When I read Harvey Pitcher’s Comment of 1 July about the Bishop of London’s address in Westminster Abbey commemorating the eve of the Battle of the Somme, I took it that the Bishop was quoting the order to WALK across No Man’s Land as a dire example of ‘lions led by donkeys’. Mr Pitcher has now emailed me to correct that impression, saying that the Bishop ‘listed having to walk through No Man’s Land as one of the many horrors the PBI [Poor Bloody Infantry] faced at the Somme’. The full text of the Bishop’s address is now available at http://www.london.anglican.org/articles/commemoration-eve-somme-westminster-abbey/ and confirms that; although the Bishop does set it in the context of Haig’s and his generals’ over-confidence.
Subsequent research by me swiftly revealed that ‘walking’ was in any case likely to be the predominant way in which the troops covered the ground, because (a) they were carrying 70 lbs and more of impedimenta, and (b) the distance to the enemy lines varied between 400 yards and 1500! The best analysis I have found of why they were carrying so much and what the actual tactics of the advance were meant to be, is by Stephen Tempest at https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-on-the-first-day-of-the-Battle-of-the-Somme-British-soldiers-were-mown-down-in-their-tens-of-thousands-because-they-were-ordered-to-walk-not-run-or-rush-towards-the-German-trenches-in-formation .
What no-one does, as far as I can see, is quote the actual words in which the ‘order to walk’ was expressed. The Bishop implies that Haig and his generals ‘decided that the inexperienced infantry should advance not by the tested method of “fire and movement”, with some lying down to cover the movement of their comrades with rifle volleys’ because they blithely believed the artillery barrage of the previous five days had completely destroyed the front line and the troops would encounter no resistance. But reference to the actual Order might elucidate whether the ‘tested method’ was positively forbidden, or commanders could change to it if necessary. In any case, footage and narrative reveal that in parts of the front, at least, the infantry did surge forward as we usually imagine them doing (see Damian Grant’s Comment of 27 July and Clare Hopkins’s of 5 June).
Since my posts about the Somme on 1 July, 8 July, 12 July and 21 July, I have actually read Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s recently published Somme: Into the Breach, whereas when I referred to it in my first and last posts I was only going by newspaper articles about it. It turns out that I was wrong when I said, citing Sebag-Montefiore, that Rawlinson, Haig’s second-in-command, had ‘ignored the opinion of his intelligence officers, formed from interrogating deserters, that the German machine-gun placements were still in one piece’. In fact, the information obtained from the German deserters did indicate that the redoubts and dugouts in the northern section of the line were still intact, but British intelligence officers jumped from the deserters’ statements that there were weaknesses at Mametz and Montauban (southern section) to the conclusion that the British bombardment had been effective along the whole German line! In Sebag-Montefiore’s words, ‘Haig and Rawlinson were given to understand that the dugouts had been destroyed all along the front, leading them to conclude, as they did: why not attack everywhere in that case with more or less equal force?’ (p. 198).
Sebag-Montefiore’s book has completely changed my perceptions of the first day of the Somme — the warfare was totally different from Ypres 1 and Gallipoli — and I heartily recommend it, although it is a bit loosely written. Let me qualify that last statement, though: since the perception of the battle that I am left with is itself of a much looser event over much bigger spaces than I had imagined it, Sebag-Montefiore’s open-weave technique is appropriate and effective.
As I read on, I became more and more aware of a syndrome at work compounded of amateurism, false optimism, inefficiency, rigidity, inhumanity, plain stupidity and other attitudes, that is all too familiar to me as ‘Edwardianism’. In an admirably short and concentrated appraisal in his last chapter (p. 513), Sebag-Montefiore writes:
My final judgement on Haig and Rawlinson is as follows: Both of them failed to give sufficient weight to what they were told by their artillery experts, and neither applied common sense when planning the first attacks. You didn’t need to be an inspired general to learn about the limitations of the artillery, which was the principal means of allowing a troop assault to succeed.
They, the top generals at the Somme, did not apply their common sense?! There could hardly be a more damning condemnation of them.
I am very pleased to see this reconsideration on your part, Patrick. I nearly wrote in reply to an earlier blog of yours which rather took the line that the generals were stupid and uncaring of their soldiers’ lives. The best analysis I have come across of that first day’s disaster is in Martin Middlebrook’s “The First Day on the Somme”. He too focuses on the extra time that it took soldiers to walk rather than run across no-man’s land, and points out that where that instruction was ignored and saps were dug forward from which soldiers rushed across to the German lines, then initial success was achieved. He too points out that Rawlinson was the only infantryman – and a good one with a fine reputation from the Boer War – among the senior generals and that the cavalryman Haig was unwilling to over-rule him. Rawlinson assessed that his infantry would not be able use fire and movement (see below) and that they would only be able to walk forward. And that’s where it all started to go wrong. So, would the armchair critics please put themselves into Rawlinson’s position and, having determined that you had to send your attacking infantry forward at a walking pace carrying all their impedimenta over the ravaged ground of no-man’s land towards a determined and resolute enemy, please decide what story you are going to tell them to induce them to climb cheerfully out of their trenches at the appointed hour and begin that fateful advance. You too might very well come up with something confident about the devastation that will have been wreaked by the greatest artillery bombardment in the history of the British army to date.
Fire and movement is the essence of all modern military tactics. One group shoots to keep the enemy’s heads down while the other advances some distance; then they change roles. It can be done at various levels of command. When it is done by small groups of infantry it is called “pepper-potting” and it is very effective, particularly when advancing in contact across open country. But it is difficult to do well, even by experienced and well trained infantry, and Rawlinson knew that those in his Fourth Army, only formed in January 2016, were neither. At the micro level it needs flexibility in timings and boundaries, and it gets more difficult without reliable battlefield communications – the curse of all World War I operations – and the consequent need to tie the infantry to a rigid, pre-arranged artillery fire plan. And it gets even more difficult when you start to take casualties among your junior leaders, as you undoubtedly will, and the momentum wavers when those who have gone to ground become increasingly reluctant to get up and advance again. Maybe in 1916 Rawlinson had a point. Certainly when the Germans decided after much debate that this was the way forward for their great attack of March 1918, the Kaiserschlacht, they created an elite force of carefully selected and trained stormtroopers to lead the advance; the rest plodded along behind just like the infantry of 1916, ready to consolidate the gains.
Rawlinson was not a fool. He was not relieved of his command, and in 1918 he planned and commanded the Fourth Army in one of the greatest feats of arms in the history of the British army, the rolling attack from August through to November which broke out of the trenches, mastered the very different art of open warfare and finally broke the German army and its morale.
Dear Charles, thank you so much for this superb Comment. I have long felt that what was needed was the view of an experienced professional military man and historian, and you have given it! I personally have no quibbles at all with what you have said; quite the contrary. In particular, I think your reference to communications being ‘the curse’ of WW1 operations and the impact of this on the fire plan is very important and easily overlooked by us armchair analysts. I feel that your contribution has brought all-round vision to the current discussion of the Somme, and I believe followers of this blog should deeply appreciate it. I think you prove that from July 1916 Rawlinson embarked on a learning curve that led to victory.