Blood and Thunder (55 page)

The tail end of 1917 had well and truly taken it out of Henry Dundas. In December the 20-year-old was sent home. As early as November his physical health had become a concern. Henry was pulled out of the line and sent home in time for Christmas, to the joy of his parents, with an ambiguous heart complaint. It seemed that senior officers were determined to give him a rest. He spent his time relaxing at home and at Eton, which he was ecstatic to see again. ‘This place is fascinating. Just being here is a joy in itself, strolling about as one used to … ah me!'

In February, back at the front, Henry turned 21 and had a ‘marvellous' coming-of-age dinner with the old gang. He spent the evening boozing with Ralph Gamble and Oliver Lyttelton, and deemed it ‘well worth the headache the next day!' But nothing could detract from the grinding monotony of war. He and Ralph sat and had a heart to heart about all the friends they had lost thus far. For them, 31 July 1917 was the blackest day of the war. Eric Greer, John Dyer and Logie Leggatt were ‘absolutely irreplaceable'. The turnover weighed heavy on them both and they were beginning to feel like old men. ‘One feels it all the more so with what is practically a new generation of officers who have never even heard of Eric and John,' lamented Henry. ‘What wonderful people they were.'

Although Ralph, Henry and their fellow OEs had had enough, 1918 promised more fighting, more hardships and ever further thinning of the ranks of Old Etonians. In fact it would prove to be the most savage year so far in terms of the scale of the fighting. As spring approached the Germans were planning a monumental offensive. They had no choice but to attempt a push on this scale as the country could not sustain itself for much longer. The burden of fighting and Britain's naval blockade strangling their supply lines were forcing their hand.

The collapse of Russia facilitated German plans. Huge numbers of troops could now be pulled from the Eastern Front and sent into France and Flanders, where they would enjoy numerical superiority over the Allies. But this window of opportunity was destined to slam shut in their faces with the arrival in force of the Americans, and they knew it. As summer approached, there would theoretically be virtually infinite numbers of men arriving from across the Atlantic to fight for the Allied cause. It was clear to the Germans that if they had not won the war by this point, the strain of battling this new foe would tip the scales and doom them to ultimate defeat. The race was on to win the Great War.

The German high command began planning to throw everything it had at the British in the hope that defeating Haig's armies would cause the French to capitulate. Many different plans were concocted but in the third week of January, Ludendorff,
controlling the Kaiser's army, made his choice to begin with ‘Operation Michael'. The German Army was going to attempt to smash through south of Arras and on the Somme, and then it would turn to roll north-west up the line. A few days later Operation Mars would commence, assaulting Arras. In April, as soon as the ground dried up enough, Operation George would punch through on the River Lys in the Armentières area and push up towards the English Channel. There would be no respite for the British until they had been completely destroyed.

In their planning, German military commanders could proceed safe in the knowledge that nobody at home was going to impede their endeavours. Douglas Haig did not enjoy the same freedom. He and the prime minister were engaged in a battle of their own that had soured their relations to the point of Lloyd George scheming behind Haig's back with the French.
He had now conspired with them to ensure that the British would take over more of the front. From St Quentin down to the River Oise was to come under British control at the beginning of the year.

As if this was not bad enough, Haig would be extending lines south without the reinforcements that he had told the government he needed. Astute as ever, Henry Dundas had already recognised the lay of the land. ‘Everything now depends upon Americans and the uselessness or otherwise of their fighting troops, who will be the main source of reserves against the German divisions from the Russian front. In fact they will form about the only reserve, as it doesn't look as if [we have got] any more men and the French certainly haven't.'

Haig had estimated that he needed over 600,000 men to maintain the BEF as it stood. He got 200,000, and many of these were not in optimum condition. In command of the Fifth Army, Hubert Gough was mortified by some of the men he received. Large numbers, he claimed, were returning wounded and he journeyed out one snowy day to inspect a draft that had just come in. Getting out of his car and kicking off the blizzard that had streamed in through the window he found more than half of the men wearing wounded stripes, some two or three. ‘It struck me at the time as unjust,' he later recalled. ‘While there remained at home many thousands of comparatively young men who had never seen a shot fired.'

Determined not to send men to Haig to be sacrificed as had happened at Passchendaele, the prime minister wanted to keep them at home, where the politicians and not the commander-in-chief could decide when they would be needed. At this crucial juncture of the war, Haig was forced to wholly reorganise the British Army on the Western Front to accommodate his lack of manpower. Brigades were reduced from four battalions to three. Each division shrank significantly. Not only that, but this enforced restructuring destroyed the operational experience gleaned so far. Henry watched sadly as Guards battalions, including the 2nd Irish, were sent to 31st Division. ‘They looked magnificent,' he wrote sadly when he thought of Eric Greer and what he would make of it. ‘But as I looked at all the things that Eric used to be so fond of – their drums and one or two things like that – I wept quite properly. Poor Eric.'

Gough was understandably mortified with this re-arrangement of his army. His force had been weakened immeasurably and as far as he was concerned, the set-up was not a patch on what it had replaced. But it was done, and done in the knowledge that very soon his men would be required to stand up to a large-scale German offensive. Every attempt, as Gough later put it, should have been made to ensure that when the storm came the army was in the best possible position to resist it. This was simply not the case.

For the British Army, preparing to face a large-scale offensive delivered at them and not the other way around, was a new concept and would require a monumental amount of work. Borrowing heavily from the enemy's defensive developments, the BEF began reorganising to defend in depth. Facing the Germans first would be the Forward Zone. This was not designed to be the strongest held and most fiercely fought over position. This was to be the Battle Zone behind, the most important feature of this new, flexible British system of defence. A little over 1½ miles in depth and taking advantage of all the best features of the landscape in any given area, the Battle Zone was to be where the British Army would hold fast and try to halt the attackers. Much of it would not be permanently occupied. Troops to the rear would be on alert and would rush in to man their posts in the event of an emergency.

Between 4 and 8 miles behind the Battle Zone was a Rear Zone. Here rough defensive lines were marked out, or ‘spit-locked' as opposed to being properly dug for now. It all sounded deliberate enough, but unfortunately the planning was not matched by the manpower available and consequently the Battle Zone, and in particular the Rear Zone, were underdeveloped.

Whilst the troops were being schooled in the principle of elastic defences, it was imperative that the RFC remain attack minded so that vital intelligence on German troop movements could be gathered. The Royal Flying Corps went to work. Along with its efforts, trench raids, patrols, the interrogation of prisoners and the knowledge that two successful German generals had been reallocated to a specific part of the front, made it clear, by late January, that the attack would fall upon the Third and Fifth Armies. Both were commanded by OEs, in Generals Byng and Gough, and formed the southern part of the British sector on the Somme and to the south of Arras. Efforts would henceforth be focused on this area as much as possible without neglecting the other end of the Western Front.

What the RFC found was disconcerting. In front of the two OE commanders there was evidence of, among other things, fourteen new aerodromes, large ammunition dumps and constant movements by rail towards the existing front. Throughout February more and more trains were spotted. Airmen daily took scores of photographs of German batteries that would enable the British gunners to work out where to direct their fire. Bombing raids were also increased. Large ammunition dumps, significant concentrations of rolling stock, aerodromes and factories took precedence as targets.

Whilst these machines went about their business, fighter squadrons made as much of a nuisance of themselves as possible. Ian Napier had worked very impressively as a liaison officer with the French on the left of the Guards Division in the summer of 1917. He returned to 40 Squadron from his sojourn, by which time they had undergone a conversion to the SE5a, one of the highest rated scouts at the front.

Work began in earnest with their first real dogfight of 1918 on 6 March. Ian and his fellow pilots took off mid afternoon and found seven enemy scouts hovering about above the lines, attempting to stop the British airmen from carrying out their bombing and reconnaissance tasks. Ian picked one out and went for it. Darting to within 30 yards of it he opened fire with both the gun above his head and the one in front of his cockpit and let off short bursts. The enemy machine appeared to spin off in a funk. Pulling away Ian spotted another German aeroplane. He let off 150 rounds at it and got lucky, the machine dropping out of the sky and coming to ground north-west of Lens. It was a profitable day for the squadron and they claimed four enemy machines destroyed and two forced down out of control. Luck was not with them three days later when they suffered the loss of one of their number. The wings fell off Leonard Tilney's plane at 12,000ft. Aged 22 when he fell to his death, Tilney was the 61st OE to die with the flying services.

On 17 March dark clouds descended on the would-be battlefield. The RFC found itself grounded at just the wrong moment. Rain began to fall and for four days reconnaissance was impossible. It was miserable timing, for although the British airmen could not get into the air, other sources indicated that the offensive was about to begin. A captured German NCO, a pilot and a handful of deserters all confirmed the date: 21 March 1918.

Hubert Gough had been embroiled in a bitter struggle with GHQ over where to place his limited reserves but Haig had the entire front to think about and he refused to divert them all to Gough, however unjust it might have seemed to the army commander who was about to bear the brunt of the German attack.

On 20 March 1918 Etonians in the Oise Valley were changing places in the Forward Zone. Morice Julian St Aubyn came from a Cornish family and on the outbreak of war had entered his father's regiment, the King's Royal Rifle Corps. Like most of the Etonians now manning Gough's army, Morice was no stranger to the front. Many of the tired young men serving in 1918 had racked up multiple wounds since the beginning of the war. He had had to have shrapnel pulled from his back a week before his battalion witnessed horror at Hooge in 1915 and he had been shot in the stomach on the Somme in September 1916.

The 7th King's Royal Rifles, which was part of the 43rd Brigade, also included George Llewelyn Davies' brother Peter. They trudged backwards into support. If, however, an emergency called for it, they would be required to take up position in the Battle Zone, a line of strong points in front of the village of Benay. This was to be their first time engaged in this duty and so that night they planned to man the Battle Zone as a practice session. By the time they set out though, information taken from the prisoners had filtered through. Their practice was upgraded to a precautionary measure. Most of the Riflemen, however, didn't expect an enemy push.

Passing Morice St Aubyn on their way into the Forward Zone were the 6th Somerset Light Infantry. Amongst their number was a former Colleger named Paul Hobhouse. The son of a Somerset gentleman, the 23 year old had gone up to Oxford before volunteering to join his local battalion. Wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel at Hooge and having survived huge blood loss, Paul had also been shot in 1916. That night Gough's front was ominously quiet. The German guns lay silent. Morice St Aubyn's battalion was in position in the Battle Zone by midnight. They sat illuminated by the moon, counting down the hours till they could return to Benay for breakfast. Paul Hobhouse's men were digging saps in front of them. Downing their shovels they settled down to await morning in their posts.

Before dawn the foreboding silence was broken by the fiercest bombardment the war had yet seen. Gaspard Ridout had still been at Eton in October 1916. He was an exceptionally shy boy but bright, the only OE to get into Woolwich in his intake and passing out third. The son of a banker, born in Newcastle, he was still a teenager when the Germans began their offensive in March 1918. A great many of the British guns were positioned further back to await organised, strong resistance in the Battle Zone when the enemy appeared on the horizon; but some artillery remained in the Forward Zone to take up targets behind the German lines. Gaspard's battery belonged to the 331st Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. Stationed towards the southern end of the British Sector they had been at Hargicourt, surrounded by barbed wire to give them some semblance of protection, since the beginning of the month. For the past week they had been attempting to harass German battle preparations as much as possible, but at 4.45 a.m. on Thursday 21 March the enemy targeted the British artillery with every kind of shell imaginable.

At his headquarters, some 30 miles behind the lines, Hubert Gough was awoken by the dull roar of the fierce bombardment occurring in the distance. He jumped out of bed, ran into his office and got straight on the phone to Haig's headquarters. After putting down the receiver he went over to his bedroom window and caught his first sight of the fog that had enveloped his army. He could barely make out the branches of a tree in the garden 40ft from the window. The weather had played right into enemy hands. ‘The stars in their courses,' he wrote, ‘seemed to be fighting for the Germans.' The bitter irony of the mist was not lost on Henry Dundas either. ‘It is really rather uncanny the way the weather favours the Boche. It is the general topic of interest and is shaking the faith even of the padres,' he complained bitterly. ‘Think of our pathetic offensives – drowned at birth like so many puppies by deluges of rain.'