Myths and Legends of the Second World War (21 page)

As a commander Haig was much hampered by the need to comply with French demands, and meet time-scales which did not always match the needs of the BEF. Too often the British army was obliged to launch and sustain costly attacks for no better reason than the need to relieve pressure on their French and Russian allies. The inglorious attack at Loos between June and December 1915 was fought at the insistence of the French, with the somewhat remote object of assisting the Russians, who had lately been driven out of Warsaw. Haig predicted that the attack would end in disaster, and so it did. In mid-February 1916 the French agreed with Haig to make a combined push north of the River Somme on or about July 1st, on a front of twelve miles. Then, at the end of February, the Germans launched a powerful offensive at Verdun, which rapidly bled the French army white. As a result the French commitment to the Somme offensive shrank rapidly, while the BEF was required to take over more sections of the French line, and weakened correspondingly. Ten days after the Somme offensive opened with catastrophic losses, the fighting at Verdun eased considerably, which ranks as a success of sorts. But it is doubtful that any of the thousands of British and Allied casualties took much comfort from this. Again, in April 1917, the BEF suffered 150,000 casualties supporting the ill-fated French Nivelle offensive. This in turn led to a fatal delay in operations in Flanders, with the result that Third Ypres became bogged down in the mud of Passchendaele, where men came to believe that the thunder of the artillery was causing the clouds to unleash the torrential rain.

Popular myth portrays the machine gun as the greatest casualty-producer on the Western Front, but in fact the First World War was primarily an artillery war, and shells the bigger killer. The problem of effective coordination of infantry and artillery tactics remained acute from declaration through to Armistice. Prior to 1916 British artillery tactics were largely simplistic. By means of a long preliminary artillery bombardment – lasting seven days in the case of the push on the Somme – it was anticipated that all German targets engaged would be destroyed in advance of the main infantry assault, be they trenches, strong points, machine gun nests or wire belts. However, the expected result was not achieved for two principal reasons. The first was that even the heaviest bombardment was incapable of achieving total destruction, given how deeply the German defenders were dug in. The second was that the number of guns, as well as the type and quality of munitions, were wholly inadequate for the task in hand. During the early stages of the war the importance of heavy-calibre weapons was sorely underrated by British planners, the BEF of 1914 being able to field just six heavy batteries, as compared to 72 field batteries. By November 1918 the ratio had increased to 440 heavy or siege batteries, and 568 field batteries. Yet even by July 1916 the BEF could muster only one heavy gun per 57 yards of frontage. Although following the shell scandal of 1915 artillery munitions were no longer in chronically short supply, ordinary shrapnel shells were of limited effect against hard targets, and were of negligible value in cutting wire. High explosive was more effective, but decried in some quarters as unsporting, since it gave off yellow fumes which were rumoured to be poisonous. Far too many shells – up to a third – were duds which failed to explode, due in large measure to an exceptionally rapid expansion in manufacturing capacity in which quality had been sacrificed for quantity. Even after these several ills were remedied, high explosive shells tended to bury themselves in ground or mud before detonating, thus reducing their effectiveness and making the cratered moonscape of No Man's Land still more impenetrable. A remedy, in the form of the Model 106 impact fuse, would not be introduced until 1917.

Only after the holocaust of July 1st 1916 did the creeping barrage come to be widely adopted by the BEF. This technique involved a wall of exploding shells advancing ahead of the infantry, as well as covering its flanks, with the object of stunning and blinding the defenders, thus preventing them from taking effective action before the attacking infantry reached their lines. The intention was simply to neutralize the opposing enemy positions rather than carry out mass destruction; manuals suggested that infantry advance just 50 yards behind the barrage, although 20 or 30 yards was more usual. On ordinary ground it was reckoned that infantry could keep pace with a barrage which advanced at a rate of 100 yards every three to four minutes. In muddy conditions, troops were unlikely to keep pace even if the time between barrage lifts was extended to eight minutes. A combination of substandard or inappropriate munitions and inexpert gun-laying methods made the creeping barrage an imperfect science until 1917, while the pervasive curse of poor battlefield communications served as another significant limiting factor. Once the infantry moved out of visual range of the artillery observers in forward positions, it became nigh on impossible for the guns to regulate the speed of advance of the barrage in accordance with directions from the infantry, or to direct additional concentrations of fire where required. All that commanders and planners could do was try to second-guess the conditions and speed in advance.

Without voice control the creeping barrage was not without its flaws, and the very nature of the technique meant that troops were required to advance steadily in extended line. Yet as the quantity of guns increased in step with the quality of shells and gunnery, by trial and error these tactics began to reap dividends. The preliminary bombardment, comprising a correct munitions mix, could cut wire, destroy artillery and isolate enemy troops in forward trenches from food, munitions and reinforcements. The science of counter-battery fire improved beyond measure during 1917, by virtue of accurate mapping and weather forecasts, gun calibration centres and effective techniques for flash and sound location. False zero hours left the enemy uncertain of the timing of the attack, or its precise location, while the creeping barrage might consist of not one but five or six successive lines of fire, supported by a hurricane bombardment of trench mortars and barrage machine gun fire as the troops attacked. The 106 Fuse improved wire cutting and reduced ‘back splash' from the barrage, allowing the infantry to follow even more closely. Ground–air cooperation with the Royal Flying Corps was refined, while by 1918 the use of smoke and gas shells became commonplace.

The result was that, after several hard lessons, the British army of late 1916 onwards was the most effective all-arms fighting force on the Western Front, and would remain so until victory in November 1918. Just as the disaster of the Dieppe raid in August 1942 taught the Allies a number of lessons which paved the way for later successful seaborne landings in Sicily, Italy and Normandy, so the Somme may be seen as the crucible of the British army, and the subsequent refinement of artillery tactics positive proof that its commanders learned from past mistakes and eventually bettered their enemy.

Nevertheless, it remains the case that the problem of command and control was never substantially overcome, even as new technologies reached the battlefield. A telling example in this context was seen at Cambrai in November 1917 when the commander of the newly formed Tank Corps, Brigadier-General Hugh Elles, elected to lead his entire force of more than 400 vehicles into battle in person. In due course Elles rumbled across the start line in the leading tank of H Battalion, christened Hilda, proudly flying the Corps flag. While certainly admirable, the gesture rang hollow. Once the primitive ironclads took to the field, Elles quickly found that his command capacity inside Hilda was limited to a light kick delivered to the driver's left or right shoulder, depending on the change in direction required. After forging through the enemy wire Hilda became ditched, and Elles realised that if he wanted to influence the battle at all he had no option but to walk back to his headquarters at Beauchamp, where he could direct the battle with the aid of several field telephones. So this he did.

The tank itself gave rise to a wide variety of myths and legends, both during and after the war. The primitive Mark I ‘land dreadnoughts' first trundled into action on 15th September 1916 during the middle stages of the Somme offensive, when two vehicles managed to penetrate as far as the target villages of Flers-Courcelette. An observer of the Royal Flying Corps reported back to GHQ that he had sighted ‘A tank in the main street of Flers, with large numbers of troops following it.' This message was written up by the propaganda bureau, and famously appeared in the British press as ‘A tank is walking up the High Street of Flers, with the British Army cheering behind it.' It was a fanciful image, but one which matched the high expectations of the then commander of the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps, General Ernest Swinton:

I imagined the consternation of the enemy – the feelings of the German machine gunner, by now accustomed, thumbs pressed on the double button of his gun, to mow down our oncoming infantry, while he in vain emptied belt after belt of ammunition against the strange monsters which loomed up out of the morning mist and came lurching and sliding on and on, over trenches and through wire.

Following the symbolic success of two tanks at Flers, unbounded public excitement about the exploits of the new war-winner persisted until the end of the conflict, and in the first few days gave rise to outlandish rumours. Among these short-lived myths were that each tank was at least as large as a house, manned by a crew of 400 men, was equipped with 12-inch guns, could travel at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, and was built in Japan by Swedes. Other rumours were slightly less positive, it being said that the tanks were officered by Royal Flying Corps aircrew who had lost their nerve. Several no less outlandish rumours had circulated in the vicinity of Thetford earlier in the year while the Heavy Branch trained in conditions of great secrecy at Elveden, including one that a giant underground tunnel was being bored right through to Germany.

The myth of the tank as a war-winner endured rather longer. Writing to his wife in August 1918, Winston Churchill (by then the Minister of Munitions) appraised the tanks as ‘invincible' machines that were sure to play a ‘decisive' part in the Allied victory. Jean de Pierrefeu, an official at French General Headquarters throughout the war, wrote in 1923 that from the tank ‘was to come victory as Pallas came from the head of Zeus'. If anything, the Germans proved even more effusive in their praise. Writing in his memoirs, the former infantry General A.D.H. von Zwehl affirmed that: ‘I consider we were beaten not by the genius of Marshal Foch, but by “General Tank”. In other words, a new weapon of war, in conjunction with the widespread reinforcement of the Americans.' Indeed for some time after the end of the war tanks were referred to in Germany as ‘Germany's Death'.

In fact the reality of the tanks' first day of combat was very different. On September 15th only 49 tanks were combat ready, 13 of these breaking down before they could cross the start line. By July 1917 there were still only 136 operational vehicles available for the commencement of Third Ypres, colloquially known as Passchendaele. Even at Cambrai on 20th November 1917, when 378 tanks achieved spectacular success on the first day of the battle, legend holds that a single German artillery officer succeeded in disabling 16 tanks as they crawled over Flesquiéres Ridge, and no less than 56 per cent of the force as a whole was immobilized. The statistics for Amiens in August 1918 were if anything worse. Of the 342 Mark Vs which took to the field on the 8th, only 145 remained fit for action the following day. By the 10th only 85 were operational, and 38 on the 11th. On the 12th, enemy action, breakdowns and crew exhaustion meant that just six tanks were able to fight.

Conditions inside an operational tank were succinctly described as a pocket hell. One tank commander who took part in the first tank actions on the Somme in September 1916, Sir Basil Henriques, records:

The nervous strain in this first battle of tanks for officers and crew alike was ghastly. Of my company, one officer went mad and shot his engine to make it go faster; another shot himself because he thought he had failed to do as well as he ought; two others had what I suppose could be called a nervous breakdown.

The simple truth was that the Mark I tank was a slow, cumbersome and unreliable machine, highly vulnerable to enemy attack, and when in transit or action a hellish operational environment for its eight-man crew. Basic mobility remained a fundamental problem. The maximum road speed of the Mark I was little more than 3.7 mph, which by 1918 had barely increased to 4.6 mph in the improved Mark V. Over broken ground, and in particular a cratered battlefield, a tank was unlikely to exceed 1.5 or 2 mph. Moving tanks from railheads and assembly areas to their start lines was a time-consuming process, with many breaking down en route due to mechanical defects. Tanks had to be refuelled with aviation spirit every 55 kilometres. Even steering and changing gear required considerable physical effort, and the active participation of most of the crew.

The tank was originally designed as an armoured ‘machine gun destroyer', able to crush belts of wire and take out enemy strong points with ease, and minimal casualties. However, the armour of the Mark I was nowhere more than 12 mm thick, which from the outset made them vulnerable to an existing German rifle munition, the toughened ‘K' round, developed to penetrate the steel loopholes used by British snipers. Even ordinary rounds could have considerable effect against the tank, particularly machine gun fire, for fragments of bullets tended to penetrate through gaps between the armour plates and other apertures, causing ‘bullet splash'. Although seldom fatal, wounds inflicted in this way were usually extremely painful, and obliged crews to wear cumbersome face visors. Any hit from an artillery shell would knock out a tank, while in time the Germans found that a bag of grenades thrown under a tank stood a fair chance of blowing off the track. Large calibre 13 mm anti-tank rifles were issued to German troops in 1918, which could penetrate the armour of a Mark IV at 120 yards. All these factors combined meant that the tank was a weapon of very limited usefulness without infantry support, without which it was vulnerable, and was incapable of holding any ground taken. Tanks might break into enemy positions with relative ease, but breaking through them was quite another matter.