The Battle of the Somme lasted for the remainder of the summer and well into the autumn of 1916, but midnight of the first day brought to an end a distinct phase of the campaign. The diversion at Gommecourt and the attack of the two corps that Gough had taken over were immediately closed down. On 2 July only three divisions were involved in serious action compared with fourteen on the previous day. The fighting of 1 July can be classed as a separate battle in its own right. It can be argued that, for the British at least, it was the turning-point of the First World War. Before going on to examine the long-term effects, however, a look should be taken at the immediate aftermath of the battle – on the battlefield itself, in those places where the generals and politicians wielded power and in the homes of the ordinary soldiers.
In the days following the battle, the remainder of the men who had fought on the first day were withdrawn. In the early hours of 2 July it was decided that the Quadrilateral Redoubt could not be held, so a staff officer crossed to it and ordered the garrison to withdraw. C.S.M. Percy Chappell gathered together the survivors of the 1st Somerset Light Infantry and led them back to the British front line. There were seventy-eight in all, including twenty walking wounded.*
The last to leave the Quadrilateral was the Royal Irish Fusiliers company, which arrived back at its battalion H.Q. next morning. ‘Their arrival caused a merry interlude. The company commander was slung with German equipment of every shape and description, and his company were also replete with souvenirs. They still guarded a few sulky looking prisoners from whom they seemed reluctant to part. If the colonel had not intervened they would, in all probability, have been led about in triumph for the rest of the war.’ (Capt. W. Carden Roe, M.C, 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers)
Paddy Kennedy remained for three days in the new front line at Montauban. To the amazement of these forward troops, they received no further orders to advance. Several small German counter-attacks were beaten off and there was obviously little to prevent the Manchesters and the other battalions here from occupying the nearby woods.
On 4 July the whole of the 30th Division was withdrawn for a well-earned rest. Kennedy went straight back to the place in the old front line where he had dumped all his heavy equipment and found everything as he had left it. When he reported back to his own battalion, the 3rd Pals which he had not seen since 30 June, he still had the kitten he had found in the German dug-out at Montauban. Paddy gave it to the company cooks for a mascot.
On the unsuccessful sectors, the clearance of the British wounded from No Man’s Land went on for several days. At dawn on 2 July most of the work of recovery in the open had to cease, as the Germans were rarely prepared to allow the British to move freely.
Some stretcher-bearers and their helpers did not wait for darkness to come again, but risked their lives by continuing to work in daylight. Two examples of gallantry in this respect are recorded by the Ulster Division, on that part of its sector where the Germans still dominated No Man’s Land.
Before the war Robert Quigg had been a worker on the MacNaghten estate at Bushmills in Co. Antrim. Now he was Pte Quigg and soldier-servant to twenty-year-old 2nd Lieut Sir Harry MacNaghten, the 6th Baronet, who was one of the missing on the evening of 1 July. Next day Quigg went out into No Man’s Land seven times searching for his officer, and each time he brought in a wounded man, the last dragged in on a groundsheet from within a few yards of the German wire. In the end, Quigg had to give up through sheer exhaustion. Sir Harry was never found.*
In the same area Lieut Geoffrey Cather, the adjutant of the Armagh Volunteers, fetched in three wounded men during the night following the battle. Next morning, in full view of the enemy, he brought in another but, while giving a fifth a drink from his water bottle, he was killed by a German machine-gunner. For their bravery in the fighting on 1 July and for these rescue attempts both Quigg and Cather were awarded the Victoria Cross, making a total of four such awards in the Ulster Division.*
During the afternoon of 2 July there was a shower of rain near Thiepval and, shortly afterwards, some men could be seen crawling towards the British trenches. Fearing a German attack, the defenders called for artillery support, but cancelled this just in time when they realized that the ‘attackers’ were British wounded who had been revived by the shower.
As soon as darkness came again, full-scale rescue work was resumed as stretcher-bearers and many volunteer helpers combed the battlefield for the rest of the wounded. One of the searchers in Sausage Valley was Maj.-Gen. Ingouville-Williams. One wounded Newfoundlander had taken shelter from further German fire between the bodies of two of his dead comrades. Being a recently arrived reinforcement and unfamiliar with the area, he did not know which trenches were German and which his own. He stayed between the two bodies until 3 July, when he decided he would have to take a chance and crawled towards one of the belts of barbed wire. Fortunately he chose the right one.
In front of the 29th Division, one survivor was so demented that he had removed all his clothes. Another, also crazed, or having lost all sense of direction, fired at the British trenches every time a man showed himself there.
The attitude of the Germans to the wounded and their rescuers was unpredictable. Sometimes, as in Lieut Cather’s case, they shot at anyone who moved, but at other times they were merciful. As late as 5 July, it was known that many wounded were out in No Man’s Land near Beaumont Hamel so the British decided upon a bold scheme. ‘A large Red Cross flag was slowly raised above the parapet. When, after a few minutes, no shots had been fired, two M.O.’S stood up on the parapet beside the flag. Still the enemy held their fire. The two officers then advanced across No Man’s Land with the flag. A mass of curious heads appeared above the German parapet and a German M.O. and some orderlies came out to meet ours. The officers of both sides stiffened to a ceremonious salute. The Germans carried our wounded from near their wire to the middle of No Man’s Land and handed them over to our bearers. This great work of humanity went on until all the wounded were collected then, again, the officers saluted. Not a word had been exchanged all afternoon.’ (Capt. W. Carden Roe, M.C.,1st Royal Irish Fusiliers)
Some of the wounded managed to survive in the open for long periods and individual soldiers continued to be rescued from No Man’s Land for many days. At Gommecourt, a lieutenant of the London Rifle Brigade came in three days after the battle – blinded by a head wound. The following day another lieutenant, from the 1/7th Sherwood Foresters, was recovered. He had been fired on whenever he moved and had been hit seven times. A week after the battle an artillery officer spotted movement in No Man’s Land. That night he went out with an infantry patrol and rescued two men of the Rangers; they had been living off water from the bottom of shell holes. The record appears to have been held by a private of the 1/4th London, again at Gommecourt, who was found fourteen days after the battle. He was stuck fast in the mud and had to be dug out, but his wounds had not turned septic and he recovered after a year in hospital.
In spite of the good weather and the devotion and bravery of the stretcher-bearers, many of the wounded succumbed and met lingering, solitary deaths out in No Man’s Land. ‘The body of Lieut-Col. J. Addison, 9th Yorks and Lanes, was not found until the battlefield was searched in September, when it was found with a short diary, showing that he must have lived at least two, if not three days before he died.’ (Lieut-Col. H. F. Watson, D.S.O., 11th Sherwood Foresters)*
After the fall of Ovillers two weeks later, two Tunnelling Company officers walked across Mash Valley, to inspect a mine crater which they had blown on 1 July. They were horrified to see that all the dead infantrymen of the 8th Division lying on the German side of the old No Man’s Land had been bayoneted in the throat and that the bodies on the German wire had all had the back of their heads smashed in. They were convinced that German patrols had come out during the night after the battle and had finished off the wounded and mutilated the dead. The two officers wrote a report on what they had seen and one sent it by registered post to his father, a barrister, with the request that it be put before a committee, then sitting in London investigating German atrocities. The letter was never delivered. It was probably removed from the post by the Army Censor.
Another problem facing the British after the battle was the clearance of the dead and wounded from their own trenches. The worst conditions were in VIII Corps’ sector where three divisions had been beaten offby the Germans, with heavy loss. Here there were many harrowing scenes. ‘Our original front and support lines were full of wounded men from all the various units and it took three days to clear them. Heavy rain came on 2 July and made the trenches impossible, and many wounded were actually drowned.’ (Maj. V. N. Johnson, 12th Infantry Brigade H.Q.)*
The men involved in this distressing and arduous work, many of whom had fought in the battle, became exhausted and irritable. On one occasion, after three days and nights of back-breaking work, two stretcher-bearers took a short rest but their M.O., as tired as they were, insisted that they resume work. ‘My pal was so tired he threatened to shoot him. The M.O. got even angrier and, in turn, threatened to shoot my pal but in the end they both calmed down and we went back to work.’ (Pte J. W. Stevenson, Sheffield City Battalion)
Nearby, two Accrington Pals signallers were helping the stretcher-bearers. ‘A group of staff officers appeared and we stood to attention. One of them asked our corporal, “Why haven’t these men shaved?” I could have shot him without compunction.’ (L/Cpl H. Bury, Accrington Pals)
‘I was out in No Man’s Land until late on 2 July and I made up my mind I had to move. I was hurt in the foot and I more or less fell into our trench. There were no troops manning it and no stretcher-bearers but lots of wounded. There was a chap sitting on a box but he didn’t reply when I spoke to him. I spent that night in a dug-out with some other wounded. Next morning I crawled up into the trench and the man was still sitting on his box; he had been dead all the time. An officer told me, “If you want to get out of here lad, crawl!” ’ (Pte H. C. Bloor, Accrington Pals)†
Communal graves had been prepared behind the trench system but, with priority being given to the wounded, it was many days before all the dead bodies could be cleared. ‘A large number of corpses were got out of our trenches by means of a very good trench-tramway, but from there it was a slow job to carry them away to the communal graves. The result was a large stack of corpses which was extremely bad for morale.’ (Capt. H. F. Dawes, 12th Infantry Brigade H.Q.)*
Four battalion commanders of the 11th Infantry Brigade had been killed. Their men recovered the bodies from the battlefield and buried them side-by-side in the mass grave at the Sucrerie, near Colincamps, past which they had marched on the eve of the battle.†
Not all the dead were disposed of so methodically. Abandoned trenches or large shell holes formed the last resting place for many. The bodies of those Newfoundlanders who had been killed before reaching their own front line were collected and buried en masse in a disused assembly trench.
Many miles to the south, near Mametz, burial parties found the bodies of Capt. Martin and those of his men who had fallen in front of Mansel Copse, exactly where he had predicted they would be caught by a German machine-gun. His body, and those of 159 other men from the 8th and 9th Devons, were buried in a trench in the copse. When the grave had been filled in, a notice was put above it:
The Devonshires held this trench.
The Devonshires hold it still.
After the failure of the ambulance trains on the first day, strenuous efforts were made to get the wounded away to the base, in order to relieve the congestion at the forward medical units. The complicated instructions, recently introduced by G.H.Q. for the handling of ambulance trains, were ignored and every available train in the B.E.F. worked round the clock. As soon as one arrived, it was sent straight to a Casualty Clearing Station and loaded.
During the three days following the battle, there was a mass movement of wounded between the Somme Front and the bases that was, fortunately, never to be seen again in the war. Ambulance trains made fifty-eight journeys, carrying 31,214 wounded, from Fourth Army alone. This all-out effort shows what might have been done on the first day, when five trains had taken only 2,317 patients.
The trains were supplemented by other forms of transport on the long journey to the base hospitals on the coast; by barges that chugged slowly down the River Somme; by lorries and even by buses, some of which were still marked ‘London General Omnibus Company’ — a nostalgic sight for wounded Londoners. But it was the trains that were the vital factor, evacuating nearly ninety per cent of the wounded who went to the base.
The effects of the unexpectedly high number of casualties, made worse by the ambulance train failure on the first day, continued to be felt for some time. Devoted work by the R.A.M.C. men relieved some of the suffering, but it was several days before the congestion was completely cleared. An examination of the records available shows that approximately 10,000 of the first day’s wounded were still in the battle zone at 10 P.M. on 2 July and, of these, half had still not been accepted by a medical unit. It was not until the morning of 4 July, that the Fourth Army’s Director of Medical Services declared himself satisfied that all his wounded were being properly cared for.
The wounded continued to suffer much hardship. ‘After being wounded, I walked to Bray, where I spent five nights in a field with only a ground sheet and a blanket. By then my arm was in a very bad state.’ (Pte A. R. French, 7th Royal West Kents) One Field Ambulance, a unit near enough to the front to be under shell fire and which had accommodation for about 500 wounded, reported at one stage that it held 3,700, of whom 2,000 were outside in fields.
‘I was brought in from No Man’s Land on Monday 3 July and had a rough dressing put on a bullet wound in my foot, but no more. The same day I was taken to a c.c.s. at Corbie and remained there until the Friday night, with no medical attention at all. When I was taken to the Base Hospital at Wimereux, the dressing was removed and my foot and all the way up my leg was completely gangrenous. Within a few hours I had to have a mid-thigh amputation, from what had been a simple wound in my foot.’ (Sgt H. Benzing, Grimsby Chums)
An additional hazard that sometimes overtook the wounded was hunger, because the rations at the forward medical units were soon eaten by the unexpected influx of men. ‘I walked from one medical unit to another until, after several days, I finally arrived at a place where my wound was dressed. By this time I was in agony and my leg was swollen. Here, too, were refreshments at a canteen but they had to be paid for and I had no money. I was desperately hungry until I met a man from my own company and he gave me fifteen francs.’ (Pte J. A. Deary, 2nd Liverpool Pals)
In the confusion strange things happened. ‘I have a vague memory of getting rough injections with jagged needles on half-a-dozen occasions and being left on the side of the road for hours; then into wagons and ambulances of all descriptions. I must have fallen into a coma for I woke up somewhere in Belgium. A lovely Canadian nurse was trying to work out where this Irishman had come from, with his Shamrock badge and shoulder tabs.
‘Later, at the base, I was robbed while I was being given a bath. Someone took, £30 in francs, which was sewn into the lining of my tunic. It was prize money that I had won in various sporting events, also several weeks of pay. Was I mad? And you know how mad an Irishman can get!’ (Sgt J. A. B. Maultsaid, Belfast Young Citizens)
The thief was not the only opportunist. ‘After my wound had been treated at the battalion Aid Post, a man who was on “light duties” there with a swollen toe was told by the M.O. to take me as far as the ambulance. No one noticed him in the confusion and he managed to stick to me all the way back to Southampton. When we landed, he shook my hand and congratulated himself on his escape from France.’ (Pte J. Singleton, 1/7th Sherwood Foresters)
So the wounded came to England – to the Blighty of their songs. Day after day, packed hospital ships left French ports -Rouen, Le Havre, Dieppe and Boulogne. Southampton was the main English port used and for over a week trains were leaving there at the rate of nearly one an hour, taking the wounded to military and civilian hospitals all over Britain. So swift was the evacuation process, that some of the men who had been wounded early in the battle on 1 July could be in an English hospital within twenty-four hours; but these were the fortunate few.
As the flow of wounded continued, the hospitals in England began to fill up. Some effort was made to send men to hospitals in or near their home towns. ‘Unfortunately I had been reported missing to my next of kin, who was my fiancee, but, by the afternoon post the same day, she received another letter telling her I had been admitted to Vernon Park Hospital, Stockport, just a few miles away from her home.’ (Pte L. Welch, 1st Edinburgh City Battalion)
The wounded sometimes had so little treatment in France that their wounds were still covered by the field dressings applied by their pals in No Man’s Land; their uniforms were torn and filthy; their boots caked in the mud of the Somme. ‘You can imagine my joy when I was dumped into a nice clean bed, in Bristol Hospital, in my muddy uniform and well sprinkled with lice; and wasn’t I sorry for the poor nurse who had the job of cleansing me.’ (Sgt A. S. Durrant, Durham Pals)
‘When I got to Orpington, six days later, they took the shrapnel out of my leg. The doctor said, “It’s missed the bone by a hair’s breadth, laddie.” And then a dark-eyed, luscious maiden of twenty kissed me.’ (Pte J. W. Allsop, Leeds Pals)
For twelve British officers and 573 men the war was over – they were prisoners. Of these, 399 came from the two divisions, 36th (Ulster) and 56th (London), which had first captured many of their objectives and then had to withdraw. Considering the scale of the attack – 120,000 men had gone over the top — it was a remarkably small figure, indicative of the complete German success on many sectors but, also, it was a tribute to the resolution of those attackers who had gained the German trenches and then been cut off there. These men often preferred to fight on and die rather than surrender. No doubt some of the prisoners felt ashamed and despondent but, in view of the fearful casualties suffered later in the war, many would say that these prisoners were the luckiest of all.
For the Germans this was the biggest bag of British prisoners taken in France in one day since the retreat from Mons in 1914. Their most important captive was the only officer taken from the Ulster Division. This was Capt. Charles Craig, the Member of Parliament for South Antrim, who had been one of the leaders in raising the division in 1914, when he had ordered the first 10,000 uniforms. He was badly wounded in the Schwaben Redoubt late in the afternoon, just as the Ulsters were being forced back, and had to be left behind. Craig was a large man whom the Germans considered too heavy to be carried on a stretcher. They found a wheelbarrow and pushed him back to an ambulance.*
The Germans were not always so considerate. ‘There were six of us taken prisoner; one was a London Scottish bloke wearing a kilt. The Germans argued for a long time among themselves, whether to take us back or not. Eventually we set off and the London Scottish man helped me as I was wounded. The Germans kept hitting him with rifles; they hated the “Kilties”.’ (Pte H. B. Barr, 1/4th London)
Pte Albert McMillan was in a party of about 100 prisoners who were assembled behind the German lines. He noticed a five-foot-high pile of German corpses, neatly stacked crisscross fashion, and covered by a sheet. These were victims of the British bombardment, awaiting a decent burial, but the sight of this and similar stacks on other occasions gave rise to the rumour, still believed by some, that the bodies were awaiting transport to special factories so that scarce raw materials could be extracted from the corpses.
The men in McMillan’s group were asked by the Germans to explain the working of a captured Lewis gun. As each prisoner refused, he was hit across the face and kicked on the shins. Later, McMillan was interrogated by a German officer. One of the questions asked of him was why the British had not attacked on 29 June – a question which indicated that the Germans had known the original date of the attack.
That night McMillan and the other prisoners set out on a march to Cambrai, thirty kilometres away; a distance covered without any night stop which caused great hardship to those of the party who were wounded. But once at Cambrai the spirit of the British soon returned. They were housed in an old French barrack room, high up on the wall of which the Germans had painted ‘Gott strafe England’. Within a short time the British had managed to change this to ‘Gott strafe Deutschland’; the Germans were furious.
When wounded prisoners of the North Midland Division were taken to a hospital at Le Cateau, a German doctor greeted them with the following speech: ‘If you are good fellows you will be well treated and if you are bad fellows you will get kick up arse.’
Three days after the battle a German aeroplane flew over the British lines at Gommecourt and dropped a list of the men of the London and North Midland Divisions who had been captured there. Soon afterwards a British aeroplane returned the courtesy.
When the unwounded survivors of the battle had returned to the villages or billets from which they had marched only a day or two earlier, battalions were paraded and roll calls were held. In the hardest hit battalions this was a sad occasion as less than 100 men answered out of 700 or more names that were called. Sometimes the fate of the absent was known; they had been seen to be killed or taken away wounded, but of many there was no news, and they were marked as ‘Missing’. Those who had been left out of the battle were uncomfortable spectators at the roll calls; many felt guilty and ashamed at being spared the ordeal that had taken so many of their friends.
In the 1st Somerset Light Infantry, C.S.M. Percy Chappell was the senior rank to return unhurt from the battle; every officer was dead or wounded. Percy looked for his four sergeant friends who had joked on the eve of the battle about choosing flowers for each other’s graves. All four were casualties.
The winning footballers of the 8th East Surreys were unable to collect the prize money from their commander. Capt. Nevill was dead. Another company commander to be killed was Maj George Gaffikin who had rallied the West Belfasts with his Orange Order sash. Gaffikin had been badly wounded in the Schwaben Redoubt and died at a Casualty Clearing Station.
One of the 9th Devons’ casualties was Lieut William Hodgson, the poet. He had been killed in the fighting for Mametz and buried in the Devons’ trench grave in Mansel Copse.
Only one man answered his name when the roll was called for 14 Platoon of the 1st Rifle Brigade. The platoon had been forty strong before the battle.
The 2nd Edinburgh City Battalion had recruited the complete First Eleven of the Hearts of Midlothian Football Club and, to July 1916, the battalion’s football team had never been defeated. Now, most of the footballers had become casualties.
For the survivors, these roll calls produced mixed emotions. The strongest was that of disappointment. They had been led to believe that nothing could stop their victory, that the Germans would surely be beaten. Now, for so many, came the realization that this was not to be and that the war would be long and bitter. There was great sadness that so many of their friends were dead, but there was also relief that they themselves had survived. For all they knew, many of their friends might turn up as stragglers or be back in an English hospital, only slightly wounded, while they had to continue at the Front.
There was, however, one consolation for the survivors. For some time, parcels continued to arrive for those men who were missing and these were shared out among those who remained. ‘I chose two tins of sugar from a parcel. On opening them, there were four half-crowns in each tin – one from Mother and one from Dad. It all seemed so ghastly. You can understand why they did not allow you to brood, but kept you fully occupied with inspections, etcetera, followed by fatigues and duties that gave you very little time to think.’ (Rfmn A. Withers, 1st Rifle Brigade)
The generals, who before the battle had been so confident in their talks to the men, now toured their units, commended them for their courage and put as good a face as possible on the disappointing outcome. Where the battalions had been successful, the men were congratulated on their victory. The Territorials and New Army battalions were told that they had proved themselves as good as the Regulars – a compliment that would never have been paid a week before. For those who had failed, the theme was usually the same: by their gallant efforts they had held the attention of the enemy and contributed to success elsewhere.
The Ulster Division’s commander did not endear himself to his men. ‘Major-General Nugent addressed us after the battle and said, “Men, you’ve done very well, but you might have done better.” There was a lot of murmuring in the ranks and some thought he was anything but a gentleman.’ (Pte S. Megaw, Belfast Young Citizens)
Lieut-Gen. Hunter-Weston was particularly diligent in visiting his corps. In the weeks following the battle, he visited every battalion that had attacked and personally thanked the soldiers. During one of these visits, he had a narrow escape: ‘General Hunter-Weston had assembled us all and told us that the whole of the VIII Corps had made a sacrifice so that troops on another part of the front could advance. Just then a German artillery spotting plane flew over and, not before time, we got the order to disperse. Then came the whine of approaching shells and a big one went off a few yards from where the General had been standing. A lump of shell killed one of our heavy grey horses. The pair had been out since Mons; they used to pull the field kitchen. It was a sad loss!’ (Rfmn A. Withers, 1st Rifle Brigade)
When they had been raised in 1914, the Tyneside Scottish had been refused the right to wear kilts. Now each man was given a small square of tartan, immediately christened ‘sand-bag tartan’, which he could wear behind his cap badge as a tribute to the Tynesiders’ bravery. ‘One Geordie sat quietly studying the three-inch square of cloth. “Man, we’ll have to fight a hell of a lot of battles before we get our kilts!” ’ (Pte T. Easton, 2nd Tyneside Scottish)
For several days the senior generals remained unaware of the full extent of the losses suffered. By the afternoon of 2 July, estimates at Fourth Army and G.H.Q. were still forty per cent below the actual casualties incurred.
The only way of knowing what Haig and Rawlinson thought when the full extent of the losses was reported to them, is from a scrutiny of their respective diaries. In neither is there any direct reference to the final casualty list, nor did either of them show any sign of remorse, nor give any explanation for it. Haig did make one entry that was to earn him the disfavour of many ordinary soldiers. On the eveniny of l July he wrote: ‘North of the Ancre, VIII Corps said they began well, but as the day progressed, their troops were forced back into the German front line, except two battalions which occupied Serre Village, and were, it is said, cut off. I am inclined to believe from further reports, that few of VIII Corps left their trenches.’* This was an example of the deplorable communications that existed between the front line and the H.Q.’S. The divisions of VIII Corps – the 4th, 29th, 31st and part of the 48th (South Midland) – had lost 662 officers and 13,636 men between them during the day. To his credit, Haig made no attempt to conceal this entry when the true facts emerged.
On some sectors, the results had been so disastrous that some commanders felt uncertain as to their own future. The first general to lose his command and reputation during the Battle of the Somme was not in the Fourth Army, which had carried out the main attack and suffered most of the casualties, but one who had been involved in the diversionary attack at Gommecourt. There was more than one general who was apprehensive on account of Gommecourt. The Third Army commander, Allenby, was not popular at G.H.Q. and thought that he might be blamed for the failure to capture the village, especially after his two divisions had lost nearly 7,000 men.
The corps commander on the spot, Lieut-Gen. Snow, was also under suspicion. He had been away for ten days’ leave before the battle and had been criticized by Allenby for not paying sufficient attention to the preparations. Allenby may have considered sending Snow home, but he needed the backing of the c.-in-c. and this he was not sure of getting.
The final possibility was Maj.-Gen. Stuart-Wortley, commander of the North Midland Division which had failed to link up with the London Division behind the village. It was Stuart-Wortley who had taken over VII Corps, temporarily, while Snow was on leave.
Immediately after the battle, Allenby ordered a Court of Inquiry to investigate the handling of the attack of Stuart-Wortley’s division. Its members were a brigadier-general, who had not been involved in the battle, and two lieutenant-colonels, one each from the two attacking divisions.
The court held its first sitting in a hut on 4 July and took evidence from fourteen witnesses from the North Midland Division and from two R.F.C. pilots. The junior member of the court, the c.o. of the London Rifle Brigade who on l July had watched the attack ‘as though it were Ascot Races’, had to take down all the evidence in longhand. That night the court adjourned with the intention of resuming two days later.
But early the next morning there came a dramatic move. At 6.50 A.M., Stuart-Wortley received orders from Allenby that he was relieved of his command and was to return, at once, to England. Even so the Court of Inquiry sat once more and heard another twenty-five witnesses, but one suspects that the proceedings had become a mere formality.
What of the generals in Fourth Army; was no one to blame for the loss of 50,000 men in one day? Rawlinson, who had refused Haig’s advice when formulating his plan of attack? Hunter-Weston, whose corps had lost so many men without a single success, and where confusion reigned for days after the battle?
What about G.H.Q.? Haig had been in overall command of the battle and was ultimately responsible for it. Maxwell, the Quartermaster General, had placed only three ambulance trains in Fourth Army area on the first day after Rawlinson had requested eighteen trains, a failure which had led to such unnecessary suffering among the wounded.
Haig and Rawlinson were protected by the sheer enormity of the disaster. It was several days before the full extent of the losses were known in France, let alone in England. By then the battle had moved into another phase and the opportunity for a swift recall to England had passed.
Hunter-Weston and his corps staff were moved from the battle area before the end of the month to a quiet sector far from the Somme. This was almost certainly requested by Gough, who had taken over Hunter-Weston’s part of the front. Gough tried to get rid of his other corps commander, Morland, who had handled the attacks on Thiepval and the Leipzig Redoubt, but this time Gough was out of luck. Haig turned down the request.
Some time during the second half of 1916, a suggestion came from the War Office that Lieut-Gen. Maxwell should return to England; possibly this was a result of the ambulance train fiasco of 1 July. Haig, always loyal to his subordinates, resisted, and Maxwell retained his position.
However, there was still one more 1 July general to go. Maj.-Gen. Pilcher, commander of the 17th (Northern) Division, had been ordered to detach his 50th Brigade to another division on the first day, and had had to stand idly by while it suffered heavy losses. One of its battalions was Philip Howe’s, the 10th West Yorks, which had suffered more casualties than any other battalion in the whole battle on 1 July.
During the next few days the division sustained further heavy casualties, under Pilcher’s command now, but subjected to relentless pressure from the corps commander, Lieut-Gen. Home. On 11 July, Home sent for Pilcher, accused him of not driving his division hard enough, and sent him home. Horne was certainly a demanding master, for he relieved another major-general the same day.*
Pilcher was much aggrieved by his dismissal. ‘It is very easy to sit a few miles in the rear and get credit for allowing men to be killed in an undertaking foredoomed to failure, but the part did not appeal to me and my protests against these useless attacks were not well received.’ (Maj.-Gen. T. D. Pilcher, 17th (Northern) Division)†
Neither Stuart-Wortley nor Pilcher was ever again given an operational command. Stuart-Wortley was posted to Ireland and Pilcher remained in England. Almost without exception, the soldiers who had served under them in France thought that they had been removed for losing too many men, whereas in both cases their dismissal was caused by their unwillingness to sacrifice still more. There was no room for soft-hearted generals on the Western Front in 1916.
In contrast to the ‘degommering’ of Stuart-Wortley and Pilcher, the hard-driving Horne was soon promoted. In October he was given command of the First Army. He had been a corps commander for only five months, but his methods were those in fashion.
If it had taken several days for accurate reports of the battle on 1 July to reach the H.Q.’S in France, how much more difficult was it, then, for the ordinary folk at home to find out what had happened?
For the first few days, their only source of information was the press which, in turn, was mostly dependent on official releases. Already, on 1 July, the evening papers had published excitable, optimistic, but vague, reports of the morning’s battle. Reuter’s correspondent reported in the London Evening News that the German front line and many prisoners had been taken, at small loss to the British.
The Sunday papers had little further news, but by Monday the dailies were full of reports. The Daily Express claimed the capture of 9,500 prisoners and many villages, among them Contalmaison and Serre, neither of which had actually fallen, but it also added ominously: ‘The New Tactics – Warnings Against Undue Optimism’. It was left to The Times to give the most reliable account of the battle. It had picked up the German official communiqué from a neutral paper; this proved far more accurate than the British versions.
The newspaper reports were soon supplemented by firsthand accounts of the wounded soldiers returning from France. Most of these were eager to recount their version of the battle and their listeners were subjected to many conflicting and exaggerated stories. Soon, the whole of the country was seething with rumour. The ordeal of the relatives of men serving at the Front was pitiful. The local character of many of the New Army battalions meant that some towns and cities soon found that their menfolk had suffered heavy losses, but accurate information was very hard to get. Crowds besieged council and newspaper offices and local drill halls demanding news. In Accrington it was rumoured that only seven men had survived from their Pals’ attack! No one would confirm or deny the report and the townspeople surrounded the mayor’s house in an angry mood, convinced he was withholding news from them.*
Gradually more details came from France and the Post Office was kept busy delivering thousands of telegrams to the homes of the casualties. Mrs Emma King was away from home, resting with her parents after the birth of her baby, and it was some time before she returned to her other four children at Tickhill. She found there a telegram which had stood unopened on the mantelpiece for many days. It told her that her husband Dick was dead. Two other men from the same mining village had also been killed on 1 July.
The window blinds were drawn in working-class streets all over industrial England as the people mourned their dead. Local newspapers published rows and rows of photographs of young men who had ‘fallen for their King and Country’. On 12 July, Orangeman’s Day, all traffic in Belfast was halted at noon and the whole city fell silent for five minutes.
The greatest anguish was among those whose men were reported missing, and relatives tried every means to find out what had happened to them. They visited hospitals, searching for wounded men from the same battalion; they wrote letters to the missing men’s pals or officers in France. Advertisements appeared in newspapers, appealing for news of loved ones. Some resorted to spiritualism.
There had been such confusion in France that many men who had been posted as missing were later found to be wounded, and as further advances were made, the bodies of some of the remainder were recovered and the news passed to their next-of-kin. Others were reported to be prisoners of war. Five months later, relatives of the remainder were told that the missing men were officially presumed to have been killed in action. Over the years some received more definite news but many never discovered what had happened to their husbands, sons or sweethearts.
Lieut-Col. Sandys, the officer who had been so concerned over his battalion, the 2nd Middlesex, had been evacuated to England where he soon recovered from his wounds. But he still brooded over his men, convinced that he could have done more for them. Early in September he sent letters to two of his officers who were also in England. To one he wrote that he wished he had been killed with his men on 1 July and, to the other, ‘I have come to London to take my life. I have never had a moment’s peace since July 1st.’
On 6 September, in his room at the Cavendish Hotel, the tormented man shot himself in the head with his revolver. He was taken to St George’s Hospital, but died a week later Without regaining consciousness and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. At his inquest, which was well covered by the press, the jury found that Sandys had committed suicide while temporarily insane. It was a tragic end for a much-loved officer. The War Office seemed to ignore the suicide. The official record states that Lieut-Col. Sandys died of wounds received on 1 July. Nine days after his death it was announced that he had been awarded the D.S.O. and he was also mentioned in Haig’s Despatches in January 1917.