The Battle of Fromelles

THE BATTLE OF FROMELLES

Roger Lee

Big Sky Publishing, 2010, 206pp, $19.95

Roger Lee’s book on the Battle of Fromelles can be broadly divided into four parts: an explanation of the context in which the battle was fought, a description of the tactics of 1916 and the planning processes that led to the battle, a description of the battle itself, and an epilogue on the discovery in 2008 of the remains of 250 casualties of the battle, and their subsequent recovery and re-burial.

The section on the context makes many useful points about the other events of 1916, and their impact on relatively smaller battles like Fromelles, points of a kind often overlooked by less informed commentators.  This context includes the heavy casualties around Verdun and in the early stages of the British Somme offensive, and the Russian Brusilov offensive.

These events were of a scale that explains why Fromelles might not have received much attention in broader histories of the First World War.  Coverage by the Australian official history, however, seems broadly appropriate.  The single day of battle at Fromelles, with its 5533 casualties, is covered in 120 pages in Bean’s Volume III, compared to 430 pages for the seven weeks and around 23,000 casualties at Pozières and Mouquet Farm. Fromelles has also been the subject in Australia of several recent popular histories.

This section also provides a useful reminder of the possible consequences of a German peace (possibilities often ignored by critics of Australian participation in the First World War).  While the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk might not have imposed a Carthaginian peace on Russia, it was at least as onerous as the Treaty of Versailles, sometimes considered a root cause for the Second World War.  It is often forgotten that what was then Australian territory (Papua) was bordered by a German colony (New Guinea).  A peace imposed by Germany on the British Empire and its dominions could well have had territorial effects on Australia.

The chapter on the planning for Fromelles is probably the least satisfactory part of the book. Lee explains clearly the problems with military technology (particularly limited communications and developing artillery tactics and technology) that were endemic in 1916.  These contributed to the failure of many attacks, including Fromelles.  He also makes some good points about the strategic reasoning and operational background to the attack, and mounts a vigorous defence of the British high command.  As he notes, it is the duty of a general to win wars, and that duty includes preparing and implementing attack plans. Aubers Ridge, on which Fromelles stands, was a strategically important objective.

Lee explains that the plan for Fromelles was not hastily cobbled together for the attack, contrary to some mythology.  Rather, it was based on preliminary planning that Sir Richard Haking, commanding the British XI Corps that controlled the battle, had already conducted as part of his normal command responsibilities.

Lee acknowledges later in the book that there was a major fault with the plan, in that the dominating German strongpoint called the Sugarloaf was on the boundary between the British 61st Division and the Australian 5th Division, rather than being made the responsibility of one division. While such a fault might have been understandable (although not acceptable) in a plan that had been hastily put together, it should not have remained in a more developed plan.  The failure to capture the Sugarloaf led directly to the heavy losses in the Australian 15th Brigade, leaving the 14th and 8th Brigades isolated in those parts of the German lines they had entered.

This acknowledgement of a major planning failure weakens Lee’s defence of the high command and the planning process, as does his comment about the many other ‘poorly prepared and inadequately supported’ attacks that took place in early July 1916.  Fromelles comes to appear as nearer to an unsatisfactory norm, rather than an exception, as Lee’s defence of the high command might wish to suggest.

Ultimately, and perhaps inadvertently, Lee’s defence of the high command comes across more as damning with faint praise than as a convincing defence of the command process. A better assessment of Haking’s part in Fromelles might be that he did not even reach the standard that Churchill ascribed to Haig:

He might be, he surely was, unequal to the prodigious scale of events; but no one else was discerned as his equal or better.

The description of the actual battle is a model of clarity (leaving aside a minor problem with some of the maps, mentioned later).  It makes plain the difficulties experienced by the 2/1st Bucks and the 59th Australian Battalion when attacking the Sugarloaf along converging lines, with inadequate communications further slowed by the extended chain of command.  The attempt to coordinate a second attack on the Sugarloaf collapsed under the strain of communications inadequacy.

After the failure to take or neutralise the Sugarloaf, the outcome of Fromelles moved on to its (by then inevitable) tragic conclusion.  The German counterattacks are clearly described, as is the fighting withdrawal of those elements of the 14th and 8th Brigades that had entered parts of the German defences.

The epilogue describing the discovery and recovery of the bodies of 250 casualties of Fromelles provides a sombre end to the book.  While this process was essential once the bodies had been found, the effort needed to resolve the fate of a small percentage of the very many Australian soldiers still missing in France and Flanders demonstrates the wisdom of a ban on speculative searches.  It also shows the thoughtfulness of the original British concept of an Unknown Soldier, later extended from Britain to other nations, including Australia.  Those seeking closure can perhaps find consolation in the thought that the ‘unknown’ might, indeed, be their missing relative.

Unfortunately, there are some problems with the publication standard.  While the maps produced specifically for the book are clear, and assist greatly with understanding the description of the battle, many of those copied from the Kriegsarchiv are so small when printed as to be almost unreadable.  Also, some of the maps describing the course of the battle include reference numbers, not all of which are explained in the accompanying text. There is some difference between the text on French divisional organisation and the figure explaining it, with ‘regiments’ used in the text when ‘brigades’ was probably intended.

Overall, however, this is a very useful description of the Battle of Fromelles, set in its wider context.

JOHN DONOVAN