MESSINES.
During the second half of May there was much coming and going of units
in the Bermicourt area. The remnants of C and D Battalions returned
there to refit. A and B, forming the 2nd Brigade, drew 76 Mark IV.
tanks, and left for the Belgian frontier and the forthcoming attack
on the Messines Ridge. Two new battalions, F and G, arrived from
England. The 3rd Brigade was now formed of C and F, G replacing the
former in the 1st Brigade. Preparatory to this increase in the corp’s
fighting strength, Colonel Elles was raised to the exalted rank of
Brigadier-General.
The battle of Messines, and the part taken in it by the 2nd Brigade,
can be dealt with very cursorily. It was the opening stage of our
attack in Flanders, which followed on the collapse of the French
effort in Champagne and our own failure to break the Drocourt-Quéant
line. The new offensive, long premeditated, was planned on a large
scale and inspired by very sanguine ideas. It was hoped to drive the
enemy off the whole coast-line as far as the Dutch frontier, and then,
by forcing the evacuation of Lille, to open the way for an advance
on Brussels and Antwerp. The preliminary operations fell into three
stages. The monotonous Flemish plain is diversified, between St Omer
and Menin, by a line of hills shaped like a note of interrogation lying
on its back. Starting at Cassel, a very conspicuous isolated height,
these hills run due eastward to Kemmel, over the Belgian border, and
thence curve round Ypres to the north. The enemy held the whole of
this curve, which, from the village of Wytschaete, 250 feet above the
sea, falls gradually away to nothing beyond the forest of Houthoulst.
Our first object was to dispossess him of the Wytschaete or Messines
Ridge, which overlooks the whole Ypres salient. The second stage would
be the capture after an interval of the rest of the curve, known as
the Passchendaele Ridge. This, it was estimated, would be effected in
three or four days. The moment the ridge was ours, the third stage
was to open with the landing of a force of all arms, including even
tanks, at Middelkerke, between Nieuport and Ostend, to get behind the
enemy’s forces along the Yser, and so facilitate an advance on that
water-logged front. No one can say how far this ambitious scheme would
have prospered if the weather had remained fair. As it fell out, the
first stage alone was carried through successfully. Wytschaete and
Messines were taken in a few hours, but owing to the rain it took
us three months instead of three days to reach Passchendaele; and
long before that the amphibious enterprise at Middelkerke, the most
interesting and hazardous feature of the whole plan, had perforce been
cancelled. I shall give some account of its elaborate machinery later
on.
Sir Herbert Plumer and the 2nd Army had been facing the Messines
Ridge for two years, and plans for its capture had been developed at
leisure. The surface soil in the neighbourhood lay upon a substratum
of clay, very suitable for tunnelling; and for upwards of twelve
months we had been driving mine-shafts beneath the German trenches.
The ridge was enclosed in a small salient, with the chord of the arc,
about six miles long, represented by the enemy’s third defence system,
known as the Oostaverne Line. This was to be our final objective.
The battle was to be finished in one day. Considering the lengthy
and precise preparations for it, the moral effect of the explosion
of twenty huge mines, and the powerful artillery fire which was to
be concentrated on the small area within the salient, it will be
apparent that there was no very urgent need for tanks. The state of
the ground, moreover, already bad, would not be improved by the seven
days’ preliminary bombardment; and if rain fell it would soon become
impassable. Messines, in fact, was not a tank battle at all. It was one
of those rare occasions when a section or two, to deal with obstinate
strong-points, would have been as useful as the entire brigade which
ultimately went into action.
Warning of possible operations in the Ypres salient had been received
at Bermicourt early in the year. The Intelligence branch of the corps
began a survey of the whole area in March; and the following month,
when the 2nd Brigade was detailed to assist in the attack at Messines,
the R.O.’s of A and B Battalions went forward to reconnoitre the
southern sector. Ample information was available, for the 2nd Army knew
all that there was to be known about the German position. It had also
constructed one of the familiar large-scale models of the ridge and the
country beyond; but although such representations are always worth a
visit, it is doubtful if they are of much value from a tank commander’s
standpoint. They bear no real resemblance to the actual ground to be
traversed, and the view from a tank is so limited that the larger
details of a landscape are of small use in getting bearings.
Between the 23rd and 27th May the tanks of the two battalions were
detrained at Ouderdom and Clapham Junction (near Dranoutre). They
lay up before the battle in the neighbourhood of the railheads--B
Battalion’s machines in a wood, and those of A in timber and canvas
shelters built to represent huts. These assembly positions were within
four miles of the line. The usual precautions were taken to conceal the
fact of the tanks’ arrival, the tracks left by their movements (which
show up very clearly in aeroplane photographs) being obliterated by
harrows. This was the first appearance of Mark IV.’s in the field; and
another novelty was the use of old Mark II.’s for supply purposes.
Twelve were attached to the brigade, carrying between them one complete
fill of petrol, oil, grease, and ammunition for all the 76 fighting
tanks.
The attack was to take place at dawn on 7th June. Three corps were
taking part--from left to right, the 10th, 9th, and 2nd. Eventually
64 tanks were allotted to them--40 to attack the first objective,
the German second line beyond the crest of the ridge, and 24 more to
help in the final rush for the Oostaverne trenches. On 24th May the
preliminary bombardment opened. The weather was hot and dry: there had
been no rain for a fortnight; and now, day after day, the ridge was
smothered in dust-clouds thrown up by the bursting shells. The gun-fire
slackened on the last day, 6th May; but the enemy became nervous
after dark and began to shell the back areas. He used a large amount
of gas, which caused much discomfort to the tank crews on the final
approach-march to the front line, for that invaluable device, the small
box-respirator, is more than usually inconvenient when worn inside a
tank. Later in the night a heavy thunderstorm broke; but by 2.30 A.M.
the sky was clear once more.
At 3.10, on the very edge of dawn, the German front line between Hill
60 and Messines went up into the air with an indescribable shock
and noise, as the nineteen huge mines exploded. Simultaneously the
barrage fell through the dust-clouds upon the still-moving earth.
With so tremendous a preparation, the first stage of the attack
went like clockwork. Messines was carried by 7 A.M., and Wytschaete
before midday. The tanks were seldom needed, and indeed were unable
in most cases to keep up with the very rapid advance. One, however,
by a combination of luck and skilful driving, was able to lead the
Australian and New Zealand troops of the 2nd Corps the whole way to
the second objective, a distance of two miles, in an hour and forty
minutes. Another, the “Wytschaete Express,” convoyed the Ulster
Division into that village; and a third lent very timely help at
Fanny’s Farm, beyond Messines, where the infantry was held up for
a time. In the meanwhile, the 24 reserve tanks had moved up to our
original front line, and in the afternoon climbed the ridge to lead
the assault on the final objective. The Oostaverne Line was little
damaged, by comparison with the shattered first and second systems,
and might have caused us serious trouble. The tanks, however, reached
the trenches ahead of the infantry, and so demoralised the defenders
that the whole position was taken at a light cost. During its
consolidation, the surviving machines patrolled beyond it; and this
dangerous operation, which often exposes tanks to direct artillery
fire which they can neither avoid nor counter, led on this occasion to
one very gallant and useful piece of work. Well east of Oostaverne,
between that village and the Ypres-Menin railway, stood Joye Farm, at
the head of a marshy little valley down which crawled a stream called
the Wambeek. Late in the afternoon two of the patrolling tanks (both
males of A Battalion) became ditched near the farm, actually in front
of our outpost line. All efforts to extricate them before night having
failed, it was proposed to withdraw the crews. The Wambeek valley,
however, offered the enemy cover in which to mass his troops for a
counter-attack; and as the tanks would be of material assistance in
such an event, the men eventually were ordered to stand by them during
the night and resume unditching at dawn. At 4 A.M., therefore, work was
started again. One tank was got out, and at once moved forward toward
the Ypres-Menin railway, where a counter-attack was in progress, but
broke a track while attempting to cross the metals. At 6.30 the Germans
were seen to be gathering along the Wambeek. Each tank could bring one
6-pounder to bear on the valley, and the majority of their crews took
the machine-guns outside into shell-holes. The infantry near at hand
were asked for support and supplied with ammunition, of which their
Lewis-gun teams were deficient. The enemy’s attack was now developing;
but although for five hours he made repeated attempts to issue from
the valley, in every case he was repulsed with heavy losses, inflicted
largely by the 6-pounder and machine-gun fire of the two tank crews. At
11.30 our barrage opened again and finally dispersed the assailants.
In this battle the two tank battalions lost 3 officers and 16 men
killed or died of wounds, and 26 officers and 73 men wounded or
missing. Eleven tanks were disabled by direct hits; 48 were ditched,
and 2 were hit after ditching. There were nineteen recorded cases in
which they helped the infantry. The Mark IV.’s, with their lighter
sponsons and other improvements, were shown to be far handier than the
old type of machine. Apart from the obvious conclusions that tanks
need not have been used at all in the first phase of the attack, and
that the ground was thoroughly unsuitable for any combined effort on
their part, the chief lesson to be drawn from Messines was one already
taken to heart--the necessity, namely, of providing a more efficient
unditching apparatus for use in such pulverised _terrain_. Many
casualties would have been avoided, and many more tanks would have got
into action and returned that night, if the long unditching spar issued
shortly after had been in use during the battle.
The question of the advisability of using tanks at Messines raises
another which it may be of interest to consider before we close this
chapter. “The third battle of Ypres,” says Colonel Buchan,[16] “was
the residuum left to Sir Douglas Haig of the great plan of a Flanders
offensive which he had conceived the previous winter. Events which he
could not control had postponed it till too late in the summer.” Here,
as elsewhere, the writer implies that the dilemma in which we found
ourselves was caused wholly by the failure of the French advance on
Laon. Manifestly, the work of the Allied armies was interdependent;
but the principle of assuming at all costs the perfection of our own
dispositions can be carried too far. There was in any case a bold
alternative to the Ypres offensive, which actually was proposed and
might well have been adopted, even before the postponement of the
latter compromised its prospects. This alternative was a tank attack on
a large scale against the central portion of the Hindenburg Line--to
take place after Messines. In other words, the battle of Cambrai was
to be fought in the early summer, on the same lines as eventually were
adopted in the late autumn. In the Arras battles the Mark I. tanks were
used for the last time, and as none really were needed at Messines,
the improved Mark IV.’s and the experienced personnel lost there might
have been preserved for a greater occasion. The enemy’s attention was
drawn northward by the 2nd Army’s victory. He began at once to transfer
reserves to meet the obvious corollary of an attack from Ypres; and
to foster this belief by various stratagems was no more difficult in
June than in November. Meanwhile, let us suppose the four original
tank battalions, reinforced in May by F and G, to be preparing at
Bermicourt and Wailly for the secret blow far to the south. By the end
of June, when the three brigades began to assemble in the Salient, it
would have been possible to arm them with 100 tanks apiece--300 in all.
(216 fighting machines were actually in Belgium for the battle of July
31st.) Our communications across the devastated Somme area were then so
far complete (or could have been made so) as to permit of a rapid and
secret concentration on that front, and the plan of attack adopted with
such startling results on November 20th might have been anticipated in
almost every detail, with this great additional advantage--twelve or
fifteen fresh divisions, instead of six tired ones, could have followed
the tanks. The ground was perfect, virtually untouched by war, and not
likely to be affected seriously by rain. The enemy was unprepared.
And of the possible obstacles, the fabulous Hindenburg trenches, whose
rear systems were not even completed by midsummer, were the least to be
feared.
Such was the scheme put forward and strongly urged by the supporters
of the new weapon. If it did not seem to offer so glittering a reward
as a victorious advance along the coast, its prospects of success were
immeasurably higher. It would possess the elements for which tanks
were designed--surprise and normal country. Apart from the ordinary
difficulties confronting an attack out of the Salient, where the enemy
was fully prepared for one, the effect of bad weather and gun-fire
upon the ruined soil reduced every ambitious military operation there
to the nature of a gamble. It is interesting to note that quite early
in the year, after the reconnaissance made by the Heavy Section of the
whole area, the ground north of Messines was declared utterly unfit
for tanks; and far less rain than actually fell in August would have
ruined our offensive. (As it happened, June and July, about when it
was proposed to fight the alternative tank battle, were brilliantly
fine.) Nor were the strategic prospects of a blow at Cambrai to be
under-estimated. A success, of which there was every probability, would
have threatened directly the great line of supply, running southward
through Maubeuge, by which the German armies in Champagne were fed and
clothed and armed. Such a threat was the object of the November attack,
and of the second battle of Cambrai ten months later, when at length it
was carried through to a practical conclusion.
This excursion into strategy and speculation may seem out of place in a
book of this nature. But one of my main objects in writing is to show
how a belated appreciation of the correct use of tanks in battle came
to overset all the theories stereotyped by years of stationary warfare,
and how the tactical beliefs held by the Tank Corps itself were
ultimately accepted as gospel by the Army as a whole. Already there are
signs of backsliding, and in a few years we shall be told that the
war was won by cavalry. But regarding Cambrai as the great conversion
(if only “for the duration”), it is both interesting and pertinent to
discuss the earlier proposal, although it came to nothing at the time,
and was only exhumed later as a sort of counsel of desperation. In the
spring of 1917 there was little hope for it. The Belgian coast-line
worked like a magnet, and there were infantry and guns in plenty to be
drawn thither. The main argument against the attack farther south was,
however, that too few tanks were available. Yet 300 at least could have
been found, and only 370 went in eventually at Cambrai. No doubt there
were other and better reasons. Whatever they were, they prevailed: our
activities continued to shift northward, and soon men and guns and
tanks were floundering in the morasses of the Salient.