The Somme - Two Reflections on a Battle

REVIEW ARTICLE

The Somme – Two Reflections on a Battle

Australians on the Somme: Pozières 1916

Peter Charlton

Methuen Haynes, 1986, 318pp.

The Somme

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson

University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2005, 358pp.

Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign opens, I wish to express to you in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done, so far as I understand it.  The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know.  You are vigilant and self-reliant, and pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you.  While I am anxious that any great disaster … shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine.  If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it.  And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you.

Abraham Lincoln to U.S. Grant, 30 April 1864[i]

Introduction

Almost since it began on 1 July 1916, the Battle of the Somme has exerted an almost morbid fascination on those Anglo-Saxon nations that participated in it, a fascination matched in the First World War only by that on Passchendaele and Verdun.  By contrast, the great successes of the ‘Hundred Days’, the advances made on the Western Front between 8 August 1918 and the Armistice, receive less attention. 

These two books were written almost 20 years apart.  They take dissimilar approaches, but exemplify that fascination.  Charlton describes in detail a small part of the Battle, essentially the Australian actions around Pozières and Mouquet Farm from late July to early September, and also covers the attack at Fromelles on 19-20 July, away from the Somme region.  Prior and Wilson cover the whole battle, but focus at a higher level.

Australians on the Somme: Pozières 1916

Writing almost 70 years after the Battle, Charlton’s view is that of the men on the ground, with less attention on the higher-level machinations.  Haig dismissed the Australian contribution on the Somme as ‘minor operations’, however, from a relatively small force of some 85,000[ii] on 8 July, these ‘minor operations’ incurred almost 28,500[iii] casualties (including those at Fromelles) in less than two months.

Charlton tells us a tale of arms and the man.  He principally looks at the actions of privates, corporals, lieutenants and captains.  In his book we meet and follow the fortunes of those actually advancing on the German lines, and see the necessary brutality of the battlefield in detail.  In one place, Charlton describes the effect of artillery on individual soldiers, an issue of great importance to Prior and Wilson.  The Red Cross casualty inquiry records in the Australian War Memorial are replete with eyewitness reports of such casualties. 

Some of Charlton’s work has been dated by more recent research.  His description of the early British part in the battle, for example, repeats the generally accepted story of the 1 July attacks being made by extended lines of overloaded troops advancing steadily towards the German lines.  Prior and Wilson address this issue in detail, and demolish this myth in their book. 

In Charlton’s narrative, we meet men whose fame resounded throughout Australia between 1915 and 1918, such as Albert Jacka and ‘Pompey’ Elliott.  Others did not receive their recognition, like a 45-year-old former bushman serving in the 3rd Battalion, Private Jenkins, who had been constantly in trouble out of the line.  He devoted his last hours to caring for the wounded, finally being killed taking tea to them, and then passing into anonymity.  Others cross Charlton’s pages who were to appear in the next war at a higher level, including Iven Mackay, Gordon Bennett, and Arthur Blackburn, here seen winning his VC.

As with too many leaders on the Somme, Haking (the corps commander) blamed the troops for the bloody failure at Fromelles, the 61st (2nd South Midland Territorial) Division being described as ‘not sufficiently imbued with the offensive spirit to go in as one man at the appointed time’.  More bizarre, he thought that the ‘attack, though it failed, has done both divisions a great deal of good’.  Presumably higher casualties would have done even more good!  Charlton quotes the British official historian, Sir James Edmonds, saying that he didn’t think Haking ‘was much use after his wound … in 1914’.  Perhaps not, but Haking retained his command until the end of the war.

At Fromelles, another failing of the British command was displayed, to the great detriment of any trust in it that the troops might have developed.  The attack, costing some 7000 Australian and British casualties, was described in the communiqués as ‘some important raids’ that captured about 140 German prisoners.  The 5th Australian Division alone lost around 400 prisoners.  As mentioned earlier, Haig described the Australian involvement at Pozières as ‘minor operations’.  Such descriptions shook confidence in official British reports, as the broad facts, particularly the scale of casualties, soon became known in Australia.

The initial Australian attack on Pozières went well, in one of those night attacks that Haig (quoted by Prior and Wilson, and by Charlton) considered not even possible in a peacetime exercise.  However, in another of his less than felicitous interventions on the battlefield, Gough told Walker to cease the preparatory artillery fire before his next phase.  This gave the Germans time to redeploy their artillery, and retaliate.  Gough also indicated to Birdwood his theory for the offensive, to keep attacking with moderate numbers.  The idea of a concentrated attack seems to have been alien to Gough at this period, and Haig also was not taking control of the battle, allowing Gough to dissipate his efforts. 

Gough provided the plan for the initial 2nd Australian Division attack at Pozières, a plan which Legge, enthusiastic but inexperienced, accepted, but Brudenell White doubted.  White, however, allowed Legge his way, as also with his artillery plan, which did not use the available heavy guns to best effect.  Gough pushed for an early attack, although there was no particular need for haste.  Perhaps inevitably, the attack failed, leading to an exchange between Haig and White, when White corrected some of Haig’s post-battle criticisms.  White also insisted that later attacks be carefully prepared.  While Charlton is vigorous in his criticism of British generals, he also levels criticism at Australians when he considers it deserved.  He describes Legge as a good administrator, but accepts Bean’s assessment, that he was not ‘conspicuously a fighting leader’.

As the battle progressed, the repeated attacks, generally with only small forces, made less and less ground successively.  In late August, Gough again intervened on the battlefield, involving himself in the planning of a brigade attack (by directing that it repeat the direction of two previous failed attacks). White proposed a phased attack, with the initial phase being from a different direction, as success there might open the way for Gough’s proposal.  As it happened, the whole attack failed, but its planning was symptomatic of the poor strategy of repeated minor attacks in this period.

Charlton refers to the poor quality of British intelligence.  As an example, three days before the German offensive against Verdun began, Haig confidently told a French general, and a day later, Robertson (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) that a blow was likely against the British, not the French.  Only limited understanding seems to have been gained of the German defensive systems on the Somme, despite broad air superiority (over an area where the chalk soil made detection of defensive positions relatively easy), the availability of prisoners for interrogation, and the earlier capture of some positions.  Prior and Wilson elaborate frequently on this failing.

Charlton covers the debate between Haig and Rawlinson as to the best method of attack on 1 July, and the objectives to be sought.  At the preliminary stage, Rawlinson (in views supported by Foch) favoured a phased, step-by-step approach, while Haig sought deeper objectives.  Prior and Wilson follow in more detail the vacillations of Haig, Rawlinson and Gough. 

Charlton also remarks on the gap between the perceptions of the rear area staff and the reality of events in the firing line.  In one example, while a soldier in the line recorded being ‘shelled ceaselessly’, the Reserve Army War Diary recorded that the ‘day was on the whole quiet, with less shelling at Pozières’.  While effective communications between front and rear were a continuing problem during the entire First World War, it is hard to credit such a gap between perception and reality! 

Australian discipline was a major concern of the British high command.  In a foretaste of an incident at El Alamein during the Second World War (when soldiers of the 51st Highland Division were ordered to polish their brass before the attack, so making themselves conspicuous[iv]), Haig was displeased with a system of discipline that left badges and buttons unpolished.  Even Gough apparently found this displeasure a bit much!  However, neither seemed to understand a system of discipline that did not rely on external form.

As the strains of the Pozières/Mouquet Farm battles showed in an increased level of desertions, Birdwood, Rawlinson and later Haig all asked that the death penalty be imposed on the AIF.  The Australian Government refused, and continued to refuse as the war progressed, despite support from Australian generals, including Glasgow, Holmes and Monash.  Although Birdwood supported the death penalty for the men under his command, Haig considered that he was too soft in his approach to discipline in the AIF.  As casualties mounted, and under unsubtle pressure from the War Office, Hughes twice tried to introduce conscription for the AIF.  Both referenda failed.

The AIF returned to the Somme in October 1916, and struggled through the bitter winter months.  Charlton refers to the final (British) attack of the Battle, at Beaumont-Hamel, and to the increased strength it gave to Haig at a forthcoming conference of Allied commanders.   Prior and Wilson are more robust, indicating clearly that Beaumont-Hamel was attacked to strengthen Haig’s position at that conference.  It could not strengthen the position of the British high command with the AIF, whose disillusion flourished with officers who could not understand or learn the imperatives of a new kind of warfare.

Charlton does not see the British generals as wicked, but as ‘ignorant and inadequate, limited by intellect, experience and training’.  They seemed to be unable to organise coordinated attacks, persisted in tactics that had not succeeded, and did not implement on a wider scale and in a timely fashion those that did.  Charlton sees Pozières as a foundation point for Australia’s modern suspicion and resentment of the British.

The Somme

Prior and Wilson, writing almost 90 years after the event, cover the overall battle, but concentrate on the higher level.  As an indication of their focus, only a few men below the level of divisional command are mentioned in their book, and even the higher commanders are treated impersonally.  They do not introduce us to many of those individuals who fixed bayonets and advanced to their front against the German defences.

A key question that stands out in Prior and Wilson’s work is, quite simply, who was responsible for the battle?  They show clearly that it was not, contrary to myth, a case of the generals wandering off on an adventure of their own.  Their constitutional masters in the government, although not entirely comfortable, approved the concept.  During the battle, they reviewed progress, but despite developing concerns, allowed matters to proceed for almost five months.  While they had doubts, they did not act on them.  Prior and Wilson, in their description of the progress of the battle, show why these concerns developed.

Prior and Wilson also show clearly that the popular image of lines of soldiers walking stolidly across no man’s land to their deaths on 1 July was not typical.  One well-known incident was actually reserve troops advancing above ground from their lines to the British front line, and up to 30 percent of the British casualties on 1 July may have occurred behind their own front line.  Prior and Wilson record that, of the 80 battalions in the first attack on 1 July, 53 crept out into no man’s land close to the German wire and rushed the German line from there, ten rushed the German wire from their own parapet, no evidence exists for five, and the remaining twelve advanced at a steady pace across no man’s land, at least some of them because they were following a creeping barrage.

The instructions provided to lower level commanders were often so broad as to allow of almost any interpretation, speaking, for example, of ‘celerity of movement’, but at a ‘steady pace’, albeit that on occasions the ‘rapid advance of some lightly equipped men’ might be appropriate.  At least this left room for initiative! As Prior and Wilson note, Rawlinson eventually stated that ‘there can be no definite rules as regards the best formations for attack’.  They list the variety of tactical approaches used, including some units that advanced into no man’s land before the barrage lifted, while others used dispersed formations.  Only a few units advanced in the formal lines of popular image.  Some of these were among the most successful, for which Prior and Wilson give credit to the effectiveness of the artillery support they received.

One problem was that reports of successful penetration of the German lines led to additional attacks to reinforce a success that was, often, only a rumour.  The result was only to increase the casualties.  Compounding the problem, such reports generally led to the reduction or cessation of artillery support, to avoid hitting them, but making the advance of their supports even more dangerous.  Poor communications once an attack started plagued all commanders in this period.  Unfortunately, on too many occasions when communications were effective, the information provided was incorrect.

Australians recognise the ordeal of the 5th Australian Division at Fromelles, where 5533 casualties were suffered in just over 24 hours, as probably our worst day of the war.  It is sobering to realise that several British divisions suffered similar casualties in less than 12 hours on 1 July.  Fromelles, less than three weeks later, also produced scenes, found often on 1 July, where communication trenches were so blocked with dead and wounded that the only way to advance (or retire) was in the open.  Amazingly, however, one attacking battalion on 1 July escaped even a single death.  But another in the same division had 500 casualties. 

Too many of the attacks made after 1 July were rushed, despite demands from Haig and others for careful planning (often the rushed attacks were ordered by the same commanders who demanded careful preparation).  Haig’s ongoing conviction that the Germans were about to collapse contributed to this failing.  It was a further two years before the Germans did crumble, and even then their dour artillery and machine gunners continued to resist.  Haig’s demand on one occasion that there must be no ‘delay to organise a great attack which will take time to prepare’ cannot have helped clarify his desires to Rawlinson.  Later, Haig called for ‘careful and methodical’ preparation to be ‘pushed forward without delay’.  While Haig has a reputation for being inarticulate, perhaps on many occasions he was too loquacious? 

In preparation for the 15 September attacks, Haig sought bold action, which might yield ‘decisive results’.  As with his perpetual optimism about collapsing German morale, some of Haig’s thoughts seemed to have been around two years in advance of practicality.  His apparent confidence that tanks, in their first operation, would produce a breakthrough on a scale that would allow the cavalry to advance tens of miles into the German rear areas now seems little more than a flight of fancy. 

Six weeks later, Haig was still dreaming of a great cavalry breakthrough.  In late October, after extended heavy rain, when men on foot could not operate effectively, Haig and Gough contemplated an advance by three cavalry divisions.  The Battle of the Somme finally petered out in November, at Beaumont Hamel.  That attack was political, to give Haig a stronger bargaining position at a conference of Allied commanders.  Limited objectives were set, as to preserve his standing Haig needed at least a nominal victory, but definitely not a clear defeat.  The conference over, Haig restrained Gough’s enthusiasm for further advances in appalling weather.  After almost six months, Haig finally imposed his will on an over-eager subordinate (as a change from pushing an often reluctant one, Rawlinson, towards unachievable objectives).

Prior and Wilson’s section on the Australian contribution to the Somme battle is brief.  The initial refusal of Walker, commanding the 1st Australian Division, to be rushed into battle was commendable among so many examples of lesser moral courage.  The successful night attack to capture Pozières proved that wartime soldiers could carry out such manoeuvres, decried by Haig less than a fortnight earlier as ‘hardly … possible even in a peace manoeuvre’.  The next, hasty, attack to capture the OG lines showed once again the folly of such poorly planned efforts.  Charlton covers these events in more detail.

On four occasions between July and October 1918, the British planned for a great breakthrough to release the cavalry into the German rear areas.  In pursuit of this objective, they incurred some 432,000 casualties.  Of these, Prior and Wilson state that 71 came from the cavalry, whose actual participation might tactfully be described as minimal.  The casualties in individual British infantry divisions ranged from 2,000 (37th) to more than 17,000 (30th).  The three Australian divisions engaged had casualties ranging from 7248 (4th) to 8113 (2nd).  In addition, the 5th suffered 5533 casualties at Fromelles.  The reviewer’s great-uncle died at Pozières with the 4th Australian Division.

Before the Battle had commenced, Rawlinson commented that ‘I …  fully realise that it may be necessary to incur … risks in view of the importance of the object to be attained.’  This seems to foreshadow Haig's 22 August 1918 message to his army commanders that ‘[r]isks which a month ago would have been criminal to incur, ought now to be incurred as a duty’[v].  Unfortunately, during 1916, the risks came from poor British planning as much as from effective German defences.  Two more years were necessary to overcome these obstacles.

Prior and Wilson are scathing on the level of training received by reinforcements, but suggest that neither infantry training, nor the specific tactics adopted by the infantry, determined success; rather, it was the artillery which mattered.  This does not give due credit to the level of training required to follow closely behind a creeping barrage, or to capture machine gun posts missed by the artillery, which in that era was essentially an area, not a precision, weapon.  Prior and Wilson also mention the first shadows of ‘peaceful penetration’, conducted so successfully by the Australian Corps in mid-1918, but again seem to overlook the level of infantry training needed to carry out such operations (often without artillery support).

Prior and Wilson note that the futility of bombarding distant targets while the infantry had not yet attained their initial targets took some time to become obvious.  They conclude that the key to victory on the Somme was decisions at higher levels, particularly on the use of artillery.  With echoes of the French maxim that ‘artillery conquers, infantry occupies’, they conclude that ‘if fire support was adequate a well-trained division could exercise its skill and capture its objectives.  If such support was absent a Maxse, Tudor or Walker [divisional commanders with good reputations] could make no difference whatever’. 

Their belief in the primacy of the artillery is not shared by all writers.  Others, such as Travers and Griffiths,[vi] see the key to victory in cooperation between arms, particularly the infantry and artillery, in the absence of a decisive breakthrough weapon, a task neither cavalry nor tanks were then able to perform. 

The number of uncoordinated attacks launched after 1 July demonstrated a great failure of command.  Prior and Wilson show that only rarely did divisions of the same corps, much less adjacent corps or armies, cooperate in launching attacks.  Attacks were launched on narrow fronts (allowing the Germans to concentrate their resources against the attacking troops), without adequate preparation.  Artillery in adjacent formations was allowed to stand idle while attacking troops lacked sufficient support, and German artillery was not sufficiently subject to counter-battery fire.  Ensuring coordination between arms and between force elements was a task of commanders.

The Principles of War were not formalised until 1921[vii], but any thought that such principles might be found seems to have escaped the attention of many commanders.  As well, lessons already learned were often not passed on.  So, for example, the 38th (Welsh) Division, relieving the 7th Division, was not told of the value of the creeping barrage by its predecessor, which had gained some success by its use on 1 July.  As late as mid-September, one of the corps commanders had still not realised the value of the creeping barrage.

Another fault among commanders was an unfortunate propensity to blame the troops for lack of success.  After a failed attack on 8 August 1916 (two years later, 8 August would be a more propitious date), Rawlinson blamed the infantry for ‘want of go’ and inferior training.  Haig, for once thinking clearly, recognised that the problem was in the plan.  Directed by Haig to himself draw up a new plan, Rawlinson tried, but the result was not happy.  Haig still did not feel the need to replace Rawlinson, despite finding ‘something … wanting in the methods employed’. 

Later, army, corps and divisional commanders blamed the lack of ‘martial qualities’ and ‘poor spirit in the men’ for a failed attack on Schwaben Redoubt.  The divisional commander pointed to a lack of training and discipline, apparently oblivious that he had some responsibility for these points.  The battalions concerned had lost between 30 and 50 percent of their strength in the failed attack.  Presumably if they had lost 90 percent, all would have received praise.

On one occasion a corps commander rebelled openly at his orders.  In November, Cavan insisted that he would not repeat an unsuccessful attack until Rawlinson had personally seen conditions at the front.  Rawlinson agreed the attack was impossible, and persuaded Haig to scale it down.  Haig later reversed his decision; the operation proceeded and failed with 2000 casualties.  On other occasions, however, Rawlinson effectively ignored Haig’s orders to seek a deep penetration, and sought humbler targets.

Among the senior commanders, the corps commanders varied in skill.  At Hawthorn Redoubt on 1 July, for example, the corps commander decided to detonate a mine ten minutes before zero hour, and also to ‘lift’ the artillery barrage in his sector at the same time.  The result was to expose the attacking troops to enemy machine guns, with the inevitable result.  The point of the barrage was to suppress the enemy, so it should not have been difficult to forecast the result of lifting it early.  Lead battalions of the British 31st Division, which had advanced into no man’s land, were effectively destroyed before Zero Hour.  Other corps commanders had similar negative influence. 

Of the army commanders, Prior and Wilson dismiss Gough quickly as deserving only obscurity.  Rawlinson is seen as a more complicated figure, but lacked fixity of purpose, and essentially followed Haig’s conceptions.  Prior and Wilson show Haig and Rawlinson regularly at opposite ends of the spectrum.  When Rawlinson was seeking limited objectives, Haig would demand deeper thrusts.  When, however, Rawlinson was optimistic, Haig might be cautious. 

Unfortunately, when they synchronised it was almost always on the side of optimism, planning for unattainable objectives.  Rawlinson’s plan for 1 July changed from a limited advance in support of the French to a breakthrough for the cavalry, with Haig seeming to envisage a breakthrough battle on Napoleonic lines, a concept he returned to later, ignoring the technical changes that had eliminated the possibility by 1916.  Even Rawlinson found this concept impossible to take seriously.

The British government was not well served by Robertson in its relationship with Haig.  Robertson’s interventions were at times bizarre, as in the figures he offered at different times for German casualties.  Churchill, not then in the Cabinet, estimated that British losses on the first two days were five times German.  Robertson, responding indirectly, claimed on 1 August that the Germans had by then lost at least 1.25 million men, compared to British losses of 160,000.  It is hard to accept that Robertson believed the German total, or that of 3.575 million German losses since August 1914 that he offered four days later. 

By late August, Robertson admitted that he ‘did not really know’ the level of German casualties.  The politicians, however, did not question the figures, or other contradictory advice Robertson offered them.  Writing after the war, with assistance from the German Reichsarchiv, Churchill concluded that total German casualties from July to October were approximately 200,000.  Others incurred during the preliminary bombardment, and in November, suggest that the German total of 237,000 from June to December, just over half of the British/Commonwealth total, is reasonable. 

While the politicians became progressively more concerned about the absence of worthwhile progress during the first 10 weeks of the battle, their reaction seemed to consist only of looking for other theatres where action could occur, not for the actual causes of failure on the Western Front.  By October, Lloyd George and Robertson fell out over Robertson’s complaint that the War Committee was seeking alternative advice.  Lloyd George’s reaction, that he was not a mere dummy of his adviser, was reasonable.  Unfortunately, he was not prepared to force the constitutional point (or at least not until 1918).

Retrospect

The major problem for the British command was their slowness to learn.  That lessons (such as the need for approach trenches) were learned quickly in I ANZAC cannot be attributed solely to colonial flexibility of mind, as the corps commander (Birdwood) and the commanders of 1st and 4th Australian Divisions (Walker and Cox) were regular officers in British or Indian service.  Some British commanders absorbed lessons rapidly; others never seemed able to do so.

The British inability to coordinate the operations of adjacent formations enabled the Germans to concentrate on defeating each limited attack.  Twenty-five years later, Rommel in North Africa was frequently able to defeat elements of the 8th Army in succession, rather than having to face the whole force simultaneously.  The more things change … !

Of the British leadership, in 1916 Haig and Rawlinson learned slowly, Gough hardly at all (although by August at Pozières he was pushing for the front to be held lightly, to minimise casualties from German artillery).  In the end, responsibility for failure on the battlefield belongs to Haig, who ‘proved incapable of coordinating the actions of his two armies, … [nor did he] seek to impose his authority on the battlefield’. 

While Haig adopted new technology, he failed to ‘overcome pre-war conceptions of a simple and understood theory of war’[viii], and persisted in relying on the cavalry as a battle or war-winning weapon of exploitation.  Objectives ranging from 50 to 100 miles away were set.  None were ever in reach.  Senior officers, like Haig and too many of his subordinate commanders, remained the captives of concepts learned in their youth, to which they tried to fit new technology.  Younger leaders, with less time vested in their careers, could allow technology to drive the concepts.  Can armies ever overcome this problem? 

Prior and Wilson convincingly demolish a number of myths of the Somme.  One of these is that Haig lacked imagination.  To the contrary, his optimism about forever imminent collapses of German morale, combined with a romantic attraction for a Napoleonic style of warfare, led him to set tasks for the cavalry that were beyond the capacity of his force, given the technology of 1916.  It remains debatable whether at any time after late 1914 the cavalry could operate freely in a relatively constrained area on the Western Front dominated by those two efficient killers, artillery and machine guns.  The cavalry successes in the Middle East were achieved in a region less densely populated with soldiers and weapons.

It may have been their isolation from most classes of civilian society in pre-war Britain that led the generals to underestimate the intelligence of the New and Territorial Army troops at their disposal, and hence to a reluctance to plan complex manoeuvres.  Yet those commanders who did try different tactical techniques were often successful.  Haig initially opposed Rawlinson’s plan for night attacks early in the Battle because the ‘troops are not highly trained and disciplined’ and the attack ‘would hardly be considered even in a peace manoeuvre’.  Yet as an alternative he proposed an attack that involved a highly complicated turning manoeuvre, and open to a flanking German counter-attack.  Haig, as so often during the battle, could not make a clear decision.  When eventually, the night attack proceeded, the troops deployed successfully, the German front system was captured quickly, and the second line soon after.

The stark contrast between Lincoln’s trust in Grant’s military skills, demonstrated in his letter to Grant quoted at the beginning of this article, and the British government’s mistrust of Robertson’s and Haig’s skills, is shown by a minor incident detailed in Chapter 2 of Prior and Wilson’s book.  When the War Committee queried the value of maintaining a large force of cavalry in France, given the demands it made on shipping space for fodder, it escalated into a challenge to the government’s constitutional authority.  However, the whole incident quickly blew over.  The government asserted, but failed to exert, its authority, while the army failed to even try to convince the government that there was value in maintaining the cavalry!  This set the stage for the rest of 1916. 

One wonders whether a Lincoln in Downing Street might have had the moral courage to sack Haig.  Under the United States Constitution, Lincoln was Grant’s Commander-in-Chief, and he had previously sacked even popular generals like McClellan when he lost faith in them.  His trust was founded on involvement in Grant’s appointment.  Asquith (and later Lloyd George) were in a different position as constitutional advisers to their sovereign, but in practice the Cabinet had appointed, and could have removed, Haig.  They held back from this decision, while neither trusting, nor fully supporting, him. 

The ultimate failure on the Somme rests with the civilian leadership.  The War Committee was less than thorough in its investigations of the plans, particularly the important issue of the relative balance of artillery.  Its members did not act when their concerns about progress and casualties increased.  Part of the government’s problem was that it could see no realistic alternative to operations on the Western Front, but the War Committee lacked the nerve to assert its authority over Haig and Robertson, and thus failed the soldiers in the trenches. 

However, perhaps the War Committee’s problem was not only the lack of alternative theatres of war, but also of alternative candidates for command.  During the Second World War, Brooke, then Chief of the Imperial General Staff, has been described as spending hours poring ‘over the Army List in search of suitable divisional commanders’.[ix]  He is said to have wanted to be ‘merciless with divisional and corps commanders whom he thought not up to their job, but he did not think he could find better men to replace them’.[x] 

That lack of alternatives seemed to be a problem also in the earlier war.  It is hard to imagine Robertson poring over the Army List seeking replacements for Haig, Gough or Rawlinson, and neither the other Army commanders in 1916 (Monro, Plumer and Allenby) nor most of the corps commanders, commented on above, stand out as obvious alternatives.  While the War Committee lacked the moral courage to replace leaders in whose ability it had lost confidence, it also lacked options.  Faced with a similar problem, Lincoln chose a man who would not have met any test set by Robertson, but who produced results. 

Conclusion

There may be good reasons why after two years of war the British command had not learned what tactics would work, but it is difficult to discern such reasons.  That many lessons were only sinking in by November 1916, after five more months of heavy fighting, beggars belief.  While it is never possible to offer certainty in alternative versions of history, it seems unlikely that concentrating on ‘bite and hold’ operations within range of the British artillery could have produced less productive results.  If these operations had been coordinated between divisions, corps and armies, they may even have produced better results than actually achieved. 

Another recent book on the Battle of the Somme[xi] suggests that it was a necessary precursor to victory in 1918, because of the experience it provided.  While there might be some truth in this suggestion, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that sufficient experience could have been gained with fewer casualties and in less time.

Despite the quote below, Prior and Wilson would probably believe that there was too much German and too little British artillery on the Somme, and that the British artillery available was not used to best effect.  Charlton might comment that neither were the other arms and services used to full effect.  Pace Prior and Wilson, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that even better use of the artillery would not have changed the result, unless Haig, Rawlinson, Gough and their corps commanders had improved their ability to make best use of all the resources available to them.

Let the final word on the Somme come from the level of those who fought the battle:

“There’s too much fuckin’ artillery in this bloody war” said Jakes irritably, as though they had all failed to appreciate the fact.  “You don’t get no sleep.”

Frederick Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune, Peter Davies, 1977, p222[xii]

JOHN DONOVAN

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[i] Quoted in John Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire, Myths and Anti-Myths of War 1861-1945, Book Club Associates, London, p64.

[ii] C.E.W. Bean, 1982, Volume III, The A.I.F. in France, 1916, University of Queensland Press facsimile reprint, p306.

[iii] Bean, Volume III, pp442 and 863.

[iv] Mark Johnston and Peter Stanley, 2005, Alamein The Australian Story, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, p254.

[v] Quoted in John Terraine, 1982, White Heat The New Warfare 1914-18, Book Club Associates, London, p321.

[vi] Tim Travers, 1987, The Killing Ground, The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare 1900-1918, Allen and Unwin, London, p250; Paddy Griffith, 1994, Battle Tactics of the Western Front, The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916-18, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, pp198-200.

[vii] Shelford Bidwell, 1973, Modern Warfare A Study of Men, Weapons and Theories, Allen Lane, London, p21.

[viii] Travers, The Killing Ground, p252.

[ix] David French, 2000, Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War Against Germany, 1939-1945, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, p1.

[x] French, Raising Churchill’s Army, p202.

[xi] Gary Sheffield, 2004, The Somme, Cassell Military Paperbacks.

[xii] Quoted in Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire, p127.