task of the IV Corps in the battle was assigned to the 7th and 8th
Divisions, while the 49th Division took over the greater part of the
trench-line held by the Corps. Their first object was to gain Fromelles,
but their main and ultimate objective was the Aubers Ridge. The general
scope of the attack was disclosed confidentially to the troops about
to be engaged. It was ‘not a local effort for the capture merely of
Fromelles and Aubers villages,’ but was ‘part of a much larger operation
designed to break the enemy’s line on a wide front.’ The importance of
the forces employed was also emphasized. ‘Not only is the offensive being
undertaken by the First Army’, we read, but a force of ‘the best French
troops, amounting to 300,000 or 400,000 men, is likewise advancing to the
attack north of Arras.’ The disposition of the British troops made their
objective quite clear. They faced the Lille-La Bassée road, curving round
La Bassée at the extreme right. Their line was extended on the left to
cover about half the road to Lille. The furthest point of that line from
Le Bridoux to Cordonnerie Farm was held by the 49th (West Riding[32])
Division, and two of its Infantry Brigades, the 147th and 148th, were
detailed to occupy the German trenches which the 8th Division, followed
by the 7th, and thus supported by the 49th, was to compel the enemy to
vacate[33]. Unfortunately, the whole plan miscarried. The first artillery
attack could not be sustained in sufficient strength to wipe out the
barbed-wire entanglements and free the way for the Infantry. It followed
that the 8th Division could not press its heroic advance home, and the
West Riding Infantry Brigades were never called upon to discharge their
allotted task. The first day’s programme was thrown out from the start.
Its features on the British front bore a tragic and curious resemblance
to those of the later days further south, when the advantage won by
the French bombardment had been neutralized by German local fire. The
advance was broken, that is to say, into little pockets and blood-spots
of fighting, which sank into the soil where they occurred. If the courage
displayed in these encounters had been combined for the united effort
which was intended, no troops born of woman could have withstood it. The
record of every fighting unit tells the same tale of desperate valour;
of a few exhausted and staggering survivors hardly able to remember
their own exploits, of endurance strained to the limit of capacity, and
of unwilling admiration extorted even from a grudging foe. But the net
result on May 9th was failure; it was necessary to retire and to repair,
and the part of the West Riding units, to their own deep disappointment,
was confined to occasional supporting fire, to relief-duty in the
trenches, marked by little more than its normal dangers, and, on the
whole, to a comparatively quiet day.
This battle of Fromelles, or of Aubers Ridge, which had the indirect
success of engaging sufficient German forces to assist the French advance
to Carency, was renewed a week later at Festubert, and was not broken off
till May 26th. ‘I had now reason,’ wrote Sir John French in his Seventh
Dispatch, ‘to consider that the battle, which was commenced by the First
Army on the 9th May and renewed on the 16th, having attained for the
moment the immediate object I had in view, should not be further actively
proceeded with; and I gave orders to Sir Douglas Haig to curtail his
artillery attack and to strengthen and consolidate the ground he had won
... on a front of four miles to an average depth of 600 yards.’ We may
add that, if Lille was not taken, Ypres, too, with its narrower front,
still stood with its back to the wall; and behind that wall lay the
Channel ports. Moreover, the southern approach had been partially blocked
by the reduction of the German salient from Lens, and the fighting
quality of our troops was such as to deter the enemy from attempting a
break-through on one line without adequate resources on the rest. In
other words, a see-saw movement was the chief obvious conclusion from the
six weeks’ spurts of battle-fury to the east and south-east of Ypres. A
new direct frontal attack would mean a new risk to Lens and on to Lille;
a new attempt to throw out the Lens salient would mean a protrusion of
the British salient from the Yser Canal. The third or middle course was
to accept stalemate; and to the limited but useful extent of forcing this
decision on the enemy, the heroes of the Second Battle of Ypres, of the
French pocket-battles in the Artois, and of the British struggles round
Aubers and Festubert are entitled to the full measure of their renown.
Moreover, taking a wider survey, the stalemate suited the combatants
on other accounts besides exhaustion. Germany was waging war on two
fronts. Having pushed her western pieces into positions, in which, save
for minor attacks, they might be left undisturbed for a time, she was
anxious to concentrate on the east. England, too, had another foe, whom
it might be too late to overtake unless she set about the work at once.
It became known as shortage of shells, and Mr. Lloyd George, as we saw,
was appointed in June to devise rapid measures for its defeat.
[Illustration]
Turning back to the 49th Division, we note that on May 16th it
occupied, again with the 8th Division, the extreme left of the British
line. On the 22nd, orders were received for the 148th Brigade (the 4th
and 5th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and the 4th and 5th York
and Lancasters) to throw forward the line to two ruined houses on the
Bois Grenier-Le Bridoux road. (A panorama sketch of the site is given
opposite). This meant the laying-out and preparation of a new front-line
trench astride the road, and the necessary tools, sandbags, stakes,
barbed-wire, and other paraphernalia were collected during the day of
the 22nd and the early part of that night. Work was started about 11
p.m., when two Companies of the K.O.Y.L.I. under Major P. T. Chadwick
and Captain Critchley, traced out and began digging the new trench. The
two ruined houses, situated about half way between the British and the
German lines, were found to be occupied by the enemy, who brought heavy
rifle fire into play and considerably worried the working parties. In
this encounter, Lieut. R. T. S. Gwynne was wounded, and died the next
day. On the 23rd the same Companies went out again in order to strengthen
the work commenced on the previous night. Heavy fire was drawn from the
ruined buildings, but the enemy was forced to retire. Work was continued
till daylight with satisfactory results, the cover being much improved
and the communication-trench up to the new line being practically
completed. By this means, certain operations which had been ordered by
the Corps Commander on May 20th were enabled to be carried out. On the
24th these were opened by a bombardment from the ninety-six guns in the
line at short intervals between 8 and 9 p.m. At 8-50 two Companies of
the same 4th K.O.Y.L.I., under Captain A. C. Chadwick and Captain L.
M. Taylor crossed the parapet of No. 6 trench and advanced up to the
new trench prepared on the preceding nights: a journey of about seventy
yards. The German machine-gun and rifle fire was exactly one second too
late to find this party. The Companies quickly took position, and dug
themselves in, and the ruined houses were put in a state of defence by
a section working under Captain Creswick. Next morning, two Companies
from the 5th K.O.Y.L.I. relieved their comrades of the 4th, and continued
operations. From the 26th of May onwards for some days the Germans left
them no peace, and a number of casualties ensued. But the operation had
been carried out, and Sir Henry Rawlinson, Commanding the IVth Army
Corps, desired that his high appreciation should be conveyed to the
officers and other ranks of the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry
for the ‘gallantry and precision’ which had been displayed.
Further compliments followed. On June 12th, a message was received from
the Adjutant-General at General Headquarters:
‘The Commander-in-Chief notices with gratification the record
of the 49th (West Riding) Division for the month of May, which
shows that no single conviction by Court-Martial has occurred,
a condition which does not obtain in any other Division of the
Armies. He desires that his appreciation of this fact be duly
conveyed to the 49th Division.’
And Major-General Baldock, commanding the Division, was informed by the
General Officer Commanding the First Army, to which the Division had been
transferred at the end of May:
‘Sir Douglas Haig wishes to add an expression of his great
satisfaction at the state of discipline in the 49th (W.R.)
Division, and also desires to congratulate the Division on its
soldier-like bearing and efficiency.’
A month later, the Division was re-transferred from the First Army,
Indian Corps, to the Second Army, VIth Corps, commanded by Major-General
Sir John Keir, when it moved to Proven, north-west of Poperinghe, and the
surrounding villages in Belgium. The weather after May 23rd had become
very hot, and there was one case of sun-stroke in the trenches.
We shall return to the fortunes of the Division in the alternating
periods of trench-life and billets which succeeded the intenser fighting
of May. The whole Western front settled down to what seems like a phase
of inactivity, but what was really a broken succession of diverse
minor experiences, the monotony of which, like the sea’s, was always
movement, more apparent at close quarters than afar. Meanwhile, it will
be appropriate to pick up the record of that isolated unit of West Riding
Divisional Engineers, which, as we mentioned above, preceded the Division
overseas. They, too, reached the scene of war in April, 1915. They fought
in a different field, and were even more heavily engaged, but they earned
by conspicuous gallantry not less honour than their comrades in France.
This unit, the 1/1st Field Company of West Riding Royal Engineers, under
the command of Major Dodworth, formed one of three Companies which served
under Lt.-Col. G. B. Hingston, C.R.E., in the 29th Division. Their
original destination was France, but in February, 1915, it was decided to
ship the Division with all possible speed to the Dardanelles, and, had
this decision been carried out, the fate of British arms in the Peninsula
might have been brought to a different conclusion. As a fact, owing to
causes which have been made public, its departure was postponed till
March, and, after a troublesome delay at Alexandria, the Field Company,
with a strength of 6 officers, 201 other ranks, 62 horses and mules, and
12 vehicles, reached Tenedos on April 24th. At midnight on the same day
they were selected, much to their delight, to sail with the covering
force on the ‘River Clyde’ to the South Point of the Peninsula, and
there, below Sedd-el-Bahr, the modern model of the Trojan wooden horse
was beached at 7 a.m. on April 25th.
The events of that day of death and glory have been sung, and painted,
and told, and require but brief reference here. ‘No army in history,’
says the poet who wrote a prose-epic called _Gallipoli_[34], ‘has been
set such a task. No other troops in the world would have made good those
beaches,’ and it is heartening to recall that troops from the West Riding
of Yorkshire were included in this unique band.
[Illustration: “MODERN MODEL OF TROJAN WOODEN HORSE.”]
For five months, from April till September, our Field Company of
Royal Engineers remained on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The roads, the
water-supply, the trenches, the night-wiring, the bridges, the jetties:
every kind of engineering job came their way. They even manufactured
hand-grenades, and gave practical lessons in the use of them, and they
took their bellyful of fighting and of experience of Turkish shells.
In June, for example, two of their sappers, A. Jennett and G. Packard,
were awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for their gallant rescue
of Captain Todd, of the Argyll Mountain Battery, who was lying with
a leg blown off under heavy fire on the other side of a barbed-wire
entanglement; and the same decoration was bestowed on Lance-Corporal
W. B. Owen, who snatched another wounded Officer out of a trench in
actual enemy occupation, and carried him to a dressing-station two
miles off, for the most part under fire. On September 22nd came a
welcome fortnight’s rest. They were back again early in October, and
had a terrible spell of work after the great gale of November 26th,
which helped to confirm the decision for evacuation. For the end of the
adventure was approaching, and our Engineers remained till the end. After
helping to clear Suvla and Anzac, they moved in January, 1916, to Helles,
where they cut steps down the cliff to W. Beach. Thence they sailed at
last in two parties reaching Suez, January 16th.
The rest of their story belongs to the Division in which they became
absorbed. But the praise of their famous work in Gallipoli, to which
they went straight from home, redounds to the credit of the West Riding,
and may be added to the praises which we have quoted from Sir Henry
Rawlinson, Sir Douglas Haig and Sir John French:
‘The 1/1st West Riding Field Company Royal Engineers, which
forms part of the “incomparable” 29th Division,’ wrote
Lieut.-General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, Commanding that
Division, ‘did grand service on the Gallipoli Peninsula....
Engineers have always the post of honour in war, having to
make entanglements, to mine, to sap and to carry out many
dangerous jobs in the very forefront of the fray. Of all this
work the 1/1st West Riding Field Company Royal Engineers had
its full and more than its full share, and right well did all
ranks rise to the occasion.... The casualties among them have
been heavy ... but the results achieved by them have more
than counterbalanced the loss incurred. They have covered
themselves, their Unit, and the rest of the West Riding
Divisional Royal Engineers with glory.’
This passage occurs in a letter written by Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston on
September 9th, 1915, and published with the next Quarterly Report of the
West Riding County Association. In that Report, Lord Scarbrough included
an account of a visit paid to Flanders by himself, as Chairman of the
Association, and by Brig.-General Mends, the Secretary. Their ‘object
was to ascertain in what ways the Association might best provide for
the needs and comfort of the troops, and to study the conditions under
which they have to work’; and it will not be out of place to examine Lord
Scarbrough’s conclusions in those respects in anticipation of what we
shall find in the ensuing chapter.
He recalled to the memory of local patriots that the 49th Division was
composed of Field and Heavy Artillery raised from Leeds, Bradford,
Sheffield, Otley and York; of Engineers from Sheffield; of three Infantry
Brigades from the West Yorkshire, West Riding, Yorkshire Light Infantry,
and York and Lancaster Regimental Districts; of Army Service Corps from
Leeds and York; and Field Ambulances from Leeds and Sheffield. They had
left for France in April, and had been ‘continuously in the fighting line
ever since.’ It would stimulate local patriotism to know that a Staff
Officer wrote of the Division:
‘I am very proud to have been connected with it. They are a
real good lot, and I don’t think there is a better Division in
the country.’
To the ‘amenities of war,’ as likewise to the ‘other side of the
picture’, we shall presently come back: such facts may be recovered from
written evidence; but what Lord Scarbrough and General Mends saw in the
‘smiling faces’, the ‘spirit of cheerfulness’ and the ‘sense of mastery
over the enemy,’ is contained in no formal War Diary, and is the more
valuable and vivid on that account. It brought comfort and encouragement
to the West Riding in the dark days of the autumn of 1915; not merely to
members of the Association, struggling, as we know, against the flood,
but also to many wives and mothers, realizing that, ‘in a campaign like
this,’ as the Report stated, ‘casualties come fast,’ and, lastly, to
the various committees, Parliamentary Recruiting, Trades Union, and
so on, which based their appeal for fresh efforts, in the last stages
of voluntary enlistment, on the valorous record of the ‘boys’ who had
already gone to the front. Alike in Flanders and in Gallipoli, that
record was worthy of the West Riding.
CHAPTER V
THE DAY’S WORK
During January, 1916, the 49th Division was ‘in rest’: the first period
of complete rest which the Division as a whole had enjoyed since the
previous April, when it first entered the field.
Even before this complete rest the Division could look back on some
months of comparative military inactivity. It had not been called upon to
take part in the severe fighting at Loos in September, 1915; and no other
big operations, on the scale of the warfare in May and June, had occurred
since the Battle of Festubert. Yet there had been fighting every day.
Every day of the intervening weeks and months between the close of the
spring campaign and the order to rest in January had brought difficulties
and dangers here and there, up and down the line of trenches in the
neighbourhood of Ypres and the Canal, in which the 49th was engaged, and
which it was essential to maintain as a barrier between the invader and
the sea.
It is not easy to write the history of those days, when the Division
was neither ‘in rest’ nor in action. We might review them in numerical
sequence, long day after long day, when according to the Battalion
chroniclers, ‘nothing of importance happened,’ or one unit relieved
another, or there was an inspection by the Corps or Army Commander,
or there was a ‘bombardment of the whole line, varying in severity
throughout the day and night.’ These entries, and entries like these
recur again and again in the Diary of every unit in the Division. Or,
again, when autumn arrived, the weather compelled attention. ‘Rained.
Trenches very bad; practically no work could be done. Heavy bombardment
all day from 4 a.m.,’ is a typical entry in October; and we are left to
read between the lines the accumulated miseries of that day’s work, in
which the worst hardship of all was that ‘practically no work could be
done,’ in evil trenches sodden with rain and shaken by continuous fire.
Minor miseries, perhaps, and less epical in retrospect than the Homeric
combats of the spring, or the campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula; yet
real and serious enough in their hourly call on a man’s endurance to
warrant an attempt at narration.
We are told, for instance, that Sir Herbert Plumer was pleased if the
Second Army casualties did not exceed two hundred a day in ordinary
trench work, and a division of this figure into the Army total will
yield a quotient from which we may deduce the average chance of danger
in a quiet time. Or we may observe that the British first line trenches
were distant from the line of German trenches by about 80 to 150 yards,
but that where the line bent back on the north to the bank of the Yser
Canal the distance from the German line was only 30 yards, with a very
nasty corner at the bend. We may note, too, the lack of rest at night:
the constant flare of Very Lights across the trenches, and the incessant
contest of wit (and luck) between the men repairing trenches or bringing
up rations or ammunition and the snipers watching their opportunity.
[Illustration]
Certain days at any rate may be selected for somewhat more detailed
description, not because they differed essentially from the days that
went before and that came after, but because, in the cycle of days, as in
a cycle of numbers at a gaming-table, they are marked with adventitious
interest.
Take, for instance, July 29th (we are writing of 1915 throughout) in
the story of the 7th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. They
were in dug-outs on the Canal, having completed a turn in the trenches
just before midnight on the 25th. On the 26th, 27th and 28th, nothing
of importance happened. On the 29th from half-past eight till noon,
there was a heavy shelling of the dam at the rate of two shells every
five minutes; this rate was reduced by a half from noon till an hour
after midnight, when the shelling ceased. The dam was untouched, but the
adjoining bridge was damaged in three places. One officer was killed and
ten men were wounded. Even so, the story is not exceptional, despite
the 230 odd shells falling in sixteen hours. But there is a sequel to
the story, which is told in the following words: The Military Cross was
awarded to 2nd Lieut. A. R. Glazebrook ‘for conspicuous and gallant
conduct, on the 29th July, in helping to dig out, at great personal risk,
an officer and ten men whose dug-outs had been blown in, thus saving nine
lives,’ and Riflemen J. Bentley and H. Garrity received the Distinguished
Conduct Medal ‘for working with Lieut. Glazebrook.’
Take July 16th. On the 15th the Germans had shelled the Canal bank, and
had fired three salvoes of shells into Divisional Headquarters at the
Château des Trois Tours. Advanced Headquarters remained there, including
the G.O.C. himself, the General Staff Officers, 1st and 2nd Grade, the
Brigade Major of the Royal Artillery, and the Signal Company. The rest
moved back to St. Sixte. On the 16th, at 4-30 p.m., the grounds of the
Château were shelled again, and the grave difference between this day
and that, otherwise so alike in experience, was the inclusion of the
General’s name in the casualty list. He was just crossing a bridge which
connected the Château with the mainland when he heard the shell coming,
and, though he doubled back to cover, he did not reach it in time, and
suffered a severe wound in the head. It was the only casualty at the
time, though the house was riddled with shrapnel, and as soon as the
shelling had ceased, the gallant Officer was taken to Poperinghe, where
Sir Thomas Bowlby attended him. Advanced Headquarters were withdrawn to
Hospital Farm. The retirement was completed on July 18th, on which day
the grounds of the Château were once more heavily shelled soon after the
General Staff had left.
The loss of Major-General Baldock’s services was deeply regretted by
the Division, which he had commanded since September, 1911. He had
accompanied it from peace to war and commanded with conspicuous success
during the heavy fighting of May and June, and ‘the whole Division loved
him’, it has been written. Happily, he recovered from his wound, though
he was not able to resume command, and on July 17th, 1915, Major-General
E. M. Perceval[35], C.B., was appointed in his place.
Take the events of July 15th, in the new line of trenches occupied by
the 146th Infantry Brigade. The 8th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment,
had relieved the 7th at midnight on the 13th, and came in for some
desultory shelling the next day. On the 15th, the usual patrol went on
tour in front of the trenches. It was composed of Lieut. E. F. Wilkinson,
and two Riflemen, Mudd and Clough. By bad luck, Mudd was shot through
the chest, and his cries of pain attracted the German fire. It was a
very ordinary little scene, but it is appropriate to imagine the sudden
call on two lonely men’s courage and resourcefulness. They carried the
wounded man back from in front of the German parapet under the heavy
fire, and were pulled up by their own barbed-wire mesh. Clough went in
to find cutters, and Lieut. Wilkinson stayed out with Mudd. The tool was
brought, the wire was cut, and the patrol came back with two candidates
for decoration. Lieutenant Wilkinson was awarded the Military Cross
and Rifleman Clough the Distinguished Conduct Medal for their cool and
gallant action in this exploit. Next day, as war’s tricky fortune had it,
Lieut. C. Hartnell, of the same Battalion was killed by a shell in the
front-line trench: the first officer casualty in that unit.
Take a few incidents in the trench life of the 4th and 5th Battalions
of the York and Lancaster Regiment. On July 11th, the 4th relieved the
5th in an advanced trench on the East side of the Yser Canal, where the
German and English lines met at an angle, with the French on the other
side of the Canal, and were separated, as we saw, by a distance of only
30 yards. It was a recent capture from the enemy, and the trenches, we
read, were ‘in an awful state with both English and German dead. No work
could be done on them because of shell fire.’ Again, quite an ordinary
experience, as trench life went in those days, but full of horror to its
participants, and exacting to endure. On July 13th, the day was ‘much
quieter’—plainly a comparative term—till in the evening about half-past
seven a heavy bombardment was opened all along the line, punctuated by
explosions of gas shells, and followed by rapid rifle-fire. There was
just a breath of wind blowing, but not enough to disperse the poisonous
fumes, and for some hours the corner was unhealthy. The total casualties
for the two days were 13 officers wounded, 17 other ranks killed and 55
wounded, and at 10 o’clock next night the 5th Battalion again relieved
the 4th. Meanwhile, Sergt. W. Hutchinson and Ptes. J. W. Biggin and J.
Cowlishaw were awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal,
‘for holding the flank of an advanced trench, which was
partially demolished for 24 hours on the 13th July, in an
isolated position, extricating themselves and the gun after
they had been buried, and keeping the gun in action.’
Eighty-five casualties and three D.C.M.’s for two days’ turn in the
trenches: the period of standstill had its chances.
Take the worse experience of the 5th Battalion on July 10th, when they
first took over these newly captured trenches. All day long the incessant
German batteries poured their hail and thunder on the line, and not a
single quiet hour was given for cleaning, clearing or repairing. The
casualties mounted fast. Twenty-seven men were killed, and the list of
wounded and missing included one Officer and 129 other ranks. Next day
the following telegram was received: ‘Army Commander desires to commend
prompt action of troops 49th Division when attacked last night’; and the
severity of the ordeal may be judged from the records of Lance-Corporals
J. Yates and A. Calvert and of Pte. A. Gwynette, who were all awarded the
D.C.M.: Yates,
‘for attending with great gallantry, on the 10th July, under
heavy fire and in full view of the German lines, to two wounded
men who were cut off from the rest of the Platoon’;
Calvert,
‘for assisting the Platoon Commander in steadying the men and
keeping up their spirits, on the 10th July, when many other
N.C.O.’s had been killed or wounded’;
and Gwynette,
‘for attending to about twenty wounded men on the 10th July,
during the heaviest part of the bombardment, and for keeping up
the spirits of the men by his general bearing and conduct under
heavy fire.’
These, surely, are the tests that tell. In these typical examples,
selected almost at random from the day’s work, we see in the making,
as it were, that ‘sense of mastery over the enemy,’ which the Chairman
and Secretary of the Association had observed on their visit to the
front, and which was ultimately to dictate the terms of the Peace of
Paris. On the East bank of the Yser Canal in the Summer of 1915, in
stinking trenches filled with human wreckage, and exposed to a pitiless
bombardment, the prospect of ‘ease after war’ might well seem too
remote for realization. It might seem, too, an idle thing, and below
the fever-point of warfare, to respond in such dismal surroundings and
with so dull a hope of martial glory to the constant, recurrent calls
on a courage screwed to the sticking-place or a sense of duty as its
own reward. Yet, somehow, in justice to the heroic dead, and to those
who earned as well as to those who received decorations, the perception
must be aroused that the war was won in the last resort by the private
soldier, whether Regular, Territorial or New Army. In our Military
Headquarters calculus he is not _Kanonenfutter_, food for guns: he
is always, potentially, the wearer of a medal for the distinguished
conduct, which he always seizes an opportunity to display; and a period
of comparative inactivity may provide more memorable opportunities of
this kind than the stress and press of a big battle, precisely because
the velocity of effort is measured by the daily round of marching from
billets to trenches or of carrying out a normal patrol.
The word ‘always,’ though a big word, is appropriate, because this
display of distinguished conduct is found to become a man’s second nature
and not to depend on a sudden impulse. Take the records, for example, of
Drummer F. Thickett, of the 4th York and Lancasters, and Lance-Cpl. T.
Best, of the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. On that night of
the 13th-14th July, when the new trench was so heavily attacked, Thickett
succeeded in wading through the Canal in order to carry a message from
the firing-line to Headquarters, although the bridges had been broken and
the telephone wires had been cut[36]. _He did it again_ on the night of
8th-9th August. Under heavy shell and rifle fire, and when all mechanical
communication had broken down, he crossed the Canal on a single plank,
and took the necessary message to its destination. Best’s record is in
the same kind. On July 20th and _again_ on August 5th, a part of the
trench where he was posted was blown in by enemy fire. On each occasion
he kept his men in hand, and started digging-out and rebuilding at once,
with the utmost pluck and coolness, and without regard to German rifles
and trench-mortars. Best and Thickett were both awarded the D.C.M., which
it will be agreed that they thoroughly deserved; and we see in this habit
of duty, acquired in daily experience and when no big forward movement
set the pace, the ultimate secret of the success of British arms.
One more sample from these records may be selected.
On November 15th, the 6th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, relieved
the 8th Battalion in a line of trenches about two miles north-north-east
of Ypres. The weather was frosty, and the evil condition of the trenches
was not improved by the fall of about a hundred ‘whiz-bangs’[37] and
thirty ‘heavies’ between 9-0 a.m. and 3-30 p.m. on the 16th. On the
17th, the shelling continued, with a regular reply by our Howitzers, and
there was the ‘usual sniping’. On the 18th, as on the 17th. On the 19th,
the chronicler says: ‘One of our Companies heavily shelled by enemy,
six being killed and seven wounded.... Battalion relieved by 1/5th West
Yorks. Regt., and went into Divisional Reserve near Poperinghe.’ So far,
the day’s work was not exceptional, but there was to be a notable sequel
to the day’s story. ‘For most conspicuous bravery near the Yser Canal,
on November 19th, 1915,’ the supreme decoration of the Victoria Cross
was awarded to Corporal Samuel Meekosha, of the 6th Battalion, in the
following circumstances:
‘He was with a Platoon of about twenty Non-commissioned
Officers and men who were holding an isolated trench. During
a very heavy bombardment by the enemy six of the Platoon were
killed and seven wounded, while all the remainder were more or
less buried. When the senior N.C.O.’s had been either killed
or wounded, Cpl. Meekosha at once took command, sent a runner
for assistance, and, in spite of no less than ten more big
shells falling within twenty yards of him, continued to dig
out the wounded and buried men in full view of the enemy and
at close range from the German trenches. By his promptness and
magnificent courage and determination he saved at least four
lives’.
It was the first V.C. in the 49th Division, and Captain Meekosha, who
rose to Commissioned rank, reflected credit on the Riding which had
raised it.
Three hundred and seventy-six Honours in all, including 178 Mentions in
Despatches, fell to the share of the Division during its first year’s
service in the field. Of these, the Victoria Cross, 16 Military Crosses
and 71 Distinguished Conduct Medals were Immediate Awards for specific
acts of gallantry. A few of those gallant acts have been brought back
to memory here, not because they differed in kind from others for which
awards were made (or, indeed, from many others for which, from lack of
evidence or other causes, no recommendation was forthcoming), but rather
to illustrate a catalogue which might prove wearisome _in extenso_. Thus
on one day, December 19th, as many as ten M.C.’s and twenty-nine D.C.M.’s
were won by Officers and Other Ranks, as the reward of valorous deeds
on the occasion of a sudden gas-attack, which opened at 5-15 a.m. and
continued for forty or fifty minutes. The fumes, reaching the support
trenches, found many men still asleep, and these were gassed before they
could be roused. The gas-attack preceded intense shelling, which went
on, with a slacker daylight interval, until three o’clock the following
morning. ‘It was the most awful yet magnificent sight that I have ever
seen,’ writes a R.F.A. Officer: ‘The whole country shaking with the
explosion of shells, mostly big; and a church near my Headquarters
was hit with a 17-in. shell and blown to bits. The sky was one great
glow like a vast electric light, and the atmosphere was laden with a
choking and sickly heaviness. Our men are splendid,’ he added. The total
casualties of the day mounted up to:
OFFICERS. OTHER RANKS.
Killed 4[38] 46
Wounded 2 106
Gassed 8 191
-- ---
14 343
-- ---
The decorations were presented by General Sir Herbert Plumer, Commanding
the Second Army, on the following January 23rd; and a week later the same
Army Commander once more paraded the Division, in order to present awards
for good service brought to notice in Dispatches. On the latter occasion
he told the Division:
‘This is a very pleasant ceremony to me, and I hope to you,
with which to finish, for the time being, my connection, and
that of the Second Army, with this Division. I have had the
pleasure on two occasions lately; one some weeks ago when
you came out of the Line, and one the other day, when I gave
ribbons representing decorations to Officers, N.C.O.’s and men
of the Division after the recent gas-attack; and on those two
occasions I expressed briefly, but I hope quite distinctly, my
appreciation of the way in which the 49th Division has carried
out the duties entrusted to it during the last few months.
But now that it is settled for the time being that the 49th
Division is to leave the Second Army, and go into another area,
while I have nothing to add as regards appreciation of the
work you have done, I should like to say to you how sorry I am
that you are leaving the Second Army.... I cannot expect you
to share my regret. No one so far as I know, has felt any deep
regret at quitting the Ypres salient; but, while you will not
regret your change of scene, when you look back at the time
you have spent up here, notwithstanding the arduous time you
have gone through, notwithstanding the losses of your comrades,
whom we all deplore, you will, ... I know, have some pleasant
memories to carry away with you of your comrades of the Second
Army. We, I can assure you, will follow your doings with the
deepest interest, ... and shall always feel a kind of reflected
glory when we hear of the gallant deeds which I am quite sure
you are going to accomplish both individually and as a Unit.’—
Stirring words, and a fine farewell, after what Major-General Perceval
has described as ‘nearly six months’ continuous duty in the worst
trenches of the Allied lines. During the whole of this period, runs
the statement of the Divisional Commander, the men ‘had unflinchingly
sustained an unrelaxing bombardment,’ and had borne ‘with unfailing
cheerfulness the most trying conditions of weather in permanently flooded
trenches.’
So much for this aspect of siege warfare.
Before following the 49th Division from its well-earned period in Rest
Billets to its next area of activity, we shall pick up some threads in
the history of the 62nd Division (the West Riding 2nd Line, it will be
remembered) from February, 1915, when Major-General Sir James Trotter
assumed Command. But, first, in order to complete the present picture,
brief reference is due to what Lord Scarbrough, after his visit to the
front, described as ‘the amenities of warfare.’ For these, too, were a
part of the day’s work, just as the hours of recreation are a part of a
schoolboy’s day.
The following are the relevant dates and facts:
July 28th. Divisional Baths opened at Steenje.
Aug. 5th. Divisional Armourer’s Shop opened at Steenje.
Aug. 22nd. ‘The Tykes’ Entertainment Troupe gave their opening
performance at Peselhœk, near Poperinghe.
Aug. 23rd. Divisional Technical School of Instruction opened
near Hospital Farm.
Sept. 10th. Divisional Farrier’s Shop opened.
Sept. 15th. Divisional Band’s first performance.
Oct. 11th. Divisional Horse Show held.
Oct. 15th. Divisional Grocery, Canteen and Coffee Bar opened.
Nov. 9th. Divisional Shop for repair of Gum Boots opened.
Dec. 6th. Divisional Tailor’s Shop opened.
There was also the Divisional Dump, where 6,000 rifles, for example, were
salvaged in four months; and, more definitely among amenities, there was
the _Buzzer_, published as the organ of the Divisional Signal Company,
which enjoyed a wide circulation and scattered enjoyment as it circulated.
The gracious visit of His Majesty the King on October 27th, when
all Arms of the 49th Division were represented at an inspection of
contingents from the Second Army, belongs to a different category, but it
is gratifying to recall His Majesty’s comment to General Perceval on the
appearance and bearing of his men.
[Illustration: LT.-GEN. SIR W. P. BRAITHWAITE, K.C.B.
MAJ.-GEN. E. M. PERCEVAL, C.B.
MAJ.-GEN. SIR R. D. WHIGHAM, K.C.B.
MAJ.-GEN. N. J. G. CAMERON, C.B., C.M.G.
MAJ.-GEN. SIR J. K. TROTTER, K.C.B., C.M.G.]
Plainly, the items in the above list owe their invention and inclusion to
a common aim at recreation. This aim might be simple and direct, as in
the construction of a Dump for restoring derelict war material; it might
be a little less direct, as in the foundation of the Baths[39], which
served partly for refreshment, and partly, taken in connection with their
laundry, drying-sheds, etc., for the prevention of ‘trench feet’ and
kindred ills; it might be purely recreative, again, as in the programmes
of the _Buzzer_ and ‘The Tykes’; or it might be recreative-utilitarian,
in the Gladstonian sense of a change of occupation, as in the
establishment of workshops and schools; and, in referring to any of these
aspects, we should always keep clearly in mind the sharp contrast which
they presented to the constant experience in the trenches, to and from
which the men went and came.
Consider, first, this question of ‘trench-feet.’ It was the fate of the
49th Division to occupy during this winter the most water-logged trenches
of the line. They were ‘permanently flooded,’ as General Perceval said.
Yet he had the satisfaction of reporting that the number of cases of
‘trench-feet’ was among the lowest in any Division. The total number
was 760; the average number was six a day. We have to add this feature
to the day’s work, but, with it, we add the measures that were taken
to counteract the evil. Not merely the three or four pairs of socks
which each man took with him into the trenches, the arrangements for
washing and drying them, and the provision of anti-frostbite grease and
oil; but also the care of the inner man; soup-kitchens, hot cocoa and
chocolate, supplies of Oxo and pea-soup, and the stress laid by the
Divisional Commander on the importance of keeping the men’s vitality
high. Nor should the gifts of the Association at home be forgotten in
this context; they sent the portable bath-house with oil-pumping engine
and piping complete; they sent 5,000 tins of ‘Tinned Heat’ (which sounds
like an import straight from Hades); 10,000 small tins for anti-frostbite
grease, 15,000 small cans for whale-oil, 4,885 short gum-boots, 722 thigh
gum-boots, 7,000 mittens, 9,300 socks, oilskin-jackets, oilskins and
sou’-westers, besides other contributions in kind. There were still six
cases every day, but the day’s work was mollified by these means.
Another gift which reached the Division from the West Riding Association
was the furniture and accessories for the theatre of ‘The Tykes.’
This capable troupe of entertainers had begun in a very modest way
on improvised platforms in the open air. Perhaps they did not know,
or were indifferent to the fact, that European drama, consummated in
Shakespeare, had precisely similar beginnings. Though ‘The Tykes’ did
not produce a Shakespeare, they hardly fell short of his success in the
pleasure which they afforded to their own audiences. Historically, they
were fourth on the list of Divisional Concert Parties, and it was on
Christmas Day, 1915, that they definitely started on their career as
a theatrical company. In January, 1916, and again in the December of
that year, they went home to the West Riding, where they played at the
Empire Palace, Leeds, the Opera House, Harrogate, and the Empire Palace,
Sheffield, exhibiting to enthusiastic houses the simple joys of the men
at the front. They performed in all in about fifty places, in improvised
barns or converted stables, or very rarely in genuine halls, and they had
the honour to be the first company to appear on the boards at Arras and
Cambrai after their capture in 1918. Even more impressive and gratifying
is the fact that over 80,000 francs was handed by ‘The Tykes’ to the
Institutes’ of the Division between 1916 and 1919, for the provision of
additional comforts, sports, etc., to its units. The original ‘Tyke’
was Lieut. J. P. Barker, A.S.C., who was evacuated sick to England in
September, 1918. He really started and made them, and, if other names may
be mentioned, we would refer to Lance-Cpl. A. Coates, of the Army Service
Corps, and Pte. H. Marsden, formerly R.E., of the 243rd Employment
Company, who were members of the troupe right through from August 22nd,
1915, to February 2nd, 1919. A Divisional cinema, we may add, was
established in March, 1917, and, after narrowly escaping destruction in
the German advance at Berthen, April 9th, 1918, it survived to hand over
a profit of 27,900 francs for the worthy objects of the Institutes’ Fund.
Turning next to the facilities for education which were gradually
developed in this period, we note the technical character of the
instruction provided. Thus, a Drainage Section was organized in the
Ypres Salient, which laid down nearly 9,000 yards of main and subsidiary
drains, with valuable results in the trenches. Mining Sections were
also formed to help Tunnelling Companies, and did excellent work while
they lasted. A Divisional Gas School gave lessons in the use and
care of anti-gas appliances, and doubtless contributed to keep down
the list of casualties on December 19th. There were always Ambulance
courses, and local opportunities for instruction in Sniping, Scouting,
Signalling, Bombing and other special branches. The Divisional Technical
School taught the use of Trench Warfare appliances, keeping parties of
newly-arrived troops for twenty-four hours in mimic trenches, with the
enemy trenches opposite also faithfully reproduced; and a Divisional
Training School was established to give both practical and theoretical
instruction to junior Officers and N.C.O.’s of Infantry.
The workshops of the Royal Engineers turned out a quantity of stuff which
was really remarkable in the circumstances. All the made-up material for
use in the trenches was prepared there, as well as the work in connection
with the accommodation of men in the Rest Area. When we read of one and
three-quarter million sandbags, or of fifteen miles of road maintained
and drained by civilian labour under the supervision of the R.E., or of
seventeen bridges kept up and seven constructed by this Arm, or of four
thousand tons of bricks drawn from ruined houses for horse-standings, or
of thirty miles of trench-gridding[40] laid and fifteen miles of trenches
maintained, we are able to form some idea of the unremitting toil and
admirable skill displayed by the Divisional Engineers.
Reference, too, should be made to the fact that the grave defects in
Field Artillery, which that Arm of the Division was so well aware of,
and which it so particularly and gallantly endured, were to some extent
corrected by the issue on October 29th of 18-pounder Quick-Firer Field
Guns, instead of the existing 15-pounders, and on January 30th in the
next year of 4.5-inch Howitzers instead of the 5-inch Howitzers in
possession.
One more item of statistics may be mentioned. In a year’s constant
journeys on bad roads for long distances, amounting in all to a total
mileage of 900,000 miles, no lorry had to be replaced: an extremely
creditable record for the Divisional Supply Column.
But these details are carrying us too far. Our purpose in the present
chapter has been to preserve an impression of the daily experience of the
49th Division from the end of June to the end of December, 1915. The same
things happened every day, though they might happen with a difference.
The day was fine, or the day was wet; the patrol got back, or the patrol
was wounded; a shell exploded, or a shell fell ‘dud’; distinguished
conduct found a grave, or distinguished conduct won a medal: but always
it was relieving or being relieved, throughout this long tour of duty
under the exhausting conditions of the Ypres Salient. We have sought to
illustrate the life by selecting certain days for description, and we
have sought, too, to set off that description by an account, however
inadequate, of the other side of the picture: of the means provided from
home or improvised on the spot, and alike approved by the Divisional
Commander, to bring touches of warmth and colour into the chilling
monotony of trench-warfare. How far such aim has been accomplished,
even how far it is capable of accomplishment at this distance from 1915
and the bank of the Yser Canal, where the general gloom of the outlook
was almost as difficult to banish as the mud on the physical horizon,
cannot be predicated with any certainty. What is clear to the present
writer, however, and what he should have made clear to his readers, is
that no opportunity was let go of doing a full day’s work every day.
They all pulled together all the time. The result was that, though the
long strain told on the physique of the Division, it did not tell on
their spirits or their resolution, and, inasmuch as their appointed day’s
work was essential to the conduct of the war, and to the maintenance
of equilibrium on the Western front, the 49th (West Riding) Division
deserved well of their King and country in the last six months of the
year 1915.
[Illustration: Tower of the Cloth Hall Ypres]
CHAPTER VI
SERVING IN RESERVE
The intensive training of a 2nd Line Division, which was to take a
conspicuous part in the battles of 1917 and 1918, is the subject of the
present chapter.
The military confusion at home during the period prior to the passing
of the first National Service Act, and prolonged to some extent through
1916, though it never affected the keenness and enthusiasm of the
2nd Line troops themselves, has yet to be taken into account in any
impression which may be given of the conditions under which training was
carried out. Reference to this factor will be found in the Memorandum
on the Territorial Force written by General Bethune at the War Office,
of which mention has been made before.[41] The then Director-General
remarked: ‘Great difficulty was experienced in training, as, with so
many new Armies to be formed, the majority of capable instructors went
to them, and our 2nd Line Territorial Force had to train themselves as
best they could. The result,’ he added, ‘was extraordinarily good and
surprised anyone who had anything to do with it.’ We shall reach the
element of surprise in due course. Here, for the moment, we are concerned
with the ‘great difficulty’ which was encountered, and more particularly
with those aspects of the difficulty which lay outside the cognizance of
the Territorial Force personnel, or, at any rate, outside their control.
Let us go back to first principles. The idea of a voluntary Army,
despite the wastage of war and the unequal distribution of patriotic
sentiment, or of the capacity to respond to it, was still, late in
1914, a sacred article of British faith. Another accepted article, if
not of faith, at least of British practice, was the enlistment of that
voluntary Army on a County basis. This procedure, which was laid down in
Section IX. (I.) (a) of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act, followed
a similar provision in the Militia Act of 1882, and, tracing it back
to that source, we discover that its primary cause was ‘to estimate
the extent of the County’s liability in the event of the ballot being
enforced.’[42] The tradition survived the ballot, and the rule of County
enlistment was incorporated, as we have seen, in the organization of the
Territorial Force. This rule worked well enough in peace-time, and might
conceivably have continued to work well if it had been the only rule to
be applied when war broke out on a scale not dreamed of by the authors of
the Act of 1907.[43] But, historically speaking, and without attempting
to judge the issue, it was decided very early in the war to vary that
rule, and to raise recruits for the new Armies on a system which crossed
the method handed down to the Territorial Force by the old Militia and
Volunteers. The Counties were reaped of their best men by a Secretary of
State who knew not Lord Haldane. The first hundred thousand disappeared
into the vast abyss of war from every town and village in the country.
Members of Parliament came down to recruit for Kitchener’s Army, and
forgot, or were not reminded by the Mayor, of the claims of Haldane’s
Force. Bonds of brotherhood in arms, by trades, professions, even by
height or religion (_e.g._, ‘Bantams,’ ‘Jewish’ Regiment, etc.) drove
their wedges through the County bond; and under these new and distracting
conditions, the old rule of enlistment by Counties became to a large
extent a pious memory of peace, and enlistment by hook and crook, by
picture-posters, white feathers, and worse devices, became the feverish
rule of war.
This was the 2nd Line problem viewed through the spectacles of
Territorial Force County Associations. The men themselves did not see it
from the same angle. Their great desire, with insignificant exceptions,
was to prepare themselves for service overseas with the utmost possible
expedition. In their camps or billets or drill-halls, they were probably
as unconscious of as they were indifferent to the serious administrative
difficulties created for their County chiefs by the constant changes of
policy on the part of the Army Council. Nor is the Army Council unduly
to be blamed. The pace of the war itself was quicker than anyone had
anticipated, and social and industrial conditions at home did not readily
adapt themselves to its imperious needs. If we refer to these forgotten
problems, out of which the successive National Service Acts were forged,
as a partial solution, we shall be understood to refer to them solely in
explanation of the ‘great difficulty’ which was experienced, and not in
the least in derogation of the great zeal with which that difficulty was
surmounted to the ‘surprise’ of everyone concerned.
We have further authority as to the difficulties. In a Memorandum kindly
prepared by Major-General Sir James K. Trotter, K.C.B., who was appointed
to command the West Riding 2nd Line Division[44] in February, 1915, he
writes as follows of the early days of his Command:
‘The difficulties affecting training were at this stage very
serious. The troops were not all provided with uniform. They
were without equipment; the Infantry had no arms, except a
few d.p. rifles; the Artillery no guns; the Mounted Troops,
Artillery and Engineers no horses, and the Transport nothing
but a few hired carts. But the want most sorely felt was
that of the young, active, trained N.C.O. to instruct and to
give life to the movements of the young soldiers. Competent
instructors were not to be had. Every available N.C.O. was
taken up by the 1st Line Territorials and the New Service
Army units, and this Division was at this time left to its
own very limited resources. The Regimental Officers were in
the main new and untrained, and though the Command Schools of
Instruction gave short courses to as many as possible, it was
very remarkable to observe the time necessary to convert the
raw recruit into a trained soldier under these conditions....
What was lacking was the atmosphere. Nevertheless, some real
progress in elementary training was made in the early Spring
(1915), and some young officers displayed considerable energy
and initiative.’
Lack of atmosphere is the burden of this complaint, and a brief map of
the conflicting winds which were blown across the path of Territorial
Force organization may account, in part, at least, for these disturbed
atmospheric conditions. Summarily, the war policy of the Army Council
in regard to the Territorial Force may be marked by the following five
steps: (1) They decided to raise Reserve or 2nd Line units behind the
Imperial Service Units of the original or 1st Line. The practical
distinction between the two was based on their state of preparedness
to fulfil the overseas obligation. Thus, the distinction was always
fluid. It varied, that is to say, according to the degree of training
reached by the individual personnel, and there were always frequent
exchanges between the 2nd and 1st Lines. The only constant element in
the Reserve units were the men, who, owing to age or health or other
conditions, would never be fit for Imperial Service. Divisional and
other military organization was the same in both Lines, but the 1st was
composed of Officers and other Ranks ready for service abroad, the 2nd
was composed partly of surplus Imperial Service personnel, partly of
troops prepared, so far, only up to Home Service, which still formed
the statutory function of the Territorial Force. (2) The next stage
occurred when the 1st Line units went overseas. Then a 3rd Line, or
2nd Reserve, was authorized for formation, behind the Home Service
units composed partly, as we have seen, of men ready, in a military
sense, to go overseas, and this 3rd Line was presently constituted into
a series of (3) Draft-producing Depots, with establishments varying
from time to time according as their corresponding 1st Line units were
stationed at home, or on garrison duty abroad, or with an Expeditionary
Force. A little later (4) steps were taken to weed out the Home Service
personnel still remaining with the 2nd Line units and to distribute
them into newly-constituted Home Service units, and finally (5) the
National Reservists were formed into Supernumerary Territorial Force
Companies, with a fixed establishment of about 120 all Ranks, for the
protection of Lines of Communication and Vulnerable Points at home.
To complete a brief account of a long process which was not worked
out with a very clever perception of its intention from the start, we
may add that these Supernumerary Companies were transformed by Royal
Warrant, in 1916, into the Royal Defence Corps, when they passed out
of the County administration. But all through 1915 the position was
extraordinarily complex from an administrative point of view. Territorial
Force Associations were responsible for maintaining their 1st Line units
overseas, their 2nd Line units at home, their 3rd Line Draft-producing
Depots, their Provisional Home Service units and their Supernumerary
Territorial Force Companies.
In justice to the West Riding Association, which was hard put to it
to keep an even keel in this welter of conflicting currents, we may
examine the policy which they pursued, in somewhat more detail. From
the first they declined to be hustled. As early as October, 1914, the
Chairman, Lord Scarbrough, remarked in his Quarterly Report to members
of the Association, that ‘In consequence of the great difficulty of
obtaining supplies of clothing, boots, necessaries, etc., and the lack of
Officers and qualified Instructors, it was considered best not to push
recruiting for the Reserve units, but to endeavour to raise them very
gradually as Instructors and clothing and equipment could be provided.
By so doing,’ he pointed out, ‘the efficiency of these units is not
likely to be retarded, and the waste of time and discouragement entailed
by collecting large numbers of men without Officers, Instructors, arms,
uniform, boots, or any provision for their well-being, has been to a
large extent avoided.’ But his policy, however sound at the outset,
could not be indefinitely maintained. The time came, and it came more
quickly than some even of the shrewdest of observers had foreseen, when
the Reserve, or 2nd Line, units had to be allowed to recruit up to
full establishment, despite those deficiencies in equipment which so
seriously embarrassed their Commanding Officers, in the urgent work of
training them for service overseas. So the ‘large numbers’ continued
to come forward, and might not be refused. As early as November, 1914,
for example, the 2/6th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment had a
strength of over 1,400, and this splendid record was not unique in the
2nd Line Division. The real problem faced by General Trotter in the
Spring of 1915 was not shortness of numbers, though this, too, became a
source of some anxiety at County Headquarters, when the new Armies were
competing with the Territorial Force; it was still less lack of keenness
for foreign service, but it was always the old problem of Israel in
Egypt—how to make bricks without straw. We quoted just now the General’s
own account of the problems which he had to face in this regard. We may
quote here his further account, by no means too rosy in certain aspects,
of the progress in elementary training which was made in the early Spring
of 1915. It will be remembered that the 1/1st West Riding (49th) Division
went abroad in the middle of April. The 62nd Division was then appointed
to take over its duties. The Infantry, it is reassuring to find, were
now in possession of rifles, which had been obtained from Japan, and the
Artillery, about the same time, received an armament of French guns,
made in 1878, and ‘evidently discarded,’ writes General Trotter, ‘for
many years. The tangent scales were graduated in metres, and the shells
were provided with a graduated time-fuze. But no one could be found to
connect the graduation with the range scales, and no book of instructions
existed.... No ammunition was available for practice, and the whole time
this weapon was in the hands of the Artillery, _i.e._, till December,
1915, it was only used for training purposes, and then only to a limited
extent, the breech action and sights being of obsolete pattern. If,’ adds
the General, ‘the Artillery had, according to the plans in force, been
called upon to take part in the defence of the coast, the casualties it
would have caused would have been at the breech-end of the guns’. There
were other interruptions to training, as seen from a Commanding Officer’s
point of view. The competition in recruiting, to which so frequent
reference is necessarily made at this period, produced, in places,
almost humorous results. Thus, a Divisional Commander of the Territorial
Force units would be pressed in some places by the local authorities to
supply bands for recruiting-meetings held for the purpose of enlisting
men in units of the New Armies. Again, industrial conditions created
unforeseen anomalies. It often happened that the first men to enlist
were the key-men in their respective factories, and these men, after
having been put through a course of military training, and having become
efficient soldiers in the comparatively shorter time corresponding to
their superior capacity, had eventually to be returned to the works from
which they came, or to other works engaged in producing war-materials.
Another increasing source of embarrassment to the Divisional Commander
and his subordinate Officers lay in the calls which were made on the
62nd Division, during 1915, to supply drafts for service overseas. Even
the extraction from 2nd Line units of the men fit only for Home Service
upset the composition of those units, and interrupted the continuity
of training and the growth of an _esprit de corps_. Take, merely as an
example, the experience of the 2/8th Battalion of the West Yorkshire
Regiment. On March 8th, 1915, ten of their men were drafted to the 1/8th.
Sundry other exchanges of personnel between the 2/8th and 1/8th, before
the latter went to France, in April, resulted in a numerical loss to the
unit remaining at home. On May 17th, 4 Officers and 188 other Ranks were
transferred to the 26th Provisional Battalion for coast defence, and were
followed at subsequent dates by a further 17 men. On August 15th, 54 men
went out to the 1/8th Battalion. On the 27th came the gratifying news
that Lieut. E. F. Wilkinson, formerly of the 2/8th Battalion, had been
awarded the Military Cross in France: _sic vos, non vobis_. In October,
orders arrived that the Battalion was to be reduced to 600 all ranks,
that unfit men were to be posted to the 26th Provisional Battalion, and
the remaining surplus over the new establishment, to the 3/8th Battalion
West Yorkshires. It is obvious that changes of this kind, which may
be paralleled in any other unit, were no light drawback. The success
of the training of the Division during the period, May to October,
1915, when it was in camp in Sherwood Forest, might have been even
more seriously affected except for the loyal co-operation of Officers,
N.C.O.s and men in carrying out the programmes arranged for them. They
were moved by an increasing resolve to prepare themselves for the call
for embarkation, the hope of which, though renewed from time to time,
seemed always so slow to materialize.[45] Meanwhile, work was carried
on with this object always in view. Particular attention was devoted to
the duties of the Platoon Officers and Company Commanders, and General
Trotter bears witness that ‘during the summer and autumn months, the
Division made remarkable progress in training, administrative work and
discipline.’ In October, they left their encampments, and were stationed,
at the end of November, in the Northern Command, with Headquarters at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, where the Brigades were allotted to the Tyne defences,
and the units were occupied in making and improving the trenches. About
this time the Artillery at last had received a serviceable weapon;
18-pounder, breech-loader guns were issued to three Brigades, and 5″
Howitzers to the fourth. In December, news arrived that the Division had
been selected as the first of the 2nd Line Territorials Divisions for
service in France, and orders were issued to move to Salisbury Plain. Sir
James Trotter, whose organizing ability had so well and truly laid the
foundations of the military efficiency of the Division, was succeeded
in its Command, on December 24th, by Major-General Walter Braithwaite,
C.B.,[46] who took over the Division at Newcastle.
It is interesting to dovetail the accounts of the retiring and
succeeding Divisional Commanders. General Braithwaite notes that
‘the Battalions were commanded mostly by Territorial Force Officers
of a certain age and standing, with personal knowledge of the men in
their units, and with experience, in many cases, of Territorial Force
conditions as they existed before the war, but, naturally, with no
experience of war as it was being waged. The material was excellent,
and all that was lacking was to adapt it to the conditions obtaining at
the Front.’ Accordingly, at Lark Hill Camp on Salisbury Plain, where
the Division arrived in January, 1916, application was at once made
to the War Office for men with fighting experience to fill posts on
the Divisional Staff, and for the appointment of Brigade Majors of the
Infantry Brigades in order to set to work to make the Division completely
war-worthy. The response was prompt and satisfactory, and perhaps the
most satisfactory feature from the Divisional Commander’s point of view
was the loyal readiness of individual Officers who felt themselves and
were too old for the strain of active service to make way for younger
men, who had either been wounded or invalided from France. An ideal
General Staff Officer, 1st Grade, was found in Lieut.-Colonel the Hon A.
G. A. Hore-Ruthven, V.C. Lieut.-Colonel R. M. Foot, to the great benefit
of the Division, was appointed Q.M.G.; Brig.-General A. T. Anderson
arrived from France to take command of the Divisional Artillery, with
Capt. W. J. Lindsell as his Brigade Major, and these Officers, with
Lieut.-Colonel Gillam in command of the Royal Engineers, made, we are
assured, ‘an excellent beginning.’ Mention is also due to the arrival
at this date of the Rev. C. M. Chavasse as S.C.F., and we may add here
that he served with the 62nd Division for the whole period of its active
service, with the exception of a very short time when he was promoted
to be Senior Chaplain of the Corps. The Brigadiers of the 185th, 186th
and 187th Infantry Brigades, respectively, who were also appointed about
this time, were Generals V. W. de Falbe, who had commanded a Battalion in
France; F. F. Hill, who had been invalided from Gallipoli, and R. O’B.
Taylor, who happened to be home from leave in Egypt, and who had also
been in Gallipoli. These arrivals, as might be expected, added immensely
to the strength of the Division. Its efficiency, from February onwards,
increased by leaps and bounds, and the Division was fortunate, too, in
receiving from time to time the latest ‘tips’ from Officers serving in or
invalided home from France, and anxious to place their experience at the
disposal of those about to proceed there.
Still, it was not all smooth sailing. In May, 1916, after service
rifles had been issued, and when training was in full swing, orders
were suddenly received for the Division to find a draft of over 4,000
men for France, and it looked as if the Division was to be turned into
a mere draft-producing unit, and its fighting efficiency to be impaired
accordingly. Happily, this order, like so many others, was cancelled. A
further and more actual disappointment ensued a month or so later, when
the Division was sent to the East Coast to be employed in reserve for the
defences, with the intimation that it was likely to stay there. We are
left to imagine the consternation of the troops, already straining at the
leash, and the difficulty of the Divisional Commander and his subordinate
Officers in accommodating their programmes and policy to these shifting
counsels from above. Certainly, the East Coast was not as convenient
for training, and did not provide the same facilities as were available
on Salisbury Plain. The Brigades were separated by some distance: the
Headquarters of one Brigade and the bulk of the Artillery being round
about Bungay, another group being at Henham Hall (Lord Stradbroke), and
a third at Somerleyton (Lord Somerleyton, formerly Sir Savile Crossley),
near Lowestoft. But once more the prospects changed. Fresh orders
presently arrived, stating that the Division was selected for service in
France. On July 26th, the King came down to inspect the Division prior to
embarkation, and His Majesty expressed himself extremely satisfied with
all that he saw.
[Illustration]
Time went on, however, and no embarkation orders came. Drafts for
Service units abroad and for Service units definitely allotted to home
duties continued to be called for throughout this Summer and Autumn, and
still the Division was in doubt as to its ultimate use and destination.
Still the Divisional Pelican waited to put his foot down on German
soil. The men now enjoyed opportunities, of which they gladly availed
themselves, of working on training instructions which had been received
direct from the front. Trench-digging, air-raid duty, rifle-practice
with Charger-Loading Lee Enfields, gas-drill, concentration-marches,
musketry and Lewis-gun courses, assaults-at-arms, aquatic sports, and
other martial exercises and recreations, were all included in the
preparation for battle. The whole life of the soldier in France was,
so far as was possible, copied as faithfully as it could be during
this strenuous period. Officers on light duty in England, who had been
wounded, were sent down in batches and distributed among the Battalions,
which were eager, as we saw above, to take advantage of the benefit of
their experience. Young Officers, with a war record behind them, were
appointed to command Battalions, Batteries and Companies. Sketches of the
latest types of trenches were received and re-produced in practice; and,
briefly, except for the actual atmosphere of active service, the Division
became during these months a living organism capable of assimilating
all the lessons which experience could teach it, and likely, with its
splendid material, to give a good account of itself at the Front.
And, at last, the summons arrived. In October, 1916, orders were received
to proceed to Bedford and Wellingborough in order to complete the
Division with all necessary stores, and to hold itself in readiness to go
overseas. The actual order for the move was still postponed till the last
days of December, and the final scenes may be quoted from the War Diary
of one of the West Riding Battalions:—
‘January 4th, 1917.—Order of the Day issued by Major-General
Braithwaite, containing farewell message from His Majesty the
King to 62nd Division, on the eve of their departure overseas.
‘January 4th, 1917, 9 a.m.—Farewell service of Holy Communion
at St. Paul’s Church, Bedford, before proceeding on Active
Service.
‘January 11th, 1917.—Left Bedford for France. Right half
Battalion left the Ballast Pit Sidings, Bedford, at 3-25 a.m.
Left half Battalion left at 5 a.m.’
‘I do not think,’ writes General Sir Walter Braithwaite, at the
conclusion of the Notes with which he has been kind enough to supply
the present writer, ‘a more happy and contented Division, or one better
found and equipped, ever left the shores of England, and I think it was
as well trained as a Division could be, thanks to all the help I received
from the Staff and Commanding Officers, and to all the kind friends in
France, who kept us supplied with the latest training instructions.[47]
I cannot close this short sketch of our training period without alluding
to the great help we received throughout the period from Lord Scarbrough
and Brig.-General Mends. They were “father and mother” to the Division;
made several visits to us; took endless trouble to help us, and, in fact,
made all the rough places smooth. Also, I cannot but acknowledge the
patriotism of those Commanding Officers who, feeling themselves too old
for active service, made way for young up-to-date Commanders.’
It will be interesting to conclude this account with a conspectus of the
Order of Battle of the 62nd Division from February, 1917, when it first
entered the field, during the 22 months of its brilliant fighting record,
till February, 1919, when demobilization was in active course. The
purpose of this information, which is arranged for convenience in tabular
form, is to show, in the first column, the units which composed the
Division when it first landed in France; in the second column, the units
which joined the Division between that date and February, 1919; in the
third column, remarks explanatory of the information in columns one and
two; and in column four the names of the respective Commanding Officers
at the time of the embarkation of the Division. It will be observed that
certain Battalions of the 1st and 2nd Lines were amalgamated during 1918,
and these tables should be referred to, accordingly, in cases where
any consequent changes in nomenclature may puzzle the reader of later
chapters.
ORDER OF BATTLE OF 62nd (WEST RIDING) DIVISION between February,
1917, and February, 1919.
---------------------+---------------+--------------------+-------------
Landed with Division,|Joined Division| | Commanding
Jan.-Feb., 1917. |between Feb., | Remarks. | Officer
| Feb., 1917 | | (Jan.,
|and Feb., 1919.| | 1917).
---------------------+---------------+--------------------+-------------
DIVISIONAL F.A. | | |
310th Brigade, | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. G.
R.F.A. | | | R. V.
| | | Kinsman,
| | | D.S.O., R.A.
311th Brigade, | |Became Army Brigade |Lt.-Col. A.
R.F.A. | | early 1917. | Gadie
312th Brigade, | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. E.
R.F.A. | | | P. Bedwell,
| | | R.A.
62nd Div. Ammunition| |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. F.
Col. | | | Mitchell
62nd T.M. Batteries | |Remained throughout.|
|14th Bde. |Joined November, |
| R.H.A. & | 1918. |
| B.A.C. | |
| | |
DIVISIONAL ENGINEERS.| | |
457th Field Company,| |Remained throughout.|Major W. A.
R.E. | | | Seaman
460th Field Company,| |Remained throughout.|Major L. St.
R.E. | | | J. Colley
461st Field Company,| |Remained throughout.|Major E. J.
R.E. | | | Walthew
Signal Company. | |Remained throughout.|Capt. R. V.
| | | Montgomery
| | | (Som. L.I.)
| | |
185TH INFANTRY | | |
BRIGADE. | | |
2/5th West Yorks. | |Amalgamated with 8th|Lt.-Col. J.
Regt. | | W. Yorks., August,| Josselyn
| | 1918. |
2/6th West Yorks. | |Amalgamated with 6th|Lt.-Col. J.
Regt. | | W. Yorks, to 49th | H. Hastings
| | Div., Feb., 1918. |
2/7th West Yorks. | |Disbanded June, |Lt.-Col.
Regt. | | 1918. | Hon. F. S.
| | | Jackson
2/8th West Yorks. | |Amalgamated with |Lt.-Col. W.
Regt. | | 1/8th W. Yorks, | Hepworth,
| | Feb., 1918. | V.D.
185th T.M. Battery. | |Remained throughout.|
| | |
|1/8th Bn. W. |Amalgamated with |
| Yorks, from | 2/8th W. Yorks., |
| 49th Div. | Feb., 1918. |
|1/5th Bn. |Joined June, 1918, |
| Devon Regt. | from Egypt. |
|2/20th Bn. |Joined August, 1918,|
| London Regt. | from Egypt. |
| | |
186TH INFANTRY | | |
BRIGADE. | | |
2/4th Bn. West | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. H.
Riding Regt. | | | E. P. Nash
| | | (R. Scots)
2/5th Bn. West | |Amalgamated with |Lt.-Col. T.
Riding Regt. | | 1/5th Bn., Feb., | A. D. Best,
| | 1918. | D.S.O., (R.
| | | Innis. Fus.)
2/6th Bn. West | |To 49th Div. for |Lt.-Col. J.
Riding Regt. | | amalgamation with | Mackillop
| | 1/6th, Feb., 1918. |
2/7th Bn. West | |Disbanded June, |Lt.-Col.
Riding Regt. | | 1918. | Clifford,
| | | D.S.O.
| | | (North.
| | | Fus.)
186th T.M. Battery | |Remained throughout.|
|1/5th Bn. West |From 49th Div. |
| Riding Regt. | Amalgamated with |
| | 2/5th, Feb., 1918.|
|2/4th Hants. |From Egypt, June, |
| Regt. | 1918. |
| | |
187TH INFANTRY | | |
BRIGADE. | | |
2/4th Bn. K.O.Y.L.I.| |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. E.
| | | Hind, V.D.
2/5th Bn. K.O.Y.L.I.| |Amalgamated with |Lt.-Col. W.
| | 1/5th Bn., Feb., | Watson (Som.
| | 1918. | L.I.)
2/4th Bn. Yorks. & | | |
Lancs. Regt. | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. F.
2/5th Bn. Yorks. & | | | St. J.
Lancs. Regt. | | | Blacker
| |Disbanded Feb., |Lt.-Col. P.
| | 1918. | Prince
| | | (Shrops.
| | | L.I.)
187th T.M. Battery | |Remained throughout.|
|1/5th Bn. |From 49th Div. |
| K.O.Y.L.I. | Amalgamated with |
| | 2/5th, Feb., 1918.|
| | |
PIONEER BATTALION |9th Bn. Durham |From 50th Division, |
| Light Inf. | Feb., 1918. |
| | |
DIVISIONAL TRAIN. | | |
62nd Divisional | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col.
Train | | | H. H.
| | | Wilberforce
525 Company, | |Remained throughout.|Major A. P.
R.A.S.C. | | | Wright
526 Company, | |Remained throughout.|Lt. S. G.
R.A.S.C. | | | Shaw
527 Company, | |Remained throughout.|Lt. W. N.
R.A.S.C. | | | Roberts
528 Company, | |Remained throughout.|Capt. H. P.
R.A.S.C. | | | Peacock
| | |
DIVISIONAL R.A.M.C. | | |
2/1st (W.R.) Field | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. W.
Ambulance | | | Lister
2/2nd (W.R.) Field | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. C.
Ambulance | | | W. Eames
2/3rd (W.R.) Field | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. W.
Ambulance | | | S. Keer
62nd Divl. Sanitary | |Remained throughout.|Capt. Moss-
Section | | | Blundell,
| | | C.B.
2/1st Northn. Cas. | |Remained throughout.|Lt.-Col. W.
Clearing Stn. | | | A. Wetwan
|33rd Sanitary |Joined after |
| Section | Armistice. |
| | |
DIVISIONAL MACHINE | | |
GUN BN. | | |
|201st M.G. |Joined 1917}
| Company | }
|208th M.G. |Joined 1917} Formed into 62nd
| Company | } Bn. Machine-Gun
|212th M.G. |Joined 1917} Corps, Feb.,
| Company | } 1918
|213th M.G. |Joined 1917}
| Company | |
| | |
DIVISIONAL M.T. | | |
COMPANY. | | |
62nd Div. M.T. | |Remained throughout.|Major H. J.
Company | | | C. Hawkins
| | |
MOBILE VETERINARY | | |
SECTION. | | |
2/1st (W.R.) Mob. | | |
Vet. Sect. | |Remained throughout.|Capt. P.
| | | Abson,
| | | A.V.C.
| | |
DIVISIONAL EMPLOYMENT| | |
CO. | | |
|252nd |Joined June, 1917, |
| Employment | and remained |
| Co. | throughout. |
---------------------+---------------+--------------------+-------------
The Staff Officers in January, 1917, were as follows:—
G.O.C. Major-(Lieut.-) General (Sir) W. P. Braithwaite,
(K.) C.B.
A.D.C. Lieut. G. H. Roberts.
A.D.C. Sec.-Lieut. J. C. Newman.
G.S.O. (I.) Lieut.-Col. Hon. A. G. A. Hore-Ruthven, V.C.,
D.S.O., Welsh Guards.
G.S.O. (II.) Major W. G. Charles, Essex.
G.S.O. (III.) Capt. J. A. Batten Pooll, 5th Lancers.
A.A. and Q.M.G. Lieut.-Col. T. M. Foot, C.M.G., R.L., late R.
Innis. Fus.
D.A.A. and Q.M.G. Major H. F. Lea, R.L., late Yorks. Regt.
D.A.Q.M.G. Capt. F. J. Langdon, R.L., late The King’s.
A.D.M.S. Col. de B. Birch, C.B., R.A.M.C. (T).
D.A.D.M.S. Major T. C. Lucas, R.A.M.C.
D.A.D.O.S. Lieut. R. M. Holland.
A.D.V.S. Major F. J. Taylor.
A.P.M. Major G. D’Urban Rodwell.
C.R.A. Brig.-Gen. A. T. Anderson, R.A.
A.D.C. Lieut. Anderson, R.A.
Bde. Major Capt. W. G. Lindsell, R.A.
S./Capt. Capt. A. J. Elston.
C.R.E. Lieut.-Col. F. Gillam, R.E.
Adjt. Capt. G. D. Aspland.
185TH INF. BDE.
G.O.C. Brig.-Gen. V. W. de Falbe, C.M.G., D.S.O.
Bde. Major Major R. E. Power, The Buffs.
S./Capt. Capt. W. A. C. Lloyd.
186TH INF. BDE.
G.O.C. Brig.-Gen. F. F. Hill, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.
Bde. Major Major C. A. H. Palairet, The Fusileers.
S./Capt. Capt. W. O. Wright.
187TH INF. BDE.
G.O.C. Brig.-Gen. R. O’B. Taylor, C.I.E.
Bde. Major Major R. B. Bergne, Leinster Regt.
S./Capt. Capt. F. M. Lassetter.
CHAPTER VII
I.—PREPARATIONS ON THE SOMME
We return from the 62nd Division in England to the 49th in France, in the
same year, 1916. The battles of the Somme were fought mid the pleasant,
folded hills of Picardy, where the Sussex Weald almost seems to have
crossed the Channel into France, and Spring renews every year the glad
tokens of that poets’ May, when the sons of Champagne and Picardy,
between the valleys of the Marne and the Somme, made France splendid
in history as the mother of fable and romance: classic soil, a French
writer tells us, ‘entre Orléans, Rouen, Arras et Troyes, en pleine terre
française, champenoise et picarde, dans toutes ces bonnes villes et
villages.’[48]
Classic, too, in another aspect, as the scene of repeated assaults, in
the Hundred Years’ War, and before and after, by invaders envious of
Paris. The last and heaviest of those assaults, since Paris fell in 1871,
now occurred in 1916, between February and June, at the eastern gate
guarded by Verdun. In 1914 and again in 1918 the invader pushed nearer
to Paris; but neither in the first year nor in the last year of the War
were his hammer-blows quite so destructive or his heart of hate quite so
hot as in the middle year, 1916, when the Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia
staked his army and his dynasty on the attempt. We are not directly
concerned with all that Verdun means to France. Vaguely we read from
the map that it is distant about a hundred and fifty miles from Paris,
and dimly we perceive that its fall, like the surrender of Strasbourg
and Metz, might well, if swiftly accomplished, have brought disaster on
the capital. But what even an Englishman cannot realize, despite the
_entente cordiale_ and the fellowship binding the _entente_, is the
intense passion of the cry of General Petain’s troops on the Meuse:
_Passeront-pas_, they shall not pass. The Crown Prince threw his brave
soldiery (for their valour is the measure of French endurance), first,
against the series of forts of which Verdun was the citadel, next against
Verdun itself, which was no longer an objective but a symbol, and lastly,
and vainly at the last, against a resolve not to yield the pass, even
when the force of the resistance had robbed the passage of all profit.
This, briefly, is the story of Verdun in the early months of 1916.
It is French history from start to finish. The wider vision of fuller
knowledge is aware that there was unity of purpose even before there
was unity of command. Sir Douglas Haig’s great Second Despatch contains
several references to this feature: ‘The various possible alternatives
on the Western front had been studied and discussed by General Joffre
and myself, and we were in complete agreement as to the front to be
attacked.’ ‘It was eventually agreed between General Joffre and myself
that the combined French and British offensive should not be postponed
beyond the end of June.’ ‘To cope with such a situation unity of command
is usually essential, but in this case the cordial good feeling between
the Allied Armies, and the earnest desire of each to assist the other,
proved equally effective.’ The French time-table at Verdun was partly
regulated in conformity with these counsels. Partly, too, the situation
at Verdun was affected by movements outside France: by Russia’s successes
against Austria, and by the Battle of Jutland on May 31st, from which the
Germans brought back so little except damaged ships and a broken moral
to support their loud claims to victory. But the German tidal wave at
Verdun, whatever considerations intervene, was repelled finally by French
bayonets and by the spirit of France behind her steel:
‘They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn-leaves
Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons!
And of their death her life is.’
The place and the time, as we see—The Somme valley and the end of
June—had been agreed between General Joffre and Sir Douglas Haig; and, in
accordance with their decisions, the three-fold object of which was:
‘(i.) To relieve the pressure on Verdun,
(ii.) To assist our Allies in the other theatres of war by
stopping any further transfer of German troops from the Western
front,
(iii.) To wear down the strength of the forces opposed to
us’[49],
steps were taken betimes to make the necessary, elaborate preparations.
It will be appropriate to follow those preparations in connection with
one or more units of the 49th (West Riding) Division, which we left, it
will be remembered, enjoying a welcome term of rest after their tour of
duty on the east bank of the Yser Canal.
Take, for instance, the 7th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. We
select it partly for the chance that Lt.-Col. Tetley, D.S.O., then Major,
2nd in Command,[50] kept a separate diary of the Battalion, which we have
had the advantage of perusing, partly because, as will appear, the second
Victoria Cross in the Division was awarded to a non-commissioned officer
of this unit for conspicuous gallantry on the first day of the Somme
campaign.
The first fortnight of 1916 was spent by the Brigade[51] at Wormhoudt,
where, after Company training every forenoon, ‘the men had plenty of
time to themselves.... The Tykes gave their entertainment every night.’
On January 15th, this easeful life ended, and a march of eight miles to
Merckeghem was followed on the 16th by a sixteen-mile march to Zutkerque,
which the men ‘stood very well.’ On the 17th, another sixteen miles
brought the Brigade as far as Calais, where they went into camp on a
‘sandy common, which was very like Strensall Common’ in Yorkshire: there
is a family likeness in gorse-bushes. The New Year Honours of that date
brought Major H. D. Bousfield’s D.S.O. and Captain J. D. Redmayne’s
Military Cross. From 8-30 p.m. on February 1st till 3 a.m. on the 2nd the
Brigade travelled by rail from Calais to Longeau, just east of Amiens,
with all transport and baggage on board: the relief of Verdun had begun.
About a week was spent near Amiens, where the Yorkshiremen found the
landscape a pleasant ‘contrast to that round Poperinghe,’ and ‘not unlike
the Yorkshire wolds.’ From February 10th to 12th the march was resumed
to Authuille, where the 5th and 7th Battalions were in support and the
6th and 8th in the trenches. The 7th remained in support for eight days.
On February 20th they went into the trenches on the north-east edge of
Thiepval Wood. On the whole, the trenches were good and dry, but they ran
down on the left to a marsh made by the River Ancre, and on the right
they had been damaged by trench-mortar fire; still, it was a change for
the better from the Yser. Snow was falling heavily at this time, and
the trench-tours were kept down to four or five days. After three weeks
of this experience, the Battalion was relieved on March 5th by the 9th
Inniskilling Fusiliers, of the 36th (Ulster) Division, and went into
billets at Harponville. It is observed that ‘during the three weeks
the Brigade had been in the trenches, a great deal of work was done by
the newly appointed Intelligence Officers, and practically everything
possible was known about No Man’s Land.’ The Intelligence Officer in the
7th West Yorkshires was 2/Lieut. Beale, but for old acquaintance’ sake,
we select an example of such service, which provided valuable knowledge
for future use, from the record of Lieut. E. F. Wilkinson, M.C., of
the 8th Battalion of the same Regiment. At mid-day on February 28th he
went out to certain cross-roads. Again, on the afternoon of March 2nd,
he waded up the stream which flowed under a stone bridge just west of
these cross-roads, and found a plank bridge twenty-five yards up-stream,
which, judging by the marks on it, was regularly used by the Germans. The
information which this officer obtained in his daylight prowlings helped
to compose the map of No Man’s Land; and it is worth observing that a
German War Diary (2nd Guard Reserve Division), to which we refer later
on, acknowledges that British Officers ‘were provided with excellent
maps, which showed every German trench systematically named, and gave
every detail of our positions.’
We are writing of the preparations for the Somme battles. ‘These
preparations’, said Sir Douglas Haig,[52] ‘were necessarily very
elaborate and took considerable time. Vast stocks of ammunition and
stores of all kinds had to be accumulated beforehand within a convenient
distance of our front. To deal with these, many miles of new railways,
both standard and narrow gauge, and trench tramways were laid.’ In the
Harponville period, we now read, all the Companies of the 7th West
Yorkshires ‘were employed in working on a new railway, which was in
course of construction from Daours to Contay.’ This work, assisted by
good weather, ‘nearly every day being warm and sunny,’ was finished on
March 26th. On the 30th, there was an inspection by Lord Kitchener, who
expressed his approval of the appearance and turn-out of the men. The
5th Battalion of the West Yorkshires, which was billeted in Harponville
at the same time, shared in the work and the inspection. Day by day
they were called upon for working-parties to construct new roads, new
railways, or both; and ‘all this labour,’ Sir Douglas Haig reminds us,
writing of the Army as a whole, ‘had to be carried out in addition to
fighting, and to the everyday work of maintaining existing defences. It
threw a very heavy strain on the troops, which was borne by them with
a cheerfulness beyond all praise[53].’ Certainly no sign of lack of
cheerfulness is revealed in the diary of any unit. ‘The men liked the
change of work,’ we are told.
Throughout April and May Battalions were busily engaged in various
forms of training and fatigues. On May 29th, while in the billets
at Vignacourt, orders were received by the 7th West Yorkshires to
march to Aveluy Wood, just east of Martincourt, in order to provide
working-parties to dig a buried-cable trench for the 36th (Ulster)
Division. The move was accomplished in two days’ marches, and the 8th
Battalion of the same Regiment joined them in Aveluy Wood on June 1st.
The weather here was bad, the accommodation poor, and German shells were
rained on the camp from an early hour in the morning on June 2nd. But the
work of preparation went on apace, and the Battalion remained in Aveluy
Wood till June 19th. Meanwhile, the King’s Birthday on June 3rd had
brought further honours to the 49th Division. The Distinguished Conduct
Medal awarded to a Company Sgt.-Major ‘for general good work and devotion
to duty since the Battalion came to France in April, 1915,’ and the
Military Medals awarded to a Sergeant, a Lance-Corporal and a Rifleman
for devotion to duty on December 8th, 1915, when their Battalion, in
front-line trenches on the Yser, was exposed to heavy shell fire, are
typical of the record of the whole Division.
The time of preparation was nearly over. The appointed hour of action
was close at hand. ‘It was agreed’, we remember, between General Joffre
and Sir Douglas Haig, ‘that the combined French and British offensive
should not be postponed beyond the end of June.’ Before the curtain rises
on that drama, opened punctually on July 1st, and on the part taken at
the opening by the gallant Battalion which we have accompanied from
Wormhoudt, we may glance more rapidly at the experience of other units in
the Division which Major-General Perceval led to the Somme.
Take the 5th Battalion, York and Lancasters. On February 3rd, they
entrained for Longeau, marched four hours to Ailly, and reached Oissy
by motor-’bus on the 4th. ‘Hilly country,’ they note again with
satisfaction. Their machine-gunners were struck off strength to form a
Machine-Gun Company under Captain Rideal. March was spent in railway
work and training: ‘Regular hours and a fortnight’s rest have worked
wonders with the Battalion,’ we read after a month’s manual labour. ‘The
slackness due to nearly a year’s trench-life is no longer apparent, and
an entirely new stock of N.C.O.’s are beginning to give promise for the
future.’ And the future began to show more clearly. A whole week’s work
at the end of April was ‘devoted to training,’ especially to an ‘attack
on trenches south of Naours, which undoubtedly represent the German lines
opposite the Authuille Section. The 49th Division in reserve attacks
the German 3rd Line, the 1st and 2nd Lines already having been taken by
other Divisions, probably of the Corps’ (we are quoting from an account
of training-practice); and the Officer Commanding the Battalion, Lt.-Col.
Shuttleworth Rendall, D.S.O., added with keen anticipation: ‘All training
and the similarity of the ground seem to point to the fact that, at a
date not far distant, the 49th Division will attack the actual 3rd Line
of the German trenches in front of Authuille.’ It happened very much
as Colonel Rendall foresaw; and, when we come presently to the actual
fighting, we shall see that this gallant Officer was, unfortunately,
severely wounded shortly after the ‘date not far distant’ from the
rehearsal which he here reports. Meanwhile, on June 26th, Brigade
Operation Orders were received at Battalion Headquarters: ‘the utmost
secrecy still preserved. Day of attack, alluded to as Z day, not yet
notified. On Z day at Zero hour, artillery bombardment will lift from
German front line and attack will commence.’
There were four X and Y days still to run. Bad weather accounted for a
postponement from the 28th to the 30th June; and, while awaiting the
summons to the Assembly-trenches in Aveluy Wood, we may follow the story
of preparation in the log-book of yet another unit, the 4th West Riding
(Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment, with which we first made acquaintance in
Chapter II.
On January 15th they marched from Houtkerke, where they had lived for
a fortnight in farm-billets, to similar accommodation at Wormhoudt.
The Battalion remained in rest: ‘Company-drill, bayonet-fighting,
route-marching, bomb-throwing, etc., have been carried out, and the men
appear to have greatly benefited by the change’. On February 2nd came the
move to Longeau, and the march through Amiens to Ailly, which preceded,
as with other units of the Division, the tours in the trenches north
of Authuille and the working-parties of March to May. Lt.-Col. (later,
Brig.-General) E. G. St. Aubyn, D.S.O., at that time in Command of the
Battalion, was allotted special duties at Corps Headquarters at the end
of June, when Major J. Walker took Command. (Major E. P. Chambers had
been attached since early in April as Claims Officer to the Division).
The Birthday Honours included a D.S.O. for Major R. E. Sugden, two
Distinguished Conduct Medals and a Military Medal. At 2 p.m. on the last
day of June, the Battalion moved to Senlis, ‘to take part in operations.’
Every unit repeated the same experience: rest and recuperation in
January from the severe strain of the trenches on the Yser; a move
south-south-west early in February to the hilly country about Amiens;
trench-work and trench-warfare in the valleys of the Somme and the
Ancre; intensive training in offensive; elaborate, tireless fatigue-duty
in all kinds of labour behind the line: railways, tramways, causeways,
dressing stations, magazines, water-mains, communication-, assembly- and
assault-trenches, mining operations, and so forth; often under enemy
fire, with the weather ‘bad, on the whole,’ and ‘the local accommodation
totally insufficient,[54]’ and, at last, at the end of June, on the
agreed date, ‘to relieve the pressure on Verdun.’
II.—OPERATIONS ON THE SOMME
We are to remember in the first instance that the French and British
objective was limited. In order to relieve the German pressure on Verdun,
it was not necessary, however desirable it might be, to drive the enemy
out of France and Belgium. Strictly speaking, he was never driven out;
he begged an armistice for retirement; and, though his retreat became a
rout, it falls into its place in the war-history, as Sir Douglas Haig
indicated in his last Despatch, as the final stage of a gradual process,
in which, compared with older battles, months and miles were consumed
like hours and yards. A fairly clear perception of what was happening,
albeit two years before the end, was present to the mind of the British
Commander when he wrote his Second Despatch in December, 1916. There he
represented the Battles of the Somme as a phase, or stage, in a longer
battle, and the objects of the fighting on the Somme as subsidiary to the
objects of the war. Accordingly, we are not to expect, as at home, and
racked with acute anxiety, we were eager to expect at the time, that the
German defeat on the Somme would be equivalent to an Allied victory in
the war. Still less are we to repeat the practice, too common in 1916,
of dividing the yards of Allied gains into the miles of territory in
German occupation, in order to calculate a time-ratio from the quotient.
Space and time were never measurable by one calculus. Even a surrender
of space, as General Petain proved on the Meuse, and as Marshal Foch
was to prove in 1918, might diminish instead of increasing the force
of the enemy’s offensive. Always the war was greater than its battles,
and always a chief object at every stage was to wear down the enemy’s
resistance. Sir Douglas Haig, as we saw in the last chapter, was well
aware that the Battles of the Somme had not broken the enemy’s strength,
‘nor is it yet possible to form an estimate of the time the war may last
before the objects for which the Allies are fighting have been attained.
But the Somme battle,’ he declared with conviction, ‘has placed beyond
doubt the ability of the Allies to gain those objects.’ This, after all,
was all that mattered, and we do well to see the view from Olympus before
descending into the valley of the Somme.
It is the evening of June 30th, 1916. The diaries of units agree in their
accounts of these crowded, fateful hours. The 1/7th West Yorkshires’
record says:
‘June 30th. Battalion marched to Aveluy Wood, _via_ Hedauville,
Englebelmer and Martinsart, after dark. All transport moved to
position south-east of Hedauville, between that village and
Bouzincourt.
‘Not more than 25 Officers per Battalion were allowed to
go into action; the remainder, with a certain number of
Signallers, Lewis Gunners and Bombers went to Bouzincourt,
ready to be called upon when wanted.
‘July 1st. Battalion received orders about 8 a.m. to move
to assembly-trenches in Thiepval Wood, and all had arrived
there by noon. There was a good deal of shelling of the
assembly-trenches while we were getting into them, and a good
many casualties were caused, especially among the Lewis gun
teams.’
The 1/5th York and Lancasters state:
‘June 30th. 11 p.m. Battalion clear of Warloy on road to
assembly-trenches.
‘July 1st. 3-45 a.m. Whole Battalion in assembly-trenches,
Aveluy Wood.
—— 6-20 a.m. Intense bombardment commenced, and lasted for one
hour.’
The 1/6th West Yorkshires write:
‘June 30th. Battalion marched to assembly-trenches in Aveluy
Wood.
‘July 1st. 6-30 a.m. Heavy bombardment by our artillery of
enemy trenches. Battalion moved across the River Ancre and took
up a position in Thiepval Wood.’
The 1/4th West Ridings’ record runs:
‘Battalion moved from Senlis at 11-7 p.m. (30-6-16), marching
to assembly-trenches in Aveluy Wood, arriving about 2 a.m.
(1-7-16) under heavy shell-fire.’
We need not multiply this evidence. We should already be able to imagine
the quick, dark scheme of concentration, so far as the 49th Division was
concerned, in the first stage of the Allied programme for the relief of
the pressure on Verdun.
At this point we may look at the map (page 92).
We spoke on a previous page[55] of the line drawn from Douai to Lens,
working from east to west, on which a break-through by the French would
have shaken the defences of Lille at the apex of a triangle formed with
Lens and Douai at its bases. We are now to strike south of this line, and
taking Douai as our apex to draw a second triangle with Arras and Bapaume
at the lower angles (the further extension of this sketch is explained at
page 124 below):
[Illustration]
For the great battle for Paris or the coast, the great German invasion
of France, which was also an attack on British sea-power, has shifted its
centre from Ypres; and, while the Crown Prince of Prussia is hammering
at Verdun, as the eastern gate to Paris, the French and British Army
Commanders in the north-west of France have resolved to try to advance
(to push the Germans further back, that is to say), on, roughly, a
north-easterly front, looking from Amiens through Albert to Bapaume.
This, broadly, is the key to a situation, which we have been following in
diminishing degrees from the big, strategic plans in high places to the
disposition of units and individuals. We have watched the preparations
for that advance: the movements of troops by rail and road; the eyes of
the army in the air; the ears of the army underground; the elaborate
collection of war-material; the construction of permanent ways, and
so forth. We see now the relation in space of the campaign of 1916 to
the campaign of 1915. The tidal wave has ebbed away from Ypres, and
has surged more furiously against Verdun; we are to change our focus,
accordingly, from the Yser Canal to the River Somme, and from the Channel
ports to Paris; and in this sector, narrowing our survey, as the vast
movement unfolds into details, we are most particularly concerned with
the straight line, laid on a Roman road, which runs south-west from
Bapaume to Albert. It is rather more westerly in direction, and about
half the length of the road down to Bapaume from Douai. Travelling along
its well-laid surface from north-east to south-west, we pass through Le
Sars, Pozières and La Boisselle, the last a little to the left of the
line. The nodal point, or meeting-place, or starting-place, is the town
of Albert on the Ancre, ‘a small, straggling town built of red brick
along a knot of cross-roads at a point where the swift chalk-river Ancre,
hardly more than a brook, is bridged and so channelled that it can be
used for power.’[56] Westward from Albert is Amiens; eastward we saw,
Bapaume. Next, follow the chalk-stream of the Ancre, northward under
Albert’s bridges, through its native banks and braes. For our range of
vision is being contracted, and we are coming through Army Commanders’
plans to the men appointed to carry them out in their destined stations
along the line. About two miles north of Albert on the west bank of the
Ancre are the first trees of Aveluy Wood, where our assembly-trenches
lay. Martinsart lies behind this Wood, Mesnil and Hamel are beyond it,
Bouzincourt just below it to the rear. Opposite, on the east bank of
the Ancre, about three miles to the north of Albert, lies the village
of Authuille, north of which again is Thiepval Wood, looking backwards
at Hamel and Mesnil on the safe, west side of the little river, and
facing ‘the German line opposite the Authuille section,’ just as Colonel
Rendall (and, doubtless, many others) had imagined the situation in that
dress-rehearsal by Naours which we attended at the end of April. Thiepval
village is on the German side of our front line.
[Illustration: THE SOMME FRONT. BRITISH.]
So we reach by gradual delimitation, by a _diminuendo_ process, as it
were, the task allotted to Major-General Perceval, Commanding the 49th
Division, on July 1st, 1916.[57] ‘Z’ day has arrived at last. The vast
plans for the relief of Verdun are now about to be set in motion. Home
Governments have expressed their approval, and have sent the munitions
and the men. Due weight has been given to outside considerations in this
war on many fronts: to the needs of Italy and Russia, the disappointment
of Germany at sea, the inclination of the United States of America. From
the dunes of Calais to the Picardy hills, north-west France has become
an armed camp, with the ceaseless movement of the immense accumulation
of animate and inanimate material which nearly two years’ experience has
proved to be essential for modern warfare. All the while, as Sir Douglas
Haig reminds us in his great Second Despatch, ‘the rôle of the other
armies holding our defensive line ... was neither light nor unimportant.
While required to give precedence in all respects to the Somme battle,
they were responsible for the security of the line held by them and for
keeping the enemy on their front constantly on the alert.’ Verily, a huge
organization to be stated in terms of unit action and of the prowess of
individual men. It was a long way from Sir Douglas Haig to Aveluy Wood:
the 49th was only one of five Divisions (the 12th, 25th, 32nd, 36th and
49th), which composed the Xth Corps of the Fifth Army.
Our business lies between Authuille and Thiepval. We have fined down the
vaster issues to the operations east of Authuille, where the British line
bulged towards the Ancre in an ugly angle known as the Leipsic Salient.
The fighting to which we now come is all round and about that Salient,
between the point where the British front line crossed the River Ancre at
Hamel to the point where it met the Albert-Bapaume road. If we realize
that the object of this fighting was to straighten and push back that
bulge, and so to contribute to the advance of the long Allied line on the
Somme battlefield, we may return to the men who fought there in the early
days of July, 1916. It is one thing to show on a map, on however large a
scale, the increasing depth of the British front line at various dates
after July 1st; it is another thing to visualize that line in the actual
mud, trees, slopes, which composed it, and to recount the conditions day
by day, under which it swayed forward and back, in front and beyond and
across the magnificently fortified German trenches.
Take the 7th West Yorkshires, for example.
We left them at noon on July 1st in their assembly-trenches in Thiepval
Wood. While the sun was still high in the heaven, about half-past five in
the afternoon, Brigade orders (146th Infantry) arrived for the attack.
The 5th and 6th Battalions of the Regiment were to go over the top in an
attempt to capture Thiepval village, the 8th was detailed for support,
and the 7th for reserve. Some hot hours of confused fighting ensued. The
7th Battalion was told off to man the original British front line trench,
from the point where it touched the east bank of the Ancre to a point
known as Hammerhead Gap, at the top of Thiepval Wood. This move was being
completed with great difficulty, owing, mainly, to the congestion of the
trenches by the wounded and stragglers of the 36th (Ulster) Division,
when an Officer of that Division, Commanding the 9th Royal Irish Rifles,
made an earnest request for help to reinforce his men in the German
lines. Two Companies (C and D) of the 7th West Yorkshires made their way
to these captured trenches, leaving A and B Companies to hold the British
front and support lines. The fall of night brought no rest to this unit.
The 36th Division became able to hold its own, and the half-Battalion
from the 49th was ordered to withdraw. This order was not easy to carry
out in the darkness, weariness and general _mêlée_, and about forty men
of C Company found themselves stranded for the night (July 1st-2nd) in
the disagreeable hospitality of the German line. They were well led by
a non-commissioned Officer, Corporal (later, Sergeant) George Sanders,
who was recommended for his valuable work and great personal bravery
by the Officers of the Royal Irish Rifles. Later, Sanders received the
supreme decoration of the Victoria Cross[58] for his gallant conduct in
this action, and six of the brave men with him were awarded Military
Medals. The whole Battalion was withdrawn to Aveluy Wood, and reached the
assembly-trenches about 11 o’clock on the night of July 2nd; thirty-six
hours, or a little less, after they had assembled on the 1st. They had
lost 16 killed, 144 wounded and about 20 missing; they had gained a
Victoria Cross, some experience, and—four days’ rest.
Take another unit of the 49th Division: the 5th Battalion of the York
and Lancaster Regiment, in the 148th Infantry Brigade. We left them
proceeding to Aveluy Wood just before midnight on June 30th. The first
instalment of their story in the present action is to last almost exactly
a week: from 1-30 p.m. on July 1st, when the Battalion moved out of the
assembly-trenches, till 8-30 p.m. on July 8th, when they were relieved by
the 7th West Ridings, and went into huts in Martinsart Wood. The story
makes sad but gallant reading. They sustained in those seven days and
nights a total of 307 casualties. Their Commanding Officer was wounded
and missing, their Officer 2nd in Command was killed, another Officer
had died of wounds, thirteen more were wounded or missing. In other
Ranks, 56 were killed and three had died of wounds; 204 were wounded and
44 missing: a heavy toll to be extracted from one Battalion towards the
relief of the pressure on Verdun.
The price was paid without reckoning the cost, and we shall not follow
in detail the experiences of this unit during that week. They moved first
to where the British front line touched the left bank of the Ancre. Major
Shaw took A and B Companies to the north side of that line; Lt.-Col.
Rendall, with C and D Companies was posted on the south side. Captain G.
A. G. Hewitt at this juncture retired to hospital suffering from shock.
The fighting went on from hour to hour with very varying fortune: at one
time, there seemed a possibility of a successful assault on St. Pierre
Divion, the next village north of the line; at other times, the utmost
efforts were required to extricate the wounded. On July 5th, Aveluy Wood
was shelled practically for the first time. High explosive, shrapnel and
lachrymatory shells were employed, and found all the assembly-trenches;
captured maps and prisoners’ information were no doubt responsible for
this disaster. Early in the morning of the 6th, seven officers and eighty
other ranks went out in two bombing parties to capture a front-line
trench; no Officer and twenty-two other Ranks returned. It was in this
action that Lt.-Col. Rendall, D.S.O., Commanding the Battalion, had
to be left wounded in a German dug-out, and that Major Shaw, 2nd in
Command, was killed. The failure was due to the good German sniping,
too heavy bombs for effective throwing, and a communication-trench not
deep enough to pass them through. It was stubborn fighting, we see,
and very difficult progress was made. But one Division in one Corps of
one Army was not the whole fighting force which the Allies brought to
the Somme, and some relief may be found by looking through German eyes
at the results on July 1st in another sector. We have already referred
to the War Diary for this period of the 55th Reserve Infantry Regiment
(the 2nd Guard Reserve Division), which was holding the German line in
front of Gommecourt six or seven miles north of Hamel. Their experience
is no doubt typical of the enemy’s sufferings all along the line. Thus
we read of an intense bombardment, ‘overwhelming all the trenches,
and sweeping away the wire’; of the ‘thick charging waves of English
infantry’; of every round from the English guns pitching into the trench,
‘thus rendering its occupation even by detached posts impossible’;
of telephonic communication destroyed by the bombardment, so that
‘Regimental Headquarters were without news of the progress of events’; of
the English ‘excellent maps,’ and the ‘most disturbing effect’ of English
aeroplanes: and, so reading, we begin to perceive another side to the
picture. Such records of failure and disappointment, of forlorn hopes and
forfeited successes, as occur in the journals of our own units are seen
in a truer perspective when the long line of battle is displayed. Even
the rain in which some wet Yorkshiremen spent a miserable night (July
7th) by the roadside fell impartially on the other side of the road, and
was duly chronicled by dripping Germans; and, when we are told that C and
D Companies of the 6th Battalion of the West Yorkshires, who ‘went over
the parapet to the attack’ at 4 p.m. on July 1st, had to retire to their
own trenches with their Signalling Officer (Lieut. Dodd) killed, their
Commanding Officer (Lt.-Col. Wade) and two other Officers wounded, we
take consolation from the entry which follows next in the same journal:
‘Enemy reported to be massing opposite our front for a counter-attack,
which, however, did not develop.’ ‘Enemy’ did not have it his own way all
the time.
Let us follow this unit a little further. During the first fortnight
of July, step by step, and with many a step backward before two steps
forward could be taken, German trenches in the Leipsic Salient had been
occupied, and improved footholds had been won. Every effort was being
made to consolidate and extend the new positions, and it happened on July
14th, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, that this Battalion (the 6th West
Yorkshires) took over that portion from the 7th. The 7th had had a rough
experience. In the early morning of July 13th they had been attacked by
German bombers, who, according to Colonel Tetley’s testimony, evinced
‘great bravery and disregard of danger.’ At one time they rushed a
British trench, ‘but were bombed out by 2/Lieut. F. J. Baldwin and men of
A Company.... Practically all our bombers were casualties.’ The Battalion
lost 15 killed and 92 wounded in this exploit, but Major-General Perceval
assured them that their ‘stubborn fighting had materially assisted in the
success of the larger operation on the British front,’ and Lieut. Baldwin
was awarded the Military Cross and two N.C.O.’s the Distinguished Conduct
Medal.
The night of the 14th-15th was fairly quiet. Both sides were attending
to their wounded. But early in the morning of July 15th, when the 6th
Battalion had relieved the 7th, the Germans returned to the attack, and
this attempt, very pluckily repulsed, is memorable for the use of a
weapon, new in the experience of the defenders, and hardly less horrible
in its first effect than the surprise of poison-gas at Ypres. We have the
advantage of a graphic description of the three hours’ fighting on that
morning from the pen of Lieut. Meekosha, V.C., who took part in it as a
non-commissioned Officer.[59] He writes:
‘About 3-30 a.m. the Germans launched their dastardly attack
with liquid fire, the only warning we received being the
terrifying shrieks of those unfortunate sentries who came into
contact with the flame. Then came a hail of hand grenades, a
few of the Boches coming as far as our own parapet, hoping
to find our men demoralized. For their pains they were each
presented with at least one well-aimed bullet. Our men then
lined the parapet with as much speed and ammunition as
possible, and let the Hun have it for all they were worth.
Another party of Boches, well stacked with bombs, had already
stormed one of our saps, which had been blocked about half way.
Our Battalion bombers were at once called out to deal with this
party, and, fighting their way foot by foot, cleared every
living Boche from the sap, a fact which reflected no little
credit on our men, being, as they were, at a disadvantage from
the very beginning. Our Stokes Mortar Battery was then set to
work on the German front line, and to see old Fritz jump on
to his own parapet, run a few yards as hard as he could go,
and then into his own trench again (provided that he did not
get a bullet in the attempt, our machine-guns and rifles being
on the look out for opportunities) was the best amusement I
had had for weeks. This went on for about three hours, during
which time the work of our Officers and N.C.O.’s was cut out in
stopping our men from rushing headlong into the Hun trenches in
their eagerness to kill as many Boches as possible in as little
time as possible. Unfortunately, a few of the good men lost
their lives during this fighting, but we had the satisfaction
of knowing that, for every one lost, the Hun lost at least four.
‘Thus ended our first experience under liquid fire.
‘After this, our boys set to and cooked for themselves the
breakfast they so richly deserved.’
It was after this fashion that the pressure on Verdun was relieved.
Sir Douglas Haig is quite clear on this point. He admitted that, ‘north
of the valley of the Ancre, on the left flank of our attack, our initial
successes were not sustained’; that ‘the enemy’s continued resistance
at Thiepval and Beaumont Hamel (29th Division) made it impossible to
forward reinforcements and ammunition, and, in spite of their gallant
efforts, our troops were forced to withdraw’; and that ‘the subsidiary
attack at Gommecourt also forced its way into the enemy’s positions;
but there met with such vigorous opposition that ... our troops were
withdrawn’[60]. These were the first day’s experiences. The succeeding
days, as we have seen, brought certain adjustments for the better, even
in the difficult region where General Perceval’s gallant troops had to
fight their troublesome way up slopes of mud from the valley of the
Ancre to the deeply fortified positions which the Germans held with
machine-guns, rifles and liquid flame. But they did not bring conspicuous
success. They were not expected to bring it, as a fact. As we have looked
at the fighting at close quarters, so we are to look at the results
through Command spectacles. The Battle of the Somme was not won, nor was
it intended to be won, between Thiepval village and Authuille, where the
Leipsic Salient bulged inwards. ‘The British main front of attack,’ we
are told in the same Despatch, ‘extended from Maricourt on our right,
round the Salient at Fricourt, to the Ancre in front of St. Pierre
Divion’; that is, from the bank of the River Somme to the Albert-Bapaume
road and north of it. But ‘to assist this main attack by holding the
enemy’s reserves and occupying his Artillery’ (not, note, by capturing
his defences), ‘the enemy’s trenches north of the Ancre, as far as Serre
inclusive, were to be assaulted simultaneously’; and, further north,
‘a subsidiary attack’ was to be made at Gommecourt. So clear did this
distinction become in the early stages of the battle, and so plain was
the dividing line between the holding and the pushing forces, that Sir
Douglas Haig decided to separate the Commands: ‘In order that General
Sir Henry Rawlinson might be left free to concentrate his attention
on the portion of the front where the attack was to be pushed home, I
also decided to place the operations against the front, La Boisselle to
Serre, under the command of General Sir Hubert de la P. Gough.... My
instructions to Sir Hubert Gough were that his Army was to maintain a
steady pressure on the front from La Boisselle to the Serre Road, and
to act as a pivot, on which our line could swing as our attacks on his
right made progress towards the north.’ Moreover, ‘our attacks on his
right’ (Sir Henry Rawlinson’s on Sir Hubert Gough’s) must be associated,
in a larger survey, with the simultaneous French attacks under their
own Command. Accordingly, it is wholly just to say that the containing
action of the 49th Division, when the first impetus of the units had
been checked, developed exactly according to plan, in a military phrase
rendered famous by another Army. Up to July 7th, the enemy’s forces
north of La Boisselle ‘were kept constantly engaged, and our holding in
the Leipsic Salient was gradually increased’; and, after July 7th, as
the Commander-in-Chief wrote, ‘the enemy in and about Ovillers had been
pressed relentlessly, and gradually driven back by incessant bombing
attacks and local assaults,[61]’ among which, one among many, may be
mentioned a very gallant night attack by the 8th West Yorks. Thus, Sir
Douglas Haig’s view from Olympus informs the Battalion records, and
we shall see in the further course of the Somme battle how fully his
instructions were observed till the time came to swing round on Sir
Hubert Gough’s pivot.
CHAPTER VIII
I.—OPERATIONS ON THE SOMME—(_Continued_).
It is not seemly to be too modest about the Somme, nor to insist
over-much upon the limitation of the Allied objective. We know that it
was not intended to drive the Germans out of France; at least, not in
1916. As a fact, in the Spring of 1917 there was a big German retirement,
which was only voluntary in the sense that the enemy bowed to necessity
before necessity broke him, and again, in the Autumn of 1918, there was
another big German retreat, which brought the war to an end. They take a
short view who fail to see the direct and intimate connection between the
campaign of 1916 and the decisive results in the following two years. The
British Commander, while the future was still veiled, had no illusions on
this point. Wielding, like the Castilian knight of old, ‘now the pen and
now the sword,’ Sir Douglas Haig, when he indited his great Despatch on
December 29th, 1916, stated without reserve, that:
‘Verdun had been relieved; the main German forces had been held
on the Western front; and the enemy’s strength had been very
considerably worn down. Any one of these results is in itself
sufficient,’ he avowed, ‘to justify the Somme battle. The
attainment of all three of them affords ample compensation for
the splendid efforts of our troops and for the sacrifices made
by ourselves and our Allies. They have brought us a long step
forward towards the final victory of the Allied cause.[62]’
‘A long step forward,’ not necessarily in the eyes of the old men and
children who stuck pins in their wall-maps at home; and yet not a short
step either, even when measured by this exacting standard. Let us look at
the map once more and stick in some imaginary pins on our own account.
First, take the straight, white road from Albert to Bapaume, and divide
it into eleven equal parts, representing its length of, approximately,
eleven miles. Just before the second milestone (or mile-pin) from Albert,
mark the point where the Allied line crossed the road on July 1st, 1916,
and just beyond the eight milestone mark the point where the Allied line
crossed the road on December 31st. They had devoured (or ‘nibbled’ was
the word) six miles in six months, including the villages of Pozières
and Le Sars, and were less than three miles distant from Bapaume. Next,
observe the effect of this protrusion on the reach, or embrace, of
the Allied arms. Take the Ancre and the Somme as frontiers, and prick
out from the point by the second milestone a line running northwards
to the left of Thiepval and across the Ancre to Beaumont-Hamel, and
southwards to the left of Fricourt and Mametz, then to the right of
Maricourt, then left of Curlu to the Somme. This was the Allied line
on July 1st. Take the same boundaries again, and prick out from the
point by the eighth milestone a line running northwards to the left of
Warlencourt and Grandcourt, then to the right of Thiepval, Beaucourt
and Beaumont-Hamel, and southwards to the right of Flers, Lesbœufs,
Sailly, Rancourt, Bouchavesnes and Clèry to the Somme. This, roughly,
was the Allied line on December 31st. The pricked-in area, rhombic in
shape, which means neither round nor square, encloses a large number
of square miles re-captured from reluctant Germans. It did not include
Bapaume itself, nor Péronne, nor St. Quentin, nor Brussels; the time for
these had not arrived. But it took in many towns and hamlets which had
known the foot of the invader, it broke huge masses of fortified works
which had been designed to shoe the invader’s foot, and, consequently,
it seriously shook the moral power of German resistance. We shall not
measure the acres of French territory released, for we have no standard
by which to calculate the effect of Verdun relieved on the German armies
driven homewards between the Ancre and the Somme. Nor is a yard by yard
advance properly expressed in terms of mileage. Take any one of the
positions re-captured: Mametz, Trônes, Combles, Thiepval itself, and
review it for a moment in the series of defences, artificial and natural
and natural-artificial, which the tenacious attackers had to overcome.
Thus, between Fricourt and Mametz Wood were Lonely Copse, the Crucifix,
Shelter Wood, Railway Copse, Bottom Wood, the Quadrangle, etc.: every
name a miniature Waterloo to the gallant men who fought and fell there.
Nowhere in all that area could a sixteenth of a mile be gained without
an elaborate battle-plan and a battle, or several battles, taxing to
the utmost the endurance of troops dedicated to victory and resolute to
death. So, ‘they brought us a long step forward towards the final victory
of the Allied cause.’
We are to contract our range once more to the scope of the 49th Division,
and to consider that ‘step’ more particularly in the region north of
Albert by the Ancre, where Sir Hubert Gough commanded the Fifth Army. It
was not a sensational record. If we follow the Diary of that Army, say,
from July 21st to the end of September, we receive, mainly, an impression
of containing work excellently done, while the shock of battle broke
afar. A few of these entries may be cited:
‘July 21st. 49th Division in Leipsic Salient....
‘July 23rd. Attack by 48th Division and 1st Australian
Division. Good progress. 49th Division front South of River
Ancre....
‘July 29th. 49th Division left of 12th Division to River
Ancre....
‘Aug. 27th. 49th Division relieved 25th Division....
‘Sept. 3rd. South of Ancre 49th Division attacked....
‘Sept. 24th. 18th Division relieved 49th Division....
‘Sept. 27th. 11th Division captured Stuff Redoubt.
‘Sept. 28th. 18th Division attacked Schwaben Redoubt.’
Except on September 3rd, to which we shall come back, the work of the
49th Division, seen from this angle of vision, appears more passive than
active.
Let us enlarge the angle considerably. Instead of Sir Hubert Gough’s,
consult Major-General Perceval’s Diary, the Divisional instead of the
Army Commander’s. We come nearer to action in that aspect.
Between July 21st and the 27th there were ‘three encounters with the
enemy in the Leipsic Salient.’ On the 21st, he made a bombing attack; on
the 22nd, the 4th York and Lancasters ‘attempted to extend our position
in the Salient to the east by surprise,’ but were foiled; on the 23rd,
the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry made a similar attempt, ‘but
consolidation was prevented by a heavy counter-attack from all sides, and
our troops retired to their original line.’ From the Army Commander’s
point of view, a single entry sufficed for these exploits; the Divisional
Commander had to account for nearly five hundred casualties in the period.
Take the 28th of July to the 4th of August. There were 279 casualties in
the Division, due, partly, to ‘a considerable amount of trench-mortar
fire on the Leipsic Salient and Authuille Wood’; and who shall say
but that every wounded man made a definite contribution to the Somme
advance? Yet Sir Hubert Gough was content to observe: ‘49th Division
left of 12th.’ Or, August 26th to September 1st. General Perceval’s
entry on the 27th merely repeats (or we should say, anticipates) Sir
Hubert Gough’s at greater length: ‘Divisional Headquarters returned
from Acheux to Hedauville, and at mid-day the Command of the line from
Thiepval Avenue (exclusive) to River Ancre passed from 25th to 49th
Division.’ There is a further entry in this Diary, which, being a record
of work done in the ordinary course of duty, the Army Commander did not
reproduce: ‘With a view to an attack on German trenches north of Thiepval
Wood, the new saps and parallels to the north of the Wood have been
completed, ammunition-trenches improved, and dumps formed and filled with
ammunition, bombs, R.E. stores, etc.’
So far the Divisional Commander, in expansion of Sir Hubert Gough. There
are next the Battalion Commanders to be consulted; and, still omitting at
present the Divisional record of the week including September 3rd, when
‘49th Division attacked,’ we may once more enlarge the angle, and examine
this preparation for attack from a Battalion Commander’s point of view.
Thus, we read that:
‘On August 26th, the Battalion[63] was sent up to the trenches
on the right of Thiepval Wood.... Captain R. Salter was killed
instantaneously by a shell as soon as he got to Battalion
Headquarters. We were in this line for only two days, but had
52 casualties as there was a good deal of shelling.... The
Battalion was relieved on August 28th by the 5th K.O.Y.L.I.,
and went into huts in Martinsart Wood; from here we had to find
large working parties in the front line for two or three days,
and then had a rest until the attack on September 3rd.’
We are brought back, like Master Pathelin, _à nos moutons_. The ‘long
step forward’ was achieved, the Battle of the Somme was won, by the
Allied Armies working to the plans of Sir Douglas Haig and Marshal
Joffre. Those plans included the provision of a separate Army on the
Ancre, to hold the German forces in that area, and to make what progress
they could. The Commander of that Fifth Army was Sir Hubert Gough, and
Major-General Perceval’s West Riding (49th) Division was included as a
unit of its Xth Corps. What happened, then, on September 3rd, when the
new saps and parallels had been constructed, the communication-trenches
improved, and the dumps filled with bombs and ammunition? How did the
49th attack, and what have the Officers Commanding its Battalions to add
to the bare record of Sir Hubert Gough or the more expansive Diary of the
Divisional Commander?
The units immediately concerned were the 4th and 5th Battalions, West
Riding Regiment, and the 6th and 8th Battalions, West Yorks. The
7th Battalion of each Regiment was stationed in reserve. The week’s
casualties in the Division were high:
OFFICERS. OTHER RANKS.
Killed 14 196
Wounded 47 994
Missing 17 611
-- ----
78 1801
-- ----
Total 1879
and the bulk of them occurred on September 3rd. The large percentage of
missing in all ranks (more than a third of the whole) seems to indicate a
hasty retreat from untenable positions.
The presumption is borne out by Battalion records. These agree that
co-operation was interrupted by a bad block in communication, and that
Battalions were not able to render one another all the support that was
expected. Each unit tended to believe that its own advance was held up,
or, rather, that its withdrawal was necessitated, by what had happened on
its right or left; and, consequently, the exploits of individuals were
more conspicuous than the conduct of the attack. Zero hour was 5-10 a.m.,
and the Companies left the trenches punctually and went over in good
order. But the half-light caused some confusion, and communication proved
very difficult. In the instance of several Battalions no definite news
was received for three hours or more. Runners failed to get through, and
rumours were not satisfactory. At last, about 9 o’clock, tidings began
to arrive of heavy losses incurred in trying to consolidate captured
positions under a cross enfilade of machine-gun and rifle fire. Remnants
of Companies, driven back after a long morning’s heavy fighting told of
the exhaustion of their bombs, and of their messages lost in No Man’s
Land. Stray parties cut off in the attack, found cover in shell-holes
until nightfall. One Commanding Officer frankly wrote, ‘the whole attack
failed.’ ‘The objectives were gained,’ he summed up, ‘but the first
casualties in Officers and N.C.O.’s were heavy, and therefore the men
with power of “leadership” were lost when most needed to hold on. The
presence of the enemy in the Pope’s Nose (a machine-gun nest at an early
point) upset all chances of reinforcements and supply except across
the open’—an almost impossible condition. The runners, as we saw, did
not get across, and the light was too bad for the observation posts to
give effective help. On the other hand, the daylight was too strong
to consolidate under fire the battered German trenches which had been
captured. There was, unfortunately, a ‘but’ or an ‘if’ which qualified
every record of success; and we may quote the following statement from a
Battalion Diary, which gives a very fair impression of the whole episode:
‘From the reports of the two Officers who returned to Battalion
Headquarters from the battle, it was ascertained that for
the most part a really good fight was put up. If Battalion
Headquarters had been able to get any information back, it is
practically certain that the position would not have been lost.
The men fought splendidly, and in many cases without N.C.O.’s
or Officers, and the losing of the captured position was a
piece of bad luck.’
‘What remained of our assaulting troops,’ says General Perceval, ‘were
back in our trenches,’ about 10 a.m., having ‘sustained heavy casualties
and lost most of their Officers.’ A re-attack was planned for 6 p.m., but
was countermanded during the afternoon, and the 146th Infantry Brigade
was withdrawn to Forceville and the 147th to Hedauville. So, the 49th
Division had attacked, and the whole attack had failed; but between these
two bald statements lie detailed records of a courageous attempt, which
we shall not pursue further, but which contributed in this hard-held
sector to the ‘long step forward’ which was being taken on the Allied
front at large. German records, so far as we have seen them, confirm
the seriousness of the attack. We read there how ‘matters had meanwhile
become still worse,’ and how Company was added to Company in order to
meet the impending danger. ‘Lieut. Engel’s Company signalled “Please
send support,”’ and his experience was repeated in other sectors; ‘our
_Minenwerfer_ intervened at the most opportune moment’. On the whole, the
enemy’s accounts increase admiration for the 49th Division.
It is particularly interesting to record that, in the course of this
summer and autumn, a Regiment of Yorkshire Yeomanry met their friends
of the 49th Division in and about the defences of Thiepval. We shall
come, in Chapter XIV below, to the experiences of the Mounted Troops
who left the West Riding for France during 1915. There we shall see how
they served as Divisional Cavalry for several months, and how, in May,
1916, they were re-organized as Corps Cavalry, and were set to do various
duties, not always appropriate to their Arm, which they discharged with
a thoroughness and an efficiency worthy of the best traditions of the
Service. The Yorkshire Dragoons were posted to the IInd Corps, which,
on July 25th, 1916, took over that sector of the Fifth Army front which
lay between Ovillers-la-Boisselle and Thiepval. The hopes of a Cavalry
situation, unfortunately, never materialized, but the Dragoons did
excellent work during the Battle of the Somme by maintaining Observation
Posts in forward areas, thus short-circuiting the means of communication
between Corps Headquarters and Battalion Commanders. ‘During operations,’
we are told, ‘information received in this way and from other sources
was embodied each day in maps and reports, which were sent up by
despatch rider during the night, and reached front line units in time
for the usual attack at dawn.... The observers were sometimes asked to
undertake special work of great importance. Before several attacks they
were required to reconnoitre and map the enemy’s wire. The slightest
mistake might have lost hundreds of lives, but it was never made.’
Among the names which we may mention _honoris causa_ in connection with
this service are those of Captain, later Major, R. Brooke; Major, later
Lieut.-Col., R. Thompson; Sergts. Storer and Tinker (Military Medals),
and Corpl., later Sergt., Cranswick (Bar to M.M.).
Let us consult the map once more.
[Illustration: THIEPVAL DEFENCES.]