The Somme E-Book

A.H. Farrar-Hockley

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 451

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Originally published in 1964, this is a critically acclaimed classic history of the military engagements of the Somme that raged from July to November 1916. It tells of bloody battles interspersed with trench actions of dreadful intensity. In addition to the key confrontations, Farrar-Hockley provides a detailed background to the Somme planning and why it failed with dreadful casualties. In its entirety, the conflict along the Somme scarred the minds of a whole generation, becoming recorded by historians as the graveyard of the 'flower of British manhood'. With a new introduction by Charles Messenger, and a touching foreword by the author's son, Dair Farrar-Hockley, this new edition of The Somme is a testament to those who gave their lives on this famous battlefield.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT IS DUE TO the publishers for permission to quote from the following books: to George Allen & Unwin Ltd for The Supreme Command by Lord Hankey; to Geoffrey Bles Ltd for The Memoirs of Marshal Joffre by Marshal J. J. C. Joffre, translated by Colonel T. Bentley Mott; to Jonathan Cape Ltd for Prelude to Victory by Major-General E. L. Spears; to Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd for The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, edited by R. Blake; and to Hutchinson and Co. Ltd for General Headquarters, 1914–1916 by General E. von Falkenhayn, and for My War Memoirs by General E. von Ludendorff. Acknowledgement is also due to Christy & Moore Ltd for permission to quote from A Frenchman in Khaki by Paul Maze.

The Author and Publishers also wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce illustrations which appear in this book: the Radio Times Hulton Picture Library for Figs 5 and 6; Ulstein Bilderdienst, Berlin, for Fig. 3; and the Imperial War Museum for the remainder of the photographs.

The maps on pages 14, 57, 103, 166, 195, 230 and 245 are based on the map ‘The Somme 1916’ in Official History of the Great War, Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1916, by permission of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

CONTENTS

TITLE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD: A Family Perspective

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

1    The Men and the Hour

Falkenhayn

Joffre

Haig

Verdun

2    Gestation

The River

From the General to the Particular

Cannon Fodder and Cannon

The Other Side of the Wire

Overture and Beginners

3    First Strike

Zero

Diversion at Gommecourt

Beaumont Hamel

The Battle for the Ridge

Above the Somme

Below the Somme

4    The Long Agony

The Higher Commands

The Second Line

‘At All Costs’

The New Brooms

Mother’s Children

Third Time …

5    Judgement

Finale

Consequences

The Casualties

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PLATES

COPYRIGHT

FOREWORD

A Family Perspective

ASTHE EASTER TERM of 1963 drew to a close at Exeter School, my thoughts turned to a new and intriguing opportunity. My father had invited me to join him on a journey to the Somme to complete research on his latest book. For my part, a minor role emerged, charting our journey – and points of key interest – with my trusty box brownie camera.

After an uneventful journey across the Channel, we found ourselves on a foggy evening looking for our B&B on the Albert–Bapaume road. Over the next ten days, we began by exploring the operations of Fourth Army, first from the German perspective, before going on to examine aspects of the British advance in September 1916. As a schoolboy, the sheer scale of operations; the extraordinary endurance of fighting men gathered from every corner of the Empire; the daily routine in appalling conditions; and the shocking loss of human life took a while to sink in. Sobering thoughts for a future Sandhurst cadet!

Walking across the battlefield at High Wood, my father dropped into the conversation that his uncle – Stanley Griffin – had fought in the battle. A young officer in the Machine Gun Corps, commanding a platoon of four Vickers machine guns, he had been seriously wounded in the stomach late on 1 July and was fortunate to be helped to a dressing station.

Some seventy years later, when my great uncle came to stay for a few days, my wife asked him over breakfast what he might like to do today. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I wondered whether we might go to Mersea Island.’ ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Is there anything in particular you would like to see?’ We were living just outside Colchester. A journey to Mersea was but 3 miles. ‘I would like to stand on the jetty and look out to sea …’

As the story unfolded, we heard of two brothers determining what they might do in the summer holidays of 1914. On 3 August, Stanley and Bernard arrived late in the afternoon at Burnham on Crouch on the Essex coast. The following morning they hired a dinghy. Their goal was Mersea Island. It was a beautiful day and they exulted in a shared love of sailing. Approaching the island – the jetty now in sight – they were surprised to see a boy in short trousers, running down the jetty as though towards them. Suddenly he stopped and, cupping his hands, shouted the immortal words: ‘War’s declared!’

With scarcely a further thought, they turned about, retracing their steps to Burnham and thence to Hamilton Road in Ealing and an uncertain future. Bernard, older by three years, joined the Middlesex Regiment, moving to Sittingbourne before embarking on a troopship for India in October 1914 with 1/10th Battalion (Territorial Force). Stanley initially mustered with 3rd Battalion, York & Lancaster Regiment, before transferring to the Machine Gun Corps in November 1915.

On Stanley Griffin’s ninetieth birthday, our children experienced a fleeting moment of revelation from him, so rare in men of that generation. Who shall say what triggered it? From his subconscious memory there unfurled a scene on the village green in Ealing. Clasping his hands to his ears in despair at the insistent peal of church bells, he had tugged at his mother’s skirts in a moment of desperation; only to learn of the relief of the siege of a place – beyond his wildest imagination – called Mafeking.

As the evening wore on, he reflected on how fortunate he had been to see old age; to have survived the tumult of the Somme; to be carried to a dressing station and given life-saving surgery. And then to see it all happen again in 1939. It was an enormous span of history for any of us to absorb, gathered around my father’s dinner table.

A week after my return from the Falklands War in 1982, I was delighted to hear my great uncle’s voice on the telephone. Now we had a shared experience – minor though mine was in any realistic comparison. Little needed to be said. He was glad of my safe return and simply wondered whether some music would help to heal the soul: an offer to go with him to the Albert Hall, which I readily accepted.

Major General Dair Farrar-Hockley MC

November 2015

INTRODUCTION

I COUNT MYSELF PRIVILEGED to have been trained in part by General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley GBE KC B DSO MC when I was an officer cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was then a major, already highly decorated and well known to us cadets through his book The Edge ofthe Sword, which described, often movingly, his Korean War experiences, especially as a prisoner of the Chinese and North Koreans. While at Sandhurst, Tony Farrar-Hockley came to know well Brigadier Peter Young DSO MC, outstanding wartime commando and the academy’s reader in military history, and the eminent military theorist and soon to be knighted Basil Liddell Hart. It was they who persuaded Farrar-Hockley to take up writing military history. His first attempt, a study of the 1914 campaign written while he was at Sandhurst, never reached publication stage. He worked on this book on the 1916 Somme battle when commanding 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment at Aldershot, prior to taking it to the Radfan, where he won a bar to the DSO he had been awarded for Korea.

Farrar-Hockley did not have the advantage that modern historians have of being able to consult official documents. As far as the British were concerned, the fifty-year rule was still in force (it would be reduced to thirty years in 1967), which meant that in 1964, when The Somme was first published, it was only the 1914 papers that were released by the Public Record Office (now The National Archives). It was much the same with the French and Germans. There was also not the wealth of private papers in the public domain as there are now. Instead, Farrar-Hockley had to rely largely on the literature of the day, including the official histories. He did have one benefit that modern historians do not: he was able to talk to a number of British veterans of the battle. These men were then in their late sixties or early seventies and certainly compos mentis. The author also tramped the battlefield, as his son Dair recounts.

As the historiography of the war on the Western Front stood in 1964, the British public certainly was influenced by two books: Leon Wolff ’s In Flanders Fields (1958, 1963, 2003), an account of the 1917 Third Battle of Ypres, and, more especially, the then youthful Alan Clark’s The Donkeys (1961, 1991), a study of the British performance on the Western Front in 1915. Both vehemently attacked British generalship. On the other side stood John Terraine, whose Mons: Retreat to Victory (1960) and Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier (1963, 1990, 2005) argued that, given the circumstances, the British high command learned from its mistakes and, indeed, did achieve victory in 1918. General Farrar-Hockley overtly sides neither with the ‘instant historians’, as Terraine called his opponents, nor with Terraine himself. But, as he points out in his Preface, the general had an advantage over all of them – ‘I have been shot at in battle’.

Farrar-Hockley begins with a short review of the 1915 campaign on the Western Front. Interestingly, he is condemning of Haig for his failure to learn from his mistakes as a commander, but more than happy to blame others. On the other hand, he approves of Falkenhayn’s reasoning behind the German offensive at Verdun. He then takes us through the genesis of the offensive, as agreed at the December 1915 Chantilly Conference, with simultaneous attacks by the Russians and Italians. Farrar-Hockley stresses that Joffre was only too aware that Haig was keener to attack in Flanders than he was on the Somme – hence his directive of 27 May to his army commanders spoke of both options. He sees Joffre as believing that unless French troops took part in the Somme offensive the British would turn their backs on the Somme. Even after Haig had confirmed to Joffre that he would attack on the Somme, his instruction to his army commanders of 16 June makes it clear that only once Fourth Army had secured the Pozières Ridge the decision would be made to press on towards Bapaume or attack elsewhere, which implied Flanders. The author observes that the mixture of strategic and tactical direction in this document is indicative of a general not used to commanding groups of armies, although nowadays we would view what Haig wrote as in the operational rather than tactical realm. As for the troops taking part, he is heavily critical of the training of the New Armies, considering it totally inadequate for what was to come.

In terms of the battle itself, General Farrar-Hockley covers the first day in some detail, working his way from the feint at Gommecourt southwards. He believes that Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps had the most difficult ground to contend with, but was guilty of putting an overly optimistic gloss on the initially very sketchy reports that came back – a fault common to higher commanders at the time. The author praises 36th Division for its thorough rehearsals prior to the attack on the Schwaben Redoubt, but condemns the order that confined battalion commanding officers to their forward headquarters as there was no senior officer to co-ordinate the attack on the ground and no coherent situation reports were received. Success at Montauban also pointed to careful preparation, including effective counter-battery fire, although this was largely thanks to French guns supporting the British. As for the French themselves, Farrar-Hockley believes that they were more effective than the British primarily because they had a better understanding of combined arms warfare down to the very lowest level. Indeed, the French infantry was employing much the same low-level tactics as would be laid down in the British manual SS 143 Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action of early 1917, which was the synthesis of lessons learned on the Somme.

Most of the rest of the battle is described in a lengthy chapter aptly titled ‘The Long Agony’, although, as much as anything, it is more a series of vignettes. There is Frenchman Paul Maze, Gough’s unofficial liaison officer, visiting a brigade in the Ovillers–La Boiselle sector on 3 July. Clearly of interest to Farrar-Hockley as a battalion commander is his account of Colonel Frank Maxwell VC DSO and his 12th Middlesex securing Trônes Wood on the eve of Rawlinson’s night attack of 14 July. Yet, the failure to release the cavalry in timely fashion to exploit the infantry’s initial success on that day indicated that planning and staff work still suffered from serious shortfalls. Indeed, as he notes elsewhere, the increasing shortage of capable brigade commanders, able to both plan and oversee their inexperienced staffs, was an increasingly critical problem. Farrar-Hockley also notes the phrase ‘at all costs’ being used by commanders on both sides during the second half of July. He largely passes over the August fighting to concentrate on the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, which opened on 15 September. Apart from marking the debut of the tank, the author sees it as the last opportunity to break through the German defences. Knowing that he was up against the German third line, Haig believed that boldness was essential, while Rawlinson, who had the key role in the attack, was still set on the more cautious ‘bite and hold’ policy. It was a ‘curate’s egg’ of a battle, and the problem remained of the inability of commanders at all levels to reinforce success in a timely fashion, mainly because of the inadequacy of the communications of the day.

Haig was aware, by the end of 15 September, that the opportunity for breaking through was gone. Yet the Somme fighting dragged on for two more months. Farrar-Hockley does not describe any of it in detail. As to why Haig did not immediately close down the offensive, the author posits two reasons: the need to secure more favourable positions for the winter and French insistence that Haig continue to apply pressure on the Germans.

In regard to the merits of fighting the battle, Farrar-Hockley does not express any strong views. Some may criticise him for this, but in the climate of the early 1960s his largely uncontroversial account was valuable as a counterbalance to the more subjective studies of British performance on the Western Front.

Since 1964, there have been numerous further accounts and analyses of the Somme and 2016 will inevitably witness many further additions to the bibliography. Some of the published works have done much to increase our knowledge, while others have added little new. What makes General Sir Anthony’s study of the Battle of the Somme deserving of seeing the light of day once more is the authority with which it is written. He understood only too well the ‘fog of battle’, including its chaos and confusion, and this shines through the text. The Somme still stands out after all these years as a well-written and lucid single-volume account of a battle whose shadow remains over us 100 years later.

Charles Messenger

November 2015

PREFACE

THE SOMME covers several major battles fought in the region of the river between 1 July and 19 November 1916. Each was interspersed by a series of trench actions of dreadful intensity and loss. In this book it is clearly impossible for me to describe every action of every day, and thus some reader who fought in those perilous times may discover that I have omitted reference to his own acre of the battlefield, where the effort was no less worthy, no less gallant than others to which I have given space. I mean no disrespect by these omissions. Similarly, I have made reference to the Royal Flying Corps only in certain contexts. This does not imply any disregard of their work, or of their potential, which was sometimes unrealised.

In telling the story of the battles, I have made use of three main sources with perhaps a fourth subsidiary of information: published and unpublished accounts (a bibliography of the principal reference books is given here); personal discussion with survivors; a study of the battlefield – I have walked the ground of every action described. As a subsidiary advantage – perhaps disputable as such – I have been shot at in battle.

In laying out the material, it has seemed best to maintain certain principles. Firstly, I have tried not to insist that individuals thought or acted in a certain way on the balance of probabilities – ‘Haig must have thought …’, ‘Rawlinson must have decided …’ In recounting dialogue I have checked in every case the words used to the best of memory. In all cases I have avoided describing the manner of delivery – ‘… snapped Falkenhayn’, ‘… Joffre remarked bitterly.’ It is surely better to let the words speak for themselves. Where I hold a personal opinion concerning an individual or action, I have plainly said, ‘In my view …’, or ‘It is my opinion …’

With regard to military appointments, I have used the modern term where this connotes more nearly the responsibility. Thus, Kiggell’s post at General Headquarters is referred to as Chief of Staff, though the established title at the time was Chief of the General Staff. In describing the battlefield, I have done so from left to right, the system now used, instead of right to left as employed in the Great War. It is both more natural to study in this way, and easier to follow the order of events in this particular case. In describing the German chief field headquarters, I have neither used the full title Oberste Heeresleitung nor its abbreviated form O.H.L. I have used the English translation and called it the Supreme Command. It may be of value to mention that I have employed the British military terms ‘unit’ for Cavalry regiments, infantry battalions, artillery batteries and similar bodies, and ‘formation’ when speaking of a group of units customarily organised under one command such as a brigade, division, corps or larger force.

Though formal acknowledgements are made elsewhere, it is perhaps appropriate to note here those from whom I have received personal kindnesses. The librarians and staffs of six libraries have extended exceptional help and advice, and have borne patiently the long absence of books. I refer to Mr D. W. King, O.B.E., F.L.A., of the War Office; Miss R. E. B. Coombes of the Imperial War Museum; Lieutenant-Colonel E. H. Whitfield, M.C., formerly of the Joint Services Staff College, Latimer; Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Young, M.B.E., of the Staff College, Camberley; Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Shepperd of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; and Lieutenant-Colonel L. H. Yates, O.B.E., of the Prince Consort’s, Aldershot. The librarian and staff of the photographic library, Imperial War Museum, have also helped in every way possible. In this context, the assistance of my son, Dair, in investigating and sorting photographs was most valuable. Overseas, I must acknowledge with warm thanks the kindness of the Commandant of the École Supérieure Militaire Inter-Armes, St. Cyr, for permitting me to search through his library and museum at Coëtquidan; and Dr A. A. Schmalz, Archivassessor, Militararchiv of the Federal German Bundesarchiv. I am in the debt of Major G. Holtorff, assistant military attaché at the Federal German Embassy in London who explained certain passages of his country’s history to me; and to Mrs E. B. Jewkes and Mrs B. Crossman for the time and trouble they have taken in making translations of books and papers for me.

Brigadier Peter Young, D.S.O., M.C., M.A., Reader in Military History at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, provided me with unpublished papers for which I am most grateful, as indeed for the many discussions with him and his staff which have provoked thought and ideas about the Somme battles. I am indebted to Major-General R. A. Bramwell Davies, C.B., D.S.O., Colonel, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, for granting me permission to see private papers of the Highland Light Infantry and the Royal Scots Fusiliers; and to Brigadier Charles Dunbar, M.B.E., for finding and preparing these for my use. I acknowledge the ready help of the curators and staffs of almost every museum of the British infantry taking part in the Somme actions. Major John North and Mr Morley Kennerley were both kind enough to offer me papers relating to the battle which were enlightening. In considering the higher direction of the war, I was fortunate in discussing events with the late Mr C. T. Atkinson, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford; Captain B. H. Liddell Hart; and General Sir Clement Armitage, K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., whose first-hand knowledge of staff and regimental conditions of the time is unrivalled. In the gatherings of the British Legion I have found many opportunities to glean new facts or corroborate old accounts. In particular, it was good of Major-General B. K. Young, C.B.E., M.C., chairman of the Aldershot Branch, and Mr Paddy Smythe, the energetic and enterprising secretary – himself a Coldstream Guardsman on the Somme – to provide me with so many opportunities to meet veterans of the battle. In preparing maps and sketches I have had the expert and painstaking assistance of Sergeant G. Ryan of the Parachute Regiment, a willing volunteer to whom I give warm thanks.

Lastly, I must thank my wife. As so often in the past, she has given many hours to researching, typing, correcting, fetching and carrying in the most helpful manner. Without her, little would have been done.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Field-Marshal Hindenburg; Emperor William II; General

Ludendorff

General Erich von Falkenhayn

Men of a support battalion leave their trenches towards Morval just after zero, September 1916

The movement forward of a 60-pounder in October 1916

The Vickers medium machine-gun, belt fed from right to left

A company of 1st Lancashire Fusiliers prepares to assault in the VIII Corps battle, July 1 1916

British eight-inch howitzers in action between Fricourt and Mametz, August 1916

An Australian crew loads a 9.45-inch mortar behind Pozières, August 1916

The mine under Hawthorn Redoubt is fired, zero minus ten minutes, July 1 1916

A German heavy mortar in action

The village of Beaumont Hamel after capture in November 1916

Winter on the Somme: an ammunition limber on the road to Flers, November 1916

The result of a British bombardment: a machine-gun post smashed by fire at Guillemont, September 1916

‘The terrible road into Guillemont, straight, desolate, swept by fire …’ The view from Waterlot Farm

General Fayolle, commander of the French Sixth Army during the Battle of the Somme

Rawlinson and Haig

General Foch, French Northern Army Group commander during the Battle of the Somme

MAPS

The Some, 1916

The Verdun Salient

The Allied and Germans lines on the Somme/Ancre,February 1916

The Allied and German lines, Armies, Corps, Divisions and Objectives at zero, on Z Day, 1 July, 1916

The Battle for Beaumont Hamel

The Schwaben Redoubt

Allied Successes, 1/2 July 1916

Trônes Wood

Fourth Army Operations, 14 July–15 September 1916

The Fourth Army advance, 14 July, 1916

The British advance, 15 September, 1916

Final line reached by the Allies on the Somme,19 November, 1916

1

The Men and the Hour

FALKENHAYN

‘ON THE EVENING of the 14th September, 1914, in Luxemburg, Lieut-General von Falkenhayn, the Minister of War, was entrusted by His Majesty the Emperor and King with the post of Chief of the General Staff of the Army in the Field, in the place of the invalided General von Moltke.’

In this long and solemn sentence Erich von Falkenhayn tells us1 how he became the director of German operations2 in the first autumn of the Great War. He assumed his new post at a time of crisis. The Army’s war plan3 had failed in France almost in the moment of triumph. The German field armies in the west had thrown back the French attacks across the common frontier, whilst themselves developing, through Belgium, a huge turning movement. The unexpected appearance of four British divisions in the field on the French left flank checked but did not prevent the German march south and west. For 30 days the plan prepared in Berlin with such care over so many years seemed to be unfolding with scarcely a fault. Only in the moment of coup de grâce were the Franco-British armies found to be intact, the German manoeuvring forces in imbalance. The prospect of advance effaced, the pattern of deployment was unsuited to defence and the vast German war machine was necessarily thrown into reverse; a withdrawal began, limited in space but profound in purport. It was at this moment that Falkenhayn took charge.

Took charge. He controlled, it is true, the whole apparatus of war-making: intelligence, operations, personnel and supply policy. In the west – that is, on the new line from the Oise to the Alps – seven army commanders awaited his orders; and though they might at times protest against his instructions, his insistence would ensure their obedience. In the east, against Russia, the movement of the lone German army there depended upon his approval. Yet his master was the Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, William II; and this capricious man might interfere as he saw fit at any moment, in any sphere. However, there is no evidence that Falkenhayn feared such intervention in September 1914. The dying Moltke had failed; William trusted Falkenhayn to put matters right.

This was more easily commanded than executed. How was he to reorientate German strategic policy when all planning, including economic planning, had reckoned on the total defeat of France in 70 days? Clearly, the battle line must be stabilised and the enemy’s advance checked while the relative threat of each front – the western, in France; the eastern, in Russia – was reassessed. A redeployment of manpower would be necessary, a new effort in armaments essential. To these herculean tasks Falkenhayn applied his keen mind.

Along the battle line, local commanders mounted a series of minor counter-attacks; but they were too widely dispersed, too feebly pressed to regain more than a few tactical features. More important, the German battalions and batteries succeeded in holding the equally laboured attacks of the French and British. The fact was that both sides were temporarily spent. Shells were running short,1 equipment was scarce or worn out, dead and wounded officers and N.C.O.’s had not been replaced, the men that remained from the early battles of manœuvre needed a rest from the incessant marching and fighting. As each side sought to remedy these weaknesses a curious situation became apparent: the Channel Departments through which the outer, wheeling German armies had passed were once more empty; a huge stretch of territory remained uncontested from the Oise, where the battle line reached its northernmost point, to the Channel coast, over 100 miles distant. The Germans now saw that they might yet pass round the French flank. The French supposed that they might yet march round the Germans’.

With that organisational facility for which the Germans are justly famous, Falkenhayn began to assemble a force for this purpose by diverting formations in transit.1 He hastened to send them north of the Oise.

So, too, the French commander-in-chief, General Joffre, reshuffled his order of battle and packed troops northward by train. Piecemeal, French and German divisions – sometimes brigades – reached the flank, ready to march, only to find that the enemy had appeared simultaneously with a force of roughly equal numbers. There would be a clash, each side would dig in. Thus neither was able to achieve an outflanking movement; each had to be content with a gradual extension northward of the battle line along hastily made entrenchments or behind raised sandbag walls. In this fashion, the line reached at last to the sea: the French had held the Pas de Calais, the Belgians a fragment of territory west of the river Yser, the British had secure Channel ports to cover their lines to England, the Germans had gained the industrial complex, including the coalfields, of Belgium and northern France.

Meanwhile, Falkenhayn had had the opportunity to assess the threat on either front. The premise on which the German war plan had been founded was that a dual offensive – one east, one west – was beyond their means.2 Notwithstanding the enormous potential of Russia, they had decided to strike first at France because the latter was expected to mobilise and deploy more swiftly. France crushed, the whole German field army would turn upon Russia. Now, in October, though expectations in France had not been realised, the Russians had been beaten in their first major encounter at Tannenberg and the onset of winter in the east reduced the likelihood of a Russian counter-offensive in 1914. A critical situation was unlikely to develop there for some time.

The same might not be said of the western front. The French Army remained resilient; the British were expanding their numbers in France. It seemed clear that all available reserves must be committed to the west in an attempt to break through the Allies’ front and break up, thereafter, their remaining battle formations.

In appreciating the area in which he should mount this attack, Falkenhayn was attracted to the Channel flank by the weight of his own forces in Flanders and the comparative disorganisation of the Allied defences there. He struck first at the Belgians and the French on the Yser and, shortly after, met the British in a major encounter immediately east of the ancient cloth city of Ypres. Through October into November the summer veterans and young reserves from the homeland struggled to break through. At last the Belgians earned a respite by flooding their front. Round Ypres, the old professional British Army fought its final battle as an entity, resisting into November every effort to breach its positions. At times, the issue was decided by the committal of a single company. On 11 November Falkenhayn discontinued the battle. He saw no prospect of its success. Indeed, it is likely that this shrewd man discerned that the prospect of victory, as such, had already passed beyond German attainment.

While the battles were being fought upon the Yser and the Flemish plain against Belgians, French and British, the German army in the east was pressing in upon the Russians. Hindenburg, nominal victor of Tannenberg with his chief-of-staff, Ludendorff, advanced his force into Poland. Though temporarily checked here, he believed that the Tsar’s armies were vulnerable to a crippling blow, and he repeated an earlier demand for reinforcements. When Falkenhayn refused, Hindenburg attacked with his army1 as it stood.

On 11 November, the day of the final attack at Ypres, he began to advance across the steppe. A sharp frost had hardened the ground but there was no sign of heavy snow. The Russians continued to oblige their enemy by broadcasting uncoded their orders by wireless. Their intelligence of German movements was correspondingly tardy. These factors, combined with the skill and method of the Germans, sped Hindenburg’s armies1 forward and brought him to the edge of a spectacular victory in Poland. But a skilful stroke by the Grand Duke Nicholas2 and a short run of luck in his favour permitted a Russian withdrawal. By the time reinforcements were available to Hindenburg from the western front, the bitter winter had set in. The Russians, suffering difficulties from lack of munitions and ordnance, were saved for a breathing space. The German commanders whom they had eluded were left to remark that Falkenhayn’s retention of men in the west had availed nothing there; and denied victory in the east.

This claim was widely discussed and popularly supported in military circles in the German homeland. The Emperor, looking anxiously for victory wherever he might find it, began to show that partiality for Hindenburg and his chief-of-staff which was subsequently to influence the course of the war. When Falkenhayn again denied reinforcements to the east in the new year of 1915, William reversed the decision. Of the six corps husbanded as a general reserve for a spring offensive in the west, four were sent to Hindenburg. As if to underline the correctness of this decision, a winter battle was fought against the Grand Duke in Masuria, hard marching in the blizzards producing almost 100,000 prisoners and an advance of 30 miles. It was impossible for Falkenhayn to convince his sovereign that this success against Russia was, in relation to the war effort, wasted.

As the year continued, the struggle between east and west was intensified. Falkenhayn’s operational policy remained unchanged; his arguments in favour of a decisive campaign against France and Britain were strengthened by the naval supremacy of these two, and the expansion of the British imperial war effort. There were few arguments to attract him eastward. The spaciousness of European Russia alone defied conquest. Austria-Hungary, Germany’s principal ally along the borders of south-eastern Russia, had proved incapable of sustained operations against the Tsar’s armies. Turkey was too distant, lacked too much in expertise and equipment to be more than vexatious in the mountain passes of the Caucasus. But even if the former had been moderately sound, it is doubtful whether Falkenhayn would have been persuaded to change his views. A decisive victory in Russia – if attainable at all – would be expensive in time and effort. It was the west with all its potential that threatened. The longer the Franco-British allies had to develop this threat, the greater their strength; the greater the danger to Germany, inferior in numbers and cut off from overseas supply.

Robbed of two-thirds of his reserve by Hindenburg in January, Falkenhayn withdrew three battalions from each division in France, reinforced these with men from regimental depots, and built-up by April a striking force of fourteen divisions. With a new weapon, poison gas, and a substantial increment of artillery ammunition obtained by industrial rationalisation, he was able once more to consider a spring offensive.

Just then, the position of Austria-Hungary became desperate. Wisely refraining from tackling the Germans the Grand Duke had opened his 1915 offensive against the weaker ally. At great cost in men he began to force his way through the Carpathian passes in February and it now seemed that the Austrians would be unable to contain him. Once the Russians reached the southern exits, the entire Hungarian plain would be open to them; and if the Austro-Hungarian forces were unable to hold the Russians in the Carpathian mountains, they were hardly likely to do so in this open country. A major defeat here would mean a separate peace between Vienna and Moscow. With this in view, Italy and the neutrals of eastern Europe would join the Allies ‘courir au secours du vainqueur’.

However reluctant he was to abandon an offensive in the west, Falkenhayn saw that circumstances demanded it. By mid-April Emperor and Cabinet were agreed; all aid must go to save Austria-Hungary. The whole of the reserve and certain other elements from France were transported east and south by rail against Russia. In this way the Western Allies gained that time for military expansion which Falkenhayn sought to deny them.

JOFFRE

Unlike Falkenhayn, General Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre had been appointed the professional chief of his nation’s Army before the outbreak of the war. He thus bore the responsibility for the disastrous plan which led to France’s defeat on her frontiers in August 1914, though it follows that he must be given credit for the subsequent withdrawal, intact, of his armies to the Marne and their actions upon it which forced the Germans back. At this point Joffre, the impassive, bourgeois, engineer officer, had to reshape strategy after initial failure on his own part; while Falkenhayn, the former commanding officer of a guard regiment, the newly promoted senior member of the Great General Staff, had to begin anew from the failure of his predecessor. Falkenhayn was then 53; Joffre, 62.

Like Falkenhayn, Joffre never doubted that the issue of the war must be decided on the western front. ‘The best and largest portion of the German Army is on our soil, with its line of battle jutting out a mere five days’ march from the heart of France. This situation made it clear to every Frenchman that our task consisted of defeating this enemy, and driving him out of our country. My views, on this matter, remained unchanged during the whole time I was directing operations. While far from denying that the other theatres had their interest and value, I consistently refused to attribute to them the importance with which some people sought to invest them… .’1

When the line became fully extended and stabilised, Joffre had to face the fact that open warfare was past and a decisive manœuvre out of the question until a major breaching operation had destroyed a wide portion of the enemy’s defences. In order to make this breach and to exploit it he would require a substantial force. By now his reserve in men and munitions had dwindled dangerously; the numbers ready in depots fell far short of his needs. The principal source of any new striking force must come, therefore, from the men in the battle line. Where his men held positions of tactical superiority, thinning out would be possible; elsewhere, a strengthening of defence works would permit him to relieve high grade units by older men or those with a large proportion of recruits. There was, too, the prospect of handing over a greater sector of the line to the British, whose present responsibility was, man for man, much less than the French.1 Like the majority of his brother officers Joffre regarded the British Expeditionary Force as a collection of amateurs, not without courage but largely without skill. ‘Sir John French’s forces had been considerably increased, and he now held a front of thirty miles with four army corps, whilst many of our corps occupied as much as ten and a half miles. I, therefore, instructed General Foch to request him to relieve the French Eighth Army, which was interposed between the British and the Belgians. The Field Marshal offered no objections to the principle involved, but the execution of the relief began only in January [1915].’2

Joffre was unwilling to wait upon the British. By December he was partially convinced by his operations staff that certain sectors of the German line were undermanned and vulnerable to a breaching operation. It is probable, too, that he wished on his own account to test his enemy’s defences, having in mind an offensive in the spring. Two major and four minor attacks were mounted; all failed, some totally. Apart from losing a few minor villages, the German lines were never at any time placed in the slightest danger, and their reaction to this renewed activity was swift and effective. On all but one of the corps fronts they counter-attacked at once and retook much or all of the paltry prizes of the French. In addition, between Christmas 1914 and 14 January 1915, they attacked locally both in the Argonne and from the Aisne heights, restricting their activities to features of immediate tactical importance and calling off the battle as soon as these were won. ‘It was evident’, Joffre wrote subsequently, ‘that we should have to make stupendous efforts if we were to succeed in uprooting the Germans from our soil.’1

For a little while, it was hoped that the popular support in Germany for the campaign against Russia would have the effect of drawing off forces in that direction. The Second Bureau2 in Joffre’s Headquarters searched for signs of withdrawal of divisions from the line. In January the Secret Service reported a flow of reinforcements in both directions – the Emperor’s support for Hindenburg was taking effect simultaneously with Falkenhayn’s redeployment – and this apparent abundance of manpower impressed Joffre that the hour was not suited for optimism, still less for delay. He had chosen for his principal attack that point between Rheims and Verdun where the lateral railway in German hands ran within five miles of the front. Even if the assault failed to open a breach for exploitation, surely the ardour of his soldiers would carry them forward to cut the railway line. Further to the south and east he ordered First Army to eliminate the enemy’s bridgehead on the left bank of the Meuse at Saint Mihiel. He now urged through political channels that the British should contribute by relieving his Eighth Army in Flanders.3

The weather was seasonable – the air cold, the ground hard with frost; sleet and snowstorms were frequent. A German local attack disrupted the preparations of de Langle’s Fourth Army in the Champagne. These unsettling events and a heavy fall of snow delayed the main attack until 16 February when, amidst the support of an immense bombardment by artillery, the French infantry went forward. For more than a month the fighting continued as the assault forces attempted to push forward up the bare slopes of the rolling hills. When it ended on 18 March, they had advanced on a front of 12 miles to a depth of about 800 yards. It had cost Joffre 240,000 men.

At Saint Mihiel, too, the attack was a failure.

The British now followed suit. Before the period of these disasters, plans had been completed for a joint enterprise round Arras, a movement forward which was lined strategically with the Champagne offensive. When it was clear by the beginning of March that all hope of a break-in by de Langle’s Fourth Army must be abandoned, the French contribution was cancelled. Surprisingly, the British commander-in-chief, Sir John French, decided to persist in his own part to capture the Aubers Ridge with the aim of threatening Lille beyond.

Perhaps Sir John was aware that the French had little respect for the ability of his command to attack; he had certainly been told indirectly that his two armies1 were not pulling their weight. Whatever the reason, however laudable his motives, the operation which was hazardous with French troops in parallel was scarcely feasible without them, not least because his theatre reserves of artillery ammunition were exhausted. Of course, Joffre made no demur: let the British take their turn. If this mood seems strange in an ally, the disappointments of the winter must not be forgotten. Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British First Army, was charged with the operation and his plans have since been extolled as examples of prudence and clarity. On 10 March they were put to the test. Fourteen battalions of British infantry assaulted three of Germans. A rapid initial success was succeeded by a complete stalemate: the Germans held, the British went to ground. They had captured the village of Neuve Chapelle and taken 1600 prisoners. They had killed or wounded 12,000 of the enemy and lost about the same themselves. They had fired 100,000 rounds from their guns which they could not afford. The blame has been placed, correctly, on the commander-in-chief, Sir John French. Unfortunately, the army commander, Haig, drew no conclusions from his own mistakes. His staff assured him that he – and thus they – had done all that could possibly have been done to ensure success. They – and he – had neither the honesty nor the imagination to see that they had failed the soldiers committed to battle on their plan by employing a system of control suited to the Crimea.

The Germans now attacked. Though deprived of his major reserve in the west Falkenhayn was loath to abandon all offensive action in this theatre. The novel weapon of poison gas, tried tentatively against the Russians,1 was available and he selected the Fourth Army in Flanders under Duke Albrecht of Württemberg to assault the enemy salient at Ypres once more. On a beautiful spring morning, 22 April 1915, the Franco-British positions were shelled with high explosive; and two hours before sunset the cylinders of chlorine gas were opened, while the field artillery fell silent so as not to disturb the bluish-white clouds that drifted westward on a light evening breeze. The effect of the fumes was dynamic.

Before dark a group of Zouaves in the line had broken completely and soon others who could still move were running back to escape asphyxiation. Many withdrew only to die in the clear air behind. In this confusion four miles of the line were completely unmanned and the advent of darkness alone saved the Allies from a German breakthrough. Fortunately for the defence, Duke Albrecht and his local commanders were unprepared for their success. Like Haig at Neuve Chapelle, they had failed to make provision for the rapid passing of information from front to rear, and their plan for the follow-up was too rigid to permit quick exploitation. North-east of Ypres the Canadians thinned out, forming an attenuated line as a temporary measure, and by next morning there was sufficient re-organisation to check the advancing German infantry. Duke Albrecht continued the battle to gain a few thousand yards until his reserves were spent.2 By this time Falkenhayn had other problems on the western front: the French and British were again attacking in Artois.

The mishaps and disappointments of past battles had made Joffre more cautious in the expression of his intentions, more modest in his expectations. When he approved the new plan for a joint attack north of Arras – in place of that scrapped immediately prior to Neuve Chapelle – he accepted its aim as being the capture of Vimy Ridge and certain other features to the north. He hoped inevitably for greater things1: perhaps this capture of ground would create a situation for a complete break-in to the enemy defences. Yet if it did not, neither troops, nor public or posterity would judge the operation too harshly. The stated aim was the capture of ground of tactical importance – Vimy Ridge offered a view across the entire plain of Douai – a task well within the potential of the forces he placed under command of his Tenth Army. Immediately to the north, between the Tenth Army’s left flank and Neuve Chapelle, the British were to attack once more towards Lille.

On this front Field-Marshal Sir John French attacked on the morning of 9 May. The infantry assault was preceded by a bombardment of 46 minutes, a brief time dictated solely by the quantity of shells available on the ground. Since few of these were high explosive, the Germans were not forced underground but remained in their trenches, sheltering from the shrapnel in bays with overhead protection. Thus, when the British guns lifted to permit their own infantry to close with the enemy, the latter were ready. They had moved the few paces from protection bay to fire step and were soon engaging the exposed attackers scrambling forward under the weight of 70 pounds of ammunition, weapons and equipment. The effort was totally wasted. Enraged and frustrated, Sir John sought release from his burden by complaining to The Times correspondent about his shortage of shells.2

On his southern flank the morning was rich in success. An enormous barrage – some 700,000 shells, mostly high explosive – had been fired in preparation. In two hours, the French XXXIII Corps advanced two and a quarter miles, breaking through the entire trench system of the enemy. Now was the moment for the launching of reserves through the breach. Those of the corps, six battalions, were five miles in rear; the army reserve, a division, almost eight miles. The most forward regimental commander reported his success at 11 am and, appreciating the run of the battle, the divisional commander asked for the corps reserve at about the same time. Yet the first three battalions did not appear until 4 pm, the remainder at 6. Though the army reserve was passed to XXXIII Corps at 1.30 on the afternoon of the battle, its first elements did not reach the corps rear boundary until 2.30 am on the following morning. Wisely, it had been decided that the reserves should be kept back in safety from enemy artillery fire during the early stages of the battle. But neither the senior commanders nor their staffs had apprehended that, if they wanted safety for their reserves, they must provide adequate communications to them to ensure their timely committal; and if these could not be provided over the distance, then the reserves were too far back and special measures should have been taken to provide them with a measure of covered accommodation forward.1

The inevitable result of all these delays was that the Germans sealed the breach. The prospective strategic success on the morning of 9 May had become, next day, a local tactical gain. Attack and counter continued into late June without effecting a notable change in the line.2 In studying the reasons for failure Joffre appreciated that the problem was one of getting the reserves forward speedily into the breach and under the effective control of the sector commander concerned, yet seems to have made no significant effort to look for a better system of control.3 In contrast, he and his chief of operations were struck forcibly again by the fact that a single sector of attack permitted the enemy to concentrate reserves in its defence. Since these reserves were not inexhaustible, they concluded, an offensive mounted in two widely separated sectors must surely find the enemy without means of reinforcement for one of them, particularly where the first attack was separated in time by, say two or three weeks, as well as in space from the second. But, immediately, the succession of losses made talk of a renewed offensive impracticable. For the time being it was agreed that the enemy must be worn down by widespread and recurrent ‘nibbling’.

When operations came to an end in Artois in June, the Austro-German offensive against the Grand Duke Nicholas had been in progress for some six weeks. It had made remarkable progress, thanks to German direction and stiffening amongst the heterogeneous Austro-Hungarian forces. The Russians no longer threatened. In part surprised, in part exhausted by their winter effort in the Carpathian passes, lacking almost every form of warlike supply, they were in full retreat, leaving hordes of prisoners behind and, more important for this populous but ill-organised country, quantities of artillery.1 Not unnaturally the Tsar’s government began to call for a relief offensive on the western front.2

Even if he had the means to hand, Joffre would have found it difficult to mount a major offensive immediately. There had been agreement amongst the Allies at Calais in early July that attacks should be localised – ‘bousculer la ligne, ne pas percer’, a continuance of the policy of ‘la guerre de l’usure’, destruction by attrition.3 He had already conceived a plan, however, to attack at two widely separated points – though not in time – and the crisis in the east permitted him to widen the scope of his project. While pressing strongly with his Tenth Army and the B.E.F. in Artois, he would make his principal thrust in the Champagne, a decision that is difficult to understand in view of his partial success in the former and his total failure previously in the latter. Reluctantly, Sir John French agreed to attack with him once more amongst the grey mining villages and pitheads north of Arras.

September was to be the month. Joffre feared the onset of autumn weather as a series of postponements took them through the first three weeks. On the 22nd, the artillery bombardment began in the Champagne, continuing through two days of sunshine and white clouds. On the night 24/25 the rain came. Under grey skies the assault began at 9.15 am next morning with that power characteristic of French infantry. By the 27th they had captured the enemy first line on a front of nine miles, a success due partly to the close proximity of the divisional and corps reserves behind the leading elements. The second line lay, however, on a series of reverse slopes. In consequence, the attackers had to come over the crest to get at their enemy and this disadvantage was made the greater because the French guns in close support were unable to drop their shells over the high angles of the crest-line. Two or three times a day battalions would scramble from their slippery, broken trenches to the ridges above, where they would be shot down as they appeared in silhouette to the Germans. For ten more days the offensive tottered on, ending at last with a vain charge by two cavalry divisions, launched in a desperate hope of advancing with such speed over the crests that the enemy would be unable to react with fire. Horses now joined the litter of dead men on the wet chalk. Each side had lost about 150,000 casualties, a slight credit balance lying in the French favour with the capture of 25,000 prisoners and 150 guns. These prizes were given public prominence.

North of Arras, the British and French armies had little more success. Foch, the Army Group commander, showed scant consideration for his ally and made no effort to coordinate the attack. After a typically intense and prolonged barrage, his Tenth Army assaulted at 12.15 midday without achieving a quarter of the spectacular advances made in the same region in May. The British had assaulted at 6.45 am after a fractional artillery preparation, with a release of gas in the last hour as a weapon of surprise. The 47th (London) and 15th (Scottish) Divisions quickly overran the mining village of Loos, an area in which the Germans had not expected them,1