The Great War Explained by Philip Stevens

Author:Philip Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844685554
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

The weather in Flanders is never wholly reliable. During the six weeks delay after Messines Ridge, from mid-July until late August, whilst Haig debated his plans with Lloyd George in London and planning was going ahead with the latter’s limited approval, it had been so hot and dry that horses went lame in numbers that began to have an effect on the army’s ability to move. Dust hung everywhere in the air as men and horses moved around the rear areas, and every shell explosion added to the prevailing dust clouds. However, as the first assaults were launched on 31 July, it began to rain, and rain, and rain. After only twenty-four hours the low land was a marsh in the better areas, a huge lake of mud in all the others. Flanders lies largely at or below sea level, and the centuries-old system of ditches that drained the natural marshland had long since been destroyed by the artillery war that raged incessantly around the Salient. The early attacks were largely successful, but the pattern of all other attacks in wet weather was gradually emerging. It became ever harder for the infantry to advance, difficult to move even the least bulky supplies forward to the infantry, and almost impossible to move artillery at all. Tanks were used in large numbers and lost in equal ones. The rain affected the Royal Flying Corps’ effectiveness, as support for ground troops, as artillery spotters and as reconnaissance observers. And still it rained.

The only way to move around was on the roadways of duckboards laid on trestles above the mud. Any man, horse or mule that slipped off the roadways would fall into the deep, soft mud on either side. It was impossible to free oneself and all too often impossible for others to do anything to help. There are accounts of men gradually slipping further into the mire, certain of their slowly coming death, pleading with comrades for the shot that would end their lives quickly rather than in the earth’s slow embrace. There are also accounts from soldiers who found it kinder to shoot their own close comrades than to leave them to that fate. To carry a single wounded man on a stretcher needed as many as sixteen men to provide the necessary regular changes of carrier that the effort of getting through the mud demanded. And out in the open could be heard the cries of the wounded, often only ending as their struggles served only to sink them further into the drowning mud.

Getting supplies to the troops in the fighting line across the mud was as desperately dangerous, backbreaking work as getting the casualties back. During the day, from their positions atop the ridge, the German machine guns could beat the whole area for a mile or more behind the BEF’s front-line troops with barrages. At night those same machine guns would be set to cover any small landmarks that might enable troops to navigate their way around the swamp.

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