4
The Plan
The year 1916 opened hopefully for the Allies. The major military powers of the Alliance – France, Russia, Italy and Great Britain – were hoping to launch simultaneous offensives from three sides in an effort to gain victory in that year. The planning for these had already started and the attacks were to be launched as early in the summer as possible. The British and French assaults were to be made side by side on the Somme.
For Britain, there was every indication that 1916 was to be her year of triumph. After the frustrations of 1914 and 1915, there were high hopes of the army of civilian soldiers which was only now coming to full strength and of a new military leadership. In December 1915 fresh men had come to the two vital positions of Chief of the Imperial General Staff and c.-in-c. of the B.E.F. Gen. Sir William Robertson (‘Wully’ to his friends) had taken over in London and Gen. Sir Douglas Haig was the new commander in France.
The British entered into the plan for a joint offensive with enthusiasm. The Dardanelles expedition was closed down and many of the troops involved there were directed to France. Haig felt very strongly that it was on the Western Front that the major British effort should be made and that all troops sent to other theatres were being wasted.
The Allied plans were rudely shattered when the Germans launched a heavy attack on the French at Verdun in February 1916. The Germans made some early gains and nearly took the town. The French, true to their policy of ‘not another metre’, held stubbornly and refused to give more ground; their defiant call, ‘Ils ne passeront pas’ (‘They shall not pass’), found a place in French history.
Steadily the French losses mounted, until it began to look as though they might collapse if the Germans were not diverted. The means for doing this were at hand, for the growing number of British divisions in France were not involved, at this time, in any major action. Anxious calls went out from the French that the British should attack and relieve them at Verdun. The British could not ignore this call and her government sent instructions to Haig to prepare his army for battle.
Sir Douglas Haig, the new c.-in-c., was to become the most controversial character of the war. By 1915 he had had a distinguished army career and there was no doubt about his personal bravery. He had spent many years with the cavalry (7th Hussars and 17th Lancers) and had commanded a group of mobile columns in the Boer War. In 1914 he was an infantry corps commander with the B.E.F. and became an army commander before the end of the year. Involved in the Battle of Loos, he had been severely critical of the handling of that battle by the former c.-in-c., Sir John French.
Haig had married one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting and was a confidant of the king. After Loos, he was in London on leave and was called to Buckingham Palace where the king asked him about the battle. Haig repeated his criticisms of his superior. In December, Sir John French was recalled to England; Sir Douglas Haig was offered the position of c.-in-c. and he accepted. So Haig moved to G.H.Q. and became the commander of the whole of the British Army in France and Belgium. He was not, however, promoted immediately to the rank of field-marshal, but remained a full general, the same rank as his army commanders.
Haig, a dour, determined Lowland Scot of fifty-five and an ardent member of the Church of Scotland, firmly believed that God was on his side and received great satisfaction from the weekly sermons of his chaplain. His apparent disloyalty in openly criticizing Sir John French can only be excused by saying that Haig was firmly convinced that he was doing the right thing for the army; there is no evidence that he was seeking French’s position, although he must have known that he was the most likely candidate. It remained to be seen whether he could do better.
Not an effusive man, he was given respect and loyalty by his subordinates and they credited him with the ability and determination to command the B.E.F. In his turn he was able to delegate powers easily to his generals, and if things went wrong he stood by them, frequently protecting them from the wrath of the government.
Douglas Haig was not a happy man in the spring of 1916. The original plan for a joint attack with the French on the Somme had suited him. The participation of the veteran French Army on his right would have made up for the inexperience of his own troops. Instead, because of Verdun, the French could only attack on an eight-mile front in the coming joint offensive instead of one of twenty-five miles as previously promised. In addition, the French were demanding more and more urgently that the British should open their attack and gave 1 July as the latest they could hold on at Verdun without some action to divert the Germans. This was earlier than Haig would have liked to get his still inexperienced army ready for what was becoming a predominantly British effort rather than a joint offensive.
Douglas Haig may have had faults, but disloyalty to his allies was not one of them. He accepted the French plea and prepared for an attack in June. He had no illusions about the task before him. In the original plan for a combined Allied offensive he had hoped to see the end of the war in 1916. He had dreamed of seeing the infantry break through the hated lines of trenches so that he could push his beloved cavalry divisions through into open country. He was certain that, in the resulting war of movement, he could beat the Germans. But, in the changed circumstances following Verdun, he felt that his army could not do this virtually alone. In May he told his army commanders that it was unsound to expect a victory in 1916 and that the summer attack had three objects: to relieve the French at Verdun; to inflict losses upon the Germans; and to place the British Army in positions favourable for the final victory that would now come in 1917.
He placed the main part of the attack in the hands of the newly formed Fourth Army, under Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson who held the Somme front with the French on his right. He directed Rawlinson to mount an infantry attack and to seize the Pozières Ridge on a ten-mile front from Montauban, his most southerly point, to the River Ancre. North of this little river, one corps was to seize the German trenches on a further three-mile front and there form a flank guard to protect the main attack.
Basically the plan was for a simple infantry attack but Haig’s optimism, which was to affect so many plans during the war, elaborated on this. There were five cavalry divisions in France which Haig could not bear to leave out of the battle. This might be the cavalry’s last chance. It was being suggested in London that, because of the expense of maintaining the idle cavalry in France, they should be disbanded. If Rawlinson’s infantry were able to break clear through the German lines, Haig could pass his cavalry through the gap and achieve his war of movement. If all went well he might even force the collapse of the Germans in 1916 after all.
Haig ordered the formation of a strong force of three cavalry divisions under Lieut-Gen. Sir Hubert Gough. These were to stand immediately behind the attacking infantry in case there was a breakthrough. If that event occurred, Gough was to be given some infantry divisions of his own and, with these supporting the cavalry, he would exploit the success independent of Fourth Army control. This force was to be known as the Reserve Army. Gough was given the necessary staff to create an army H.Q., but not the rank of full general to put him on a par with the Fourth Army Commander, Gen. Rawlinson.
Gough’s orders from Haig were to wait for Rawlinson’s infantry to attack and, if a break occurred, to push through that gap and seize Bapaume. He was to leave a covering force there, facing the German rear, and turn his main force northwards into the open country behind the lines towards Arras. At the same time, Rawlinson’s infantry was to turn north and roll up the trench lines alongside Gough. The French, meantime, were to hold the right flank of the breakthrough and prevent German interference from the south.
If Haig had been a racing man it would be said that he had placed bets on two horses. He wanted to capture the German trench system on a wide frontage in conjunction with the French and, at the same time, he wanted a breakthrough so that his cavalry could get out into open country. One suspects that his reason led him to the former but his instinct to the latter. It is easy to sympathize with Haig in his planning for his first battle as c.-in-c. Deep down he felt that the B.E.F. had been ill-directed in 1915; he believed that he had the ability and, with his reinforcements, the troops to do better.
To give the attack an even better chance of success, Haig ordered the commanders of his First, Second and Third Armies to carry out constant threatening moves on their fronts to keep the Germans guessing and to tie down their reserves. To the Third Army, which held the line north of Rawlinson’s Fourth, he gave an even bigger task. On the opening day of the battle it was to mount a full-scale attack on the German-held salient at Gommecourt. Once again Haig was going to kill two birds with one stone. He wanted to eliminate the awkward salient and, at the same time, provide a worthwhile diversionary effort to assist the main attack of Rawlinson’s Fourth Army.
Having decided upon his broad plan, Haig issued the necessary orders to his army commanders for their more detailed planning. He gave the first target date for the opening attack – 25 June.
In theory, three army commanders – those of the Third, Fourth and the Reserve Armies – were directly involved in the further development and detailed planning of the c.-in-c.’s plan of attack. In effect, two of them had little to do.
Gen. Sir Edmund Allenby (the ‘Bull’), the commander of the Third Army, was responsible for the diversionary attack on the Gommecourt salient. He did not like the plan. There was to be a one-mile gap between his attack at Gommecourt and the northern flank of that of the Fourth Army. To Allenby there should have been no gap at all so that his troops at Gommecourt could have the protection on one flank at least of other troops advancing at the same time. If this was not possible then the diversion, to be successful, should be well away from the main attack. But Allenby was not personally on good terms with Haig; he did not press his objections too hard but left his corps commander on the spot, Lieut-Gen. Snow, to make the detailed preparations.
Certain decisions had already been made for Snow. His diversionary attack had to conform with the main one in the length of its preliminary bombardment and the timing of the attack itself. Two divisions were to be used and no extra troops were allotted for preparing the attack or for a reserve.
With his modest resources Snow decided not to attack the salient frontally; instead, each division would attack one shoulder of it with a proportion of their battalions. If both were successful, they were to push on, link up behind the village and cut off the salient. Neither Allenby nor Snow had much heart for this task. Not only would they be drawing upon their troops the fire of German artillery and infantry from three sides; in addition, to add to the effect of diversion, they had been ordered to make their preparations as obvious as possible.
After he had given his two divisional commanders their orders, Snow offered them some advice. He pointed out that their diversionary role was a strictly limited one, that there were no reserves behind them, and he stressed that they were only to advance when the German defences had been destroyed by the artillery. This advice was to have important repercussions.
Haig had chosen as the commander of the Reserve Army Sir Hubert Gough (‘Goughy’), who came from a famous army family; his uncle, father and brother had all won the Victoria Cross. As a brigade commander in 1914, it was Gough who had ordered the first shots to be fired by the B.E.F. in the war. (German artillery were firing on his men and Gough ordered his own guns into action but, since they were outranged by the heavier German battery, they did no damage.) Thereafter his rise had been meteoric: April 1915, a divisional commander; July 1915, a corps commander; and, now, in the spring of 1916, he was commanding an army, although he was not immediately given the rank of full general. He was, at forty-five years old, by far the youngest of the senior generals in France, being seven years younger than Rawlinson and ten years junior to Haig.
As commander of the Reserve Army, Gough had little to do. He had been allocated three cavalry divisions, but they were still well to the rear and he had no responsibility for holding any of the line. Gough formed his army H.Q. and, although their roles depended upon Rawlinson’s infantry creating a gap, began to plan for the coming battle with the cavalry staff. He was much heartened when, in mid-June, Haig allocated him further troops – a full corps of three infantry divisions; now he had the makings of a proper army.
If Allenby was despondent and Gough excited, the commander of the Fourth Army was calm. Unlike the other three generals involved, who were all cavalrymen, Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson (‘Rawly’) had always been an infantryman (King’s Royal Rifle Corps and the Guards). He had seen action in Burma, Sudan and the Boer War, where he had commanded a battalion at the Siege of Ladysmith. Between the end of the Boer War and 1914 he had travelled extensively, having visited India, Canada, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, Algeria and Morocco. He had watched the armies of three great powers on manoeuvres: those of Germany, Japan and Russia.
In 1914 he had been Director of Recruiting at the War Office and directly concerned with the raising of the New Army. In France he had commanded successively the 4th Division, IV Corps and Fourth Army, the last of which he had formed himself. After Neuve Chapelle, some of the men under his command had named him the ‘Arch Bitcher’, following the vigorous handling of his corps in that battle. Unlike Allenby, Rawlinson was on easy terms with Haig who had personally selected him for his present position. As the commander of the army making the main attack, he was to be the key man in the coming battle.
Rawlinson did not share the cavalry generals’ enthusiasm for the breakthrough. In his opinion it was going to be difficult enough to take the German lines one by one, without having to breach the trench systems completely for the cavalry to pass through. He accepted Haig’s dual plan but only prepared for the first part of it.
Rawlinson had been impressed with the successful German opening attack at Verdun. A heavy artillery preparation had completely destroyed the French front-line trenches which had then been occupied by the German infantry. This process had been repeated several times and Rawlinson planned to employ it on the Somme. He had great faith in his own artillery and proposed to use the heaviest and longest bombardment of the war to destroy the German line. Every available gun was to be used for five days and nights before the infantry attacked. The infantry themselves were relegated to the role of mopping up and occupying defences that had already been destroyed for them by the artillery. He hoped the Germans would then counter-attack their lost positions so that he could exact a further toll of their infantry under conditions favourable to his own men.
Rawlinson planned to take one enemy line, or trench system, at a time. Having taken the first and allowed the counterattacks to break themselves against it, he would bombard the second until it too was ready for capture. Given time and enough artillery ammunition, he would eventually break through the German defences and then the cavalry could have their chance. So confident was he in the power of the artillery that he was convinced there would be little resistance from the Germans when his infantry attacked. Rawlinson, therefore, ordered an infantry attack plan which provided for a slow, rigid, methodical advance over No Man’s Land, in place of the standard assault tactics.
Rawlinson’s Fourth Army had been given five strong corps; he spread four of these corps evenly along the front of the main attack between the Somme and the Ancre and the last of them north of the Ancre to form the flank guard to the main attack. The artillery too were spread evenly along the line.
The original date chosen for the attack could not be met and a new one had been chosen – 29 June. The time of the infantry attack had also been fixed – 7.30 A.M. The French would have liked it even later but Rawlinson said that this was the latest he could manage. The established principle of the infantry attacking at dawn, which was over three hours earlier, was to be sacrificed for the better artillery observation of full daylight.
It is interesting to examine the relationship between the three generals involved in the main attack. Douglas Haig, the newly appointed c.-in-c., was doing a field marshal’s job but only held the rank of general. Henry Rawlinson was in theory his subordinate but held the same rank and was nearly the same age; in addition, he was the only one of the three who was an infantryman. Hubert Gough was supposed to hold a position equivalent to Rawlinson’s but was a rank lower and nearly a decade younger. The result was that, instead of Haig exercising command over two equal subordinates, Haig and Rawlinson seemed to be more in partnership and the unfortunate Gough was beneath both of them.
The first result of this relationship was seen when Rawlinson’s deliberate plan was submitted to the c.-in-c. Haig could not see in it the making of a breakthrough and a rolling up of the German lines to Arras. He urged Rawlinson to shorten the bombardment so that the Germans would have less warning of the attack. He advised, also, that the German trenches should be rushed as soon as the barrage lifted on the day of the attack and, finally, he asked Rawlinson to take at least two of the German lines on the first day and not one as Rawlinson had planned.
The first two were sensible suggestions and standard army practice but Rawlinson would agree to neither. His shortage of heavy artillery could only be overcome by increasing the length of the bombardment and he considered his infantry insufficiently trained to adopt more sophisticated tactics. If Haig had had the courage of his convictions he would have ordered Rawlinson to adopt these two tactics but, possibly in deference to Rawlinson’s long infantry experience and seniority, he did not press his objections.
On the third point, that of the taking of more than one line, there was a compromise. North of the main road to Bapaume the German second line lay close behind their first and, on that section at least, Rawlinson agreed to take both lines on the first day. This would bring the high ground at Pozières into that day’s objectives. South of the road the German second line lay farther back and, as the French on his right were only planning a small advance on the first day, to push on too far would leave Rawlinson’s right flank open. Here only the first line was to be taken on the first day.
As the generals drew up their plans the divisions were gathering on the Somme for the battle. Some had been there ever since this front had been taken over from the French and these had got to know their sectors well, but for most it was a case of leaving old familiar trenches in the north. Reginald Bastard, now a lieutenant-colonel and commanding his battalion, the 2nd Lincolns, led it in a seven-day march by easy stages through pleasant Picardy before taking over part of the line opposite Ovillers.
The 30th Division, a New Army formation composed mostly of Liverpool and Manchester men, found themselves on the extreme right of the line next to the French. The Lancashire men were soon on good terms with the French soldiers whom they often met. At this stage of the war the French were considered to be veterans and the raw Lancashire troops were pleased to be alongside them.
From Gallipoli, the 29th Division arrived and went into the line opposite Beaumont Hamel. They were greeted at once by a large placard displayed by the Germans: ‘Welcome to the 29th Division.’ The division formed part of VIII Corps, north of the Ancre, which was to provide the flank guard to the main attack. The corps commander, Lieut-Gen. Hunter-Weston, a jovial Scot, had been the 29th Division’s commander in Gallipoli, when the division had earned its ‘Incomparable’ reputation. Hunter-Weston was delighted to have his old division in his corps but the senior officers of his other divisions soon tired of hearing how good it was. The 29th Division had still to prove itself in France.
The divisions continued to arrive until the whole area was thick with troops. Nothing like it had ever been seen before; there were to be three times as many men as at Loos, the B.E.F.’s previous biggest effort. Eighteen divisions would be available for the first day of the attack; the reader should remember that these contained thirteen battalions each and were equivalent to twenty-six Second World War divisions. The superiority over the Germans was seven to one. Even the old-timers who had known the bad battles of 1915 were impressed; surely this huge force must succeed.
On the eve of the battle, Rawlinson was to examine the ration strength of his Fourth Army. It contained 519,324 men and prompted him to comment, ‘It is not the lot of many to command an army of over half a million men.’*
Although strong in numbers, the army was very short of experience. The four Regular divisions were only shadows of their former selves; three had been ‘diluted’ in the exchange of battalions with New Army divisions and the Regular element was composed mainly of war-time volunteers with a few old hands like Reginald Bastard and Percy Chappell, now a company sergeant major in his old battalion, the 1st Somersets.
The Territorials, too, had changed. Their losses had been harder to replace, the rush of recruits in 1914 and early 1915 having sometimes passed them by. Many of their battalions were below strength and some of their reinforcements had only received the sketchiest of training. In the Third Army, Allenby had to provide two divisions for a diversionary attack in which he had little faith and in which the divisions concerned might well be badly cut up. He chose to keep his other divisions intact and allocated two Territorial ones for Gommecourt, the 46th (North Midland) and 56th (London).
If the battle was anyone’s it was to be the New Army’s; some sixty per cent of the battalions due to attack on the first day belonged to it. Physically and intellectually they were the cream of the nation, but they were completely inexperienced in battle, except for the 21st Division which had seen a few chaotic hours at Loos. What the Kitchener Men lacked in experience they might make up in enthusiasm; of this they had plenty.
A close look at the composition of the army preparing for the battle will reveal that it was composed almost entirely of the county regiments of the British Army.* There were no Guards; no Australians, Canadians, Indians, New Zea-landers or South Africans. An even closer look will show that, of those units due to see action on the first day, some parts of the United Kingdom provided very strong contingents; the Industrial North and Midlands, Ulster and London were to have a particularly large stake in the battle to come.†
There were two small exceptions to this all-United Kingdom rule. The Newfoundlanders were still attached to the 29th Division on its return from Gallipoli and the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps had been found a place in the 1st Lincolns. It is true that there were other Empire troops, but only in the side lines: a complete brigade of South Africans held in reserve, Indian and Canadian cavalry regiments and a Canadian heavy artillery battery. Some men from the Empire could be found serving in the English units and even a few Americans, although it was not yet their war.
And so the Army of 1916 assembled for the battle – every man a willing soldier, either a pre-war Regular or a volunteer. There was not a conscript in the line.