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the Battle of the Somme.
The
Battle of the Somme was planned as a joint French and British operation.
The idea originally came from the French Commander-in-Chief, Joseph
Joffre and was accepted by General Sir Douglas
Haig, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)
commander, despite his preference for a large attack in Flanders. Although
Joffre was concerned with territorial gain, it was also an attempt to
destroy German manpower.
At first Joffre intended for to use mainly French soldiers but the German
attack on Verdun in February 1916 turned
the Somme offensive into a large-scale British diversionary attack.
General Sir Douglas Haig now took over responsibility
for the operation and with the help of General Sir Henry
Rawlinson, came up with his own plan of attack. Haig's strategy
was for a eight-day preliminary bombardment
that he believed would completely destroy the German forward defences.
General Sir Henry Rawlinson was was in
charge of the main attack and his Fourth Army were expected to advance
towards Bapaume. To the north of Rawlinson, General Edmund
Allenby and the British Third Army were ordered to make a breakthrough
with cavalry standing by to exploit the gap that was expected to appear
in the German front-line. Further south, General Fayolle was to advance
with the French Sixth Army towards Combles.
Haig used 750,000 men (27 divisions) against the German front-line (16
divisions). However, the bombardment failed to destroy either the barbed-wire
or the concrete bunkers protecting the German soldiers. This meant that
the Germans were able to exploit their good defensive positions on higher
ground when the British and French troops attacked at 7.30 on the morning
of the 1st July. The BEF suffered 58,000 casualties (a third of them
killed), therefore making it the worse day in the history of the British
Army.
Haig was not disheartened by these heavy losses on the first day and
ordered General Sir Henry Rawlinson to
continue making attacks on the German front-line. A night attack on
13th July did achieve a temporary breakthrough but German reinforcements
arrived in time to close the gap. Haig believed that the Germans were
close to the point of exhaustion and continued to order further attacks
expected each one to achieve the necessary breakthrough. Although small
victories were achieved, for example, the capture of Pozieres on 23rd
July, these gains could not be successfully followed up.
On 15th September General Alfred Micheler and the Tenth Army joined
the battle in the south at Flers-Courcelette. Despite using tanks for
the first time, Micheler's 12 divisions gained only a few kilometres.
Whenever the weather was appropriate, General Sir
Douglas Haig ordered further attacks on German positions at the
Somme and on the 13th November the BEF captured the fortress at Beaumont
Hamel. However, heavy snow forced Haig to abandon his gains.
With the winter weather deteriorating Haig now brought an end to the
Somme offensive. Since the 1st July, the British has suffered 420,000
casualties. The French lost nearly 200,000 and it is estimated that
German casualties were in the region of 500,000. Allied forces gained
some land but it reached only 12km at its deepest points.
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The Battle of the Somme
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Debates
War
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Military
Commanders and the First World War
Battle
of the Somme
The
Somme
(1)
After the war, Sir William Robertson,
Chief of the Imperial General Staff, attempted to explain the strategy
at the Battle of the Somme.
Remembering the dissatisfaction displayed by ministers at the end of
1915 because the operations had not come up to their expectations, the
General Staff took the precaution to make quite clear beforehand the
nature of the success which the Somme campaign might yield. The necessity
of relieving pressure on the French Army at Verdun remains, and is more
urgent than ever. This is, therefore, the first objective to be obtained
by the combined British and French offensive. The second objective is
to inflict as heavy losses as possible upon the German armies.
(2)
Sir
Douglas Haig, battle
orders sent out just before the Battle of the Somme (May 1916)
The First, Second, and Third Armies will take steps to deceive the enemy
as to the real front of attack, to wear him out, and reduce his fighting
efficiency both during the three days prior to the assault and during
the subsequent operations. Preparations for deceiving the enemy should
be made without delay. This will be effected by means of -
(a)
Preliminary preparations such as advancing our trenches and saps,
construction of dummy assembling trenches, gun emplacements, etc.
(b) Wire cutting
at intervals along the entire front with a view to inducing the enemy
to man his defences and causing fatigue.
(c) Gas discharges,
where possible, at selected places along the whole British front, accompanied
by a discharge of smoke, with a view to causing the enemy to wear his
gas helmets and inducing fatigue and causing casualties.
(d) Artillery barrages
on important communications with a view to rendering reinforcements,
relief, and supply difficult.
(e) Bombardment
of rest billets by night.
(f) Intermittent
smoke discharges by day, accompanied by shrapnel fire on the enemy's
front defences with a view to inflicting loss.
(g) Raids by night,
of the strength of a company and upwards, on an extensive scale, into
the enemy's front system of defences. These to be prepared by intense
artillery and trench-mortar bombardments.
(3)
Sir Douglas Haig explained the importance
of using heavy artillery at the Battle of
the Somme in his book Dispatches, that was published after the
war.
The enemy's position to be attacked was of a very formidable character,
situated on a high, undulating tract of ground. The first and second
systems each consisted of several lines of deep trenches, well provided
with bomb-proof shelters and with numerous communication trenches connecting
them. The front of the trenches in each system was protected by wire
entanglements, many of them in two belts forty yards broad, built of
iron stakes, interlaced with barbed-wire, often almost as thick as a
man's finger. Defences of this nature could only be attacked with the
prospect of success after careful artillery preparation.
(4)
Philip
Gibbs, a journalist, watched the preparation for the major offensive
at the Somme in July, 1916.
Before dawn, in the darkness, I stood with a mass of cavalry opposite
Fricourt. Haig as a cavalry man was obsessed with the idea that he would
break the German line and send the cavalry through. It was a fantastic
hope, ridiculed by the German High Command in their report on the Battles
of the Somme which afterwards we captured.
In front of us was not a line but a fortress position, twenty miles
deep, entrenched and fortified, defended by masses of machine-gun posts
and thousands of guns in a wide arc. No chance for cavalry! But on that
night they were massed behind the infantry. Among them were the Indian
cavalry, whose dark faces were illuminated now and then for a moment,
when someone struck a match to light a cigarette.
Before dawn there was a great silence. We spoke to each other in whispers,
if we spoke. Then suddenly our guns opened out in a barrage of fire
of colossal intensity. Never before, and I think never since, even in
the Second World War, had so many guns been massed behind any battle
front. It was a rolling thunder of shell fire, and the earth vomited
flame, and the sky was alight with bursting shells. It seemed as though
nothing could live, not an ant, under that stupendous artillery storm.
But Germans in their deep dugouts lived, and when our waves of men went
over they were met by deadly machine-gun and mortar fire.
Our men got nowhere on the first day. They had been mown down like grass
by German machine-gunners who, after our barrage had lifted, rushed
out to meet our men in the open. Many of the best battalions were almost
annihilated, and our casualties were terrible.
A German doctor taken prisoner near La Boiselle stayed behind to look
after our wounded in a dugout instead of going down to safety. I met
him coming back across the battlefield next morning. One of our men
were carrying his bag and I had a talk with him. He was a tall, heavy,
man with a black beard, and he spoke good English. "This war!"
he said. "We go on killing each other to no purpose. It is a war
against religion and against civilisation and I see no end to it."
(5)
Statement issued by the British Army based in Paris on the Somme Offensive
(3rd July, 1916)
The first day of
the offensive is very satisfactory. The success is not a thunderbolt,
as has happened earlier in similar operations, but it is important above
all because it is rich in promises. It is no longer a question here
of attempts to pierce as with a knife. It is rather a slow, continuous,
and methodical push, sparing in lives, until the day when the enemy's
resistance, incessantly hammered at, will crumple up at some point.
From to-day the first results of the new tactics permit one to await
developments with confidence.
(6)
Private George Morgan, Ist Bradford Pals, took part in the Battle of
the Somme on the 1st July, 1916.
There was no lingering about when zero hour came. Our platoon officer
blew his whistle and he was the first up the scaling ladder, with his
revolver in one hand and a cigarette in the other. "Come on, boys,"
he said, and up he went. We went up after him one at a time. I never
saw the officer again. His name is on the memorial to the missing which
they built after the war at Thiepval. He was only young but he was a
very brave man.
(7)
John Irvine, Daily Express (3rd July,
1916)
A perceptible slackening of our
fire soon after seven was the first indication given to us that our
gallant soldiers were about to leap from their trenches and advance
against the enemy. Non-combatants, of course, were not permitted to
witness this spectacle, but I am informed that the vigour and eagerness
of the first assault were worthy of the best traditions of the British
Army.
We had not to wait long for news, and it was wholly satisfactory and
encouraging. The message received at ten o'clock ran something like
this: "On a front of twenty miles north and south of the Somme
we and our French allies have advanced and taken the German first line
of trenches. We are attacking vigorously Fricourt, La Boiselle, and
Mametz. German prisoners are surrendering freely, and a good many already
fallen into our hands.
(8)
William Beach Thomas, With the British on
the Somme (1917)
No
true news (of the first day of the Battle of the Somme) was known by
anyone for hours. Flashes of hope, half-lights of expectation, hints
of calamity only penetrated the smoke and dust and bullets that smothered
the trenches. The tension was unendurable. The telephones, the carrier
pigeons, the guesses of direct observers, the records of the runers,
the glimpses of the air-men, all combined could scarcely penetrate the
fog of war. The wounded who struggled back from the German trenches
themselves knew little.
(9)
The Daily Chronicle (3rd July,
1916)
Ist
July, 1916: At about 7.30 o'clock this morning a vigorous attack was
launched by the British Army. The front extends over some 20 miles north
of the Somme. The assault was preceded by a terrific bombardment, lasting
about an hour and a half. It is too early to as yet give anything but
the barest particulars, as the fighting is developing in intensity,
but the British troops have already occupied the German front line.
Many prisoners have already fallen into our hands, and as far as can
be ascertained our casualties have not been heavy.
(10)
Herbert Russell, sent a telegram to Reuters
about the Battle of the Somme (1st July, 1916)
Good
progress into enemy territory. British troops were said to have fought
most gallantly and we have taken many prisoners. So far the day is going
well for Great Britain and France.
(11) George Coppard was a machine-gunner
at the Battle of the Somme. In his book With A Machine Gun to
Cambrai, he described what he saw on the 2nd July, 1916.
The
next morning we gunners surveyed the dreadful scene in front of our
trench. There was a pair of binoculars in the kit, and, under the brazen
light of a hot mid-summer's day, everything revealed itself stark and
clear. The terrain was rather like the Sussex downland, with gentle
swelling hills, folds and valleys, making it difficult at first to pinpoint
all the enemy trenches as they curled and twisted on the slopes.
It eventually became clear that the German line followed points of eminence,
always giving a commanding view of No Man's Land. Immediately in front,
and spreading left and right until hidden from view, was clear evidence
that the attack had been brutally repulsed. Hundreds of dead, many of
the 37th Brigade, were strung out like wreckage washed up to a high-water
mark. Quite as many died on the enemy wire as on the ground, like fish
caught in the net. They hung there in grotesque postures. Some looked
as though they were praying; they had died on their knees and the wire
had prevented their fall. From the way the dead were equally spread
out, whether on the wire or lying in front of it, it was clear that
there were no gaps in the wire at the time of the attack.
Concentrated machine gun fire from sufficient guns to command every
inch of the wire, had done its terrible work. The Germans must have
been reinforcing the wire for months. It was so dense that daylight
could barely be seen through it. Through the glasses it looked a black
mass. The German faith in massed wire had paid off.
How did our planners imagine that Tommies, having survived all other
hazards - and there were plenty in crossing No Man's Land - would get
through the German wire? Had they studied the black density of it through
their powerful binoculars? Who told them that artillery fire would pound
such wire to pieces, making it possible to get through? Any Tommy could
have told them that shell fire lifts wire up and drops it down, often
in a worse tangle than before.
(12)
General Rees, commander of 94th Infantry Brigade at the Somme,
described how his men went into battle on 1st July, 1916.
They advanced
in line after line, dressed as if on parade, and not a man shirked going
through the extremely heavy barrage, or facing the machine-gun and rifle
fire that finally wiped them out. I saw the lines which advanced in
such admirable order melting away under the fire. Yet not a man wavered,
broke the ranks, or attempted to come back. I have never seen, I would
never have imagined, such a magnificent display of gallantry, discipline
and determination. The reports I have had from the very few survivors
of this marvellous advance bear out what I saw with my own eyes, viz,
that hardly a man of ours got to the German front line.
(13)
German machine-gunner at the Somme.
The officers were in the front. I noticed one
of them walking calmly carrying a walking stick. When we started firing
we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. You
didn't have to aim, we just fired into them.
(14)
John Buchan described the first day of the
offensive at the Somme in his pamphlet, The Battle of the Somme
(1916)
The British
moved forward in line after line, dressed as if on parade; not a man
wavered or broke ranks; but minute by minute the ordered lines melted
away under the deluge of high explosives, shrapnel, rifle, and machine-gun
fire. The splendid troops shed their blood like water for the liberty
of the world.
(15)
Harold Mellersh was a young platoon commander who took part in the Somme
offensive.
Nothing happened at first. We advanced
at a slow double. I noticed that it had begun to rain. Then the enemy
machine-gunning started, first one gun, then many. They traversed, and
every now and then there came the swish of bullets.
It's a bloody death trap, someone said. I told him to shut up. But was
he right? We struggled on through the mud and the rain and the shelling.
Then came a terrific crack above my head, a jolt in my left shoulder,
and at the same time I was watching in an amazed, detached sort of way
my right forearm twist upwards of its own volition and then hang limp.
I realised that I had been hit.
I was suddenly filled with a surge of happiness. It was a physical feeling
almost, consciousness of a reprieve from the shadow of death, no less.
That I had just taken part in a failure, that I had really done nothing
to help win the war, these things were forgotten - if ever indeed they
had entered my consciousness.
(16)
Clare Tisdall worked as a nurse at a Casualty Clearing Station during
the Battle of the Somme.
During the Somme we practically never stopped. I
was up for seventeen nights before I had a night in bed. A lot of the
boys had legs blown off, or hastily amputated at the front-line. These
boys were the ones who were in the greatest pain, and I very often used
to have to hold the stump up in the ambulance for the whole journey,
so that it wouldn't bump on the stretcher.
The worse case I saw - and it still haunts me - was of a man being carried
past us. It was at night, and in the dim light I thought that his face
was covered with a black cloth. But as he came nearer, I was horrified
to realize that the whole lower half of his face had been completely
blown off and what had appeared to be a black cloth was a huge gaping
hole. It was the only time I nearly fainted.
(17)
Ford Madox Ford served at Mametz Wood during
the Battle of the Somme. He wrote about his experiences in his book,
No Enemy: A Tale of Reconstruction (1929)
I don't think that many of those who were one's comrades did not at
times feel a certain hopelessness. And so they would sit in the chairs
of the lost and forgotten. You will say this is bitter. It Is. It was
bitter to have seen the 38th Division murdered in Mametz Wood - and
to guess what underlay that.
(18)
In his pamphlet, The Battle of the Somme, John
Buchan describes the Allied attack on German lines on 14th July.
The attack failed nowhere. In some parts if
was slower than others, where the enemy's defence had been less comprehensively
destroyed, but by the afternoon all our tasks had been accomplished.
The audacious enterprise had been crowned with unparalleled success.
Germans may write on their badges that God is with them, but our lads
- they know.
(19)
Manchester
Guardian (18th September 1916)
The British army has struck the enemy another heavy blow north
of the Somme. Attacking shortly after dawn yesterday morning on a front
of more than six miles north-east from Combles, it now occupies a new
strip of reconquered territory including three fortified villages behind
the German third line and many local positions of great strength.
Fighting
has continued since without intermission, and the initiative remains
with our troops, who made further advances beyond Courcelette, Martinpuich,
and Flers to-day. After the first shock yesterday morning, when the
enemy surrendered freely, showing signs of demoralisation, there has
been stubborn resistance, and much of the ground gained afterwards was
only wrested from him by the determination and strength of the British
battalions pitted against him. The Bavarian and German divisions have
fought well, but nevertheless they have been steadily pushed backwards
from the line they took up after their first defeats in the Somme campaign.
British
patrols have approached Eaucourt l'Abbaye and Geudecourt, and while
no definite information is obtainable to-night regarding the exact extent
of our gains they are rather more than the territory described in detail
in this despatch. The battle is not over. Famous British regiments are
lying in the open to-night holding their position with the greatest
heroism. All that the enemy can do in the way of artillery reprisals
he is doing to-night. But despite the tenacity with which the reinforced
German troops are clinging to their positions everything gained has
been maintained. Progress may not be at the same speed as in the first
assault yesterday morning, but it is thorough and none the less sure.
The story of the
capture of Courcelette and Martinpuich, which were wrested from the
Bavarians virtually street by street yesterday, will be as dramatic
as any narrative told in this war. They are the chief episodes in the
first two days of this offensive, but I can only give a bare summary
now of the furious conflict which raged for possession of these obscure
ruined villages. There are evidences that the unexpected British offensive
disorganised the plans of the German higher command for an important
counter-attack to recover the ground lost since July 1. Heavy concentrations
of infantry were taking place, and the unusually strong resistance on
the British left was due to the presence of an abnormal number of troops
behind Martinpuich and Courcelette. In spite of this the divisions taking
part in yesterday's attack splendidly achieved their purpose.
Armoured cars working
with the infantry were the great surprise of this attack. Sinister,
formidable, and industrious, these novel machines pushed boldly into
"No Man's Land," astonishing our soldiers no less than they
frightened the enemy. Presently I shall relate some strange incidents
of their first grand tour in Picardy, of Bavarians bolting before them
like rabbits and others surrendering in picturesque attitudes of terror,
and the delightful story of the Bavarian colonel who was carted about
for hours in the belly of one of them like Jonah in the whale, while
his captors slew the men of his broken division.
It is too soon yet
to advertise their best points to an interested world. The entire army
nevertheless is talking about them, and you might imagine that yesterday's
operation was altogether a battle of armed chauffeurs if you listened
to the stories of some of the spectators. They inspired confidence and
laughter. No other incident of the war has created such amusement in
the face of death as their debut before the trenches of Martinpuich
and Flers. Their quaintness and seeming air of profound intelligence
commended them to a critical audience. It was as though one of Mr. Heath
Robinson's jokes had been utilised for a deadly purpose, and one laughed
even before the dire effect on the enemy was observed.
Flers fell into
British hands comparatively easily. The troops sent against it from
the north of Delville Wood, astride of the sunken road leading to its
southern extremity, reached the place in three easy laps supported by
armoured cars. As a preliminary measure one car planted itself at the
north-east corner of the wood before dawn and cleared a small enemy
party from two connected trenches. It was not a difficult task for the
"boches" promptly surrendered. The first halting-place of
the Flers-bound troops was a German switch-trench north-east of Ginchy,
part of the so-called third line, which they reached at the time appointed.
There was a slight obstacle in the form of a redoubt constructed at
the angle of the line where it crossed the Ginchy-Lesboeufs road. Machine-gun
fire was well directed from this work, but two armoured cars came up
and poured a destructive counter-fire into it, and then one of the many
watchful aeroplanes swooped down almost within hailing distance and
joined in the battle. The dismayed Bavarians promptly yielded to this
strange alliance. Armoured cars and aeroplane went their several ways
and the infantry carried on. The redoubt sheltered a dressing station
where there were a number of German wounded. The second phase of the
Flers advance brought the attackers to the trenches at the end of the
village. Little resistance was offered. Here, again, the armoured cars
came forward. One of them managed to enfilade the trench both ways,
killing nearly everyone in it, and then another car started up the main
street, or what was the main street in pre-war days, escorted, as one
spectator puts it "by the cheering British army."
It was a magnificent
progress. You must imagine this unimaginable engine stalking majestically
amid the ruins followed by the men in khaki, drawing the dispossessed
Bavarians from their holes in the ground like a magnet and bringing
them blinking into the sunlight to stare at their captors, who laughed
instead of killing them. Picture its passage from one end of the ruins
of Flers to the other, leaving infantry swarming through the dug-outs
behind, on out of the northern end of the village, past more odds and
ends of defensive positions, up the road to Gneudecourt, halting only
at the outskirts. Before turning back it silenced a battery and a half
of artillery, captured the gunners, and handed them over to the infantry.
Finally, it retraced its foot-steps with equal composure to the old
British line at the close of a profitable day. The German officers taken
in Flers have not yet assimilated the scene of their capture, the crowded
"High Street," and the cheering bomb-throwers marching behind
the travelling fort, which displayed on one armoured side the startling
placard, "Great Hun Defeat. Extra Special!"
(20)
In his pamphlet, The Battle of the Somme: The Second Phase, published
in 1917, John Buchan claimed that the battle
marked the end of "trench fighting and the beginning of a campaign
in the open."
Thenceforth, the campaign entered upon a new
stage, and the first stage, which in strict terms we call the Battle
of the Somme, had ended in Allied victory. We did what we set out to
do; step by step we drove our way through the German defences. Our major
purpose was attained. It was not the recapture of territory that we
sought, but the weakening of the numbers, materiel and moral of the
enemy.
(21)
In his book, Traveller
in News,
William Beach Thomas wrote about his reporting
of the Battle of the Somme for
the Daily Mail and the Daily
Mirror.
A
great part of the information supplied to us by (British Army Intelligence)
was utterly wrong and misleading. The dispatches were largely untrue
so far as they deal with concrete results. For myself, on the next day
and yet more on the day after that, I was thoroughly and deeply ashamed
of what I had written, for the very good reason that it was untrue.
Almost all the official information was wrong. The vulgarity of enormous
headlines and the enormity of one's own name did not lessen the shame.
(22)
John Raws was killed at the Battle
of the Somme. He wrote a letter to his brother just before he died
(12th August 1916)
The glories of the Great Push are great, but the horrors are
greater. With all I'd heard by word of mouth, with all I had imagined
in my mind, I yet never conceived that war could be so dreadful. The
carnage in our little sector was as bad, or worse, than that of Verdun,
and yet I never saw a body buried in ten days. And when I came on the
scene the whole place, trenches and all, was spread with dead. We had
neither time nor space for burials, and the wounded could not be got
away. They stayed with us and died, pitifully, with us, and then they
rotted. The stench of the battlefield spread for miles around. And the
sight of the limbs, the mangled bodies, and stray heads.
We lived with all
this for eleven days, ate and drank and fought amid it; but no, we did
not sleep. Sometimes, we just fell down and became unconscious. You
could not call it sleep.
The men who say
they believe in war should be hung. And the men who won't come out and
help us, now we're in it, are not fit for words. Had we more reinforcements
up there many brave men now dead, men who stuck it and stuck it and
stuck it till they died, would be alive today. Do you know that I saw
with my own eyes a score of men go raving mad! I met three in 'No Man's
Land' one night. Of course, we had a bad patch. But it is sad to think
that one has to go back to it, and back to it, and back to it, until
one is hit.
(23)
In his autobiography, My War
Memories, 1914-1918,
