Gen. Rawlinson at Fourth Army H.Q. in the château at Querrieux had received two important callers during the afternoon. His visitors were Gen. Haig, the British c.-in-c., and Gen. Foch, commander of the French group of armies fighting alongside the British. Alas, Rawlinson could not deliver the good news of victory and breakthrough for which his chief and his ally were hoping. Haig returned to his Advanced G.H.Q. before evening, for he too was expecting an important visitor, Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. When Robertson arrived in the evening he would be disappointed at the mixed news from Haig. London had had high hopes of this day.
However, there was one general who was well satisfied. As Gen. Foch drove south from Querrieux he knew that France had got what she wanted. Foch was a humane man. He would have liked to have seen a British victory, but whether there was victory or not the British were, at least, fighting. The Germans would be diverted from Verdun and the French Army saved from destruction.
What action had Gen. Rawlinson taken since midday? Had he done anything to exploit the success of his right wing? Had he done anything to retrieve the failure of the remainder of his army? These questions can only be answered by studying a few known facts, one or two statements recorded by Rawlinson in his diary, and some deduction.
Absolutely nothing had been done to exploit the victories of the divisions on the right wing. Rawlinson had refused Congreve permission to advance one yard beyond his original objectives and, as early as 12.15 P.M., Rawlinson had already made up his mind about the cavalry. ‘There is, of course, no hope of getting the cavalry through today.’* By 3 P.M. the cavalry divisions had received their orders: they were to turn round and retire. These orders were sent from Gough’s Reserve Army H.Q., but there can be no doubt that the orders originated with Rawlinson.
As for that greater part of his front, where the morning attacks had failed, there was little that Rawlinson could do. No doubt he had urged his corps commanders, with some vigour, to try and try again, but on these sectors the attacking divisions had been so badly smashed that they were beyond the pressure of generals. There were adequate fresh divisions available, but the trenches were so shelled, so full of dead and wounded, that they would never have reached the front line, let alone have carried out a successful attack.
By the evening, Rawlinson had a good idea of what progress his troops had made and the extent of his failures. His diary entry for 7.30 P.M. gives a résumé of the battle that, in spite of the confusion, is remarkably accurate but for one detail: ‘Casualties to date, 16,000.’ The units of the Fourth Army had, in fact, suffered over 50,000 losses.
At about this time there was an important change in the command structure. Rawlinson’s army was a big one, containing five corps, three of which were obviously in trouble. As a result of a telephone conversation between Rawlinson and G.H.Q., Lieut-Gen. Gough, the cavalry commander, was sent to take over the command of the two northern corps of Fourth Army. These were Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps, which had fared badly north of the Ancre, and Morland’s X Corps, whose only success had been the capture of the Schwaben Redoubt by the Ulster Division. At the same time, control of the cavalry divisions passed directly to Fourth Army.
The move is an interesting one. Rawlinson had decided some hours previously that there was to be no cavalry action and thought that Gough could do a more worthwhile job looking after the two infantry corps. Gough had a reputation as a thrusting general, and might be expected to drive the failing corps to further efforts and possible success.
What is more interesting is Rawlinson’s attitude to the change. In theory he and Gough were both army commanders and equals, although Gough still lagged behind by one rank. Haig had the final say in the move but in his diary Rawlinson stated bluntly: ‘I am putting Goughy in command of VIII and X Corps.’
Gough appears to have relished the prospect of something to do. With his Chief of Staff he set off at once by car to see the two corps commanders. He had trouble on the way with military policemen who tried to persuade him to drive without lights, but Gough refused. He was in a hurry and preferred the remote risk of death or injury by aerial bomb to the more likely danger of crashing in the dark.
Gough’s first call was at Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps, which was still under Rawlinson’s order to make a fresh attack in the early hours of the next morning. Gough summed up the position quickly and came to the conclusion that such an attack would be hopeless. Although he was not supposed to take over until 7 A.M. on 2 July, he immediately cancelled the attack. This swift assessment and his decision to ignore previous orders shows high moral courage in Gough and it undoubtedly saved many lives. Leaving Hunter-Weston, Gough went on to his other corps where he arrived in time to learn that its only success, the capture of the Schwaben Redoubt, had turned to bitter defeat as the Ulster Division had been forced out of its gains.
As darkness fell, the medical services were faced with their biggest test. The casualty list had exceeded all estimates and the two attacking armies had suffered over 35,000 wounded men between them. Many of the lightly wounded had already reached the Casualty Clearing Stations, especially those from the sectors on the right wing where the attack had been successful. Now that it was dark, the thousands of men in No Man’s Land were available for recovery too. These were in far worse condition. Their wounds had been left untreated for up to twelve hours, and some had been wounded several times. The evacuation process was about to come under its maximum strain.
The first stress to appear was among the stretcher-bearers, who had the difficult and hazardous job of recovering the badly wounded, firstly from the battered British trenches and, later, from No Man’s Land. Heavy casualties among the bearers themselves had thrown an extra burden on those who had survived. Every spare man – pioneers, infantry, artillery, engineers and the rest – was pressed into service and every device was used to get the wounded away: ‘As we had no stretchers we had to use sheets of corrugated iron and by the end of the day we had all cut our fingers.’ (Sgt A. P. Britton, 8th Lincolns) ‘We abandoned the communication trenches and carried over the open. We even carried two wounded to a stretcher and our men lost the use of their hands, but carried the stretchers by slings around their necks without complaint.’ (Sgt F. F. Webber, 94th Field Ambulance)
First stop for the wounded man on his way to the rear was often the battalion Aid Post, where his own Medical Officer was in charge. Being so close to the fighting and having few facilities, the M.O.’S could give only rudimentary treatment. If a case could possibly go farther back without treatment he was waved past, leaving the M.O. to deal with the most desperate cases only. On the worst sectors, the scenes at these Posts were among the most harrowing of the whole battlefield. ‘I managed to crawl half a mile to Basin Wood where I saw the most horrible sight. Our M.O. was working at a trestle table in his vest, and bodies were piled like sand-bags all around him.’ (Cpl A. Wood, 1st Bradford Pals)
Immediately behind the trench system were the Dressing Stations operated by the Field Ambulances. Again there were no facilities for surgery here but men had their wounds dressed properly before being sent back to the c.c.s.’s. A typical Dressing Station had been set up in the basilica at Albert: ‘Wounded flooded in on foot, or were brought by stretchers, wheelbarrows, carts – anything. Their wounds were dressed and then they were laid out on the floor to await evacuation. Soon the whole church was packed and we were ordered to stop any vehicle that passed and make them take wounded to the rear. I even put three cases in a general’s staff car. Those who were not expected to survive were put on one side and left. It was very hard to ignore their cries for help but we had to concentrate on those who might live. We worked for three days and nights without rest. It was the bloodiest battle I ever saw.’ (Pte H. Streets, 58th Field Ambulance)*
Even at the Dressing Stations the wounded were not finally out of danger. German shells sometimes crashed against the basilica, but the massive structure had survived nearly two years of shelling and the wounded inside were safe. Not so the men like Charles Matthews who were laid out in the open in the village square at Carnoy. Matthews was given no treatment there, as he had no open wounds, but all afternoon he waited with hundreds of others under the hot sun. It was a terrifying experience to be lying helpless and vulnerable to random German shrapnel shells bursting overhead. A medical orderly covered his face with a newspaper to protect him from the burning sun. Matthews was touched by this thoughtful action and felt in some absurd way that the paper would protect him from the plunging shrapnel balls.
Those men who had only been lightly wounded and were still able to walk were expected to get themselves to the rear. Once their wounds had been dressed, often by themselves or by their friends, they were directed along specially marked tracks: ‘The walking wounded started coming out of the trenches in ones and twos, but later they came in droves. It was just like watching a crowd leaving a football match. Most had left their rifles and equipment behind and were only half dressed.’ (Gnr H. W. Beaumont, 170th (County Palatine) Brigade R.F.A.)
From the Dressing Stations to the Casualty Clearing Stations was a distance of some ten miles, covered by motor ambulances running a shuttle service. Even when they had been loaded into the ambulances, the wounded were still in danger from German shells for the first part of their journey. One man met an old school friend while waiting for the ambulance. Because there was only room for one when his turn came, he stayed behind with his friend, and watched the ambulance blow up fifty yards down the road.
All day the ambulances had been bringing the wounded to the c.c.s.’s, but how had the next part of the evacuation process, from the c.c.s.’s to the base, been operating? Before the battle, Gen. Rawlinson had formally requested eighteen ambulance trains for his Fourth Army and had been assured that there would be no delays. Using the procedure laid down in the new G.H.Q. instructions, the Fourth Army c.c.s.’s had called for twelve of these trains. The response had been disastrous. Only three ambulance trains had been standing by in the Fourth Army area. One had run in the morning and the other two in the afternoon. Urgent messages were sent to other parts of the British zone, calling for more trains, but by midnight only two more had arrived, making a total of five for the day.
These five trains had only taken 3,217 cases to the base. Of these 647 were sick and many of the wounded were cases left over from previous days. At least 32,000 men had been wounded in Fourth Army, whose c.c.s.’s had proper accommodation for only 9,500 cases. 10,000 had already reached the c.c.s.’s and most of the remainder were about to descend upon them. Less than 1,000 of the day’s wounded had been evacuated to the base. All the carefully laid plans to avoid congestion had failed.
So it was that at 10.50 P.M., with thousands of wounded men coming in from the front, the Director of Medical Services in Fourth Army entered in his War Diary:
Ambulance Trains not yet arriving and all c.c.s.’s in Southern Area are full except those at Vecquement and these are filling rapidly.
And at midnight:
All arrangements except trains are working smoothly.*
Fortunately, there was no such problem in Third Army. 4,000 men from VII Corps had been wounded at Gommecourt, but all the medical facilities of Third Army were available to absorb them and there was no hold-up at any stage.
What did the shortage of ambulance trains mean to the Fourth Army wounded? Those who had been placed out in the open at the c.c.s.’s, had to spend the night there, in pain, often with their wounds untreated, and all hoping that it would not rain. Motor ambulances, bringing more wounded from the front, were turned away from those c.c.s.’s which were full and sent elsewhere. The drivers, already tired, had to motor farther in the dark, trying to find someone to take their loads.
At the front there was an immediate effect at the Dressing Stations. The War Diary of the 25th Field Ambulance reports:
7.0. P.M. Urgent demand for more stretchers, indented on c.c.s. Corbie without avail. 8.30 P.M. 36 c.c.s. and 38 c.c.s. at Heilly closed. By midnight choked with cases, opened several barns for temporary accommodation,†
The wounded men in such places as the basilica at Albert and the village square at Carnoy had to wait longer than would otherwise have been necessary for their turn to be taken to safety in the ambulances.
For some the wait was too long. They died of serious wounds, denied the attention of the surgeons at the c.c.s.’s, or they died as German shells fell amongst them. Someone would have to answer for the missing ambulance trains.
If the British soldiers were relieved when darkness fell, the Germans were equally pleased that the day was nearly over. Their regiments were defending a twenty-six-mile front, for they were having to fight the French as well as the British, and had done their work well in spite of the numerical superiority of their attackers. The long months of toil when they had worked on their defences and the pre-war years of conscription which had given them such a high degree of proficiency had paid their dividends.
True, there were parts of the front where their enemies had been successful, the German front-line defences had been lost and the defenders had suffered heavy casualties: ‘By the afternoon we were very low in numbers and were nearly out of ammunition. We took all we could from the dead and wounded but we were not strong enough to hold out for long. The day closed with another English attack which we fought standing up in the open. When our last cartridge had been fired we retreated through the enemy barrage to Klein-Bazentin [Bazentin le Petit]. When the regiment collected in Le Transloy that evening, my company consisted of twenty men.’ (Unteroffizier Paul Scheytt, 109th Reserve Regiment)
On his way back to Bazentin, Scheytt took part in a small diversion: ‘We found a battery of our own guns completely deserted and, out of pure cussedness, we decided to fire them although we were only infantrymen. So we fiddled about with all those little levers and eventually got two guns loaded and fired two rounds. The English immediately replied, so we cleared off as fast as we could.’
The following story shows how difficult it was for the British to be sure they had completely cleared a dug-out: ‘I was wounded quite early in the morning and remember lying semi-conscious and seeing British soldiers jumping over our trench but we were not rounded up and several of us took shelter in a dug-out. Once, during the morning, an English grenade came down and exploded with a loud crash. No one was hurt and one of my comrades said “Pardon me” as if he had made a rude noise. We laughed. A second grenade followed and again no one was hurt. Then an English soldier came down but we all hid in a dark corner and weren’t seen. It was many hours later that one of our men went out with a white handkerchief and we were taken prisoner by two soldiers from the Devonshire Regiment. They were very friendly and the doctor who attended to me asked me where I came from. When I told him “Freiburg”, he told me that that was where he had studied and asked me about certain girls that he knew there.’ (Grenadier Emil Kury, 109th Reserve Regiment)
In spite of these British successes, the Germans were still greatly relieved. The attack on such a long frontage had surprised them and there were few reserves behind the southern part of their front. For many hours the sector opposite Montauban had been virtually naked; only two battalions had moved forward half-heartedly during the afternoon. The seemingly empty woods and fields that the British troops had gazed on all afternoon had indeed been empty for long periods. The German second main trench system was over a mile away and that too was not fully manned. The Germans could have done little to stop a determined British advance on this sector. They were both amazed and pleased when nothing happened. ‘What puzzled me most all day was the lack of further forward movement by the British. The whole of our line had collapsed and it would have been a simple matter for them to have advanced much further than they did.’ (Soldat Emil Goebelbecker, 109th Reserve Regiment)
The sudden advance of the Ulster Division near Thiepval had again caught the Germans without local reserves and for some time the issue there had been in the balance. ‘We were force-marched from Grandcourt up to the line; we were nearly running. We came under artillery fire, both shrapnel and gas, and had to put on our gas masks. We straggled all over the place. We heard that one of our companies had been taken prisoner. Then came the order that we wouldn’t have to attack, after all, as the English had been held.’ (Soldat Lorenz Schneider, 8th Bavarian Reserve Regiment)
At one place on the edge of the Schwaben Redoubt there occurred the following curious incident. ‘About 2.30 in the afternoon the attacks had stopped. I heard music from a bit farther along the trench where the English were. I told my mates and they didn’t believe me. Then we all listened and sure enough we heard something like a zither or guitar. So I propped up my rifle and went along to have a look. At about 100 metres distance, I could vaguely see some people so I went back to my mates. We all took our rifles and fired off a few rounds at them. There was a short silence and then they replied with a machine-gun. We didn’t hear the music again.’ (Soldat Wilhelm Lange, 99th Reserve Regiment)
On most of the front where the British had attacked the Germans were more than satisfied. They had been tested by everything that their enemy could throw against them – a week-long artillery barrage and massed infantry attacks – and they had emerged victorious. The evidence of their victory was before their eyes, the bodies of hundreds of dead British hanging on the barbed wire and strewn thickly across No Man’s Land. Their badly wounded enemies could be seen dragging themselves painfully away and fugitives sprang up from shell holes and ran back into the gloom. These latter were pursued by a few scattered shots, but the passion and fury of the day had abated and the Germans were mostly content to let them go. There had been enough killing.
The anger had turned, in some cases, to pity and compassion. The Germans had been prepared to allow truces for the removal of the British wounded as early as 2 P.M., on some sectors, but these daylight cease-fires had not been successful. Sometimes the British artillery had unwittingly spoilt the work of mercy by continuing to fire on German trenches. The Germans had also taken advantage of the truce by coming out into No Man’s Land, less to help the wounded than to collect Lewis guns, which they calmly loaded onto stretchers and carried back to their trenches. This was reported to the nearest British brigade H.Q. which issued a stern order that no truce was to be allowed and that the Germans were to be fired upon. This was only carried out with some reluctance, but the spell was broken and firing started again from both sides.
When it became dark the front-line troops were able to resume their local armistices without interference by their superiors. ‘During the night I was approached by an officer of the Rifle Brigade [the 1st London Rifle Brigade]. He had a white flag and asked if he could remove the wounded. I could speak English and told him I would put his request to my leutnant. My officer gave permission but he only informed the troops on either side, not the H.Q. in the rear. We helped the English to find their wounded. Sometimes we carried them over to their own side, sometimes the English laid a white tape to the wounded men so that their stretcher-bearers could find them in the dark. When it got light we received orders that we should stop what we were doing but, by then, most of the good work was done. We fired warning shots to tell the English that the truce was over.
‘We were hardened, experienced soldiers. It wasn’t fair to send these young soldiers against us. Some of them were only students and we felt very sorry for them.’ (Gefreiter Hugo van Egeren, 55th Reserve Regiment)
This incident was at Gommecourt. Not all the Germans were so cooperative; only where their domination was complete were they prepared to help.