THE GERMAN ARMY the British were about to assault on the Somme was a formidable and well-trained body of men that had been deliberately honed for war. Germany had developed a highly efficient conscription system which ensured that almost 50 per cent of all her young men had experienced two years of military training from the age of 20 to 22 before being released to the reserve forces. There they would be liable to annual military training with the Reserve Army until they were 27, followed by a further period of intermittent training with the Landwehr until they reached 39, at which point they passed into the Landsturm, which could be mobilised as a kind of home-guard force. Only at the grand old age of 45 were German men completely free of military obligations to their country. Mobilisation was a complex but thoroughly well considered process. The serving army units would be topped up with the youngest reservists, while the rest of the reservists formed their own formations, which also took their place in the line of battle. The already huge German peacetime army of some fifty-one divisions could thus be rapidly supplemented with a further thirty-one reserve divisions and multifarious ancillary formations. By such means the Germans were able to mobilise a trained field army of nearly 2.5 million in 1914.
The British Army was in sharp contrast a truly New Army. Before the war Britain had relied on a volunteer system to raise her small Regular Army. In characteristically immodest fashion the British claimed that the BEF was the best trained, best equipped army in the world, but with a total of just 160,000 men it was, nevertheless, a negligible force on the battlefields of Continental Europe. At home was a further body of partially trained voluntary soldiers known as the Territorial Army. The British Army had been thoroughly reorganised in 1908 by the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, assisted by the ubiquitous figure of Major General Douglas Haig in his earlier capacity as Director of Military Training. As a result six regular infantry divisions and one cavalry division would be available for overseas service, while fourteen territorial divisions complete with artillery and fourteen Yeomanry cavalry brigades were designated for home defence duties. The territorials were part-time soldiers organised into extra battalions raised by local voluntary associations, but based on the existing regular regiments. The soldiers were expected to indulge in weekly drill night-training sessions, with additional weekend training and an annual fortnight at summer camp. In the event of war it was expected that the existing territorial battalions would expand their recruitment activities to quickly raise second line battalions that would effectively double their numbers. When push came to shove on the declaration of war, the home service restriction on territorials was quickly abandoned as the men were ‘invited’ to volunteer for overseas service, which the majority duly did. Yet it soon became obvious that more troops would be needed than the existing system could supply.
In August 1914 the newly appointed Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, was far-sighted in his immediate perception that hostilities would be long and hard fought. It was apparent to him that millions of soldiers would be needed if Britain was to take her proper place in the line on the Western Front. This was completely foreign to the British military tradition and there was simply no framework on which such an expansion could be easily based. Kitchener had the usual regular soldier’s marked distrust of volunteers, which had been further reinforced by what he considered as their inadequate performance in the Boer War. As a natural autocrat, confident in his own judgement and constitutionally unable to delegate, it was inevitable that he would act on his personal instincts. He resolved, therefore, not to expand the Territorial Army, which was already in crisis in its attempts to ‘double up’ on the outbreak of war. Indeed as it still had a home defence function to perform, it clearly had enough on its plate in the short term without further pressure. Instead Kitchener would create a ‘New Army’, still based on the regiments, but administered and trained by the regular battalions rather than delegating that power to the territorial voluntary associations. Such battalions came to be known as ‘service’ battalions. Significantly his first appeal for mass volunteers referred to service for three years or until the war was over, which emphasised his belief that a war with Germany would be a prolonged trial of strength. Indeed, Kitchener would have preferred the introduction of national conscription, but reluctantly bowed to the judgement of his Cabinet colleagues that this might trigger popular unrest which would undermine the all-important spirit of national unity in the face of war.
In response to Kitchener’s iconographic ‘Your King and Country Need You’ poster and the first appeal for recruits in August 1914 the volunteers poured in. The initial stream became a torrent, until at the height of popular enthusiasm some 30,000 men a day were flooding into the recruitment offices up and down the country. Their motivations were many and varied. A simple patriotism and a genuine desire to stand up against the foe for ‘King and Country’ was undoubtedly present for many. For others it was a simple zest for adventure: a change from the tedium of the office, the hard graft of the shop floor, the loneliness of the farmyard, the filth and ever-present dangers of the pit. Many went because their best pals were going. The minimum recruiting age was just a petty rule to be overcome by young lads determined not to be left out of the ‘adventure of a lifetime’, and the hard-pressed recruiting sergeants were often all too compliant in allowing them to enlist.
I went down to Colston Hall with the hope of enlisting in the newly formed battalion by the City, called ‘Bristol’s Own’, official title, 12th Battalion The Gloucestershire Regiment. I went to the recruiting table and the recruiting sergeant was there. I knew that the age of enlistment was nineteen so that it was no good the telling the truth—I would say I was nineteen instead of seventeen and a half! But I wasn’t asked how old was I—I was asked, ‘When were you born?’ I gave the answer I’d given throughout my life—12th February, 1897! The recruiting sergeant said, ‘Well, I don’t know whether we can take you at that age....’ He must have seen my sad look, and he said, ‘But if you go outside the Colston Hall, run round the building three times—you’ll be three years older when you come back!’ That was a good enough hint for me! When I came back he said, ‘How old are you?’ and I said, ‘Twenty!’ So that got me into the battalion.1
Private Harold Hayward, 12th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, 95th Brigade, 5th Division
Faced with this mass of civilians the existing regimental structures simply could not cope and civilian committees were established by prominent local dignitaries, industrialists and politicians both to promote and manage the recruitment process. The most famous development was that of ‘Pals’ battalions raised exclusively from a single locality, or in the cities from an identifiable strata of society.
I saw this lot in the paper and it said it was all Leeds people, and I joined up, I didn’t even know that infantry walked, to be quite truthful with you, I didn’t know anything about soldiers. I ought to have joined the cavalry lot, being brought up with horses, but it appealed to me and I went and I’ve never regretted a moment of it really, because I never met a finer lot of fellows in my life. He looked at me and he says, ‘Sallow complexion, prominent nose, mole on the right cheek’. Before he’d done with me I felt a bit like Frankenstein! Then he says, ‘Initials?’ I says, ‘F.A.’ He says, ‘You’re going to have some trouble with that!—F.A. in the army doesn’t stand for your initials!’2
Private (Fewster) Arthur Dalby, 15th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, 93rd Brigade, 31st Division
Allowances could even be made to allow groups of friends to join up and serve together.
Everyone rushing to get in, thinking it was a Pals army, they were all full of sportsmanship and that sort of thing. We were all footballers together, I was one of six. The height was men five foot six and a half. I was five foot six and was worried stiff, so I filled my shoes with paper and fastened big rubber heels on the soles and heels. They asked me my height and I told them; they hummed and hawed about it so he says, ‘Well take your shoes off!’ Well that jiggered it! Anyway I says, ‘Well there’s all my pals joining and there was six of us all footballers!’ So he says, ‘Oh, go on, let him go in!’3
Private Morrison Fleming, 15th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, 93rd Brigade, 31st Division
The Pals battalions came to represent a significant proportion of the front-line service battalions that were raised. That they were the pride and joy of their communities was demonstrable by the response of the local newspaper when the Manchester and Salford Pals were paraded in front of Kitchener in Manchester on 21 March 1915.
Only now and then in these months of war has it been forced fully home to us that we are living history, but the dullest could not see the march of the 12,000 yesterday without knowing that of this, his children’s children will be told. Nor could he see it without a deep and quickening sense of his personal relation to the facts behind it. For Manchester’s army is Manchester, and the New Army is Britain, in a way no soldiers ever have been before or, it is hoped, will ever need be again. The people who cheered and the people who marched were not spectators and a spectacle. They were kin in the truest sense, and every eligible man who watched the City Battalions swing by must have felt it an incongruous thing that he was not on the other side of the barrier.4
Reporter, Manchester Guardian
The fatal disadvantages of putting all the community’s eggs in one basket had not yet become apparent.
When the dust had died down the situation was somewhat complex. In a typical British county regiment the 1st and 2nd Battalions were regular; the 3rd was the original regular reserve battalion which remained at home; the 4th, 5th and 6th Battalions were usually territorial battalions, which each in turn often raised second-line battalions numbered the 2/4th, 2/5th and 2/6th Battalions; there would then follow a number of Kitchener service battalions, which typically would be numbered 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Battalions. Sometimes they too would raise second-line battalions. The exact number of battalions would vary depending on the recruitment potential of the parent regiment’s area. Thus, while the Dorsetshire Regiment only raised eleven battalions during the course of the war, the Royal Sussex Regiment had twenty-six battalions, the Northumberland Fusiliers had fifty-one battalions, while the all-territorial London Regiment managed a total of eighty-eight battalions.
Each battalion consisted of a headquarters company and four companies totalling about 800 men when on active service. In the Royal Artillery the typical field artillery battery would have about 200 men and six guns. The various units that together made up a typical infantry division were three infantry brigades (each of four battalions), four field artillery brigades (each of four batteries) and one heavy artillery battery. In addition there was a squadron of cavalry, ambulance units, divisional supply and ammunition trains, and engineers. The total strength was nominally 18,000 men. Broadly according to this pattern the new units were fitted into Kitchener’s New Army destined for the most part for the Western Front. Thus, the Regular Army divisions were numbered 1st to 8th; the New Army divisions were numbered 9th to 26th; the anomalous 27th to 29th divisions were in fact Regular Army divisions scraped up from units on Imperial garrison service, then the 30th to 41st were more New Army divisions, before finally the 42nd through to 74th divisions were the Territorial Army divisions (with the exception of the 63rd or Royal Naval Division which was originally formed from ‘spare’ naval reservists).
It was one thing to recruit soldiers, but another thing entirely to convert them into soldiers capable of meeting the relatively well-trained Germans in battle. Variously lacking officers, NCOs, uniforms, kit, modern weapons or even the most basic accommodation for the men—the situation was soon desperate. There was a shortage of specialist personnel of all kinds: clerks to record the details on recruitment, drill and weapons instructors, doctors to check and maintain the recruits’ health, cooks to prepare food, armourers to set up and maintain weapons. Any kind of military experience was soon at an absolute premium and many old officers and NCOs were ‘dug out’ and called back to the colours to drill the ranks into some semblance of discipline. Even worse were the problems in recruiting new artillery units. There were hardly any guns left in the country to train with and the skills that accurate gunnery required were considerably more advanced than those required by the infantry.
With these quickly amassed and ramshackle legions the old British boast of the quality rather than the quantity of her army now rebounded. In contrast to the instruction received by the bulk of the German Army there is no doubt that the British training programme was rushed, lacked any depth or detail and was often irrelevant to the real needs of the troops in modern conditions of trench warfare. In an attempt to give newly arrived battalions an easy introduction to the war, they were first attached to a regular battalion serving in the line to gain practical experience under close supervision in the strange routines and lurking dangers of trench life. Then the whole division would serve in a quiet area before being ‘blooded’ in battle. For many soldiers the Somme would be their first real baptism of fire. The training process never really finished. When they were out of the line after a couple of days rest all units would resume a programme of individual training designed to reinforce the basic military skills and to prepare them for the imminent offensive. For the service battalions this was little more than a continuation of the training they had received before they crossed the Channel, but even the ‘old sweats’ in the regulars could greatly benefit from a course of refresher training.
Our time was devoted to training for the offensive, or ‘fattening up for the slaughter’ as we cheerfully called it. For the first week or so we confined ourselves to platoon and company training, to smarten up the men and correct the somewhat slouching habits which there was always a tendency to contract during a long spell in the trenches. Three or four days of drill, bayonet fighting, musketry, bomb throwing and kindred pursuits had a wonderfully enlivening effect on us, and we were soon in fine fettle.5
Lieutenant William Colyer, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 10th Brigade, 4th Division
The men were armed with the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle, a bolt action rifle, which in the hands of the pre-war regulars could fire up to 15 aimed rounds per minute. Accurate up to a mile it was at its most effective at ranges of up to about 600 yards. The 18-in sword bayonet that clipped on to the end was not neglected and many of the older officers put great store in bayonet fighting. The usual myths were peddled, implying some racial inferiority lurking deep within the heart of the German soldier, which thereby rendered him constitutionally unable to face any attack pushed home at the point of the bayonet.
A red-tabbed and red-faced Major gave a lecture, a gruesome lecture on the use of the bayonet. He might as well have been trying to teach his grandmother to suck eggs, talking to infantrymen who had been there in battle on the use of the bayonet. He said he’d been to examine men who had been killed by the bayonet and how unnecessarily it had been used. Because the bayonet is grooved, if you bayonet a man and try and withdraw, very often it’s very hard because the flesh closes—you’ve got to give it a twist. If you withdraw without giving it a twist, the outside could close and it won’t bleed, it will only bleed internally. As the bayonet’s grooved, giving it a twist allows the air into it; then the blood flows freely.6
Private Basil Farrer, 2nd Battalion, Green Howards, 21st Brigade, 30th Division
One of the most important new weapons that the pressures of war had added to the British armoury was the Lewis light machine gun. This weighed just 26 lbs and it fired drums of 47 rounds up to a range of 2,000 yards. Sustained fire was impossible and the gun was not particularly accurate, but what the Lewis gun offered was relatively high firepower that could actually accompany the attacking infantry as they moved forward. It was a complex weapon and officers and NCOs were sent on training courses to master the intricacies of the gun mechanism.
For three days, then, I thought and talked of nothing but body-locking pins, feed actuating studs, pinion casings, pawls, racks, plungers, strikers and all the other jargon connected with the study of the Lewis gun. My great desire was to attain the record speed for changing the bolt of the gun. This operation is not at all as simple as it sounds; for instance, it would probably take you about three-quarters of an hour, at the end of which time you would be oily and angry and flushed, and moreover would probably have put in the new bolt the wrong way round, with the distressing result of the bullet shooting backwards, prematurely completing the day’s work of the firer. My time for changing the bolt correctly was thirteen seconds.7
Lieutenant William Colyer, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 10th Brigade, 4th Division
There were soon some sixteen Lewis guns for every battalion, one per platoon and the specialist knowledge of how to operate them was assiduously passed on to their men once the officers and NCOs returned to their units.
The Vickers machine gun was the heavy machine gun used by the British Army. By 1916 the guns had already been withdrawn from the infantry battalions and concentrated in specialist machine gun battalions of the Machine Gun Corps, whose numbering corresponded to the infantry brigade to which they were attached. The water-cooled, belt-driven Vickers heavy machine gun fired at a rate of up to 500 rounds per minute, spraying bullets across the beaten zone with a range of 4,500 yards. It was also slowly being appreciated that the Vickers could be fired as part of a barrage, using indirect firing at extreme elevation to hose bullets up into the air that would then pour down on targets behind the German lines. It was indeed a heavy weapon and needed a six-man crew to carry the 40-lb gun, 50-lb tripod, water container, condenser tubes and ammunition belts. Once in action, however, it could be operated by a team of two with the rest occupied in bringing up ammunition and extra water supplies.
One crucially important weapon that had to be mastered was the hand grenade. The lineage of this weapon was fairly ancient but it had not been considered part of modern war until the reality of trench warfare forced a rapid reassessment. Many different, makeshift ‘bombs’ were tried, of which the two best known were the ‘hair brush’, which had a slab of explosive tied to a wooden handle, and the ‘jam tin’ bomb—a lethal concoction of explosive and shrapnel packed into an ordinary jam tin with a spluttering fuse to complete its ramshackle appearance. By 1916 the army had settled on the mass-produced Mills bomb, which was reliable, could be thrown with a round arm cricket bowling-style action to about 30 yards and was possessed of a segmented case that fragmented to maximum lethal effect.
All in all there were many new skills for the soldier to learn as the horrors of war unfolded before them. Gas had not been considered when the war started, but now every man had to learn to put his gas mask on properly in conditions designed to simulate the kind of pressure they might face in action.
Yesterday we had the regiment ‘gassed’. All had to pass through a room and stay in it in squads for two or three minutes while gas was fired off at them. The idea is to give the men confidence in their flannel helmets and also to show them the necessity of wearing them in such a way that no outside air can get in under them. Which means the bottom end of the bags have to be tucked well into their coats which later must be buttoned up over them. One man I hear funked it, so no doubt the experience has now overcome his fears.8
Lieutenant Colonel Frank Maxwell VC, 12th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, 54th Brigade, 18th Division
The gas helmets described were undoubtedly of the hooded P. H. helmet pattern that had been introduced in November 1915 and would continue to be the standard gas mask in the British Army until replaced by the small box respirator in August 1916. Even such a grim item of personal protection was not immune from the slightly surrealistic perceptions of the British soldier.
The gas mask was a grey flannelled hood, saturated in an evil smelling chemical and uncomfortably sticky. It was drawn over the head and the base was tucked under the collar of the jacket or shirt, as the case may be. The hood had two large eye-pieces of metal rimmed glass. A rubber mouthpiece within the hood was gripped tightly between the teeth, through which the heavily impregnated disinfectant air, inhaled through the nose, was expelled through a rubber ‘flipper’ outside the mask, which opened and closed as one breathed. After a while the excess saliva in the tube coagulated—for want of a better word—causing the ‘flipper’ to sound like a raspberry blower each time one exhaled. It is not difficult to imagine the cacophonous effect of thirty-odd ‘flippers’ performing at the same time!9
Signaller Dudley Menaud-Lissenburg, 97th Battery, 147th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 29th Division
Books about the war in 1916 have often deliberately downplayed the most important element of the weaponry of the British Army because it does not fit in with their neo-romantic picture of helpless suffering amongst the ‘victim’ infantry. Yet it was the artillery that lay at the centre of the Battle of the Somme, which was destined to be a gunners’ battle right from the start. By 1916 the generals had correctly identified that artillery held the key to success on the Western Front, although they had not yet gained the experience in how best to use it to unlock the tactical conundrum that bedevilled them. The generals knew, however, that they needed ever-greater concentrations of guns and howitzers if they were to make any progress at all. Yet gunnery demanded a complex network of skills that could not quickly be imparted. The hordes of new gunners needed constant practice at gun drill to build up the kind of teamwork and fitness that was required to allow rapid fire for long periods of time.
The No. 1 was the sergeant or NCO in charge. He’d repeat the orders that would come from the officers, say they got the order, ‘Drop 50 yards!’ He used to give that order. The No. 2 on the right-hand side of the gun, he worked the range drum, it was just a dial all calibrated up to about 6,800 yards that was your total range. Instead of sitting on the seat facing forward, he always used to sit swivel legged, with his left leg out and his left arm out. His right arm was on the range drum. When the gun fired with the recoil of the gun the cam lever practically came into his hand as the gun came back, he used to whip that out, the breech would open and the empty cartridge case used to fly out. The No. 3, the gunlayer got onto the aiming point, laid the gun and actually fired it, he had a handle at the side. We used to register, you couldn’t see the targets you were firing at. They used to plant an aiming post out in front about four foot high, black and white and on the top was a little square, that was white. They used to lay this gun on to that post and any target was so many degrees right or left of this aiming post. The No. 4 and No. 5 worked alternately as loaders, standing there with another shell, they’d whip the shell in. The weight of the shell going in practically helped to close the breech. While No. 5 was loading No. 4 would be picking another one and setting the fuses if it was needed. No. 6 would assist in setting fuses. No. 2 would close the breech again. As soon as he’d closed the breech he used to say, ‘Set!’ No. 3 used to say, ‘Ready!’ No. 1 would say, ‘Fire!’ Set, ready, fire! When you’ve got into the style, you could fire the gun and before the gun came back at the end of its recoil, it was nearly loaded again.10
Gunner George Cole, C Battery, 253rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
While their men sweated over drill, officers had to master the skills of ranging shells on to targets from observation posts and faced the problem of mastering the mathematics, and in particular the trigonometry, that had blighted so many of their young lives at school.
The 18-pounder gun was the workhorse of the British artillery. A solid, reliable weapon, firing as one might expect a shell weighing just over 18 lbs, its main fault was its limited range of just 6,500 yards, although this could be raised to 7,800 yards by digging in the gun trail. The other field artillery gun was the 4.5-in howitzer. These fired a 35-lb shell up to 6,600 yards with an entirely different looping trajectory. The heavy artillery were in short supply in 1914 but the demands for ever-heavier shells to smash down the German defences soon caused a massive expansion in the siege batteries of the Royal Garrison Artillery who operated the heavier guns and mortars. These were many and varied but the key type amongst the artillery was the 60-pounder guns that hurled their shell up to 10,500 yards. The bulk of the howitzers were 6-in or 9.2-in types although the 8-in howitzer was developed by the simple expedient of shortening the barrel of the 6-in gun. The howitzers had an obvious value in conditions of trench warfare.
The howitzer fires upwards in a rather curved trajectory, so that when it arrives at the target it drops rather from the sky, instead of a flatter trajectory of a gun that doesn’t rise so much. A gun is superb for shooting at a battleship and a howitzer is superb for shooting at targets which are behind a hill. A lot of enemy batteries were behind hills so that howitzers were ideal for that purpose, and also for dropping down on trenches where there were minenwerfers and machine guns. A gun couldn’t touch them but a howitzer could.11
Second Lieutenant Montague Cleeve, 36th Siege Artillery Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery
At the start of the war when the whole emphasis of the Royal Artillery had been on the necessity of providing shrapnel shell-fire support for the infantry the range was not a problem as the guns were brought into action in direct sight of the enemy. Shrapnel shells were indeed lethal weapons if they caught infantry advancing across open ground.
Shrapnel shell is like a shotgun cartridge really. The nose of the shell is spigotted into the body of the shell and is held by either lead or little wooden rivets. In the bottom there’s a bursting charge, a cast iron plate above that, a rod goes right through the shell. There’s a time fuse and a percussion fuse and the flash from that goes down into the base, ignites the bursting charge, the iron plate pushes the bullets up and forces the nose of the shell off and then the bullets are all sprayed out of the shell. Well, if the shell hits the ground first, it’s useless. You did have a percussion fuse, but all that happened is that the bullets are just driven into the ground. I’ve had a shrapnel shell burst alongside me and no damage at all—practically all gone into the ground. The shrapnel shell time fuse has to be set according to what height you want it to burst. The fuse has a ring marked out in tenths of a second and according to your time of flight, you try to make that shrapnel shell burst just nicely above ground level.12
Signaller Leonard Ounsworth, 124th Heavy Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery
Once trench warfare began it was soon found that infantry in the trenches were relatively safe from the effects of shrapnel. High explosive shells with direct-action fuses that exploded only on impact were required to blast them out from their burrows, but these were initially in very short supply. Shrapnel shells came to be used mainly as a means of cutting barbed wire. This was not what they had been designed to do.
At that time we had no really efficient means of cutting the many square miles of wire entanglements protecting the German lines. Shrapnel to be effective had to burst low, which meant that three-quarters of the shells burst on percussion. It was extremely expensive and almost useless. We did not at that time possess a high explosive shell with direct-action fuse sensitive enough to cut wire.13
Second Lieutenant Alfred Darlington, 283rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 56th Division
By this time methods had been developed by which the fire of the guns could be controlled even when the gunners at the gun positions could not see their targets. Observation posts would be set up in the front line with telephone lines leading back to the guns’ positions. The forward observation officer would correct the fire of the guns up and down in range by means of a simple bracketing system.
Yet the view from the front line was restricted, particularly when the German lines ran along the higher ground which prevented any view of the German rear lines and artillery battery positions. Here the men of the Royal Flying Corps truly came into their own. At the start of the war, during the period of open warfare, aircraft had been seen as a minor addition to the armoury of war. The RFC was mainly used as an advanced reconnaissance patrol, to send a pilot out to locate the enemy and discover in which direction they were moving. As such it had performed a valuable role. But when the trench lines became established it was obvious that aircraft could perform a far greater role. The pressure cooker of war acted to speed up the technological development of aircraft and their engines, allowing more equipment to be carried aloft. It was soon realised that cameras could allow the pilots to bring back a record of what they had seen for later intensive study back on the ground. Soon cameras capable of taking pin-sharp glass negatives were being fitted to the basic army cooperation aircraft—the BE2c. Once the plates were back on the ground the emerging science of photographic interpretation allowed a large amount of valuable information to be gleaned. German gun batteries were exposed despite their best efforts at camouflage, machine-gun posts were obvious, the entrances to dugouts could be clearly seen and headquarters or communications centres were apparent by the tracks of buried telephone wires. Such information was obviously invaluable in planning the assault. The BE2cs could also take up a wireless with which the crews could guide shells right on to their targets using a simple clock-code system for range corrections. The work of the army cooperation aircraft was invaluable and the commander of the RFC, Brigadier General Sir Hugh Trenchard, had developed an aggressive aerial policy to enable them to carry out their duties free from the attentions of German scout aircraft. The British scouts waged a ceaseless offensive, pushing forward over the German lines and seeking to engage any German aircraft as soon as they appeared, keeping them well away from the crucial battlefield where the army cooperation aircraft plied their trade.
Through the hard work of the RFC, the Royal Artillery had developed the capacity to destroy targets behind the German lines that were not actually visible from the British front line. One limitation still remained. The artillery never could and never would be able to guarantee perfect accuracy even after they had been ranged on to a target. The failure of the guns recoil action to recreate the exact same firing position (especially in wet and muddy conditions), slight differences in every shell fired, the varying effects of wind, atmospheric pressure and other meteorological factors—all these resulted in shells flying slightly over the precise target, dropping slightly short or very slightly deviating to left or right, resulting in a rectangular beaten zone that could be up to 50 yards long and less than 10 yards wide, depending on the gun calibre. This made it difficult to guarantee that even after a zone had been flayed with shells any had actually landed in the trenches or gunpits that were the real target.
The emergence of trench warfare led to a demand for a simple short-range weapon that could throw a shell upwards and across the short divide of No Man’s Land, to drop and explode within the opposition front line. No great sophistication was required and the brighter engineer officers used their initiative to construct primitive mortars redolent of a much earlier style of siege warfare. The requirement for mortars had not been anticipated and the British Army did not have a single trench mortar when the war started. As ever, the press of war ensured that the design, assessment and manufacturing process was constricted into months rather than years and soon every division was equipped with a Stokes light mortar battery attached to each of the infantry brigades and three further 2-in medium mortar batteries as an integral part of the divisional artillery. Although the trench mortars were relatively simple weapons the men still had to be trained.
I was sent to a remote village in the back areas to go on a trench mortar course to learn something about the 2-in trench mortar pudding stick toffee apple. It consisted of a bomb weighing 42 lbs on a steel rod weighing 8 lbs and about 3 feet long, the rod fitted with a long tube at the lower end of which was a rifle mechanism. There were several different lengths of charges which could be used. The maximum range was 570 yards. The platform was extremely difficult to fix steadily and was nearly always uprooted after a few rounds had been fired. There was, however, one good feature of the mortar. The bombs were provided with a sensitive direct-action fuse that made them the best weapon we had at that time for wire cutting.14
Second Lieutenant Alfred Darlington, 283rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 56th Division
As the trench mortar batteries gained in confidence they in turn would demonstrate their potential and capabilities to the infantry within the division. Sometimes these exhibitions did not go entirely according to plan. Lieutenant Edgar Lord went to one such demonstration with his best friend Lieutenant Ivan Doncaster.
We sat down in a field near to some sandbag emplacements awaiting the arrival of the ‘brass hats’, who were to occupy the stalls. The personnel of the Trench Mortar Battery were preparing for the show, shortening fuses and such like, when suddenly we heard a cry, ‘Run for it!’ Scores of people rushed madly in all directions, so I rose to my feet and tried to move away from the emplacements, but had only gone a few yards, when I felt rather than heard a tremendous explosion. At once I flung myself on the ground covering my head with my arms. An unbelievable roar rent the air; earth and pieces of metal flying everywhere. Everyone there was hit with either or both. Two more explosions followed, during which time I did the ‘worm turn’ in a useless endeavour to reach cover. When we gathered our scattered wits, I discovered a hole an inch long in the shoulder of my tunic and my right thigh felt as if it had been beaten with a heavy stick, whilst I was covered with earth. A few yards away a man lay groaning across a few strands of barbed wire, through which he had been trying to crawl, but the gust had merely blown him into it, assisted by a piece of shell in the seat of his pants. I bandaged him, but as the leg of my trousers felt warm and sticky, I had to ask Doncaster to attend to two small wounds of mine. As the pain became more severe, I found it more comfortable to lie on my stomach. It was at least an hour before ambulances arrived to take us away. Only one man was killed outright, but several died later from the seventy or eighty casualties, a number surprisingly small considering the nearness of the crowd. If it had happened ten minutes later, most of the staff and senior officers would have been involved. An officer was shortening fuses on some of the shells, when he accidentally released a striker which fired a ten-second fuse. Instead of throwing the shell into an empty emplacement or traverse, he dropped it where he was among all the bombs—and ran for it—he was not hurt at all!15
Lieutenant Edgar Lord, 15th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, 96th Brigade, 32nd Division
What would in the modern world be regarded as an absolute calamity was just another incident in the dangerous pageant of war. The infantry took an almost instant dislike to this new weapon of war. The trench mortars would descend on the front-line troops, fire a few rounds and then depart as quickly as possible. The German retaliation would be swift, but not quite swift enough to catch the trench mortar crews. The answering burst of shell fire would land squarely on the long-suffering front-line troops. However, the mortars were formidable weapons of war simply because they had the power to deliver large amounts of high explosive accurately on to a target.
AFTER IMPROVING THEIR weapons skills the soldiers were ready to commence the programme of tactical exercises that would try and get them ready for what would face them when they went over the top in a few weeks’ time. Battalion parades and route marches would get them used to working en masse as a battalion. Most of the men were keen to learn, recognising perhaps that they needed all the help they could get.
We moved back for our training for the ‘Big Push’, full of enthusiasm, which carries one a long way. This training business was infinitely harder work than being in the line. There was no rest all day and far into the night for a good many of us. Our headquarters were at Ailly-sur-Somme, a most charming place, and all the battalions were equally well situated round about. Our training ground was a big open bit of country which, when we came to it, was covered with beautiful crops, but these we had absolutely to ignore, and in no time there was very little left. What compensation the farmers got I cannot imagine, but certainly it would not be less than £1,000 for our piece of ground alone. It seemed wicked, but there was nothing else to be done as all this country was very closely cultivated and it was absolutely necessary to carry out this training.16
Brigadier General F. C. Stanley, Headquarters, 89th Brigade, 30th Division
Although the training programme varied immensely according to the whims of the divisional commanders, in many cases an effort was made to layout on the ground the overall shape and course of the battlefield and particularly the relative positions of the specific German lines that would be their objectives.
We dug, I suppose, from 6,000 to 7,000 yards of trenches; of course not to full depth, but enough to show what it looked like. Here we practised every day, getting every man to know exactly what was required of him and what the ground would look like on the day. They all tumbled to it fairly well, and certainly our practice improved all of us very much indeed. We practised all day and every day. First, battalions singly, and then two or more battalions together. We had a sort of dress rehearsal which the Divisional Commander attended. As regards weather, it was a beast of a day, pouring with rain and everybody got soaked through. But things went off quite satisfactorily and he was very nice.17
Brigadier General F. C. Stanley, Headquarters, 89th Brigade, 30th Division
The last exercises were often seen as a chance to demonstrate what they had learnt in front of the generals and staff.
We finally made our last ‘dress rehearsal’ witnessed by the commander of the Army Corps, the 56th divisional general and all the brigadier generals, so there was plenty of red tape around. The smoke bombs were sent over just before the commencement, the attack was carried out quite satisfactorily and all the positions carried quite easily, but of course we had no opponents on this occasion.18
Lance Corporal Sidney Appleyard, 1/9th Battalion (Queen Victoria’s Rifles), London Regiment, 169th Brigade, 56th Division
For the exercises were in no sense realistic: there was no live firing from fixed-line machine guns, no deafening explosive detonations to recreate the sheer shock and awe of war; such training concepts had not yet been developed and belonged to the future. The result was that an aura of unreality often permeated accounts of these training exercises.
The whole of the division was assembled and grouped as for the attack. After the usual explanations and pow-wows, beginning from the brass-hats and commanding officers and finishing with the platoon officers and section leaders, we moved across country against imaginary Boche trenches. As we went along the various bodies of men unfolded themselves into smaller groups, and eventually into extended order, as per programme, according to the amount of opposition which we were supposed to be encountering. After some time, having advanced a great distance and captured an immense tract of country (with such surprising ease that we all felt it was a pity we hadn’t thought of doing it this way before) a halt would be called. Whereupon the brass-hats would ride up again and there would be criticisms, more explanations and more pow-wows. This being over we could collect ourselves together and hurry home, so as not to be late for tea. War under these conditions certainly was very enjoyable.19
Lieutenant William Colyer, 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 10th Brigade, 4th Division
The British Army had been hastily assembled, if not thrown together, but it had an unshakeable confidence in its own abilities. Whether Regular, Territorial or New Army every constituent unit seemed to firmly believe that they were the finest unit in the British Army—bar none. Even a regular sapper, Major Philip Neame VC who had been attached to a territorial division soon swallowed any doubts and became a true believer in the mighty prowess of his new division.
The best territorial divisions within a matter of a few months of getting to France were as good as a regular division—they became first class. I know that because I went from being a sapper officer with a regular division to become a brigade major in a territorial division and in the closest touch with the four battalions in my brigade. They were first class. When they were first sent to France, they were split up and a battalion attached to different regular divisions and thereby had something like six months attachment to a regular brigade. So they’d had that training and when they were collected again and made a division, their own division again, they were absolutely first class. The personnel were, taken on the whole, more intelligent than the average regular soldier. Most of them in the London territorial division were highly educated in that a great number of them were London clerks and that sort of thing. They became a first-class division and in battle they could be counted on to undertake any task.20
Major Philip Neame VC, Headquarters, 168th Brigade, 56th Division
Major Neame was undoubtedly an intelligent man and a good judge of men, but his confidence in his division was not so much misplaced, as influenced by his own optimism and natural pride in their achievements thus far. Everything possible at the time had been done to get these men ready for war, but the chronic lack of experienced men to train the hundreds of thousands of raw youths meant that in reality there was small chance of turning this vast conglomeration of office workers, pitmen, factory workers and farm labourers into cohesive units of hard-bitten soldiers. The Territorial and New Army divisions may have been promising material, but they lacked the sheer intensity of battle experience, while the Regular divisions were regular only in name by 1916—they, too, were filled with raw recruits, as their original ranks were for the most part either dead or still recovering from wounds. These men were the men that would meet the German Army in battle on the downlands of the Somme.