Chapter 13

Moreuil and Rifle Wood

When we reached the village, there were rifle shots close at hand; as we rode down the street, bullets whizzed over us or struck with a clap on the walls of the houses; but there was no one to be seen, no inhabitants, no soldiers, on either side.

Herbert Asquith crossing the River Avre at La Neuville

Hubert Gough was adamant that Foch’s orders to XIX Corps to hold the Rosières line nearly brought about its destruction. The question of retirement, felt Gough, should have been the responsibility of the British GHQ. ‘Haig was still responsible for the security of British troops’, he wrote, ‘and I cannot say that I approved of the Fifth Army being handed over body and soul, to the French even if Foch was Generalissimo.’¹ Despite having a personal axe to grind, there were many senior officers who shared Gough’s feelings on the Rosières retirement:

‘If the order to retire could have been issued in time to enable the divisions to withdraw the previous night, they could have retired from their dangerous positions and taken up a new line before daybreak on the 28th with little loss, and with much better prospects of holding it. Foch knew, or ought to have known, that my troops were extremely exhausted after a week of desperate fighting, that their left flank was very exposed to attack for five miles, and that no reliefs were coming up for several days yet … That Foch’s hasty and ill-considered order did not lead to a disaster was only due to the gallantry of the exhausted fragments of the British divisions and the steady tactical leadership of their officers.’²

28 March 1918 was not only Hubert Gough’s last day in command of the Fifth Army but also marked the first day of the German ‘Mars’ attack along thirty-three miles of the Third Army Front from the Somme River to Arleux, north of Arras. Byng’s Army faced an offensive spearheaded by nine fresh divisions and, as with the larger 21 March offensive, the attack was opened with a bombardment of gas and high explosive. But on this occasion there was one essential difference – by 5.00pm the offensive had ground to a devastating halt in the face of a stubborn and effective British defence. ‘Mars’ had been a complete and very costly failure and in cancelling the attack that evening, Ludendorff – despite the initial success of the ‘Georgette’ Offensive in Flanders ten days later – effectively signed away any further German pretensions of overall victory on the Western Front. It was the day Germany lost the war.

The disaster that overshadowed the ‘Mars’ offensive was indicative of the overall failure of the March offensive. Ludendorff ’s plan to turn the flank of the British and move swiftly on the Channel ports had almost been negated by his change of strategy to reinforce the Eighteenth Army in the south where the gains were of little consequence. But despite the initial – and yes, impressive – territorial gains, German assault troops had sustained enormous losses and senior commanders witnessed not only a corresponding plunge in battlefield morale but a growing Allied recovery in the field as German lines of supply to their forward troops came under an intolerable strain:

‘The Große Schlacht [Great Battle] is turning into a disaster for the attacker. The entire front is trembling from an overwhelming cannonade, the English and French gunners load their guns ceaselessly from huge stacks of ammunition, while the Germans have to count every shell. The German infantry is exhausted, their battalions counting no more than regular companies.’³

The responsibility for maintaining the momentum of the German advance fell on two of the oldest forms of transport available – manpower and the long-suffering horse. The distinct lack of motorized transport – capable of transporting troops en masse and the all important supplies of ammunition – were largely absent from a battlefield where the pace of advance was dependent on the stamina of the infantry and the horse. To make matters worse a large percentage of motorized lorries were shod only with iron-bound wheels which added to the destruction of road surfaces between railheads and forward positions. Moreover, as the advancing German troops overran British supply depots, the gradual realization that their own resources were, by comparison, of poor quality, compounded a problem that would eventually see the euphoria of success being replaced by despondency as the promised breakthrough ground slowly to a halt.

But for the time being we must leave aside the waning morale of the German soldier on the battlefield and Ludendorff ’s strategic worries and return to the Fifth Army where Gough was about to be replaced by General Sir Henry Rawlinson. Gough’s own account of his sacking in his 1931 account reveals little of the intense personal hurt and betrayal he felt at the time, and indeed continued to feel long after the event. However, on the day of his dismissal he wrote a private letter to Colonel Clive Wigram which hinted at the stinging rebuke he felt his dismissal to be:

‘You can imagine my feelings at being removed from my command and handing it over to Rawly. I cannot as yet find out much as to the causes or persons responsible for removing me, but I have been told it was political and that it was due to a letter from Derby ordering it.’⁴

He was right. In spite of initial attempts by Douglas Haig to save his protégé from the inevitable, a telegram from Lord Derby, the Secretary of State for War, sealed the issue and Gough became the government’s scapegoat for what was seen as the Fifth Army disaster.

We are told that the first Gough knew of his impending fate was at 5.00pm on 27 March when Major General Harold Ruggles-Brise, Haig’s Military Secretary, arrived at Gough’s Dury Headquarters with the news that he was to be replaced by Henry Rawlinson. It is hard to believe that the Fifth Army commander had no idea of the political storm that was brewing around his command, particularly as he had already been dealt with severely by Foch and had been excluded from the Doullens Conference. According to Brigadier General Henry Sandilands – commanding 104 Brigade – who had just returned from leave, Gough’s removal was already on the cards by the morning of 26 March – before the Doullens Conference was convened that afternoon. Sandilands was outside Fifth Army Headquarters when:

‘a large limousine drove up, out of which, to my astonishment, stepped Sir Henry Wilson, followed by Lord Milner in an overcoat and a bowler. Sir Henry Wilson, who knew me personally, asked me if it was safe to drive through Amiens and I told him as far as I knew it was perfectly safe, as I had not heard the slightest sound of shelling or bombing the whole morning. I naturally assumed that he was looking for Fifth Army Headquarters and told him that General Gough was inside the villa, at the gate of which we were standing. He replied, “Oh he is here is he? Well good morning”. Both he and Lord Milner got back into their car and drove off. I thought at the time “that’s the end of Gough”.’⁵

At 4.30pm on 28 March 1918 Rawlinson arrived to take over command. Gough wrote of the occasion, ‘I told him all I could of our situation, and as I felt I should only be an embarrassment to him in exercising his new command, I left Dury, not at all sure where I was to get a bed or dinner that night.’ Paul Maze who had worked so closely with Gough since 1914 wrote of his sadness as he witnessed the ‘lorries of the Fourth Army marked with a boar which were unloading, while the lorries of the Fifth Army marked with a fox were loading up. I needed no further evidence.’ Maze recounted his final conversation with Gough in the small garden of his former headquarters:

‘He at once informed me that he had ceased to be in command of the Fifth Army … and quite simply he told me of Marshal Foch’s visit, how abrupt and short he had been to him and the depreciatory terms [with which] he had referred to the conduct of the Fifth Army. During the moments we were together in the garden he neither made a complaint nor passed an opinion. His thoughts dwelt upon the problem the Fifth Army was still facing.’⁶

Rawlinson had inherited five exhausted infantry divisions and one of cavalry, prompting a communiqué to Foch expressing his concern that unless reinforcements arrived within the next 48 hours, Amiens would fall. His divisional commanders could only muster a tenth of their original strength, some battalions had been almost completely annihilated while others were now part of composite battalions composed of a mixed body of men from all arms – in short anyone who could shoulder a rifle. It was hardly an auspicious start to a new command.

Rawlinson’s diary entry for 30 March recorded one of the most significant cavalry actions to be fought on the Western Front involving the British 2nd Cavalry Division, which at the time included the Canadian Cavalry Brigade. The 2nd Cavalry Division had only arrived in the Avre valley on 29 March after a long march from Mondidier. Major General Thomas ‘Tommy’ Pitman, now in command of the division, established his headquarters at Boves, southeast of Amiens:

‘This quiet little village, through which we had passed on the march only a few months previously, was now a mass of seething transport and all the paraphernalia which congests traffic in the area behind a battle. There were at least three other divisional headquarters in the same street, and the French, who had commenced to arrive, had taken over the château, which had formally been the headquarters of a corps school. It was nearly midnight before the last units of the Division reached their destinations.’⁷

But there was very little rest to be had. Shortly after 7.00am on 30 March, orders from XIX Corps were received by Pitman to cross the Avre and move southeast across the River Luce and clear the enemy out of Moreuil Wood on the right flank of the 20th Division. British infantry were holding a line running from Moreuil along the southern edge of Moreuil Wood to Demuin.

Commanding the Canadian Cavalry Brigade was Brigadier General John ‘Jack’ Seely, a larger-than-life character who counted Winston Churchill amongst his personal friends and was the only British cabinet member to serve for practically the whole period of the war on active service. Seely had already been awarded the DSO in 1900 for his services with the Imperial Yeomanry in the Boer War and would be mentioned again in despatches for the attack on Moreuil Wood. In his memoirs he describes his conversation with Tommy Pitman:

‘[Pitman] told me that the German advance continued, and that the situation was grave in the extreme; we must do what we could to delay the continued onslaught; the German advanced guard had already captured the Moreuil Ridge, and were pouring troops into the Bois de Moreuil on the Amiens side of the ridge. Villers-Bretonneux, on the ridge further north, was still held by us, but was being heavily attacked. I remember his final words, ‘Go to the support of the infantry just beyond Castel, this side of the Moreuil ridge. Don’t get too heavily involved – you will be needed later.’ Pitman was a cool hand if ever there was one. From the way he spoke I knew things were pretty desperate.’⁸

Whether the conversation was exactly as described by Seely – a man according to George Paget prone to an embellishment of the facts – is debatable, but there was no doubt that the situation at Moreuil Wood – a mere twelve miles southeast of Amiens – was of vital tactical importance to the Germans.

The pear-shaped wood stood on the southern end of the ridge and was typical of many French wooded areas – thickly planted with a good deal of undergrowth, although today the battlefield visitor will find the wood covers less than half its original acreage. In 1918 it had a northern face, a south western face running parallel to the Avre River, and a south eastern face running along the Moreuil – Demuin road. Each was approximately a mile-and-a-half in length. There was a small protrusion of woodland at the north western corner – the modern day Bois de la Corne. Significantly, the ridge upon which it stood was the point at which the French and British sectors came together and commanded the river crossings of the Avre and Luce. If this high ground was captured by the Germans the British line along the Luce would be compromised and the future of Amiens put very much in doubt. It was a strategic point that had not escaped the attention of the enemy. German infantry had been gradually moving forward since 4.30am on 29 March and under cover of the early morning mist had been pushing their units into Moreuil Wood from the southeast.

As 3 Cavalry Brigade and the Canadians were closest to the wood, Pitman ordered Brigadier General John Bell Smyth commanding 3 Cavalry Brigade to cross the Avre with Seely’s Canadians and seize the ground north of Moreuil Wood and then ‘restore the situation up to the line of the Moreuil-Demuin road’. The situation was deemed to be so serious that no further orders were given, once in the field the two cavalry commanders were to act upon their own initiative and support each other. Seely arrived first:

‘I asked the French general what the position was. He said that strong detachments were already on the outskirts of Moreuil, some two miles to our right; that his flank was unprotected and that he had already sent orders to his troops to fall back … I knew that moment to be the supreme moment of my life.’⁹

Supreme moment or not, Seely had persuaded General Diebold – who spoke gloomily of the allies’ prospects – to hold his positions and established his cavalry headquarters on the northern edge of the smaller wood which had not then been entered by German infantry. Seely’s orders were for Captain Albert Nordheimer’s A Squadron of the Royal Canadian Dragoons to clear the northwest corner of the wood and attempt to link up with the French at Moreuil village. According to Major Charles Connolly – Seely’s brigade major – Nordheimer’s squadron came under heavy enemy fire: