I have described what happened on our side of the lines, our fearful
losses, the stream of wounded that came back day by day, the “Butchers'
Shops,” the agony in men's souls, the shell-shock cases, the welter
and bewilderment of battle, the shelling of our own troops, the lack
of communication between fighting units and the command, the filth
and stench of the hideous shambles which were our battlefields. But to
complete the picture of that human conflict in the Somme I must now tell
what happened on the German side of the lines, as I was able to piece
the tale together from German prisoners with whom I talked, German
letters which I found in their abandoned dugouts, and documents which
fell into the hands of our staff--officers.
Our men were at least inspirited by the knowledge that they were beating
their enemy back, in spite of their own bloody losses. The Germans had
not even that source of comfort, for whatever it might be worth under
barrage fire. The mistakes of our generalship, the inefficiency of our
staff-work, were not greater than the blunderings of the German High
Command, and their problem was more difficult than ours because of
the weakness of their reserves, owing to enormous preoccupation on the
Russian front. The agony of their men was greater than ours.
To understand the German situation it must be remembered that from
January to May, 1916, the German command on the western front was
concentrating all its energy and available strength in man-power and
gun--power upon the attack of Verdun. The Crown Prince had staked his
reputation upon that adventure, which he believed would end in the
capture of the strongest French fortress and the destruction of the
French armies. He demanded men and more men, until every unit that
could be spared from other fronts of the line had been thrown into
that furnace. Divisions were called in from other theaters of war, and
increased the strength on the western front to a total of about one
hundred and thirty divisions.
But the months passed and Verdun still held out above piles of German
corpses on its slopes, and in June Germany looked east and saw a great
menace. The Russian offensive was becoming violent. German generals on
the Russian fronts sent desperate messages for help. “Send us more
men,” they said, and from the western front four divisions containing
thirty-nine battalions were sent to them.
They must have been sent grudgingly, for now another menace threatened
the enemy, and it was ours. The British armies were getting ready to
strike. In spite of Verdun, France still had men enough---withdrawn
from that part of the line in which they had been relieved by the
British---to co-operate in a new attack.
It was our offensive that the German command feared most, for they had
no exact knowledge of our strength or of the quality of our new troops.
They knew that our army had grown prodigiously since the assault on
Loos, nearly a year before.
They had heard of the Canadian reinforcements, and the coming of the
Australians, and the steady increase of recruiting in England, and month
by month they had heard the louder roar of our guns along the line, and
had seen their destructive effect spreading and becoming more terrible.
They knew of the steady, quiet concentration of batteries and divisions
on the west and south of the Ancre.
The German command expected a heavy blow and, prepared for it, but as
yet had no knowledge of the driving force behind it. What confidence
they had of being able to resist the British attack was based upon
the wonderful strength of the lines which they had been digging and
fortifying since the autumn of the first year of war--“impregnable
positions,” they had called them--the inexperience of our troops, their
own immense quantity of machine-guns, the courage and skill of their
gunners, and their profound belief in the superiority of German
generalship.
In order to prevent espionage during the coming struggle, and to conceal
the movement of troops and guns, they ordered the civil populations to
be removed from villages close behind their positions, drew cordons of
military police across the country, picketed crossroads, and established
a network of counter espionage to prevent any leakage of information.
To inspire the German troops with a spirit of martial fervor (not easily
aroused to fever pitch after the bloody losses before Verdun) Orders
of the Day were issued to the battalions counseling them to hold fast
against the hated English, who stood foremost in the way of peace (that
was the gist of a manifesto by Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, which I
found in a dugout at Montauban), and promising them a speedy ending to
the war.
Great stores of material and munitions were concentrated at rail-heads
and dumps ready to be sent up to the firing-lines, and the perfection
of German organization may well have seemed flawless--before the attack
began.
When they began they found that in “heavies” and in expenditure of high
explosives they were outclassed.
They were startled, too, by the skill and accuracy of the British
gunners, whom they had scorned as “amateurs,” and by the daring of our
airmen, who flew over their lines with the utmost audacity, “spotting”
for the guns, and registering on batteries, communication trenches,
crossroads, rail-heads, and every vital point of organization in the
German war-machine working opposite the British lines north and south of
the Ancre.
Even before the British infantry had left their trenches at dawn on July
1st, German officers behind the firing--lines saw with anxiety that
all the organization which had worked so smoothly in times of ordinary
trench--warfare was now working only in a hazardous way under a deadly
storm of shells.
Food and supplies of all kinds could not be sent up to front-line
trenches without many casualties, and sometimes could not be sent up
at all. Telephone wires were cut, and communications broken between the
front and headquarters staffs. Staff-officers sent up to report were
killed on the way to the lines. Troops moving forward from reserve areas
came under heavy fire and lost many men before arriving in the support
trenches.
Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, sitting aloof from all this in personal
safety, must have known before July 1st that his resources in men and
material would be strained to the uttermost by the British attack, but
he could take a broader view than men closer to the scene of battle, and
taking into account the courage of his troops (he had no need to doubt
that), the immense strength of their positions, dug and tunneled beyond
the power of high explosives, the number of his machine-guns, the
concentration of his artillery, and the rawness of the British troops,
he could count up the possible cost and believe that in spite of a heavy
price to pay there would be no break in his lines.
At 7.30 A.M. on July 1st the British infantry, as I have told, left
their trenches and attacked on the right angle down from Gommecourt,
Beaumont Hamel, Thiepval, Ovillers, and La Boisselle, and eastward
from Fricourt, below Mametz and Montauban. For a week the German
troops--Bavarians and Prussians--had been crouching in their dugouts,
listening to the ceaseless crashing of the British “drum-fire.” In
places like Beaumont Hamel, the men down in the deep tunnels--some of
them large enough to hold a battalion and a half--were safe as long as
they stayed there. But to get in or out was death. Trenches disappeared
into a sea of shell-craters, and the men holding them--for some men had
to stay on duty there--were blown to fragments.
Many of the shallower dugouts were smashed in by heavy shells, and
officers and men lay dead there as I saw them lying on the first days
of July, in Fricourt and Mametz and Montauban. The living men kept their
courage, but below ground, under that tumult of bursting shells, and
wrote pitiful letters to their people at home describing the horror of
those hours.
“We are quite shut off from the rest of the world,” wrote one of them.
“Nothing comes to us. No letters. The English keep such a barrage on our
approaches it is terrible. To-morrow evening it will be seven days since
this bombardment began. We cannot hold out much longer. Everything is
shot to pieces.”
Thirst was one of their tortures. In many of the tunneled shelters there
was food enough, but the water could not be sent up. The German soldiers
were maddened by thirst. When rain fell many of them crawled out and
drank filthy water mixed with yellow shell-sulphur, and then were
killed by high explosives. Other men crept out, careless of death, but
compelled to drink. They crouched over the bodies of the men who lay
above, or in, the shell-holes, and lapped up the puddles and then
crawled down again if they were not hit.
When our infantry attacked at Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel and Thiepval
they were received by waves of machine-gun bullets fired by men who, in
spite of the ordeal of our seven days' bombardment, came out into
the open now, at the moment of attack which they knew through their
periscopes was coming. They brought their guns above the shell-craters
of their destroyed trenches under our barrage and served them. They ran
forward even into No Man's Land, and planted their machine-guns there,
and swept down our men as they charged. Over their heads the German
gunners flung a frightful barrage, plowing gaps in the ranks of our men.
On the left, by Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel, the British attack
failed, as I have told, but southward the “impregnable” lines were
smashed by a tide of British soldiers as sand castles are overwhelmed by
the waves. Our men swept up to Fricourt, struck straight up to Montauban
on the right, captured it, and flung a loop round Mametz village.
For the German generals, receiving their reports with great difficulty
because runners were killed and telephones broken, the question was:
“How will these British troops fight in the open after their first
assault? How will our men stand between the first line and the second?”
As far as the German troops were concerned, there were no signs of
cowardice, or “low morale” as we called it more kindly, in those early
days of the struggle. They fought with a desperate courage, holding on
to positions in rearguard actions when our guns were slashing them and
when our men were getting near to them, making us pay a heavy price for
every little copse or gully or section of trench, and above all serving
their machine-guns at La Boisselle, Ovillers, above Fricourt, round
Contalmaison, and at all points of their gradual retreat, with a
wonderful obstinacy, until they were killed or captured. But fresh waves
of British soldiers followed those who were checked or broken.
After the first week of battle the German General Staff had learned the
truth about the qualities of those British “New Armies” which had been
mocked and caricatured in German comic papers. They learned that
these “amateur soldiers” had the qualities of the finest troops in the
world--not only extreme valor, but skill and cunning, not only a great
power of endurance under the heaviest fire, but a spirit of attack which
was terrible in its effect. They were fierce bayonet fighters. Once
having gained a bit of earth or a ruined village, nothing would budge
them unless they could be blasted out by gun-fire. General Sixt von
Arnim put down some candid notes in his report to Prince Rupprecht.
“The English infantry shows great dash in attack, a factor to which
immense confidence in its overwhelming artillery greatly contributes. ..
It has shown great tenacity in defense. This was especially noticeable
in the case of small parties, which, when once established with
machine-guns in the corner of a wood or a group of houses, were very
difficult to drive out.”
The German losses were piling up. The agony of the German troops under
our shell-fire was reaching unnatural limits of torture. The early
prisoners I saw--Prussians and Bavarians of the 14th Reserve Corps--were
nerve-broken, and told frightful stories of the way in which their
regiments had been cut to pieces. The German generals had to fill up the
gaps, to put new barriers of men against the waves of British infantry.
They flung new troops into the line, called up hurriedly from reserve
depots.
Now, for the first time, their staff-work showed signs of disorder and
demoralization. When the Prussian Guards Reserves were brought up from
Valenciennes to counter--attack at Contalmaison they were sent on to the
battlefield without maps or local guides, and walked straight into our
barrage. A whole battalion was cut to pieces and many others suffered
frightful things. Some of the prisoners told me that they had lost
three-quarters of their number in casualties, and our troops advanced
over heaps of killed and wounded.
The 122d Bavarian Regiment in Contalmaison was among those which
suffered horribly. Owing to our ceaseless gun-fire, they could get no
food-supplies and no water. The dugouts were crowded, so that they had
to take turns to get into these shelters, and outside our shells were
bursting over every yard of ground.
“Those who went outside,” a prisoner told me, “were killed or wounded.
Some of them had their heads blown off, and some of them their arms.
But we went on taking turns in the hole, although those who went outside
knew that it was their turn to die, most likely. At last most of those
who came into the hole were wounded, some of them badly, so that we lay
in blood.” That is one little picture in a great panorama of bloodshed.
The German command was not thinking much about the human suffering of
its troops. It was thinking of the next defensive line upon which they
would have to fall back if the pressure of the British offensive could
be maintained--the Longueval-Bazentin-Pozires line. It was getting
nervous. Owing to the enormous efforts made in the Verdun offensive, the
supplies of ammunition were not adequate to the enormous demand.
The German gunners were trying to compete with the British in continuity
of bombardments and the shells were running short. Guns were wearing
out under this incessant strain, and it was difficult to replace them.
General von Gallwitz received reports of “an alarmingly large number of
bursts in the bore, particularly in field-guns.”
General von Arnim complained that “reserve supplies of ammunition were
only available in very small quantities.” The German telephone system
proved “totally inadequate in consequence of the development which the
fighting took.” The German air service was surprisingly weak, and the
British airmen had established temporary mastery.
“The numerical superiority of the enemy's airmen,” noted General von
Arnim, “and the fact that their machines were better made, became
disagreeably apparent to us, particularly in their direction of the
enemy's artillery fire and in bomb-dropping.”
On July 15th the British troops broke the German second line at
Longueval and the Bazentins, and inflicted great losses upon the enemy,
who fought with their usual courage until the British bayonets were
among them.
A day or two later the fortress of Ovillers fell, and the remnants
of the garrison--one hundred and fifty strong--after a desperate and
gallant resistance in ditches and tunnels, where they had fought to the
last, surrendered with honor.
Then began the long battle of the woods--Devil's Wood, High Wood, Trones
Wood--continued through August with most fierce and bloody fighting,
which ended in our favor and forced the enemy back, gradually but
steadily, in spite of the terrific bombardments which filled those
woods with shell-fire and the constant counter-attacks delivered by the
Germans.
“Counter-attack!” came the order from the German staff, and battalions
of men marched out obediently to certain death, sometimes with
incredible folly on the part of their commanding officers, who ordered
these attacks to be made without the slightest chance of success.
I saw an example of that at close range during a battle at Falfemont
Farm, near Guillemont. Our men had advanced from Wedge Wood, and I
watched them from a trench just south of this, to which I had gone at
a great pace over shell-craters and broken wire, with a young observing
officer who had been detailed to report back to the guns. (Old
“Falstaff,” whose songs and stories had filled the tent under the
Red Cross with laughter, toiled after us gallantly, but grunting and
sweating under the sun like his prototype, until we lost him in our
hurry.) Presently a body of Germans came out of a copse called Leuze
Wood, on rising ground, faced round among the thin, slashed trees of
Falfemont, and advanced toward our men, shoulder to shoulder, like a
solid bar. It was sheer suicide. I saw our men get their machineguns
into action, and the right side of the living bar frittered away, and
then the whole line fell into the scorched grass. Another line followed.
They were tall men, and did not falter as they came forward, but it
seemed to me they walked like men conscious of going to death. They
died. The simile is outworn, but it was exactly as though some invisible
scythe had mown them down.
In all the letters written during those weeks of fighting and captured
by us from dead or living men there was one cry of agony and horror.
“I stood on the brink of the most terrible days of my life,” wrote one
of them. “They were those of the battle of the Somme. It began with a
night attack on August 13th and 14th. The attack lasted till the evening
of the 18th, when the English wrote on our bodies in letters of blood,
'It is all over with you.' A handful of half-mad, wretched creatures,
worn out in body and mind, were all that was left of a whole battalion.
We were that handful.”
The losses of many of the German battalions were staggering (yet not
greater than our own), and by the middle of August the morale of the
troops was severely shaken. The 117th Division by Pozires suffered
very heavily. The 11th Reserve and 157th Regiments each lost nearly
three-quarters of their effectives. The 9th Reserve Corps had also lost
heavily. The 9th Reserve Jager Battalion lost about three-quarters,
the 84th Reserve and 86th Reserve over half. On August 10th the 16th
Division had six battalions in reserve.
By August 19th, owing to the large number of casualties, the greater
part of those reserves had been absorbed into the front and support
trenches, leaving as available reserves two exhausted battalions.
The weakness of the division and the absolute necessity of reinforcing
it led to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment (2d Guards Division) being
brought up to strengthen the right flank in the Leipzig salient. This
regiment had suffered casualties to the extent of over 50 percent west
of Pozires during the middle of July, and showed no eagerness to return
to the fight. These are but a few examples of what was happening along
the whole of the German front on the Somme.
It became apparent by the end of August that the enemy was in trouble
to find fresh troops to relieve his exhausted divisions, and that the
wastage was faster than the arrival of new men. It was noticeable that
he left divisions in the line until incapable of further effort rather
than relieving them earlier so that after resting they might again be
brought on to the battlefield. The only conclusion to be drawn from this
was that the enemy had not sufficient formations available to make the
necessary reliefs.
In July three of these exhausted divisions were sent to the east,
their place being taken by two new divisions, and in August three more
exhausted divisions were sent to Russia, eight new divisions coming to
the Somme front. The British and French offensive was drawing in all the
German reserves and draining them of their life's blood.
“We entrained at Savigny,” wrote a man of one of these regiments, “and
at once knew our destination. It was our old blood-bath--the Somme.”
In many letters this phrase was used. The Somme was called the “Bath of
Blood” by the German troops who waded across its shell-craters and in
the ditches which were heaped with their dead. But what I have described
is only the beginning of the battle, and the bath was to be filled
deeper in the months that followed.