James Brett takes issue with our
interpretation of the Somme.
After my pleasant surprise at your refreshingly ‘revisionist’ editorial, I was disappointed with the lead article in the February issue concerning the Somme. An opportunity to reinvestigate the generally misunderstood Great War seems to have been missed. Instead we had the traditional view of ‘lions lead by donkeys’ with countless innocents sent to the slaughter by callous red-tabs sipping port in their lavish châteaux. There were the habitual rogue photographs captioned ‘a British officer leads his men over the top at the Somme on 1 July 1916’, which were, in fact, a pair of stills taken from a newsreel staged several weeks later for the benefit of the cameras.
Methods of attack
More disturbing was the perpetuation of the myth of ‘men walking upright across no-man’s land’ due to the orders of ‘those ensconced in comfortable chateaux far behind the line’. Study Haig and Rawlinson’s official orders prior to the battle and there is no mention made of this mode of advance. Instead, it was largely down to the corps and divisional commanders to determine the most appropriate way of crossing no-man’s-land in each sector. Haig and Rawlinson gave their commanders the freedom to experiment with various solutions to the unique tactical problems they faced.
Admittedly some did employ linear lines on the morning of 1 July, such as Pulteney’s III Corps, but this was by no means generic. Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps crept out into no-man’s-land under cover of darkness and was able to pounce on the German frontline troops within seconds of the barrage lifting. Congreve’s XIII Corps, on the right of the British line, abandoned their heavy packs and doubled across no-man’s-land in platoon files, making effective use of dead ground. Indeed, 30 Division only fell short of their objective due to the necessity to secure their flanks against the slow progress of the corps to their left.
Similarly, Rawlinson did not enforce a uniform artillery plan, and in some sectors the BEF’s gunnery was far from ‘ineffective’. Maxse’s 18th Division utilised a creeping barrage starting in front of their own trenches and providing his infantry with invaluable cover, allowing them to reach all of their objectives with relatively light casualties. This success was noted by the high command and before the close of the battle several other divisions had experimented with this methodology.
The notion that the BEF’s commanders were disconnected from the realities of industrial warfare is largely incorrect. Haig’s diary shows that he spent most afternoons touring units under his command, and while his time in frontline trenches was undoubtedly limited, he and his subordinates were well aware of the conditions their troops faced. Further, the term ‘châteaux generals’ is misleading. Pulteney’s HQ for III Corps comprised the shell-damaged kitchen of a French farmhouse, barely ten metres square. By the close of 1916, 28 brigadier-generals had been killed in action.
Men and matériel
I accept, however, that it is easy to select specific examples to support a historian’s viewpoint on almost any battle. Nevertheless, I felt that your article missed the principal lesson which the BEF learnt from its operation on the Somme – an oversight in a series which aims to trace the development of the British Army – namely that the army’s logistical and administrative system was insufficient to maintain operations on the scale now demanded.
As with any modern industrialised conflict, the Great War was essential about ‘stuff’. Victory was often determined by the side that could bring the greatest weight of men and matériel to bear on a vital point at the critical time. As your article correctly recognised, the conundrum of the 1914-1918 battlefield was that the defender could move men and matériel into the battle at a far greater pace than the attacker – thus the debate surrounding ‘bite-and-hold’ or ‘breakthrough’.
At the Somme, Germany could rely upon all the technology of the 20th century – steam, internal combustion, the telephone – to transport and organise their armies in the field. On the opposite side, the BEF and the French had to rely upon the centuries-old transport of horse and foot to convey their reserves, artillery, and supplies across a zone devastated of all infrastructure. Communications largely relied upon the pace of the runner.
Faced with this technological enigma, it is easy to conclude that Haig should have abandoned any notion of a grand breakthrough offensive, and that to not do was an egotistical folly. But the reality was he was given little choice. For the leaders of France and Britain, so long as German troops occupied a vast swathe of France’s rich industrial heartland, a strategy of restricted attacks that guaranteed a protracted conflict was unacceptable both to the politicians and general public. Pride and French sovereignty were at stake: the BEF’s job was to expel the invader as soon as possible. When Haig and Robertson addressed the war cabinet in January 1916 with a proposal for only limited offensives that year, they were angrily shouted down by cabinet members.
Lack of munitions
Not only were unrealistic demands made of the BEF leadership; they also lacked the tools to accomplish the job. It was not until the late spring of 1917 that sufficient quantities of heavy artillery, munitions, and general supplies were available for the BEF’s commanders to sustain effective offensive action on the scale demanded.
The pre-war Army’s only munitions source was Woolwich, and this was an arsenal rather than a factory, with shell manufacture effectively a cottage industry. At Neuve Chapelle, in March 1915, Rawlinson’s IV Corps used a hurricane bombardment to achieve an impressive first-day lodgement. But his artillery was concentrated on a front barely two miles wide, and he expended his corps’ entire munitions quota for the next six months.
War production was rapidly stepped up, but this created issues with quality. At Loos almost 60% of the shells fired failed to explode. The ‘shell crisis’ of 1915, as the Territorials were effectively sacrificed due to a lack of supplies, brought about the fall of Asquith’s government. Only by 1916 were British manufacturers producing something near the quantity of matériel required.
Still, the broadening of the front to be attacked on the Somme spread the BEF’s artillery too thin. While both Haig and Rawlinson agreed with their artillery advisors, Birch and Uniacke, that a hurricane bombardment was the most effective method of breaking the German trench-line, they lacked sufficient quantities of heavy artillery to achieve this. In order to drop the same poundage of shells per yard of trench as at Neuve Chapelle, they were forced to adopt a long bombardment. The rapid expansion of the BEF also meant that the quality of the new gunners was variable. The bombardment therefore lacked the concentration and accuracy of twelve months later.
The legacy of the Somme
The Somme’s true legacy was not in the field of strategy and tactics, but logistics and administration. Your article accurately describes the sheer scale of matériel amassed prior to the Somme, by far the largest operation yet conducted by the BEF. However, the General Staffs A and Q Branches, which dealt with logistics and administration, were still operating along the principles of the pre-war Field Service Regulations.
During the summer of 1916 war production ceased to be a problem, but the BEF’s administration found itself unable to cope with the sheer scale of the offensive. The inefficient system all but ground to a halt as conditions on forward supply-lines worsened and demand increased, an unending downwards spiral. One of the principle reasons subsequent attacks on the Somme failed to restart the advance was that the logistical organisation was unable to supply the engaged divisions with the resources required to achieve local superiority.
The administrative failings at the Somme were well recognised by both Haig and Lloyd George. It is no coincidence that shortly after the offensive’s conclusion Eric Geddes, former managing-director of the LMS railway, was appointed as Director-General of Transportation, his mission to overhaul completely the BEF’s administrative system. His sole remit was efficiency.
Two of the most important changes made were a streamlining of the BEF’s port systems, greatly increasing the tonnage passing through Dunkirk, Boulogne, and Le Havre, and greater British operational control over the French Nord Railway system, upon which the BEF was largely reliant for its supplies.
In the two months prior to the Somme, the controllers of the Nord system had prioritised French movements, rationing the BEF to 150,000 tons per week and causing a huge backlog at the Channel ports. Geddes also reformed the forward supply system, investing heavily in road maintenance and motor transport, as well as hugely expanding the BEF’s use of narrow-gauge railways, which were suited to the often difficult ground conditions of the Western Front. In January 1917 the War Department Light Railways operated 97 miles of track and conveyed a weekly average of 10,325 tons. By September 1917 they operated 623 miles and transported a weekly average of 210,808 tons; more than the entire standard-gauge network in June 1916.
1917
This enormous logistical reform and the effect it had on the BEFs operational capabilities were to be the true legacy of the Somme. By the late spring of 1917, Britain’s generals could begin to operate without the supply restriction which had plagued almost all of their offensives thus far. For the first time they were free to experiment with matériel-based solutions to the tactical obstacles they faced.
This freedom ultimately bred innovation and success, first with the spectacular capture of Vimy Ridge by Julian Byng’s Canadian Corps, and later with the impressive advance of Third Army at Cambrai. Both successes depended upon diligent logistical preparation of the immediate battlefield.
Yes, the BEF’s leadership made mistakes at the Somme. Yes, thousands of men died in terrible conditions for very little gain. But to dismiss the offensive as an incompetent and pointless sacrifice is short-sighted.
The Somme was an important stepping stone on the BEF’s learning curve as it grew from a tiny colonial police force into a mass industrialised army – an army that was ultimately capable of utilising its matériel-intense operational methodology to outfight the German Army on the Western Front during the second half of 1918. This evolution, which took less than four years, seems hardly reflective of a leadership which was ‘incompetent, callous, and stupid’.
Archibald Wavell once said, ‘It is knowledge of the mechanics of war, not of the principles of strategy, that distinguishes a good leader from a bad one.’ I believe this to be equally true of the military historian. I look forward to reading your account of Amiens and the next phase in the development of the British Army.