December 1915
From December 1915
the British commander-in-chief was Douglas Haig,
then a general but promoted to field- marshal, the highest rank in the army,
a year later.
Haig had been left
in no doubt, by Kitchener's instructions of December
1915, that the defeat of the Germans by 'the closest co-operation of French
and British as a united army' was to be his objective. The Chantilly
conference of early December had set out an Allied strategy, in which a
combined offensive was to play a major role.
14the January
1916
Haig had his doubts
about the level of French participation even before the
Germans attacked Verdun, writing on 14 January that he thought the French
unlikely to stand another winter's war, and so 'the war must be won by the
forces of the British Empire'. This being so, lie was reluctant to hazard his
army in the 'wearing-down fights' of which Jut had spoken: he argued that
there would be little merit in fighting such battles until the main offensive was
imminent.
14th
February 1916
On 14 February
Haig met Joffre at Chantilly. Haig could not agree to relieve
the French 10th Army for operations to the south of the Somme. It was
currently sandwiched between the British 1st and 3rd Armies around Arras.
HOwever, the two commanders-in-chief were able to agree on a combined
offensive astride the Somme, with a target date of 1 July. Haig then told
Rawlinson, designated to command the new 4th Army, to consider how this
offensive might best be handled. But at the same time he ordered Plumer,
commanding 2nd Army in Flanders, to plan for operations there, in an area
where the German communications bottleneck presented an attractive target.
At this early stage we can see the contradictions inherent in the choice of the
Somme as a battlefield. There were no significant tactical objectives close
behind it, and advance of even 30 miles (50 kilometres) would not strike a
fatal blow. A much smaller advance from Ypres, however, would seize the
railheads upon which the northern wing of German armies depended. Sir
James Edmonds, the official historian. complained that, this being the case,
'the Somme offensive had no strategic object except attrition'. That the
Somme became a battle of attrition there is, as we will see, little doubt. But in
early 1916 Haig saw it as something more: a potential breakthrough.
21st
February
Battle of Verdun
28th
February 1916
As soon as news
of Verdun broke Haig agreed to relieve the 10th Army, and
on 28 February he saw Joffre `to shake him by the hand and place myself
and my troops at his disposition'. Over the coming months Haig had to
balance conflicting priorities. The French urged him to attack as soon as
possible to take the weight off them: given the importance of maintaining the
alliance these demands could scarcely be ignored. But on the other hand
Haig was all too well aware of the real state of his army, writing: 'I have not
got an Army in France really, but a collection of divisions untrained for the
Field. The actual fighting army will be evolved from them.'
April 1916
Haig moved his
headquarters to Montreuil-sur-mer, a pleasant Picardy
town.. He had attempted to translate his staff from 1st Army direct to GHQ,
but his chief of staff, Major-General Butler, was considered too junior, and
instead Haig took Lieutenant-General Sir Launcelot Kiggell. John Terraine,
Haig's most acute defender, observed that `Kiggell never was, nor aspired to
be, more than a mouthpiece for Haig.' He adds that 'a distinct weakness of
Haig's period of command is a lack of forceful and energetic personality at
his side until the last months of the War, when Sir Herbert Lawrence joined
him as Kiggell's replacement'.
4th
April 1916
Rawlinson and his
chief of staff, Major-General A. A. Montgomery,
developed their plan in March. It embodied what Rawlinson called 'bite and
hold', and was based on the mathematical calculation of the front that could
be attacked by his troops and the 200 heavy pieces available to support
them. He concluded that he should be able to seize the German first line on a
front of 20 000 yards (18 200 metres) and then, in two distinct attacks, push
on to take the German second line. Rawlinson knew that Haig was unlikely
to welcome the plan, and wrote on 4 April that he had heard that the
commander-in-chief favoured wider objectives 'with the chance of breaking
the German line'.
Here Rawlinson
was perfectly correct. Haigh declared that the methodical
bombardment favoured by Rawlinson would forfeit surprise, and
complained that the whold scheme was far to cautious. He favoured a more
ambitious attack behind a short hurricane bombardment. The serious flaws
in Haig's proposal, not least the difficulty of dealing with German barbed-
wire and strong-points with a short bombardment, and bringing cavalry
through to exploit the breakthrough were apparent to Rawlinson. However,
he declared himself 'quite game to try although it does involve considerable
risks'. He told Haig as much, but added that he would do as he was told,
and expected instructions in due course.
Haig eventually
conceded that a deliberate bombardment would be
necessary, but could not be deflected from his confidence in an ambitious
attack, which would break the German line and allow Lieutenant- General
Gough's Reserve Army, then consisting largely of cavalry, to be pushed
through the gap. Rawlinson never shared this enthusiasm. He warned his
corps commanders that, despite the commander-in- chief's views on the
subject, 'I had better make it quite clear that it may not be possible to break
the enemy's line and push cavalry through at the first rush.' While on the
whole he was 'pretty confident of success', he expected that it would cone
only after heavy fighting, and expected 10 000 wounded a day, hardly an
index of a clean break-through.
This was not the
message conveyed to the soldiers of 4th Army. Brigadier-
General Gordon of 8th Brigade was expounding official orthodoxy when he
told his men that they could 'slope arms, light up your pipes and cigarettes,
and march all the way to Poziêres before meeting any live Germans'.
26th
May 1916
There were sound
reasons for delaying the offensive until the New Army
divisions were better prepared, but sounder reasons for not imperilling the
alliance. On 26 May Haig entertained Joffre in his modest château at
Beaurepaire, near Montreuil. When he suggested that his army might not be
ready to attack till August Joffe declared that ‘the Franch army would cease
to exist if we did nothing till then’. Haigh an abstemious man, noted that:
They are, indeed,
difficult Allies to deal with! But there is no doubt that the
nearest way to the hearts of many of them, including the `Generalissimo', is
down their throats, and some 1840 brandy had a surprisingly soothing
effect’.
Rawlinson's newly
formed 4th Army took over the right of the British line,
about 20 miles (30 kilometres) of chalk downland from Foncquevillers in the
north to Maricourt, just short of the meandering Somme, in the south. The
Albert–Bapaume road slashed obliquely across its main feature, a long,
irregular ridge running from Thiepval to Ginchy. Rawlinson himself took up
residence in the delightful Château de Querrieu, about 12 miles (19
kilometres) behind the front. He thought it 'capital country in which to
undertake an offensive when we get a sufficiency of artillery'.
It had previously
been a quiet sector, and German defences, prepared at
leisure, were very strong. There were two completed systems, with a third in
preparation. The first, composed of several lines of battle and
communication trenches, incorporated fortified villages like Serre, Thiepval,
La Boisselle and Fricourt. The lie of the land made it immensely strong, for
the villages enabled their defenders to bring flanking fire to bear on the
sections of line between them. The second line was a mile or two behind the
first, and both this distance and the intervening ridges meant that an attack
on the second line would have to be distinct from the assault on the first.
The firm chalk was ideally suited to the construction of deep dug-outs. The
Germans had built many, some of them 30 feet (9 metres) deep and
impervious to direct hits by all but the heaviest guns. These were no surprise
to the British, who had already captured one near Touvent Farm.
June 1916
In the week before
the attack British gunners fired a million and a half shells.
The 18-pounders concentrated on the wire and trenches while heavier pieces
hit German strongpoints and reached out to strike batteries. When the attack
started, a creeping barrage – which was a new concept developed by Major-
General C. E. D. Budworth, Rawlinson's Major-General Royal Artillery
–would move ahead of the infantry. Tunnels had been dug beneath German
strongpoints, and chambers hollowed out and packed with explosives: these
nineteen mines were to be exploded shortly before zero hour.
1st
July 1916
The expectation
was that the shelling and mines between them would cut the
wire, destroy or neutralize the first garrison of the first position, and cripple
the German artillery's prepared response. The infantry was to advance at a
walk, in extended lines, carrying full kit, in the belief that it was occupying
ground already conquered by artillery. Rawlinson was well aware of the
importance of the bombardment, and postponed the attack from 29 June to
1st July to give his gunners more time. Yet although the bombardment was
dreadful for the Germans…. The rats in some dugouts went mad and
scrambled up the walls, where they were killed with spades and conversely
inspiring to the British, it failed to accomplish what was expected of it. The
shelling of an exceptionally strong section of front was proportionately
about hall as heavy as that of the far flimsier defences at Neuve Chapelle.
The French, attacking on both sides of the Somme on the British right, had
double the ratio of heavy guns per yard of front. About one-third of the
shells fired failed to explode because of faulty fuses or shot-out gun barrels
which meant that shells tipped over and over in flight. Inexperienced artillery
observers, and there were many in the New Armies, often moved sections of
German wire but failed to cut it.
The interrogation
of prisoners produced conflicting views of the state of
German defences. Some said that dugouts offered complete protection:
others that they were being destroyed. Some patrols reported that the wire
was cut: others found it intact. While Haig was convinced that the wire was
indeed cut, Rawlinson was less confident, and was not 'quite satisfied that all
the wire has been thoroughly well cut'. There was enough doubt in the
efficacy of the bombardment for a private soldier, Rifleman Percy Jones, to
write: 'I do not see how the stiffest bombardment is going to kill them all.
Nor do I see how the whole of the enemy's artillery is going to be silenced.'
Rawlinson, as we
have seen, had his own misgivings about the attack, some
of which were shared by corps commanders. Yet 4th Army specifically
warned that: 'All criticism by subordinates... of orders received from
superior authority will, in the end, recoil on the heads of the critics.' The plan
had become sacrosanct: and even those who successfully deviated from it
kept their intentions secret. Had Rawlinson been more morally robust, and
the decision process less constrained by status, he might have argued his
case more vigorously. As it was, he made what Robin Prior and Trevor
Wilson call `an unhappy act of obeisance to Haig's authority', with the
consequence that the result of 1 July 1916 was less 'an unforeseeable
misfortune... [and] more in the nature of a foregone conclusion'.
The first day of
the battle is marvellously chronicled by Martin
Middlebrook's The First Day on the Somme, which remains one of the best
books written on the war. In the south, Water Congreve's XIII Corps had
taken its objectives, thanks partly to the fact that French gunners, anxious to
avoid their own infantry being taken in the flank by intact positions on their
left, had added their own fire to that of British guns. Henry Home's XV
Corps had made fair progress, taking Mametz and getting so close to
Fricourt that the Germans gave it up next day. But further north the results
were grievously disappointing. William Pulteney's III, Thomas Morland's X
and Aylmer Hunter-Weston's VII Corps had achieved few lasting gains.
There had been some short-lived successes: the inimitable 36th Ulster
Division, attacking north of Thiepval, had overrun the German first line but,
with the defences of Thiepval intact behind their right shoulders, the
Ulstermen could not be supported.
The British army
had lost 57 470 officers and men, 19 240 of them killed and
2152 missing, on what remains its bloodiest day. Unusually in a war in which
artillery was the major killer, about 60 per cent of these casualties were
caused by machine-gun fire. The Germans, sheltering in dugouts, emerged
as the barrage lifted to fire into the massed ranks in front of them, and their
batteries came to life to drop a curtain of shell-fire across no man's land.
Their official account observed that:
‘The training
of the infantry was clearly behind that of the German; the
superficially trained British were particularly clumsy in the movement of large
masses... The strong, usually young, and well armed British soldier followed
his officers blindly, and the officers, active and personally brave, went ahead
of their men in battle with great courage. But owing to insufficient training,
they were not skilful in action.’
The British official
historian admitted that this appeared to be fair comment.
Although the initial
casualty reports that reached Rawlinson were
optimistically inaccurate, even the real numbers could scarcely have deterred
him, for the attack's operational imperative remained unaltered. On the night
of 1 July he set out his vision for the next phase of the battle: 4th Army
would hold on to what it had gained, and make fresh efforts to secure the
many front-line strong points where it had failed. This was a novel reversal
of the principle of reinforcing success, and did not commend itself to Haig
when he visited Querrieu on the 2nd. He gave Gough command of the two
northern corps, VIII and X, and told Rawlinson to renew the attack in the
south, where he had already made progress. Joffre demurred, perhaps
fearing that operations in the south would leech away French resources too,
but Haig, rightly this time, was adamant.
3rd
July 1916
On 3 July attacks
on Ovillers and Thiepval failed, and XV Corps could not
exploit a promising attack at Contalmaison. That night XV Corps reached
the southern edge of Mametz Wood, lying between the two German
positions, and XIII Corps cleared Bernafay Wood, on the British right.
Before he could attack the German second position Rawlinson had to secure
Mametz Wood, and it was not until 12 July that he did so, after grim fighting
which sadly mauled the New Army's 39th (Welsh) Division, whose
composition owed much to the influence of David Lloyd George. In less
that a fortnight 4th Army lost some 25 000 men securing the start-line for the
assault on the second position. What is noteworthy is that these battles were
fought without overall direction from Querrieu. For example, when XV
Corps attacked Mametz Wood on 7 July, the artillery of XIII Corps
remained silent. Attacks on one sector were disrupted by insuppressed fire
from another and there was no attempt a cohesive action ac ross the whold
of the 4th Army front.
Yet Rawlinson was
not idle. I le and his staff were considering the pt ohlem
of the German second line, leering down ;it them front the Longeuval Ridge.
Rawlinson proposed a night attack, and was only able to persuade Haig that
the troops were well enough trained for this when Horne and Congreve, his
remaining corps commanders, firmly assured GHQ that the plan was indeed
feasible. Night attacks were no novelty, and often raised as many problems
as they overcame. Forming up and negotiating the wire could be difficult,
although the laying of miles of white tape helped men keep direction.
Machine-guns firing on fixed lines, and artillery engaging registered targets
were as deadly by day as night. The Germans were amply provided with
illuminating flares, and, like any defender in a night battle, knew their ground
while the British did not.
14th
July 1916
Of course darkness
did afford some shelter to the attacker, and contributed
to the shock of a surprise assault. But what really made the 14 July night
attack work was the fact that Rawlinson's gunners were engaging about 6000
yards (5460 metres) of front as opposed to the 22 000 yards (20 000 metres)
of 1 July, and that trench systems behind the front attacked on 14 July were
no more than another 12 000 yards (11 000 metres). Although Haig's
allocation of part of the old 4th Army to Gough had reduced the number of
guns available to Rawlinson, in essence he had two-thirds as many guns with
which to demolish one- eighteenth of the length of trench. There was steady
bombardment on 11-13 July, and at 3.20 on the morning of the 14th a five-
minute blizzard of fire preceded the infantry attack. Its results were
remarkable. The German second line, trenches and wire pulverized by a
shelling proportionately five times heavier than that which fell before 1 July,
was overrun on a broad front from Bazentin-le-Petit to Longeuval.
It proved impossible
to exploit success. Getting the cavalry forward across
slippery ground and deep trenches was a problem in itself and, despite
Royal Flying Corps reports that High Wood was empty, it was in fact laced
with trenches and German reserves were on hand. The battle was less a
tragedy of missed opportunities than a successful instance of bite and hold:
which, of course, is what Rawlinson had favoured from the start. However,
the fact that the Germans remained in possession of both Delville Wood and
High Wood enabled them to slip reserves over the crest-line behind them to
turn the new line into a position it would take Rawlinson's men two bitter
months to break.
16th
July 1916
On Rawlinson's
left Gough's men made steady progress, taking La Boisselle
on 7 July and Ovillers on the 16th. Pozieres, on the AlbertBapaume road at
the heart of the German second position, was attacked by the newly arrived
Australians on 23 July, and over the next two weeks the village was smashed
to pieces as they fought their way through it.
7th
August 1916
They were masters
of it on 7 August, but at what a cost. Three Australian
divisions lost almost 23 000 men, and with them their faith in British
leadership. 'If Australians wish to trace their modern suspicion and
resentment of the British to a date and a place,' writes the Australian historian
Peter Charlton, `then July–August 1916 and the ruined village of Poziéres are
useful points of departure.'
It was an atrocious
summer, with rain turning the shattered woods and
charnel villages into a stinking slough as the British and German armies
slogged it out on the uplands. It is important to grasp the significance of
these 'forgotten battles' that defined the real character of so much of the
Somme fighting.
2nd
July 1916
At this stage in
the war German doctrine emphasized the importance of
immediate recovery of lost ground. On 2 July Falkenhayn visited General
von Below, whose Second Army held the Somme front, and emphasized
that 'the first principle in position warfare must be to yield not one foot of
ground, and if it be lost to retake it by immediate counter-attack, even to the
use of the last 'nail'. Below immediately passed these instructions on to his
troops, with the result that British and French attacks were almost always
followed by German counter-attacks. Terraine castigated historians who
portrayed the Somme as British troops rising from their trenches to be
mown down: it ought, he pointed out, to be set beside an image of German
troops doing precisely the same thing.
One of the consequences
of Falkenhayn's prior commitment to Verdun had
been the concentration of German artillery in that sector, and it was not easy
to disengage guns for use elsewhere. As the Somme ground on, so Allied
artillery preponderance became more marked and the squat triangle of
tortured earth with Bapaume at its apex was dominated by the gun. One of
the less than fair consequences of the British army's regimental system, with
its emphasis on county regiments – most now gone for ever – was a
tendency to undervalue the contribution made by the Royal Artillery. The
remarkable improvement in artillery technique was an important legacy of the
Somme. It is natural enough for a British audience to reflect on what German
guns were doing to its grandfathers and great- grandfathers, and easy to
forget what it was like on the other side of the hill. Between 15 July and 14
September British gunners fired 6.5 million shells, and the Royal Flying
Corps' superiority over the battlefield meant that much of this fire was very
well controlled.
Lieutenant Ernst
Junger, who was to become Germany's most decorated
officer, described the artillery landscape.
‘The sunken
road now appeared as nothing but a series of enormous shell-
holes filled with pieces of uniform, weapons and dead bodies. The ground
all round, as far as the eye could see, was ploughed by shells... Among the
living lay the dead. As we dug ourselves in we found them in layers stacked
one on top of the other. One company after another had been shoved into
the drum-fire and steadily annihilated'.
The German army
was extraordinarily resolute. Junger recalled being led
forward to the front line through the village of Sailly-Saillisel one night in late
August by a guide who was beyond hope and beyond fear. Nothing was left
but supreme, superhuman indifference. 'They attack every day,' he said. `But
they can't get through. Everyone knows it is life and death.'
A tank at Serre
The first tanks – so called because they were shipped to France described
as 'water tanks' – were developed in such secrecy that Haig did not know
about them till Christmas Day 1915. He took an early interest in them, writing
in April 1916 that they might prove useful in the northern part of the Somme
front, to take the
ridge around Serre, and discussing 'the surprise and
demoralizing effect' likely to result from their first use. There would be too
few available to use on 1 July, but during the summer stalemate GHQ
remained anxious to accelerate their arrival with a view to using them in a
decisive battle. Haig was not a free agent. Just as he had been pressed to
initiate the Somme earlier than would have been ideal, so Joffre demanded a
decisive resumption of Allied attacks on the Somme in order to keep the
Germans at full stretch.
The Russians were
in growing difficulties, and if the Somme faltered the
Germans might be able to shift some weight to the east. Haig realized that the
attack would have to be properly prepared, and refused to launch it before
15 September, despite Joffre's pressure. But such was its importance that he
felt it worth using as many tanks as were available. If the summer's fighting
had turned into an attritional battle which had worn down the Germans,
GHQ was clear that the next phase of the fighting was to be a ‘decicive
operation..’
August 1916
In August Sergeant
Frederick Oehme, an ex-law student, described
Martinpuich, one ‘a pretty place’, as 'a region of horror and despair.
'Lasciate ogni speranza' Abandon hope – are the words over the portals of
hell in Dante's Divine Comedy. I kept thinking of them as we tore through
the village.' He was killed on 25 October.
What is at issue
is not the terrible damage that this fighting did to the
contending armies,. but whether the British could have inflicted this damage
on the Germans at less cost to themselves. There were too many small-scale
operations, with the same objectives being attacked, time and time again, by
too few soldiers behind too light a barrage. Lack of progress coupled with
heavy casualties – 4th Army lost about 82 000 men during this period – led
to growing disquiet in the British government, and on 29 July Robertson
warned Haig that 'the powers that be' were becoming more restive. This
induced Haig to give firmer direction to Rawlinson, and one of the casualties
of that dreadful summer was the commander-in-chief's confidence in 4th
Army's commander.
29th
August 1916
Rawlinson was sceptical
about the tanks. On 29 August, a fortnight the
coming battle, lie told the King's assistant private secretary that:
‘We are puzzling
our heads as to how best to make use of them and have
not yet come to a decision. They are not going to take the British army
straight to Berlin as some people imagine but if properly used and skilfully
handled by the detachments who work them they may he very useful in
taking trenches and strong points. Some people are rather too optimistic as
to what these weapons will accomplish’.
Rawlinson was preparing
his ground in case the coming battle did not
produce the decisive result hoped for by Haig: there was still no meeting of
minds between Querrieu and Montreuil. Nor was Gough any more
optimistic, and neither of the army commanders engaged in the first tank
battle was inclined to use them save in small groups dotted along the front.
Kiggell told Rawlinson that Haig wanted tanks 'to be used boldly and
success pressed in order to demoralize the enemy and, if possible, capture
his guns'. It is hard to resist the conclusion that Haig and Kiggell figured
among the 'some people' mentioned in Rawlinson's letter of 29 August.
The first tanks,
part of the Heavy Section, Machine- Gun Corps, arrived in
France in early September and were moved up by rail to Bray-sur-Somme.
In the meantime 4th Army had at last taken Guillemont and Ginchy, helping
the French to push on and reach the Bapaume-Peronne road at
Bouchavesnes. Although the French, recovering after this advance, were
unable to attack on 15 September, their heavy guns, reaching into the
German flank and rear, made a valuable contribution.
10th
September 1916
A German regimental
history described these days as the ‘worst of the
War’. On 10th September a reservist told his family 'You can form no idea
what the poor soldiers have to go through here in this place and how cruelly
and uselessly men are sacrificed is awful’
15th
September 1916
Of forty-nine tanks
available for the attack, thirty-two actually got into
action. Tank D1 had the distinction of being first into battle on the morning
of 15 September, when it went forward, shortly before the main attack began
at 6.20, to clear a strongpoint on the edge of Delville Wood. Gough
allocated his tanks to 2nd Canadian Division, which planned to use them to
spearhead its attack on the sugar factory near Courcelette. The attack was
successful, though the tanks broke down or moved too slowly to keep up
With the infantry. On their right, 15th (Scottish) Division of III Corps,
Rawlinson's left-hand formation, took Martinpuich with the help of half the
Corps' eight tanks.
Further east, High
Wood - 'ghastly by day, ghostly by night, the rottennest
place on the Somme' - lived up to its evil reputation. Controversially, III
Corps decreed that the four tanks allocated to 47th (London) Division would
pass through the wood despite the reasoned opposition of the tank, officers
who argued that the ground was had. I lace ditched ;Ind the lout th reached
the German support line, where it was destroyed by a shell. The First
infantry attacks failed, and it was not until a trench-mortar battery had put
750 bombs into the wood that the morale of the Bavarian defenders cracked
and the Londoners took the place at last. It did their commander, the well-
respected Major-General Barter, no good. He was sacked, and his
supporters attributed this to the fact that he had been right about the tanks
while the corps commander was wrong.
Further east, XV
Corps made for Flers. The New Zealand Division, on its
left, was initially held up by fire from High Wood, but on the right the attack
developed with far greater promise. Twelve of the seventeen tanks allocated
to the attack here went into action together. There was panic among some
defenders, and 41st Division took Flers with close support from some of the
surviving tanks. A pilot, echoed by war correspondents, reported: 'A tank is
walking up the High Street of Flers with the British Army cheering behind it.'
On Rawlinson's right, XIV Corps made disappointing progress, largely
because most of its tanks, for which gaps had been left in the barrage, failed
to materialize.
By the end of the
day the British had taken a great bite out of the German
third position, seizing strongpoints which had held them up for months and
capturing ground from which to renew their attack. They had not broken
through, and the attack had cost 4th Army alone nearly 30 000 men. Success
at Flers was, like success at High Wood two months before, to be over-
celebrated: the truth of the matter was that the problem of exploiting success
was still far from solution. The tanks could help break into the German
position but, short- ranged, slow, prone to breakdown and ditching, bone-
cracking and nauseating for their crews, they could not yet assist with the
breakout.
25th September
1916
If 15 September
had brought no breakthrough it had at least continued with
the remorseless process of attrition. On 25 September Charteris observed
that lads of the 1917 class, not due for conscription till the coming January,
were appearing on the battlefield, 'and if the weather holds we shall have
worked through
them pretty quickly'.
As usual he was optimistic. A bad summer blew into an
awful autumn, and the conditions in which men lived and fought simply defy
description. Even the Official History's prose rises to describe how, `in a
wilderness of mud, holding water-logged trenches or shell-hole posts,
accessible onbly by night, the infantry abode in conditions which might be
likened to those of earthworms rather than of human kind’.
The British continued
to make gains, taking Morval and Lesboeufs on 25
September and Thiepval a 1 July objective — on the 26th, but their progress
was painfully slow. The last blow in the battle was struck by Gough, tt hose
men renamed 5th Army on 1 October — took Beaumont-Hamel, another 1st
July target, on 13 November. When Allied leaders met that month at
Compiegne they agreed that it was time to halt for the winter. There would lie
another offensive in 1917, but it was evident to all that the burden of 1916
fbr British and French alike, been almost insupportable.
Even now it is
impossible to say exactly what that burden was. Allied
casualties on the Somme totalled about 600 000, two-thirds of them British. I
he Germans reported casualties on a different basis, and the British official
historian, Sir James Edmonds, assessed them as 660-680 000. Even if, as
some historians suggest, he was over- generous, it is hard to place them
lower than 600 000. One German officer described the Somme as 'the
muddy grave of the German field army, and of confidence in the infallibility
of German leadership', while Ludendorff acknowledged that his army was
'completely exhausted' at its end.
One of the many
virtues of Malcolm Brown's Imperial War Museum Book
of the Somme is its identification of the ambivalence at the heart of the
Somme experience. While one officer called it 'just slaughter', another,
Charles Carrington, wrote:
The Somme raised
the morale of the British Army. Although we did not win
a decisive victory, there was what matters most, a definite and growing sense
of superiority over the enemy, man to man... We were quite sure that we had
got the Germans beat: next spring we would deliver the knock-out blow.
Yet nobody reading
Carrington's A Subaltern's War could doubt that he had
indeed seen about the worst the battle had to offer.
This ambivalence
extends to the generalship. Given the nature of Anglo-
French relations and the emphasis that British politicians placed on
maintaining the coalition, it is hard to see how Haig could have declined to
attack on the Somme. Indeed, it took much of his moral strength not to be
hustled into attacking sooner. Despite the advantages that the ground offered
to the defender, and the lack of attainable objectives behind the front, the
Somme was not inherently unsuitable for an offenssive, and had the
advantage o meeting French wishes to mount an Allied operation.
Notwithstanding the losses of the first day, and the growing misery of the
summer's fighting, the British could scarcely have stopped their attack: the
need first, to relieve Verdun and second, to prevent the Germans slipping
troops to the east, saw to that.
In terms of tactics
if not morale, the British army which emerged from the
Somme was better than that which had entered it. As Paddy Griffith has
written: 'The five- month Somme battle taught the BEF many lessons and
transformed it from a largely inexperienced mass army into a largely
experienced one.' However, the management of the battle does not redound
to the credit of the British high command. The first day's plan was the
bastard child of the differing expectations of Haig and Rawlinson. There was
enough evidence to suggest that the scheme was unrealistically optimistic,
and this was at best honestly discounted and at worst wilfully suppressed.
Rawlinson's handling of the battle thereafter was deficient: he behaved like
the corps commander he had been, not the army commander he was.
5th
November 1916
His own insecurity
did not help. One example shows precisely how his
relationship with Haig affected the battle. Lord Cavan of XIV Corps
formally protested at an order to attack Le Transloy on 5 November:
'I assert my readiness
to sacrifice the British right rather than jeopardize the
French... but I feel that I am bound to ask if this is the intention, for a
sacrifice it must be. It does not appear that a failure would much assist the
French, and there is a danger of this attack shaking the confidence of the
men and officers in their commanders. No one who has not visited the front
trenches can really know the state of exhaustion to which the men are
reduced'.
Cavan pressed his
point: Rawlinson went forward to see the ground, and
agreed that the attack was impossible. After speaking to Foch, Haig reversed
the decision, and XIV Corps attacked as ordered. Cavan lost 2000 men for
no gains, and there is no evidence that his failure assisted the French.
The British won
the battle on points and, as Sergeant R. H. Tawney later a
distinguished professor of economic history — wrote, were in danger of
reducing 'the unspeakable agonies of the Somme to an item in a commercial
proposition'. It seems certain that a knock- out blow was still well beyond
them: their opponent was simply too tough. The British were right to he on
the Somme: hut so many of them would not lie there today had some of their
leaders shown a moral courage equal to the valour of the men they
commanded.
