Chapter 2

The Battleground

‘Machine guns should be distributed in depth and sited for flanking fire so as to form impassable belts of fire.’

Instructions from BEF General Headquarters.

The German offensive on 21 March involved a colossal attack by over thirty German divisions along fifty-four miles of the British front line between the River Scarpe in the north and the River Oise in the south. Known loosely as the Somme sector, it encompassed a stretch of the front that approximates the line of the modern day A26 Motorway.

As far as obstacles to an attacking enemy were concerned the only significant geographical barriers to a hostile advance were the River Somme south of Péronne and the Canal du Nord north of it. The Somme – Crozat Canal runs from the River Oise at Tergnier via St Simon to St Quentin in the north, the Crozat Canal being that section of the St Quentin Canal between the River Somme and the River Oise running roughly from St Simon to Tergnier.

The Somme itself is canalized from St Simon via Péronne to Amiens in the west with the numerous branches of the river and their associated marshes passable only on causeways. The River Somme between Péronne and Ham is a complex waterway with the river and canal running parallel through a wide shallow river valley; the canal, which lies west of the river, forms the principle navigable waterway some 58 feet wide and 6 feet deep. The only practical method of crossing the network of waterways and marshes was by the use of causeways and bridges. Lieutenant Claude Piesse, an Australian officer serving in the 8th Battalion Queen’s West Surrey Regiment, (8/Queen’s), thought the narrow causeway and bridge at St Christ Briost was just wide enough to take two lines of horse traffic and wondered if there would be a ‘jam when a big battle was taking place and extra large quantities of ammunition, wagons and ambulances used the road’. As far as the other waterways were concerned – the Rivers Germaine, Omignon and Cologne – these only served to restrict lateral movement as they ran predominately east – west, almost at right angles to the front line.

To the military eye much of the area was ideally suited to rearguard actions. The undulating nature of the terrain, consisting of small valleys and sunken roads, gave rise to areas of dead ground which was hidden from ground level observation which offered advantage to the defending forces. Furthermore, the area had a number of quarries dotted across the landscape where local inhabitants had sought building material; these in particular were ideally suited as defensive strong points or redoubts, such as the Enghien Redoubt and Cooker’s Quarry. However, apart from the area west of a line running roughly from Arras – Albert – Roye, it was in effect, one endless area of devastation. The German retreat to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917 had reduced the ground to a desert.

The scene that met the British as they advanced in pursuit of the Germans almost a year previously was one of total desolation. ‘The larger towns were literally razed to the ground. In hundreds of villages virtually every building was either blown up or burned down, trees were felled across roads, huge mines were exploded at important road intersections, every bridge over the Somme and other rivers was destroyed, railway lines were torn up, no supplies of any sort were left behind.’¹ Paul Maze, a French liaison officer attached to the Fifth Army, spent much of the period prior to the March offensive criss-crossing the area on his motorcycle visiting the various divisional and brigade HQs. His journeys left him in no doubt of the extent of the devastation. ‘The only indication of a village’, he wrote, ‘was its name written on a large board and a few ruins, hardly showing above the overgrown weeds. The pavé road through the village was banked on both sides by mere heaps of bricks. There was no life about.’²

On the eve of the German attack the Fifth Army, under the command of 47-year-old Lieutenant General Hubert de la Poer Gough, held a front line of forty-two miles from Gouzeaucourt in the north to Barisis in the south where it joined General Auguste Duchêne’s Sixth French Army. An outspoken individual, Gough was a general who was either loved or hated by those he commanded, a facet of his character that became only too clear in 1914 during the retreat from Mons when his maverick and insubordinate behaviour as commander of 3 Cavalry Brigade very nearly resulted in his dismissal. Haig intervened on his behalf and from the moment Gough came under the patronage of Haig’s influence, his career rapidly progressed to that of army commander by 1916. He may have been an individual who possessed an abundance of optimism and decisiveness but his reputation had been scarred by a less than satisfactory performance on the Somme in 1916 and a year later during the Third Battle of Ypres. Certainly Lieutenant Claude Piesse was not one of his most ardent fans, describing him as the ‘best hated man in France’.

It was the length of the Fifth Army frontage that had been the subject of so much political acrimony between Lloyd George and Douglas Haig and would bear the brunt of the German attack on 21 March. After the Third Battle of Ypres Gough and his Fifth Army had been placed in general reserve for a short period before being deployed to a new sector of the front running south from Gouzeaucourt to the River Omignon, a sector which had previously been the domain of the British Third Army. Almost a month later in January 1918, the Fifth Army relieved the French Third Army south of the Omignon to a point just south of St Quentin, a front that was extended two weeks later to the village of Barisis, south of the Oise River, which included nearly ten miles of the front running along the wide valley of the Oise. This sector, which was overlooked by the German front line, was, according to the French, ‘inaccessible to the enemy, owing to the marshes’. Unfortunately, as the 2/2 London Regiment historian remarked, ‘very little rain fell between 1st January and 21st March; the marshes dried up, the water channel narrowed and became shallow and fordable; and thus the river line had very little defensive value’.

Commanding the Third Army was 52-year-old General Julian ‘Bungo’ Byng. He was another cavalryman who rose from command of the 3rd Cavalry Division in 1914 to command of IX Corps during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, where he supervised the withdrawal of British Empire forces from the peninsula. By May 1916 he was commanding the Canadian Corps and, along with Major General Arthur Currie, led the Canadian capture of Vimy Ridge in 1917. In June of that year he was promoted to general and took command of the Third Army. Byng’s Third Army held a front line of twenty-eight miles from the left of the Fifth Army at Gouzeaucourt to Gavrelle, some six miles northeast of Arras, a line which included the Flesquières salient which was all that was left of the ground captured during the Cambrai battle, ground that Byng would cling to stubbornly in March. To defend his sector Byng had fourteen divisions and some 1,200 guns for a front that was fourteen miles shorter and – in terms of the number of guns per mile – could muster forty per mile of front compared to thirty-seven per mile on the Fifth Army front. There was a further disparity: Gough had at his disposal twelve infantry divisions and three cavalry divisions together with just over 1,500 guns and was struggling to maintain two infantry divisions in reserve, while Byng was able to hold four divisions in reserve. Mindful of time and distance Gough was keen to bring his reserve units closer to his front in order for them to be deployed effectively should they be required but GHQ felt his request to be without foundation and refused. The effects of this short-sighted decision would become only too apparent as these divisions were flung into the battle too late.