If the capture of Thiepval in September 1916 bore distinct evidence of a learning process and of improvements in command, training and tactical methods in the BEF, the final throes of the Somme offensive – the struggle for Munich and Frankfort Trenches in November that year – also showed that developments and improvements were, at that time, still imperfectly understood and certainly not yet universally applied by all formations serving under Sir Douglas Haig on the Western Front.
On 18 November 1916, in the very last phase of the Allied offensive on the Somme, the British 32nd Division attacked the Munich and Frankfort Trenches, which were situated on Redan Ridge, about a mile north-east of Beaumont Hamel, while other units attacked towards Grandcourt, south of the River Ancre.2 Although the 19th Division reached the western edge of Grandcourt, the latter village was to remain in German hands until the following February. Similarly, as so often happened when the British launched attacks on a limited scale in 1916, the 32nd Division’s assault on Munich and Frankfort Trenches was, in the main, a costly failure, despite the considerable gallantry and powers of endurance displayed by all ranks in dreadful conditions. By nightfall on 18 November most of the survivors of the attack had fallen back to positions in or near their own front line. Remarkably, however, more than 100 other ranks and a handful of officers from the 11th Battalion, Border Regiment, and the 16th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry (HLI), not only penetrated as far as Frankfort Trench but held out there, largely unaided, for eight days. This courageous stand in Frankfort Trench merits only a footnote in the British official history yet, like the 32nd Division’s attack as a whole, the episode illustrates many of the best and worst features of the battlefield performance of the BEF in 1916.3
Following the disastrous British assault on 1 July, and the more successful attack on the German second main position between Bazentin le Grand and Longueval a fortnight later, the offensive had developed into a grim battle of attrition. Haig himself came to accept that the prospects of an early breakthrough had receded, now seeing the BEF’s operations on the Somme more in terms of a ‘wearing-out’ fight in preparation for the next large-scale set-piece assault, which was planned for mid-September and which Haig hoped would prove to be the decisive stroke.4 During the period from 15 July to 14 September, the British Fourth Army, under General Sir Henry Rawlinson – apart from its repeated attempts to win Delville Wood and High Wood – was also embroiled in a bitter contest for Guillemont and Ginchy, both of which were captured in the first half of September. In the meantime, General Sir Hubert Gough’s Reserve Army, which had gradually assumed responsibility for operations north of the Albert–Bapaume road, was beginning to figure more prominently in the offensive. After a fierce struggle, starting on 23 July, Australian troops of I Anzac Corps had, by 5 August, captured Pozières on the Albert–Bapaume road, as well as the ruined mill on the ridge line beyond the village. The gains at Pozières had undoubtedly provided the BEF with better observation over the central portion of the battlefield, although the Australians suffered some 23,000 casualties in 5 weeks. Moreover, Pozières was only a prelude to the long and painful slogging-match which the Reserve Army had still to face in order to take the successive German trench lines north-west of the Albert–Bapaume road, and on the slopes and spurs of the Morval–Grandcourt ridge, so that it could unlock the German defences at Mouquet Farm and Thiepval from the rear.