The generalissimo
The Germans rolled westwards, pausing here and there to drink French wine and to disport themselves in top hats looted from shops. And Gough’s army fought gamely here and there but mostly became a shambles. To the north Byng’s army was also pushed back but held itself together rather better than Gough’s. Byng had less front to defend and better positions to fall back upon. Haig, moreover, was more sympathetic to his troubles because Byng was nearer to the Channel ports. Haig remained confident, as was his way, and also because for the first few days of the offensive he didn’t much know what was happening. Lloyd George in London also took several days to realise the extent of the emergency; when he did he held his nerve well. Pétain, the French commander, lived under a cloud of gloom that grew blacker each day. It did not help that on March 23 the Germans began shelling Paris with an eight-inch gun firing from seventy-five miles away. Plumer handed over to Haig the 3rd, 4th and 5th Australian divisions and the New Zealand Division.
These would be the chief reinforcements sent south. They headed for the Somme and gradually took up a line that started at Hébuterne, north of Albert, and ended near a town on the red-brown downland south of the Somme. The town had flourished on the spinning of wool but most of its citizens, apart from a few old people, had now fled. It had a church with a red tower, several elegant châteaux and a textile factory. From the gentle rises outside the town one could see the spire of the cathedral at Amiens, about ten miles away. The town was Villers-Bretonneux.
AS THE GERMANS pressed forward on the second day Haig wrote in his diary that ‘our men are in great spirits. All speak of the wonderful targets they had to fire at yesterday.’ The rest of the entry seemed to be at odds with this bravado. Haig had sent a message to Pétain, telling him that Gough was falling back behind the Somme, except at Péronne. Could Pétain relieve Gough’s army up to Péronne? This was a long stretch of front and Pétain was worried that the Germans were about to strike in the Champagne, where the frontline ran nearest to Paris. He nevertheless offered help. General Marie Fayolle would bring up French reserves and take command of Gough’s army and the supporting French divisions.
Next day the Germans crossed the Somme at Ham. Fayolle’s troops were rushed in piecemeal. The Germans pushed them back too. The commander on the spot told Pétain that he needed another six divisions. Haig drove to Villers-Bretonneux to see Gough, whose old headquarters at Nesle, fifteen miles behind the front on the first day, was about to be overrun. Haig said he was surprised to learn that Gough’s troops were now behind the Somme. ‘On the first day they had to wear gas masks all day which is very fatiguing, but I cannot make out why the 5th Army has gone so far back without making some kind of a stand.’ The truth was Gough didn’t have any prepared positions to fall back on. Haig then saw Pétain and asked him to put another twenty divisions in near Amiens to prevent the French and British armies being separated. Pétain said he would try but that he also expected to be attacked in the Champagne. He was obviously torn between trying to help Haig and his fears for Paris. The long-range shelling of the capital so excited the Kaiser that he insisted on announcing it himself. He sensed a great victory and shortly afterwards decorated Hindenburg with the Iron Cross with Golden Rays. Hindenburg wrote to his wife: ‘What is the use of all these decorations?’
Horse racing went on at Moonee Valley in Melbourne on this Saturday and those present had no way of knowing that Pozières, which had been won with 23,000 Australian casualties, was about to be overrun. The racebook said: ‘After [a certain race] there will be an interval of 15 minutes for recruiting speeches. During that time the bookmakers will not call the odds.’
HAIG WAS DRIFTING in the market. The next day, March 24, was one of the critical moments of the Great War. The Germans kept coming. They were now close to Bapaume and the old Somme battlefield. A gap opened north of the Somme between Gough and Byng’s armies. In the evening Clemenceau dined with Pétain. They discussed moving ministries and their staffs from Paris to Tours. Pétain’s fears were starting to overwhelm him. At 11 pm he arrived at Haig’s advanced headquarters on the southern outskirts of Amiens.
The way Haig tells it, Pétain was ‘very much upset, almost unbalanced and most anxious’. Haig told Pétain of his plans to bring reserves, including four Anzac divisions, south to help Byng. He again asked Pétain to concentrate as many French divisions as possible in front of Amiens. Pétain said he expected to be attacked in Champagne at any moment. He did not think the main German blow had yet been delivered. He said he had told General Fayolle that if the Germans continued to advance on Amiens, he [Fayolle] was to fall back southwards to cover Paris. This would separate the French and British armies.
Haig wrote in his diary: ‘I at once asked Pétain if he meant to abandon my right flank. He nodded assent and added “it is the only thing possible, if the enemy compelled the Allies to fall back still further”.’ Haig assumed Pétain had orders to cover Paris at all costs.
And now Haig finally realised he had a crisis. He had taken over extra front on the understanding that the French would help him if there was a big attack. He was being told the arrangement was off. He had operated all along on the understanding that the French and British armies should not be separated. This arrangement also seemed to be off. Haig’s army was in peril. It was possible Britain and France could lose the war. Pétain’s defeatism had to be checked.
Haig hurried back to Montreuil, arriving at 3 am. He telegraphed Wilson, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, asking him and Lord Derby, the War Minister, to come to France immediately. They should arrange that ‘General Foch or some other determined General who would fight, should be given supreme control of the operations in France’.
Haig had long opposed the idea of a generalissimo. Now, to save the cause, he was prepared to give up much of his own independence. He had made the decision quickly and calmly. He was sure it was the right one. It was one of his best moments.
NEXT DAY, THE 25th, the Germans pushed across the old Somme battlefield. Another day or so at this rate and their frontline would be back where it was before July 1, 1916. During the night a Saxon division that had fought against the Australians at Pozières crossed the River Ancre between Albert and Hébuterne. The Australian 3rd and 4th divisions were assembling as a reserve between Arras and Doullens. The New Zealanders were already being rushed into the battle nearby at Auchonvillers. The Anzac divisions ran into rare confusion. The British army had not been in a rout like this since the retreat from Mons. Great columns were shuffling west: artillery pieces, wagonloads of wounded, walking wounded, stragglers. Communications had broken down days ago, mainly because brigade and battalion headquarters were constantly being shifted west. As often happens there was probably more panic in the back areas than in the frontline.
LLOYD GEORGE WASN’T going to send Lord Derby across to Haig: the War Minister was too easily manipulated. Instead he sent Lord Milner, a member of the War Cabinet, to accompany Wilson. The allies met the next day, the 26th, at Doullens, fifteen miles north of Amiens.
There were in fact three meetings. First, Haig met his army commanders, Horne, Plumer and Byng. Gough was not present. True, he was now officially under Fayolle and he had more troubles than the other three commanders, but one would still have expected him to be there. It was as though he and his front had already been written off. Haig explained what had to be done. Amiens had to be held and all reserves had to go to Byng.
The army commanders stayed for the second meeting, which was joined by Milner and Wilson. Wilson was confused: he loved politicking but this was happening too quickly. Milner’s mind was as clear as ever. He wanted to know what Haig intended to do; Clemenceau, whom Milner had already spoken to, was worried that Haig was about to fall back on the Channel ports. No, said Haig, he wanted a ‘fighting’ French general in supreme command so that together they could save Amiens.
The main meeting began at noon. Raymond Poincaré, the President, Clemenceau, Foch and Pétain appeared for France. Milner, Wilson and Haig were there for Britain. Haig looked tired, probably because his routine had been disturbed by two late nights. Haig thought Pétain looked terrible. ‘He had the appearance of a Commander who was in a funk and has lost his nerve.’
Haig spoke first. He said his objective now was to defend Amiens and hold on north of the Somme on Byng’s front. When Haig mentioned Gough’s army, Pétain said it was ‘broken’. Pétain said he wanted to defend Amiens too, but it would be hard to move French divisions up. He refused to give guarantees. Pétain had lost faith. Foch hadn’t: the allies should fight in front of Amiens – ‘we must not retire a single inch.’ Clemenceau proposed a formal scheme: Foch would co-ordinate the British and French armies in the defence of Amiens. Haig thought the proposal ‘worthless’: he wanted Foch to be able to overrule Pétain. Haig proposed that Foch should co-ordinate all the allied armies on the western front. This was adopted. There was finally a unified command – of sorts. Ludendorff had brought about something he never intended.
Foch’s appointment was defined more precisely the following month when Pershing and the Americans became party to the contract. The agreement gave all national commanders-in-chief the right of appeal to their own governments if they believed Foch was putting their forces in peril. Foch would work with a small staff of about twenty officers. His writ was limited. How it ran would depend on the power of his personality.
Foch and Clemenceau tended to grate against each other. After the Doullens conference, Clemenceau is supposed to have said to Foch: ‘Well, you’ve got the job you so much wanted.’ To which Foch is said to have replied: ‘A fine gift. You give me a lost battle and tell me to win it.’
Haig returned to Montreuil and went riding. Wilson saw him and thought he looked ten years younger. Foch immediately began to impose his personality. After leaving Doullens he ran into Gough further south and spoke brusquely to him, appearing to question Gough’s courage. Haig said Foch had spoken ‘most impertinently’. Yet it was also evident that Haig was moving away from his protégé and thought that he had made mistakes over the last five days. According to Wilson, he and Milner that evening talked to Haig about removing Gough. Wilson said he told Haig he could have General Rawlinson (now the British military representative on the Supreme War Council in Versailles) as a replacement and that Haig agreed to this. Haig did not mention this in his diary but said that he defended Gough. ‘He had never lost his head, was always cheery and fought hard.’
ONE ANECDOTE SOMETIMES tells more about an event than boxes of official documents. Brigadier-General Henry Sandilands commanded a brigade in Gough’s army. He was on leave when the Germans attacked. He was ordered back and arrived in Amiens around midnight on March 25. He walked for almost an hour trying to find someone who could tell him what was going on and where his division, the 35th, was. Eventually he found the officers’ club. He was told his division might be near Maricourt, a few miles south of Pozières.
Next morning – the 26th, the day of the Doullens conference – he still couldn’t discover what was happening. Then he heard that Gough’s headquarters was in a suburb of Amiens. He induced the manager of the officers’ club to run him there in a Ford van. He found an unpretentious villa and ‘great confusion’. Sandilands came upon some junior officers that he knew. He also noticed an officer sitting on a chair with his mouth wide open. A doctor was prodding at his teeth. Sandilands didn’t pay much attention to the officer.
‘Feeling rather cheerful myself, I said to the assembled company: “What on earth are you all running away for like this?” My remark was received in dull silence, and to my horror the officer with his mouth open sprang up and said: “What the hell are you doing here?” This was no less a person than General Gough, with whom, like most people, I had had one or two encounters.’
Sandilands said he was trying to find his brigade and hastily left the room. No-one at the villa knew where the 35th Division was; they didn’t even know what corps it was in at that moment. Sandilands hung about outside the gate to the headquarters ‘waiting for something to turn up’.
About 11 am a limousine arrived. Out stepped Lord Milner and Wilson. They were on the way to the Doullens conference. Wilson knew Sandilands. He asked him if it was safe to drive through Amiens. Sandilands said it was. He assumed the pair was looking for Gough’s headquarters. The general was inside the villa, he told Wilson.
Wilson replied: ‘Oh, he is here is he? Well, good morning.’ Wilson and Milner climbed back into the car and drove off. Sandilands said he thought: ‘That’s the end of Gough.’
About noon a staff officer told Sandilands that the 35th Division was in General Walter Congreve’s corps. Congreve’s headquarters was ten miles east at Vadencourt, near Albert. Sandilands was to go there at once. But, sorry, there was no car. Well how was he to get there? No-one knew.
Sandilands fell back on the manager of the officers’ club and his Ford. He arrived at Congreve’s headquarters a few hours later. Congreve had won the Victoria Cross in South Africa. Sandilands had never met him and was shocked at his appearance. ‘He struck me as being absolutely down and out and incapable of any clear thinking. He was evidently suffering from want of sleep and both mental and physical fatigue.’ Congreve told Sandilands to go to his division and tell its commander, Major-General George Franks, to pull back. He must not fight because there were no troops to send to him.
Sandilands arrived at the 35th Division headquarters and delivered the message to Franks. The general said he had just received a message from corps headquarters to go forward eight miles to near Bray. The division had retreated from there that morning. Sandilands said the order had to be a mistake. Only half-an-hour ago he had been told the 35th was to pull back. No, said Franks, he had now been told to return to Bray.
Franks said: ‘As an infantry officer do you think it possible that men who have been fighting a rearguard action and retiring for about eight miles could now turn round and advance again towards the position they were originally holding in the morning?’
‘No,’ said Sandilands, ‘it would be madness to attempt it and I should refuse to do it.’
‘That is what I have done,’ Franks said. What he did not say was that, for doing so, he had just been relieved of his command.
Sandilands now left to find his brigade, which was supposed to be near the village of Buire. He arrived there about 6 pm after passing groups of senior officers along the road ‘just standing about in a hopeless sort of way, doing nothing’. No sign of his brigade. He eventually found it after dark. While his men ate and slept Sandilands scouted to see if any other troops were about. He found the remnants of the 21st Division and stragglers from many others.
Sandilands found a defensive position for his men and fought off four weak attacks during the next two days. Such was the way of things near the frontline on the day that Foch became generalissimo.
NEXT DAY, THE 27th, the Germans kept coming, but their momentum began to slow. The direction of the attack was now pointing south-west, towards Amiens, rather than north-west towards Arras and the Channel ports, as Ludendorff had intended. The Germans were threatening Montdidier in the south, having advanced thirty miles in a week. In the centre they were within seven or eight miles of Villers-Bretonneux. They would be able to bombard Amiens with ease from there. In the north, where the two Australian divisions were coming into the battle, the Germans had entered Dernancourt. They were in nearby Albert too. British artillerymen fired on the basilica to deny the Germans use of the tower for observation. The Hanging Virgin fell but the war didn’t end.
Long before they entered Albert the German infantrymen had discovered that British soldiers were better fed and clothed than they were. The Germans stopped to eat, drink and grab items of clothing. The novelist and poet Rudolf Binding, a German staff officer, was astonished by what he saw in Albert. Some of his countrymen were rounding up cows. Others were carrying hens and bottles of wine. Some had looted a stationer’s shop and were making off with writing paper and coloured notebooks. Some were wearing top hats. Others were drunk. A lieutenant emerged from a cellar. ‘I cannot get my men out of this cellar without bloodshed,’ he said.
ON THE EIGHTH day of the battle Hubert de la Poer Gough became its most famous casualty. He lost his job, not his life, his honour, not his limbs, cut down by multiple wounds inflicted over a week. Lloyd George and others in London saw the British retreat as a shambles and a humiliation; it demanded a scapegoat, preferably one high up the chain of command. Gough’s first wound came when he returned to his headquarters about 5 pm. As he tells it in his The Fifth Army : ‘Here I found General Ruggles-Brise, Haig’s military secretary, and not having an idea what he had come about, I sat him down to some tea. He then asked to see me alone and told me as nicely as he could that the Chief thought that I and my Staff must be very tired, so he had decided to put in Rawlinson and the Staff of the Fourth Army to take command. I was very surprised, and I suppose I was very hurt, but beyond saying “All right”, I only asked when Rawlinson would be coming to take over.’
Haig had Gough to dinner the following night. He told him he wanted him and his staff out of the line so that they could reconnoitre the Somme valley from Amiens to the sea, in case the British had to fight there.
A few days later Haig was at a conference to define more precisely Foch’s powers as generalissimo. Here Gough received his second wound. Lloyd George told Haig it was not enough for Gough to be out of the line: he must be sent home. Haig wrote: ‘To this I said I could not condemn an officer unheard, and that if L.G. wishes him suspended he must send me an order to that effect. L.G. seems a “cur” and when I am with him I cannot resist a feeling of distrust of him and of his intentions.’ Next day the order came in writing from Lord Derby. Gough was sent home on half-pay. Haig told Gough: ‘You will have every chance to defend yourself, Hubert. There will be a court of enquiry.’ Gough, according to his account in The Fifth Army told Haig: ‘Don’t worry about me’, and left.
Several months later Haig wrote to his wife:
As regards Gough, I am sorry that he is talking stupidly, but I don’t think it would be any use writing to him. Some of his friends are advising him to keep quiet. I am doing all I can to help him, but, as a matter of fact, some orders he issued and things he did were stupid – and anything of the nature of an enquiry would not do him any good. In my report, of course, I will give him every credit for being in a very difficult situation, and will stick up for him as I have hitherto done.
It was typical of Haig. Loyalty ran so far: in the end everyone was expendable but himself. It seems perverse that Gough was sent home in disgrace for losing a battle he could never have won.
Gough had been failing and bungling and cobbling up attacks for close to two years. He had been promoted far beyond his ability – by Haig. His ideas on tactics were old-fashioned. He lacked the analytical powers of men like Monash and Currie. He had none of the charm of Birdwood or the grace of Plumer. He inspired no affection. Politicians didn’t like him: Lloyd George had wanted him removed in 1917. His luck always seemed to be bad, mainly because he didn’t do enough preliminary work to give good luck a chance. He might have been sacked for First Bullecourt or August at Ypres. Instead he was dismissed for something that would have confounded a better general.
Haig is supposed to have told one of Gough’s staff officers that public opinion at home demanded a scapegoat ‘and the only possible ones were Hubert and me. I was conceited enough to think that the army could not spare me.’
LUDENDORFF SUFFERED TOO. His youngest stepson, a pilot, was shot down and killed over the battlefield. Ludendorff asked that a search be made for his stepson’s aircraft. It was found late the following month. A grave was nearby. Ludendorff sent the lieutenant who discovered the wreckage a personal note and a photograph of himself as a mark of gratitude.
ON THE 28TH, the day that Gough was relieved, the Germans made small gains north of the Somme but pressed on strongly south of the river. Ludendorff’s plan to capture Arras and drive north was being compromised every day. The German infantrymen were following the path of least resistance, and that was south-west. They were now only a mile or so from Villers-Bretonneux.
The 4th Australian Division had come into the battle north of the river at Dernancourt, near Albert. The front here was fluid and uncertain, more so because the Germans were slowing down. They had been diverted by beer and top hats; they were also tired.
A railway line ran north–south past Dernancourt. Immediately east of the line was the River Ancre, fast-flowing and sparkling, and then Dernancourt. The Germans were in the village. The Australians were on the western side of the railway line, peering into a misty dawn. Sergeant Stan McDougall, a Tasmanian blacksmith, was behind the railway embankment. His job was to watch a level crossing. Just after dawn McDougall heard the sound of bayonet scabbards slapping on thighs. He knew the Germans were coming, even though he couldn’t see them. McDougall ran to summon help and brought back seven men. He picked up a Lewis gun and began firing it from the hip, pouring fire into Germans trying to cross the embankment, killing eight. Fifty-odd Germans had crossed the embankment and were threatening the Australian flank. McDougall opened up on them. The barrel casing of the Lewis gun became so hot it blistered his left hand. A sergeant contrived to support the gun while McDougall squeezed the trigger with his good hand. The Australians took about thirty prisoners.
McDougall’s citation for the Victoria Cross said his actions ‘saved the line’. Seven days later McDougall was at Dernancourt when the Germans attacked again. He took a Lewis gun out into no-man’s land. When German fire damaged the gun he crawled back 300 yards to find another one. Then he led a counter-attack. This time he won the Military Medal.
Lieutenant John Barton of the 5th Australian Division passed columns of refugees as he approached the front west of Albert. Beds, tables and chairs swayed on overloaded carts. Men and children trudged beside them. There were few women. Most, Barton wrote, had stayed in their homes until the last. They would have a little bundle ready. If the Germans appeared, they would pick it up and flee. The refugees greeted the Australians with ‘Tres bon Australie’. And the Australians replied: ‘Cheer up, Froggie.’
In the village of Acheux the Australians came on a woman ‘living rough’. The kitchen furniture had gone with her husband and children. She had her bundle of luggage in a towel tied up at the four corners so that she could thrust a stick into it and sling it over her shoulder. She ended up cooking for the Australian officers.
A week later Major Donald Coutts, the doctor with the 2nd Division, arrived in the nearby village of Millencourt. The villagers had obviously left in a hurry, leaving clothing, plates, cutlery, food and wine behind. Private Roy Brewer, from the same division, also came on a village (he didn’t name it) where the French had left everything behind. The Australians found a cow wandering. They shot her and ate steak and chipped potatoes for three days. The 24th Battalion from the 2nd Division arrived at Millencourt in the first week of April. The men had no clean underwear and made use of women’s underclothing left behind. They also took to wearing silk hats and frock coats. An order was eventually issued prohibiting the wearing of civilian clothes.
MARCH 29, THE ninth day of the battle, brought a pause. Ludendorff tried to reorganise his forces. He decided to move five divisions to the south. His armies there would next day push west, towards Amiens, and south to herd the French away from the British. Everything was slowing down in the north; the artillery was struggling to catch up with the infantry. Ludendorff’s armies there had advanced twenty miles, the last half of this over the old Somme battlefield. In the south, however, the Germans had now pushed back the right of what remained of Gough’s army south of Villers-Bretonneux. The 9th Australian Infantry Brigade, part of the 3rd Division and commanded by Monash’s friend Charles Rosenthal, had been guarding bridges on the Somme near Corbie. Now it was rushed to Cachy, south-west of Villers-Bretonneux and in front of Amiens.
THE GERMAN ATTACK on the 30th, the tenth day of the offensive, mostly failed. Just north of Villers-Bretonneux sits the pretty little village of Le Hamel. On the 30th the Germans, according to one of their histories, could hear roosters crowing in Hamel. ‘We’ll have you in the pot tomorrow,’ one soldier announced. Not to be. The Germans were repulsed there and at Villers-Bretonneux, a few miles south. Just south of Villers-Bretonneux is Hangard Wood. The Germans took ground in front of this, which was close to Rosenthal’s new position at Cachy.
ON THE ELEVENTH day Ludendorff’s attack paused again. The French at the southern end of the line below Amiens now believed the Germans had gone about as far as they could. Yet Amiens tempted Ludendorff. He was so close: if he broke through at Villers-Bretonneux he was almost there, even though his artillery was lagging.