Blood and Thunder (35 page)

La Boiselle was also a dismal waste of men and resources. What made it worse was that given the terrain and the failure of the preliminary bombardment, it was inevitable, and that inevitable failure cost Desmond Darley his life. The raw 11th Suffolks suffered the highest casualties in their division: 691 men and eighteen officers in its first action. Somewhere in the chaos the 21-year-old died. Nobody knew when across the four days, or how, and for his family it was another example of false hope gradually ebbing away.

A rifleman, Kane, who was close to Harry MacNaghten as he was shot in the legs, bayoneted the German who was wielding the machine gun. Harry's company then fell back behind the ridge where it was consolidated by a surviving officer who arranged a second charge at the Germans. He was very severely wounded almost as soon as he gave the order but carried on until he fell. Then Harry's surviving sergeant rallied the men and went again. Almost every single officer of the 12th Irish Rifles was a casualty and they eventually had to fall back on their own trenches. The fate of wounded men on the battlefield was harrowing. One of Guy Cholmeley's fellow officers was found in no-man's-land a full three days later with a severe wound to the head. Rendered blind he had crawled pitifully about, feeling his way along and trying to find the British lines.

Whether a similar fate had befallen young Harry MacNaghten was never established. After being shot in the legs he was lost in the chaos and listed simply as ‘missing believed killed'. For all of its initial success in jumping into the German front lines, the Ulster Division too had failed in its endeavours. The importance of the assault on the Thiepval area was not lost on the men in command as they ordered their troops forward again and again. Every available man they could find was collected and assembled; forty-six out of an entire battalion, commanded by NCOs. With so few men the Royal Irish Rifles were then pulled back to consolidate their position instead.

At Fricourt with the West Yorkshire Regiment, James Knott fell less than a year after his brother. The German gunners had been knocked out prior to the attack but casualties were still horrific.
3
The only part of the line that achieved anything approaching success was the southernmost sector of the British line. Here British troops achieved what they set out to and demolished the front German system, albeit in the face of much less artillery. They did not, however, make it to the second system of trenches.

The cost of the opening day of the Somme campaign was horrendous. Over 19,000 men died and nearly 60,000 were put out of action on a single day. Of fifteen OEs known to have died on 1 July half were wiped out with no trace. It was the blackest day ever to befall the British Army. The bombardment had not lived up to expectations, no matter how loud and threatening it had seemed. The front was too long and the complexity and depth of the German objectives too deep to be swept aside.

At the end of 1 July there was utter confusion across the British front. If the men commanding the battalions could not adequately assess the situation then Henry Rawlinson did not have a hope when he was relying on their information to plan the subsequent days of his offensive. Yet still, he would be required with Haig to decide what to do next to press the advance on.

Notes

  
1
  Second Lieutenant Richard Willingdon Somers-Smith is buried at Bedford House Cemetery.

  
2
  Major Cedric Charles Dickens would not survive the campaign on the Somme. He was killed during preparations for another major assault near Ginchy on 9 September at the age of 27. His body was never recovered and he too is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.

  
3
  The Knott family saw to it that their boys were buried together James's body was labriously transferred north, resting as circumstances dictated in cemeteries and crypts along the way until he could be laid beside henry in Ypres Town Cemetery – an unusual occurrence for one killed on the Somme on 1 July.

13

‘The Metal Is Gold and Tried in the Fire'

So what next for the British Army? The sheer logistical effort of deploying the attack on the Somme, and political ramifications with France and Russia, meant that this front could never be abandoned. The offensive had been planned for months and was
the
allied offensive of 1916 aimed at winning the war.

Gains had been made in the south, but Rawlinson was faced with utter failure in the north, which was the worst-case scenario in terms of moving forward. No full-scale advance could be made without first taking Thiepval and other important tactical features. So perhaps Rawlinson should even out the progress before he considered the full advance? In this instance they would eventually be able to make a larger assault on the German second-line system. Haig did not think so. He wanted to continue the gains already made in the south, pushing with the French who had success of their own on the other side of the River Somme on 1 July.

Whilst men crawled about and bled to death in no-man's-land, the British plan was laid. There would now be an attack in the southern part of the British sector to try to gain a favourable position for a main thrust on the second system of German trenches at the ridge running between Longueval and Bazentin-le-Petit. Additionally, there would be a diversionary attack at Thiepval as soon as 3 July.

This diversion failed. Thus began a series of scrappy assaults in the centre of the British Somme front that would attempt to both keep the Germans on their toes and to gain local advantages ready for a larger assault. Control began to drain away from Rawlinson, who was losing his grip on the situation. Power was passing into the hands of his subordinates just as the weather took a turn for the worse on the Somme.

More troops coming into the area meant more Old Etonians being fed on to the battlefield and amongst them was yet another who had made the transition from schoolboy to soldier in the midst of the war. Marc Anthony Patrick Noble had left school at 17 to do his bit. Born in 1897, Marc was tall, 6ft, with dark hair and dark eyes. At Eton he was not one of those who worshipped the playing fields. He was bright, with a vivid imagination and was passionate about his many interests, which included astronomy, English poetry, playing chess via correspondence with his brother Humphrey, history, music, painting, old books, shooting, farming and politics.

In the nursery he and his sister Marjorie invented sagas ‘the length each of a thousand
Arabian Nights
' or prepared lectures for their parents, properly presented (with a blackboard and a jug of water at hand) after dinner. One evening she spoke on Francois I and Marc on Napoleon. As they got older they began producing a newspaper for a favourite aunt called the
En Avant
, the motto of their Brunel relatives. Photography came hand in hand with this new venture and Marc was often out taking pictures of locations such as Windsor Castle and St George's Chapel for their ‘historical home' column.

Marc held ‘an almost ascetic contempt' for dancing or anything that devoted time to ‘playing about with girls.' He was utterly satisfied with his own company. His sister remembered looking for him at their Broome Park home and finding him at the end of a lofty corridor whilst everybody else revelled downstairs. ‘The scents of a summer night drifted in through an open window.' She found Marc with his telescope, ‘silhouetted against a great Northumbria sky of stars'.

Eton, where he arrived in 1910, tried Marc's patience on occasion. ‘One can never forget one is at school. No sooner has one settled down to read than that awful clock booms out that it is quarter past something, and all the illusion is spoiled.' He was, however, fully invested in school life; like Cedric Dickens he was a cellist and as well as his personal interests he was a member of the Shakespeare, debating and essay societies. Marc spent his five Eton years in Samuel Lubbock's house, a fabled abode of notable personages that would include Prince Henry, where the spread on the dinner table was enviously talked over by the boys in other houses.

Marc was a thoughtful boy at the best of times and war had him pondering the grand scheme of things at school. ‘I was thinking this evening about my life,' he wrote. ‘It is mysterious just to think of the future and what it holds in store for us … I have passed fifteen times the day I am going to die …' Like William Winterton, Robin Blacker and Yvo Charteris, Marc was another of those who grew to consider their position at Eton untenable as 1915 dawned. By February he had convinced his housemaster that this was the case and was working on his father towards the idea of a commission in the artillery. It was the only choice as far as allegiance was concerned. Marc's grandfather, Sir Andrew Noble, had spent a lifetime fighting with the artillery and in the pursuit of the advancement of gunnery. It seemed only fitting that in this war, so dominated by his craft, his grandson should follow in his footsteps.

Sir Andrew Noble had joined the Royal Artillery in 1849 and within eleven years was Assistant Inspector of Artillery and a member of the Ordnance Select Committee. At about this time he was encouraged by Sir William Armstrong, the hydraulic engineer who produced guns for both the Army and the Navy, to take up a post in the private sector. More importantly he wanted him to take a job with him in Elswick where 60,000 people were employed at his burgeoning armaments factory. Sir Andrew's career rocketed in this forward-thinking environment and he was pivotal in the advancement of every facet of gunnery, be it smokeless powder, a chronoscope for the measurement of tiny amounts of time, or fired gunpowder. By 1877 Armstrong and his team were finally able to begin wrenching antiquated muzzle loaded guns out of the government's stubborn hands.

There was further motivation behind Marc's decision to join the Royal Field Artillery. He had begun to think that he would like to forge a post-war career at Elswick. At the beginning of 1915 he wrote from Eton to his father, who was a director at the factory, attempting to explain:

I do hope, that in all this matter I have not caused you deep pain … I know that you would have preferred me to stay on at Eton, but … it is not as if I had rushed into it … and I should like to thank you especially for being so considerate about it all … After all, the object of education is to teach us all to be men. I think Woolwich with its stern discipline, its hard work, will do me more good as a keen cadet than staying at Eton [as] a fellow who is looked on as not having done all he might, and feels it too.

The family had always thought that if any grandson of Sir Andrew was to end up at Elswick it would be Marc's elder brother Humphrey. Their uncle even thought that the career might be beneath a boy as bright as Marc, but now Marc himself was resolved and, more importantly, resolved not to do it in a He's-a-Noble-so-there's-a-berth-in-Elswick-for-him-manner. He wanted to enter the place after the war as a competent artillery officer in his own right. ‘I do
not
want to go into Elswick through being the grandson of the Chairman and the son of a Director.'

Marc left Eton in April 1915 and proceeded straight to Woolwich, where he revelled in the outdoor lifestyle and in the scientific side of his artillery training, which engaged his quick mind. There was nothing that could be done to change his ambitions. ‘It seems a little sad that when the family has helped to create a thing like that, none of the rising generation should help to continue the work … Even if Grandpapa had founded a large business for making sausages or cheap braces … I think it would have been the duty of one of the grandsons to continue it.' For now though, his career was a moot point. Elswick would go on, ‘unless the country is smashed up, in which case we won't care about considering our own careers', but for now the war was the priority.

By the time Rawlinson's troops launched their assault on the Somme on 1 July 1916 Marc's grandfather had been dead for eight months, passing away on the very day that his grandson was commissioned into the artillery. Now a subaltern in the 121st Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, which was attached to the 38th (Welsh) Division, Marc moved off that night from well behind the lines in the direction of the fighting. Arriving near Fricourt in the early hours of 7 July, they immediately began laying out lines of fire. Their target, behind Fricourt itself, was Mametz Wood.

The wood, or what was left of it, had been designated as one of those necessary tactical objectives that would ease the burden of a future full-scale assault in the area and after July 1916 it was to become an unlikely location resonating through Welsh consciousness. The attack was due to be launched just a few hours after Marc and his guns arrived on the scene. Pushing from the ironically named ‘Happy Valley' the Welsh Division was to advance towards Mametz Wood over a worryingly wide bit of open ground.

Marc and his gunners began laying out a preliminary bombardment as soon as possible. It was hoped that they would be able to raise their barrage to create a shield of sorts for when the infantry went over the top. Unfortunately though, the infantry ran headlong into a veil of machine-gun fire and the attack faltered. Underinformed and disappointed, Haig threw his toys out of the pram and laid the blame with the Welsh troops, dismissing their commanding officer.

The following day Marc's battery continued pounding away at the north-west corner of Mametz Wood amidst rumours that the Germans were advancing towards Mametz itself. Another exhausting day followed and they fired on the wood throughout the night too until, on 10 July, the Welshmen were ordered to attack. The advance through a smoke screen at dawn was chaotic, but the troops this time managed to infiltrate the splintered, tangled remains of the wood. Marc's battery rolled their guns forward until they were within range of enemy rifles among the trees and kept rapid fire up to try to support the advance. ‘I especially admired him,' a senior officer wrote of Marc, ‘[in] his first taste of real war. He was evidently shaken by the unpleasant things that were happening, as was only natural, but he did his job most gallantly smiling all the time.'