Chapter 14

Aftermath and Beyond

We climbed the crest of a hill where the road rose high, and far on our right was Amiens cathedral, touched with fire in the glory of the morning, outlined against a pale green sky. Here was surely something to fight for, a symbol of France.

Sergeant ‘Jimmy’ Downing – 57th Battalion Australian Imperial Force.

After the actions at Moreuil and Rifle Wood there was a lull in the fighting, the junction between the French and British on the river Avre was strengthened and over the next two days the French gradually relieved the British 8th and 14th Divisions. On 3 April at the Beauvais Conference the Allied command met again to confirm Foch’s appointment and decide on the immediate strategy both north and south of the Somme. Two days later the Fifth Army became the Fourth Army, Gough’s command had been completely erased.

As far as the German offensive was concerned it was becoming increasingly clear to all that the breakthrough and swift success promised by Ludendorff was not going to materialize, added to which the enormous human cost of the advance had, in many respects, already outweighed any territorial gain. Despair replaced exuberance as Germany braced itself for who knew how many more bloody years of war.

With Amiens still firmly fixed in his sights, however, Ludendorff made one further attempt to take the town, an attack that was halted at Villers-Bretonneux on 5 April by the Australian 9 Brigade and the British 14th and 18th Divisions. The heavy fighting was almost too much for the battered 14th Division and, to the dismay of many, numbers of British troops and their officers were seen to be retreating in disorder. Aware of what their British counterparts had already suffered during the German offensive there was a degree of sympathy amongst the Australian ranks, Jimmy Downing thanking his lucky stars that ‘we had escaped the hell they had already endured’. Buoyed up by the French and Australian reinforcements the Germans were held less than ten miles from the outskirts of Amiens. The offensive had come to a complete halt; the failure of both ‘Michael’ and ‘Mars’ had effectively ended Ludendorff ’s ambitions on the Rivers Somme and Scarpe.

By 5 April 1918 the BEF had been strengthened by over 100,000 infantry replacements hastily despatched in response to the German offensive, many of them were as young as eighteen. Private Frederick Hodges – en-route to join 10/Lancashire Fusiliers – remembered being addressed in Northampton by an elderly general who told them that despite not completing their training and still being boys of eighteen they were going to play the part of men. Fred Hodges and his reinforcements were badly needed as the total British losses given for the March offensive numbered 177,738 men, of whom at least 72,000 were prisoners. With a daily attrition rate of over 10,000 casualties the BEF had haemorrhaged men; the Fifth Army alone had lost over 90,000 from its sixteen infantry divisions. From the four Fifth Army infantry corps engaged during the battle the hardest hit was Watts’ XIX Corps which reported losses of over 32,000 of whom some 19,000 were missing. The French reported losses of around 77,000 from the twenty divisions engaged. Although German losses were marginally less than the combined Allied total, the 239,000 casualties still averaged over 11,000 men per day, the larger army group of von Hutier’s Eighteenth Army – thirty-five divisions - had taken 84,800 casualties, offset a little by the 51,000 Allied prisoners taken in the first seven days of the offensive. Von der Marwitz’s Second Army – twenty-four divisions – reported over 73,000 casualties while von Below’s Seventeenth Army – twenty-nine divisions- which was principally engaged in the costly ‘Mars’ offensive around Arras incurred over 81,000 casualties.

Even though the Allied losses were higher, with a greater number permanently lost to the war effort in captivity, taken as a whole, the loss to the Germans was much greater in terms of resources and morale. The Kaiserschlacht offensive had taken some 1,200 square miles of Allied territory in a remarkable advance of over forty miles, a result that none of the later German offensives would match. But this newly-won ground contained little of strategic value, much of the area comprised of the sterile 1916 Somme battleground and the wastelands created by the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in 1917. Amiens remained in Allied hands and the ball was now firmly back in Ludendorff ’s court.

On 9 April Ludendorff ’s attentions were directed on the valley of the River Lys where once again the offensive strike – this time codenamed ‘Georgette’ - made significant ground before it too was finally brought to a halt. His judgement perhaps still clouded by visions of victory, Ludendorff once again turned his attentions to Villers-Brettoneux where he opened his assault on 24 April. By the end of the day it looked as if his gamble might just pay off; German units occupied much of the village and dug in to prepare for the inevitable Allied counter-attack. It came almost immediately with the Australian 15th Division attacking to the north and the British 18th Division to the south. The final stroke was launched on the night of 24/25 April in an attack which sealed the fate of the German defence and set the name Villers-Bretonneux firmly up on the pedestal of Australian legend alongside those of Gallipoli and Poziéres.

Perhaps one of the greatest casualties of the March offensive was Hubert Gough whose performance during the retreat was arguably his finest hour. Up until March 1918 his record of command was one that had been pitted with controversy and it is ironic that it was the Australians, whom Gough had handled so badly at Pozières in 1916, who were finally brought up to bolster the line at Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918. Given the circumstances he found himself in in 1918, Gough fought relatively well but was made a scapegoat for problems that were not entirely of his own making and over which he exercised little control. His dismissal consigned him to a wilderness from which he only temporarily emerged in May 1919 when he was appointed Chief of the Allied Military Mission to Russia, an appointment from which he was sacked again the following October only five months later.

Returning home he was awarded the CBE, and spent the last months of the war as a student on an agricultural course at Cambridge University. In October 1922 he retired from the Army to take up pig and poultry farming at Burrows Lea at Gomshall in Surrey. This career change may have prompted his purchase of land in Kenya in 1925 but the move to Africa was never made and in 1927 he sold Burrows Lea. During this time he also briefly dabbled in politics, a career which ended in March 1922 after he was defeated as an Asquith Liberal in a parliamentary by-election in Chertsey.

Gough’s Fifth Army colleagues continued to lobby the government for him to receive an award similar to that given to the other army commanders at the end of the war, but the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused, preferring in 1937 to sanction the award of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in what was seen as a vindication of Gough’s reputation. In May 1940 Gough was back in uniform when he joined the Home Guard as commanding officer of the Chelsea Home Guard detatchment. News of his professional performance apparently reached Churchill’s ears, and in June 1940 he was promoted to Zone Commander in the Fulham & Chelsea area. Sir Hubert Gough died in London on 18 March 1963, aged 92.

If an ephitaph is needed for this old soldier it may lie within his obituary: ‘Had Gough been removed from command during the battles of the Somme or of Ypres not much surprise would have been aroused. That he should now be recalled – on March 28 – by Mr Lloyd George’s government, after hard fighting against great odds, appears the height of injustice.’

Gough’s four corps commanders all survived the war and those that had not already received knighthoods did so soon after the Armistice. In 1919 Richard Harte Butler was appointed to command the 2nd Division, a post he held until 1923 when he became GOC Western Command. He retired from the army in 1929 to live in Shawbury, in Shropshire, where he died on 22 April 1935 aged 65. He is buried at St Luke’s Churchyard at Hodnet, Shropshire.

Walter Norris Congreve, who had won the Victoria Cross at Colenso in December 1899, was appointed GOC of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force between 1919 and 1922 and then GOC Southern Command between 1923 and 1924. From 1924 he served as Governor of Malta, where he died aged 65. Walter Congreve’s son, Major William de la Touche Congreve, was also awarded the Victoria Cross shortly after his death in July 1916, making father and son one of only three such pairs to be awarded the coveted cross.

Ivor Maxse was moved from command of XVIII Corps in June 1918 to become Inspector General of Training to the British Armies in France and the United Kingdom. After the War he became GOC of IX Corps, stationed with the British Army of the Rhine in Germany. He went on to be GOC Northern Command before retiring from the Army in 1926 to establish a successful fruit growing business appropriately called the Maxey Fruit Company. He died in 1958 aged 96. Herbert ‘Teeny’ Edward Watts who held the remnants of the Fifth Army together in the final days of the offensive, lived until 1934 when he died at home in Bournemouth aged 76. A very private individual who specifically asked that his funeral be kept within the family circle and who was described in his obituary as: ‘A wise, a brave, and a modest man, and a very gentle and perfect knight.’

The unfortunate 59-year-old Major General Victor Arthur Couper, who commanded the 14th Division, was sent home in April 1918 and retired from the army a year later. In 1927 the former Greenjacket officer became Colonel Commandant of the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade. He died in 1938. Although Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Kenlis Maxwell was not disgraced, his surrender at Boadicea Redoubt and subsequent captivity did raise a number of eyebrows, aparently not enough to prevent his award of the DSO being announced! After the war he retired to his estates in County Cavan and occupied his time with golf, hunting and sailing and was frequently to be found on the ski slopes of Switzerland. His son, Lieutenant Colonel the Hon Somerset Maxwell, was killed at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942 whilst serving with the Royal Corps of Signals. Arthur Maxwell died in 1957 aged 79.

The unlucky 8th, 21st and 50th Divisions found themselves again on the receiving end of the third major German offensive in May 1918, this time in the Aisne sector. Moved to what was considered to be a quiet part of the front, they bore the brunt of the Blücher-Yorck offensive which opened on 27 May 1918. The fiery Brigadier General Edward Puis Riddell who commanded 149 Brigade was badly wounded at Beaurepaire Wood with Brigadier General Cuthbert Martin, who was regrettably killed. Fortunately Riddell survived the war adding a second bar to his DSO before he retired from the army in 1925. He became chairman of the Hexham Conservative Association and was heavily involved in the British Legion. Knighted in 1945 he died at Hexham in August 1957 aged 82.

Brigadier General Hubert Rees, who commanded 150 Brigade, became another casualty of the Blücher-Yorck offensive when he was captured on the first day of the German advance. Rees had the rather dubious pleasure of meeting the Kaiser before being marched away into captivity. Repatriated in December 1918 he retired from the army in 1922 and died in January 1948. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Alexander Shaw Page was also taken prisoner on the Aisne after another epic stand with his battalion of Middlesex which, once again, was practically wiped out on 27 May. Page was repatriated in October 1918 and retired from the army in 1920 to take up Holy Orders in 1921. He died at home in East Dereham, Norfolk in August 1953 aged 76. In the Second World War his son, Flight Lieutenant Harry Page was shot down and killed in January 1942 flying with 61 Squadron.

Brigadier Hanway Robert Cumming, who commanded the Leicester Brigade at Épehy, emerged unscathed from the Blücher-Yorck offensive but was killed aged 54 during the Anglo-Irish War in the infamous Clonbanin ambush on 5 March 1921. His body was brought back to England and cremated at Golders Green. Amongst the long list of dignitaries in attendance was Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson – who himself was assassinated by two IRA gunmen in 1922. Another casualty of the Anglo-Irish conflict was Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Smyth who commanded 6/KOSB. He finished his war with the DSO and bar commanding 93 Infantry Brigade; tragically he was gunned down in Cork by the IRA in July 1920. Brigadier John Edward Bernard Seely returned to England in 1918 and was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Air and President of the Air Council in 1919, posts he resigned from at the end of 1919 after the Government refused to create a Secretary of State for Air. On 21 June 1933 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Mottistone. His son, Second Lieutenant Frank Reginald Seely was killed in action with the 1st Battalion Hampshires in April 1917 and is buried at Haute-Avesnes British Cemetery. Jack Seeley died in November 1947.

The casualty rate amongst battalion commanders during the March offensive was high, on the first day alone eight were killed in action and a further fifteen were taken prisoner. Of those that survived the conflict several remained in the army as serving soldiers through to the Second World War. Probably the most renowned of these was Lieutenant Colonel Vyvyan Vavasour Pope whose arm was so badly shattered in his encounter with German infantry near Vadencourt that it had to be amputated. He transferred to the Royal Tank Corps in 1923 and on the outbreak of war in 1939 was appointed Chief of Staff to II Corps which had been mobilised at Salisbury under Alan Brooke’s command. At the end of September he joined the BEF as Lord Gort’s tank advisor and took a leading role in the armoured counter-attack at Arras on 21 May 1940. He was evacuated from Dunkirk after which he was posted to North Africa in 1941 as GOC XXX Corps. However, on 5 October his aircraft ran into trouble on taking off from Heliopolis. All those on board were killed.

Captain George Douglas James McMurtrie also remained in the army and served in Africa, retiring after the Second World War with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He died in 1994 having achieved the grand old age of 96. Many, such as Lieutenant Colonel Algernon Lee Ransome, who retired in 1938, were recalled on the outbreak of war in September 1939; in Ransome’s case it was to command the 46th Division which he commanded until 1945. He died in May 1969. Lieutenant Eric Jacobs-Larkcom was another regular officer who remained with the colours, spending much of his time in the Far East. During the Second World War as a lieutenant colonel he served with the British Military Mission to China after which he entered the Foreign Service. He died at Truro in May 1982 aged 87.

For the majority the end of hostilities heralded the long-awaited opportunity to return to civilian life. Eddie Combe, who defended Le Quesnoy and reportedly ‘went over the top’ on some fifteen occasions, opened the UK office of Clarke Dodge and Co., a leading firm of New York Stockbrokers, in 1924 and later became a partner. He retired to Brighton after forty years in the business and died in June 1967. Lieutenant Colonel John Durnford Crosthwaite was another stockbroker who returned to the family business of Fenn and Crosthwaite. After the fall of France in 1940 he rejoined the army but resigned when he was refused overseas service on account of his age and so, like many old soldiers, he joined the Home Guard. He lived out his final years as a senior partner in the family firm and died in January 1981 aged 89.

Lieutenant Colonel Hugh John Chevalier Peirs, who commanded 8/Queens at Le Verguier, left the army with a further bar to his DSO and continued to practise law until his untimely death in June 1943 aged 57. Captain Harry Kenneth Staddon lived considerably longer and also resumed his law practice. He died in May 1961, four years before Lieutenant Claude Lorraine Piesse of 8/Queens who returned to Australia in 1920 and died in Perth. Like Piesse, Lieutenant Herbert Asquith was greatly affected by the war. He was the second son of Herbert Henry Asquith, the British Prime Minister and younger brother of Raymond Asquith who was killed on the Somme in September 1916. After the war he returned to practise law but is better known for his writing. In 1937 he wrote of his war experiences in Moments of Memory, episodes that appeared again in his poetry which included The Volunteer and The Fallen Subaltern. He died in 1947, aged 66. Another writer was Lieutenant Colonel Rowland Fielding who concluded his war in command of the 1st Battalion Civil Service Rifles after which he returned to mining engineering. He will always be remembered as the author of War Letters to a Wife which was published in 1929. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and died at Wimbledon in September 1945 aged 74.

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury, the grandson of the 16th Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, was taken prisoner on 21 March having been mentioned in despatches on seven occasions. After escaping from Fürstenberg – he remained at large for nine days almost reaching the Danish frontier – he was recaptured and sent to Clausthal 2,000 feet up in the Hartz Mountains where he remained until he was repatriated. In 1921 he led the first British expedition to Everest, an enterprise which included George Leigh Mallory in its number. The 1921 expedition made Howard-Bury a public figure and in 1922 he won the Conservative seat for Bilston which he lost in 1924. He returned to the House of Commons two years later as MP for Chelmsford, a seat he held for six years. He died in September 1963 aged 82.

The 2/2 Londons commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Read Richardson, was 37-years-old when he was wounded on 21 March, injuries which left him disabled for the rest of his life. After the war he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Swansea in 1920, a position he held until 1940 when he was compelled to resign on account of increasing ill-health. Retiring to South Africa he continued mathematical research up until shortly before his death in November 1954. Lieutenant Colonel Herbert John Wenyon who commanded 8/Royal West Kents, died in August 1944 aged 56. He was a county cricketer who played for Middlesex between 1921 and 1923. In July 1945 his only son, RNVR Lieutenant Louis Wenyon, was killed in a flying accident.

Major Cecil James Hazard who had been the last man to cross the Bristol Bridge at Pèronne, emigrated to Guatamala in 1924 and laid the foundations for the Los Andes coffee growing plantation which is still farmed by the family today. Captain George Arthur Howson retired as a major and devoted the remainder of his life to helping the war disabled by forming the Disabled Society and later by establishing the Royal British Legion Poppy Factory which largely employed disabled soldiers. He died aged 50 in November 1936. Lieutenant Robert Forden Petschler who destroyed No.4 Bridge at Ham resumed his civilian occupation as an electrical engineer. He later retired to run a hotel in Chichester and died in June 1978 aged 85.

Major Alwyn Leslie Raimes survived the war but his younger brother, Captain Lancelot Raimes was killed in action in June 1916; he is buried at Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension. After the war Alwyn presumably returned to working with the family firm of Raimes and Co. and wrote an account of his battalion at war entitled The Fifth Battalion Durham Light Infantry, 1914–1918. By1948 he was working with the Ministry of Food. When he retired he was living in Dorking and died in November 1967. Second Lieutenant John Crawford Cunningham was awarded the DSO for his gallantry, news of which reached him at Holtzminden Prison Camp where he was joined by five other subalterns from his battalion and Major Marcus Hartigan who was captured at Malaisse Farm. In 1920 Cunningham resumed work in the family business, remaining there until the outbreak of war in 1939 when he became the Factory Defence Officer at the Luton Percival Aircraft factory. In January 1941 he was awarded the George Medal for defusing an unexploded parachute mine during an air raid on the factory where he remained until 1954. He died ten years later.

For others such as Captain James Charles Vanner of 7/Leicesters the ravages of war were responsible for his early death in March 1919 aged only 22. Wounds received in August 1918 effectively ended his war and, weakened from gas poisoning, he gradually deteriorated. Fortunately Private Fred Hodges remained unscathed, returning to civilian life in 1919 where he worked as an accountant in the gas industry for forty-five years and had the distinction of being one of the last few remaining Great War veterans. He died in February 2002. Sadly Lieutenant Colonels Robert Edward Dewing and Christopher ‘Kit’ Bushell VC were victims of the last months of the war. Dewing was killed in April and Bushel on 8 August 1918 - the first day of the Battle of Amiens.

Father HenryVincent Gill, the Roman Catholic chaplain to 2/Royal Irish Rifles, was awarded the DSO and Military Cross for his bravery under fire and spent the last thirteen years of his life as a minister at the Leeson Street Jesuit community in Dublin. He died in 1934. The Wesleyan chaplain, Reverend Thomas Westerdale, who wrote of his experiences with the Somerset Light Infantry at St Simon, published a number of books including, Messages From Mars: A Chaplain’s Experiences at the Front. Westerdale managed to combine his religious duties with that of war correspondent and regularly sent copy to the Methodist Times. After the war he continued to write on a variety of subjects and died in Winchester in 1965. Another officer who turned to the church was Tom Witherow of 2/Royal Irish Rifles who was described as a ‘most remarkable combination of warrior and man of the cloth’. He died aged 99 in September 1989.

Captain Harry Fine who commanded the garrison at Fort Vendeuil left the army with a Military Cross and is thought to have died in 1948. In 1939 he applied for a Short Service Commission having given his age as 45 but was turned down on health grounds. He was still single at the time and living with his sister in Paddington. Captain Leonard Maurice Harper was awarded a bar to his Military Cross and died in December 1967 aged 74 at Hounslow. The gallant Lieutenant Geoffrey Ewart Lester returned to the Standard Bank of South Africa after his repatriation in 1919 but moved to Kenya in 1922 where he married and continued his career in banking. Returning to England in 1944 he died aged 60 in 1953. Lieutenant David Victor Kelly, the 110 Brigade Intelligence Officer took a different path and joined the Diplomatic Service and became the British Ambassador to Argentina, Turkey and the Soviet Union. He was knighted in 1942 and died in March 1959. He wrote several books including 39 Months with the Tigers 1915–1918.

The Victoria Cross holders who survived the war all fared well apart from Cecil Leonard Knox who was killed in February 1943 after losing control of his motor cycle. On returning to England in 1919 he had became a Freeman of the Borough of Nuneaton and a director of Haunchwood Brick & Tile Company. In 1940 he took command of the local Home Guard until his untimely death three years later. He was cremated at Gilroes Cemetery, Leicester. Frank Crowther ‘Cully’ Roberts was appointed GOC of the Poona Brigade in 1938 and briefly commanded the 48th Division in 1939, retiring with the rank of major general. He died in January 1982 and is buried at Bretby Churchyard near Burton-on-Trent. Charles Edwin Stone returned to Derby to work for Rolls Royce, remaining there for the rest of his working life. He died in August 1952 aged 60 and is buried in Belper Cemetery, Derby. Alfred Cecil Herring retired as a major and returned to civilian life as a chartered accountant. In 2006 a public house in Palmer’s Green in North London was named after him. He died in August 1966. Jack Davies was possibly the only living recipient of the Victoria Cross to have been first awarded the medal posthumously. Thought to have been killed in action, his postcard from Zagen confirmed he was still alive and had been taken prisoner. Jack returned to work at the Ravenhead Brick and Pipe Works in St Helens and married his sweetheart Beatrice. During the Second World War he was a captain in the Home Guard. He died suddenly in October 1955 aged 60. Alfred Maurice Toye remained in the army and spent six years as chief instructor at the Royal Egyptian Military College, later becoming commandant of the War Office School of Chemical Warfare. For much of the Second World War he was on active service with the 6th Airboirne Division and retired as a brigadier general in 1948. He died in 1955 in his fifty-eighth year and is buried at Tiverton, Devon.