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

Cross and died in his bed as a retired major. Arthur Thornton-Smith did not live to see his acting captaincy confirmed, but was killed in the first advance. He has no known grave, but is commemorated, with so many of his regiment’s dead, on the Tyne Cot memorial.⁹³

      The weather continued to be filthy. On 27 August Corporal Robert Chambers of the Bedfordshire Regiment wrote in his diary: ‘Raining like fury. Everywhere a quagmire. Fancy fighting the Germans for land like this. If it were mine I’d give them the whole damn rotten country.’⁹⁴ In the middle of the month Gough visited Haig to announce that ‘tactical success was not possible and would be too costly under these conditions’, and recommended that the attack should be abandoned. Haig disagreed. Buoyed up by Charteris’s assertion that German manpower was wilting under the strain, he was determined to continue the battle, but decided to entrust the main thrust to the methodical Plumer.

      The next phase of the battle began well. The weather improved, and 2nd Army’s careful preparation helped the first attack, launched on 20 September, to take most of its objectives and break up German counterattacks with artillery fire. On 26 September the Australians took Polygon Wood, squarely in the middle of the battlefield, and on 4 October Plumer’s men pressed even deeper, with 5th Army keeping pace on their left. By now both the army commanders felt that the weather made any continuation of the advance impossible, and told Haig so. Haig disagreed again. This decision is even more controversial than that of mid-August. Although the balance of historical opinion is now set against Haig on the issue, the Australian Official History suggests. ‘Let the student, looking at the prospect as it appeared at noon on 4th October, ask himself: “In view of three step-by-step blows all successful, what will be the result of three more in the next fortnight?”’⁹⁵

      The last phase of the fighting, formally christened the battles of Poelcappelle and Passchendaele, eventually took the British onto Passchendaele Ridge: the village was taken by the Canadians on 6 November. By now it was clear that no further advance could be expected. The project for the amphibious landing, already badly disrupted by German artillery attack on British positions at Nieuport, was shelved in October when Haig realised that its essential precondition, British capture of Roulers, would not now take place. By the end of the battle both sides had lost around 275,000 casualties, although there is the customary dispute over precise figures.

      Passchendaele, like the Somme, represented a British victory on points and, also like the Somme, provides the historian with another stark confrontation between head and heart. It played its part in the wearing out of the German army, was not an unreasonable response to the situation confronting Haig in early 1917, and, given good weather and limited objectives, might have produced a respectable tactical victory: it is hard not to speculate what might have been the case had Plumer been in command from the start.⁹⁶ Yet it did not produce a breakthrough, impose such a strain that the Germans collapsed, or prevent the Germans from launching, in March the following year, an offensive which so nearly won them the war.

      And while its cost in human terms was actually lower than that of the Somme, it did more serious damage to British morale. Philip Gibbs wrote that: ‘For the first time the British army lost its spirit of optimism, and there was a sense of deadly depression among the many officers and men with whom I came in touch.’⁹⁷ Charles Bean, then a war correspondent and later the Australian official historian, assessed that his countrymen were reaching the end of their tether. After attending a conference given by Plumer’s chief of staff in October he wrote: ‘They don’t realise how very strong our morale had to be to get through the last three fights.’⁹⁸

      However, two official surveys of censored mail concluded that morale remained sound, though one observed that in 2nd Army ‘the favourable and unfavourable letters were almost evenly balanced’.⁹⁹ There was no sudden rise in infractions of discipline, and in the case of 5th Army, whose records are complete enough to enable us to form an opinion, convictions for self-inflicted wounds, desertion and absence without leave remained low. An unnamed young officer summed up the harsh paradox of 1917: the army was better trained but less confident.

      I am certainly not the same as I was a year ago. I can no longer write home to you, as I once did, of victory. We just live for the day and think of little else but our job, the next show, and our billets and rations. I may be a better soldier and know my job better than I did, but I dare not think of anything beyond that. After all, just imagine my life out here: the chance of surviving the next battle for us platoon commanders is about 4 to 1 against!¹⁰⁰

      First-hand accounts leave us in no doubt of the horror of Third Ypres, but also hint at the mixture of natural discipline, loyalty and sheer endurance that kept men going. On 27 August Lieutenant Edwin Campion Vaughan of 8/Royal Warwicks advanced on a German pillbox, nicknamed Springfield, with the remnants of his company.

      Up the road we staggered, shells bursting around us. A man stopped dead in front of me, and exasperated I cursed him and butted him with my knee. Very gently he said ‘I’m blind, sir,’ and turned to show me his eyes and nose torn away by a piece of shell. ‘Oh, God! I’m sorry, sonny,’ I said. ‘Keep going on the hard part,’ and left him staggering back in his darkness … Around us were numerous dead, and in the shell-holes where they had crawled for safety were wounded men. Many others, too weak to move, were lying where they had fallen and cheered us faintly as we passed: ‘Go on boys! Give ‘em hell!’ Several wounded men of the 8th Worcesters and 9th Warwicks jumped out of their shell-holes and joined us.

      A tank had churned its way slowly round behind Springfield and opened fire; a moment later I looked and nothing remained of it but a heap of crumpled iron: it had been hit by a large shell. It was now almost dark and there was no firing from the enemy; ploughing across the final stretch of mud, I saw grenades bursting around the pillbox and a party of British rushed in from the other side. As we all closed in, the Boche garrison ran out with their hands up; in the confused party I recognised Reynolds of the 7th Battalion, who had been working forward all afternoon. We sent the 16 prisoners back but they had only gone a hundred yards when a German machine gun mowed them down.¹⁰¹

      The inside of the pillbox was filled with ‘indescribable filth’, two dead Germans and a badly wounded one. He soon noticed that his servant, Private Dunham, was carrying, in addition to rifle, bayonet, and a ‘Christmas tree’ of webbing, a mud-soaked sandbag. ‘What the hell are you carrying in there, Dunham?’ he asked. ‘Your rabbit, Sir!’ he replied stoutly. ‘You said you would eat it on Langemarck Ridge.’

      Private Albert Bullock was in the Hampshires when he arrived in France that September. He was posted to the Royal Warwicks at Rouen, and joined the 8th Battalion at Ypres on the 29th, two days after the exploit described above. ‘Colonel Carson gave us a talk on the attack,’ he wrote. ‘Didn’t understand it much.’ He was in action the next day.

      Lay on ground for some time and could feel cold breeze from shells that were going overhead … 7 o’clock move up over Steinbeek Stream supposed to be but more of a stinking cess-pool. Got in a hole with three others. 6-inch shell pitched 6ft away gave me clout in the back with lump of dirt and half buried us but didn’t explode. Counter barrage falling heavily 20 yards behind us … 12 o’clock move up to original front line in reserve, can see Germans moving about easily on Passchendaele. Am shaking from head to foot through concussion of so many shells, feel very anxious to see all that’s going on so keep from feeling windy.

      He lost his platoon commander five days later:

      He was only 19 same as myself and was walking about on the top with only a stick, dressed in an ordinary private’s clothes as were all officers so as not to be picked off by the snipers – heard later that he was shot through the heart just after I saw him.