David Lloyd George, who was to become Prime Minister before the end of the year, described 1 July 1916 as a watershed in the war for Britain. It can be argued that not only was it a turning-point in the war, as Lloyd George suggested, but it was the most tragic day of the war for Britain. In doing this let two questions be examined, admittedly with all the advantages of hindsight: firstly, was there no alternative, political or strategic, to this head-on clash; and, secondly, if there was none, what had gone wrong, tactically, with a battle whose outcome had been awaited with almost universal optimism?
In June 1916, Britain’s senior ally, France, had appeared to be in danger of collapse. Weakened by her heavy losses of 1914 and 1915, she claimed that she could not hold the German pressure at Verdun indefinitely. Britain’s other allies were faring little better; Italy had been severely mauled by the Austrians in May and Russia’s attack, the Brusilov Offensive, had petered out. It was unthinkable that Britain could stand idly by and watch her partner go under, for Britain too would share the stigma of defeat. She had, therefore, two alternatives – to fight hard and divert the Germans, or to attempt to make peace.
It was at precisely this moment, June 1916, that the Germans, for the second time at least, sent an emissary to the French Government suggesting the possibility of discussing peace terms. Germany was in a strong bargaining position and would have wanted to settle on terms reasonably favourable to herself. But the Allies were not yet defeated; France had not broken and Britain and her Empire had not yet been fully engaged. Any peace could only have been a compromise settlement leaving many issues unresolved, but at least the fighting would have stopped.
In spite of their supposed desperate position at Verdun, the French sent a haughty reply: if the Germans would, as a preliminary, return all French, British and Russian prisoners, they, the French, would then consent to talk. While the Germans were digesting this Gallic masterpiece, July arrived, the British attacked and no one was in the mood to discuss peace for a long time.
Only a handful of the British leaders – the king, the prime minister, the C.I.G.S. and Haig among them – knew of the peace moves. The War Committee was probably not told, although some of its members may have heard rumours. The ordinary man in the street and the soldier in France, of course, knew nothing. But would it have made any difference if they had known? Consider the climate of popular opinion when these select few were considering the fate of their country. The war was still very popular to all but a few front-line soldiers; the handful of pacifists and conscientious objectors were treated as outcasts. Britain believed herself to be on the eve of a great offensive that would save the French and win the war.
In France, the generals were convinced they could break the deadlock. On 23 May, Rawlinson wrote in his diary:
There are rumours of peace amongst the politicians, so it will be as well to have a go before they can mature. If we could win a decisive victory, it would certainly put us in an immensely improved position for discussing terms.
The realistic Rawlinson went on to add:
I do not think there can be peace before this time next year – more probably the Autumn of 1917.
When Rawlinson spoke of ‘peace’ he meant, of course, ‘victory’.
Public and military opinion would have regarded a compromise peace as no better than defeat. It is doubtful if any British prime minister could have secured the support of the country if he had attempted to negotiate at this time. In theory, peace had been possible; in practice, it had not.
If there was no political alternative to the continuation of the war, was there no military alternative to a pitched battle on the Somme? Could not Britain use her sea power; her island position? Was there no indirect approach? Both sea power and the indirect approach had been tried at Gallipoli and had failed. There was talk of a sea-borne landing on Germany’s North Sea or Baltic coast many times during the war, but this would have been a hazardous venture. A landing in Holland to outflank the Germans in Belgium might have produced results, but Britain had gone to war over the violation of a neutral country; she could not, now, make use of that expedient herself.
The Royal Navy had imposed a very efficient blockade upon German sea-borne supplies as soon as the war had started, but the results were slow to affect German resistance and time was the one thing that Britain did not have in 1916. The French had stated, categorically, that they could not hold on at Verdun after June. No one appears to have suggested that the French should give up Verdun and withdraw to a new line, a move which might have given them time to catch their breath. The relationship between Britain and France did not extend to Britain, the junior partner, offering such advice. Moreover, a voluntary withdrawal would be utterly alien to the military philosophy of both countries.
Everything drew the main British effort to the Western Front. The best troops were there and the generals were convinced it was the only place where Germany could be beaten. If there was to be no peace, then this was the place for the fighting.
Given that the Western Front was the obvious choice, was there still no alternative in the method of attack to an infantry assault on a near-perfect German defence system? Haig would have liked time for his new divisions to become more proficient and to await the arrival of tanks, but tank production was being continually delayed and the French would not wait. Haig would have loved, also, an opportunity to use his large force of cavalry, but cavalry were of value only after a real advantage had first been gained by the artillery and infantry. The dominant motive for the British attack on 1 July was the French insistence that they be relieved. In the circumstances prevailing at the time there was no alternative to an infantry attack. The only choice left, and this was a real option, was on which part of the Western Front the attack should be made. Strategically, the Somme was a negative choice; behind the German lines there was absolutely nothing of any importance to either side. But, for the British, the Somme held several attractions. It was next to the French and the only place where a joint attack with them could be mounted. There was open ground; no mining area this, like Loos. There was dry ground, too, unlike the marshy lands of Ypres.
There was another attraction. The Somme had never been tried before. One cannot help thinking that the British were drawn to the clean, open land of Picardy because it was a fresh place for them to seek the victory for which they longed. It was a tragedy that the Germans recognized the British intention in time to make their defences there so strong. But in a war based on long artillery barrages followed by massed infantry attacks, it was hardly possible to prepare a major offensive with secrecy. In the end, it probably made little difference to the outcome. The British could have tried anywhere from Ypres to Albert; the result of the plan of attack used on 1 July would have been the same.
The Allied decision to fight on 1 July, rather than accept a compromise peace, doomed all the combatant countries. In June there had been a slender chance, given goodwill and common sense, for Britain, France and Germany to stop the war, and the other warring nations would have had to conform. But afterwards Britain, up to then almost an amateur in the war, had invested so much prestige and blood on this one day that she could not pull out without getting what she considered the only just return for that investment – a total victory.
Germany, her peace feelers rejected in such a dramatic manner, realized that she could not get at the conference table what she considered her rights from her 1914 victories and would have to fight on, in the hope of some chance of winning later.
France was happy. Now, she had a totally committed partner. Gone were the days when she had had to bear the full brunt; more and more, the British would do the fighting.
This commitment to a long war had far-reaching effects upon Britain. Above all else was the cost in human life, which eventually brought mourning into nearly every home in Britain. The exact proportion of the losses stemming from 1 July is not often appreciated. Eighty per cent of Britain’s casualties occurred after the opening of the Battle of the Somme. Most of Britain’s losses were on the Western Front; 522,206 casualties were sustained there up to the end of June 1916; 2,183,930 afterwards.*
As with the human loss, the financial cost, too, was the greater in the second half of the war. The full cost of the war to the United Kingdom was £8,742,000,000, seventy-three per cent of which was incurred after 1 July 1916. Between then and the end of the war, the National Debt increased exactly three times over.*
Although there was no practical alternative to a Somme, it is reasonable to ask whether the battle could have been better handled. It is easy to write of ‘the generals’, but just over 100 officers of general’s rank were involved in the battle of 1 July, from the c.-in-c. down to the brigadier-generals who commanded the infantry and cavalry brigades. Some of these enhanced their reputations; others did not. But once the political and strategic decision had been taken, that an offensive should be launched on the Somme, one general above all others had dominated the battle – Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson, commander of the Fourth Army.
Rawlinson’s plan was based on at least three assumptions:
1. That his army was unskilled;
2. That his artillery was powerful enough to destroy the German defences, line by line, but not more than one line at a time.
3. That there was little possibility of a breakthrough followed by cavalry action.
This appreciation was never set out on paper; it may not have occurred, in this form, in Rawlinson’s mind; but this plan can only be explained by accepting that these were his assumptions.
As there was to be no breakthrough, it was unnecessary to concentrate a decisive force at any particular point and so both infantry and artillery were spread out equally all along the front to be attacked. The infantrymen were to leave their trenches at zero hour and advance in a rigid wave system, carrying all their needs on their backs. There was to be no rushing of the German front line as soon as the artillery barrage had lifted from it, despite Haig’s advice that this should be done. Rawlinson’s infantry was simply to occupy ground already conquered by the artillery and there await counter-attacks. This was the new doctrine of attack as pioneered by the Germans at Verdun. Rawlinson did not quarrel with anyone about the cavalry; he merely produced a plan which made no provision for its use.
If Rawlinson’s plan had succeeded, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece of simplicity. The guns were spread along the attack front and fired shells, day and night, until the first line of German defences was destroyed. The infantry was then to walk over and occupy these, while the guns moved up and commenced the destruction of the next line. The whole process was to be repeated, indefinitely, until the Germans broke.
The list of mistakes made on 1 July is a long one but many would have been avoided but for the basic assumption that a week-long artillery bombardment would destroy all the German defences – the trenches, the dug-outs, the wire and the Germans themselves. The force of artillery available to the British and the ammunition for the guns was far greater than in any previous battle. Unfortunately neither the guns, nor the shells, were appropriate to their allotted tasks. The destruction of the dug-outs, in which the Germans were sheltering, demanded a quantity of heavy artillery that the British did not have. Although there were more heavies than ever before, the attack front was twice as long as in any previous battle. The heavies available were shared out fairly between all of the attacking corps but none of them had sufficient to complete the destruction of the German dug-outs on its sector. It was only on the right wing, where the French artillery lent a hand, that the dug-outs were sufficiently damaged to permit success. The French were lucky; they had nearly four times as many heavy guns for each mile of front as did the British. * The effect of what heavies the British did have was further reduced by the fact that up to one third of the heavy shells failed to explode.
The task of shooting away the German barbed wire had been given to the British 18-pounders, which accounted for sixty per cent of the total number of artillery pieces used. The ammunition return of III Corps, which attacked La Boisselle, shows that exactly seventy-five per cent of the 18-pounder shells it fired during the bombardment was shrapnel; the proportion would have been similar in the other corps. As we have seen, the margin for error in cutting wire with shrapnel was so slight that great stretches of the German wire still faced the infantry when they attacked.
Rawlinson had always wanted a long artillery preparation, while Haig, in a letter written on 12 April, favoured a ‘short, intense bombardment’. By 16 May, Haig had compromised and he sanctioned a ‘methodical bombardment, continued until the officers commanding the attacking units are satisfied that the obstacles to their advance have been adequately destroyed’.* These were sound sentiments but, at the end of June, they did not withstand the pressure of the timetable, with the French clamouring ever more insistently to be saved from defeat at Verdun. There was never any real attempt to relate the barrage to the reported observation of the units scheduled to attack. On the last day of the month, the unhappy Lieut-Col. Sandys and many other front-line officers were definitely not satisfied that the German defences had been ‘adequately destroyed’.
In the end, both heavy and light guns failed to destroy all their targets and, instead of the infantry walking over to occupy a smashed defence system, they were faced by intact barbed wire and by machine-gunners emerging from undestroyed dug-outs. Rawlinson’s plan for the infantry had not countenanced the possibility of trenches still manned by an aggressive enemy. The standard infantry tactics of this period, adopted by all armies and certainly taught in the British Army, was that an assault on a position such as this would include bombing parties, armed with grenades and light weapons only and carrying a minimum of equipment. These men would go out into No Man’s Land, lie as close to the barrage as they dare, even at the risk of suffering casualties from shells that fell short. Then, at the very moment that the artillery barrage lifted, they would rush the enemy trench and keep the defenders down in their dug-outs until the more heavily armed main body of infantry arrived to complete the capture of the position.
In May, Rawlinson issued the Fourth Army Tactical Notes, which contained detailed recommendations to the operational units taking part in the opening attack. For the infantry, the basis was the wave system described earlier in this book. Both Haig and the corps commanders protested at the absence of rushing tactics. Rawlinson, confident that the artillery preparation would destroy the Germans and fearful that his inexperienced battalions would become disorganized if the attack was too complicated, was adamant that his advice should be followed. It is uncertain whether corps and divisions were formally ordered by Rawlinson to adopt the recommended tactics, but it is certain that intense pressure was put on them to do so.
It is significant that two of the three divisions of the Fourth Army that were so successful in their initial assault did not conform blindly to the Tactical Notes. Both the 36th (Ulster) and 18th (Eastern) Divisions sent substantial numbers of their men right out into No Man’s Land before zero hour; the third successful division, the 30th, probably owed its success to the support of the French heavy artillery. The Ulster Division’s tactic may have been the result of native impetuosity rather than careful planning but it paid off. The Eastern Division, however, was commanded by the best training general of the period, Maj.-Gen. Ivor Maxse, a hard-swearing, intolerant man but a brilliant exponent of infantry tactics. His battalions had never been in battle before but Maxse had trained them thoroughly. The leading battalions were ordered to get right up to the barrage before zero hour, and told they must accept six per cent casualties from their own shells. The German front-line trench fell to their first rush.
It may be significant, also, that both of these divisions were from the New Army. It is possible that the intelligence of the New Army men proved, on this occasion, more successful than the blind obedience of the Regulars. What is certain is that those divisions, Regular or otherwise, which most closely followed Rawlinson’s advice, suffered the heaviest casualties and achieved the least success.
The French, who did not use the wave system but sent all their men forward in small groups, captured the entire length of the German front-line trench in the first hour of their attack but, once again, any conclusions should be qualified by consideration of their greater concentration of heavy artillery.
The common criticism of the British infantry attack on 1 July was that the men were hindered by having to carry too heavy a load. This is not completely just. The spare ammunition was certainly needed in the bitter trench fighting that followed. What was wrong was that all the men had to carry the full loads. When Pte Paddy Kennedy dumped his heavy kit before joining in the attack on Montauban, he was doing what every man in the first wave of the attack should have been encouraged to do. It was the senselessness of sending up to eight waves of heavily laden men across open ground, without any sort of advance guard, that caused a high proportion of the casualties.
The mistaken assumption that the artillery would destroy the German defences, followed by the failure to provide skirmishers, caused the ensuing failure and the terrible casualties. If only one of these two mistakes had been made, Rawlinson would probably have got away with it. Together, they brought disaster.
Exactly two weeks later, thirteen of Rawlinson’s battalions, twelve of them from the New Army, made a brilliant attack on German trenches near Mametz Wood. For the planning of this attack, Rawlinson consulted his corps commanders; the Official History records that the plan he made was ‘in agreement with the whole body of infantry opinion’. The men were deployed in the dark near the German barbed wire and, after a bombardment of only five minutes, rushed and captured the German trenches in the half-light of dawn. The Germans were slow coming out of the dug-outs and either surrendered or were bombed to death. The dug-outs this time had become death traps.
The lack of heavy artillery at this stage of the war could not be helped, but imagine what might have happened if Rawlinson had taken the precaution of using standard infantry tactics on 1 July, as were used on 14 July. When we consider the success of this attack, as well as the progress made by some units on 1 July, it is reasonable to suggest that Rawlinson’s men lost the battle on 1 July by a matter of seconds – the interval between the lifting of the artillery barrage and the arrival of the first wave at the German trenches. If the British infantry could have fallen upon the German front line quickly, it is possible that the day would have ended very differently.
These two terrible mistakes having been made, a further defect in the Fourth Army Tactical Notes was revealed. Just as Rawlinson had bound the infantry to the wave system, the artillery was shackled to a rigid programme after zero hour had passed. The Notes had declared:
Experience has shown that the only safe method of artillery support during an advance is a fixed time-table of lifts to which both the infantry and artillery must conform…. No changes must be made in the time-table by subordinate formations without reference to corps H.Q.’S, or confusion is sure to ensue.*
The average corps H.Q. was in a château five miles behind the trenches.
The infantry attack had been timed for 7.30 A.M., a late hour by normal standards. This had been done, mainly on French insistence, to allow the early morning mists to clear, giving good visibility for the dozens of officers who were observing for the artillery. Having secured this advantage for the gunners, at the expense of the infantry who were thus denied the chance to attack under cover of the half-light of dawn, Rawlinson threw the advantage away by issuing the above instructions. If only a proportion of the guns had been placed at the disposal of the Forward Observation Officers, the story of the vital first hour might have been different. Later in the day the rigid rules were relaxed, but by then it was too late. Once again, Rawlinson refused to credit his troops with having any skill and robbed them of all chance to use their initiative.
There were many other minor, local mistakes, the result of faulty decisions by subordinate commanders who had little experience of an attack on this scale and who had been over-rapidly promoted, factors unavoidable in the circumstances; but their shortcomings were remorselessly exposed once the basic errors had been made, and so the casualty list lengthened.
There was a sector on the left of VIII Corps of exactly one mile that was not to be attacked. It formed the gap between the northern part of the main attack, at Serre, and the diversion at Gommecourt. ‘A few days before the attack, I pointed out to General Hunter-Weston that the assembly trenches stopped dead on the left of the 94th Brigade and that not a spade had been put into the ground between me and the subsidiary attack at Gommecourt. Worse still, no effort at wire-cutting was made on that stretch either. A child could see where the flank of our attack lay, to within ten yards.’ (Brig.-Gen. H. C. Rees, D.S.O., 94th Infantry Brigade)* On the day of the attack the Germans were able to ignore this mile-long sector and concentrate their artillery fire on the British troops attacking on either side of it.
The narrow paths cut through the British wire were, in many places, completely inadequate to allow the infantry to deploy swiftly. The few paths that were provided were sometimes prepared so long before the attack that the Germans knew their exact positions. ‘The advertisement of the attack on our front was absurd. Paths were cut and marked through our wire days before. Bridges over our trenches, for the second and third waves to cross by, were put up days in advance. Small wonder the M.G. fire was directed with such fatal precision.’ (Capt. A. Stair Gillon, 87th Infantry Brigade H.Q.)† This was one reason for the heavy losses of the Newfoundlanders, who had to struggle under fire to get through their own wire. These were the very gaps about which Capt. Stair Gillon later complained. In one gap alone, the bodies of sixty-six dead Newfoundlanders were found after the battle.
No advantage was taken of many of the mines that had been prepared at such great labour. It was known that all the debris would fall to the ground within twenty seconds of the explosion, yet cautious commanders had ordered the mines to be blown two minutes before zero hour. The Germans often won the ensuing race for the craters. Ironically, the most successful mine had probably been the one at Kasino Point. In spite of the casualties it had inflicted on British troops, and most of these were caused by the shallow setting of the mine which resulted in the debris being distributed over a wide area, the late firing completely demoralized the German defence.
The commander of the London Division, by his bold action in digging a new advanced trench half-way across No Man’s Land, had shown how it was possible to reduce the amount of open ground his men had to cross. Other divisions had prepared long, shallow tunnels under No Man’s Land, which disgorged attackers near the German wire, or became rudimentary communication trenches when the head-cover had been taken down or had fallen in under shell-fire. All these measures had saved life. But some divisions, over-confident, thoughtless or lazy, had done nothing. They had not dug advanced trenches. They had not dug tunnels. Their men were condemned to be exposed over as much as 800 yards of a bullet-swept No Man’s Land.
Perhaps the greatest loss of life due to a single mistake by a junior officer was that which should have borne on the conscience of the brigade major in the 34th Division who, against orders, had sent Rawlinson’s eve of battle message to a front-line unit by telephone.
Having surveyed the obvious mistakes made, there are at least two controversial aspects of the battle that should be examined. These are the diversionary attack at Gommecourt and the failure to exploit the success of the British right wing. Although Gommecourt and Montauban were as far apart as could be on the British attack front, there is a direct relationship between the two.
Some sympathy should be spared for the Third Army generals who had to plan the diversion at Gommecourt, for they had little say in the major decisions – the sector to be attacked, the date, or even the hour of the attack itself. In addition, they were ordered to make their preparations as obvious as possible. In the event of victory, the main glory would go to the Fourth Army; if defeat, the men at Gommecourt would die in vain. What a disheartening prospect!
In direct results, the attack at Gommecourt inflicted upon the Germans nearly 2,000 casualties, including those caused by the seven-day bombardment, and on the day of the attack it drew fire from the artillery of three German divisions, fire which would otherwise have been directed onto other targets. On the face of it, these were the only benefits, because Hunter-Weston’s corps, on the immediate right, did not advance a yard. To achieve these meagre results, 6,769 of Britain’s best Territorial soldiers had been lost.
But the effect of the diversion reached further. The Germans expected to be attacked at Gommecourt and, as they could not believe that the British would attack on a front as long as they actually did, they neglected their front opposite the British extreme right wing. The complete success of the British right wing was, partly, the result of Gommecourt.
In summing up the Gommecourt diversion, there are a number of questions for which it is difficult to find conclusive answers. Was Gommecourt the best place for a diversionary attack? Allenby would have liked it to be farther north, but then the German artillery at Gommecourt would have been free to fire on the main British attack.
Was a full-scale diversion necessary at all? Would it not have been better to have made the obvious preparations for an attack and to have fired the long bombardment, but then, at 7.30 A.M. on 1 July, to have made only a brief infantry demonstration? This would have held German attention at Gommecourt right up to that time and would have saved at least 5,000 British casualties there. But this would have allowed the Germans to turn, at once, from Gommecourt and attack the flank of the Fourth Army.
Finally, was the dismissal of Maj.-Gen. Stuart-Wortley justified? Of all the troops attacking on 1 July, the men of his North Midland Division had the bleakest prospects. Theirs was the wettest and muddiest part of the front – witness Bugler Soar on the night before the battle, struggling to pass along a machine-gun while trapped in the mud. Also, being the most northerly division of the attack, they were fired on by the German artillery in front of them and from as far north as there were guns within range.
The preliminary orders sent to Stuart-Wortley in May had included this note: ‘The objective of the first bound should, therefore, be restricted to occupying the ground that is won by the artillery.’* They were signed by Brig.-Gen. F. Lyon, VII Corps’ chief staff officer. The morning attack of Stuart-Wortley’s division had been as brave and determined as any. Six battalions had lost 1,700 men, including five of their c.o.’s, against defences that had, quite clearly, not been ‘won by the artillery’.
Stuart-Wortley was not a popular, dashing general. ‘He was a worn-out man, who never visited his front line and was incapable of inspiring any enthusiasm.’ (Brig.-Gen. F. Lyon, D.S.O., VII Corps H.Q.)† Fair comment, maybe. But Lyon was a staff officer; he did not have to bear the responsibility of ordering men to certain death.
One feels that Stuart-Wortley was a scapegoat; that Gen. Allenby and Lieut-Gen. Snow were afraid that any hesitancy on their part, any failure at Gommecourt endangering the Fourth Army attack, would result in their being sent home. They need not have worried. Fourth Army, its own attack a disaster, could never accuse the Third Army men of letting them down.
Many of the men who fought at Gommecourt never knew they were taking part in a diversion. Over half a century later, some still could not accept that their friends died simply to draw German fire.
It is commonly supposed that there was no place for cavalry in France after the lines of trenches had become established late in 1914: But I would contend that, for a few hours on 1 July, there occurred an opportunity when cavalry should have been used. Why had Rawlinson refused Congreve’s request to advance farther, when his two divisions on the right wing near Montauban had taken all their objectives? Why had three divisions of cavalry been brought up and then, at 3 P.M., been ordered to retire, although regiments from one of these cavalry divisions had been just behind the successful Montauban sector?
Haig, the cavalryman, had always longed for an opportunity to use the cavalry divisions. It was he who had sent these forward and formed them into the Reserve Army under Gough. It was he who visualized what might be achieved if the German lines could be broken. Haig wanted the army to be a tiger, tearing into the German rear. His orders to Rawlinson had read:
Opportunities to use cavalry, supported by guns, machine-guns, etc. and infantry should be sought for, both during the early stages of the attack and subsequently.*
But Rawlinson had constantly resisted this course of action and the presence of Gough with the cavalry divisions. His plan, eventually accepted, was for a gradual battering down of the German positions. To him, the army was an elephant trampling the German lines down one by one. Never has a family motto more suited the character of the man, for that of the Rawlinson family was ‘Festina Lente’ – ‘Make Haste Slowly’.
Was there, in fact, the opportunity for which Haig had hoped? Were the infantrymen in the new front line of Montauban Alley being practical when they looked for the cavalry to come through? Were the Germans waiting in strength to smash any impetuous move forward by the British?
In fact, the Germans on this sector could not have been in a more desperate position. Germany was fighting in Russia, in Italy, in Belgium and in France; although she had a large army it was committed to a huge length of line besides being heavily involved in the Battle of Verdun, and the limited number of German reserve divisions had to be carefully hoarded. It has been seen in an earlier chapter how the diversion at Gommecourt and the threatening moves made by the other British armies in the north had completely misled the German c.-in-c., Falkenhayn, as to where the main attack would fall. He had also assumed that the French had been so mauled at Verdun that they would not join in the British attack. When the German commanders on the Somme had pointed out the British balloons, the obvious preparations and the long artillery bombardment there, Falkenhayn thought that these were merely diversionary moves and sent no extra reserves to that front.
On 1 July, the commander of the German XIV Reserve Corps had only two weak divisions as local reserves for the eighteen-mile front from Gommecourt to the River Somme, and by the afternoon he had been forced to commit battalions of both to the fighting. On a four-mile sector facing the British right wing there were no more than four scattered battalions and most of the German artillery here had been put out of action. The construction of the second main line on this sector had been neglected and consisted of a single shallow trench. A scratch force of clerks, cooks, batmen and 200 recruits was rushed up to man this trench, and they were all that faced Congreve until midnight when fresh battalions arrived. Against this Congreve had the two divisions that had attacked that morning and a reserve division, the 9th (Scottish); in addition the French had indicated that they were willing to advance, and cavalry regiments of Gough’s Reserve Army were near by.
One reason given for the neglect of the cavalry was that they could never have crossed the trenches, barbed wire and shell holes of the old battlefield. But these obstacles existed on every other part of the front; if the objection is valid, why had three divisions of cavalry been brought up at all? Once Montauban had been captured, the ground between the village and the former British front line became peaceful. Sappers started to lay a light railway; an old road was repaired and brought into use; teams of horses brought forward field guns, using duck-board bridges to cross the old trenches. The cavalry could have advanced over this ground.
Let it be stated that Rawlinson, as army commander in sole charge of operations on this front, had every right to choose whichever course of action he thought best suited to his overall plans. When Congreve made his telephone call, there were at least four possibilities open to Rawlinson.
‘We had been told that if we made our three miles the cavalry would follow through with thirty miles.’ (Pte A. A. Bell, 2nd Manchester Pals) This was the first of Rawlinson’s options: an attempt at the breakthrough using some of Gough’s cavalry and the infantry of Congreve’s corps. Such an operation would have been a gamble, would have needed a complex command arrangement and the cooperation of the French on the right flank, but it could have opened up the most glittering possibilities. It was certainly what Haig, the c.-in-c, desired.
The clerks and cooks in the German second line might have broken and the Germans, with few local reserves and no strong lines on which to fall back, might have been
forced to retire on a broad front and take up a new position, which could not be made so strong as the one abandoned… Whilst the Germans were fully engaged at Verdun there seemed to be every chance of a definite breakthrough.
Whether the successes gained at Montauban on the 1st... could have been exploited in the sense of Sir Douglas Haig’s conception must for ever remain an unsolved question: all that can be said is that no attempt was made to do so.
These quotations are all by the Official Historian, Sir James Edmonds, who had once been a member of Haig’s staff.
A less risky alternative to an attempted breakthrough was a limited cavalry operation. If a small cavalry force had gone out from Montauban and wheeled left, exploiting the ground which lay between the German front-line system and the second line, such a force would have found open ground, no barbed wire and only a rare, probably unmanned communication trench. There was hardly any German infantry in this intermediate zone, but there were artillery batteries and administrative units which would have been most vulnerable to cavalry action. Such an operation would have been in the nature of a raid. Mametz Wood could probably have been taken, and Fricourt and Contalmaison threatened. After a week-long bombardment and heavy fighting all day, the sudden appearance of British cavalry behind them might well have caused the German infantry still holding the front line in the centre to break.
There would have been dangers, of course. The cavalry might have been caught by long-range German machine-gun fire or British artillery fire; their return route might have been closed behind them. But, considering the slaughter of the British infantry farther north, these would have been risks that the cavalry would certainly have accepted. Two or three cavalry regiments, boldly handled, could have achieved results out of all proportion to their numbers.
A third and even safer course open to Rawlinson was to permit a modest infantry advance in conjunction with the French. The two woods, Bernafay and Trônes, which were just outside Montauban, could easily have been occupied. Patrols did go into Bernafay, found only a few Germans whom they took prisoner, and then returned, leaving an empty wood. Indeed, the Germans assumed that both of these woods had been occupied by the British. Some of the open ground between Montauban and the German second line could have been occupied too. There was little risk in these moves.
But Rawlinson chose the safest course of all. In refusing Congreve’s request to advance he was sticking to his original plan; the new front line in Montauban Alley was a perfect defensive position from which to beat off the expected German counter-attacks. When these did come, however, they were so weak that they were easily dealt with.
Nothing further happened on the right wing until the afternoon of 3 July. The Germans were still so disorganized that two Scottish battalions took Bernafay Wood at a cost of only six casualties. Rawlinson was now prepared to move farther, but the French, unimpressed by the British lethargy on the first day, had lost interest in this sector and were attacking elsewhere. Five more days of inaction followed, then the 30th Division, back in the line again, moved on Trônes Wood. But they were too late; the Germans had recovered.
The fighting for Mametz Wood, Trônes Wood and the open ground, some of which could have been taken so easily on 1 July, went on for days. The casualties incurred in their subsequent capture were enormous and might have been avoided by bold action on that day.
Little wonder that Pte Norton of the Norfolks had looked in vain for the cavalry, that Soldat Goebelbecker was ‘puzzled by the lack of further forward movement by the British’ and that Capt. Spears was ‘almost biting his nails down to the palms in frustration’.
In attempting to assess whether this opening day of the Battle of the Somme was a success or otherwise, one faces several difficulties. It is not easy to look at the military aspects without the political, to treat the British attack apart from the French, or to separate the first day from the remainder of the battle.
Only with the massive use of hindsight can it be seen that Britain should not have fought the battle at all. The failure of the political and military leadership to recognize the stalemate, or their refusal to accept it, committed the soldiers to a war of attrition that resulted in the loss of the cream of a generation of young men and created problems in Europe that led to the Second World War. But this is an academic conclusion, much divorced from the realities of the period. It would have needed a genius and a very brave man to have turned Britain from the path she chose on the Somme rather than make a compromise peace with a hated enemy.
Whether the Battle of the Somme in its entirety was a victory for the Allies, as has often been suggested, is a subject of controversy. Looking back at Haig’s three original aims for the battle, all seem to have been fulfilled. The French were relieved from defeat at Verdun; the positions held by the Allies at the end of the battle were better than on 30 June; losses were inflicted on the Germans. But the Battle of Verdun was probably waning, with both sides nearing exhaustion, before the Somme started, and the final Allied positions on the Pozières Ridge were rendered valueless when the Germans retired the following spring. Only the third achievement cannot be argued against: it was on the Somme that the Germans lost the core of their battle-hardened army.
In dealing with the first day alone, it can be claimed that 1 July was a British success, for the Germans immediately started closing down their attack on Verdun. But the British assault had been on such a scale that success, in this limited sense, had been inevitable. The terrible losses made it a success hardly worth having.
How should history judge the individuals who were involved in making the major decisions for 1 July? The ultimate responsibility rested with Asquith and his War Committee, but its members should not be judged too harshly. They represented a country which was still fully behind the war. In supporting their ally and pressing for military victory, they were doing what nearly every patriotic Briton expected of them. Many of the politicians did not know of the German peace offers; none suspected that the battle would be so grossly mismanaged.
Douglas Haig, that much maligned soldier, is another to whom too much blame should not be attached. Once he had chosen the front to be attacked – and the Somme was no worse than any other — and given his army commanders their instructions, his main duty was to provide them with the best troops and resources available, and there is no evidence that he failed in this. His ambitious plan to capture Bapaume with cavalry and then roll up the German lines to Arras may seem unrealistic, but it was a contingency plan in the event of a breakthrough occurring. It has been seen just how close the cavalry came to being needed.
On one count, however, Haig can be criticized: that was his reluctance to impose his will on Rawlinson. He felt that Rawlinson’s plan of attack was wrong, but Haig, not long at G.H.Q. and an ex-cavalryman, would not overrule his ex-infantry subordinate. It turned out to be a tragic error.
Of the army commanders, Rawlinson emerges very badly. His Fourth Army had taken only a quarter of its objectives and had suffered 50,000 casualties in one day. He had been responsible for three major errors, one each for the artillery, the infantry and the cavalry.
Rawlinson was not to blame for the shortage of heavy artillery but he had failed to recognize the depth and strength of the German dug-outs it was supposed to destroy. He ignored the doubts of infantry officers on this score and the evidence of the captured dug-out on his Touvent Farm sector. It seems incredible that no one at Fourth Army H.Q. knew of this or suspected that the Germans had dug down so far.
Rawlinson had ignored both the current War Office manual on tactics and the advice of all around him in refusing to rush the German trenches. By insisting, instead, on his own rigid attack plan he had robbed his men of any opportunity to use the intelligence and initiative which they surely possessed. Rawlinson must take full responsibility for this, the worst mistake of the day and the one which had caused most of the casualties.
Rawlinson had a poor opinion of his neighbours, the French. On the eve of the battle he wrote;
If we do bring off a great success they will be jealous; if we do not, they will say it is hopeless to try and break the lines and will begin, again, to talk of making terms. This makes one’s relation with them very difficult, for they are like children in many ways.*
These were unworthy sentiments. On the following day, the French took four fifths of their objectives and twice as many prisoners as did Rawlinson. The French heavy artillery support and their successful infantry advance did much to help Rawlinson’s only real success, the advance of his right wing.
Perhaps it was the antipathy that Rawlinson felt towards his ally which influenced his other mistake – the refusal to allow the right wing to exploit its success. It is easy, however, to write these lines after many months of research and thought, but picture the situation when the corps commander at Montauban telephoned his chief to ask permission to advance farther. Rawlinson had spent months planning this battle; he had given every appearance of having complete confidence in the result. But now, as he sat in his office at Querrieux with the hot sun streaming through the windows, his hopes were crumbling away. His other corps commanders were reporting disaster, confusion, or an ignorance that could mean anything.
Then, suddenly, from a sector where he had least expected success, came a report of victory. Rawlinson had heard other reports like this one during the morning; they had turned out to be false. To accede to Congreve’s request, Rawlinson would have to trust the French, whom he did not trust; he might have to use the cavalry, in which he had no confidence; he would have to switch his attention from the centre, where his main hope lay, to a sector as far from the centre as could be. The proposed advance was against all Rawlinson’s instincts and against his own carefully prepared plan.
Rawlinson did not have weeks to sit quietly coming to a decision. He did not have an hour. He should have grasped the opportunity to do something on the right wing, especially in view of Haig’s orders about using cavalry, but he failed to do so under such great pressure.
The first two of Rawlinson’s mistakes were the direct cause of the failure of his army to take many of its objectives and of the fearful casualties it had suffered. The third ensured even more casualties in the days that followed.
Of the other army commanders, Allenby had the unenviable task of making a diversion against Gommecourt. His plan showed imagination but he was over-ambitious in including the encirclement of Gommecourt village in the objectives. His failure to recall the London Division as soon as the attack had broken down, and his insistence that the battle be resumed in the afternoon, when his troops had already performed their diversionary function, only added to the casualty list. Also the summary dismissal of the North Midland Division’s commander seems harsh, particularly after the advice about the limited nature of the attack given to Stuart-Wortley before the battle.
Lieut-Gen. Gough of the Reserve Army was blameless. His voice in the major decisions and his influence on the battle were non-existent.
The mistakes of the lesser generals were mainly due to an inexperience that was unavoidable in the circumstances; some of the corps and divisional commanders had done extremely well. If those who had not had all been replaced, it is unlikely that their successors would have done any better. One wonders, however, whether Haig was right to retain the sixty-four-year-old Lieut-Gen. Maxwell in his position as Quartermaster General after the ambulance trains’ failure.
The only good to emerge from that terrible day was the display of patriotism, courage and self-sacrifice shown by the British soldiers. Theirs is a memory that their country should always cherish.