Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front. Richard Holmes

had it been an isolated problem, but the resignation of Lord Fisher as First Sea Lord persuaded Asquith to form a coalition government. Lloyd George took up the newly-established portfolio of Minister of Munitions, but, although he made a point of appointing ‘men of push and go’ who could ‘create and hustle along a gigantic enterprise’, the first consignment of ammunition ordered by the new ministry did not arrive until October 1915: the heavily-criticised War Office had in fact succeeded in generating a nineteen-fold increase in ammunition supply in the first six months of the war.

      On 16 May the next British offensive, at Festubert, just south of Aubers Ridge, fared little better, gaining 1,000 yards on a front of 2,000 for a cost of 16,500 men. Another attack, this time at Givenchy, went no better, and Lieutenant General Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose IV Corps had played the leading role in all these spring attacks, found himself passed over for command of the newly-formed 3rd Army, which went instead to General Sir Charles Monro, who extended the British line further south as far as Vimy Ridge.

      French and Joffre met at Chantilly on 24 June and declared themselves committed to continuing offensives on the Western Front: without them the Germans could shift troops to another front for an attack of their own. Passive defence was, therefore, ‘bad strategy, unfair to Russia, Serbia and Italy and therefore wholly inadmissible’. An Anglo-French meeting at Calais on 6 July gained Kitchener’s somewhat grudging support for a large-scale offensive, and a full Allied conference at Chantilly the following day confirmed the principle of a co-ordinated Allied attack on all fronts. Joffre’s strategy for the Western Front had actually changed little. Previous British attacks had been designed to support French thrusts further south. And now he proposed that the BEF should attack at Loos, in the shadow of Vimy Ridge, with one French army attacking just to its south and the main French blow falling around Rheims in Champagne.

      Sir John French was not happy. On 12 July he looked at the Loos sector, and thought that ‘the actual terrain of the attack is no doubt difficult, as it is covered with all the features of a closely inhabited flourishing mining district – factories – slag heaps – shafts – long rows of houses – etc, etc’.⁴⁸ He proposed to fight chiefly with artillery, but Joffre demanded ‘a large and powerful attack … executed in the hope of success and carried through to the end’. Then Kitchener threw his weight into the balance: Sir John was ordered to help the French, ‘even though, by doing so, we suffered very heavy losses indeed’.⁴⁹ Once he had received this unequivocal order French’s spirits lifted, and he hoped that gas, which would now be available to him in retaliation for German use of gas at second Ypres, would be ‘effective up to two miles, and it is practically certain that it will be quite effective in many places if not along the whole line attacked’.⁵⁰

      The battle of Loos was to be the biggest fought by the British army in its history thus far. First Army was to attack with the six divisions of I and IV Corps, with the newly-formed XI Corps, comprising the Guards Division and two inexperienced New Army divisions, in reserve to exploit success. Early on the morning of 26 September Haig gave the order to launch the gas from its cylinders, and the infantry went forward at 6.30. On the southern part of the front there was considerable success: Loos itself was taken, and the German first position overrun. However, it proved impossible to get the reserves up in time to exploit these gains. French, probably concerned that Haig might commit them prematurely, had unwisely retained control of them, and it was typical of his old-fashioned style of command that when he heard of the break-in he drove up to see the corps commander and give his orders in person. Precious time was wasted.

      The two New Army divisions, moving up along busy roads with rain hammering down, were not in fact ready to go forward till mid-morning on the 26th. When they reached the intact German second opposition they were very roughly handled: the twelve attacking battalions, some 10,000 strong, lost 8,000 officers and men in under four hours. The history of the German 26th Infantry Regiment is deservedly much-quoted.

      Never had machine guns had such straightforward work to do, nor done it so effectively; with barrels burning hot and swimming in oil, they traversed to and fro along the enemy’s ranks unceasingly; one machine gun alone fired 12,500 rounds that afternoon. The effect was devastating. The enemy could be seen literally falling in hundreds, but they continued their march in good order and without interruption. The extended lines of men began to get confused by this terrific punishment, but they went doggedly on, some even reaching the wire entanglement in front of the reserve line, which their artillery had scarcely touched. Confronted by this impenetrable obstacle, the survivors turned and began to retire.⁵¹

      A subsequent attack was described by Captain W. L. Weetman, one of the few surviving officers of 8/Sherwood Foresters, in a letter to his former commanding officer.

      We got across the open to attack a well-known spot [the Hohenzollern Redoubt] which you probably know of, though I think I had better leave it nameless … Of course they heard us coming and we soon knew it.

      Young Goze was the first down, a nasty one I’m afraid. Then Strachan disappeared along the trench and I fear was killed. Young Hanford fell, I don’t know when but was killed at once and I saw his body later on after it was light … Becher was outside before the attack directing us with a flashlight and got a bullet in the thigh – explosive – and lay out for nearly 2 days. Before we had finished Ashwell and Vann got nasty ones through the shoulder, and that left only the CO and myself …

      About half an hour before the relief was finished our dear Colonel was killed instantly by a sniper, whilst trying to locate Becher’s body, as we then thought he had been killed. It was the last straw and I took on the remnants to Rescue Trenches and then broke down. I thank God I was spared, but it is awful to think of all those brave fellows who have gone.⁵²

      Loos cost the British more than 43,000 men, including three major generals and the only son of the poet and writer Rudyard Kipling. It was the end for Sir John French. Haig ensured that the papers on his handling of the reserves were circulated in London, and French’s political support, waning since the spring, at last collapsed. He left France on 18 December, resentful and embittered, returning home to a peerage (he quipped bitterly that he might take his title from the town of St-Omer, which had housed his headquarters, and be Lord Sent Homer) and the post of commander in chief of home forces. Haig replaced him, and General Sir William Robertson, French’s chief of staff since early 1915, became chief of the imperial general staff in London, where he staunchly supported Haig’s insistency on the primacy of the Western Front. Lieutenant General Sir Launcelot Kiggell, previously assistant to the CIGS, replaced him at Haig’s headquarters.

      The failure of the September offensive did not deter Jofffe, and Haig inherited the requirement for another Allied offensive. This time it was to take a new form, elaborated at a meeting at Chantilly on 14 February 1916. Instead of the familiar two-pronged attack, with an Anglo-French jab in Artois in the north and a French thrust in Champagne in the south, the two armies were to attack side by side on the River Somme. The British took over the front from Arras to Maricourt, just north of the Somme, in early 1916, forming a 4th Army, commanded by the happy Rawlinson, in order to do so. Haig was especially anxious to relieve French troops because, on 21 February, the Germans had begun their attack on the French fortress of Verdun. Although it is impossible to be sure of the motivation of General Erich von Falkenhayn, who had taken over from the exhausted Moltke as chief of the general staff in the autumn of 1914, it is likely that the traditional view remains correct: he was attacking at Verdun not in the hope of making territorial gain, but with the deliberate intention of provoking an attritional battle which would ‘bleed the French army white’. Haig had never had any realistic alternative to the place of that summer’s Allied offensive: and now, with the attack on Verdun, he was to be constrained in time too.

      In April general headquarters was moved south from St-Omer to Montreuil, better placed to watch over the extended British front, and on 26 May Haig entertained Joffre in his (remarkably modest) quarters in the nearby Château de Beaurepaire. All too well aware that many of his