From the Somme to Victory: The British Army’s Experience on the Western Front 1916-1918

Though historians still argue about the nature and extent of the dilution, and how quickly it actually occurred, there is little doubt that, after its terrible awakening on the morning of 1 July, the unique character of the highly localised BEF of mid-1916 – in which many battalions, batteries and field companies had special links to particular communities – was gone for ever.

Given the scale of the casualties and the suddenness with which so many national illusions were shattered in July 1916, it is therefore hardly surprising that, ever since, a largely negative view of the experience of Britain’s New Armies on the Somme has tended to prevail among the general public. It must also be pointed out that this view has been powerfully reinforced over the years by various veterans and historians (see Chapter 2). In The Imperial War Museum Book of the Somme, Malcolm Brown quotes from an interview he recorded, in 1976, with George Morgan, who went over the top with the Bradford Pals at Serre on that fateful morning of 1 July 1916. Some sixty years after the event, George was still clearly bitter and disillusioned:

We were all pals, very happy together; and they were such good people. They were fine young men, the cream of the country. That spirit lasted until 1 July 1916. We had so many casualties that we were all strangers after that. The new men who came were fed up, they were conscripts and they didn’t want to come, they didn’t want to fight. Things were never the same any more … After July 1st I hated the generals and the people who were running the country and the war. I felt we’d been sacrificed … We didn’t do anything. We didn’t win a thing.²

If that is the view of a veteran of the Somme, it is again small wonder that such attitudes have proved so persistent.

The British official historians of the Somme offensive – Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds and Captain Wilfrid Miles – attribute many of the problems faced by the New Armies in 1916 to what John Bourne has called the widespread ‘de-skilling’ of the BEF following its huge and rapid expansion in 1914–1915. Certainly in his final chapter in the second volume on the Somme, published in 1938, Miles arrives at a series of conclusions which present the New Armies of 1916 in an unfavourable light when compared with the performance of the old professional BEF. This may be explained by the fact that the decentralisation of tactics to the level of temporary officers and citizen-soldier NCOs was a very unsettling development in the eyes of many Regulars. There is indeed an element of this in Miles’s statement that:

Owing to the dearth of trained officers, the staffs of corps, divisions and brigades included many young Regular and New Army officers who had to learn the duties of their branch in the heat of battle. In some cases over-anxious staff officers ‘nursed’ inexperienced brigade and battalion commanders too much, thereby curbing and discouraging initiative; on the other hand, proper guidance and help from the staff were not always forthcoming when most needed.

The perfunctory battle training of the troops was based upon tactical principles sound for the most part, but lacking in some essential details and in a proper anticipation of the difficulties with which the infantry would have to contend … Generally speaking, the new British infantry, unlike that of the old Regular Army, had not been taught to combine fire and movement to the best advantage … it was not well practised in the use of ground; and, whilst inclined to be unduly sensitive as regards to open flanks, did not sufficiently appreciate the necessity of helping adjacent formations … There remained in the Armies few battalions possessed of the deep grounded knowledge and battle discipline which react instinctively to an unexpected situation and deal with it.³

In more recent years, several historians have added their weight to the negative interpretation of the experience and achievements of the New Army divisions on the Somme. Writing in 1991, Denis Winter maintained that the army which Haig sent into battle was ‘as badly organised as most people came to suspect in the post-war period. Poorly trained and ill-equipped, supported by staff work of low quality and commanded by generals inadequate to the task, the BEF under Haig was indeed the bluntest of swords’.⁴ The American scholar Bruce Gudmundsson asserts, with a staggering degree of certainty, that ‘most British officers worked hard to maintain an air of detached amateurism … This became even more true as the war progressed and those few regular officers who took their profession seriously found themselves concentrated on staffs, leaving small unit leadership to enthusiastic but tactically incompetent schoolboys’.⁵ Closer to home, Martin Samuels, in his book Doctrine and Dogma, states that the British army in the First World War was characterised by its unsubtle and inflexible approach to battle: ‘Having once adopted this approach, it proved virtually impossible to alter it’. Similarly, in a later work, when analysing the performance of New Army formations on 1 July 1916, Samuels declares that, ‘since troops could not be trusted to act effectively without direct orders, such orders must be provided in advance … Commanders made little effort to train their men to make flank attacks, or even to alert them to the potential benefits of such actions’. He adds that, whereas the British units tended to be leaderless and lacking in a natural ability to assess tactical problems, ‘the German forces enjoyed leaders at every level who went forward and who were ready to act on their own initiative, according to circumstances’. In his view, the failure to follow up the initial success of the 36th (Ulster) Division on 1 July was largely the product of the British army’s ‘system of restrictive control’.⁶

All these arguments notwithstanding, my own research, over the years, into the operations of the 18th (Eastern) Division – a typical New Army formation in many ways – has consistently indicated that there is another side to the story and that the truth about the New Armies on the Somme is much more complicated than the above historians would have us believe. I therefore thought that it might be helpful to look afresh at the New Army divisions on the Somme by adopting the same approach as I used in the 1990s when analysing the BEF’s performance in the Hundred Days offensive of August to November 1918.⁷ What I have done (as I did for the Hundred Days) is to go through the Somme volumes of the British official history and to list, analyse and assess each attacking operation undertaken by all the New Army divisions on the Somme – from the 9th (Scottish) Division to the 41st Division – including those which are either merely mentioned in passing or, alternatively, covered in detail by Edmonds and Miles. The operations involved, which amounted to 281 separate attacks in all, ranged from strong offensive patrols, company or battalion actions, and bombing attacks, to full-scale set-piece assaults by several divisions at a time. If a division’s initial assault, on a particular day, failed or was inconclusive and was followed by a second attack the same day with a specific new start-time and a new artillery barrage, then I have classed them as separate operations. Hence the overall figure of 281 does not just include the big operations such as those launched on 1 July, 14 July or 15 September, but also embraces quite minor local affairs and many of the small-scale, isolated, narrow-front attacks on the Fourth Army front in the late summer for which Rawlinson was sternly admonished by Haig on 24 August. It is not, of course, a comprehensive list but I do believe that the sample based on mentions in the official history is sufficiently extensive and thorough to offer some reasonably accurate, significant and instructive conclusions about divisional performance in 1916.

Operations which I classed as ‘successful’ fell into five main categories, including operations in which all the assigned objectives were taken and consolidated; attacks in which most of the objectives were secured and substantial progress (albeit in relative terms) was achieved; actions in which part of the division or battalion concerned secured part of the objective while other elements made only limited gains or merely secured a foothold; operations in which only limited progress was made (e.g. company-strength bombing attacks leading to the seizure of, say, 200 yards of enemy trench and the erection of blocks or barricades to secure the gain); and finally, in a few cases, success against negligible opposition. This latter category does not necessarily denote a ‘walk-over’ and usually indicates that the Germans had abandoned a village or strongpoint as the result of a series of attacks or cumulative pressure by the New Army formation in question. On the more negative side, I classed as a ‘limited success verging on failure’ any operation in which a unit had largely failed in its assigned task, had done well initially but had subsequently been driven out of most of its gains, or had ended the day with only the smallest toehold in the enemy positions to show for its efforts. Inevitably, some operations were outright failures. However, even these two latter categories sometimes disguise an operation, such as the 36th (Ulster) Division’s assault on the Schwaben Redoubt on 1 July, which might have ended as a major success but for poor command decisions at army or corps level or lack of progress by, or support from, the divisions on either side.

Having established the broad criteria, it might be useful to look first at the overall or collective performance figures for the twenty-five New Army divisions which conducted meaningful and active offensive operations on the Somme between 1 July and 24 November 1916. Of the sample of 281 attacking operations mentioned in the relevant official history volumes, 104 (or 37.01 per cent) achieved all objectives or made substantial progress towards that end; 10 (or 3.55 per cent) saw some elements of the division or battalion involved securing part of the objective while other parts made only limited gains; 43 (or 15.30 per cent) were actions in which only limited progress was made; and 3 (or 1.06 per cent) were successes against negligible opposition. Thus, of the 281 attacks considered, some progress or success – ranging from limited to substantial – was registered in 160 of them, or 56.93 per cent of the operations under review. On the debit side, I assessed 20 attacks (or 7.11 per cent) as being ‘limited successes verging on failure’ while 101 (or 35.94 per cent) were complete failures. It is worth noting, at this early stage, that the overall success rate – i.e. with all the categories of success brought together – was over 55 per cent and that the proportion of total or outright failures in New Army attacks on the Somme was as low as 35.94 per cent. These figures alone would seem to suggest that the widely held negative view of the tactical performance of New Army divisions in 1916 is somewhat ill-deserved.

The figures are even more revealing, and in many ways surprising, if one looks at the overall performance figures for the individual divisions. My examination of the statistics relating to the divisions of the First New Army (‘K.1’) which fought on the Somme – namely the 9th (Scottish), 11th (Northern), 12th (Eastern) and 14th (Light) Divisions – revealed that the overall success rate (i.e. attacks in which some progress was made) was as high as 85.71 per cent for the 11th Division, 70 per cent for the 14th Division, 64. 28 per cent for the 9th Division (despite the bitter struggle at Delville Wood), and 63.63 per cent for the 12th Division. The number of attacks carried out by these divisions ranged from 7 in the case of the 11th Division to 14 in the case of the 9th (Scottish). Collectively, the K.1 or First New Army divisions mounted 41 attacks and achieved an overall success rate of 69.04 per cent – with all 4 engaged attaining a success rate of 63 per cent or more. The statistics are only slightly less impressive for the divisions of K.2 or the Second New Army, all six of which saw action on the Somme. The lowest success rate here was recorded, in 22 attacks (itself a high number) by the 17th (Northern) Division, at 40.90 per cent. Next, in ascending order, came the 15th (Scottish) with 54.54 per cent in 11 attacks; the 16th (Irish) with 66.66 per cent in 6 attacks; the 19th (Western) with 73.33 per cent in 15 attacks; the 18th (Eastern) with 76.92 per cent in 13 attacks; and, highest, the 20th (Light) Division with 85.71 per cent in 7 attacks (though admittedly over 50 per cent of its successful actions fell into the ‘limited progress’ category). It may be noted that, apart from the 17th Division, the other 5 had an overall success rate of 54 per cent or more (with 3 of them over 70 per cent). Collectively, they made 74 attacks and achieved some progress in 62.16 per cent of the operations under review.

Four divisions of the Third New Army (K.3) undertook attacks on the Somme – the 21st, 23rd, 24th and 25th Divisions – two of which, the 21st and 24th, had experienced a disastrous baptism of fire at Loos the previous September. The 24th Division’s success rate of 38.46 per cent in 13 attacks (with a corresponding outright failure rate of 61.53 per cent) may well suggest that the formation had not yet recovered from the Loos debacle. The 23rd Division achieved an overall success rate of 54.16 per cent in 24 attacks; the 25th Division reached a success rate of 62.49 per cent in 24 attacks; and the 21st Division, in marked contrast to the 24th, registered a highly creditable 80 per cent overall success rate in 10 attacks. All the K.3 divisions, apart from the 24th, achieved a success rate of 54 per cent or more and, collectively, their overall success rate in 71 attacks was 57.74 per cent.

One may pause at this point to consider that, in terms of achieving some progress in their attacks on the Somme, the divisions of the First, Second and Third New Armies attained a collective success rate of 62.98 per cent, while the percentage of total failures was between 28.51 per cent (for the First New Army) and 33.8 per cent (for the Third New Army), or an average outright failure rate of 31.6 per cent. I would therefore argue from these figures that, in general, the divisions of the first three New Armies performed at least creditably, and in some cases with great distinction, in their attacks on the Somme. Certainly the figures do not lend any real support to the idea that the Kitchener divisions were largely ineffective in operations in 1916 and were merely bewildered and innocent pawns in the game.

As nearly always occurs in any discussions of the Battle of the Somme, the experience of the Pals or locally raised formations clouds the issue. Indeed, I would go further and assert that many of the negative assessments of the BEF on the Somme seem to stem from the performance of the Fourth and Fifth New Armies – and the Fourth in particular. The 30th, 31st, 32nd, 33rd, 34th and 35th Divisions of the eventual Fourth New Army (K.4) were all involved, at some stage, in the offensive and their figures do compare unfavourably with those of the other four New Armies. Again, in ascending order, the 31st Division had a failure rate of 100 per cent (or a success rate of nil per cent) in 2 attacks; the 35th (Bantam) Division recorded similarly depressing figures in 4 attacks; the 33rd Division’s overall success rate was 41.66 per cent in 12 attacks; the 34th Division achieved a success rate of 45.45 per cent in 11 attacks; the 30th Division registered a success rate of 46.15 per cent in 13 attacks; and the 32nd Division had a success rate of 50 per cent in 10 operations (though even here a high proportion of the 50 per cent was made up of attacks which fell into the ‘limited progress’ category). Thus only 1 of these 6 divisions recorded even a qualified overall success rate of 50 per cent and their collective success rate in 52 attacks was only 40.38 per cent.

The figures for the five divisions of the Fifth New Army which fought on the Somme – the 36th (Ulster), 37th, 38th (Welsh), 39th and 41st Divisions – are more varied. The 36th (Ulster) Division had a success rate of nil per cent in its one major attack – although this bald statistic in no way reflects its quite outstanding feat – and near-success – in overcoming the formidable Schwaben Redoubt on 1 July. Its ‘limited success verging on failure’ on that day can be attributed to command failures at corps level and the lack of progress by neighbouring divisions rather than to any serious shortcomings on its own part. The 38th (Welsh) Division too had a low overall success rate (28.57 per cent) in 7 attacks, no doubt largely as a result of its unhappy initial experiences at Mametz Wood. The 37th Division’s units attained an overall success rate of 56 per cent in 25 attacks (many of which were undertaken while elements of the formation were attached to other divisions, such as the 34th); the 39th Division’s success rate figure was 71.42 per cent in 7 attacks; and the 41st Division achieved some meaningful progress in both its major attacks (100 per cent). In other words, 3 out of these 5 divisions had an overall success rate of over 50 per cent. In all, the 5 divisions representing the Fifth New Army carried out 42 attacks and achieved some progress in 54.76 per cent of them.

One may deduce from all this that the overall success rate of divisions in the Fourth and Fifth New Armies was between 40.38 and 54.76 per cent, giving the K.4 and K.5 divisions together an average overall success rate of 47.57 per cent and an average failure rate – i.e. outright failures – of 43.31 per cent. The only group of New Army divisions with an overall success rate of less than 54 per cent were those constituting the Fourth New Army, which were largely composed of Pals formations.

If broken down into months, the figures are equally instructive. Out of both interest and convenience, I have separated the statistics for 1 July 1916 from those for the rest of that month. In all, I calculated, from the official history, that 11 out of the 281 separate attacks by New Army divisions took place on 1 July, of which 4 (or 36.36 per cent of these 11 attacks) resulted in some progress or success while 7 of the 11 (or 63.63 per cent) fell into the ‘limited success verging on failure’ or outright failure categories. 111 attacks were mounted in the remainder of July, producing some progress in 57.65 per cent of these operations. If one combines the figures for 1 July and the rest of the month, then one arrives at a total of 122 attacks in July as a whole, of which 68 (or 55.73 per cent) resulted in varying degrees of success or progress, while 54 (or 44.26 per cent) fell into the ‘limited success verging on failure’ or outright failure categories. Of the sample of 281 attacks by New Army divisions, 45 took place in August, the overall success rate by Kitchener formations that month being 48.88 per cent (22 of the 45 attacks); a further 54 attacks were carried out in September, when some success was achieved in 34 of the operations (62.96 per cent); in October the overall success rate rose as high as 71.87 per cent (i.e. some success in 23 out of 32 attacks, despite the deteriorating conditions); and in November there were 28 attacks, with some success in 17, or 60.71 per cent.

Not surprisingly, the failure rate was high on 1 July 1916, although, even on that bloody day, some progress was made by New Army divisions in approximately 36 per cent of their assaults. It will have been noted, from the above statistics, that the heaviest month of fighting for New Army divisions was July but also that the worst month for them, in terms of performance, was August when, though not so heavily engaged as they had been in July – and would be again in September – their overall success rate dropped to 48.88 per cent. August was, in fact, the only month between 1 July and the end of the offensive in which the overall success rate fell below 50 per cent. This may in part be ascribed to the Fourth Army’s tendency that month to deliver unco-ordinated small-scale attacks on narrow local fronts. The overall improvements in September and October – as indicated by the monthly figures – may owe a fair amount to the developments in artillery tactics and techniques, including the widespread adoption in the BEF of the creeping barrage, and also to the greater concentration and density of set-piece bombardments, such as that preceding the 25 September attack towards Morval, Lesboeufs and Gueudecourt. The overall failure rates drop from 63.63 per cent on 1 July and 51.11 per cent in August to 37.03 per cent in September and 28.12 per cent in October. In the same way, the success and failure statistics for November (when the percentage of ‘limited progress’ attacks was 21.42 per cent, exceeded only by September at 24.07 per cent) remain creditable in poor battlefield conditions and often foul weather. There is little doubt in my mind that, apart from August, the trend was towards improvement rather than any major shortfall in standards of performance. And it should be emphasised that this improvement, as indicated by the performance figures, was achieved in the face of continuing heavy losses, command changes, the terrible strain of the attrition battle and the constant influx of new drafts to replace casualties. If nothing else, the above figures appear to support the existence of a tactical and command learning process in the BEF’s New Army divisions in 1916.

One particularly tenacious idea in the general public’s perception of Kitchener divisions on the Somme is that they were composed largely of brave and patriotic but, above all, amateur citizen-soldiers – using the word ‘amateur’ in both of its principal accepted meanings. But just how raw and inexperienced were the New Army divisions when the offensive began? The short answer is that, in terms of previous length of service on the Western Front or combat experience, they were by no means as universally raw as many people seem to imagine. Three of the four divisions of the First New Army which fought on the Somme had been in France over a year when the battle started. The only exception here was the 11th (Northern) Division, which did not arrive on the Western Front until July 1916 – after the commencement of the battle – but it had gone overseas at the end of June 1915 and had fought on Gallipoli from August until the evacuation of the peninsula. The 9th (Scottish) and 12th (Eastern) Divisions had seen action at Loos the previous autumn, while the 14th (Light) Division had literally undergone its baptism of fire in the German liquid fire attack at Hooge at the end of July 1915, also seeing action at Bellewaarde that September. Five of the six divisions of the Second New Army had been in France for at least a year by July 1916. The 15th (Scottish) had fought at Loos in 1915 and had also taken part in operations on the First Army front, near Hulluch, in April and May 1916; the 17th (Northern) had been engaged at Hooge in August 1915 and in operations at The Bluff, near Ypres, in February–March 1916; the 19th (Western) had taken part in operations subsidiary to the main attack at Loos in September and early October 1915; and the 20th (Light) Division had seen some action at Fromelles in September 1915 and at Mount Sorrel as recently as 2–13 June 1916. The 18th (Eastern) Division had crossed to France in July 1915 and, for the best part of the following twelve months, had served its trench warfare apprenticeship on the Somme front, mainly in the Tambour sector at Fricourt and at Carnoy and La Boisselle. It was therefore very familiar with the Somme, which, even in late July 1915, was not always a ‘cushy’ sector. The 18th had suffered 1,247 casualties by the end of 1915 but its prolonged period of trench warfare unquestionably helped it to ‘shake down’ into an effective fighting formation. For a variety of reasons, including lack of equipment and the slow progress of its training, the 16th (Irish) Division had only arrived in France between late September and the end of February yet it had already seen action in the German gas attacks on the Hulluch sector in late April.⁸

The four divisions of the Third New Army which fought on the Somme had all, by then, been on the Western Front for ten to eleven months and two of them – the 21st and 24th – which were then truly green, had gone into action, albeit with near-disastrous results, on the second day of the Battle of Loos. In the case of the divisions of the Fourth and Fifth New Armies, containing the bulk of the Pals battalions, five had been on the Western Front for eight months or more (the 37th having been there as long as eleven months); another three had been there for between five and seven months; and three had served in France for four months or less, the 41st Division having arrived as late as May 1916. One may observe, at this juncture, that – with one or two notable exceptions, such as the 17th and 24th Divisions – the formations of the first three New Armies, which had collectively been in France the longest, perhaps not surprisingly recorded higher success rates (54 per cent or more) than most of the later arrivals from K.4 and K.5. Even here, however, two of the least experienced divisions, the 39th and 41st, which crossed to France in March and May 1916 respectively, registered success rates of 71.42 per cent and 100 per cent. On the whole, I am persuaded that, since a significant majority of the New Army divisions had been in France and Belgium for at least eight months by July 1916, they can hardly be described as ‘raw’ or completely ‘amateur’ in the ways and conditions of warfare on the Western Front. One should also note that approximately half of the 25 New Army divisions that fought on the Somme had real combat experience before that great battle started.

A related factor which should be taken into account at this point is the ‘stiffening’ of New Army divisions – mainly after the setbacks at Loos in 1915 – by exchanging one of their brigades for a brigade from a Regular division, presumably to give the New Army divisions in question a leavening of experience and ‘professionalism’. Not counting those Kitchener divisions which exchanged brigades with each other before and during the Somme battle, or the 9th (Scottish), which received a South African brigade, six of the 25 New Army divisions appear to have been involved in this process, namely the 23rd, 24th, 25th, 30th, 32nd and 33rd. Their success rates were, respectively, 54.54 per cent, 38.46 per cent, 62.49 per cent, 46.15 per cent, 50 per cent and 41.66 per cent. In short, only two of the six had a success rate of 50 per cent or more and the average success rate of these divisions was 48.88 per cent, scarcely a ringing endorsement for the policy. Again, and possibly to the surprise of many, those New Army divisions which retained their original units tended to perform better than those which were ‘stiffened’ with Regulars, though, of course, there were relatively few survivors from the old 1914 formations by the time of the Battle of the Somme.⁹

Did either the freshness or the resting of units help to improve battlefield performance? The immediate and obvious answer is that indeed it did, as in a lengthy battle of attrition, shattered formations undeniably needed time to reorganise, refit, train and, above all, regenerate their fighting spirit. Yet, here too, the picture is a little more complex than one might initially suppose. If one analyses the number of major operational ‘tours’ of active offensive duty, or ‘battle periods’, undertaken by each of the 25 New Army divisions on the Somme, one finds that three – the 18th, 23rd and 39th – had four or more; eleven (or over half of the remainder) had three battle tours; seven had two such tours; and only four had one such tour. However, if one had jumped to the conclusion that combat fatigue might be reflected in the success or failure rates of those divisions with the most battle periods, then one would be wrong. The 23rd Division, with four tours, achieved an overall success rate – i.e. with some progress in its attacks – of 54.16 per cent; the 39th, with four tours, had an overall success rate of 71.42 per cent; and the 18th, with five tours and seven major assaults, had a success rate of just under 77 per cent. On the other hand, the 31st Division, with only two tours, had a 100 per cent failure rate.¹⁰ Even the official historian was moved to acknowledge the achievement of the 15th (Scottish) Division which, having been in the line continuously since 8 August, ‘attacked with remarkable success’ on 15 September and was not relieved until four days later. Despite Chris Pugsley’s more recent claims on behalf of the New Zealand Division, this was, in my view, probably the longest continuous operational tour – if only by a narrow margin – of any British or Dominion division on the Somme, and the 15th Division still ended up with an overall success rate of more than 50 per cent.¹¹

On the other side of the coin, some divisions were ‘tired’ even before they had undertaken major offensive operations. A case in point was the 35th (Bantam) Division which, it may be recalled, was one of the formations with the highest failure rates on the Somme. On at least three occasions – 20 July, 20 August and 24 August – officers at divisional, brigade and battalion levels registered severe doubts about the ability of their troops to mount an effective attack, despite the fact that the division had so far carried out no major assaults to match those of, say, the 18th, 32nd, 34th and 36th Divisions on 1 July or the 9th Division at Longueval-Delville Wood later that month.¹² Therefore, it does not necessarily follow that relatively ‘fresh’ divisions did well or that there was a corresponding reduction in the fighting capabilities of ‘well-used’ divisions the more they were employed.

While challenging various Somme shibboleths, let us look at the deep-rooted perception that 1 July was an unmitigated catastrophe for the New Army divisions. As I stated earlier, no one should ever seek to underplay the appalling losses and horrors endured by all who fought on the Somme – especially those who went into action on 1 July – but the reverses at Serre and Thiepval aside, the day was not an unrelieved disaster for the New Army formations. In this connection, it might be helpful to summarise what progress, if any, was made by the New Army divisions between Montauban and Serre on 1 July.

On the right flank, in the south and next to the French, the 30th and 18th Divisions of XIII Corps – admittedly assisted by French artillery – captured all their objectives, including the village of Montauban. Next, on the XV Corps sector, elements of the 63rd and 64th Brigades of the 21st Division made good progress to the left, or north-west, of Fricourt, advancing 2,000 yards across the top of the Fricourt spur to the sunken Pozières–Fricourt road and Round Wood, although the attached 50th Brigade from the 17th (Northern) Division suffered terribly nearer the village and on the slopes to its immediate left, close to the Tambour. However, their collective efforts paved the way for the occupation of Fricourt the following day.¹³ The 34th Division, in III Corps at La Boisselle, suffered heavier losses than any other division that day, while the 102nd (Tyneside Scottish) Brigade and 103rd (Tyneside Irish) Brigade each incurred, according to Martin Middlebrook, more casualties than any other brigade on 1 July. The 21st and 22nd Northumberland Fusiliers (2nd and 3rd Tyneside Scottish) succeeded in taking a section of the German trenches around Schwaben Höhe on the northern slopes of Sausage Valley – a gain which Middlebrook estimates at around 20 acres – but, on the right, the 15th and 16th Royal Scots (the two Edinburgh City battalions), with some men of the Tyneside Irish, also made progress astride the Fricourt spur towards Birch Tree Wood, pushing a little beyond their first objective.¹⁴ At Thiepval, in the X Corps sector, the 32nd Division could do no more than secure a foothold in the Leipzig Redoubt, at the tip of the Leipzig Salient. To their left, the 36th (Ulster) Division performed the extraordinary feat of overcoming the formidable defences of the Schwaben Redoubt and even, at one stage, penetrated to within 500 yards of Mouquet Farm. Had they been in greater strength at this critical juncture – or had Morland, the corps commander, not chosen to employ his corps reserve to reinforce failure at Thiepval village rather than success at the Schwaben Redoubt – they might have been able to advance down the Mouquet Switch towards the farm, thereby threatening to take in reverse the entire German position along the Thiepval spur. It is speculation, of course, but the Ulstermen could perhaps have achieved one of the most remarkable successes of the entire campaign but for faulty command decisions and lack of progress on their flanks. As it was, at the end of the day’s fighting, only a few small parties remained in the original German front and support lines.¹⁵ Finally, for all the immense courage displayed by the Pals battalions of the 31st Division at Serre, in the VIII Corps sector, they had nothing to show for their efforts and sacrifice by the time darkness fell.¹⁶

If one excludes, for a moment, the 50th Brigade of the 17th Division at Fricourt, the above summary shows that only one of the seven New Army divisions (the 31st) made no progress at all; two (the 32nd and the 36th) made only minor gains; another two (the 34th and 21st) achieved some progress on at least part of their respective fronts; and the remaining two (the 18th and 30th) captured all their objectives. It is worth noting that, of the four Regular divisions engaged on 1 July, only one – the 7th at Mametz – made significant progress. Some gains made by the 8th Division at Ovillers had been lost by the end of the day; the 29th Division made no lasting progress at Beaumont Hamel; and while the 4th Division won a footing in and near the Quadrilateral, this was abandoned next morning. One might also point out that, of the five divisions which suffered the heaviest casualties on 1 July, three were Regular. It could be claimed, therefore, that, even given the scale of the disaster on 1 July, the New Army divisions, overall, performed at least as well as, and in some cases even better than, their Regular counterparts.

Denis Winter has caustically criticised the policy of shuffling British units around from corps to corps ‘like cards in a pack’.¹⁷ It cannot be denied that Dominion troops in the Canadian or Anzac (later Australian) Corps gained a great deal from remaining together as formations, which enhanced morale and team spirit, improved confidence and cohesion through familiarity, and made it easier to disseminate battlefield lessons. In contrast, a British division could come under the command of up to four different corps in six months or less. But did this apparently frequent rotation of divisions between different corps invariably have a negative effect on combat performance? My general conclusion is that it did not. Between 1 July and the end of the Somme battle, one of the 25 New Army divisions engaged – i.e. the 12th (Eastern) – served under four different corps; one (the 24th) served under three corps; twelve came under two different corps; and the remaining eleven served in one corps throughout.¹⁸ It is undoubtedly true that some of the divisions which stayed in one corps had high success rates, the 21st Division with 80 per cent and the 11th (Northern) with 85.71 per cent being good examples. Conversely, the 12th Division, rotated through four corps, had a very respectable success rate of 63.63 per cent, while the 34th Division and 38th (Welsh) Division – both of which served under only one corps command – had respective success rates of 45.45 per cent and 28.75 per cent. My belief is that, bearing in mind the various strengths and weaknesses of the corps commanders on the Somme, it mattered more what corps you were in at a given time than how many corps you might pass through in the course of the battle.

Here it might be relevant to review the number of attacks in the sample which were carried out by New Army divisions under different corps and the success rates which resulted. When serving in Jacob’s II Corps, New Army divisions had an overall success rate of 68.25 per cent in 63 attacks; in Pulteney’s III Corps, 57.69 per cent in 52 attacks; in Edward Fanshawe’s V Corps, 62.5 per cent in 16 attacks; in Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps, nil per cent in one attack; in Morland’s X Corps, 57.69 per cent in 26 attacks; in Congreve’s XIII Corps, 44.82 per cent in 29 attacks; in Cavan’s XIV Corps, 61.53 per cent in 26 attacks; and in Horne’s XV Corps, 50 per cent in 68 attacks. The figures for Horne’s XV Corps, for example, appear to reflect the large number of relatively small-scale attacks carried out around High Wood and Delville Wood in July and August while those for Claud Jacob’s II Corps encompass the bitter fighting for Thiepval and the Ancre Heights in September, October and November. Considering that a number of historians have, in recent years, been somewhat critical of Hubert Gough’s command of the Reserve (Fifth) Army on the Somme, it is interesting to observe that, in terms of success rates, New Army divisions seem to have fared better in attacks under II and V Corps in the Reserve or Fifth Army than under most of the corps in the Fourth Army – with the exception of Lord Cavan’s XIV Corps. Although the relatively high success rate in the case of II Corps probably owes much to the methodical command style of Claud Jacob, and the presence of good assault divisions such as Ivor Maxse’s 18th, this aspect of battlefield performance on the Somme might merit more thought in the future.

Command and Commanders

However much historians such as Tim Travers and Martin Samuels may suggest that the BEF, particularly in 1916, was subject to over-centralisation, restrictive control and a one-way, top-down command system, operating in a climate of fear of GHQ, I would argue that, even by the Somme, there was at least a degree of devolution of tactical decision-making and deference to the ‘man on the spot’, as advocated by Field Service Regulations. I would also contend that the identity and command style of the corps, division or brigade in which one served could, and often did, influence battlefield performance. In some units the decentralisation of command gradually increased during the battle, though the process was never uniform. Even on 1 July there was considerable variation in the attack formations adopted. At La Boisselle, for instance, the 34th Division threw all twelve infantry battalions and all three brigades into the assault, attacking in four ‘columns’ with each column three battalions deep.¹⁹ 18th Division, at Carnoy-Montauban, also attacked with all three brigades in line, but here the brigades themselves, according to the divisional history, each used two battalions to lead the assault with another in support and the fourth in reserve.²⁰ Other divisions tended to attack with two brigades ‘up’ with the third in support or reserve. In addition, a number of divisions, brigades or individual battalions on 1 July – including units of the 21st, 31st, 32nd, 34th and 36th Divisions – sent their troops out into no-man’s-land before zero hour, at times which seem to have varied between 7.15 a.m. and 7.27 a.m., in order to rush the German line at zero when the barrage lifted. Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, among others, have recently been at pains to explode the myth that, on 1 July, the British infantry were simply ‘ordered by a doltish command to walk shoulder to shoulder across No Man’s Land’ at a steady pace. They have calculated that, for the 80 battalions that went over the top in the first assault on 1 July, as many as 53 crept out into no-man’s-land close to the German wire before zero, while 10 others rushed the German front line from their own parapets. This leaves 17 battalions, 12 of which did advance at a steady pace and 5 for which evidence is difficult to find. Prior and Wilson add that there is a further complicating factor, in that at least some of the battalions which advanced at a steady pace on 1 July ‘did so because they were following a creeping barrage. These were some of the most successful units of all on the first day’.²¹ Command and control as practised in the BEF in July 1916 did not, then, remove all initiative and decision-making from divisional, brigade and battalion commanders nor necessarily exclude them from participation in the planning process.

As John Bourne has underlined, the ‘de-skilling’ which accompanied the rapid expansion of the British army applied not only to ordinary soldiers but also to officers at almost every command level. He writes: ‘The higher the level of command the less impressive was the degree of relevant experience. During the Somme campaign, the BEF was compelled to undergo a particularly brutal form of on the job training. Some commanders rose to the challenge. Some did not. The result was a considerable turnover’.²² At this point, and fully acknowledging John Bourne’s outstanding work in this field, it may be profitable to look at the experience and performance of the New Army divisional and brigade commanders on the Somme, beginning with those in post on 1 July.

Of the officers commanding the nine New Army divisions in the front line or immediate reserve on 1 July, the longest-serving was T.D. Pilcher of the 17th (Northern) Division. He was also the only one who had commanded his formation in a significant action, at Hooge in 1915, but this did not save him from becoming, as early as 13 July 1916, the third divisional commander to be sent home from the Somme.²³ Two more divisional commanders – David ‘Soarer’ Campbell of the 21st Division and J.S.M. Shea of the 30th Division – had been in post less than two months by 1 July. Campbell, who had won the 1896 Grand National on a horse called ‘Soarer’, had proved to be a fine cavalry regimental commander with the 9th Lancers in the opening weeks of the war. Bourne describes him as a ‘restless, impatient curt man’ who was often unpopular with New Army officers, but there is no doubt that Campbell helped to rebuild his division’s fighting reputation after the debacle of Loos and he commanded it with some distinction for the remainder of the war. Shea’s 30th Division fought admirably on 1 July, taking all its objectives, and although his career stuttered in 1917, after Allenby, then the Third Army commander, had criticised his performance at Arras, it is noteworthy that Allenby himself subsequently asked for Shea to head the 60th Division in Palestine, where he shone as the best of the EEF’s infantry division commanders.²⁴

Campbell and Shea, as well as Ivor Maxse (18th Division), R. Wanless O’Gowan (31st Division), E.C. ‘Inky Bill’ Ingouville-Williams (34th Division) and Oliver Nugent (36th Division) had all led brigades in action, both ‘Inky Bill’ and Maxse having commanded brigades in the original 1914 BEF. Ingouville-Williams was killed on 22 July but Maxse’s 18th Division would soon be recognised as one of the foremost assault formations on the Somme. Maxse was, in fact, the only New Army divisional commander on 1 July who subsequently rose to corps command. Neither Tom Bridges of the 19th Division nor W.H. Rycroft of the 32nd Division had any experience as brigade commanders. Rycroft was unpopular with some of his subordinate officers and was removed shortly before the end of operations on the Somme (see Chapter 5). However, he went on to serve as a competent staff officer in Salonika. Bridges had been a squadron commander in the 4th Hussars, being promoted CO of his regiment in September 1914. Having begun the war as an ageing major, he had become a comparatively youthful major-general, at 44, by December 1915, a swift rise which made him the second youngest of the officers who commanded a division on the Somme in 1916. When his right leg was shattered by a shell in September 1917, he famously ordered hospital staff to feed the leg to the 19th Division’s lion mascot.²⁵

The New Army brigade commanders on 1 July were predominantly infantrymen, though J.B. Jardine (97th Brigade, 32nd Division) was a cavalryman. One, C.R.J. Griffith (108th Brigade, 36th Division) had begun the war in command of an infantry battalion. A further proportion were former battalion officers, mostly majors, while some had been staff officers. Four of the New Army brigades on 1 July were commanded by ‘dug-outs’ – men who had retired before the war – the oldest of these being R.B. Fell (51st Brigade, 17th Division), who was 55. The others were W.J.T. Glasgow (50th Brigade, 17th Division), Ferdinand Stanley (89th Brigade, 30th Division) and Trevor Ternan (Tyneside Scottish Brigade, 34th Division). One may note in passing that two of the three brigades in the 17th (Northern) Division on 1 July were commanded by ‘dug-outs’. Six of the brigade commanders in New Army divisions on 1 July had been in post less than a month, namely H.R. Headlam (64th Brigade, 21st Division), C.C. Onslow (57th Brigade, 19th Division), Cecil Rawling (62nd Brigade, 21st Division), H.C. Rees (94th Brigade, 31st Division), H.G.M. Rowley (56th Brigade, 19th Division) and O. de L. Williams (92nd Brigade, 31st Division). Again one may observe that, in the 21st Division, the divisional commander and two brigade commanders had been in post for only two months or less on 1 July, and two of the three brigade commanders in the 31st Division had also been appointed less than a month before the start of the battle. As a group, the New Army brigade commanders on 1 July did not flourish. Only two – H.W. Higginson (53rd Brigade) and T.H. Shoubridge (54th Brigade) – later rose to divisional command and both were from the successful 18th Division. Others became casualties, including N.J.G. Cameron (Tyneside Irish Brigade, 34th Division), who was wounded on 1 July; C.J. Sackville-West (21st Brigade, 30th Division), wounded on 30 July; and R.C. Gore (101st Brigade, 34th Division) and Cecil Rawling, both of whom were killed later in the war.²⁶

A further sixteen New Army divisions entered the battle after 1 July, a quarter of which experienced changes of command at the top during the course of the offensive. These were all from the Fourth and Fifth New Armies and included the 33rd and 35th Divisions, which simply exchanged their commanders (Herman Landon and R.J. Pinney) in mid-September; the 37th Division, where S.W. Scrase-Dickens took over from Lord Gleichen on 21 October and was himself succeeded by Hugh Bruce Williams on 9 November; and the 38th Division, where C.G. Blackader replaced Ivor Philipps on 9 July.²⁷ A fair proportion of these sixteen additional divisional commanders had previously commanded brigades, some in the original BEF. They included G.J. Cuthbert (39th Division, formerly 13th Brigade); Lord Gleichen (37th Division, formerly 15th Brigade); Herman Landon (35th and 33rd Divisions, formerly 3rd Brigade); Sydney Lawford (41st Division, formerly 22nd Brigade); and F.W.N. McCracken (15th Division, formerly 7th Brigade). Ivor Philipps, who did not last long, was in many respects an odd man out. He had been a Regular, serving in the Indian army for ten years and seeing action in Burma and various expeditions before retiring as a major in 1903. His military service from then on was restricted to the Pembrokeshire Yeomanry, which he eventually commanded from 1908 to 1912, but his main interests lay in business and politics, and he became a Liberal MP in 1910. He owed his command of the 38th (Welsh) Division largely to political patronage, chiefly that of Lloyd George. One of his staff officers, G.P.L. Drake-Brockman, remarked that it was hardly surprising that, as a divisional commander, ‘he was ignorant, lacked experience and failed to inspire confidence’. Drake-Brockman criticised Philipps for launching piecemeal attacks at first – one brigade at a time – and for declaring beforehand that he did not wish for attacks to be pressed home in the face of machine-gun fire. In such circumstances, battalions were instructed to return to the start-line until fresh artillery support could be organised. This latter policy might not have been entirely bereft of common sense, but when the division’s attempts to capture Mametz Wood faltered, Philipps – portrayed by John Bourne as ‘very much a cuckoo in the Regular Army’s nest’ – was shorn of protection and dismissed on 9 July, the official reason being that he had displayed ‘lack of thrust’.²⁸

The only cavalryman, and the only other ‘dug-out’ among these sixteen additional New Army divisional commanders, was Sir James Babington of the 23rd Division, who had retired as a colonel and honorary major-general in 1907. The 24th Division’s commander, J.E. Capper (later Director-General of the Tank Corps), was a sapper, while Bill Furse (9th Division) and Arthur Scott (12th Division) were gunners. The remainder were infantrymen. Babington, who was 60, was also the oldest of this group and the longest in post, having commanded 23rd Division since it was raised in September 1914, though Victor Couper (of the 14th (Light) Division) had taken over his formation the following month. At the other end of the scale, Guy Bainbridge had taken over the 25th Division as recently as 4 June, and both Gerald Cuthbert (39th Division) and C.L. Woollcombe (11th Division) were appointed in July 1916, after the start of the battle. The officer succeeded by Gerald Cuthbert was R. Dawson, who had been in command of the 39th Division for just thirty-five days, one of the shortest tenures of all. The highest-ranking of these officers at the outbreak of war was Charles Woollcombe, who had risen to lieutenant-general by 1913 and who, at 59, was one of the oldest officers in the BEF. When Haig had become Commander-in-Chief in December 1915, Woollcombe – whose rank would normally have precluded him from anything less than a corps appointment – asked him for an active command and was happy to accept the chance to take over the 11th Division the following July. The first army commander he served under, Hubert Gough, was thirteen years his junior. Woollcombe was given command of IV Corps at the end of the Somme offensive, but was ‘degummed’ in 1918 in the aftermath of the German counter-stroke at Cambrai.²⁹

Other New Army divisional commanders later promoted to corps were Babington (to XIV Corps in October 1918) and McCracken (to XIII Corps in June 1917). Bill Furse (of the 9th (Scottish) Division) was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance in December 1916. Two who remained as divisional commanders until the Armistice were R.J. Pinney and Sydney Lawford. Reginald Pinney has had a mixed press. Although he was the second longest-serving divisional commander in the BEF at the time of the Armistice, he is perhaps best remembered as a non-smoking teetotaller and as the GOC who abolished the rum ration in his division. Frank Richards, of the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers, called him a ‘bun-punching crank more fitted to be in command of a Church Mission hut at the Base than a division of troops’, but Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Seton-Hutchison, in contrast, saw him as ‘a soldier’s general … where the men were so was he; how they lived so did he’. Haig himself is reported to have stated: ‘When the 33rd Division was there, I could always be sure’.³⁰ Lawford, a dapper, well-dressed officer whose nickname in the army was ‘Swanky Syd’, did not lack personal courage and had led 22nd Brigade from the front, and with some distinction, in the critical days of First Ypres. He was also known to be concerned about the welfare of his troops. At the end of the war, Lawford was the longest-serving divisional commander in the BEF.³¹

After 1 July eighty-one infantry brigade commanders of all categories and not just New Army formations joined the Somme battle with their units, with an average age of 44.9 years. The oldest was H.J. Evans of 115th Brigade in the 38th (Welsh) Division, who was 56. He stayed in command until 30 August 1916, his removal ostensibly being on grounds of age, although the initial performance of the division at Mametz Wood and the ‘degumming’ of the divisional commander can scarcely have helped. Evans had been critical of his superiors for their conduct of operations on 7 July 1916 and had spoken his mind, confiding to Captain Wyn Griffith: ‘You mark my words, they’ll send me home for this: they want butchers, not brigadiers’. Griffith believed that Evans had, in fact, saved his brigade from annihilation.³² The majority of officers who entered the battle as brigade commanders after 1 July had no previous experience at that level. The highest rank any of them had held by the outbreak of war was colonel and most had been majors. Some had been in post for three months or less. Two of the three brigade commanders in the 15th (Scottish) Division, for example, had only been in post since mid-April, while in the 19th (Western) Division two of the brigade GOCs (F.G.M. Rowley and C.C. Onslow) had not taken over their formations until mid-June and the third (A.J.W. Dowell) had only been appointed at the end of April.³³ The longest-serving of this group was B.R. Mitford of the 72nd Brigade (24th Division), who had been in his post since September 1914. He not only survived his formation’s unhappy baptism of fire at Loos in 1915 but later, in 1917, was promoted to command the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division.³⁴

As in the case of the brigade commanders on 1 July, those who took their formations into battle after that date included a number of ‘dug-outs’. Some, like W.H.L. Allgood, did well. He had retired as a major in February 1914, yet, having been appointed to lead the 45th Brigade in the 15th (Scottish) Division, retained his command until May 1918. R.C. Browne-Clayton of the 59th Brigade in the 20th (Light) Division had retired as a major in 1909, but succeeded Cameron Shute in command of 59th Brigade in October 1916 and remained in that post until August 1917.³⁵ Another officer who had originally retired in 1909 was M.L. Hornby, who led 116th Brigade (39th Division) from 13 April 1916 to 23 March 1918, when he was badly wounded. He then briefly reappeared at the head of 118th Brigade before transferring to 137th Brigade a few days before the Armistice.³⁶ George Pereira of the 47th Brigade in the 16th (Irish) Division similarly overcame the possible stigma of being a ‘dug-out’ and won considerable respect as a front-line commander, particularly at Guillemont in September 1916.

Nevertheless, the position of brigade commanders could be tenuous. Tim Travers asserts that Haig once told Edmonds that he had ‘degummed’ over 100 brigadiers.³⁷ Examples of the removal of brigade commanders litter the Somme offensive. R.B. Fell, of the 51st Brigade in the 17th (Northern) Division, lasted only until 6 July.³⁸ R.S. Oxley, of the 24th Brigade (attached to the 23rd Division), was dismissed because of his brigade’s failure to hold on to Contalmaison on 7 July.³⁹ One well-known case, recounted by Malcolm Brown, is that of Frederick Carleton, of the 98th Brigade, 33rd Division, who was replaced following what was perceived to be a disappointing performance at Wood Lane Trench in late August 1916. In a damning report to XV Corps, the divisional commander, Herman Landon, commented that the qualities expected of a brigade commander – ‘quick, practical methods of command, and a cheerful outlook which will communicate itself to the troops’ – were ‘not possessed’ by Carleton. The latter subsequently appealed against his dismissal and was given another brigade, but his next posting was to Salonika where his health was fatally undermined and he died in 1922, aged 54.⁴⁰ Even being part of a successful division did not guarantee security of tenure. After the capture of Thiepval on 26–27 September, Ivor Maxse was far from impressed by the efforts of the 55th Brigade to clear the Schwaben Redoubt over the following few days. He therefore engineered the removal of the brigade commander, Sir Thomas Jackson, recording that the brigade had not been handled satisfactorily and that the situation should have been more firmly grasped (see Chapter 4).⁴¹ It should be added that the dismissal caused some bitterness in the ranks of the brigade. As John Bourne points out, brigade commanders were convenient scapegoats if things went wrong and, of the twenty-seven divisions of all categories which joined the Somme offensive after 1 July, only five experienced no changes at brigade level during or just after the battle.⁴²

Not all departures were due to incompetence. Henry Page-Croft, a Territorial officer, who had been elected Unionist MP for Christchurch in 1910 and was promoted to command the 68th Brigade in the 23rd Division in February 1916, aged only 34, resigned his command in August 1916 to concentrate on his parliamentary and political career.⁴³ Others went sick. One was N.F. Jenkins, a ‘dug-out’ aged 55, who left the command of the 75th Brigade (25th Division) only a few days after the start of the Somme battle. This group also included G.A. Armytage (74th Brigade, 25th Division) on 17 October 1916; J.W.V. Carroll (17th Brigade, 24th Division) in January 1917; E.H. Finch-Hatton (118th Brigade, 39th Division) on 4 December 1916; R.G. Jelf (73rd Brigade, 24th Division) on 9 November 1916; and the commander of the 61st Brigade in the 20th Division – W.F. Sweny – on 24 July 1916.⁴⁴

A fair number of the changes also resulted from promotion. All three brigade commanders in the 9th (Scottish) Division received divisional appointments during or soon after the battle. H.T. Lukin, of the South African Brigade, took over the division in December 1916 when Bill Furse became Master-General of the Ordnance; A.B. Ritchie of the 26th Brigade became GOC 11th Division on 5 December; and S.W. Scrase-Dickens (27th Brigade) was promoted to command the 37th Division on 22 October.⁴⁵ Similarly, R.W.R. Barnes (111th Brigade, 37th Division) replaced Rycroft at the head of 32nd Division in late November 1916, though he was himself soon succeeded by Cameron Shute.⁴⁶ P.R. Robertson, of the 19th Brigade, 33rd Division, rose to command the 17th (Northern) Division on 13 July and stayed in that post until the Armistice, despite being classed as a ‘dud’ by the acerbic J.C. Dunn.⁴⁷ In addition to those already mentioned, I calculate that thirteen other New Army brigade commanders, from the group who entered the battle after 1 July, also rose to divisional command later in the war.

There is indeed some evidence to suggest that, even in 1916, the BEF was moving to a more devolved command style and that the ‘man on the spot’ – certainly down to brigade level – had sufficient powers of decision-making, and room for initiative, to make a difference at a local level. In the 21st Division, for instance, H.R. Headlam of the 64th Brigade took personal charge at the forefront of his brigade’s operations near Fricourt when the attack ran into problems during the morning of 1 July. Two days later, when German columns were seen from the air to be moving forward from Contalmaison, Cecil Rawling, of 62nd Brigade, anticipated the enemy’s intentions and, using the 13th Northumberland Fusiliers from reserve to join in an enveloping movement which was covered by Stokes mortar fire, he took Shelter Wood without too much further trouble.⁴⁸ On 10 July, L.A.E. Price-Davies (GOC of 113th Brigade), T.O. Marden (of 114th Brigade) and Lieutenant-Colonel H.E. ap Rhys Price, the GSO1 of the 38th (Welsh) Division, combined to restore impetus to operations at Mametz Wood, ordering a fresh advance involving six battalions in the late afternoon which cleared the wood to within 40 yards of its northern edge.⁴⁹ In the 34th Division, R.C. Gore, of 101st Brigade, ordered the commanding officers and headquarters of his four battalions to stay out of the initial assault at La Boisselle on 1 July, thereby keeping them more or less intact and available to reorganise their shattered battalions that night. It must be conceded, however, that a similar policy backfired in the case of the 36th (Ulster) Division when, during the late morning and afternoon of 1 July, no senior battalion officers were present to take advantage of the opportunities offered near Mouquet Farm.⁵⁰

One formation which clearly accepted the concept of the ‘man on the spot’ was the 18th (Eastern) Division. On two critical occasions – at Trones Wood on 14 July and at Thiepval on 26–27 September – Maxse, the divisional commander, and Thomas Shoubridge, of 54th Brigade, successfully entrusted the actual conduct of the attack ‘at the sharp end’ to Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Maxwell VC, the redoubtable CO of the 12th Middlesex (see Chapter 4), although it appears to have been Shoubridge’s idea for his troops to sweep straight through Trones Wood from south to north on 14 July.⁵¹ Nor was tactical ‘grip’ and innovation confined to infantry commanders. H.H. Tudor, the BGRA and later GOC of the 9th Division, helped to pioneer the use of high explosive (HE), rather than shrapnel, shells in the preparatory bombardment at Longueval-Delville Wood on 14 July, fitting the HE shells with delayed action fuses so that, even if a tree was hit, the shell would continue on its trajectory. As the divisional historian emphasises:

During the Somme Battle the use of the creeping barrage became universal by the British Army … Shrapnel was generally used, but the Ninth Division, having taken to HE, and having found it successful, stuck to it … In the Ninth the opinion was that the HE barrage had the greater moral effect, was easier to follow, and did not throw such a strain on the artillery that the setting of fuses for a shrapnel barrage necessitated.⁵²

I have obviously stressed the positive aspects of divisional and brigade command on the Somme, at least partly to counter the widely held negative views of New Army performance that I outlined earlier. However, only a blinkered fool would fail to recognise that incompetence, inexperience, inconsistency and inability to learn lessons at different command levels all contributed to making the Somme the long, bloody and frequently frustrating battle that it was for the BEF. It seems extraordinary, for example, that on 8 July the 38th (Welsh) Division, in its first battle, should give the task of securing the southern salient of Mametz Wood, at night, to a solitary platoon of the 14th Royal Welsh Fusiliers – the sort of decision which precipitated the removal of Ivor Philipps.⁵³ Yet the BEF continued to attack with insufficient weight and co-ordination on many other occasions throughout the battle. On 23 July the 21st Brigade of the 30th Division assaulted Guillemont with just two battalions – the 19th Manchesters and the 2nd Green Howards. The Manchesters actually succeeded in entering the village but the survivors were either overwhelmed there or obliged to withdraw. The official historian tartly comments that: ‘To some observers it appeared that Guillemont would have been won had the Manchester[s] received support’.⁵⁴ An attack on the same village a week later was indeed given greater weight but the end result was no less depressing. Miles, the official historian, remarks about this second action:

It is little matter for surprise that the attack made on the 30th July should have taken almost the exact course of the action of the 23rd: the conditions under which it was delivered were practically the same. After the first experience it seemed to the local commanders that an assault against the Guillemont position from the west – up the exposed shallow trough which marked the termination of Caterpillar Valley – and from the south-west – over a crest and down a slope, both devoid of cover – had little chance of success.⁵⁵

A large share of the responsibility for the failure of such attacks must be borne by the army and corps commanders and their staffs, rather than at division and brigade level. As we observed in Chapter 2, Major-General C.L. Nicholson, ‘Inky Bill’s’ successor as GOC of the 34th Division, made this plain when he later summarised the reasons for the division’s inability to take Intermediate Trench, between Bazentin le Petit and High Wood, in the first half of August.⁵⁶

Apart from playing some part in the planning process – if the division in question held regular conferences – a battalion commander in battle could also have a local influence which transcended simply leading his troops into action. The role of Frank Maxwell at Trones Wood and Thiepval has already been noted in this regard. A similar case is that of Lieutenant-Colonel W.E.C. Tanner, of the 2nd South African Infantry in the 9th (Scottish) Division, who was entrusted by Brigadier-General Lukin with the execution of the South African Brigade’s attack at Delville Wood on 15 July. Again, when the 9th Division reached a critical point in the fighting at Longueval-Delville Wood three days later, on 18 July, Lieutenant-Colonel C.W.E. Gordon of the 8th Black Watch and Lieutenant-Colonel J. Kennedy of the 7th Seaforth Highlanders launched a telling counter-attack in the early evening, supported by Lieutenant-Colonel G.B. Duff and the 5th Cameron Highlanders. Having driven the Germans back from the village, Gordon and Kennedy wisely restrained their men from following the enemy into the western side of the wood, where control and cohesion would have been lost, and then rallied and re-formed the survivors of their units. Duff was severely wounded in the action, but Kennedy subsequently succeeded A.B. Ritchie in command of the 26th Brigade – a promotion from within the brigade – while Gordon commanded the 123rd Brigade in Lawford’s 41st Division from 23 September 1916 until he was killed by a shell in Belgium in July 1917.⁵⁷

These are, of course, just two or three examples from among many, but such leadership came at a price. In his list of senior officer casualties on 1 July 1916, including acting battalion commanders, Martin Middlebrook names twenty-four such officers from the New Army divisions alone. Of these, seven (or over a quarter) were from the 34th Division, thus underlining the wisdom of Brigadier-General Gore’s decision to keep the battalion commanders of 101st Brigade out of the initial assault at La Boisselle. A further six (25 per cent) were from the 21st Division, and another five (20.83 per cent) from the 31st Division.⁵⁸ This means that approximately three-quarters of the senior officer losses suffered by battalions in New Army divisions on 1 July were concentrated in only three divisions. However, while the 21st Division recovered to record an overall success rate of 80 per cent in the battle as a whole, the 31st and 34th Divisions both fell below the 50 per cent mark. Unhappily for the New Army divisions, senior officer losses on this scale were not limited to 1 July. I estimate that, at Mametz Wood between 5 and 12 July, the 38th Division lost seven out of its twelve infantry battalion commanders killed or wounded, and, even in its successful first action, at Flers on 15 September, the 41st Division lost six, or half, of its infantry battalion commanders, four of whom died in action.⁵⁹ Under such circumstances it was no easy task to maintain real continuity of command at battalion level, particularly if one also takes into account officers such as Maxwell, Gordon and Kennedy, who were promoted to brigades during or soon after the battle.

Reorganising and Rebuilding Units

Whichever way one looks at them, the casualty figures for the New Army divisions on the Somme are appalling and need little or no amplification. A few, almost random, examples will perhaps suffice to remind us of their scale and of their likely impact on individual formations. Jonathan Nicholls points out that the daily casualty rate on the Somme was 2,953, this being the equivalent of losing nearly 3 whole infantry battalions every 24 hours.⁶⁰ Middlebrook demonstrates that, of the 32 infantry battalions which suffered casualties of 500 or more on 1 July, 20 (or 62.5 per cent) were New Army units – the highest losses being incurred at Fricourt by the 10th West Yorkshires (17th Division), who lost 22 officers and 688 other ranks, including the battalion commander, the second-in-command and the adjutant.⁶¹ The 34th Division history states that the divisional ‘wastage’ for the whole of 1916, including those taken sick, totalled 733 officers and 15,253 other ranks. By my calculations, this means that the equivalent of about 81.5 per cent of the war establishment of the division (on the April 1915 scale) had to be replaced during the year, or immediately after the Somme offensive.⁶² The 9th (Scottish) Division lost a total of 10,340 all ranks in its actions at Longueval-Delville Wood in July and near the Butte de Warlencourt in October.⁶³ At Guillemont and Ginchy, from 1 to 10 September, the 16th (Irish) Division suffered 4,330 casualties (or just under 40 per cent of the 10,845 who entered the battle), while the 12th (Eastern) Division incurred losses totalling 7,612 in a 6-week spell in July and August.⁶⁴

The consequence was that brigades and battalions were often obliged to go into action with well under their nominal rifle strengths. In mid-October, relatively few battalions in Fourth Army could muster more than 400 men for an attack and many of these, according to the official historian, were only half-trained.⁶⁵ In short, the infantry battalions and brigades of the New Army divisions on the Somme – like their Regular, Territorial and Dominion counterparts – had to undergo a constant process of replacement, reorganisation and regeneration. However, their powers of recovery appear to have been remarkable, and their resilience beyond doubt, for, as I showed earlier, the collective success rate in attack of the New Army divisions did not drop below 60 per cent in the later stages of the battle during the months of September, October and November 1916.

During the battle, not many formations were afforded the luxury of refitting at a leisurely pace. Bringing a battalion or brigade up to strength, in terms of numbers, was one thing but rebuilding esprit de corps or training specialists such as bombers and Lewis gunners, could not be achieved in a few days. Furthermore, the cumulative effects of conscription earlier in the year, of frequent large-scale losses, and of changes in the reserve or drafting system, meant that it could no longer be guaranteed that casualty replacements would come, as they normally had before, from the parent regiment at home. Helen McCartney presents persuasive evidence that efforts were still made to draw such replacements from at least the same county or region, but this was not always possible and, inevitably, the highly localised character of many New Army units in mid-1916 was becoming diluted by the end of the offensive. The practical effects of this are summarised neatly by the historian of the 34th Division. The 15th Royal Scots, he writes, received 299 men from their 6th Battalion: ‘these men had served in Egypt but none of them had handled a Mills bomb. The Suffolks drafts were from various battalions and regiments. The Lincolns was [sic] completed by parties of men from [the] Nothamptons, North Staffords, South Staffords, Middlesex, Oxford, Worcester and Leicester Regiments “and a few Lincolns”. Many of these had only three months’ service’. The divisional historian also comments that ‘it was asking much of the few remaining officers and non-commissioned officers to expect them to weld such material into a first-class fighting instrument in a few days. Yet this is what was demanded not once but many times during this long-drawn-out war of every battalion staff …’.⁶⁶ Consistent success in battle depended, at least in part, on a division’s ability to rebuild itself periodically and efficiently around a nucleus of seasoned officers and combat veterans, and to maintain its divisional ethos – a way of doing things well which could be passed on to others, however frequent the changes in personnel.

Morale and Discipline

Here too it would be foolish to claim that the New Army divisions suffered from no problems of morale. Robert Cude, an inveterate ‘grouser’ and barometer of ordinary soldiers’ opinions in the 18th Division, wrote in January 1917 that peace was ‘the heartfelt wish of all the troops operating on [the] Somme. Let the politicians fight the war now I have had enough’.⁶⁷ Clearly there were occasional crises of morale in front-line battalions. Brigadier-General L.A.E. Price-Davies VC, the GOC of the 113th Brigade in the 38th (Welsh) Division, was alarmed to see some of the troops ‘running back in panic’ following an attack at Mametz Wood on 10 July. He subsequently reported that, by the time the first objective had been reached,

the sting had gone from the attack and a considerable degree of demoralisation set in … The demoralisation increased towards evening on the 10th and culminated in a disgraceful panic during which many left the wood whilst others seemed quite incapable of understanding, or unwilling to carry out, the simplest order. A few stout-hearted Germans would have stampeded the whole of the troops in the wood.⁶⁸

In their book on the 15th Sherwood Foresters, part of the 35th (Bantam) Division, Maurice Bacon and David Langley recount an incident in the Guillemont sector on 20 July when Corporal Jesse Wilton ordered the evacuation of a dangerous and exposed position which had been under heavy shell fire – a decision which later led to Wilton’s execution for quitting his post. Bacon and Langley state that officers ‘drew revolvers to control some dreadful moments when a panicky retreat began to spread … It is scarcely doubted that Colonel Gordon feared for the steadiness of his battalion’.⁶⁹

By the same token, so far as I can trace, this type of incident was by no means universal throughout the New Armies on the Somme, and events which might have been expected to cause a decline in morale in particular units sometimes had the opposite effect or a negligible impact. Tim Bowman, in his study of discipline and morale in Irish regiments, notes that the number of men tried by courts-martial in Irish units was generally higher than that in their counterparts from the British mainland, but he and other scholars contend that the Easter Rising in Dublin did not have a major adverse effect on morale in such units. Indeed, Bowman’s assessment is that no acts of indiscipline occurred in the Irish regiments as a result of the Rising.⁷⁰

In their book Shot at Dawn, Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes assert that, on the Somme, Kitchener’s Army ‘provided the majority of victims for the firing squads’. They go on to say that, of the seventy-nine men executed for military offences during and after the main actions of the Somme in 1916 (and in the aftermath up to 31 January 1917), ‘five-sixths were serving in New Army divisions’.⁷¹ The inference here concerning the citizen-soldier as ‘victim’ is obvious. However, having analysed each of the case histories that Putkowski and Sykes present, I have come to some different conclusions. Applying their criteria regarding military offences, and the time-frame in which they were committed, very strictly, I would argue that twenty-two ‘New Army’ cases out of the overall total of seventy-nine can be interpreted as being the direct result of the Somme experience, while a further nine may have been – the evidence offered by Putkowski and Sykes being less detailed in the latter cases. In other words, even if one includes the nine cases which are less clear-cut, the total of New Army victims is still only thirty-one – a much lower figure than the ‘five-sixths’ (i.e. approximately sixty-five cases) suggested by Putkowski and Sykes. My figure is, in fact, well under half of the total number of Somme-period executions, thus putting a slightly different complexion on the matter. One might also point out, in passing, that one of these cases was an officer and another seven (or just under one-quarter of the thirty-one) were previous offenders. If one includes the 40th Division, which played no major part in operations on the Somme, twelve New Army divisions had no recorded executions for military offences in the period under review; a further seven each had only one definite recorded case; and six divisions had two or more definite cases. Again, if one lumps together the definite and less clear-cut cases, five divisions each had three or more executions which were, or might have been, a direct result of the Somme experience. These were the 25th, 30th, 31st, and 33rd Divisions – all with three – and the 35th (Bantam) Division with six. Note here that, with the exception of the 25th, all these formations were from the Fourth New Army, the group of divisions with the lowest collective success rate in the battle.

According to the evidence presented by Gerard Oram, 462 death sentences in all are known to have been imposed upon British and Dominion soldiers on the Western Front between 1 July 1916 and 31 January 1917, the vast majority of these being commuted to varying terms of penal servitude and/or hard labour. Of the overall total, 191 death sentences were meted out to NCOs and men serving in New Army front-line infantry battalions, including 15 in units transferred to Regular divisions in the ‘stiffening’ process of late 1915. Subtracting the latter 15 cases from the above total of 191, this signifies that death sentences were awarded to 176 NCOs and men who were serving in New Army divisions during the period under review, representing 38.09 per cent of the overall total of 462. Again, this proportion is much lower than the ‘five-sixths’ implied by Putkowski and Sykes. A total of 91 (or nearly 52 per cent) of the 176 death sentences in question were imposed on men in divisions of the first three New Armies (K.1 to K.3) and 85 (or just over 48 per cent) to men in divisions of the Fourth and Fifth New Armies (K.4 and K.5). Those divisions with the highest number of known cases in this period include the 35th (Bantam) Division with 35 death sentences awarded; the 15th (Scottish) Division with 14; and the 17th (Northern) and 30th Divisions with 10 each. The overall figures are, however, somewhat skewed by the fact that a large number of death sentences were handed out to NCOs and men of the 35th Division for incidents which occurred in the course of a single night in November 1916.⁷²

The 35th Division – originally composed largely of diminutive men who were under 5ft 3in in height – was badly shaken by its experiences on the Somme and unquestionably suffered from a crisis of morale in the late autumn of 1916. This came to a head east and north-east of Arras on the night of 25–26 November when a number of posts held by the 19th Durham Light Infantry were penetrated by the Germans. Later that night, a raid mounted by the same battalion failed when some forty-five men became demoralised by their own barrage, which fell short in no-man’s-land, and were thus reluctant to follow other small groups into the German trenches. As a consequence of these incidents, no less than twenty-six members of the 19th DLI were tried and sentenced to death for various offences, including cowardice, quitting posts and casting away arms, and three NCOs – Lance-Sergeant J.W. Stones, Lance-Corporal P. Goggins and Lance-Corporal J. McDonald – were ultimately executed. Major-General Landon, the divisional commander, attributed many of the formation’s problems to the ‘mental and physical degeneracy’ and poor standards of recent replacements, although the division’s troubles at least partly stemmed from the inherent weakness of the initial ‘Bantam’ concept, which could not be sustained in the long term. Landon was also determined to make an example of the NCOs involved ‘as having especially failed in their soldierly duties and responsibilities’.⁷³ The 26 November episode hastened a radical overhaul of the 35th Division, effectively ending the Bantam experiment. With the active support of Landon, and of Aylmer Haldane, the commander of VI Corps, the division’s Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) carried out inspections which led, by 21 December, to the weeding out of 2,784 men who were judged to be physically or mentally unsuitable. Henceforth, the Bantam standard was to be ‘disregarded for good and all’.⁷⁴

Although there seems to be a strong correlation between morale and combat performance in the case of the 35th Division, one should perhaps be cautious about applying this deduction across the board. The great battles of attrition of 1916–1917 placed the citizen-soldiers of the BEF under enormous strain but, as Gary Sheffield has reminded us, the ‘ultimate test of morale is willingness to engage in combat, and the BEF’s divisions continued to fight throughout the campaigns’. Sheffield also cites a report of November 1916 which was based on the censorship of soldiers’ letters and which stated: ‘the spirit of the men, their conception of duty, their Moral [sic], has never been higher than at the present moment’.⁷⁵ Christopher Duffy’s study Through German Eyes: The British and the Somme 1916, based on German intelligence reports – and in particular upon German interrogation of British prisoners of war – reinforces rather than undermines these conclusions. As one such German intelligence summary said of the British at the end of 1916: ‘Most of the front-line soldiers … are extremely proud of what they have achieved so far. Again and again we hear from prisoners the self-satisfied question: “Don’t you think we have done very well?”’⁷⁶

It is, of course, impossible to quantify courage and gallantry with any precision in relation to battlefield performance, though clearly it is inextricably linked to the maintenance of morale and to questions of leadership and initiative in combat. For these reasons it is interesting to look at New Army Victoria Cross winners on the Somme. Of the 51 VCs won on the Somme in 1916, 25 (or nearly half) were awarded to officers and men in New Army formations; 6 out of the 9 VCs won on 1 July, and 14 out of the 26 won in July 1916 as a whole, went to officers and men in New Army divisions. The latter were also in the majority in September (7 out of 13) and November (2 out of 3), the only months in which they did not predominate being August (1 out of 5) and October (1 out of 4).⁷⁷

Reflections

What, then, can one draw from this examination of the New Army divisions on the Somme? My own analysis of their combat performance in attack suggests that, in general, they were more effective in battle than the popular ‘Blackadder’-type perception would lead us to believe. Even on 1 July 1916, some New Army divisions performed at least as well as, and in some cases better than, their Regular counterparts. Over the whole battle, the divisions of the First, Second, Third and Fifth New Armies achieved collective success rates in their attacks of 54 per cent or more, with only the Pals-based divisions of the Fourth New Army dipping to a figure as low as 40 per cent. This might indicate that the strong social cohesion and community links of the Pals formations by no means guaranteed success in battle. Indeed, although the original highly localised character of many of the battalions was inevitably, and increasingly, diluted by losses and replacements as the battle went on, the collective monthly success rates of the New Army divisions did not show a corresponding decline – quite the contrary, in fact, as the figures for September and October rose to 64.96 per cent and 71.87 per cent. Again, those New Army divisions which had been ‘stiffened’ with Regular battalions or brigades do not seem to have performed as well, in terms of successful attacks, as those which retained their original units. Frequency of employment during the battle did not always equate with a drop in standards. From the figures I have presented one can see that relatively ‘fresh’ divisions did not invariably perform well and, moreover, there was no corresponding reduction in the fighting capabilities of ‘well-used’ assault divisions the more they were employed. While not all New Army divisions maintained the same level of high morale – the 35th Division being an obvious example of a formation with problems – this did not, in the final analysis, seriously affect their collective willingness to fight. The courage, endurance, resilience and self-sacrifice displayed by those who fought – and continued to fight – on the Western Front never ceases to amaze and inspire.

Chapter 3

The Performance of New Army Divisions on the Somme, 1916

Command and Commanders

Reorganising and Rebuilding Units

Morale and Discipline

Reflections