CHAPTER VIII

It is not seemly to be too modest about the Somme, nor to insist over-much upon the limitation of the Allied objective. We know that it was not intended to drive the Germans out of France; at least, not in 1916. As a fact, in the Spring of 1917 there was a big German retirement, which was only voluntary in the sense that the enemy bowed to necessity before necessity broke him, and again, in the Autumn of 1918, there was another big German retreat, which brought the war to an end. They take a short view who fail to see the direct and intimate connection between the campaign of 1916 and the decisive results in the following two years. The British Commander, while the future was still veiled, had no illusions on this point. Wielding, like the Castilian knight of old, ‘now the pen and now the sword,’ Sir Douglas Haig, when he indited his great Despatch on December 29th, 1916, stated without reserve, that:

‘Verdun had been relieved; the main German forces had been held on the Western front; and the enemy’s strength had been very considerably worn down. Any one of these results is in itself sufficient,’ he avowed, ‘to justify the Somme battle. The attainment of all three of them affords ample compensation for the splendid efforts of our troops and for the sacrifices made by ourselves and our Allies. They have brought us a long step forward towards the final victory of the Allied cause.[62]’

‘A long step forward,’ not necessarily in the eyes of the old men and children who stuck pins in their wall-maps at home; and yet not a short step either, even when measured by this exacting standard. Let us look at the map once more and stick in some imaginary pins on our own account. First, take the straight, white road from Albert to Bapaume, and divide it into eleven equal parts, representing its length of, approximately, eleven miles. Just before the second milestone (or mile-pin) from Albert, mark the point where the Allied line crossed the road on July 1st, 1916, and just beyond the eight milestone mark the point where the Allied line crossed the road on December 31st. They had devoured (or ‘nibbled’ was the word) six miles in six months, including the villages of Pozières and Le Sars, and were less than three miles distant from Bapaume. Next, observe the effect of this protrusion on the reach, or embrace, of the Allied arms. Take the Ancre and the Somme as frontiers, and prick out from the point by the second milestone a line runningnorthwards to the left of Thiepval and across the Ancre to Beaumont-Hamel, and southwards to the left of Fricourt and Mametz, then to the right of Maricourt, then left of Curlu to the Somme. This was the Allied line on July 1st. Take the same boundaries again, and prick out from the point by the eighth milestone a line running northwards to the left of Warlencourt and Grandcourt, then to the right of Thiepval, Beaucourt and Beaumont-Hamel, and southwards to the right of Flers, Lesbœufs, Sailly, Rancourt, Bouchavesnes and Clèry to the Somme. This, roughly, was the Allied line on December 31st. The pricked-in area, rhombic in shape, which means neither round nor square, encloses a large number of square miles re-captured from reluctant Germans. It did not include Bapaume itself, nor Péronne, nor St. Quentin, nor Brussels; the time for these had not arrived. But it took in many towns and hamlets which had known the foot of the invader, it broke huge masses of fortified works which had been designed to shoe the invader’s foot, and, consequently, it seriously shook the moral power of German resistance. We shall not measure the acres of French territory released, for we have no standard by which to calculate the effect of Verdun relieved on the German armies driven homewards between the Ancre and the Somme. Nor is a yard by yard advance properly expressed in terms of mileage. Take any one of the positions re-captured: Mametz, Trônes, Combles, Thiepval itself, and review it for a moment in the series of defences, artificial and natural and natural-artificial, which the tenacious attackers had to overcome. Thus, between Fricourt and Mametz Wood were Lonely Copse, the Crucifix, Shelter Wood, Railway Copse, Bottom Wood, the Quadrangle, etc.: every name a miniature Waterloo to the gallant men who fought and fell there. Nowhere in all that area could a sixteenth of a mile be gained without an elaborate battle-plan and a battle, or several battles, taxing to the utmost the endurance of troops dedicated to victory and resolute to death. So, ‘they brought us a long step forward towards the final victory of the Allied cause.’

We are to contract our range once more to the scope of the 49th Division, and to consider that ‘step’ more particularly in the region north of Albert by the Ancre, where Sir Hubert Gough commanded the Fifth Army. It was not a sensational record. If we follow the Diary of that Army, say, from July 21st to the end of September, we receive, mainly, an impression of containing work excellently done, while the shock of battle broke afar. A few of these entries may be cited:

‘July 21st. 49th Division in Leipsic Salient....‘July 23rd. Attack by 48th Division and 1st Australian Division. Good progress. 49th Division front South of River Ancre....‘July 29th. 49th Division left of 12th Division to River Ancre....‘Aug. 27th. 49th Division relieved 25th Division....‘Sept. 3rd. South of Ancre 49th Division attacked....‘Sept. 24th. 18th Division relieved 49th Division....‘Sept. 27th. 11th Division captured Stuff Redoubt.‘Sept. 28th. 18th Division attacked Schwaben Redoubt.’

‘July 21st. 49th Division in Leipsic Salient....

‘July 23rd. Attack by 48th Division and 1st Australian Division. Good progress. 49th Division front South of River Ancre....

‘July 29th. 49th Division left of 12th Division to River Ancre....

‘Aug. 27th. 49th Division relieved 25th Division....

‘Sept. 3rd. South of Ancre 49th Division attacked....

‘Sept. 24th. 18th Division relieved 49th Division....

‘Sept. 27th. 11th Division captured Stuff Redoubt.

‘Sept. 28th. 18th Division attacked Schwaben Redoubt.’

Except on September 3rd, to which we shall come back, the work of the 49th Division, seen from this angle of vision, appears more passive than active.

Let us enlarge the angle considerably. Instead of Sir Hubert Gough’s, consult Major-General Perceval’s Diary, the Divisional instead of the Army Commander’s. We come nearer to action in that aspect.

Between July 21st and the 27th there were ‘three encounters with the enemy in the Leipsic Salient.’ On the 21st, he made a bombing attack; on the 22nd, the 4th York and Lancasters ‘attempted to extend our position in the Salient to the east by surprise,’ but were foiled; on the 23rd, the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry made a similar attempt, ‘but consolidation was prevented by a heavy counter-attack from all sides, and our troops retired to their original line.’ From the Army Commander’s point of view, a single entry sufficed for these exploits; the Divisional Commander had to account for nearly five hundred casualties in the period.

Take the 28th of July to the 4th of August. There were 279 casualties in the Division, due, partly, to ‘a considerable amount of trench-mortar fire on the Leipsic Salient and Authuille Wood’; and who shall say but that every wounded man made a definite contribution to the Somme advance? Yet Sir Hubert Gough was content to observe: ‘49th Division left of 12th.’ Or, August 26th to September 1st. General Perceval’s entry on the 27th merely repeats (or we should say, anticipates) Sir Hubert Gough’s at greater length: ‘Divisional Headquarters returned from Acheux to Hedauville, and at mid-day the Command of the line from Thiepval Avenue (exclusive) to River Ancre passed from 25th to 49th Division.’ There is a further entry in this Diary, which, being a record of work done in the ordinary course of duty, the Army Commander did not reproduce: ‘With a view to an attack on German trenches north of Thiepval Wood, the new saps and parallels to the north of the Wood have been completed, ammunition-trenches improved, and dumps formed and filled with ammunition, bombs, R.E. stores, etc.’

So far the Divisional Commander, in expansion of Sir Hubert Gough. There are next the Battalion Commanders to be consulted; and, still omitting at present the Divisional record of the week including September 3rd, when ‘49th Division attacked,’ we may once more enlarge the angle, and examine this preparation for attack from a Battalion Commander’s point of view. Thus, we read that:

‘On August 26th, the Battalion[63]was sent up to the trenches on the right of Thiepval Wood.... Captain R. Salter was killed instantaneously by a shell as soon as he got to Battalion Headquarters. We were in this line for only two days, but had 52 casualties as there was a good deal of shelling.... The Battalion was relieved on August 28th by the 5th K.O.Y.L.I., and went into huts in Martinsart Wood; from here we had to find large working parties in the front line for two or three days, and then had a rest until the attack on September 3rd.’

We are brought back, like Master Pathelin,à nos moutons. The ‘long step forward’ was achieved, the Battle of the Somme was won, by the Allied Armies working to the plans of Sir Douglas Haig and Marshal Joffre. Those plans included the provision of a separate Army on the Ancre, to hold the German forces in that area, and to make what progress they could. The Commander of that Fifth Army was Sir Hubert Gough, and Major-General Perceval’s West Riding (49th) Division was included as a unit of its Xth Corps. What happened, then, on September 3rd, when the new saps and parallels had been constructed, the communication-trenches improved, and the dumps filled with bombs and ammunition? How did the 49th attack, and what have the Officers Commanding its Battalions to add to the bare record of Sir Hubert Gough or the more expansive Diary of the Divisional Commander?

The units immediately concerned were the 4th and 5th Battalions, West Riding Regiment, and the 6th and 8th Battalions, West Yorks. The 7th Battalion of each Regiment was stationed in reserve. The week’s casualties in the Division were high:

and the bulk of them occurred on September 3rd. The large percentage of missing in all ranks (more than a third of the whole) seems to indicate a hasty retreat from untenable positions.

The presumption is borne out by Battalion records. These agree that co-operation was interrupted by a bad block in communication, and that Battalions were not able to render one another all the support that was expected. Each unit tended to believe that its own advance was held up, or, rather, that its withdrawal was necessitated, by what had happened on its right or left; and, consequently, theexploits of individuals were more conspicuous than the conduct of the attack. Zero hour was 5-10 a.m., and the Companies left the trenches punctually and went over in good order. But the half-light caused some confusion, and communication proved very difficult. In the instance of several Battalions no definite news was received for three hours or more. Runners failed to get through, and rumours were not satisfactory. At last, about 9 o’clock, tidings began to arrive of heavy losses incurred in trying to consolidate captured positions under a cross enfilade of machine-gun and rifle fire. Remnants of Companies, driven back after a long morning’s heavy fighting told of the exhaustion of their bombs, and of their messages lost in No Man’s Land. Stray parties cut off in the attack, found cover in shell-holes until nightfall. One Commanding Officer frankly wrote, ‘the whole attack failed.’ ‘The objectives were gained,’ he summed up, ‘but the first casualties in Officers and N.C.O.’s were heavy, and therefore the men with power of “leadership” were lost when most needed to hold on. The presence of the enemy in the Pope’s Nose (a machine-gun nest at an early point) upset all chances of reinforcements and supply except across the open’—an almost impossible condition. The runners, as we saw, did not get across, and the light was too bad for the observation posts to give effective help. On the other hand, the daylight was too strong to consolidate under fire the battered German trenches which had been captured. There was, unfortunately, a ‘but’ or an ‘if’ which qualified every record of success; and we may quote the following statement from a Battalion Diary, which gives a very fair impression of the whole episode:

‘From the reports of the two Officers who returned to Battalion Headquarters from the battle, it was ascertained that for the most part a really good fight was put up. If Battalion Headquarters had been able to get any information back, it is practically certain that the position would not have been lost. The men fought splendidly, and in many cases without N.C.O.’s or Officers, and the losing of the captured position was a piece of bad luck.’

‘What remained of our assaulting troops,’ says General Perceval, ‘were back in our trenches,’ about 10 a.m., having ‘sustained heavy casualties and lost most of their Officers.’ A re-attack was planned for 6 p.m., but was countermanded during the afternoon, and the 146th Infantry Brigade was withdrawn to Forceville and the 147th to Hedauville. So, the 49th Division had attacked, and the whole attack had failed; but between these two bald statements lie detailed records of a courageous attempt, which we shall not pursue further, but which contributed in this hard-held sector to the ‘long step forward’ which was being taken on the Allied front at large. German records, so far as we have seen them, confirm the seriousness of the attack. We read there how ‘matters had meanwhile become still worse,’ and howCompany was added to Company in order to meet the impending danger. ‘Lieut. Engel’s Company signalled “Please send support,”’ and his experience was repeated in other sectors; ‘ourMinenwerferintervened at the most opportune moment’. On the whole, the enemy’s accounts increase admiration for the 49th Division.

It is particularly interesting to record that, in the course of this summer and autumn, a Regiment of Yorkshire Yeomanry met their friends of the 49th Division in and about the defences of Thiepval. We shall come, in Chapter XIV below, to the experiences of the Mounted Troops who left the West Riding for France during 1915. There we shall see how they served as Divisional Cavalry for several months, and how, in May, 1916, they were re-organized as Corps Cavalry, and were set to do various duties, not always appropriate to their Arm, which they discharged with a thoroughness and an efficiency worthy of the best traditions of the Service. The Yorkshire Dragoons were posted to the IInd Corps, which, on July 25th, 1916, took over that sector of the Fifth Army front which lay between Ovillers-la-Boisselle and Thiepval. The hopes of a Cavalry situation, unfortunately, never materialized, but the Dragoons did excellent work during the Battle of the Somme by maintaining Observation Posts in forward areas, thus short-circuiting the means of communication between Corps Headquarters and Battalion Commanders. ‘During operations,’ we are told, ‘information received in this way and from other sources was embodied each day in maps and reports, which were sent up by despatch rider during the night, and reached front line units in time for the usual attack at dawn.... The observers were sometimes asked to undertake special work of great importance. Before several attacks they were required to reconnoitre and map the enemy’s wire. The slightest mistake might have lost hundreds of lives, but it was never made.’ Among the names which we may mentionhonoris causain connection with this service are those of Captain, later Major, R. Brooke; Major, later Lieut.-Col., R. Thompson; Sergts. Storer and Tinker (Military Medals), and Corpl., later Sergt., Cranswick (Bar to M.M.).

Let us consult the map once more.

THIEPVAL DEFENCES.

In the extreme right-hand corner will be seen the village of Pozières on the straight road (Albert-Bapaume), which ran diagonally across the battlefield. In the extreme left-hand bottom corner are Martinsart and Martinsart Wood, on the safe side of the River Ancre, where spent Battalions of the 49th Division used to withdraw to lick their wounds. The course of the Ancre is clearly shown from just above Albert to Miraumont, winding its stream under Authuille and Hamel Bridges; and between Authuille and St. Pierre Divion lie Thiepval and Thiepval Wood, the possession of which was so hotly contested since the battle was first joined on July 1st. The more we look at this timbered countryside, with its chalk-pits, its farms and mills,the more unsuitable it seems to the red carnage of 1916. Yet the troops behaved magnificently, and Sir Douglas Haig sent several messages during these trying weeks to express his thanks and appreciation. To one Battalion he sent on August 30th by the hands of the Divisional Commander a sprig of white heather as an emblem of good luck. Hard though the going was, and bad though the luck seemed to be, making acclimatization tedious and difficult, it rarely happened, even among raw troops, that the conditions proved too exacting. Very typical of the spirit of the Division, in the midst of its harassing experiences, where the room designed by nature for smiles was too narrow almost to contain its special circles of man’s inferno, was the part borne in the third week of September by the 7th Battalion of the West Riding Regiment. They had been at Hedauville since September 4th, at two hours’ march from Martinsart Wood, whither, in order to go into the line, they moved on Friday, September 15th. There they had tea, and took rations for the next day, and were loaded with two bombs per man, and so proceeded from 7 p.m. to new trenches, south of Thiepval, which had been captured only the night before. The relief was delayed in execution partly by artillery barrage, partly by an attack of German bombers, partly by heavy rain, and partly by too few guides; there was only one guide to each Company, ‘and these were strange to the trenches and had difficulty in finding the way.’ It was completed by 4-20 in the morning (September 16th), and during ‘intermittent shelling’ all that Saturday arrangements were concerted for an attack on the German trenches in the evening of the 17th. This operation was most successful; on the left an objective was gained, and held, 350 feet in advance of schedule. The details are not uninteresting, and will repay closer study, not because the area of the attack was large in proportion to the whole battlefield, but because it was difficultterrainand the obstacles were well overcome.

Just north of the famous Leipsic Salient on the map, lay, first, the Hohenzollern Trench and, secondly, the Wonder Work: two strongly fortified positions. Eastward out of Thiepval, from the point where the road from the Cemetery meets the main road in a right angle, ran the Zollern Trench, terminating (for present purposes) at the Zollern Redoubt north of Mouquet Farm. Further along the road from the Cemetery, at a point about as far north of the Crucifix as the Cemetery is south of it, the Stuff Trench started to run eastwards, parallel to the Zollern Trench below. It was very elaborately fortified, and terminated in the Stuff Redoubt still further above Mouquet Farm. The Regina Trench ran further eastward, from about the point where the Stuff Trench terminated. Parallel with the road from the Cemetery and Crucifix, the Lucky Way ran up towards Grandcourt, and the Grandcourt Trench branched off eastward a little below the village, again in a parallel line with the Regina and Zollern Trenches. West of that Cemetery road and crossing the Divion Road about half-way between the Cemeteryand St. Pierre Divion was the horrible Schwaben Redoubt; and, though these names do not exhaust the German defences of Thiepval, they recall sufficiently the opposition to the 7th West Ridings and their support on this third Sunday in September. The assault was made in four waves at intervals of fifteen, twenty and fifteen feet, the unit being a Platoon. A Bomb Squad, consisting of one N.C.O. and eleven other Ranks, accompanied each half-Company, and every man of the last two waves carried either a pick or a shovel. Report Centres, main and subsidiary, Battalion Scouts, and other special parties were detailed for duty, and all Troops were reported in position at 6 p.m. Nearly everything went right, except that a portion of D Company, including both Lewis Guns and their detachments, were believed to have advanced towards the Row of Apple Trees, and were either taken prisoners or wiped out by machine-gun fire. About 7 o’clock reports were received that the objective had been captured, though it was doubtful how the left flank had fared. The total casualties in this little action were five Officers and 215 other Ranks. Certain valuable lessons were learned: the action proved that the jumping-off trench should be parallel to the objective (this precaution enabled direction to be kept accurately); that every man, and not merely the last comers, should carry a pick or shovel, fastened to his body by rope or tape; and that the consolidating parties should either be kept back till the barrage stops or require dug-outs: trivial details, perhaps, but they saved life and added to efficiency. We may add that the Army Commander, Sir Hubert Gough, visited the Battalion on September 19th, and expressed his satisfaction with the operation, which gained an important part of the enemy defences after five previous attempts had failed, and served to straighten the line held by the 147th Infantry Brigade north of the Leipsic Salient.

A still more important lesson had been learned, and the means were now at hand to apply it. If these formidable blockhouses were to be crushed, a new military weapon was essential, and early on September 15th the first Tank waddled into warfare. From this date to the end of September, by a brilliant series of advances from the south, across and along the Albert-Bapaume Road, a victorious crown was put to the tenacious vigil and hard fighting of the Fifth Army, and the attack swung round at last on the pivot held by Sir Hubert Gough. This attack (September 26th) was described by Sir Douglas Haig as not less than

‘a brilliant success. On the right,’ he narrated, ‘our troops (2nd and 1st Canadians Divisions of the Canadian Corps, Lieut.-General Sir J. H. G. Byng) reached the system of enemy trenches which formed their objectives without great difficulty. In Thiepval and the strong works to the north of it the enemy’s resistance was more desperate. Three waves of our attacking troops (11th and 18th Divisions, II. Corps, Lieut.-GeneralC. W. Jacob) carried the outer defences of Mouquet Farm, and, pushing on, entered Zollern Redoubt, which they stormed and consolidated.... On the left of the attack fierce fighting, in which Tanks again gave valuable assistance to our troops (18th Division), continued in Thiepval during that day and the following night, but by 8-30 a.m. on the 27th September the whole of the village of Thiepval was in our hands.... On the same date the south and west sides of Stuff Redoubt were carried by our troops (11th Division), together with the length of trench connecting that strong point with Schwaben Redoubt to the west, and also the greater part of the enemy’s defensive line eastwards along the northern slopes of the ridge. Schwaben Redoubt was assaulted during the afternoon of the 28th September (18th Division), and ... we captured the whole of the southern face of the Redoubt and pushed out patrols to the northern face and towards St. Pierre Divion’[64]:

grand exploits these, and infinitely welcome to the gallant Territorials of the West Riding, who had shared since July 1st in the long and formidable task of holding that north-west corner till the appointed hour struck for its fall, and their work could be resumed and fitted in with the larger plans of the Allied Commands.

We might close the present chapter here. The full story of September 15th and the days which followed at Thiepval is involved with other volumes of war history than that of the 49th Division. The romance of the coming of the Tanks belongs to the Machine-Gun Corps, Heavy Section; the death of Raymond Asquith in the attack belongs to the Grenadier Guards, and to the eminent family of which he was a member. What belongs to us, as the inalienable heritage of the Troops commanded by General Perceval, is the fact that for three months, less three days, from their first assembly in Aveluy Wood, they held on firmly and grimly to that narrow foothold in the Ancre Valley which was dominated always by German guns. They went and came to the muddy, bloody trenches, from Authuille Wood, Aveluy Wood, Martinsart Wood, day by day, under a pitiless harvest sun or a yet more pitiless autumnal rain; and by their steadfastness and tenacity, even more than by their toll of German life or their fragmentary captures of German trenches, they enabled Sir Douglas Haig to perfect, without haste and without undue anxiety, the long, slow sweep of his advance which swung back on Thiepval at the last. And, though the details at this stage must be kept subordinate to the main features, lest we should seem to claim more than a just share, yet it is satisfactory to observe that certain Battalions of our Division participated in these final operations. Thus the 5th West Yorkshires were detailed as support to the 7th Bedfordshire Regiment for the attack on Schwaben Redoubt on September 27th. Theywere formed up on that afternoon, and again before daybreak the next morning. Zero hour was fixed finally at 1 p.m. On that day the three supporting Companies became a part of the main advance, and the final Brigade objective was reached by a mixture of both units, the men from Yorkshire and Beds. It was a fine conclusion to the waiting orders imposed after July 1st, and it elicited the following fine testimony from Major-General T. H. Shoubridge, C.B., C.M.G., Commanding the 54th Infantry Brigade, in a letter dated October 1st, 1916, and addressed to Major-General Perceval:

‘I feel I must write and tell you how splendidly the 5th West Yorkshire supported the attack of the 7th Bedfordshire Regiment on the Schwaben Redoubt.... The Battalion had, I fear, a trying time, as the attack was postponed, and I had to bring them up in support at night, though they had practically been told they would not be wanted that night. In spite of all difficulties, when the final attack took place, they formed up in perfect order and advanced during the attack with marked determination. I was very struck with the soldierly qualities of the men and the keenness they displayed, and I am very proud to have had them under my Command.... All my Battalions are full of praise for the Artillery support afforded them both during the attack on Thiepval and the subsequent attack on Schwaben Redoubt.... We all feel very grateful to the troops of your Division associated with us.... Forgive type,’ added the gallant General, ‘Have just come out of the battle, and have no ink!’

Recognition, too, eminently merited, reached the 49th Divisional Commander from Lieut.-General C. W. Jacob, Commanding, as we saw, the II. Corps. He wrote, on October 3rd:

‘As the Division under your Command has now been transferred to another Corps, I take this opportunity of thanking you, your Staff, the Commanders of Brigades, and all Ranks of the Division, for all the good work you put in while you were in the II. Corps.‘The conditions were trying, and your casualties heavy. The calls made on units necessitated great exertions, which were always cheerfully carried out. The gallantry of the Officers and men is shown by the large number of decorations won by them, and the spirit of all Ranks is good. The clearing of the Leipsic Salient, the prompt way all calls for raids on the enemy’s trenches were met, and the heavy work done by the Division in the preparations for the final attack on Thiepval are gratifying records.... It was unfortunate that the Division as a whole could not take part in the final capture of Thiepval, but you will all be glad to know that your representatives in that battle, the 49th Divisional Artillery and the 146th InfantryBrigade, did excellent work, and added still further to the good reputation of the Division.’

‘The conditions were trying, and your casualties heavy. The calls made on units necessitated great exertions, which were always cheerfully carried out. The gallantry of the Officers and men is shown by the large number of decorations won by them, and the spirit of all Ranks is good. The clearing of the Leipsic Salient, the prompt way all calls for raids on the enemy’s trenches were met, and the heavy work done by the Division in the preparations for the final attack on Thiepval are gratifying records.... It was unfortunate that the Division as a whole could not take part in the final capture of Thiepval, but you will all be glad to know that your representatives in that battle, the 49th Divisional Artillery and the 146th InfantryBrigade, did excellent work, and added still further to the good reputation of the Division.’

Schwaben Redoubt, we may add, was not retained without a struggle. There was still one corner to be seized where the Regina Trench branched out in the direction of Courcelette, and, running north of that village, came down towards the Albert-Bapaume Road, almost immediately above Le Sars; and these gains, too, were made and held despite desperate counter-attacks before the middle of November. So, when winter came down on the Somme battlefield, and the warring armies went to earth, the Allied line which had bulged in towards Albert now bulged out towards Bapaume. ‘That these troops should have accomplished so much under such conditions ... constitutes a feat of which the history of our nation records no equal.’[65]We have tried to describe this feat, in so far as concerns the part, modest in area, indeed, but very exacting in performance, which was played by the 49th Division and we have tried to exhibit that part in its true relation to the drama as a whole.

We may now touch upon one or two details.

Before the close of 1916 a third Victoria Cross fell to the share of the 49th Division. The recipient was Major (then Captain) W. B. Allen, of the 1/3rd West Riding Field Ambulance, attached to the 246th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. The gallant Officer had already received the decoration of the Military Cross, and we cite here the official record of the circumstances in which the supreme reward was won:

‘For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty. When gun detachments were unloading H.B. Ammunition from wagons which had just come up, the enemy suddenly began to shell the battery and the ammunition, and caused several casualties. Captain Allen saw the occurrences and at once, with utter disregard of danger, ran straight across the open, under heavy shell fire, commenced dressing the wounded, and undoubtedly by his promptness saved many of them from bleeding to death. He was himself hit four times during the first hour by pieces of shell, one of which fractured two of his ribs, but he never mentioned this at the time, and coolly went on with his work till the last man was dressed and safely removed. He then went over to another battery and tended a wounded Officer. It was only when this was done that he returned to his dug-out and reported his own injury’.

Every Arm of the Service had its heroes. Major Allen in the R.A.M.C. earned the Victoria Cross; Major Alan F. Hobson, D.S.O., in the West Riding Divisional Royal Engineers, who was killed on August 26th, earned the following tribute from a brother-officer of his unit:

‘Poor Hobson, our Major, was killed about three days ago by a shell in the neighbourhood of our work. One has read of lovable, brave leaders in personal histories of previous wars. Hobson was one of those men whom writers love to describe as the best and truest type of an Englishman. He never asked one of us to go where he would not go himself. He was always happy, even-tempered and just.’

A hero’s grave or the Victoria Cross: it was a common choice, settled by fate during the war, and at no time commoner or more inevitable than during these Battles of the Somme. A few extracts from the letters of a fallen Officer may be given in conclusion to this period, not because they differ essentially (for a happy style is an accident of fortune) from other letters sent home from the Western front, but because they express in word-pictures, compiled on the spot and at first hand, the spirit of the very gallant men whose cheerful devotion in 1916 made possible the victory of 1918.

First, an account of an ordinary sight by the roadside:

‘While we were waiting for orders there was a constant procession of troops going up and troops going back from the front line. It was an intensely interesting procession to me, but there were some terribly sad sights of mangled men being brought back on stretchers. The “walking cases” were very pathetic; one in particular I remember. A young Officer leaning heavily upon the arm of one of his men, the right side of his face bandaged up. His left eye closed in agony, along he stumbled, while on each side of him our guns went off with a roar that must have been trying to a man evidently so shattered in nerve, and all the time he was exposed to Boche shelling.’

Another extract from the same letter:

‘It is a pitiable sight to see horses badly wounded, poor dumb things, so brave and patient under shell fire. When one is riding near one of one’s own batteries, and guns suddenly belch forth flame and smoke over one’s head, these dear creatures hardly wince. From the time the first shell fell among the horses until we left the town—about two hours later, we were dodging shells. When we were outside, the warning hiss of a Fritz caused a funny sight. Those near buildings jumped to a sheltering wall, some of us who were near trees embraced their trunks and dodged round them when we thought the burst would be on one side. We screamed with laughter at each other, but when one burst rather too close, our heads ached and our hearts thumped (anyway, mine did, and it is no use disguising the fact).’

And from the last of this series of dead letters:

‘Presently our trench crossed No Man’s Land—at least, it once was No Man’s Land; now it belongs to us until we can turn it over to its proper owners. We examined Fritz’s handiworkwhere he had spent months of watching and fighting. We could see what British fighting was like by the evidence there.... At one place we were within forty yards of him, but we heard no sound. The only sound that broke the stillness of that beautiful day was the bang of our own guns and the swish of our crumps overhead. At one point, close to the tangled wire of Fritz’s front line, we saw a sad sight, perhaps the saddest sight of war, groups of our own lads, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. Heroes, they had done their bit and there they lie. They have died so that others can live to be free from the yoke of a monster in human form, whose greed for power must be stifled.’

‘Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping’: this iterated note conveys, now that the war is over and the maps are folded and put away, a tender thought properly keyed, at which to close our account of the Somme battlefield. It is a field of great achievement and of pious memories, hallowed for all time in English history, and the ‘more’ that remained to be done, as foreseen in the vision of this writer, could not be more worthily accomplished than in the spirit of the heroes of the Somme.

It was the peculiarity of the war in France and Flanders that there was no clear ending to any battle. At Ypres, at Verdun, and on the Somme, the tide of war flowed with full flood, and ebbed away without definite decision. There was a little more erosion of the trenches on one side or the other, a few more miles of territory submerged, or disengaged from the invader, revealing, when the tide rolled back, the waste and ravage and destruction, and then a temporary lull, till

‘The tide comes again,And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and setsSeaweed afloat, and fillsThe silent pools, rivers, and rivulets,Among the inland hills.’

‘The tide comes again,

And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets

Seaweed afloat, and fills

The silent pools, rivers, and rivulets,

Among the inland hills.’

We reach such a coign of observation, such a lull, less real than apparent, for brave men were being killed every day, in the period from November to January, 1916-17. It lay between the exhaustion of the Somme offensive and the refluent wave of battle-fury up and down the line in early spring; and this brief interval may be utilized to pick up a few stray threads.

Let us look at home in the first instance.

The West Riding Territorial Force Association had by now settled down to its stride. We left its members in 1915[66]struggling, perhaps a little breathlessly, with difficulties of accountancy in their Separation Allowance Department, with the organization of Auxiliary Hospitals, the equipment of 2nd and 3rd Line units, the formation of a National Reserve, and the constant perplexities of the recruiting problem.We find them at the close of the next year with one Division crowned with honour in the field, with another Division straining at the leash, and with a certain reduction in their commitments, owing partly to National Service legislation, partly to firmer methods at Whitehall, and partly to other causes. Necessity had nationalized the war; and, though more than 52,000 accounts of soldiers’ wives and dependants were now on the Paymaster’s books, though more than 3,000 beds in 53 Auxiliary Hospitals were now available in the Riding, and more than 21,000 pairs of socks and 45,000 other comforts had been despatched to the troops during the winter, the Association had thoroughly mastered the technique of war administration when the original triumvirate of Lord Harewood, Lord Scarbrough and General Mends, as President, Chairman and Secretary respectively, was broken up in February, 1917, by Lord Scarbrough’s transfer to the War Office as Director-General of the Territorial and Volunteer Forces.[67]

The appearance of the words ‘and Volunteer’ requires a brief note of explanation. The Chairman informed his Association in January, 1917, that the local administration of the Volunteer Force had, at the request of the Army Council, been undertaken by County Associations. ‘Generally speaking,’ ran the writ,[68]‘the division of functions between the local military authorities and T.F. Associations in regard to the Volunteer Force will correspond to that obtaining in the case of the Territorial Force in times of peace.’ It was not, perhaps, the best precedent to select, but it was the best available in the circumstances, and an historian will surely arise to tell the story of the part-time soldier in the Great War, what he did and what he might have been used to do. Such historian will be endowed with imagination to sympathise with the buffeted patriot in the early days of the war, and he will possess sufficient knowledge of the facts to follow his tangled skein of fortune through the maze of legislative enactments and contracting-out tribunals, which cast him up on the lap of his tired country, in November, 1918, half a volunteer and half a conscript and the most melancholy mongrel of the Army Council. This, happily, is not our present business. We are simply concerned to show how the Volunteer Act of 1916, which had become law late in December, brought the Volunteer Force into the orbit of the County Associations on the one part and of the Director-General of the Territorial Force on the other. That Act made provision for Volunteers to enter into an agreement with His Majesty for the performance of certain duties of home defence ‘for a period not exceeding the duration of the present war.’ The time-clause was the essence of the contract. Till then, under the Act of 1863, a Volunteer, prior to mobilization, which could only ensue in case of imminent invasion, and which never ensued during the late war, had the right to quit his Corps at his ownoption on giving a fortnight’s notice to his Commanding Officer. Under these conditions he was plainly no soldier, however elastic the terms of his employment. He could neither be clothed nor trained at the public expense, for the public would have no value for their money if the Force, or any part of it, walked out at fourteen days’ notice. Permanence of service was then first obtained when the Volunteer Force was reconstituted out of personnel bound by agreements entered into under the new Act of 1916; and thus it happened at the beginning of the next year that the work of Associations was increased by responsibility for the local administration of the Volunteer units raised in their respective counties, and that these duties were tacked on to the machinery of the Territorial Force organization. How heavy the duties became may be measured by a single item of statistics: as many as 217 Army Council Instructions referringexclusivelyto the Volunteer Force were promulgated before the date of the Armistice.

Lastly, reference is due to German action during this lull, or to what we know or may infer about it. Plainly, their moral had been badly shaken. Sir Douglas Haig was resolute on this point, and the extraordinary ‘all but’ luck which dogged their campaign on the Western front from the beginning to the end of the war, and of which the full military explanation must await the evidence from their side, was as characteristic at Verdun as anywhere. They all but got home to their objective: so nearly that the German Emperor’s telegrams, which he used to compose after the model of his grandfather’s in the 1870-71 campaign, just missed being accurate by a few yards; and this ‘little less, and what worlds apart,’ which separated the Crown Prince from victory, however cleverly wrapped up in the language of public despatches, must have caused more than common chagrin. For actually it was Verdun which was wanted, the right breast of the mother of men, and not the outposts of its defences, nor even the serried rows of French dead. These might serve in less vital regions to dazzle the eyes of the world; at Verdun, they drew attention to the defeat. Nor was consolation to be derived from the results of that attempt to relieve Verdun which we have followed in the battles of the Somme. The higher ground, or ridges, still remained in German possession, but it was a precarious hold, as we shall see, and, while the mere configuration of the ground was soon to tell in favour of the Allies, other factors, which cannot be mapped except in an atlas of psychology, were beginning already to count. The repeated losses of fortified positions, culminating in the Wonder Work and Redoubts which had resisted the assaults of July 1st, were disastrous not only on their own account but also as indicating a weakness which might conceivably spread to the Rhine. If the theory of defence proved unsound, no degree of valour in practice would ever avail to put it right. We must not prejudge this question. We are not writing the German history of the war. But it is legitimate to say that, apart fromthe general retirement which the Germans ordered in March, 1917, and which reached a rate of ten miles a day, our troops gradually discovered a change in the enemy’s system of defences. He began, first on the British and afterwards on the French front, to abandon the formal lines of trenches, and to employ the natural features of the soil, when and where these might occur, as the basis of his defences. The crater, or shell-hole cavity, was brought into use in this way, and no outward mark was allowed to distinguish a fortified group of craters, subterraneously connected with one another and otherwise rendered formidable, from harmless groups in its immediate neighbourhood. Thus, the cession by the Germans of ‘only our foremost crater-positions,’ or of a ‘craterfield’tout court, began to figure in their reports for the edification or delusion of German readers. An integral part of the crater-system, as worked out more elaborately at a later date, was the ‘pill-box,’ or sunk blockhouse, which was strengthened towards the foe and left more thinly built on the home side, so as to render it useless as a weapon should its fire be directed by its captors. We may conclude that the blows which had been dealt at the continuous lines of trenches in the battles of the Ancre and the Somme had alarmed the German High Command; and that a part of the motive for the retirement (and a very effective part it proved) was to prepare those fortified groups and concrete nests of deadly machine-gun fire at all kinds of irregular distances. The intention was partly to deceive the airman’s eye, and to stop that preparation of exact trench-maps to which the Germans had borne testimony on the Somme. But partly, too, the modification of the defence-system implied that our offensive had not been vain. Its immediate effect, accordingly, however serious and impeding it was to prove, was not without good hope. The vaunted theory of ‘impregnability’ had been shaken, and, though the end of the war was still out of sight, yet Thiepval, like Jutland, bore a message which the rest of the war was to expound.

Full information on these problems is still lacking from the German side, and without it, as indicated above, our conclusions must be indicated hypothetically. But all the evidence now available makes it clear that they are reasonably correct. Thus, Ludendorff, writing after a tour of the Western Front in December, 1916, laid stress on the urgent need of re-organizing the fighting power of the German Infantry. The machine-gun had become the chief fire-arm, and ‘our existing machine-guns’, he declared, ‘were too heavy for the purpose.... In order to strengthen our fire, at least in the most important parts of the chief theatre of war, it was necessary to create special Machine-gun Companies—so to speak, Machine-gun Sharp-shooters.’ Attention is also called in the German Commander’s authoritativeMemoirsto the need of hand-mines, grenades, and all quick-loading weapons, and to the formation of storm troops. ‘The course of the Somme Battle,’ continues the General, ‘had also supplied important lessons with respectto the construction and plan of our lines. The very deep underground forts in the front trenches had to be replaced by shallower constructions. Concrete “pill-boxes,” which, however, unfortunately took long to build, had acquired an increasing value. The conspicuous lines of trenches, which appeared as sharp lines on every aerial photograph, supplied far too good a target for the enemy Artillery. The system of defence had to be made broader and looser and better adapted to the ground. The large, thick barriers of wire, pleasant as they were when there was little doing, were no longer a protection. They withered under the enemy barrage’; and an angry tribute is paid in his chapter to the equipment of theEntenteArmies with war material, which ‘had been developed to an extent hitherto undreamed of,’ and to ‘the resolution of theEntente, their strangling starvation blockade, and their propaganda of lies and hate which was so dangerous to us.’

It is good to see ourselves as our enemy saw us after the Battle of the Somme. And, perhaps, though we are anticipating a month or two, we may conclude this chapter by a quotation from a German Army Order, hitherto unpublished, of April 4th, 1917. It illustrates from another angle the effects of those ‘EntenteArmies’ and ‘their propaganda’ to which Ludendorff alludes in such embittered terms. The Order ran:

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