Behind the Lines
‘I have told the Brigadiers and Commanding Officers to forget all about the Germans for a few days and devote their minds and energies towards establishing a good system of interior economy, and improving the discipline of their units. It is no reflection on our men when I say we are weak in these matters. When one sees the waste and the unnecessary friction which is set up by want of administrative experience and knowledge, one realizes that it plays just as important a part in the success of the war as does the actual fighting.’—Russell writes to New Zealand Defence Minister Sir James Allen after the Third Battle of the Somme.133
On 12 October, the New Zealand Division became part of Godley’s II Anzac Corps, taking over a quiet part of the line about 8 kilometres west of Armentières. In front of it, still occupied by the Germans, was the shattered village of Fromelles, a place of sinister memory for the Australian Infantry Corps. Here on 5 July 1916 some 5300 men of its 5th Division had been killed or wounded in a poorly mounted attack on German lines. New Zealand patrols were now collecting identity disks, paybooks, field glasses and all kinds of equipment from the hundreds of Australian dead that still littered no-man’s-land.
Russell had much to do to rebuild his shattered division. Organisational and tactical weaknesses that had surfaced on the Somme needed to be addressed, reinforcements from England absorbed, and replacements found for the many officers and NCOs lost in the battles of September and October. NCOs and men from the ranks who had performed well on the Somme were now promoted; incompetent or unsuitable officers were weeded out and sent back to New Zealand.
‘A good many officers who are returning to New Zealand are not wanted back,’ Russell wrote to Allen. ‘For various reasons, there are quite a few more who must go. They are in a few words not up to the job . . . Character first, health next, and experience last. If you can send us officers with a soldierly habit of mind and body, we can put on the finishing touches fairly easily.’134
By now 1st Brigade, manned mostly by Gallipoli veterans, was showing signs of exhaustion, as was its commander, Brigadier-General Earl Johnston. Russell dealt with the problem by reforming his 1st and 2nd brigades into separate North and South Island formations, keeping the 3rd (Rifle) Brigade intact and sending Earl Johnston away on sick leave. The brigade restructure was not a popular move with many of the veterans—as one of them wrote, ‘No one but a number of the old Main Body and their subsequent reinforcements that fought on Gallipoli knew the sorrow that this caused amongst us—our old record was gone.’135
Russell’s move to restore 1st Brigade’s fighting effectiveness reflected an increasingly common problem on the Western Front—battle fatigue: ‘Each brigade, as well as each man, could only stand so much combat before becoming exhausted, and each in turn needed to be rested . . . Good men became ineffective after months of combat and it was a command problem to recognise and deal with it.’136
Another problem to be faced at this time was the bad feeling generated by the preferment of officer reinforcements from New Zealand over men who had earned their right to promotion by their performance in battle. It had surfaced in Egypt in early 1916, as Russell forged his Gallipoli veterans and reinforcements from New Zealand into the new division that would go to the Western Front. An increasing number of officers, however, were now being commissioned from the ranks. By the end of the war, they would account for nearly 50 percent of all officers serving with the division.
Meanwhile, there were important housekeeping issues to be dealt with. Up until now, Russell admitted, he and most of his officers had thought a great deal more about fighting than about efficient administration. Supplies and equipment were being wasted everywhere and the health and wellbeing of his men was being neglected, ‘partly due to carelessness and partly to ignorance’. On 21 October, Russell’s diary noted: ‘Divisional Conference—Outlined policy—Men’s comfort and safety first, the rest nowhere.’
Policy was now put into action, with the focus on improving the living conditions of the troops. Senior officers were instructed to devote at least half their time to the care and comfort of their men and to leave the more active operations, for the moment, to their seconds in command. Routine orders now required proper drainage and sanitation, the provision of hot meals in the trenches, and fresh vegetables in the divisional canteens. Trenches were drained, billets repaired, extra blankets issued and each man provided with dry socks daily. At platoon level, Russell required junior officers to attend to the wellbeing of their men ‘exactly the same way as a mother does her boy of 10 . . . you cannot trust the ordinary mortal to darn his socks or look after his digestion’.137
Behind the lines, sports days and football competitions, concerts and films were organised to improve general fitness and morale, and a divisional rugby team was set up. Accompanied by his staff and subordinate commanders, Russell inspected trenches, billets, cookhouses and wagon lines daily to ensure that his new orders were being carried out. The welfare of the horses was not neglected. Russell’s diary of 3 March 1917 noted severely: ‘Napier Johnston and I went round the 11th Battery whose horses are a disgrace to the British Army.’
Russell’s reforms had gained extra urgency because of the bitterly cold winter of 1916/17, which the French claimed was the worst in 50 years. By the beginning of February 1917, the ground had been covered in snow for a whole month. Frozen boots and socks crackled as they were put on; water spilled turned immediately to ice, and even the latrine seats were coated with a thin layer of ice after they were scrubbed. Most of the men washed only once or twice a week.
By now, however, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was also helping to improve the living conditions of the troops. As the New Zealand Division pulled out from its mauling on the Somme, Russell asked the YMCA’s first director, Jim (later Sir James) Hay, to provide some basic services as the division returned to the north of France by train. The trip would take nearly three days, which meant that the men, huddled together in covered cattle wagons, would have nothing to eat or drink for the best part of 24 hours. Russell asked that YMCA staff meet each troop train at specific points en route and provide each man—nearly 20,000 of them—with hot cocoa and a packet of biscuits.
It was duly done, and afterwards Russell told Hay that he would make available whatever labour he required to set up YMCA facilities across the division. In less than a month the YMCA was providing the men with canteen, library and letter-writing facilities from a network of huts and marquees, as well as games, literary competitions and concerts. Lectures by well-known public speakers were also provided, for Russell was well aware of the stultifying effects that prolonged trench warfare could have on men’s minds.
Venereal disease was an ongoing problem in the divisions. Russell took a tough, if somewhat puritanical line, recommending to Godley that officers who had caught VD be sent home to New Zealand for ‘misconduct’. Godley agreed to this ‘for the sake of example’, though he conceded that the penalty might in some cases be a little harsh. Russell dealt with drunkenness in the officer corps no less severely: the offenders were court-martialled, reprimanded and demoted.
In spite of Russell’s pre-Somme efforts, discipline in the division was still not up to his exacting standards. During the battle, he had written to Allen: ‘The discipline of the Division is fair, I can’t say more. There are 70% first rate fellows, 20% weak and 10% who are born to give trouble. We should be a better fighting unit without the 10%. Bad characters do not make good soldiers. With our men we might well earn the title of being the best Division in France. That we shall not do so will be partly my fault, partly the fault of the 10%.’138
Russell wanted to send his ‘incorrigibles’ back to New Zealand to be dealt with by the military authorities there. Allen resisted this on the grounds that such men would only ‘contaminate’ the rest of the community and cause ongoing trouble. A better option, Allen felt, would be to give the troublemakers ‘the post of honour’ in the front line. ‘It may be hard to say, but they are either better shot trying to do their duty at the front, or reformed if possible by the knowledge that they have been called upon to do the most dangerous jobs.’139 Richardson, who commanded the NZEF in England, was equally pragmatic: ‘When a man became a nuisance, I did not send him back to New Zealand, I put him to a place in the field where he could not miss.’140
In the end, Russell agreed that the division’s persistent troublemakers should not be sent home but put into the front line under firm military discipline. He had to admit, however, that on the Somme these men had, in general, fought just as well as the better-disciplined soldiers of his division. Among them was Private J.D. Stark of the Otago battalion, the anti-hero of Robyn Hyde’s Passport to Hell. There were few ‘incorrigibles’ to match ‘Starkie’, who became a legend in the division for his run-ins with authority. In battle, he was ‘like a berserk Norseman of old . . . completely oblivious of fear and driven to acts of bravado unmatched in the division’. Out of battle, he was equally uncontrollable.141
Russell’s efforts to improve the administration of his division and return it battle-readiness after the heavy losses on the Somme eventually bore fruit. By February 1917, he felt that advances had been made in the discipline and ‘interior economy’ of the division since it had moved into its winter headquarters. By April, he could report to Allen that his division was now ‘in first-class fighting trim. I have never seen the men look so well as they do today. The sick rate is low . . . Even venereal, for the time being, is a negligible quantity.’142
Russell had achieved all this by a combination of methods, including providing the necessary calibre of leadership at officer and NCO level, and giving proper attention to the care and welfare of his soldiers. With this went improved communication between the senior levels of command and the men, so that all ranks were kept regularly informed of what was happening and why.
By now Russell was confident that his New Zealanders were as good, or better, soldiers than any the British Army could field, and for much the same reasons that they were superior on Gallipoli. ‘No doubt the overseas troops are better fighters than the Home article,’ he wrote to his son Andy. ‘This is not because they are better men really for we all come from the same stock, but because we are better fed, and in the case of men, as of sheep, half the breeding goes down the throat.’
Meanwhile, British fighting methods on the Western Front were being given a major shake-up. The Somme battles had shown up weaknesses at all levels, from tactics to command, and British Army commanders and their staffs were looking for solutions. Lieutenant-General Sir Ivor Maxse, commander of the British XVIII Corps, and Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng were the main innovators. The result of their advocacy was a return to the small-group ‘fire and movement’ tactics that had been standard in the British Army up until 1914.
In February 1917, Haig directed that these tactics be adopted army-wide, and Russell lost no time in introducing them to his division. The basic attacking unit was now to be the 40- or 50-man platoon divided into sections made up of specialist machine gunners, bombers, grenadiers and riflemen. Every man in the platoon would be expert in the use of all infantry weapons—rifle and bayonet, rifle grenade, machine gun and bomb.
In place of the mass ‘wave’ attacks of the Somme that were so vulnerable to German machine gunners, the troops would be trained to advance in sections and in short rushes, outflanking and destroying enemy positions as they encountered them. It was the beginning of a revolution in tactical doctrine that would play a large part in breaking the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western Front.
The pressures of command, however, were starting to put a strain on Russell’s health. At the beginning of 1917 it was bad—a reaction to the heavy demands of the Somme campaign the previous September and the harsh winter that followed it. In January, he was admitted to a home for convalescent officers with bronchial pneumonia. After preliminary treatment there, he was sent to the south of France for two weeks to recover.
A month earlier, Gertrude and their daughter Jan had embarked for England for a reunification with their husband and father, and a visit to other members of the Russell family. Sometime before leaving New Zealand, Gertrude had written, rather ambiguously, to her husband: ‘Don’t forget to tell me about your lady friends, if you have any. I can’t imagine you without. I shan’t mind but don’t treat them as a subject not to be mentioned between us.’
In fact, Russell had not gone without female company. On leave, he was paying regular visits to a Swiss countess at her chateau overlooking Lake Geneva. The nature of his relationship with Madame Lily de Condolle is not known, but Gertrude eventually found out about it and family sources confirm that, while it lasted, it caused considerable tension between them. Letters between husband and his wife that might have thrown some light on the matter were burnt on Guy Russell’s orders after his death in 1960.