3

PER–BATTLE PREPARATION:
SEPTEMBER 1915

During September 1915, while all at GHQ and First Army worked feverishly on operational plans and deployment orders, things were taking shape closer to the front. The build-up of assault troops required more communication, support and reserve trenches to be dug, while existing ones had to be drained, deepened and in places widened. Stores had to be moved up, dugouts constructed and saps pushed out towards the German positions. The unsavoury task of transporting thousands of bulky gas cylinders up to the front line fell in many cases to the infantry, who also had to be given their orders and trained in their respective roles. Detailed preparations for the offensive began in late August, and in the following four weeks, a Vast and methodical’ operation took place that transformed First Army’s lines.¹ Watching the columns of lorries, guns and ammunition wagons moving up to the front ‘in an endless procession day and night’, Major E.S.B Hamilton, a medical officer with 15^th (Scottish) Division, recorded in his diary that ‘there was never anything like this’.²

The preparations that preceded the Battle of Loos were unprecedented, being the largest and most complex logistical operation that had been conducted by the BEF up to that time. These preparations were, however, still inadequate for the scale of the attack that First Army was planning. Admittedly the poor ground conditions caused a number of insurmountable difficulties, but the preparations were plagued by poor staff work, confusion and muddle. As well as the problems that were experienced in pushing the British trenches closer to the German lines, adding extra communication and support trenches, and bringing the required materials to the battlefield, there was also a growing conflict over the tactical plans for the attack. It seems that there was an unresolved tension between those senior British officers at corps and division tasked with fulfilling General Sir Douglas Haig’s grand ideas, and a number of subordinates closer to the front line who were in many cases either confused or unhappy about what they were being asked to do. These disagreements, which mirrored the confusion about the aims and objectives of the attack between GHQ and First Army, were never resolved and had important implications for the coming assault. This was especially evident when considering the contested march of the reserve divisions (XI Corps) to the battlefield in the days before the assault; an episode that reveals much about the poor prebattle preparation, staff work and logistics within First Army.

Once General Sir Douglas Haig and his corps commanders had agreed upon the basic outline of the main assault, tactical planning could go ahead. As has been explained in Chapter 2, First Army’s plans for the Battle of Loos were highly ambitious, being based on the infantry conducting an ‘all-out’ assault that would dislocate the German defences north of Lens and win a major strategic victory. But how were these ambitious plans received lower down the chain of command? While there was a concentration, especially at corps and divisional headquarters (except in one notable case), on far-off ‘unlimited’ objectives, this was not shared by those closer to the front who were understandably preoccupied with the task of actually cracking the German front line. Because it was ‘not enough to gain a tactical success’,³ units had to plan for an ‘all-out’ attack, which placed a great deal of pressure on subordinates who were faced, on the one hand, with unfavourable ground, and on the other, with the call for a major victory.

As was to be expected, the orders emanating from British divisions echoed those given by Haig in the run-up to the battle and were noticeable for their aggression. Major-General A.E.A. Holland (GOC 1^st Division) emphasised the scale of the attack in his pre-battle orders, telling his brigadiers that ‘a small tactical success such as the taking of the enemy’s front line trenches will in no way meet the requirements of the case’.⁴ Similarly, Major-General F.WN. McCracken (GOC 15^th Division) stressed that the attack should be pressed ‘with all the offensive power of the division’⁵ and Major-General Sir T. Capper (GOC 7^th Division) added even more emphasis onto the objectives he had been given. Capper, a fiery martinet with a deep and lasting commitment to the offensive,⁶ told his subordinates, a week before the battle, that:

We must abandon all narrow or limited ideas, and keep our eyes fixed on the large object in view. Large reserves are in position behind, ready to support us as soon as we have achieved a certain amount of success… boldness and clarity are to be the keywords of our action. We do not want to “huroosh” forward, but to advance rapidly and in good order.⁷

How were these pronouncements received and what impact did they have on those actually doing the fighting? Far from being equally enthusiastic, those closer to the front were much less sanguine about the prospects of the attack. The difficulty of the ground seems to have been a key factor. Contemporary descriptions of the Loos battlefield are similar in tone and content. As French and Haig had already realised, the proposed ground was unsuitable for a major offensive. Sir John French found Loos ‘a veritable shell trap,’ while Haig grimly noted that the area was ‘covered with coal pits and houses’.⁸ To Philip Gibbs, the war reporter, it was quite simply ‘hideous territory’.⁹ Similarly, according to Paul Maze, a French staff officer with I Corps, it was ‘a drab district of coal mines, where even the summer could bring no joy’.¹⁰ The ground bore the scars of many years of intense mining activity. Slagheaps and pitheads dotted the landscape. Although the battlefield was littered with small villages and criss-crossed with roads and tracks, it was generally fiat and exposed, only broken by the Grenay–Hulluch ridge and Hill 70 to the east of Loos. These gentle rises, somewhat like soft waves across a calm sea, may not have been of great strategic importance, but they were of immense tactical value and were to be bitterly contested.

The mining buildings themselves were split into two types: puits and fosses. A puits was a small mine of less permanent construction than its bigger cousin, the fosse, and usually only consisted of several ramshackle sheds and small brick buildings. A fosse, on the other hand, was a large, principal mine, characterised by its steel winding gear that could rise up to one hundred feet into the air. Inevitably, these sturdy metal giants were the stations of precariously seated observers. Although observing from a fosse was a risky and nerve-wracking task, the benefits from occupying a commanding position in such a flat landscape were obvious to all. The most famous fosse on the battlefield was undoubtedly ‘Tower Bridge’ in Loos village, which proved impossible for British gunners to hit, but only too easy for a German howitzer battery that felled it in the months after Loos had been taken.¹¹ The main enemy observation stations south of the La Bassée canal were at Fosse 8 and ‘Tower Bridge’ and gave the German Sixth Army extensive views over British preparation in the area, thus rendering forlorn any hope of surprise. As the soil in this part of France consisted mainly of chalk and flint, the extra forming up and support trenches that the British would require were easily visible and the ‘excavated chalk subsoil’ gave them, in the words of one commentator, ‘the appearance of lines of sea-foam on a beach’.¹² Alongside a fosse was usually a crassier. These were piles of waste mining material heaped into ugly pyramids that towered over the surrounding countryside and gave the Loos battlefield its own unique panorama. As well as being useful for artillery observation, these dusty, somewhat treacherous, slagheaps could also be converted into virtually indestructible fortresses, which housed nests of machine guns. The Double Crassier (south-west of Loos) and the Dump (near the Hohenzollern Redoubt) were of particular importance, given their size and location, being effectively able to enfilade any advance upon Loos or Cité St Elie respectively. Most of the crassiers on the Loos battlefield were ‘cool’, and positions could therefore be dug into them, but some, such as Fosse 3 near the village of Philosophe, were hot and proved extremely difficult to burrow into.¹³

Moving eastwards across the ground, as Haig’s report of 23 June had made clear, would not be easy.¹⁴ Between the British lines and the Haute Deule canal – First Army’s final objective – there were only three main roads leading eastwards.¹⁵ The infantry would be able to make reasonable progress marching across the grass, but getting guns and other supplies forward would take time and cause great congestion on the rudimentary transport network. Even the existing roads tended to be concentrated in the northern half of the British line, with the Vermelles–Hulluch road, which continued onto Vendin le Vieil, being the southernmost route going directly eastwards. The lack of suitable roads behind the British line was even more of a problem. Lieutenant-Colonel Hon. M. A. Wingfield (AA&QMG 7^th Division) complained that the ‘roads here were most inconvenient, practically none of them running straight from west to east, and it was most difficult to effect a traffic circuit at all, without encroaching on the areas of other divisions’.¹⁶

There were major concerns not only about the ground itself, but also the labyrinth of German defences that had been constructed upon it. Facing Haig’s First Army was the German Sixth Army, commanded by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.¹⁷ A calm and competent commander, Rupprecht was arguably the best royal general in the German Army. The defences in the Sixth Army sector were very strong and consisted of two separate lines of defence protected by barbed wire and studded with machine guns. Numerous communication trenches joined the two. There were also several fortified villages situated behind the German front trenches, which provided accommodation and storage facilities. From the La Bassée canal to Lens, the German second line ran closely in front of six mining villages between one and two miles from the front trenches. Stretching from La Bassée, past Haisnes, Cité St Elie, Hulluch, Cité St Auguste to Cité St Laurent, the second line was very similar to its front line counterpart. Strongly wired and deeply dug, the trench system contained a number of Stützpunkt, heavily defended ‘keeps’ that could be defended from all sides, and were still able to resist even if its supporting trench lines were overrun. These keeps were especially important in holding the wide, arching ‘D’ shaped line that covered open fields from Hulluch to Cité St Laurent.¹⁸

The concept behind the second line was a simple one. In response to the heavy fighting of the winter and spring, it had proved virtually impossible for assaults to be repulsed along every sector of attack, and with the waxing Allied material resources being brought to bear, sooner or later, one line of defences would break. On 13 May 1915 the German Chief of Staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn, issued a memorandum to his armies that discussed the basic offensive methods that had been employed by the French during the previous winter. Offensive operations tended to be characterised by considerable artillery preparation before the infantry were committed. The report admitted that ‘the morale of everybody behind the front line was affected by the noise, the clouds of smoke and dust rising like a gigantic wall above the battle line and the shower of splinters raining in every direction’. After the preliminary bombardment had smashed the German lines, an attack would materialise on a narrow frontage and be pressed home by large numbers of soldiers. In order to defeat these attacks:

What was required was not one or even several lines of fixed defences, but rather a fortified zone which permitted a certain liberty of action, so that the best use could be made of all the advantages offered by the configuration of the ground, and all disadvantages could as far as possible be overcome.¹⁹

Although the concept of ‘defence in depth’ would not be fully employed for at least another two years, it is clear that German tactical thought was already developing at considerable speed.²⁰ With merciless efficiency and using soldiers, engineers and legions of forced labour, a second line was begun in the summer of 1915. By the time the Anglo-French attacks commenced in late September, such a system had not been completed fully, although it was strong in parts, especially against the southern end of the British line. It would prove a considerable asset.

Such matters were not lost on those British officers surveying the battlefield from the front line and there seems to have been a general scepticism about the feasibility of conducting an ‘unlimited’ operation over such difficult ground. In particular, there were persistent queries about the rather vague ‘into the blue’ orders that had been issued and greater clarity was often sought. Whereas in later years, British attacks would be split into a number of carefully planned stages – often a series of coloured lines – this was not the case at Loos, and no definite timetable of movements was issued.²¹ Indeed, tactical orders seem to have been terribly rushed. This was particularly noticeable in 15^th (Scottish) Division, which was to make the main attack of IV Corps. Lieutenant-Colonel J. Rainsford-Hannay (Brigade Major 44 Brigade) complained that his brigade was only given its final objectives – ‘into the blue’, as he put it – to head off ‘beyond Cité St Auguste’ 48 hours before the attack.²² Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Purvis (CO 12/Highland Light Infantry, 46 Brigade) was also given similar information. He had been told to ‘push on as long as you can as you are going to be backed up all the way!’²³

But no detailed series of objectives came from higher authority. This caused concern. Brigadier-General M.G. Wilkinson (GOC 44 Brigade) evidently did not want his men to make such an ambitious operation and would have preferred a more limited series of attacks. He had told his corps commander (Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Rawlinson) that once Hill 70 had been taken, his men must be allowed to consolidate their positions and await reinforcements before carrying on. This was curtly rejected. Despite his own concerns, Rawlinson urged Wilkinson to ‘push ahead as you will have plenty of support’.²⁴ Even 45 Brigade, the divisional reserve, experienced a similar pressure and again a corresponding reluctance from subordinate officers. After the brigade commander (Brigadier-General F.E. Wallerstein) had urged his officers to get their men over Hill 70, Lieutenant-Colonel J.W. Sandilands (CO 7/Cameron Highlanders) had queried this. ‘Can you give us some objective there?’ he had asked. ‘You have got your objective which is Hill 70,’ replied Wallerstein, ‘But if you get that and you find there is no opposition push on to Cité St Auguste.’²⁵

Such confusion was not, however, unique to 15^th Division. Both 1^st and 7^th Divisions, straddling the Vermelles–Hulluch road in the centre of the British attack, experienced a similar unease. Colonel W.C. Walton (CO 8/Berkshire, 1 Brigade) admitted that he had very little idea of what to do. His commanding officer, Brigadier-General A.J. Reddie (GOC 1 Brigade), had simply told him that ‘we were to go as far as we could’. The confusion between operational and tactical attacks was again in evidence. There were apparently no specific objectives, ‘except that each battalion was to be exploited to its utmost limit’.²⁶ The AA&QMG of 7^th Division complained that Capper ‘never looked at the German front line system’ and instead ‘fixed his gaze on the second line’.²⁷ In an interview with him shortly before the battle regarding engineer requirements, Colonel G.H. Boileau (CRE 7^th Division) was apparently told to ‘never mind about forward RE dumps or tools and wire, your chief job will be to get the division over the canal’.²⁸ But even so, the orders given to 7^th Division were only to secure the crossings over the Haute Deule canal, not to cross it.

Interestingly one divisional commander was notable for his absence of aggression. Major-General G.H. Thesiger, GOC 9^th (Scottish) Division, so disliked the plan that he disassociated himself from it, and seems to have had relatively little to do with 9^th Division’s preparations. This may well have been due to his recent arrival; he had only taken charge of the division on 9 September, but there seems to have been some interference in the details of the attack by the commander of I Corps, Lieutenant-General Hubert Gough. In particular, there had been considerable discussion about the attack of 26 Brigade. It was supposed to take Fosse 8 and then undertake a complete right wheel (alongside 28 Brigade), before moving onto further objectives. Within the divisions this was regarded as being unfeasible and Thesiger subsequently made it clear that these orders were not his own, rather Gough’s. Major J.G. Collins (8/Black Watch), bitterly upset by this interference in brigade orders, complained that, ‘The Corps Commander seems to forget the infantry don’t gallop!’ Colonel Cameron of Lochiel (CO 5/Cameron Highlanders) subsequently told Lord Sempill (CO 8/Black Watch) that he would take Fosse 8, the first objective, but did not expect to ‘get a yard further’.²⁹

Things could not have been more different on the extreme right of the British line. Indeed, the experience of 47^th (London) Division shows an alternative to the tensions inherent in making such a far-reaching attack. Because it was to undertake only a limited, flank-guarding operation – and in stark contrast to Capper’s canal-crossing fantasies – Major-General C. St. L. Barter (GOC 47^th Division) was able to place a much greater emphasis on the initial assault on the German front line. As a result there were no ‘into the blue’ orders issued to his men, and there seems to have been very little unease in his division. For example, one soldier remembered how ‘full and elaborate orders were issued’.³⁰ Because exact, achievable objectives were drawn up, 47^th Division was able to construct a flagged course of the terrain, which proved very useful for training purposes. The war diary subsequently recorded that ‘every man knew exactly what he had to do: and consequently… the whole assault went like clockwork’.³¹ But the success of the assault would depend not only on the tactical plans for the attack, then being drafted at battalion, brigade and divisional headquarters, but also upon what kind of logistical preparation had been made in British divisions scheduled to go ‘over the top’ on 25 September.

It is often lamented among historians that relatively little attention has been paid to the vital, albeit unglamorous, role that logistics played in British operations during the First World War. And while I.M. Brown’s British Logistics on the Western Front (1989) is a valuable account of the higher end of logistical preparation, there is much work to be done on the movement, management and use of supplies closer to the front line.³² How effective were the preparations First Army made for the coming battle? Although certainly impressive in scale, the results seemed to have been mixed. While a number of divisions were able to prepare very effectively for the coming battle, others were hampered by a lack of equipment, supplies and men. Poor staff work was also a constant problem all along the front. First Army (and the BEF more generally) simply did not have the capacity to provide the support that such a massive battle required. There were also worrying problems concerning a lack of communication between senior members of First Army and a confusion over the type of battle that First Army was attempting to conduct.

Given the great reliance placed upon the discharge of chlorine gas, the successful delivery and installation of over 5,000 cylinders into the front trenches of I and IV Corps was perhaps the most pressing concern in the weeks before the battle. And although the arrangements were to some extent miraculous, they were flawed. Lieutenant-Colonel C.H. Foulkes’s Special Brigade was not only desperately short of officers and men (most sections were five or six men under establishment), but also in equipment such as slings and poles to carry the cylinders into the trenches.³³ When, on the evening of 17 September, the first cylinders arrived at the railhead behind First Army lines, problems were almost immediately encountered. The lids of the boxes in which the cylinders were stored were difficult to open. Some cylinders were empty or leaking on arrival, while others contained more gas and were heavier than expected. Once the cylinders had been packed into trucks and delivered to the divisional dumps, fatigue parties took over. Accounts of the journey from the dumps to the front trenches are similar in content. It usually took at least four hours (some parties took over nine hours³⁴) and was of a most exhausting and trying nature.³⁵ As well as the cylinders – which could weigh up to 160lbs – the connecting pipes were very heavy and difficult to carry through the twisting communication and support trenches. But in what was a feat of considerable labour, the cylinders were installed on time by working-parties, sent from each division (often up to 2,000 men strong), which went into the trenches every night with their dangerous, lumpy burdens.³⁶

The installation of gas cylinders must be seen as a major logistical success. It was, however, far from perfect. Despite Haig’s best efforts trying to keep the gas preparations a secret, he seems to have failed. Although he had returned a cargo of gas cylinders which had mistakenly arrived at Béthune station back to Boulogne and ordered Foulkes’s Special Companies not to mix with other troops,³⁷ by as early as 5 September surprisingly accurate stories were circulating amongst the British at the front that ‘there is to be a very big advance in which we shall use gas all along the line after a four days [sic] bombardment’.³⁸ This was even more worrying because the use of the term ‘gas’ had been forbidden, instead it was called ‘accessory’ or ‘roger’.³⁹ Given the flat, open ground and excellent observation possessed by Sixth Army over most of the British front, moving vast amounts of guns, troops and stores up unnoticed was virtually impossible, but there seems to have been a carelessness about First Army in its staff work that was repeated across many different areas of the pre-battle preparation. Captain J.C. Dunn (2/Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 19 Brigade) complained on 4 September that all ‘Troop, train, and wagon movements were unconcealed’ and although ‘strict observance’ had been maintained at the front in not discussing the coming attack, at the regimental base ‘everything was open and public; for weeks beforehand the offensive was the general topic among all ranks’.⁴⁰ But rumours were not only reaching the British front line. One German account also recorded how they were not ‘caught napping’.

In mounting the gas batteries they [the British] could not help to make some noise and our patrols reported that unusual hammering on metal. In the following nights I convinced myself of the correctness of their reports and passed them on to my superiors. Only my regimental commander and the surgeon believed in those reports and immediately took action. We had to prepare 20 inches square wooden boxes filled with straw and tar and in the rear they ordered several thousand emergency masks to protect mouth and nose.⁴¹

It is certain that this was not a unique occurrence, although it seems that the German formation (14^th Division) opposite 2^nd Division, where the front lines were very close together, had a far clearer idea of British preparations than those units further south.⁴²

As well as bringing up the gas cylinders, it was essential that First Army construct the necessary positions from which to launch the assault. How effective were these efforts? Results were again mixed. On certain sectors of the front a great deal of work was undertaken. While 15^th Division’s war diary lists twelve separate tasks that were completed before the attack and the divisional history fifteen, 9^th Division also made a major logistical effort.⁴³ In the weeks leading up to the attack over 12,000 yards of trench were dug, including a number of saps that were pushed out into no-man’s-land and then joined together to form a new fire trench within 150 yards of the German positions.⁴⁴ Although 7^th Division was not making one of the main attacks, its sector had also been transformed.⁴⁵ By 4 September no-man’s-land was around 500 yards in depth (it had been over 700 yards in places) and a considerable number of new communication trenches had been dug, while existing ones had been strengthened and widened.⁴⁶ Progress was evidently pleasing and Brigadier-General Hon. J.F.H.S.F. Trefusis (GOC 20 Brigade) recorded in his diary that ‘we are further forward than any other division in everything that is being done’.⁴⁷ 47^th Division’s preparation, for its limited attack south-west of Loos, was almost faultless. It moved into its positions on 26 August and dug over 1,450 yards of new front line, about 200 yards in advance of the old position, in the following four weeks.⁴⁸ As well as building a new front line, there were many scarcely smaller tasks including the construction of large ration and equipment dumps, a functioning water-supply system and the laying of miles of telegraph and telephone cables in and around the trenches. By 25 September, 47^th Division had dug over two miles of new communication trenches, deepened and widened existing ones and prepared positions for three machine gun batteries on the forward slope of the Maroc Ridge.

The sheer scale of the operation did, however, stretch resources thinly. As a staff officer with 7^th Division commented, it was difficult to meet all the requirements not only for an attack on the first and second German lines, but also to ‘prepare to carry on onto open warfare’.⁴⁹ Indeed, both 9^th and 7^th Divisions had been materially assisted by the labour of 1^st Division, which was one of the most overworked formations within First Army. Because it had originally not been intended that 1^st Division would be involved in the main attack, it had spent most of August pushing out a number of saps in I Corps’ sector, building keeps in and around Vermelles, and constructing a new front line for 7^th Division.⁵⁰ When the decision to attack ‘all-out’ with the six divisions of I and IV Corps had been taken, 1^st Division returned hurriedly to its own sector, one vital month having already passed. Deployed on unfavourable ground 1^st Division struggled to make adequate preparation. By the first week of September not only was there a shortage of ‘jumping off’ points and latrines, but there were also too few main communication trenches. Brigadier-General Reddie warned Major-General Holland on 7 September that the ‘trenches will be very crowded and there will be no means of communication along the lines, when occupied, owing to their being so narrow’.⁵¹ Reddie was, however, assured the following day that 3 Brigade would help widen the front trenches and dig the required latrines.⁵² But these assurances were not kept. What evidence that exists points to a simple lack of time and labour. On 1 August, 3 Brigade complained that owing to the ‘great extent of line, and the weakness of the battalions the amount of work required is very heavy.⁵³ There were too many tasks and not enough men, a situation only aggravated by heavy enemy shelling.⁵⁴

Major-General H.S. Horne’s 2^nd Division also experienced a great many problems. Strung out along the La Bassée canal on what was certainly the longest, and arguably the most unfavourable sector of the British line, 2^nd Division’s front stretched from Givenchy to a point north-west of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. No-man’s-land was a sinister, topsy-turvy landscape of huge craters, coarse grass, half-buried skeletons and rotting corpses; the product of months of trench warfare. Along this sector the British trenches ran in close parallel to the German positions and all three of Horne’s brigades were in the line, occupied with a constant diet of working-parties and fatigues.⁵⁵ The front trenches were drained, deepened and wired, their traverses repaired, fire-steps improved and numerous shellproof shelters constructed. A number of saps were opened up into no-man’s-land and a scale model of the ground was constructed and installed around its billets. The front was also one of the most active in First Army. September may have been a quiet month from the other British sectors south of the La Bassée canal, but for 2^nd Division, it was a constant battle for supremacy with German tunnellers. According to one observer, nowhere on the Western Front ‘was mining so active as here’.⁵⁶

The preparations that British divisions made for the coming offensive were clearly different from each other. Because the operational plans for the battle were so loose and the attacking units had only been given rough objectives, much was left to individual divisions and their commanders. And in the absence of a clear, guiding hand from corps or army about how to prepare for the coming battle and how resources should be managed, divisions went their own ways. This independence was also noticeable in the attacking formations that battalions adopted when crossing no-man’s-land on 25 September. It seems that no set tactics were laid down and battalion commanders were left, to a great extent, free to adopt whatever formation they preferred.⁵⁷ This confusion was compounded by the remarkable lack of communication between units. This can be illustrated by comparing the construction of flagged course and scale models of the ground. While 2^nd, 9^th and 47^th Divisions made such models, the three other attacking divisions did not place such an emphasis on them.⁵⁸ Although this had proven to be of some use earlier in the year, and would later become a staple training technique within the BEF, the lack of a unified logistical plan ensured that this was not enforced.

The medical arrangements for Loos mirrored its other preparations: on a vast scale, but still inadequate. Major-General W.G. Macpherson (DMS First Army) had estimated that several days fighting would produce around 39,000 British casualties,⁵⁹ but between 25 September and 1 October, 29,720 wounded were admitted into field ambulances and another 22,315 were treated in casualty clearing stations.⁶⁰ Such strain produced severe problems. One medical officer recorded that by the morning of 25 September ‘stretchers began to run out’,⁶¹ and another remembered how the ‘whole thing was a sort of long nightmare with the only thing clear being the necessity for dressing more and more people every minute’.⁶² Although Macpherson believed that his medical arrangements were about as good as they could have been, and ‘worked well and smoothly’, they broke down completely in some parts of the battlefield.⁶³ The area around the Hohenzollern Redoubt was a particularly ghastly example of how difficult swift evacuation and treatment of casualties could become,⁶⁴ but it was not a unique occurrence. There were not enough medical personnel, not enough casualty clearing stations and ambulances, stretchers were a constant problem and hundreds of wounded simply stacked up in the exposed fields behind the lines. Treatment techniques were, however, clearly improving. Abdominal wounds were one of the most feared injuries among fighting soldiers, and in response to surgical advances, it became possible to operate on such wounds successfully if they were treated quickly. Before the battle, it was arranged that men with abdominal wounds should be moved from the battlefield as swiftly as possible to two specialist casualty clearing stations behind the line.⁶⁵ Two other special advanced operating centres were also set up to deal with such wounds. According to Macpherson, this procedure was successful and ‘the formation of specially staffed advanced operating centres, for early operative treatment of wounds of the abdomen became the rule’.⁶⁶

Across the whole logistical spectrum, therefore, it can be seen that similar experiences were had. The resources at First Army’s disposal were bigger than ever, but the amount was still inadequate for the size of the battle Haig was planning. Why was this so? Loos may have been the biggest land battle in British military history to date, but its logistical base was too small. Too much was being asked of subordinates, there were too many jobs to complete, and all with limited resources that were being stretched to breaking point. The harassed staff of First Army may have worked wonders of improvisation, particularly with the gas cylinders, but it was surely inevitable that the chronic shortage of experienced and well-trained staff officers would cause difficulties. As I.M. Brown has explained, ‘The BEF did not have the capability to provide the support that Loos demanded’.⁶⁷ But it should not be assumed that this was simply a consequence of a lack of men or materials. On 29 August Major-General P.E.F. Hobbs (DA&QMG First Army) was recorded as being ‘in some doubt both as to the object which the 1^st Army has in view, and to the means proposed for carrying it out’.⁶⁸ This comment sheds light not only on the ambitious scale of the attack at Loos, but also the poor state of communication within First Army. It seems that these concerns were never really ironed out. Apart from the gas, Haig was not terribly interested in logistics in 1915, and he underrated its importance. Although weaponry and technology feature heavily in Haig’s diary, logistical and supply matters do not seem to have made the same impression.⁶⁹ There was only one mention of this in Haig’s main pre-battle conference on 6 September.⁷⁰ It seems that Haig did not realise what demands his offensive would make on supplies and logistics, and in any case, in line with the British Army’s doctrine of ‘umpiring’, it was up to the commander to issue general instructions, and to subordinates to sort it out for themselves.⁷¹

A key component of the British logistical plan was ensuring that communication was maintained between the assaulting troops and the headquarters in the rear. Many of the inherent difficulties in battlefield communication that would become so familiar to the British on the Western Front were cruelly exposed during the Battle of Neuve Chapelle (10–12 March 1915), when First Army attempted to batter a way through the German defences and sweep up to the Aubers Ridge, a low-lying spur about two miles into the enemy position. Although the initial assault met with some success, a number of undamaged strongpoints on the flanks of the attack caused heavy casualties and the attack bogged down. One of the chief features of the battle was the almost complete loss of control at corps and divisional level soon after the troops went ‘over the top’. The British Official History noted that:

The breaking of all communications with the front line battalions by the German artillery bombardment and the time (two to three hours) taken by runners to get back with reports, made it difficult for the corps and divisional commanders to take any action during the morning. Their task was further complicated by the inaccuracy of some of the reports received, due chiefly to the difficulty of picking up landmarks in this flat featureless district.⁷²

It was no surprise that a significant number of commanders, used to personal leadership and frustrated by the dearth of battlefield information, simply left their command posts and went forward to find out for themselves what was happening. The lethality of the modern battlefield meant that a considerable number of them never returned.

What communication methods did the BEF employ in this period? The most widely used device was the telephone. 1915 had seen a rapid growth in its use on the Western Front. By the summer demand for telephone and cable equipment was staggering.⁷³ It was estimated that for each divisional artillery group around 300 miles of cable were required. On this scale, each corps would use over 1,200 miles of it!⁷⁴ But such heavy reliance on the telephone system was not without its problems as the understaffed and overworked signal service struggled to cope with the almost exponential expansion in its use. As the telephone system grew in popularity, it gradually became more inefficient and inflexible as the indiscriminate laying of wires caused confusion, expense and much extra work. According to the History of the Signal Service (1921), one of the great lessons of the battles of 1915 was the ‘development of supplementary means of communication’ to take some weight off the telephone system.⁷⁵ Various visual signals were available, but none of these was perfect. All were heavily dependent on good weather. A First Army note on communication methods complained on 24 September that flags and discs could only be used for short distances, helios were dependent on the sun, electric lamps had very limited visibility, especially in daytime, while smoke balls were simply not effective.⁷⁶ A measure of how serious the BEF considered this communication ‘gap’ to be was the employment of carrier pigeons on the battlefield. They had been in service as early as September 1914 and were well-established on the Western Front by the following summer.⁷⁷

New wireless technology did threaten to solve some of these problems, but much research and development was still required. Wireless communication was not a new invention in 1914, but the sets that were available were few in number, heavy, bulky and unreliable. It was only with the arrival of a new field set in mid-August 1915, specially designed with an inbuilt receiver and transmitter, and built to stand up to the rigours of active service, that wireless became a viable alternative to visual and telegraphic communication. Loos witnessed the first tactical employment of these short-range (up to 5 miles) wireless sets in military history and by all accounts they did ‘excellent’ service. But they were still few in number and very expensive.⁷⁸ Almost inevitably, when considering the multiple communication difficulties the BEF was experiencing at this time, the burden of carrying messages from the front during battle inevitably fell on the humble runner.

Solving the command and communication riddle on the Western Front was not just a matter of amassing the necessary tools, but of using them correctly. This was especially evident with airpower. Major-General H.M. Trenchard was appointed GOC Royal Flying Corps (RFC) on 25 August 1915 and worked well with Haig for the next three years.⁷⁹ By the summer of 1915, the war in the skies above the Western Front was evolving at considerable pace, both in its scale and complexity. Between January and August the RFC doubled in size, with over 170 aircraft being available for the autumn offensive.⁸⁰ As well as increasing in size, the range of the operations undertaken by the RFC had also developed. Whereas during 1914 the role of aircraft remained firmly one of reconnaissance, by as early as March 1915, British planes had photographed enemy trenches (and produced maps from them), undertaken bombing operations in the enemy hinterland and engaged in – albeit fledgling – air-to-air combat.⁸¹

For the coming attack the RFC would conduct its biggest and most ambitious operation to date. All three Wings (each attached to an army) were to be involved.⁸² The most important part of the air operation centred on First Wing (Lieutenant-Colonel E.B. Ashmore), which was to be used entirely for artillery spotting, including trench bombardment and counter-battery work. Second and Third Wings (Lieutenant-Colonel J.M. Salmond and Lieutenant-Colonel W.S. Brancker respectively) were also active. Their squadrons were to conduct bombing operations on enemy rail and communication targets (the vital railway junctions of Lille–Douai–Valenciennes) and to protect First Wing from enemy air activity, which with the arrival of the Fokker Eindecker and its revolutionary ability to fire synchronised blasts of machine gun fire through its propeller arc, was becoming an increasing menace.⁸³ As might have been expected, the RFC’s bombing operations were inaccurate and did relatively little damage to enemy infrastructure.⁸⁴ Aerial bombardment in 1915 was no more than a nuisance weapon and between 1 March and 20 June, out of 141 attempts at bombing enemy targets (mostly at railways and troop columns) only three had definitely been successful.⁸⁵ Indeed, even the offensively-minded Trenchard could not have failed to recognise the considerable limitations the RFC was operating under during this period. Although the numbers of aircraft had steadily increased throughout the year, there were still too few planes and many of those were the reliable but increasingly obsolescent B.E.2c.

The most important role of the RFC in the coming offensive would be the vital air–artillery co-operation missions. These operations were fraught with difficulty, not only with technology, but also with poor liaison and staff work. One of the most persistent problems was finding an effective (and accurate) way of communicating detailed information – particularly map references – to those on the ground. The arrival of lightweight and effective wireless transmitters in the autumn of 1915 did much to help,⁸⁶ but for those squadrons not equipped with such devices, recourse had to be made to more traditional methods, including Very lights, flares, wing-flapping and the dropping of messages. Indeed, it was not unknown for pilots to land near batteries and verbally inform their commanders of what they had seen! But quick and accurate air–artillery co-operation rested not only on technology, but also upon finding an effective vocabulary for these exchanges. Various methods were developed, including the clock code (first used at Neuve Chapelle in March) and zone calls.⁸⁷ But difficulties were not just encountered in the air and there was considerable ‘cap-badge’ resistance from the Royal Artillery about so-called ‘interference’ from the RFC.⁸⁸ Although the first artillery-air co-operation missions had been flown early in the war, the idea of using planes to correct the fire of artillery batteries was still something of a novelty. According to one pilot, ‘all arrangements for co-operation including the actual methods of ranging depended at this time upon personal arrangement[s] between battery commander and air observer’.⁸⁹ As well as using aircraft to spot for the artillery, First Wing also contained two Kite Balloon sections,⁹⁰ which were used to observe the enemy lines and were especially useful for counter-battery work.⁹¹

1915 had witnessed a spasmodic growth in infantry–air co-operation, but like the artillery missions, the inherent difficulties were considerable. In response to the confusion encountered at Neuve Chapelle once the initial attack had ground to a halt, it had been decided for the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May that the attacking battalions would carry large flags and markers. This would enable RFC aircraft, circling the battlefield, to help identify what progress had been made. But these markers were never really given an opportunity to perform as most of the attacks were stopped by unsuppressed enemy machine guns and devastating artillery fire. The scheme was not abandoned, however, and for the Battle of Loos, infantry battalions were not only given markers, but also large, cloth arrows to help them direct artillery fire upon hostile positions. Measuring fifteen feet in length and about one foot in width, the arrows were to be placed upon the ground, with the arrowhead in the direction of the target. This would hopefully be spotted by friendly aircraft, which would then direct artillery fire onto it.⁹² It is not known whether any soldiers during the battle actually used the arrows to try and attract aerial attention, or whether any targets were neutralised by this type of fire. There is no mention of the use of such arrows either in the war diaries, personal memoirs or after-action reports.⁹³

The patchy logistical organisation within First Army was especially evident during the march of the reserve divisions to the battlefield. The pre-battle confusion over the role of XI Corps, the main part of GHQ’s General Reserve, has already been mentioned, but the circumstances of their actual march to the battlefield needs to be assessed. It is generally accepted this took too long and that they arrived late on the battlefield. But the reason why this occurred was the subject of great scrutiny in the aftermath of the debacle. Nobody wanted to be associated with the horrifying events of 26 September when the reserve divisions were repulsed from the battlefield and it became a subject of fierce debate within the BEF as to who had been responsible.⁹⁴ While Sir John French and GHQ wanted to highlight an allegedly poor level of staff work within First Army that had led to unnecessary delays, Haig and his staff, on the other hand, naturally wanted to show how the late release of XI Corps had been the cause of the trouble. First Army also complained about the poor march discipline of the inexperienced divisions.

Who was telling the truth? In the initial aftermath of the attack on the German second line, Haig believed that the delay of the reserve divisions had been due to ‘bad march discipline and inexperience of the divisions’.⁹⁵ After consulting GOC XI Corps (Lieutenant-General R.C.B. Haking), his earlier opinions were confirmed. Haking, using almost the exact phrases that Haig had uttered, wrote that ‘the delay was caused chiefly by their own indifferent march discipline, especially as regards first line transport’.⁹⁶ But the reply did, however, contain one rather uncomfortable comment. Haking referred to an earlier letter of 10 October 1915 in which he had said that XI Corps ‘was advancing through the administrative area of IV and I Corps who were heavily engaged, [and as a result] the progress was slow’.⁹⁷ Since Haking’s previous letter, the debate over the march of the reserves had reached crisis point with a growing rift between Sir John and Haig. His comments could have been used to support GHQ’s accusation that bad staff-work in First Army, and not the late release of XI Corps, was to blame for its late arrival on the battlefield. Haking therefore changed his mind. He excused his previous report by saying that his remarks were based on the ‘memory of verbal statements made to me by the GOC 21^st and 24^th Divisions on the night of 25 [September] at Vermelles’, before writing that ‘the most careful arrangements were made by First Army to ensure that the two roads were kept clear’. In the final paragraph Haking made it clear as to where his sympathies lay: ‘there is none to blame except GHQ and they know it’.

On reflection it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Haking was deliberately falsifying or ‘cooking’ his evidence to make it more palatable to his army commander. This interpretation is further underlined by a brief note in a copy of the telephone conversations of IV Corps on 25 September 1915. At 12.20p.m. Rawlinson telephoned Haking, urging him to get his corps onto the battlefield as soon as possible. The brief reply that ‘Haking says traffic is troubling him’ casts great doubt on Haking’s assertion that it was bad march discipline and not road congestion that caused the delays.⁹⁸ Although, according to Tim Travers, Haking was ‘perhaps under pressure’, his motives are not difficult to fathom.⁹⁹ He was one of Haig’s protégés and owed his command of XI Corps to the personal influence of the First Army Commander. Haking could also perhaps sense that the tide of army opinion was now finally pulling against Sir John French and a replacement was required. After further enquiries, and as the arguments between First Army and GHQ rumbled on, Haig defended the preparation his army had made. ‘The arrangements made in the First Army for securing a free passage for these divisions’, Haig explained to GHQ,‘could not have been improved upon. The staffs and control officers again report that such delay and blocking that did occur was due to the inexperience and faulty march discipline of the divisions themselves.’¹⁰⁰

The ‘bad march discipline’ slur was bitterly resented within 21^st and 24^th Divisions and there was a widespread feeling that they had been treated harshly, which lingered on into the post-war years. Major-General G.T. Forestier-Walker (GOC 21^st Division) was deeply upset about how his division had been handled and forcefully defended his role in the affair. He believed that the march discipline of his divisions was ‘extraordinarily good’ and the cause of the delays was the ‘constant blocking of the road at the level crossings’.¹⁰¹ Major R.B. Johnson (15/Durham Light Infantry, 64 Brigade) went even further.

Traffic congestion, ignorance of the country, loss of direction in the dark, uncut (or insufficiently cut) wire, deep and wide trench obstacles and full equipment all added to the fatigue in the latter part of the day, and delayed the arrival of some units at their positions more than ‘indifferent march discipline’.¹⁰²

Major J. Vaughan (8/Buffs, 72 Brigade) felt that Haking’s report was ‘exceedingly severe’ and blamed the ‘enormous amount of traffic on the road’ for their late arrival.¹⁰³ This was echoed by Brigadier-General B.R. Mitford (GOC 72 Brigade) who lamented the terrible road congestion, especially at a number of level crossings. To compound his frustration, he was held up outside Béthune for five minutes by a rather overzealous military policeman. Because Mitford did not have the correct entry pass, the whole brigade was halted until the matter could be sorted out.¹⁰⁴ This complete lack of liaison was evident to Lieutenant-Colonel H.J.C. Piers (8/Queen’s, 72 Brigade) who wrote that ‘there were no traffic police – no guide marks – troops of cavalry crossing our route’.¹⁰⁵ Major T.G.F. Paget (7/Northamptonshire, 73 Brigade) remarked that his battalion led the march of 24^th Division, and as only five men fell out, he reasoned that there could not have been a great deal of bad marching.¹⁰⁶

So how difficult was the march to the battlefield and what were the arrangements in First Army like? In order to conceal XI Corps from enemy air observation, it had been decided to move them at night between the hours of 6p.m. and 5a.m. As they arrived on the Western Front, 21^st and 24^th Divisions were stationed south of St Omer. They had not been long in France before being called into action.¹⁰⁷ The march of XI Corps began on the evening of 20 September and the men reached their appointed destinations in good time and without too many problems.¹⁰⁸ Lieutenant-Colonel Cosmo Stewart (GSOI 24^th Division) noted in his diary that the road surface was ‘good but hilly’ and the weather was fine for the first night of the march. He did believe, however, that the troops ‘did not rest properly owing to the men wandering about, chiefly out of curiosity’.¹⁰⁹ This resulted in some battalions being more exhausted than others. But traffic was a more persistent problem. Lieutenant-Colonel A. de S. Hadow (CO 10/Yorkshire, 62 Brigade) wrote to his wife on the evening of 21 September. His battalion had covered eighteen miles, but even so, he complained that the ‘progress is not rapid, there are so many checks’.¹¹⁰ The following nights march, however, was completed on time.

On 23 September XI Corps halted and its divisions rested. 21^st Division remained around the village of Ferfay, while 24^th Division bivouacked south of the railway at Lambres station. The Guards Division, bringing up the rear, was clustered around Norrent Fontes. Up to this point the divisions had not had a particularly taxing time; they were well used to long route marches with their full packs and had the whole of 23 September to rest. As they neared the battlefield, however, progress slowed. The march that evening was a trying one for all involved. The weather broke and showered the long columns of troops in heavy and ‘continuous rain’.¹¹¹ As they edged ever closer, progress became increasingly difficult. The war diary of 21^st Division noted that its march was ‘retarded by motor traffic both ways and at various level crossings’.¹¹² At 6p.m. on the evening of 24 September 24^th Division moved off and marched to Beuvry, with its tail units finishing up around Béthune.¹¹³ 21^st Division began marching at 7p.m. and found it extremely tiring carrying their full equipment as well as extra ammunition and three days’ rations. It had been hoped that with only three or four miles to go before they reached their allotted areas, the men would have a reasonable night’s rest, but unfortunately, the delays on the roads prevented this. By the time the last unit had straggled into its concentration area around Nouex-Les-Mines and Labusieirre, it was 6a.m.¹¹⁴ As had been confirmed by Sir William Robertson (CGS GHQ) two days earlier, the leading divisions of XI Corps were on the line Nouex-Les-Mines-Beuvry by daylight on 25 September.¹¹⁵ Unfortunately, they had only just arrived. As the day dawned the reserve divisions were needed on the battlefield.

Reviewing the march of XI Corps, it seems reasonable to assume that although its march discipline could perhaps have been better, contrary to Haig’s opinion, it was generally acceptable. As Tim Travers has written, the affair of the reserves ‘begins to look as if Haig was at best mistaken in his allegations or, at worst, was engineering a cover-up of 1^st Army errors’.¹¹⁶ The problem was not one of march discipline, but as Gary Sheffield has written, ‘bad staff work’.¹¹⁷ There was a complete lack of coordination and liaison between XI Corps and First Army. The issue of maps perfectly illustrates this lacklustre, sometimes non-existent, liaison. While the six assaulting divisions were well-supplied with adequate maps (for example, they were issued ‘lavishly’ to one battalion of 47^th Division)¹¹⁸, there seems to have been very little sense of urgency in sending them to XI Corps. For example, Brigadier-General C.E Pereira (GOC 85 Brigade, 28^th Division) was only given a single map on entering the battlefield,¹¹⁹ Lieutenant-Colonel C. Coffin (CRE 21^st Division) complained that only three maps had been issued to 21^st Division,¹²⁰ and evidently none whatsoever reached 63 Brigade.¹²¹ Often, even those maps that found their way to XI Corps were of ‘no use for finding the way across unknown country at night’,¹²² and one officer remembered how his map gave special attention to the area around Wingles, nearly three miles from the British front line!¹²³ The problem was not a shortage of maps, but a simple lack of liaison between First Army and its reserves. This simply need not have occurred. Indeed Captain E.H. Smythe (GSO3 Intelligence I Corps) believed that had the staff known maps were required, a ‘considerable number’ of them could have been drawn from stores and given to the divisions moving up.¹²⁴ As for maps of IV Corps’ sector, XI Corps had been promised them on 14 September, but it is unknown whether any were actually delivered.¹²⁵

It is clear that this situation was, in part, a result of the confusion between French and Haig over who had control of XI Corps, which stemmed back to their differing conceptions of what type of attack First Army was to make. But even if Haig can be forgiven for not knowing exactly what Sir John wanted to do with XI Corps, it was understood that it would have some role in the coming attack. Haig must therefore take some of the blame. Why was First Army’s staff work so poor? In part it was undoubtedly a reflection of the massive, dislocating growth undertaken by the BEF throughout 1915, and the difficulty of finding suitably trained staff officers for the myriad of new positions created. The ground was also to blame. The roads behind the front ran either south-east or north-east, not east-west, and these were hardly sufficient for the six assaulting divisions, let alone another corps. The arrival of XI Corps behind First Army when a major engagement was going on caused these fragile arrangements to collapse. One staff officer lamented that ‘blocks did occur, very bad ones, especially at night when transport came to a standstill for over an hour at a time. A good deal of this might have been avoided.’¹²⁶ Yet external factors cannot totally explain the misfortunes of XI Corps, and human error also played its part. The arrangements for the march of the reserve divisions were careless. There was simply no appreciation at First Army Headquarters of the space and infrastructure that would be required if a reserve corps was to march through the back areas of I and IV Corps without serious delay. For example, while huge numbers of wires had been laid in the rear areas of I and IV Corps for communication, none had been laid for XI Corps and they had to be ‘improvised’ on the day; probably a reflection of Haig’s neglect of logistical matters as well as Hobbs’s confusion about what First Army was doing.¹²⁷

Nevertheless, GHQ cannot be absolved of all blame. As the deployment of XI Corps had been a point of bitter debate in the run-up to the battle, and the matter was never fully cleared up, most subordinates did not exactly know what was going on. If clear orders had been issued earlier, it is likely that better arrangements would have been prepared. Brigadier-General F.B. Maurice (BGGS Operations GHQ) was reflective about what had happened. In a candid letter to Sir James Edmonds, he believed that:

GHQ should have made arrangements for assisting the march of [the] newly-formed divisions. I think now this was a bad oversight on my part. The reason or excuse for it was that we were pressing Sir John up to the last to hand those divisions over to Haig as soon as they came into his area and we didn’t know from hour to hour what the decision would be.¹²⁸

Maurice went over the march orders for XI Corps with Haking and told him that problems could be experienced on the night of 24/25 when his corps would be passing through the rear areas of First Army. But by that time XI Corps would probably be under First Army control and therefore out of Maurice’s hands. Maurice admitted that this was a bad mistake and concluded that ‘I ought either to have insisted in the First Army making arrangements for clearing the roads or seen to it myself.’Yet even this seemingly simple decision was one of great political importance because Maurice was placed in the grey area between GHQ and First Army, and it would be unfair to blame him for a lack of thoroughness. There was a simple lack of decision about the reserves, and for this Sir John French must take primary responsibility. Things should have been made clearer, earlier. But whatever the later arguments about how XI Corps should be employed, by the morning of 25 September its men were worn-out, hungry and appallingly ignorant of the situation that lay ahead of them.

The march of XI Corps to the battlefield in the days preceding the attack highlighted many of the problems in First Army’s pre-battle preparation. Although vast amounts of stores and supplies had been gathered and First Army conducted a massive digging and engineering operation south of the La Bassée canal, the preparations were marred by confusion and muddle. These problems stemmed in part from the inexperience of the BEF in conducting such large-scale operations, particularly the lack of trained staff officers who would have smoothed out matters on the ground, but they also reflected the higher confusion over the attack between GHQ and First Army. Because the operation was so ambitious and because battalions and brigades were to attack‘all-out’, trusting in weight of numbers and the ‘offensive spirit’, little attempt was made to structure the advance and a number of questions were left unanswered, such as whether there were any intermediate objectives and what units were to do when they reached them. Again, because it was expected that XI Corps would face a fleeing, broken enemy, there seems to have been remarkably little sense of urgency within First Army at instituting a properly organised system of reinforcement that would have enabled XI Corps to reach the battle quickly and without confusion. These inconsistencies that had proved so noticeable in both the planning and tactical preparation for the attack at Loos would continue to plague the battle in the coming days.

While the divisions had been marching, they were aware of an ominous rumbling ahead. Between 21 and 24 September, First Army had been conducting the preliminary bombardment on the German defences. This is the subject to which the next chapter turns.