Attack on the Somme: Haig's Offensive 1916

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

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Copyright © Martin Pegler, 2006

ISBN 1 84415 397 5

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Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps

Author’s Note

Epigraph

Prologue: A German Machine-Gunner at Serre

Background

Strategy

The Balance of Forces

The Start of the Conflict

The Weapons of War

The Royal Flying Corps

The Plan of Attack

Campaign Chronicle

1 July: The Attack on Gommecourt

1 July: The Attack on Serre

1 July: The Attack on Beaumont Hamel

1 July: The Attack on Thiepval

1 July: The Attacks on Ovillers and La Boisselle

1 July: The Fight for Montauban

2 July: The Battle Continues

3–4 July: The Fighting for Ovillers and La Boisselle

7–8 July: The Battles for Trones and Mametz Woods

9–13 July: Further Assaults

14–31 July: Battles for the Bazentin and Longueval Ridges

1–18 August: The Attacks on Pozières, Guillemont, and Maurepas

18–31 August: The Attacks on Martinpuich and High Wood

1 September: The Ancre Offensive

15–22 September: The Battle of Flers–Courcelette

26 September: The Further Battle for Thiepval Ridge

26–28 September: The Battle of Morval

1–31 October: The Battle of the Ancre Heights

1–31 October: The Battle of Transloy Ridge

13–19 November: The Battle for the Ancre Valley

Aftermath

A Retrospective of the Campaign

The Losses

Manpower

Communications

The Tanks

The Artillery

Tactics

Morale

Summary

Appendices

Biographical Notes

Order of Battle

Roll Call

Infantry Weapons of the Somme Campaign

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

List of Illustrations and Maps

Illustrations

1. Armistice Day 1986

2. Richard Dunning at ‘Lochnagar’ Crater, 2004

3. Volunteers of the Lincolnshire Regiment Pose With Their Lee-Enfield Rifles

4. Private in Typical Fighting Order

5. Sir Douglas Haig and General Joffre in Conversation with Lloyd George

6. Out of the Line

7. The ‘Long’ Lee Rifle

8. Architects of the Somme Defence

9. German Machine-Gun Company

10. Crew of Royal Artillerymen Laying a 9.2inch Howitzer

11. Observation Balloon

12. British Dump of 8-inch Howitzer Shells

13. Mules Carrying Petrol Cans

14. British Camouflage Netting

15. Royal Artillerymen

16. Men Occupying a Recently Captured Trench

17. Men of the 7th Division Attacking Towards Mametz

18. Soldiers Carry Screw-Picket Posts and Wire Up the Line

19. French 370mm Howitzer

20. Typical Example of a Front Line Post

21. Germans Ensconced in a Deep Dugout

22. Men of the Kings Own Regiment Wait to Move Up the Line

23. German Prisoners

24. Stretcher-Bearers

25. Forward Artillery Observation Post

26. Cavalry Move Up

27. Remains of Thiepval Château

28. Wounded German

29. Officer and Crew of the Heavy Branch Machine-Gun Corps

30. Bogged ‘Male’ Tank

31. Tank Crew Pose With Two Lewis Guns

32. Sir John Dashwood’s Tank, C13 in Angle Wood Valley

33. ‘Der Somme, 1916’

34. Men From the 51st Highland Division

35. Soldiers Cluster Around Tank D17 at Flers

36. Attack on Ginchy, September 1916

37. French Soldier Empties Liquid Mud From His Trench

38. Australians Heading Towards Poziers

39. The Badly Wounded

40. Soldiers of the French 7th Infantry

41. Flooded Duckboard Track

42. Manhandling an 18-pounder Field Gun Out of the Mud

43. German Prisoners: the Lucky Ones

44. German 77mm Field Gun

45. Snatching Forty Winks

46. Royal Fusilier with War Trophies

47. Officer of the Machine-Gun Corps

48. Men Cook Food in a Shell Hole

49. The Price of War

Maps

1. The Position of the Villages and Woods of the Somme

2. The Primary Objectives on the First Day of Battle

3. The Attack on High Wood and Delville Wood

4. Detail of the Battle of Flers–Courcelette

5. The Battle of Morval

6. The Reserve Army Attack on Thiepval Ridge

7. The Battle of the Transloy Ridges

8. Fourth Army Area of Operations

9. The Battle of the Ancre

Author’s Note

Asubject as vast and complex as the Battle of the Somme cannot be covered in depth in a single volume. The author has therefore tried to give a broad outline to the background of the war, as well as a brief comparative look at the armies and equipment involved. The length of the Somme campaign precludes an exhaustive study of every action involved, so the main objectives throughout the course of the campaign have been covered. If as a result, certain units or locations have been omitted, I can only offer my apologies. The quotations used are from veterans, most of whom the author was privileged to interview twenty or more years ago. To them, their families and all others who helped, I would like to offer my sincere thanks.

The photographs have been selected to try to provide some different images to the ones normally found in books on the Somme. They come from several sources, many from Richard Dunning’s extensive collection, others from the archives of the Imperial War Museum, Tank Museum at Bovington and the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds. I am most grateful to them all. I also extend my thanks to Editions de la Martinière, the publishers of Jacques Moreau’s evocative photographic record of the war, Nous Etions des Hommes, for their kind permission to use some of his images. The maps are contemporary and are from the Official History of the War.

Finally, a special thank you to my wife Katie, who once again gave up any attempt at having a social life while I was writing another book, and who patiently corrected my many typographical mistakes. Any remaining errors are mine.

Epigraph

To ex-Private Clarence (Clarrie) Jarman, 7th Queens Royal West Surrey Regiment, my surrogate grandfather. Despite a lifetime of suffering as a result of fighting for King and Country, he never bore a grudge and typified the spirit of his generation. Also to Richard Dunning, owner and protector of the ‘Lochnagar’ crater at La Boisselle, whose deep appreciation of every aspect of the war and unselfish desire to share his knowledge with others to ensure we do not forget, are an object lesson to all of us.

Armistice Day 1986. Ex-Private Clarence Jarman, 7th Queens Regiment, aged eighty-eight.

Richard Dunning undertaking annual maintenance at Lochnagar crater, 2004.

Prologue

A German Machine-gunner at

Serre, 1 July 1916

The following extract is taken from Experiences of Baden Soldiers at the Front, Volume 1: Machine-guns in the Iron Cross Regiment (8th Baden Infantry Regiment No. 169), by Otto Lais:

‘They’re coming! The sentries, who had to remain outside throughout the drumfire [the British artillery barrage], rise out of the shell holes. Dust and dirt lie a centimetre-thick on their faces and uniforms. Their cry of warnings rings piercingly in the narrow gaps that form the dugout entrance Get out ... get out ... they’re coming! Now men rush to the surface and throw themselves into shell holes and craters; now they fling themselves in readiness at the crater’s rim; now they rush forward under cover from the former second and third lines and place themselves in the first line of defence. There’s a choking in every throat, a pressure which is released in a wild yell, in the battle-cry: They’re coming! They’re coming! Finally, the battle! The nightmare of this week-long drumfire is about to end; finally we can free ourselves of this week-long inner torment, no longer mush we crouch in a flattened dugout like a mouse in a trap.

‘The machine-gunners, who in quieter times were much mocked – and envied (excused from handling ammunition) – are popular now! One belt after another is raced through: 250 shots, 1,000 shots, 3,000 shots. Bring up the spare gun barrels! Shouts the gun commander. The gun barrel is changed. Carry on shooting – 5,000 shots – the barrel has to be changed again. The barrel is scorching hot, the coolant is boiling. The gunners’ hands are nearly scorched, scalded. The coolant in the gun jacket boils, vaporized by the furious shooting. In the heat of battle, the steam hose comes away from the opening of the water can, into which the steam is meant to recondense. A tall jet of steam sprays upwards, a fine target for the enemy. It’s lucky for us that the sun is shining in their eyes and that it’s behind us.

‘The enemy’s getting closer. We keep up our continuous fire. The steam dies away, again the barrel needs changing. The coolant’s nearly all vaporized. Where is there water? Shouts the gunlayer. There’s soda water (iron rations from the dugout) down below. There’s none there, Corporal! The iron rations were all used up in the week-long bombardment. Still the English attack: even though they already lie shot down in their hundreds in front of our lines, fresh waves continue to pour over from their jumping-off positions

‘The skin of the gunners, of the gun commanders, hangs in shreds from their fingers, their hands are scalded! The left thumb is reduced to a swollen, shapeless piece of meat from continually pressing the safety catch. The hands grip the lightweight, thin gun handles, as if locked in a seizure. The platoon’s other machine-gun jams. Gunner Schw– is shot in the head and falls over the belt that he feeds in. The belt is displaced, taking the cartridges at an angle into the feeder, where they become stuck. Another gunner takes over. The dead man is laid to one side. The gunlayer takes out the feeder, removes the cartridges and reloads.

‘Shooting – nothing but shooting, barrel changing, handling ammunition and layout out the dead and wounded in the bottom of the trench: such is the harsh and furious pace of the morning of 1 July 1916. England’s youth, Scotland’s best regiments, bled to death in front of Serre. Our machine-gun, right by the Serre–Mailly road, commanded by the brave Unteroffizier [Corporal] Koch from Pforzheim, shoots through the last belt. It has driven twenty thousand shots into the English!

‘After the initial confusion and panic caused by our unexpected resistance, after the horrific loss of life in their closely-packed attack formations, the English reform. For two hours and more, wave upon wave breaks against us. With incredible tenacity, they run towards our trenches. In an exemplary show of courage and self-sacrifice, they climb from the safety of their jumping-off position only to be felled, barely having reached our shot-up barbed wire. Twenty, thirty metres in front of our guns, the brave ones fall, the first and the last attack waves together.

‘Those following take cover behind their dead, groaning and moaning comrades. Many hand, mortally wounded, whimpering, in the remains of the barbed wire and upon the hidden iron stakes of the barbed wire barricade. They make cover for themselves from the bodies of their dead comrades and many of us fall in the fire. We shoot the wire to shreds, into the belt of barbed wire that winds to the earth. The hail of bullets breaks up at the wire and strikes downwards as an unpredictable crossfire into the protective slope. Soon the enemy fire dies out here as well. The enemy’s losses are inconceivable. In front of our division’s sector, the English lie in rows by company and by battalion: mowed down, swept away ...’

Background

There are countless military campaigns whose glories have faded over time into distant memory and whose names would not now be remembered by any but a few dedicated historians. The Peninsular and Afghan wars, the Boer campaigns were all famous enough events in their day but are now lost in historical obscurity. However, some battles have remained in popular myth and memory as being of such importance that, while their broader details have been largely forgotten, their historical impact has remained with later generations. High on the list of such events are the battles of the Somme campaign, fought between July and November 1916. References to the Somme are still made and understood by the great-grandchildren of the soldiers who fought there nearly a century ago. It has now become a byword for brave but hopeless endeavour, enormous loss of life and the ultimate sacrifice of a generation of men. Ask almost any family about their own Great War history and it is almost certain you will be told of a relative who served and was wounded or died on the Somme.

How fair is this popular understanding of the battles that comprised the Somme offensive? Does it deserve to remain known in history simply for the terrible and unique level of casualties sustained on the first day of battle, or should the campaign be painted with a broader brush? All wars should be examined within the framework of their own historical context but sadly, once the survivors have faded away, each successive generation throws up a new layer of revisionists, apologists and accusers, who put their own opinions, values and theories on events. Was the outbreak of war in 1914 exactly as John Keegan stated, a ‘tragic and unnecessary conflict’ or was it simply an unstoppable event, a ‘terrible inevitability’ as Dr Gary Sheffield phrased it, that like a volcano, was simply awaiting the right moment to erupt? Certainly most historians are agreed the First World War came about as an inevitable consequence of British and German empirical desires. The build up to war had been a slow one, with Great Britain consolidating her position as a premier world colonial power, backed up by an immensely strong navy and small, but highly trained, professional army thinly spread around her colonial possessions. In opposition, and by no means the sole player in this game of military chess, was Germany. She had defeated the powerful Austrian Army in 1866 and went on to bring about the collapse of the old order in Europe by crushing France during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71. The unification of the thirty-nine German States in 1871 meant Germany had arguably become the most powerful European power by 1914. And not solely through its military dominance: for it was not Britain but Germany that – after the United States – was the biggest industrial power in the world. Germany had foreign aspirations too, and was a potent colonial power in its own right, particularly in East Africa. Other countries in Europe were also poised to enter centre stage in the political spotlight, not the least Russia, whose immense size made it a potentially formidable power, despite the poor equipment and training of its armies.

The position of the villages and woods of the Somme.

By 1910 there had been a number important changes in the demography and economies of the main European nations. Populations had expanded hugely in the previous two decades: 50 per cent in Russia, 43 per cent in Germany, 28 per cent in France, and 26 per cent in Britain. Industrial manufacture and inter-European trade was fundamental to the economies of all the European countries and advances in transport, specifically by railways and steam shipping, enabled raw materials, manufactured goods – and of course armies – to be more rapidly transported than at any previous time. Germany in particular had taken advantage of the importance of these improvements during the Franco-Prussian War, when it utilized its rail network to rush troops to the front line. However, that particular war was something of an exception, for diplomacy was the most powerful and widely used tool in defusing political crises during the first decade of the twentieth century. It was used most notably to smooth out the angst between Britain and Germany in Africa, and keep the factions from each other’s throats in the Balkans. But the situation was exacerbated by Kaiser Wilhelm’s dream of Weltpolitik, a dream that had disturbing undertones of later Nazism. This radically affected both France and Russia, who were justifiably wary of German expansionist dreams. Thus deep and simmering schisms had opened that seemed beyond the ken of the diplomats to close. And then there was the paranoia at the heart of the huge Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose Hapsburg rulers lived in constant fear of internal revolt. The empire encompassed five different religions, fourteen languages, and a complex history of political uprising and violence. Much of this originated in Serbia, a traditional hotbed of dissent and radical opposition. Vienna, meanwhile, was inextricably allied to Berlin. Italy, a country much influenced by Austria in the