Forgotten Victory The First World War Myths and Realities by Gary Sheffield

Author:Gary Sheffield [Sheffield, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-08-27T07:00:00+00:00

The Dawn Assault

Reserve and Fourth Armies, however bloodily and clumsily, clawed their way through the outlying German defences in the early days of July. A fortnight after the beginning of the battle Rawlinson was at last ready for an attack on the German Second Position. Four divisions, 21st, 7th, 3rd and 9th, with 18th Division guarding the right flank, assembled at night opposite Longueval Ridge. Following an intensive artillery bombardment of five minutes the British attack went in at dawn – 3.25 a.m. – on 14 July. Unlike on 1 July, the initial assault was a stunning success. The Germans were caught unprepared and bewildered by the British shelling. The infantry, mostly Kitchener volunteers, swept upon on to the ridge and captured it by mid-morning.

Haig had needed to be persuaded before he had agreed to an assault at dawn. An assembly during the night was a difficult operation, involving movement in the dark and lying out in No Man’s Land before the attack. The fact that both the assembly and the assault were successful speaks volumes about the capabilities of the Kitchener infantrymen. ‘Compared to 1 July the attack was, in several respects, a more accurate reflection of the capabilities of the New Army formations, given imaginative operational planning’.[376] Yet the fact that the attack took place at dawn was less important than the way that the artillery was handled. This was no penny-packet attack.

On 1 July, the Royal Artillery shelled 22,000 yards of front; and no less than 300,000 yards of trench lying in support of the front line. For the 14 July attack the comparative figures were 6,000 and 12,000 yards. Thus while on the first day of the battle the fire of the British guns had been spread too thinly to be effective, a fortnight later there was a formidable concentration of firepower. Rawlinson’s gunners had two-thirds of the guns they had had on 1 July, but on the 14 July only had to bombard just over five per cent of the ground. Fourth Army used 1,000 artillery tubes, 311 of which were heavy guns or howitzers, in the preliminary bombardment, which began early on 11 July. Every yard of German trench was subjected to 660lb of shell, ‘an intensity of fire twice that of Neuve Chapelle [in March 1915] and five times that achieved before the 1 July attack.’[377] Fourth Army was reaping the rewards of the move towards a total war economy, which made prodigious quantities of shells available to the gunners.

When visiting the Somme battlefield, I often take parties to Longueval Ridge. From the misleadingly named Caterpillar Valley cemetery there is a magnificent view across much of the Somme battlefield. Facing south, in the distance one can see the position of the old German line captured by XIII Corps on 1 July. It was in this area that Captain Billie Nevill’s men of the 8th East Surreys went into action on 1 July kicking footballs – an act of public school bravado or a shrewd psychological trick of leadership, depending on one’s viewpoint.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.