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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… on
July 1 the British and French Armies began an onslaught along a 25-mile front
north and south of the river Somme, Gommecourt to Foucaucourt-en-Santerre. Part
of an Allied strategy to co-ordinate attacks on all fronts, devised the
previous December – though repeatedly replanned in point of detail – it had two
strangely different outcomes.
Of
course, infamous in the UK memory is the "worst day in the history of the
British Army", July 1 itself. The 4th Army attacked between Gommecourt
(see FootSoldierSam speaks, below, for my father's personal account from the
trenches) and the Albert-Bapaume road, gained almost nothing and suffered 57,470
casualties (19,240 dead).
Field
Marshall Haig acknowledged this disaster the following day, by ordering the
small gains at Gommecourt relinquished and, contrary to the wishes of the
French commander General Joffre, redirecting some of his remaining forces to
support the French Army – who had achieved a success since largely forgotten by
their Allies, so overwhelmingly grievous was the British experience. Despite
reducing their strength to reinforce Verdun, the French Fourth and Sixth Armies
advanced up to six miles against the German Second Army. Casualty figures for
the Somme are subject to much controversy among historians, but one standard
accounting of the first day shows the French losses as a remarkably low (in the
circumstances) 1,590 and German as 10-12,000.
That
same week the French also did well at Verdun, repulsing the Germans at Fleury
(June 27) and Hill 304 (29) and recapturing Fort Thiaumont (30).
Other
Allied successes saw the Russian Army's Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern Front
continue to prosper in Latvia and the Ukraine, despite German counterattacks;
and the Italian Army pushed towards a conclusion its defence against the Austrian
Strafexpedition, driving their forces
north again with victories at Postina and Arsiero (June 27) and Pescala (28).
Meanwhile,
my father Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from
Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), was in action on the Somme,
throughout the build-up – daily fighting throughout the spring, despite the
historic starting point being designated as July 1 when the grand attack began.
After a
winter at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, and three months recovering in Egypt, his
2/1st City Of London Royal Fusiliers (250 survivors out of 1,000) had moved to
France in late April. At Rouen the Army disbanded their
Battalion and transferred the remnants to other outfits – Sam to the
Kensingtons,
about May 14. They had enough Signallers so he became an ordinary Lance Jack in
the line. Through much of June, the Kensingtons put in a long stint in and
around the front line at Hébuterne, opposite the German positions at Gommecourt – the British
artillery bombardment initiating the Somme attack started on June 25…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, Sam finally donned his extra stripe
to acknowledge a (detested) temporary promotion to Corporal, he survived more
hair-raising scrapes in No Man's Land at night, and was astonished and moved to
see some school children at play just behind the front line.
This
week's blog covers the notorious July 1 – as ever, just from one man's point of view
as my father stressed, asserting no wider knowledge than what he personally
experienced. Brace yourself if you mean to continue, it makes grievous, painful
reading. I would add that the editor's endnotes I include on the blog, and
which are often of just passing, detailed interest, on this occasion are
crucial to understanding what my father and his comrades did and endured on
that day.
In
Remembrance, for Dad and all of them:
‘After
a spell in that village, which appeared almost remote from the perils of war
although within marching distance of the Front, we were once again to return to
the trenches. Information circulated one afternoon, roughly 24 hours before we
must depart*. We had been training for a few hours each day but, on our last
day in this comparative little heaven, we were freed of all duties except
really necessary chores.
I strolled around the village noting the utter ruin of some
houses and marveling at others’ apparent immunity from damage. The place was in
a valley, fairly shallow, but the ridge on the western side shielded it from
direct enemy observation, so only the odd plane would see anything worth
reporting. Up to that time, at any rate, it had provided a very fortunate spot
for troops who rested there, savouring something of its peacefulness.
As evening approached, I felt the sadness of leaving this
unexpectedly cosy haven. A final sleep on the comfortable wire netting, the
packing up of all our bare requirements for survival up front, and our trek
westward began.
In the last three or four kilometres we slowed, for then we
moved in darkness, in two files, while giving complete attention to maintaining
contact with one another. The mere thought of wandering alone in that black
gloom with no road or track visible, no buildings, great holes here and there
usually containing a foot or two of water into which one might topple… these
things kept one keenly alert, as did the knowledge that, in this new era of the
conscripted soldier, trust and faith in the good intentions of one’s comrades
was dead or dying, and a man wandering away from his unit, no matter under what
conditions, would attract suspicions of trying to “dodge the column”.
We found the section of trenches we took over in fine condition.
The Engineers had installed their “revetting with expanded metal” system quite
splendidly, as well as a sump under the duckboard floor of the front trench,
perfect drainage, and so superior to the old, sloppy, mud floor on which we had
often slithered.
The Regiment had formed a machine-gun unit by combining all the
Battalions’ heavy machine guns and their gunners under the control of a
separate authority at, I understood, Brigade level. They had become a force to
be reckoned with by the enemy. Well behind our machine guns lay numerous
batteries of field guns which fired 18-pound shells, and still further back the
heavy howitzers whose shells tore great strips out of the atmosphere as they
roared towards targets in Jerry rear positions – borrowed from the Navy, some
of these big guns, to back up what was going to be a massive British attack…
Each day, the number of low-flying Germans increased. They just
roared over our trenches and, heading towards our rear positions, vanished from
sight. They never returned, which puzzled us, until we learned they used
another route well beyond visibility from our positions. We got used to these
forays and so, perhaps, did the people in the rear who surely should have paid
close attention to these unusual tactics…
On the day – which followed a
period of massive bombardment of enemy positions to destroy their barbed wire
defences etc – our Battalion was to occupy the ordinary front line, and our
most advanced trenches where my Platoon found itself. The support trenches
behind us sheltered a kilted Regiment who would come through our line to start
the infantry attack, at which our men in the front trench would advance over
the German front trench – by then in the hands of the Jocks – and go on to take
the German support trenches. Finally, from the advance trenches, we would pass
over all those people and clean up and occupy the German rear positions.
Perhaps surprisingly, the Germans easily matched our artillery
bombardment for several days before our attack. Their shells passed over us,
the infantry and – not that we knew it at the time – caused massive destruction
to our artillery, damaging guns, and killing or wounding their crews, thus
rendering our bombardment less intense than expected. The low-flying German
planes must have photographed all those so carefully camouflaged guns and
calculated their distances from German batteries…
Meanwhile, enemy machine guns massed at strategic points and
they stood their field artillery almost wheel to wheel, or so it seemed, and
the whole area became an inferno of explosions and bullets.
When the kilted lads advanced, their numbers decreased
alarmingly with every forward stride. Meanwhile, our own advanced position was
being blown apart piecemeal; pockets of survivors lost touch with their
leadership and the nearest NCO had to make decisions… If he could only see
ahead that our first line of attack was destroyed before capturing its
objective, that its members lay dead and wounded on the ground ahead or
grotesquely draped over the enemy barbed wire which our bombardment should have
destroyed, then when should he take his small force over the top?
Some small groups did from time to time go ahead until killed,
wounded and captured. Some dedicated officers achieved marvels within limits
set by the powerful enemy, but in the end this massively prepared attack
failed.
Nothing was gained in our sector. Many good men were lost. Many
normally strong fellows were reduced to trembling, inarticulate old-looking
men.
Our beautiful front line had become an uneven shallow ditch for
most of its length, the expanded metal revetments either lost under piles of
blasted earth or just sunk deep down in shell holes.
The wounded men who could not walk or crawl back from No Man’s
Land were, in many instances, simply left there for hours following the failed
attack because of the mentally and physically exhausted condition of their
comrades who had survived.
I saw a Scot who, though not wounded, just sat and shook. His
head nodded, his arms flailed feebly, his legs sort of throbbed, his eyes
obviously saw nothing.
One of our usually most happy and physically strong men was
crying non-stop while violently protesting about something. He’d been buried up
to his shoulders in earth and, even in that inferno, men nearby had paused in
their advance to free him, yet he had this strange grievance.
So, possibly, nervous shock afflicted everyone there to a
greater or lesser degree, even though fear no longer weighed on us as earlier
in the day.
Most of the survivors were stunned into near speechlessness for
a time, then the strong ones initiated reorganisation with a view to resisting
the enemy counter-attack which would surely follow our failure…
But Jerry must have also lost heavily in both men and morale;
the German artillery gradually became less active and communication between
scattered groups on our side more easy to maintain, so a front of some sort was
re-established which could resist if not stop an enemy attack**.
During the hours of darkness,
we began to receive assistance from the rear – food and the occasional tot of
rum, anything which could be transported forward in the awful conditions
prevailing. A gradual return to usefulness replaced the varying degrees of
stupor and inertia which for many were the invisible wounds following many
hours of explosion and upheaval, shattering to eardrums and nerves… and ruinous
to pre-conceived ideas of what should be occurring according to plans worked
out in grandiose HQ châteaux many kilometres away in the rear.
Meanwhile, the work of holding positions with a proportion of
survivors, and allowing small parties to search for and bring in wounded men
was organised by the remaining officers and the unshakeable RSM, who won
praises from everyone who chanced to be near him during the battle***.
Our Company – such as it was now, after its brush with hell –
remained in what had been the front line. By dawn, most of us were ready to
stop where we stood – crouched, rather – for under cover of dark we had
searched for and found many wounded men, their chances of living diminishing
with every hour in which they lay exposed with wounds untended.
We felt that our work was very valuable and the joy with which
injured men greeted their rescuers was reward indeed. Perhaps the failure of
the massive attack had left us with a sense of guilt which the intensive rescue
work relieved.
So urgent was the need for rapid recovery of the wounded, that
RAMC men from hospitals and dressing stations moved forward at night, having
volunteered to join the search in No Man’s Land. They gave initial treatment
and care during rapid removal to the appropriate medical centre further back.
All this, of course, they carried out under risk from enemy guns, a new
situation for hospital workers who would only have heard the odd long-range
shell or a few rare bombs from aircraft explode. So shells bursting around them
while they worked did cause them some excitement. They saved many lives.
In the front line – the model for all front lines until it went
up in dust and smoke – our Company had some sort of cover still, but only in
places, and much work would have to be done to make it suitable for occupation.
That job wasn’t ours, so we kept watch and rested through the day after the
battle, in usable sections of the trench or in large holes.’
* The British Army’s Somme attack had
long been planned for June 29. The order to postpone until July 1 came through
on June 27. The Kensingtons, who had been in the line June 9-21 then rested,
were ready to move out on the 28th, but remained in Souastre for another 48
hours until 8.25pm on Friday, June 30 – in case anyone’s confused, the various
observations and anecdotes Sam mused on in the couple of pages after he refers
to leaving the village are clearly from his various experience of the Front
over the previous weeks. During this postponement, one extraordinary thing
happened to the Kensingtons; the Brigade command replaced their Commanding
Officer! On the 27th, says the Battalion War Diary, “Major HWH Young of (7th Batt.) Leicestershire regiment arrived with
his batman”. The following day, “Temp. Lt Col WHW Young” (I don’t know whether
the change of rank was the diarist’s mistake or an overnight promotion) took
over as CO from Lieutenant Colonel HJ Stafford who promptly “proceeded on leave
to England”. Young’s notes, attached to the Kensingtons’ WD by the National
Archive, say he was rushed in by car from Étaples on the 27th – to Stafford’s
astonishment. So Young went to Brigade HQ to seek an explanation. He was told
the Battalion, being City boys, were “not good at digging”. Perhaps seeking a
clue as to how a change of CO might effect an improvement in this area by July
1, he asked about Stafford; the Brigadier said he “knew very little” of the
ousted CO – who’d led a Battalion under his command for five months. Young
writes that he found this “an extraordinary statement”. Still, of course, he
had to then try to get to know his officers at least, given they’d all convene
on the battlefield within two days. Strange/interesting that my father didn’t
recall this change at the top as a significant event from where he stood.
** Something odd struck me, as maybe it strikes you,
about my father’s account of July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle Of The
Somme; at times, it’s as if he’s not a participant, but a remote observer. This
is very different to the way he writes about other battlefields – in Gallipoli
earlier, and subsequent experiences on the Western Front, including his
front-line account of fighting against the German Spring Offensive around Arras
in March, 1918.
When he wrote
his story, back in the 1970s, and I first read it, section by section, at his
request querying anything I didn’t understand, one of my questions – I still
have the handwritten sheets – was “[Writing about the Somme] you cover the
general situation but, for once, don’t say what was happening to you – were you
in the… advanced trench throughout and therefore a ‘spectator’?… you get
personal again in the aftermath, recovering bodies etc, but there is this
notable blank on what you were doing at the peak of the action…”. He didn’t answer that question; but then he didn’t
answer any of the other far more banal questions on that sheet either and I
simply don’t know why not. So my speculation runs from he just didn’t see that
sheet of questions for some reason, to the events of that day so shook him that
his usual total-recall memory registered very little bar broken fragments, to
he did remember but it was so terrible he couldn’t bring himself to write down
much of it, to he felt guilty that he could do nothing/did nothing to help his
comrades.
Knowing him,
his strength, his capacity for bitterly candid self-criticism, and considering
the one reference he made to “guilt” in writing this passage, in the Endnotes
to the first edition of the Memoir I
made what I called “a strong guess… that he and his Platoon, like others I’ve
read about elsewhere, got stuck in their trench, cut off, no orders coming
through, and never moved, just watched the carnage and tried to live through it
– hence, the remote onlooker point of view”. Since then, the Kensingtons’ WD
and Alan MacDonald’s wondrously detailed book Pro Patria Mori: The 56th (1st London) Division at Gommecourt, 1st July
1916 have put factual flesh on those bones so I’ll add here some detailed
information/probabilities about what happened to my father on that day…
His A
Company, marching Platoon by Platoon at two-minute intervals to minimise shell
casualties, led the Battalion from Souastre via the Brigade “equipping dump” at
Bayencourt (three kilometres due south, where they gathered ammunition,
grenades and picks) to Hébuterne where they arrived in the night, at 12.05am on
July 1. His Company moved into front-line trenches designated W47 and W47S
facing Gommecourt. The 1/14th London Scottish (my father’s “kilted lads”) had
reached their positions to the Kensingtons’ left at 11pm, June 30.
At 2.45pm the
German artillery began a massive bombardment, wrecking trenches and killing
men, to which the British did not respond until the pre-planned time, 6.25am.
An hour later, says the WD, “our smoke started” – cover for an infantry advance
– and the German barrage resumed maximum intensity. The London Scottish charged
out into this maelstrom on schedule at 7.50am. Company A were supposed to
follow up soon after with digging parties to construct a new trench through No
Man’s Land to the supposedly captured German front line – which the London
Scottish had actually achieved at terrible cost. But the Kensingtons’ new CO,
Colonel Young, asked Brigade’s permission to hold his men back because the
German artillery made static work in No Man’s Land suicidally impossible –
Brigade agreed, so my father and his comrades remained in their crumbling
trench.
However, at
9am an A Company Platoon (not my father’s, I gather) did attempt a race through
the smoke, shells and machine-gun fire to resupply the London Scottish with
ammunition and grenades (“bombs” the infantry called them back then). The WD
says they “disappeared” – not quite as stark as it seems, meaning they couldn’t
get any message back rather than that they had all died. By 11.30am A Company
was still sending parties across no Man’s Land with supplies for the London
Scottish; it would take an hour to cover the 400 metres separating the lines,
with heavy casualties suffered (I don’t know whether my father was one of the
few men sent out in this way who actually made the return journey too; quite
probably not, given the sense of grievous impotence his few words carry).
Pro Patria Mori summarises that by 1pm A
Company’s CO Major Cedric Charles Dickens (grandson of the great novelist,
killed at Bouleaux Wood on the Somme Front, September 9, 1916) had “spent 6
hours watching the trenches destroyed and his men maimed and killed by the
thunderous bombardment of the German howitzers”; accordingly, he sent a message
to Kensingtons HQ reading, “Shelling fearful. Trench practically untenable,
full of dead and wounded. Very few men indeed left. Must have instructions and
assistance.” He got no reply. Author MacDonald adds: “And it was under this
ferocious bombardment that the Kensingtons were forced to stand, wait and
suffer. Their frustration was intense… The bulk of their dead and wounded were
being caused by an enemy they could not see, let alone reach. Somewhere, a few
thousand metres behind some low hills to the east, teams of German gunners were
pouring a continuous rain of high explosive onto the heads of the Kensingtons.”
At
1.35pm, Dickens sent another messenger back to HQ reporting he had about 50 men
of A and C Companies in trenches W47 and W47S (including my father still).
Colonel Young sent what he had left, as recorded in his own notes: “party of
Signallers, servants and minor shell-shock cases collected and sent with Capt
Harris” (Harris and his men didn’t connect with Dickens, but did end up in
another part of the front line and assist in its defence).
At
3pm, another runner conveyed Dickens’s final message, quoted by MacDonald: “I
have, as far as I can find, only 13 left beside myself. Trenches
unrecognisable. Quite impossible to hold. Bombardment fearful for last two
hours. I am the only officer left. Please send instructions.” The instruction
was to withdraw and his group (by then probably not including my father who, I
deduce, remained in the front line; see below) reached HQ in the reserve line
45 minutes later.
At 5.30 or 6pm the bombardment ceased on
both sides. MacDonald writes: “Across the fields and in the
shattered remains of the trenches on both sides of No Man’s land, hundreds of
men lay wounded and dying. In their agony they now filled the air with their
shrieks and moans.”
*** Most of the remnants of the Kensingtons had straggled
back to Hébuterne on the evening of July 1, and then, says the WD, around 9pm,
the 1/8th Middlesex relieved them in the W Sector trenches, whereupon they
“walked” (not marched) back to Sailly where they had to spend the night… in
another trench. But my father clearly describes how, along with some others
from A Company, he spent the first night after the catastrophe, and most of the
day too, on the battlefield and, chiefly, in No Man’s Land before catching up
with the Battalion. Well, not hard to imagine that in this particular “fog of
war” the survivors pretty much made it up as they went along – and they
obviously wanted to do something useful, even make amends, having been able to
do little more than survive the day through sheer luck while their comrades…
The Kensingtons’ WD
states that 24 officers and 525 ORs (other ranks) went into battle and the
casualty count (dead and wounded) was 17 officers and 310 ORs (59% casualty
rate). Pro Patria Mori adds that the
London Scottish casualties numbered 14 officers, 575 ORs and 15 Medics (77%),
the neighbouring Rangers (1/12th London) 17 officers, 447 ORs (58%), and 1/4th
City Of Londons (Royal Fusiliers) 16 officers, 344 ORs (58%).
Incidentally, it’s a shame my father never named “the unshakeable
RSM” – I can’t find any reference to him in the WD or Pro Patria Mori.
NB: throughout the summer, these blogs will be
unusually long, simply because Sam had such vivid memories of, and so much to
say about, his experiences a hundred years ago on the Somme. I hope you’ll
agree there’s not too much wasted verbiage and plenty of truth and substance.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: The aftermath:
"recovering our dead mates"… saying goodbye to Charlie… and on to the
Somme's air war…
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