On My Way to the Somme

ON MY WAY TO THE SOMME: New Zealanders and the Bloody Offensive of 1916

Andrew Macdonald

Harper Collins, 2005, 335 pages

Andrew Macdonald has set out to provide ‘a detailed account of the New Zealand Division on the Somme in 1916’.  He has covered the period extensively, but this book may leave the reader feeling tantalized rather than satisfied, as it delivers less than it promises.

The events recounted in this book led to at least 7959 New Zealand casualties (by the author’s count, acknowledging that the figures for wounded are almost certainly understated), including some 2111 dead.  Prior and Wilson (The Somme, UNSW Press, 2005) suggest a total of 9408.  These losses occurred largely over a 23-day period between 11 September and 3 October, and over 900 of the dead fell in a four day period from 15 to 18 September.  Even on Macdonald’s total, the casualties exceeded those of two of the three Australian Divisions that served on the Somme. 

A reader might expect to gain a detailed picture of the battles that led to such losses.  Some feel is, indeed, gained, but for the battle elements it is more of an overview than a detailed discussion of events during close combat.  When describing battles, the author writes largely in the more detached style of Prior and Wilson, rather than the passionate style of Peter Charlton (Australians on the Somme: Pozieres 1916, Methuen Haynes, 1986).  For example, one action that contributed to the award of a VC is described in just three lines.  Macdonald saves his more passionate language for descriptions of the miserable conditions in the trenches between battles. 

Macdonald at times projects post-modern attitudes to war and killing onto a generation to which those attitudes would have been alien.  The calm descriptions, by veterans quoted in the book, of friends killed and wounded, and of the casual killing of enemy prisoners and wounded and retreating enemy soldiers, are more indicative of the attitudes of a generation that accepted both that war had a legitimate place in the world order, and that it involved casualties.  His use of the word ‘conscripted’ for occasions when commanders were issued orders for specific tasks away from the battlefield, such as training reinforcements, also has echoes of late 20th Century attitudes.

The post-modern attitudes show particularly in Macdonald’s frequent claims of declining or poor morale in the New Zealand Division.  These claims are not supported by the soldiers’ own records.  At one point, Macdonald states that the ‘ominous rumble of artillery fire ate away at … morale as [the Division] approached the Somme battlefield’, and that ‘the prospect [of battle] rankled with the veterans of Gallipoli and Armentieres’.  However, in the same context, quotes from veterans describe morale ‘steadily improv[ing]’, and men ‘hoping for the best, determined to do well’, ‘in great heart’ with ‘morale … really high’.

The author seems also to have a limited understanding of a battlefield, where plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy, and outcomes are usually less than perfect.  In one attack, the successful gaining of all four objectives, and the holding of three, together with part of the objective of a neighbouring division, is described as a ‘backdrop of mediocrity’!  By the standards of 1916 (or 1917), this might more fairly be described as a significant achievement!

Macdonald describes well the vacillation, apparently endemic in the British Army of the era, between initial well-organized attacks and hasty, poorly prepared follow-up actions in the days immediately following, followed by continued repetition of the same sequence.  He claims that Haig and Rawlinson were on a steep learning curve, however, while they may have been learning, the actual steepness of the curve seems open to challenge, while they persisted in dropping back down the curve, to retry techniques that had failed earlier!  As Macdonald shows, the New Zealand Division staff was also guilty of such errors.

Nevertheless, despite Haig’s (and Rawlinson’s) slow progress up the learning curve, Macdonald notes their use of tanks for the first time in the New Zealanders’ initial attack, part of the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.  Losses among the tanks reduced their contribution to later attacks involving the New Zealand Division.  On the debit side, Haig’s belief that the Cavalry Corps could break through seems to have been founded more on wishful thinking than the realities of the battlefield.

Australians are generally aware that the death penalty was not enforced in the AIF during the First World War.  They may not, however, be aware that this did not mean that no Australian was executed.  Macdonald refers to Private John Sweeney, an Australian serving in the New Zealand Division, who on 2 October 1916 was shot for desertion, having been condemned on 15 September.  One of his comrades felt that he should have been sent into the line with them, where it was ‘likely enough the Germans would have provided the firing squad’.

The Somme proved to be a training ground for future senior New Zealand officers.  Five New Zealanders who served on the Somme became brigadiers in the Second World War, while Bernard Freyberg, commander of the 2nd New Zealand Division in that war, served on the Somme in the Royal Naval Division.  An artillery subaltern, Keith Park, became an RAF Air Chief Marshal and hero of the Battle of Britain,

Macdonald criticizes regimental histories for subjective praise of their own officers.  Unfortunately, the example he chooses, of a new officer throwing his weight around, is nullified by his admission that the officer concerned was soon ‘sent back to base as undesirable’.  Clearly, standards had to be met to get ahead.  It was not by accepting poor leaders that the New Zealand Division ‘performed with distinction during its tour in the 1916 Somme offensive’ (page 266).  Strangely, however, Macdonald chooses to qualify this assessment on the very next page, calling the Division’s performance ‘as good as could have been expected’, surely a case of damning with faint praise.

The book could have been improved with more careful editing.  For example, reference to the New Zealand Rifle Brigade is at times confusing, it not always being clear whether the reference is to the 3rd Brigade of the New Zealand Division or to the battalions within that Brigade.  The use of the unqualified descriptors ‘1st Battalion’ and ‘2nd Battalion’ for two of those battalions can also cause confusion if any of the 1st or 2nd Battalions of the four regional New Zealand regiments (Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago) happen to be present at the time. 

Within the regional regiments, some explanation of the New Zealand system of regional (named and numbered) companies would have been useful, as several of those companies are specifically mentioned.  Also within those regiments, there is some confusion as to casualties in individual battalions, as Macdonald draws on aggregated totals in regimental histories, rather than the records of specific battalions.  Brigadier General Johnston is variously referred to as ‘Earl’ (in the text) and ‘Francis’ (in his photograph).  His initials are ‘F.E.’; but from other context, it seems that he used the name Earl.

A particularly distracting artifice is the occasional use of present tense for a few pages before reverting to the past tense used through most of the book.  Macdonald also has a propensity to mix his metaphors, at one point describing the New Zealand situation as being ‘in the midst of Dante’s inferno and, worse yet, rain clouds were hanging ominously over the battlefield’.

The author states that he chose a particular editorial style to refer to individuals (at first mention, given and surnames, rank in 1916, and unit; for later mentions, surname alone).  However, this is honoured more in the breach than in the observance.  The future Major General Kippenberger, for example, is more often than not referred to by given and surnames, and usually also rank and unit.  Another annoyance is the omission from maps of places mentioned in the adjacent text.  Maps are needed in a book like this, but they must be comprehensive.

JOHN DONOVAN