surprised, in ignorance of what actually was happening (on account of the very effective smoke barrage), and, for the time being, thoroughly demoralised … The task, however, had been left unfinished.’15 Confirming the low state of German morale, the advancing troops reportedly found a German officer hanged inside one of the captured strongpoints,16 though it was unclear whether he could not stand any more of the bombardment and did away with himself, or whether his men could not stand any more of their officer, and did away with him.
Either way, there was further promising evidence in a report from Haig’s intelligence chief, Brigadier-General John Charteris, containing comments from a captured member of 125th Infantry Regiment. The prisoner criticized the training of officers, and claimed they sometimes took command after only four weeks’ military training: ‘A large proportion of the present officers are university students and young business men who know little or nothing about methods of warfare. He has known instances of officers receiving orders to have a trench dug or to fortify a position and they have had no idea how to commence the work. The men are very well trained … but they are badly led.’17 Perhaps the prisoner was simply telling his audience what they wanted to hear, and if so there were many who felt the same could be said of Charteris.
However, the attack showed that the Tank Corps had come up with a winning formula that could be repeated to capture more of the enemy strongholds, including those that were in the original attack plan for 19 August. But this would not be a job for G Battalion, who were now withdrawn to rest and regroup. Instead it was time for the more experienced men of D Battalion – including the crew of D51 – to come out of reserve, since in the words of Second Lieutenant Browne: ‘D Battalion, one of the old originals, as it never failed to remind us by word and behaviour, had not yet been into action at all.’18
* * *
Before following their progress it will be instructive to do what they could not, and pick our way across No Man’s Land to see the day’s events from the viewpoint of the German 125th Infantry Regiment, which was holding the line opposite. Whatever the British intelligence reports implied, it was a regiment with a long and proud history which had fought against the French in the Napoleonic Wars and again in 1870, then against the Russians on the Eastern Front in 1914, and then against the British on the Somme and at Arras. The regiment was named in honour of Kaiser Friedrich, King of Prussia, but formed part of the army of Württemberg, the smallest of the four kingdoms whose armies had been united following the creation of a unified German state in 1871.
The 125th had previously been resting in a number of quiet sectors – one near the French town of Cambrai, where the defences were so impregnable that a peaceful tour of duty was guaranteed – before being plunged into the ‘Flandernschlacht’, or Flanders battle. The men moved into the front line on the night of 17/18 August, and their commanding officer, Oberst (i.e. Colonel) Reinhold Stühmke, immediately realized the rules had changed:
The very manner in which the regiment had to be deployed here indicated that this was not about trench warfare in the hitherto accepted sense of the word, but rather – for the time being, at least – a continuous battle across open country which could bring many surprises. Behind a thin outpost line (or forward position), small detachments maintained a foothold in order to take the initial impact and repel weaker attacks. Behind them lay the attack companies, and even further back, widely and deeply distributed, the attack battalion. In this haphazard position there was no question of a continuously held line, or a clear parade-ground formation. The forward soldiers were posted in shell-holes, all the rest were swallowed up by folds in the ground or clung to the hedgerows, wherever they thought they could best hide from the eyes of the enemy, also in the busy skies, and thus be exposed as little as possible to the enemy’s artillery fire.19
The majority of German military records were destroyed in the Second World War, but those from the army of Württemberg have survived and provide a revealing picture of their day-to-day activities. Whereas British War Diaries often give the impression of being scribbled in a dugout with a stub of pencil, their German counterparts – true to stereotype – are detailed, methodical and often neatly typewritten. Each has its volume of appendices containing maps, orders and sketches. Professional and precise, they give no clue that they were written in hell.
For despite the British perception that their enemies were all safely ensconced in concrete bunkers, the truth was very different. While the pillboxes provided the lynch-pin of the German defences, most of their men were simply huddled in shell-holes with no defence against the devastating power of the British artillery, or the often appalling weather. Even the bunkers themselves were more vulnerable to shelling than is often supposed, and could easily prove a death-trap for the defenders as well as the attackers.
Little more than a day after the Württembergers had taken over the sector, they faced the first of the surprises that their commanding officer had referred to. Early on 19 August the bombardment increased to fresh intensity, cutting the telephone wires, and at 6 a.m. (i.e. 5 a.m. UK time) the regimental headquarters received a message by flashlight from the front line: ‘Feindlicher Angriff’ (‘Enemy attack’). Further details followed: ‘The enemy has broken through between 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 125th with a tank, of which eight are reported to be on their way.’20
The obvious assumption was that a full-scale infantry attack would follow, and when this failed to materialize, the Germans could only conclude that it had been stamped out by their artillery fire. The headquarters of 51st Infantry Brigade, which included 125th Infantry Regiment, tried to make sense of events as they unfolded:
As far as the situation can be assessed from the currently available reports, the enemy planned an advance against 125th Infantry Regiment … during the morning in conjunction with their heavy artillery barrage and the use of tanks. This attack, being identified in good time by our infantry in the foremost line, was nipped in the bud by the requested curtain barrage and annihilating fire. The tanks definitely came forward but the enemy infantry did not follow, probably caught by our artillery fire while assembling, or prevented by it from advancing. From the behaviour of the tanks, it was supposed they were cruising aimlessly round the countryside in expectation that the infantry would follow them.21
Colonel Baker-Carr would no doubt have been annoyed, or possibly amused, to see the British tactics dismissed in this way.
As they advanced, the tanks were exposed to fire from a concrete bunker that controlled the crossing of the Langemarck-Zonnebeke and St Julien-Poelcappelle roads. This position was known to the British as Vancouver, and was one of those that had been removed at the last minute from G Battalion’s objectives for the day. The Germans did not normally name their blockhouses, which were simply referred to by the nearest code-number (or ‘red-point’) marked on their trench-maps – in this case, red-point 325.22 However, this one was about to earn a name for itself. The bunker was under the command of Leutnant Staiger, a company commander in 125th Infantry Regiment. He described events on the morning of 19 August, soon after they had moved in:
It was high time. Outbreaks of fire barking out over the foremost positions did not bode well. At 6 in the morning [i.e. 5 a.m. UK time] a heavy bombardment, red flares, smoke shells. ‘The enemy are attacking!’ Already cut off by tanks, the foremost outpost line under Leutnant Wender fights its way through to our building. Tanks! We’re a little unfamiliar with them; they’re a new acquaintance. Everything is got ready for the defence, two machine guns under Vizefeldwebel [i.e. company sergeant-major] Auwärter, and two infantry sections. Right! Here they come, creeping up the road, and there they stay; on this occasion the terrain of Flanders is our ally. Now the infantry are coming as well, but our machine guns stop them in their tracks. But the tanks! Two come ever further forward, one behind the other, and so into our flank. A few metres more and they’ll be firing directly in the door. Already a shot from the revolver cannon [i.e. the tank’s 6-pounder gun] whistles past our heads, machine gun bullets smack into the walls. With so few rounds of armour-piercing ammunition we’re relatively defenceless. Hold on, what’s that? One of the tanks is sinking into a large shell-hole. It struggles visibly to get out again. It doesn’t succeed; the other turns tail and heads off. Now it’s easier for us; the attack has been beaten off. We have held onto our building. A minor skirmish goes on between the grey monster and our machine guns. As soon as it opens its peepholes, a few shots go whistling over. As soon as we make a move, they come rattling back. The whole day is spent squabbling like this. Night falls and passes peacefully. We’re ready for anything.23
From then on, the bunker was known as the ‘Staigerhaus’ in honour of its commander’s staunch defence.
For anyone familiar with the British accounts and their jubilation over the seizure of various strongholds, the main response to the German war diaries is to wonder if they can be talking about the same battle. There are some references to the British infantry working their way forward, and a map shows the enemy front line now incorporating red-point 320 (in other words, the Cockcroft), but there is no mention of the loss of any key positions, and no sense of suppressed catastrophe. In fact, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the captured ground was simply not that important to the Germans. This was consistent with their doctrine of flexible defence, under which the forward outposts were thinly manned and not intended to be held at all costs. Of course, they could still cause heavy losses to the attackers, so it remained a major achievement for the British to have taken them with so few casualties.
Overall, the Germans felt the day had gone well. A bulletin was issued by 26th Infantry Division, to which all the units belonged: ‘The enemy did not achieve any success. The division is fully in possession of the positions it held this morning. Strong enemy infantry, who were ready to attack 125th Infantry Regiment between the Steenbeek and the Langemark-Zonnebeke road at midday, were caught by our frontal and flanking annihilation fire. They did not attack. Only weak elements of the enemy are to be found east of the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road. Red-point 325 is in our hands.’24
Despite this, it was clear the defenders were coming under increasing pressure – but from the British artillery, rather than infantry or tanks. In total the 125th lost twenty officers and men killed, ninety wounded and one missing during the day, which they considered heavy casualties.25 Needless to say there is no mention of any officers hanging themselves, or being hanged.
The next day, however, following further relentless bombardment, 51st Infantry Brigade made a significant comment which partly bears out the British intelligence reports: ‘Heavy losses were incurred again today by the fighting battalions. The sustained enemy fire and high casualties are having a demoralising effect on the troops. In many places sections of men had to move around, hunted by enemy artillery fire, to seek shelter in shell craters in the less badly bombarded areas.’26 Above all, the Germans were under no illusions that they had only won a temporary reprieve, and 26th Division’s orders stated that ‘a continuation of the enemy attacks is to be expected in the near future.’27
As they waited for the next throw of the dice, both sides could draw some encouragement from the events of 19 August. The British concluded that tanks could outflank and overpower the German strongpoints, enabling the infantry to occupy them with little loss of life. The Germans concluded that tanks were being used to compensate for the weakness of the infantry, and the concrete blockhouses could defy them if their defenders were determined enough, especially as the terrain was so obviously unsuitable for tanks. The time had come for D Battalion, including the crew of D51, to prove that the British interpretation was the correct one.