In the afternoon the Rev. Blackburn conducted a short divine service close to our bivouac and amongst the trees. He asked if it was safe as it was exposed, but everywhere was exposed. The enemy opened fire where we were paraded and rounds fell about 100 yards off, the chaplain ducked his head and excused himself.
Major G B MacKenzie – 2/Siege Battery
The artilleryman on the Aisne in 1914 either fought with the Royal Field Artillery, (RFA) the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) or the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) which manned the heavy and siege batteries. The RHA was an integral part of the Cavalry Division and with its lighter 13-pounder guns provided artillery support to the cavalry brigades. Unlike infantry regiments, the artillery has no regimental colours; its colours are the guns themselves and are treated with the same reverence. Neither does the artillery have specific battle honours, their battle honours are encompassed in the word ‘everywhere’ or Ubique, an honour unique to the gunners. Ubique is a declaration that wherever there is battle there are gunners.
When war was declared the artillery went to war with three principle weapons in its armoury. The 18-pounder field gun, which initially only fired shrapnel, the field howitzer firing a 35-pound shrapnel or high explosive (HE) round and the 60-pounder gun – or ‘cow guns’ as they were sometimes called – which could throw a 60-pound HE or shrapnel shell. The 18-pounder was adopted for service on Christmas Eve 1904 and despite the early difficulties with the recoil function, the gun proved to be an enormous success; versions of the Mark II were still in service during the Second World War. Successful trials during 1914 with HE rounds saw the gun adapted to fire shrapnel, HE, smoke and gas shells throughout the war, its range was 6,525 yards or 5.9 kilometres. The 60-pounder Mark I field gun entered service a year later in 1905 replacing the older 4.7-inch gun. Weighing in at some 4.5 tons it was at the limit of what could be drawn by horses but its range was significantly longer at 10,300 yards or 9.4 kilometres. The Mark II version of this gun saw service in the Western Desert during the Second World War. Finally in 1908, the 4.5-inch field howitzer – designed by the Coventry Ordnance Works – was taken into service. Weighing 1 ton it had a range of 7,300 yards or 6.6 kilometres.
Whilst gunners referred to all their weapons as ‘guns’ there were essential differences between the field gun and the howitzer which lay in the length and elevation of their barrels. Howitzers had a short barrel and a relatively low muzzle velocity and in order to increase its range the barrel was depressed from its starting point of 45 degrees; the field gun, on the other hand had a longer barrel with a higher muzzle velocity and its barrel was raised from the horizontal to increase its range.
This mix of guns was similar to that of the Germans, although the German High Command had introduced heavy mortars and howitzers in anticipation of reducing the heavily reinforced walls of the bastions which were the French and Belgian forts. Their arsenal of 105mm (4-inch) and 150mm (5.9-inch) howitzers together with the formidable 210mm (8.2-inch) howitzer, which were used to such great effect on British and French troops on the Aisne, settled once and for all the question of which arm would conquer the battlefield during the next four years.
In what must be regarded as a very short-sighted move, the French rejected howitzers almost entirely from their weaponry, opting instead for the quick firing 75mm field gun – the soixante-quinze. In line with their doctrine of L’offensive à outrance, the French High Command saw a mobile artillery corps making such good use of ground that a long-range gun would not be required to get within effective range of an enemy. Howitzers, on the other hand were weapons which suggested concealed positions, accurate and calculated map shoots and deliberate counter-battery firing and accordingly, were largely excluded from French military thinking. Not every French artilleryman agreed with this principle, some continued to warn that the high rate of fire of the French ‘75s’ made it the ideal gun for neutralizing the enemy’s fire but completely useless in knocking out the heavy batteries deployed against it. Charles Deedes, a British staff officer with GHQ thought the French guns, ‘looked like toy cannon when compared with our splendidly horsed and heavier 18-pounders’. Fortunately the French hadn’t discarded all their heavy guns, there were still some 300 in service and some of these were soon in action on the Aisne and elsewhere.
The control of British artillery on the battlefield was, in theory, the responsibility of the divisional Commanders Royal Artillery (CRA), but in effect they had little actual control over their guns. Supported by a small staff and a brigade major, some CRAs were used by divisional commanders purely as administrators whilst others were used more as a channel of control putting into effect divisional orders for the deployment of guns. In 1914, artillery was still seen as an accessory to the tactics employed by the infantry, there was no conception of the CRA being a partner in the planning of operations. Moreover, there was no centralized control of artillery in early 1914 beyond that of the divisional structure; the artillery fire plan, which was to become such a crucial element in future battles, was not part of the planning process. Whilst this rather blinkered control of a division’s guns may have worked well in the past when gunners were in close proximity to the infantry, on the Aisne the shortcomings created by poor communication with the infantry, particularly by batteries which were forced to come into action some distance from their targets, were quick to surface.
Even during the advance from the Marne the lack of co-ordination between infantry and artillery had, on numerous occasions, resulted in ‘friendly fire’ episodes which unfortunately continued to bedevil the British on the Aisne. On 13 September, for example, the 4th Division war diary records a complaint from 11 Brigade – timed at 11.42am – that the Rifle Brigade was being fired upon by the division’s guns and the next day Lieutenant Arthur Griffith and his section of 71/Battery guns at La Cour de Soupir Farm was fired on by his own battery! Friendly fire was a phenomenon which even Jock Marden complained about in his diary on 18 September: ‘Why don’t gunners have telescopes or field glasses?’ he asked, ‘then perhaps they wouldn’t shell their own side so much!’ Despite Jock Marden’s sarcasm, however, which was undoubtedly shared by many infantrymen, the gunners were learning quickly and by the concluding weeks of the campaign there was more evidence of the allocation of artillery zones being used in an effort to tie each brigade of guns to a specific frontage. This development went some way to reducing the incidents of ‘friendly fire’ and introducing a fire plan discipline.
The decentralization of control over artillery was but one of a number of features which was reflected in the British artillery manual – Field Artillery Training 1914 – a volume which had numerous failings within its pages, not least of which was its attempt to reflect the dual purpose of the British Army of 1914 – that of Imperial police force and potential European partner in a continental war. This inability to completely define the form of warfare in which it envisaged the artillery to be engaged was not apparent in the French and German tactical manuals. In both cases the tactical doctrine was clearly defined – there was little doubt in the minds of French and German military planners where the next war would be fought, or indeed against whom! But here again there were differences between the two. Whereas the German Drill Regulations for the Field Artillery recommended concealed positions and the use of indirect fire control by observers, the French – as we know – were in favour of a more direct method of fire control by placing their batteries out in the open and close to their infantry where the targets could be identified by the gun teams themselves.
The lack of a clear tactical doctrine in the British manual and its vague references to ‘positional warfare’ and the ‘war of movement’ did little to educate artillery officers and merely drew attention to the great debate on the employment of artillery on the battlefield taking place in military circles in Britain at the time. In general, the spirit of the 1914 regulations leant towards the French belief that batteries should take up their firing positions in the open so as to give continuous direct fire to the infantry. Unfortunately on the Aisne the opportunities where this was possible were few and far between and where battery commanders were able to get their guns forward, casualties amongst the gunners tended to be high. It was not uncommon for a battery to cross the river and be unable to find a suitable position from which to come into action and subsequently to retire. All too frequently guns were withdrawn from exposed positions having not fired a single round.
A case in point was XL Brigade which reached the pontoon bridge at Vailly at dawn on 14 September and crossed over to the village to wait for the infantry to clear the high ground. Finding the steep hillsides thickly wooded the XL Brigade batteries could not locate any suitable gun positions or observation points:
‘We hunted everywhere for targets and positions and although we were under intermittent rifle and gunfire, it all seemed to come out of the blue. Later on in the morning the Infantry Brigadier told the colonel that the enemy were getting round to our left and we must clear out back across the river and try and find positions to support the infantry from there.’258
It was very much the case in 1914 that the three arms – cavalry, infantry and artillery – each saw their role in isolation of the other and the principle of co-ordination between the three elements was not one which was generally considered to be of importance. Consequently any interaction between fire and movement was lost in the failure to formulate an agreed doctrine of strategic and tactical ideology. All this was to come later.
Without doubt the campaign on the Aisne produced a new set of difficulties for the gunners who found themselves ascending a steep learning curve of development. Not only were the 18-pounder field guns found to be woefully short of range but even after the crossing of the river had been successfully negotiated and the infantry were dug in on the slopes of the spurs, the guns were still struggling to reach the German positions. Alexander Johnston’s diary records his frustrations on this subject:
‘The German observation posts are extraordinarily good: directly there is any movement anywhere they shell the place at once … one can see them building redoubts and trenches about 1,000 yards away. But they are pretty well out of range of our artillery who therefore cannot stop them, while if we endeavour to do so we get shelled to blazes at once.’259
A few days later on 19 September Johnston was again watching the Germans, this time moving across his front towards 4 Brigade. ‘We could do nothing ourselves but as the Germans were very conspicuous on the hill I should have thought our gunners could have done something, however, they did not’. Unfortunately for Johnstone and 7 Brigade, beyond the river on his frontage there were few suitable sites where batteries could be brought into action as these were generally overlooked and under direct observation. It was only the 60-pounder heavy batteries which could reach the enemy guns from the southern heights above the river. The 48/Heavy Battery guns could reach the traffic running along the Chemin des Dames, ‘sometimes we got a shot off at enemy ammunition wagons on the move, or traffic on the long road running east and west; at about 10,000 yards range we stopped the traffic’.
The 3rd Division artillery brigades in particular were handicapped by the width of the Aisne valley opposite Vailly which, together with the lack of cable and telephones for forward observation, made artillery support a logistic nightmare, a factor perhaps not always fully appreciated by the infantryman under enemy shell fire. However, where the guns were able to be brought forward they were often very effective in supporting the infantry. Battery commanders such as Wilfred Ellershaw of 113/Battery did not shy away from carrying out their duties according to Field Artillery Training 1914. He would have been very much aware of the infantry’s expectation that batteries should be positioned well forward, an expectation which dated back to the deployment of guns in the South African War. Indeed, the only gunner Victoria Cross of the campaign was won by Bombardier Ernest Horlock of 113/Battery. On 14 September the battery was under the orders of 3 Infantry Brigade and had unlimbered with 46/Battery in a quarry south west of Vendresse near Chivy. The morning was misty and the fighting confused as the infantry struggled to climb the spurs towards the Chemin des Dames. On being ordered uphill, the battery commander, Major Wilfred Ellershaw, observed a German attack developing and engaged it with shrapnel fire at a range of some 900 yards. The battery at once came under heavy counter-fire from German gunners, and despite being twice severely wounded, Horlock continued to aim his gun and remained at his post.
There had already been a classic but very costly example of this tactic at Le Cateau just over two weeks previously. At Le Cateau on 26 August the 5th Division batteries were positioned within battalion lines and while the support they gave the infantry with their direct fire was effective, they were eventually overrun and over thirty guns were lost. Bravery there might have been that day – four gunner Victoria Crosses were won on Suffolk Hill – but the losses in guns and men had severe repercussions for the 5th Division infantry attack on the Aisne. In contrast 108/Heavy Battery was positioned east of Reumont out of sight of the main battle on the reverse slope of the hill and had its fire directed by an observer placed further forward on the Montay spur.
As one might have expected after the first two days of fighting on the Aisne, when the two sides began to dig defensive lines, artillery commanders tended to switch their tactics to indirect fire from more concealed positions which demanded the use of Forward Observation Officers (FOO) – linked to the battery by telephone communication where possible. Some divisions were better placed than others to establish telephone lines. The 3rd Division telephone equipment was in such a bad state of repair when it arrived on the Aisne that most batteries had to fire in the open unavoidably placing the guns under direct observation. Paul Maze, a French interpreter attached to Gough’s cavalry, came across the results of such folly on his way to Vailly:
‘Immediately beyond the village of Chassemy the shattered remains of one of our batteries stood in front of a wood under full observation from the enemy, holding the heights on the north bank of the river. Every gun and limber had been pulverized by their fire, and judging by the number of men lying about, few of our gunners had escaped.’260
Where batteries were forced to seek concealed positions without the benefit of telephone connection to an observation point, lines of gunners were used to pass messages to the batteries and it was only by 18 September that enough cable was found for one 3rd Division battery to establish a telephone link to its FOO.
Lessons were certainly being learned quickly – even amongst the French gunners. Jack Hay’s diary described an occasion when he was at a French ‘75’ battery observation post near Lassigny in the Sixth Army sector:
‘We found ourselves in the fire control or observation post of the battery, and naturally in a very advanced position. The idea is that the battery fires from a concealed spot such as behind a ridge and an observer, often two miles away, directs their fire by telephone or otherwise, all fire being what they call indirect, ie you can’t see what you are firing at. Of course the observer has to be able to see everything, and so we naturally did well, and watched the French shells exploding over a German battery about 4 miles away.’261
Yet British gunners had great difficulty in finding suitable observation points. The Chemin des Dames, being the highest point in the area, completely masked the position of German batteries beyond it. Direct observation on these gun positions was impossible except by cooperation with the RFC observers, of which more in the following chapter. Where batteries were successfully brought into action on the north side of the valley observers made use of a variety of locations from which to report on the accuracy of their battery’s shooting. Likely buildings were soon targeted by the German gunners as were haystacks and trenches. Movement to and from observation points was kept to a minimum and absolute immobility of movement was strictly enforced when German aircraft were overhead.
The frequent references to spies directing German shell fire which appear time and time again in personal accounts and war diaries did have some truth in them, although the ‘spy fever’ which often seemed to seize the battlefield was frequently generated by inaccurate and false suspicions. Aylmer Haldane recounted an occasion when a dynamo in a local cottage was reported as being used to transmit wireless signals to the enemy, a search revealing nothing but a weaving machine and a startled occupant. On another occasion a ‘heliograph’ was observed by troops flashing signals which appeared to be directing the shell fire of German batteries and convinced them that this was the work of a spy. It turned out to be a discarded sardine tin caught in the branches of a bush!
However, there were several documented cases of German artillery observers actually being discovered in British lines with telephone lines connecting them to German batteries. Gunner Myatt of 109/Battery wrote of an officer and two men being discovered in a wood with a telephone directing German fire onto British batteries. There was no doubt in Myatt’s mind that, ‘they were pretty brave men’. Another example quoted in the Official History described a German with a week’s supply of food being discovered inside a haystack and another disguised as a farmer in a house between the lines. The I Corps Diary made reference to the use by the Germans of motor cars for reconnaissance with the, ‘occupants dressed as French or English officers who drive boldly through our lines at great pace’. There is only one, ‘safe rule in dealing with Germans’, remarks the diarist, and that was to, ‘treat them as capable of any treacherous trick’.
On 23 September four siege batteries armed with the old pattern 6-inch 30 cwt (breech loading) howitzers arrived on the Aisne. These guns, when fired from their travelling carriages as heavy howitzers, had a range of 5,200 yards but mounted on a siege platform, the range increased dramatically to 7,000 yards. Ancient they may have been – they had seen service in South Africa at the turn of the century – but they were the only siege artillery pieces available for use in September 1914. The batteries were brought into position just in time to play their part in what may have been one of the very first organised artillery fire plans used in the Great War.262 On 18 September Haig entrusted Brigadier General Henry Horne – his Corps Artillery Adviser – with the organization of artillery fire and liaison with the RFC. Horne still lacked the legal authority as a commander of artillery and had to bow to the chain of command by passing suggestions to the relevant CRAs, but it was a beginning. The I Corps Special Artillery Group – which acted under the direct command of Haig himself – made even further inroads into centralizing divisional artillery. On 25 September, for example, the combined fire power of the 1st and 2nd Divisions was brought to bear on the Germans in the Chivy valley. Placed under the orders of Haig, guns from XV and XVII Brigade, a battery of VIII Brigade howitzers, 3/Siege Battery and a section of 35/Heavy Battery, brought the attacking German infantry divisions to a standstill as fire was swung across the corps frontage, an action we know was very successful. This was a great improvement but Major John Mowbray, brigade major of the 2nd Divisional Artillery, still expressed his frustration at the continuing lack of effective communication:
‘It is quite clear that divisional artillery require much more effective communication arrangements than we have. There should be a signal company or a section of a signal company allocated for this purpose and able to provide at least four stations with several miles of wire. The CRA would then be able to communicate directly with his brigades and fire could be rapidly controlled. Present arrangement of communications through infantry brigades is most unsatisfactory, many delays, often entirely nullifying the value of messages.’263
We can only ponder as to whether Mowbray himself speculated on what might have been if a concentration of fire power been used on the I Corps front during their attack of 14 September.
Nonetheless, in mitigation it has to be said that GHQ’s Operational Orders for the 14 September directed the BEF to ‘pursue’ a retreating German Army, not to attack entrenched positions. Had the orders from Sir John French been less ambiguous in content the tactics employed on that crucial first day may perhaps have been different. In any case the heavier 6-inch guns were not on the Aisne on 14 September and these would undoubtedly have been a vital component in any such attack.
By their very nature the siege batteries demanded a forward observation station from where the battery’s fire could be controlled. 2/Siege Battery under the command of Major G S MacKenzie, was in place by 5.00pm on 24 September amongst the trees to the right of the modern day D967 just southwest of La Tuilerie Farm. The forward observation post was on the high ground of Mont de Charmont, some 200 yards in front of the battery and manned from dawn to dusk. The guns were capable of firing a 100lb HE shell as well as a similar round containing shrapnel, but old stocks of obsolescent ammunition were dangerous and prone to premature detonation as was demonstrated on 25 September when such an explosion killed 22-year-old Gunner Thomas Lacey. Another similar accidental explosion occurred in 1/Siege Battery on the same day, this time killing Gunners Smith and Fuller,264 while a third premature on 1 October wounded the battery commander, Major C N Ewart, and six men.265 John Mowbray commented in his diary that the shells were too old and not really safe enough to be used, but added, ‘Ewart neglected to order all ranks to take cover while firing’. Major E L Hardcastle arrived to take over command of Ewart’s battery on 9 October.
As obsolete as the guns were they were at least able to begin to answer the questions posed by the powerful German guns and also began working closely with the infantry. On 2 October 2/Siege Battery fired four high explosive rounds into the Ostel valley after the Irish Guards reported a German band playing at about 4.30am. John Mowbray was delighted with the results:
‘Siege HQ had a telephone message last night from the Irish Guards that the enemy had a band playing and concert in progress in front of them. Without leaving the table he [the CRA] telephoned the battery who fired three rounds from the Guards directions. Message then received, band stopped. Concert ended. Assembly dispersed. Good night!.’266
A few days later on 6 October the Coldstream Guards directed fire from 1/Siege Battery onto a German trench just in front of their positions. The battery observation post was right up amongst the Guards’ forward trenches. Major Bernard Gordon Lennox and the Grenadiers were on the receiving end of the German retaliation at Chavonne:
‘Singularly quiet day up to 3.00pm. From then for about 1½ hours the Dutchmen subjected us to a terrific bombardment in the village: shrapnel and high explosive. It was quite like old times at Soupir and we couldn’t make out what had woke the beggars up, they simply plastered the village and some came so close that we got orders to be ready to move out of the village at once. This luckily was not necessary and the entertainment closed with net result of three transport horses killed and a lot of tiles and roofs not looking their best. Strolled up to the Coldstream Guards’ billets at about 6.30 and saw Tony who told me the reason of their peevishness. The Dutchmen have apparently a big trench about 500 yards in front of the Coldstream with a lot of men in it. The Coldstream got a RA officer to look at it. He telephones down to the big howitzers and they planted their very first shot right into the middle of the trench. Tony tells me he never heard such a squealing and squawking and howling and moaning which went on for the best part of an hour. Our howitzers went pumping on and the result was the Dutchmen became very peevish and let us have it for all they were worth.’267
Gordon-Lennox’s rather blasé attitude to the shelling at Chavonne was also a feature of George Jeffrey’s diary. On another occasion he describes Prince Arthur of Connaught – the colonel of the regiment – paying them a visit: ‘He sat for some time and had tea. The 6-inch battery was firing, and every time a shell went off he jumped nearly out of his skin, so fear he didn’t enjoy his visit’.
On 7 October 2/Siege Battery turned its guns on the German strongpoint at Fort Condé this time using the RFC to guide its shooting. Their first round fell within the confines of the fort and over the next few days from their position on the southern bank of the river near the Château Bois Morin, north of Chassemy, the battery fired over 100 rounds at targets on the Chivy spur registering several direct hits.
Another gun brought back into service on the Aisne was the antiaircraft gun. Another relic of the South African War it was largely ineffective. 11/Pom-Pom Section arrived on 22 September and Brigadier General Haldane had one of their guns, which he thought to be ‘a considerable novelty’, attached to 10 Brigade under the command of a Captain Hudson, ‘whose refreshing optimism as to the number of “birds” he brought down or wounded was a source of much amusement to myself and staff’. There is no record of any German aircraft being brought down by one of these guns. Accompanying the unit was Sergeant Major Victor Laws from 3 Squadron RFC. Laws’ task was to identify friend from foe in an effort to ensure the pom-pom guns did not shoot down any British aircraft, something which even Laws himself considered unlikely, although he admits that, ‘[we] may have killed quite a few troops in the front line where the percussion capped shells fell after firing’. John Mowbray was not impressed either:
‘Converted Pom-Poms sent out for anti-aircraft work, which arrived a day or two ago, already clearly useless. It is slow, the shells do not readily burst and the tracers only work up to 2–3,000 feet. As the planes generally reconnoitre at 5–6,000 feet this is of little use. Perhaps it does keep the hostile planes a little higher.’268
The I Corps War Diary shared Mowbray’s opinion, declaring the Pom-Poms, ‘have been quite useless’.
On 27 September a memorandum on British and German tactics employed on the Aisne was circulated by GHQ, which set the tone for future fighting on the Western Front. Unsurprisingly the future control of artillery was high on the agenda. The section on defence opened with a statement which heralded the birth of the new form of warfare, ‘before this war it was thought that artillery bombardment unaccompanied by an infantry attack was ineffective’. The memorandum went on to underline the need for artillery to occupy fully covered and concealed positions using observation stations to direct fire. The Germans had already made good use of observation balloons on the Chemin des Dames for artillery spotting observation and the memorandum conceded that the enemy appeared to be superior to us both in ingenuity and science:
We must learn from their methods particularly in terms of aircraft observation … Their co-operation between the artillery and aeroplane also appears thorough, aeroplanes indicate the direction of targets by throwing out lights or smoke balls which are easily distinguishable at a distance, then they return to the batteries for which they are observing and shortly afterwards (presumably when the aeroplane had had time to give further data) fire is opened with great accuracy.’269
In what would become a feature of the next four years of fighting, the memorandum drew attention to the German artillery’s habit of systematically searching for targets using map lines, giving the example of German fire on crossroads and supply routes where, ‘searching fire is frequently kept up at night’. Arthur Osburn was on the receiving end at Paissy when the German gunners began one of their ‘searching bombardments’:
‘Then came the Coal Boxes rumbling roar, as if a thousand clumsy housemaids had fallen down a thousand flights of stairs with loaded coalscuttles, the ground quivering, the rocky escarpments of the Aisne echoing and re-echoing for miles. These Coal Boxes and Black Marias would come over in salvos of twos and threes; then methodically the German gunners would search for us, ranging from end to end of each valley in huge diagonals, creeping ever nearer towards the brown mass of tightly packed men and horses which cowered away from them under the shelter of the hill; searching until whole valleys were pock-marked with smoking craters ten feet wide.’270
The shelling which Osburn described so graphically was typically fired from batteries concealed in wooded areas. The memorandum hardly needed to point out that German gunners were well concealed and, ‘quick in picking up targets and in opening effective fire’ – the British troops on the ground already knew that!
The lessons were unquestionably being learned but the material cost of answering the Germans’ apparently inexhaustible supply of shells was having repercussions at home. On 17 September Sir John French in a communiqué to the War Office indicated that shell stocks were becoming critically low. The BEF had only 270 rounds for each of its howitzers and 180 rounds for each field gun; the reply from the War Office to the effect that shell shortages were not just the preserve of the BEF was not what Sir John wanted to hear. The guns in Edward Bulfin’s 2 Brigade alone were firing an average of twenty rounds per day per gun and daily quotas were inevitably exceeded. A further 300 rounds per gun were shipped across the channel by early October but the shell shortage would raise its head again in late October when the BEF was fighting for survival at Ypres.
By the time the last battery of British guns had left the Aisne, there had been a sea change in tactics and thinking; the artillery was fast becoming the dominant force on the battlefield and over the course of the next four years the RFA would grow from 45 to 173 field brigades whilst the heavy and siege artillery of the RGA would undergo a similar expansion from 32 heavy and 6 siege batteries to 117 heavy and 401 siege batteries. The gunners had come of age.