Young patriotic clerks and manual workers responded well to being commanded by 18-year-old subalterns fresh from school. For the first time ‘nicely raised young men from West Country vicarages or South Coast watering places came face to face with forty Durham miners, Yorkshire furnacemen, Clydeside riveters, and the two sides found that they could scarcely understand each other’s speech’.18 All ranks were motivated by patriotism. Their officers were fired also with the public school ethic of service, but they had never been properly trained to fight or to command. Committed to the leadership ideas of the sports field, youthful officers were unyielding in their courage, which is why they suffered disproportionate casualties. A junior officer reporting to his infantry battalion had a 50 per cent chance of being killed or seriously wounded within six months.
War poets have provided an interesting record of the good relationship between British officers and men in the front line. But whatever its virtue and valour, an army based upon improvisation was no match for German professionalism. Neither were the British high commanders.
The commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France from December 1915 onwards was Lieutenant-General Sir Douglas Haig. ‘A dour hard-working ambitious Scot with little money and few friends, who was not too particular about the methods he used to get to the top of his profession,’ said the historian Michael Howard. ‘But he was a dedicated professional none the less.’19 This 53-year-old autocrat distrusted all foreigners, including his French allies, thought that Roman Catholics were likely to be pacifists and detested all politicians, especially Socialists, into which category he was inclined to put anyone with new ideas. These shortcomings were grave, all the more so because Haig proved totally unequipped for the unprecedented military task he had taken upon himself.
In the higher ranks of the British army Haig made sure that important promotions came only to the prewar regulars. Even worse, promotion was decided by the traditional system of age, service and seniority. This ensured that only the grossest incompetents were ever removed, and they almost invariably got a job where they could do even more damage.
The German army was equally reluctant to allow the working class across the great divide into the exalted realm of the commissioned ranks. Officers had always enjoyed a privileged place in German society, and German schools of all kinds prepared youngsters for the military service that followed their schooling. A century of conscription had ensured that German officers, like German other-ranks, were thoroughly trained. Fit 20-year-old men served two years with the army (one year for students). Training was methodical and rigorous; some said it was sadistic. Emphasis was given to specialized skills, such as operating and maintaining engines, artillery and machine-guns. Each man also learned the job of his immediate superior so that every senior NCO was trained to fill an officer’s role, should his officer become a casualty.
Until they reached the age of 40, Germans returned to the army for refresher courses that amounted to about eight weeks’ training every five years. In this way reservists were taught about new weapons and tactics, and the system provided Germany with a well trained army of over 4 million men in 1914.
The battle of the Somme
Engineers, like scientists of all kinds, were respected in Germany. With the German army reduced to static fighting on the Western Front, engineers built a well designed defence system behind their front line. They dug trenches along contours, taking advantage of every hill and ridge, and where possible the line was linked to shell-racked villages, where machine-gun positions and observation posts were concealed in the rubble.
On the Somme sector, chalk provided a chance to dig deep; 40 feet was not exceptional. Dug-outs were reinforced with cement and steel and had multiple exits. Many underground quarters had electric light and were ventilated by fans. The soldiers had bunk-beds and in some places there was even piped water. No wonder that on 8 August 1916 a British serving soldier’s letter in The Times said: ‘But the German dug-outs! My word, they were things of beauty, art and safety.’
When these defences were ready, the Germans pulled back to them. The British generals moved their men forward to lap against the German line. It was what the Germans wanted them to do, for here the British were constantly observed and under fire. It was this German line that Douglas Haig was to assault on 1 July 1916 in the battle of the Somme, throwing in thirteen British and five French divisions.
Whether Haig’s plan was based upon his low opinion of the professional army, or his low opinion of the civilians which now largely manned it, is not clear. The battle plan was detailed and robotic. No opportunity for initiative or independent action was granted to any of the combatants.
The Somme battle opened on a hot July day when 143 battalions attacked and about 50 per cent of the men, and some 75 per cent of the officers, became casualties. Karl Blenk, a German machine-gunner, recalled:
I could see them everywhere; there were hundreds. The officers were in front. I noticed one of them walked calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down, in their hundreds. You didn’t have to aim, we just fired into them.20
The German machine-gunners had been ordered to set up their positions at the rear of their trenchline, where they would command a better view and ‘In addition, owing to the feeling of safety which this position inspires, the men will work their guns with more coolness and judgement.’
With a thoroughness and dedication that the world usually ascribed to the Prussians, the British infantry had spent many hours preparing for the attack. They practised walking forward in close and exactly prescribed intervals carrying almost 70 lb of equipment.
The Germans were at this time practising carrying their machine-guns from their deep and comfortable dug-outs to position them for firing. They did this as soon as the preliminary artillery barrage lifted for the attack. It took them three minutes.21
By the end of the first day, the British attackers had suffered 60,000 casualties, about one-third of them fatal. It was the worst day suffered by any army during the war and the worst in the British army’s history.
Haig was not deterred. His futile battle continued for six months, until the Allied casualties numbered 420,000 men.22 Few of the soldiers engaged in the Somme fighting had been given proper infantry training. Even the British artillery-men were not adequately trained. Afterwards the high command tried to make the artillery’s performance an excuse for the disaster.
Between 1914 and 1918 a distinct difference was to be seen in the German and the Anglo-French methods of fighting the war. When France’s General Pétain analysed the fighting in Champagne in 1915 he concluded that surprise attacks were useless because of the great depth of defences on both sides. He said artillery bombardment was the only way of preparing for a breakthrough. Britain’s General Haig was convinced. Apart from the Neuve Chapelle fighting, in the early summer of 1915, and the Cambrai raid of 1917, Haig studiously avoided surprising the Germans. He said his guiding principle was wearing down the enemy: it was to be a war of attrition. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Haig’s methods wore his own men down more thoroughly than they wore down the enemy.
The past is a foreign country:
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between
Douglas Haig was not a man to be deterred by failure, or even to learn from it.