All through July and August the enemy's troops fought with wonderful and
stubborn courage, defending every bit of broken woodland, every heap of
bricks that was once a village, every line of trenches smashed by heavy
shell-fire, with obstinacy.
It is indeed fair and just to say that throughout those battles of the
Somme our men fought against an enemy hard to beat, grim and resolute,
and inspired sometimes with the courage of despair, which was hardly
less dangerous than the courage of hope.
The Australians who struggled to get the high ground at Pozieres did not
have an easy task. The enemy made many counter-attacks against them. All
the ground thereabouts was, as I have said, so smashed that the earth
became finely powdered, and it was the arena of bloody fighting at close
quarters which did not last a day or two, but many weeks. Mouquet Farm
was like the phoenix which rose again out of its ashes. In its tunneled
ways German soldiers hid and came out to fight our men in the rear long
after the site of the farm was in our hands.
But the German troops were fighting what they knew to be a losing
battle. They were fighting rear-guard actions, trying to gain time for
the hasty digging of ditches behind them, trying to sell their lives at
the highest price.
They lived not only under incessant gun-fire, gradually weakening their
nerve-power, working a physical as well as a moral change in them, but
in constant terror of British attacks.
They could never be sure of safety at any hour of the day or night, even
in their deepest dugouts. The British varied their times of attack. At
dawn, at noon, when the sun was reddening in the west, just before the
dusk, in pitch darkness, even, the steady, regular bombardment that had
never ceased all through the days and nights would concentrate into the
great tumult of sudden drum-fire, and presently waves of men--English
or Scottish or Irish, Australians or Canadians--would be sweeping on
to them and over them, rummaging down into the dugouts with bombs and
bayonets, gathering up prisoners, quick to kill if men were not quick to
surrender.
In this way Thiepval was encircled so that the garrison there--the 180th
Regiment, who had held it for two years--knew that they were doomed. In
this way Guillemont and Ginchy fell, so that in the first place hardly a
man out of two thousand men escaped to tell the tale of horror in German
lines, and in the second place there was no long fight against the
Irish, who stormed it in a wild, fierce rush which even machine-guns
could not check. The German General Staff was getting flurried, grabbing
at battalions from other parts of the line, disorganizing its divisions
under the urgent need of flinging in men to stop this rot in the lines,
ordering counter-attacks which were without any chance of success, so
that thin waves of men came out into the open, as I saw them several
times, to be swept down by scythes of bullets which cut them clean to
the earth. Before September 15th they hoped that the British offensive
was wearing itself out. It seemed to them at least doubtful that after
the struggle of two and a half months the British troops could still
have spirit and strength enough to fling themselves against new lines.
But the machinery of their defense was crumbling. Many of their guns had
worn out, and could not be replaced quickly enough. Many batteries had
been knocked out in their emplacements along the line of Bazentin and
Longueval before the artillery was drawn back to Grand-court and a new
line of safety. Battalion commanders clamored for greater supplies of
hand-grenades, intrenching-tools, trench-mortars, signal rockets, and
all kinds of fighting material enormously in excess of all previous
requirements.
The difficulties of dealing with the wounded, who littered the
battlefields and choked the roads with the traffic of ambulances, became
increasingly severe, owing to the dearth of horses for transport and the
longer range of British guns which had been brought far forward.
The German General Staff studied its next lines of defense away through
Courcelette, Martinpuich, Lesboeufs, Morval, and Combles, and they did
not look too good, but with luck and the courage of German soldiers,
and the exhaustion--surely those fellows were exhausted!--of British
troops--good enough.
On September 15th the German command had another shock when the whole
line of the British troops on the Somme front south of the Ancre rose
out of their trenches and swept over the German defenses in a tide.
Those defenses broke hopelessly, and the waves dashed through. Here and
there, as on the German left at Morval and Lesboeufs, the bulwarks stood
for a time, but the British pressed against them and round them. On the
German right, below the little river of the Ancre, Courcelette fell,
and Martinpuich, and at last, as I have written, High Wood, which the
Germans desired to hold at all costs, and had held against incessant
attacks by great concentration of artillery, was captured and left
behind by the London men. A new engine of war had come as a demoralizing
influence among German troops, spreading terror among them on the first
day out of the tanks. For the first time the Germans were outwitted in
inventions of destruction; they who had been foremost in all engines
of death. It was the moment of real panic in the German lines--a panic
reaching back from the troops to the High Command.
Ten days later, on September 25th, when the British made a new
advance--all this time the French were pressing forward, too, on our
right by Roye--Combles was evacuated without a fight and with a litter
of dead in its streets; Gueudecourt, Lesboeufs, and Morval were lost by
the Germans; and a day later Thiepval, the greatest fortress position
next to Beaumont Hamel, fell, with all its garrison taken prisoners.
They were black days in the German headquarters, where staff-officers
heard the news over their telephones and sent stern orders to artillery
commanders and divisional generals, and after dictating new instructions
that certain trench systems must be held at whatever price, heard that
already they were lost.
It was at this time that the morale of the German troops on the Somme
front showed most signs of breaking. In spite of all their courage,
the ordeal had been too hideous for them, and in spite of all their
discipline, the iron discipline of the German soldier, they were on the
edge of revolt. The intimate and undoubted facts of this break in the
morale of the enemy's troops during this period reveal a pitiful picture
of human agony.
“We are now fighting on the Somme with the English,” wrote a man of
the 17th Bavarian Regiment. “You can no longer call it war. It is mere
murder. We are at the focal-point of the present battle in Foureaux
Wood (near Guillemont). All my previous experiences in this war--the
slaughter at Ypres and the battle in the gravel-pit at Hulluch--are the
purest child's play compared with this massacre, and that is much too
mild a description. I hardly think they will bring us into the fight
again, for we are in a very bad way.”
“From September 12th to 27th we were on the Somme,” wrote a man of the
10th Bavarians, “and my regiment had fifteen hundred casualties.”
A detailed picture of the German losses under our bombardment was given
in the diary of an officer captured in a trench near Flers, and dated
September 22d.
“The four days ending September 4th, spent in the trenches, were
characterized by a continual enemy bombardment that did not abate for a
single instant. The enemy had registered on our trenches with light,
as well as medium and heavy, batteries, notwithstanding that he had no
direct observation from his trenches, which lie on the other side of
the summit. His registering was done by his excellent air service, which
renders perfect reports of everything observed.
“During the first day, for instance, whenever the slightest movement was
visible in our trenches during the presence, as is usually the case, of
enemy aircraft flying as low as three and four hundred yards, a heavy
bombardment of the particular section took place. The very heavy losses
during the first day brought about the resolution to evacuate the
trenches during the daytime. Only a small garrison was left, the
remainder withdrawing to a part of the line on the left of the
Martinpuich-Pozieres road.
“The signal for a bombardment by 'heavies' was given by the English
airplanes. On the first day we tried to fire by platoons on the
airplanes, but a second airplane retaliated by dropping bombs and firing
his machine-gun at our troops. Our own airmen appeared only once for a
short time behind our lines.
“While many airplanes are observing from early morning till late
at night, our own hardly ever venture near. The opinion is that
our trenches cannot protect troops during a barrage of the shortest
duration, owing to lack of dugouts.
“The enemy understands how to prevent, with his terrible barrage,
the bringing up of building material, and even how to hinder the work
itself. The consequence is that our trenches are always ready for an
assault on his part. Our artillery, which does occasionally put a heavy
barrage on the enemy trenches at a great expense of ammunition, cannot
cause similar destruction to him. He can bring his building material up,
can repair his trenches as well as build new ones, can bring up rations
and ammunition, and remove the wounded.
“The continual barrage on our lines of communication makes it very
difficult for us to ration and relieve our troops, to supply water,
ammunition, and building material, to evacuate wounded, and causes heavy
losses. This and the lack of protection from artillery fire and the
weather, the lack of hot meals, the continual necessity of lying still
in the same place, the danger of being buried, the long time the wounded
have to remain in the trenches, and chiefly the terrible effect of
the machine--and heavy-artillery fire, controlled by an excellent air
service, has a most demoralizing effect on the troops.
“Only with the greatest difficulty could the men be persuaded to stay in
the trenches under those conditions.”
There were some who could not be persuaded to stay if they could see any
chance of deserting or malingering. For the first time on our front
the German officers could not trust the courage of their men, nor their
loyalty, nor their sense of discipline. All this horror of men blown
to bits over living men, of trenches heaped with dead and dying, was
stronger than courage, stronger than loyalty, stronger than discipline.
A moral rot was threatening to bring the German troops on the Somme
front to disaster.
Large numbers of men reported sick and tried by every kind of trick to
be sent back to base hospitals.
In the 4th Bavarian Division desertions were frequent, and several
times whole bodies of men refused to go forward into the front line. The
morale of men in the 393d Regiment, taken at Courcelette, seemed to be
very weak. One of the prisoners declared that they gave themselves up
without firing a shot, because they could trust the English not to kill
them.
The platoon commander had gone away, and the prisoner was ordered to
alarm the platoon in case of attack, but did not do so on purpose. They
did not shoot with rifles or machine-guns and did not throw bombs.
Many of the German officers were as demoralized as the men, shirking
their posts in the trenches, shamming sickness, and even leading the
way to surrender. Prisoners of the 351st Regiment, which lost thirteen
hundred men in fifteen days, told of officers who had refused to take
their men up to the front-line, and of whole companies who had declined
to move when ordered to do so. An officer of the 74th Landwehr Regiment
is said by prisoners to have told his men during our preliminary
bombardment to surrender as soon as we attacked.
A German regimental order says: “I must state with the greatest regret
that the regiment, during this change of position, had to take notice
of the sad fact that men of four of the companies, inspired by shameful
cowardice, left their companies on their own initiative and did not move
into line.”
Another order contains the same fact, and a warning of what punishment
may be meted out:
“Proofs are multiplying of men leaving the position without permission
and hiding at the rear. It is our duty... each at his post--to deal with
this fact with energy and success.”
Many Bavarians complained that their officers did not accompany them
into the trenches, but went down to the hospitals with imaginary
diseases. In any case there was a great deal of real sickness, mental
and physical. The ranks were depleted by men suffering from fever,
pleurisy, jaundice, and stomach complaints of all kinds, twisted up with
rheumatism after lying in waterlogged holes, lamed for life by bad cases
of trench-foot, and nerve-broken so that they could do nothing but weep.
The nervous cases were the worst and in greatest number. Many men went
raving mad. The shell-shock victims clawed at their mouths unceasingly,
or lay motionless like corpses with staring eyes, or trembled in every
limb, moaning miserably and afflicted with a great terror.
To the Germans (barely less to British troops) the Somme battlefields
were not only shambles, but a territory which the devil claimed as his
own for the torture of men's brains and souls before they died in the
furnace fires. A spirit of revolt against all this crept into the minds
of men who retained their sanity--a revolt against the people who had
ordained this vast outrage against God and humanity.
Into German letters there crept bitter, burning words against “the
millionaires--who grow rich out of the war,” against the high people
who live in comfort behind the lines. Letters from home inflamed these
thoughts.
It was not good reading for men under shell-fire.
“It seems that you soldiers fight so that official stay-at-homes can
treat us as female criminals. Tell me, dear husband, are you a criminal
when you fight in the trenches, or why do people treat women and
children here as such?...
“For the poor here it is terrible, and yet the rich, the gilded ones,
the bloated aristocrats, gobble up everything in front of our very
eyes... All soldiers--friend and foe--ought to throw down their weapons
and go on strike, so that this war which enslaves the people more than
ever may cease.”
Thousands of letters, all in this strain, were reaching the German
soldiers on the Somme, and they did not strengthen the morale of men
already victims of terror and despair.
Behind the lines deserters were shot in batches. To those in front came
Orders of the Day warning them, exhorting them, commanding them to hold
fast.
“To the hesitating and faint-hearted in the regiment,” says one of these
Orders, “I would say the following:
“What the Englishman can do the German can do also. Or if, on the other
hand, the Englishman really is a better and superior being, he would be
quite justified in his aim as regards this war, viz., the extermination
of the German. There is a further point to be noted: this is the first
time we have been in the line on the Somme, and what is more, we
are there at a time when things are more calm. The English regiments
opposing us have been in the firing-line for the second, and in some
cases even the third, time. Heads up and play the man!”
It was easy to write such documents. It was more difficult to bring up
reserves of men and ammunition. The German command was harder pressed by
the end of September.
From July 1st to September 8th, according to trustworthy information,
fifty-three German divisions in all were engaged against the Allies on
the Somme battlefront. Out of these fourteen were still in the line on
September 8th.
Twenty-eight had been withdrawn, broken and exhausted, to quieter
areas. Eleven more had been withdrawn to rest-billets. Under the
Allies' artillery fire and infantry attacks the average life of a German
division as a unit fit for service on the Somme was nineteen days. More
than two new German divisions had to be brought into the front-line
every week since the end of June, to replace those smashed in the
process of resisting the Allied attack. In November it was reckoned by
competent observers in the field that well over one hundred and twenty
German divisions had been passed through the ordeal of the Somme, this
number including those which have appeared there more than once.