EP 05 - Nightmare in the Trenches

Nightmare in the Trenches

- Episode 05 -

Haig’s war crime on The Somme

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Nightmare in the trenches 1914-16

Wednesday 2 February 2022

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French heavy canon with range of 17.6 kilometers at Hardecourt-aux-Bois on the Somme

The French learned how to attack German trenches

The Germans began the war by retreating to the most strategic places, generally higher ground, and then consolidated their superior position with an elaborate system of trenches and observation posts.

The commander of the French 6th Army at the south of the Somme was a professor, and artillery man, Ferdinand Foch. He wanted 1069 heavy guns for the attack but could only get 528 heavy artillery guns. It was half the number he had hoped for.

So what did the French professor do? Did he, like the British, put his trust in the moral superiority of their men? No. Did he, like Douglas Haig, brush aside anyone who suggested being a little more cautious, saying they were a fool and a coward? No.

What Foch and another General Fayolle did was carefully to trim their plans according to the number of big guns they had. Having observed the French successes and British failures since 1914, Foch and Fayolle only planned to attack as much of the German line as they had the guns to knock out.

By the end of 1915 the French Army commanders had adopted what has come to be known as the ‘scientific method.’ Men could not break the trench system. They were too precious to be sent out against machine-guns and shells. The key was the artillery.

French artillery was not only in a much better mechanical condition than the British, but it was by then being trained to fire with mathematical accuracy, calculating for weather conditions, for the effect of sloping ground and a series of other factors.

Understanding the German artillery spotter network, they toppled church towers, factory chimneys and anywhere else the Germans could use as viewing posts; and targeted the heavy German artillery, often on the reverse of hillsides, knowing that these unseen guns would play havoc with any advance.

The stress was on precise observation and mathematics, using as few shells as possible. Enemy trenches did not have to be obliterated – simply put out of action long enough for an attack.

Episode 05 - Haig's warm crime on The Somme

French magazine illustration of deep German dugouts on front line, where the machine-gunners could shelter safely

'We know, however, that the Germans have dugouts 40 feet deep' - Private Percy Jones

Many books still say the British generals sincerely believed that, by the end of six days of British shelling before the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, the Germans on their part of the line were all dead.

When reports came back during the bombardment that it was not being effective, Haig dismissed them as ‘windiness' (cowardice). But the British raiding parties that went across at night knew what they’d seen.

Three of the five army corps at the Somme reported the British shells were not cutting the German barbed wire. German trenches were still heavily manned.

Percy Jones was a rifleman facing Gommecourt at the northern end of the line.

He wrote in his diary on 26 June, as the British bombardment had thundered on, ‘General Snow and his staff are busy telling us that we shall have practically no casualties because all the Germans will have been killed by our artillery barrage. This is nothing like the truth! The fact is that this attack is based entirely on the supposition that there will be no Germans left alive to oppose us…. We know, however, that the Germans have dugouts 40 feet deep, and I do not see how the stiffest bombardment is going to kill them all off. Nor do I see how the whole of the enemy’s artillery is going to be silenced.’

Private Jones had got it exactly correct. By the time the battle started, 246 German field guns and 598 heavy guns were still in action. That was more than twice as many as the British had started with.

Whatever General Snow told his men, the strategy was to throw British soldiers against German machines in the vague and vain hope that the British would be protected by their moral superiority.

It was all about artillery. The French had enough big guns for 9 miles of front. The British with fewer guns chose to attack across 16 miles.

'Woodbine Willie', the affectionate nickname of Rev Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, a socialist poet who toured with boxers and wrestlers to give moral boosting speeches and fags

'Everywhere I found the troops in great spirits, and full of confidence of their ability to smash the Enemy' -Haig to the King, 28 June 1916

Nobody anywhere near the front line on 1 July 1916 could have avoided the obvious fact that the British bombardment had been, as had been entirely predictable, largely useless.

But of course, generals were nowhere near the front line. On the morning of 1 July, General Hunter-Weston, commander at the Northern end of the line, was actually posing for a press photograph with his senior officers, 10 miles away, at his HQ in the fine 18^th century Chateau of Marieux.

According to his handwritten diary, Douglas Haig, who was even further away, and nowhere near enough to see the front line, even through a pair of binoculars, was apparently unaware of any – or much - of what was happening.

On 28 June he wrote to his friend George V, ‘everywhere I found the troops in great spirits, and full of confidence of their ability to smash the Enemy…. Several officers have said that they have never known troops in such enthusiastic spirits.’

Haig then added, bizarrely, ‘We must, I think in fairness, give a good deal of credit for this to the Parsons.’

The whole notion that the army chaplains – who on the whole were not having a good war - had fired the men up for the attack suggests Haig truly was losing touch with reality.

It was anyway a cruel delusion to suggest that the men’s spirits had anything to do with the final result. That would be governed by shells and machine-guns. The German machine-guns and heavy guns had not been silenced by the bombardment. To order the infantry in tin hats to run at the German machine guns was to commit whole scale slaughter.

French soldiers in the new uniform introduced in 1914, known as horizon blue [coloured or reconstruction]

On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, in tragic contrast to the British Army, the French Sixth Army captured all of its objectives, many of them within an hour

The French occupied the southern end of the line. Their intense bombardment ahead of the infantry attack on 1 July 1916 had successfully taken out many of the German machine-guns, field guns, mortars, observation posts and many heavy guns hidden way behind the line.

Crucially, the French bombardment was so heavy that it became impossible for the Germans to bring up any reinforcements or to move around behind their lines.

German war diaries report stumbling in the dark, unable to find the positions they were supposed to take up. On the front line, the Germans’ dugouts had been destroyed and they could get no materials to mend them since their communication trenches had disappeared. In fact they hadn’t even been able to get food and had been eating their emergency rations. Some reported having nothing left except mugs of coffee. Others sheltered in the tunnels they had been digging under no man’s land towards the French lines.

That day, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the French Sixth Army captured all of its objectives, many of them within an hour.

The French army advanced two kilometres. In some places, the French reached open country. The Germans were loading wagons and fleeing, either leaving behind or pulling out their big guns.

The brilliant success of the French operation on the Somme – and above all the comparatively few casualties they suffered - plainly demonstrates for all to see how the war on the Western Front could and should have been conducted.

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