The New Gresham Encyclopedia Part 7

Had reserves been available at once to consolidate the gains thus won, Lens itself might have been taken, and a door flung open leading to Lille. But as it was impossible to say at which part of the long British line they would be needed, Sir John French had retained his reserves far in the rear.

When at last they were forthcoming--the new 21st and 24th Divisions, hitherto untried--they were put into the battle-line after nightfall, tired and hungry after a heavy 8-mile march.

It was impossible to hold all the ground won during the day. Without reinforcements, and no sufficient artillery support, the 15th Division had already been forced to relinquish its hold on Cite St. Auguste, and fell back to the western slopes of Hill 70 on the Lens-Hulluch road. Misdirected and drenched with rain, the two tired reinforcing divisions could do little to help amid the confusion of the battlefield. Their supporting attacks at various points broke against the still intact German wire or simultaneous counter-attacks by the enemy. One brigade alone (the 72nd) lost 78 officers and 2000 men out of the 3600 with which it started. Altogether the losses of these two divisions amounted to 8000. Along the southern section they succeeded in maintaining contact with the 47th Division, and in the north helped the Scots of the 9th Division to maintain their hold on Fosse 8; but the Quarries, close by, were lost, and along most of this northern front the day's gains were gradually whittled away.

Another heavy handicap was the fact that the French Tenth Army, on the right of Rawlinson's Corps, had to postpone its advance until one o'clock in the afternoon--the British attack had been launched at 6.30 a.m.--and then was forced to direct the corps operating on its left in a south-easterly direction. This involved a considerable gap on the British right, when Rawlinson's men made their victorious advance. The Londoners of the 47th Division, however, not only held on to Loos, but formed a strong defensive flank which averted what might have been a complete disaster.

Apart from the captured positions, 57 German officers and 3000 other prisoners had been taken during the day on the British front, together with 26 field-guns and 40 machine-guns.

On the following day the Germans counter-attacked in force and recovered Fosse 8, but on the 27th the Guards Division, under the Earl of Cavan, was sent forward and almost restored the earlier gains, including Chalk Pit Wood and the slopes of Hill 70. It cost the Guards 3000 casualties to make good the restored British line. They continued to hold it until the end of the month, when they were relieved. The 15th (Scottish) Division had also been withdrawn, after suffering no fewer than 6000 casualties. All told, the British losses in the battle of Loos amounted to 50,000 men and 2000 officers, including three divisional commanders--Major-General Sir Thompson Capper (7th Division), Major-General G. H. Thesiger (9th Division), and Major-General F. D. V. Wing (12th Division)--each of whom was killed. A series of costly counter-attacks on the enemy's part failed to make much impression on the new British line, and mounted up the German casualties until they were estimated at many more than those of the British. The battle died down; the gains were consolidated; but the murderous struggle at close quarters for the Hohenzollern Redoubt and its adjoining entrenchments continued for weeks and months, an outstanding feature of which was the attempt of the 46th (North Midland Territorial) Division to carry the redoubt by storm on 13th Oct. The Midlanders' task was handicapped, like so many British operations at this period, by inadequate artillery preparation, and though they fought like veterans they could only win the western side of the stronghold at a cost of 4000 casualties.

The advance of the 10th French Army on the right of the British was held up in front of Souchez on the opening day of the combined offensive, but made better progress on 26th Sept., when d'Urbal's troops made themselves masters not only of long-contested Souchez, but also of Thelus, La Folie Farm, and most of the Givenchy Wood. But the Vimy heights, notwithstanding that some progress was made along their slopes, still barred the road to Lens from the south. On the 28th the French 9th Corps, at the British Commander-in-Chief's request, took over the defence of Loos, and the British line was rearranged.

The main French effort in 1915, as already pointed out, was in Champagne, where a solid week's bombardment paved the way for the great advance on 25th Sept. Inspired by Joffre's stirring Order of the Day, "Remember the Marne: Conquer or Die!", the French troops carried all before them on the greater part of the front. General Marchand's Colonial Division broke clean through 2 miles of the main German defences, Marchand himself falling severely wounded at the head of his men. The greatest advance was made on Marchand's right, from Navarin Farm to the b.u.t.te de Tahure, where an advance of 2 miles was made before the day closed. But the troops in the centre were robbed of decisive victory by a double check on the wings. On the right the two German strongholds at the b.u.t.te de Mesnil and the Main de Ma.s.siges--comparable with the Hohenzollern Redoubt in their strength--held out stubbornly until, after days and nights of ceaseless combat, both fell into the attackers' hands. On the extreme left the a.s.sailants could make practically no headway.

Thenceforward the French advance made little progress towards the main objectives, though a breach was made in the enemy's second line in a fresh attack on the 29th; and a third advance (6th Oct.) won the village and b.u.t.te de Tahure. On 20th Oct. the Germans recovered the b.u.t.te de Tahure, and in other counter-attacks prevented the French from developing their first initial advance into the greater victory which Joffre had hoped for it. The battle had yielded an impressive list of captures--the total number of German prisoners being over 23,000 before the end of September, and the captured guns 80--but the Allies' long line had not materially altered before the autumn offensive gave place to another winter of tedious siege warfare.

The year closed with the appointment of Joffre as Commander-in-Chief of all the French forces, General de Castlenau taking over the immediate command of the French troops in France; and the resignation of Sir John French--now created a Viscount of the United Kingdom, and appointed to the Home Command--after more than sixteen months of severe and incessant strain at the front. Lord French was succeeded by General Sir Douglas Haig, who had been singled out for promotion by his brilliant achievements since the British army first landed in France.

_The Naval War in 1915_

Throughout 1915 the operations at sea contained no movements so striking as some of those which marked the opening months of the war. The careers of all the scattered German cruisers were over, the last of them, the _Konigsberg_, being finally destroyed in the Rufigi River, German East Africa, by the shallow-draught monitors _Severn_ and _Mersey_, sent out for the purpose from Great Britain. The German High Seas Fleet remained in harbour, waiting for Lord Jellicoe to be tempted or goaded into some imprudent disposition of his forces. Hence the sudden raids on the British East Coast, begun in the closing months of 1914. They repeated them once too often, on 24th Jan., 1915, when the raiders, consisting of 4 battle-cruisers, 6 light cruisers, and a force of destroyers, were encountered off the Dogger Bank by the British battle-cruiser squadron under Admiral Beatty, consisting of the _Lion_, _Tiger_, and _Princess Royal_, as well as the _New Zealand_ and _Indomitable_, and the light cruisers _Southampton_, _Nottingham_, _Birmingham_, and _Lowestoft_, together with the _Arethusa_, _Aurora_, and _Undaunted_. Outmatched by the 13.5-inch guns of Beatty's 'Cat' Squadron of battle-cruisers, the Germans made for home. In the hot chase which followed, the _Blucher_, last in line of the German battle-cruisers, was. .h.i.t repeatedly, fell behind, and was eventually sunk by a torpedo from the destroyer _Meteor_. Her survivors were picked up by the _Arethusa_. Beatty's flagship, the _Lion_, which was leading the pursuit, was partly disabled by a chance shot and had to be towed home, Beatty himself following the chase at some distance in a destroyer. Before he could pick up his place in the pursuit he met his three battle-cruisers returning, these having broken off the action owing to the increasing risk of straying into an enemy mine-field or of falling foul of the mines which the retreating Germans were strewing in their path.

Two other German battle-cruisers had been set on fire by the British sh.e.l.ls, the _Seydlitz_ and the _Derfflinger_, but, with the rest of the German ships, they made good their escape. Taught by this experience, the Germans made no further naval raids on the East Coast.

In the following month (4th Feb.) Vice-Admiral von Pohl, Chief of the German Admiralty Staff, proclaimed a submarine blockade of the whole of the British Isles, declaring all the waters round Great Britain and Ireland a military area in which Allied merchant-ships were to be destroyed and neutral ships would incur danger of running the same risk. If the Germans thought they could scare British shipping away by these means, they were soon undeceived. They took heavy toll of peaceful shipping from the first, and shocked the rest of the world by the lengths to which they were prepared to go in developing this ruthless policy, but all their efforts failed to paralyse British trade as they antic.i.p.ated. The crowning tragedy of this submarine campaign was the sinking of the Cunard liner _Lusitania_ off the south coast of Ireland on 7th May, 1915, with its loss of upwards of 1000 non-combatants, including over 100 Americans. It was one of the German crimes against humanity in general and Americans in particular which brought the United States into the war on the side of the Allies in 1917.

_1916 on the European Fronts_

_The Western Campaign._--During the year 1916 the unity of command which was postulated as an indispensable preliminary to the victory of the Allies so long before it became a fact was achieved neither as between Britain and France in the West and Russia in the East, nor even as between Britain and France along the Western front. The most that can be said of the co-ordination between the forces under the British and French Commanders-in-Chief is that liaison was established between them, and that as far as was possible each endeavoured to help the other by diverting to itself the energies of the German forces. The Western fighting embraced two main episodes: the powerful German attacks on Verdun, eventually unsuccessful; and the Allied offensive on the Somme, in which by far the greater share was borne by the British.

The year began with numerous German attacks widely separated in locality, and intended to mask the main offensive while keeping the French and British occupied. Hartmannsweilerkopf, in Alsace (2nd to 8th Jan.); Champagne (9th Jan.); Givenchy, Arras, Neuville, Loos (14th Jan. to 6th Feb.); Vimy Ridge, Frise, Soissons, Ypres-Comines area, and Tahure (9th to 20th Feb.) were among them.

On 21st Feb. the new battle of Verdun began. This enterprise, though officially accredited to the German Crown Prince, was the design of General von Falkenhayn. Verdun was one of the four fortresses, of which the other three were Belfort, Toul, and epinal, on which French armies defending the capital and the country from an invasion from the east would base themselves. The town lies sunk in the Meuse valley, and the German invasion in 1914 flowed past it along the heights of the Meuse down to St. Mihiel.

At the beginning of the war Verdun was protected by an outer line of forts, with batteries pushed out in a circuit of 30 miles. The forts were not, however, strong enough in 1914, nor the perimeter of defence extended enough, to withstand the new artillery that had reduced Liege and Namur, and a fierce struggle went on during 1915 along the Meuse heights on the east of Verdun and beyond the low hills on the western side of the town and river, with a view to pushing out the defences all round. As previously pointed out, much had been done in this direction by General Sarrail, but not enough to deter von Falkenhayn and the German General Staff from selecting Verdun as a point for an attack which, if successful, would disorganize seriously the continuity of the French defences. In 1916, as for two years more, the problem of either combatant was to break through a line of trenches which extended continuously from the sea to Switzerland; and failing a complete break-through, comparable to that which had crippled Russia in 1915, to effect a fracture or a deep dent which would compel the loser to reconstruct his system of communications. At the best such a thrust might disclose a fatal weakness in the a.s.sailed; at the next best it would disastrously hamper his future activities.

Verdun as a fortress had strong and modern defences. West of the Meuse, north of the town, are low hills the chief of which is the Charny Ridge with dominating strategic points beyond known as Hill 304, Hill 295, Hill 265. The French lines were pushed beyond these into the woods of Avocourt and Forges, but below the heights of Montfaucon, which were the Crown Prince's head-quarters. On the east of the Meuse the heights rise to a tableland severed by wooded ravines and overlooking the plain of the Woevre. The line of French trenches embraced all this tableland and a good deal of the plain beyond. Its outer line ran in a bold convex curve from Forges and Consenvoye on the Meuse to Fresnes on the Woevre, but it did not penetrate the woods of Forges or Spincourt, and it was below the gun positions on the hills of Ornes. Inside this outer circle was the inner line of Samogneux, Beaumont, Fosses Wood, and Bezonvaux. Inside that again the line of Bras, Douaumont Fort, Hardaumont Wood, Vaux Fort, and Eix.

The multiple defences were most elaborate between these two inner lines. A weak point was that though such defences would be very exacting of life and effort, yet the outer ones were not pushed out far enough to place the bridges of the Meuse out of reach of long-range gun-fire; and an overwhelming attack might have jammed a defending army on the east of the Meuse against the river. The French had provided against the possibility by the multiplication of transport, as well as of inner defences. The Germans hoped by the weight, volume, and suddenness of their attack to bring about the not impossible catastrophe. They ma.s.sed an amount of artillery which, though surpa.s.sed afterwards in the war, was at that time the greatest a.s.semblage that had ever been seen together, and acc.u.mulated a supply of ammunition exceeding the quant.i.ty which all previous experience prescribed.

The heavier guns were placed at Ornes, Spincourt, and Forges. The woods below afforded cover for a concentration of men; and this concentration, amounting to fourteen divisions, with others in immediate reserve, was at first thrown at the 7-mile sector from Brabant-sur-Meuse to Herbebois, which was held by three French divisions under General Humbert.

The attack began on the morning of 21st Feb. with an artillery bombardment lasting four hours. The great weight of sh.e.l.l demolished the French first-line defences, so that the German troops had little to do but walk over them, while a remnant of the defenders fell back to their supporting positions. These were not sufficiently strong or well constructed to enable weak forces to hold them long against the force of three army corps (18th, 3rd, and 10th, with a Bavarian Division) which the Germans sent in after the guns had done their work. The effectiveness of the German artillery was due in part to its weight, and in part to the fact that French counter-battery work effected little, owing to the thick weather.

The trench systems in the Haumont and Caures Woods were carried, but the resistance of parts of the first line at Brabant, Herbebois, and elsewhere was even at this dangerous moment reducing the speed of the German advance, though the momentum was far from exhausted. It was not till next day that the first line was definitely abandoned by the French; and on 23rd Feb. the line Samogneux-Herbebois was temporarily held. Before the morning of 24th Feb. the French contracted their line still further by drawing in their outposts from the Woevre. It seemed a matter for surprise at the time that no flank attack was made by the Germans in the Woevre; it had been perhaps thought an unnecessary extension of their general scheme, though the weather, which was bitter and snowy, was unfavourable for operations in that sodden plain.

But the German second wave of attack was now rising in fury, and General Petain, who had undertaken the command of operations on the French side, was still awaiting reinforcements. The character of von Falkenhayn's attack had become clear, and while to the French the need for holding on was imperative, the Germans had a need no less urgent for hastening operations and exploiting their preliminary success to a point at which General Petain could not repair the breach. They had, in fact, two days in which to achieve their aim--24th and 25th Feb. On the 24th they flowed round the Beaumont Woods and came close to the Talou Ridge, the Poivre Ridge, and the rest of the French line where it ran past Haudremont and Douaumont to Vaux.

On the 25th they attacked the Poivre Ridge without much success, but pressed the more important sector of their attack close to Douaumont.

Next day, 26th Feb., brought the fateful hour of the struggle. Petain's reinforcements were at hand. The Germans made their supreme effort on a 2-mile front at Douaumont, and the picked 24th Brandenburger Regiment was the spear-head of an a.s.sault which at one moment burst its way into the Fort Douaumont trenches between the village and redoubt--a fine feat of arms which evoked this telegram from the Crown Prince's head-quarters: "Douaumont, the eastern pillar of the Verdun defences, is solidly in German hands". The adverb alone was misplaced. The position was not held solidly, for Petain's reserves, thrown in at the exact moment, flung back the Germans and prevented the leak in the defences from being widened by any further inrush.

This counter-attack, made by men of Balfourier's 20th Corps, marked, indeed, the turn of the struggle, for though Douaumont, and Vaux after it, were subsequently to be lost, together with many other historic redoubts and sh.e.l.l-battered points of vantage on either side of the Meuse, and though many thousands of lives were to be swept away in attack and counter-attack on the barren hills about Verdun, yet henceforward the a.s.saults were no different, except in weight, from others which in 1916 and 1917 were projected by the Germans or the Allies on the amplifying complexities of the armoured defence lines. Von Falkenhayn's subsequent comment on the operations, which marked the beginning of the creeping paralysis of his plan, was that violent French counter-attacks began, and the German forward movement on the heights was stayed.

Though the crisis was over there were many great moments of sleepless effort, of anxiety, and heroism in the months to come, for the last purposeful German a.s.saults on the fortress were made on 15th June, and on 14th July the Germans were still occupying the French with a.s.saults developing from the Thiaumont redoubts, which marked the farthest point southwards to which their long-sustained efforts had taken them. Following on these attacks was a considerable pause, during which the Germans were fully occupied elsewhere in dealing with the British attacks on the Somme.

The last phase at Verdun in 1916 was that in which the French, inspired by the methods of General Nivelle, thrust the Germans out of all the positions so painfully won, and re-occupied by mid-December very much the same lines as those from which the great push of the last week in February had ejected them. The story of Verdun cannot here be told in detail; its princ.i.p.al events are dated as follows:

27th Feb.--Germans take Talou Ridge.

3rd March.--Germans enter Douaumont village.

7th March.--Germans, transferring their efforts to the west of the Meuse, capture Hills 360 and 265.

14th March.--Germans penetrate west of Verdun the line Bethincourt-Mort Homme.

20th March.--Germans enter Avocourt Wood.

29th March.--French recover Avocourt Redoubt.

1st April.--Germans, renewing their attacks east of Verdun, capture part of Vaux village.

10th April.--Germans make extended attack on both sides of the Meuse, failing at the Mort Homme, but gaining at Poivre Ridge.

5th May.--Germans, renewing westerly attacks, gain a footing on Hill 304.

20th May.--Germans in a great attack on Mort Homme capture summit of Hill 295. The attack next day enlarged the gains.

24th May.--c.u.mieres and Fort Douaumont captured by Germans.

1st June.--Fresh German attack at Fort Vaux east of Verdun.

7th June.--Fort Vaux captured after six days' fighting.

17th June.--Attack renewed at Mort Homme. The attacks on both sides of the Meuse were prosecuted with increasing vigour till 28th, during which period the Germans took Hills 321 and 320, as well as Thiaumont Fort (23rd June) and Fleury (24th June). Fleury marked the point of their farthest advance towards the inner line of defences east of the Meuse at Forts Souville and Tavannes. The tide now paused, and on 30th June, a day before the British attack on the Somme, the French retook Thiaumont. The fighting went on in a restricted but incessant way through the rest of June and July, the French gradually improving their position. In August activity was renewed at Thiaumont and Fleury.

18th Aug.--French retake whole of Fleury.

9th Sept.--French retake trenches between Fleury and Douaumont.

24th Oct.--The French, after a long pause for readjustment, and now under the direction of General Nivelle, recapture village and fort of Douaumont, Haudremont quarries, and 4500 prisoners. They thus advanced to lines held in May.

3rd Nov.--Vaux recaptured. On 30th Nov. the German Crown Prince resigned the command of the Verdun front.

15th to 16th Dec.--General Nivelle (who succeeded General Joffre as French Commander-in-Chief on 12th Dec.) orders new attack at Verdun.

Vacherauville, Poivre Ridge, Bezonvaux, Hardaumont recaptured with 11,000 prisoners.

In early 1916 the British army was still finding itself, and its new Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, regarded it as insufficiently trained and equipped for the great tasks which lay before it. As an instrument of war it was still not yet ready. It also remained, if not in a water-tight compartment in respect of the French armies at its side, yet with a separate command and in separate control. This may have been merely the necessary consequence of its state of training; but it is certain that in 1916 there was no one with authority to compel that unity of action and command which in 1918, but not till then, directed the Franco-British armies as one force. Fortunately, perhaps, the German High Command elected to attack the French at Verdun instead of throwing their whole weight on the British, though there were numerous smaller actions along the worn and dangerous Ypres front and elsewhere in the first half of the year.

On 14th Feb. the enemy captured some 600 yards of 'International Trench', south-east of Ypres, but they were regained on 17th March, when a bitter and protracted struggle also began for the mine craters at St. Eloi. These were lost and recovered more than once, with heavy casualties on both sides. The Canadians, who had their full share of these costly operations, were again sorely tried at the beginning of June, when the Germans penetrated their front trenches in a surprise attack on the 2nd of that month. Major-General Mercer was killed in this a.s.sault, and General Williams captured. Eleven days later the Canadians atoned for this set-back by completely re-establishing their broken line. Throughout the first half of 1916 the enemy, not only round Ypres, but also round Loos, at Ploegsteert, Givenchy, and elsewhere, persevered in similar local attempts to keep the British occupied and upset their plans, while he was concentrating his chief efforts towards beating down the French defences at Verdun. The attack on Verdun, as already related, ultimately broke down, and the period in which it was at its height was utilized by Sir Douglas Haig to bring his forces as near as possible to the point at which they could undertake with success an attack of the first magnitude against the entrenched German lines. The date of the attack was premature, and was hurried on in order to take some weight off the hara.s.sed French armies at Verdun. It began on 1st July; the chosen _terrain_ was the River Somme, and the great offensive, in which the French joined, was over a 28-mile front from Gommecourt, north of the Somme, to Dompierre, south of that river.

_First Battle of the Somme_

The German position in the Somme area was situated on the high ground which is the watershed between the Scheldt and the Somme. The ground runs east-south-east, and its hills fall into long irregular spurs divided by wide valleys. On the forward slopes of the hills the German first-line defences ran from the Somme at Curlu to Fricourt; at Fricourt the defence line turned north, crossing the Ancre, thence pa.s.sing over the summit of the watershed near Hebuterne and Gommecourt to Arras. Between the Somme and the Ancre a second line of defence had been constructed 2 miles behind the first, and on it had been lavished all the ingenuities of fortification which the German engineers afterwards developed in the so-called Hindenburg lines. South of the Somme, where the French were to co-operate with Sir Douglas Haig, the defences were not so elaborate; it was not here that the Germans, who were fully aware of the impending British attack, expected the blow to fall. They expected the greatest weight to be felt towards the Ancre.