The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division

by Cyril Falls

So, in line and behind it, the troops were as comfortable as conditions on any part of the British front allowed. They would have been as happy as was possible under any conditions of active service had it not been for the desolation about them, which bred a feeling of loneliness. The British soldier had grown used to being billeted in villages, or lodged in encampments within reach of them. He missed vaguely the sights of village life, the gallant old men and the women setting about their endless toil, the clatter of the farm, the children who watched him falling in for parade, and came in the afternoon to listen to the band. More definite was the loss of the shops, the eggs to be bought from the villagers, the warmth and comfort of the estaminet, where he drank his beer, solaced himself with bacon or fried potatoes if he had gone short of a meal, joked with the daughter of the host, or played "House" with his friends on benches about the fire. Officers of the Provost Staff have stated that in their experience there was almost always less crime and unrest among troops in inhabited regions than among those living upon the Teuton-made veldt. There was among the men of the Ulster Division little crime at any time, but undoubtedly they also were in some degree a prey to the inevitable nostalgia born of desolation. They would have come far more completely beneath its influence but for the efforts that were made to afford them distraction and increase their comfort. "Peace hath her victories," and a comparatively peaceful life afforded as much opportunity as battle for the Quarter-master General's Staff—"Q"—to prove its ingenuity and resource. In this sector the work of the 36th Division "Q" was certainly triumphant in this respect; first of all under the direction of Colonel Comyn, for eighteen months A.A. and Q.M.G., and then, on his transfer to the War Office, under his successor, Colonel S. H. Green, who had worked under him as D.A.Q.M.G. It organized in the first place daily trips to Amiens. Three lorries, one to take twelve officers, the remaining two each twenty other ranks, left Ytres at an early hour each morning for Achiet-le-Grand. Thence the party went by train to Amiens, being met again by the lorries at Achiet in the evening. The trips allowed of six hours or more being spent in the city. Beer was provided in great quantities to replace the supplies of the lost estaminets. In September the Division was buying from brewers of Amiens no less than two railway truck-loads of forty-five barrels a day. A soda-water factory was established on the Canal bank at Manancourt. Soda-water, labelled "Boyne Water," a fancy which appealed to the troops, was sold at a penny a bottle, and various other aerated concoctions at twopence. The Divisional Canteens, always of the greatest benefit to the troops, became then of incalculable importance. Added to their usual "lines"—tobacco, biscuits, chocolate, tinned foods, books, candles—were now sold in great quantities fruit and vegetables, eggs, bread and cake, and, when procurable, fresh fish and even oysters; while special orders for anything required in Amiens by officers or men were taken, the goods being procured by the following evening, and sold to the buyer at cost price. The Division had long had a cinema, a concert party—"The Merry Mauves"—and an excellent band. These passed up and down the front, all units taking turns in the pleasures of their performances. Football and boxing competitions reappeared. There was one very exciting race meeting and horse show, with numerous classes for transport turn-outs. For animals at least the area was a paradise, there being unlimited grazing and great fields of clover. Some agriculture was attempted, over a hundred acres being ploughed and sown. A few headquarters purchased cows, and many units pigs and chickens.

To those who cared to ponder such things, the wonders of the great, creaking, rather clumsy machine, in which it took a thousand men to form the tiniest cog, never ceased to appeal. The British organization for war was assuredly by now amazingly thorough. Was there required some new-fangled and complicated Lewis-gun-mounting for trench warfare; a message and a tracing to some workshop behind brought a hundred in a week. Copies innumerable of an enlarged aeroplane photograph wanted in a hurry for a raid could be printed off at Albert in twenty-four hours. The little press of the IV. Corps, the Intelligence Branch of which officers of the 36th Division will remember with gratitude, seemed to pour forth up-to-date maps. If there was the slightest hitch about rations, it was the topic of conversation for a week. The post-office was an unceasing marvel. In Flanders, Divisional Headquarters had had their newspapers the day they were published, and the rest of the troops next morning. The letters for men in the saps reached them in two or at most three days. A letter to Hermies would probably take longer now.

But, there was no doubt about the matter, the organization was expensive in man-power, and man-power at that moment was a problem that engaged G.H.Q. almost as much as did the enemy. The writer of this book can well remember being sent, in Flanders, when the Division was very weak, to investigate the number of men a certain battalion had in the trenches. The "paper strength" of that battalion was just six hundred men. It had in the line, exclusive of its headquarters, one hundred and seven men. He went through the state with the adjutant. That revealed, indeed, a remarkably strong battalion headquarters, and an undue number at the transport lines, but no other leakages which the adjutant had power to stop. There was a number of men at Divisional Headquarters, clerks, draughtsmen, orderlies, a cook, five attached to the Signal Company; and about three times as many at Brigade Headquarters. The rest followed varied avocations. Five were on traffic control, a number attached to a Tunnelling Company. There were clerks to town majors, camp wardens, guardians of coal, straw, and ration dumps; cooks and servants at the Rest Camp. There were about forty on leave, and twenty sick not evacuated.

There were also twenty at various schools. Schools were a vital necessity; but who at this period can doubt that they were ludicrously overdone? Every formation had its schools—G.H.Q., the Army, the Corps, the Division, the Brigade. There were infantry schools, artillery schools, and trench-mortar schools; machine-gun schools, Lewis-gun schools, bombing schools, gas schools; schools which taught horse-mastership, shoe-making, brick-laying, carpentry, sanitation, butchery, cooking. For a weak Division, schools became a nightmare. Divisional commanders had to protest that they had either to man their trenches inadequately, or refuse vacancies allotted. And vacancies refused raised a vast to-do, because they threatened the existence of the school, and the school naturally appealed to the formation of which it was the protégé. Up to the Division headquarters this did not so largely matter. The Division may have been inconsiderate at times, but it did know precisely how its line was held, how strong its posts, how far separated. But above the Division the situation was not always so quickly grasped. The Corps was an impersonal affair, encamped, sometimes for years, upon the same front, changing its Divisions week by week. And when a Corps headquarters, as happened before Cambrai, resting out of the line, sent out appeals for students to attend its schools, so that they might not be idle, the most long-suffering were inclined to protest and to feel that, after all, for the idle, there was a certain work which might have been accomplished somewhat further forward. The jests of most humorists are based upon exaggeration, but there is just a kernel of truth in them, or they are not good jests. Of such nature is the dictum of M. André Maurois,[42] the French interpreter who loves the British so well and pokes such clever fun at them—that a school "is a plot of ground traversed by imitation trenches, where officers who have never been near the line teach war-worn veterans their business."

The swarm of writers which, under the influence of the reaction from war, has so bitterly criticised the higher staff officers for the waste of man-power, has been hopelessly astray in its estimation of the reason. It was not inefficiency or carelessness. It was rather the Englishman's passion for organization, for orderliness and smoothness. That passion for perfecting the machine put too many cogs and fly-wheels upon it, made it over-complicated, clumsy. Ever eager to expand their business, these directors put into it too much of the one form of capital which they could not afford—man-power.

In October began preparations for a great new offensive, a surprise offensive, which was to depend entirely upon the use of tanks. The scheme and the plans for the Battle of Cambrai must be left for discussion till the next chapter. Here will be detailed only some of the preliminary moves. The part of the 36th Division in the first day's attack was to be confined to the capture of the German trenches bounded by the Bapaume-Cambrai Road and the Canal du Nord. This was the task of one Brigade only, and the other two were to be withdrawn from the Trescault and Havrincourt sectors, each being replaced by a Division. These Divisions, the 51st (Highland) and the 62nd (West Riding), were to be kept in rear as long as possible. It fell, therefore, to the 36th to do much of the work of preparation in their areas; the repairing of forward roads, the excavating of new dug-outs, the construction of bridges over trenches. The C.R.E.'s of these Divisions, with their Pioneer battalions and some Engineers, moved forward early in November to work under the general control of the C.R.E., 36th Division. Havrincourt Wood was crammed with little wooden hutments, which its trees and scrub rendered invisible to the enemy. One of the most important tasks was the metalling of the roads, and the dumping of metal beside them in parts where it was impossible to lay it, in order that work might commence with the assault. The surface of the roads was good, but only because the Division had been holding a front so wide, which made the traffic upon them relatively light. It was quite obvious that a single day of traffic such as an offensive entails would cut them to pieces. It was front-line roadmaking upon which the C.R.E., Colonel Campbell, was required to exercise his ingenuity. Work upon tracks in Havrincourt Wood was easy; silence was all that was necessary. But work upon what was to be the most important communication of the IV. Corps in the offensive, the road from Metz to Ribécourt, was of great difficulty. In Trescault, half-way between these villages and almost in our front line, there were, to begin with, two enormous craters blown by the enemy before his retirement. These had to be filled in by night, and it took chalk by the ton to do it. Road-metal also was stacked by night almost up to the front line, and covered with camouflage before dawn. Wooden bridges were prepared for all the trenches crossing the roads which would be required, and most of these for British trenches set in position. The problem of gun positions on the northern part of the front was difficult. Cover there was none reasonably far forward, save among the ruins of Hermies and Demicourt. Among these the positions were prepared, and by night seven hundred rounds per 18-pounder borne up to them.

During the first sixteen days of November, the 36th Division had also to provide parties of from two to six hundred men daily for unloading trains at Ytres station, for the Heavy Artillery ammunition dump at Bus, and for the Field Artillery dump in Vallulart Wood. Trains frequently did not arrive within six hours of the advertised time, and the men had to sit about and wait for them, frequently half through the night—as ill a preparation for troops on the eve of an offensive as could well be imagined. Amid much confusion and unnecessary hardship, one officer earned the gratitude of the infantrymen by his foresight and consideration, the Staff Captain of the IV. Corps Heavy Artillery. He required parties up to seventy-five men, and always at short notice. He kept three of his lorries always standing by at his headquarters, telephoned when he wanted men, and fetched them from Ytres, Neuville, Ruyalcourt, or Bertincourt, as detailed by the General Staff of the Division. Better still, he generally gave them tea before sending them home, to supplement their haversack rations.

The weather favoured the British arrangements amazingly. It was fine, but morning after morning dawned with a thick ground mist which hung about all day. Foden lorries carrying stone and light steam rollers to lay it were enabled, beneath this shelter, to work at a proximity to the Germans that had otherwise been out of the question. Night after night the tanks, upon which all hinged, moved up into Havrincourt Wood. Here again the mist was a godsend, for the track of a tank across country is plain enough on an aeroplane photograph, and not hard to distinguish with a glass. Contrary to the general belief of those who have not heard them on the move, the tank is not very noisy. It was the artillery tractors, dragging up the big howitzers, which frightened everyone by their clatter.

The relief of the 107th and 108th Brigades took place on the nights of the 17th and 18th of November. To deceive the enemy as to the great concentration in front of him, a screen of the troops of these Brigades remained to hold the outpost line. These men knew only that a raid on a large scale was intended. In the early hours of the 18th, the Germans, evidently somewhat suspicious, raided a sap held by the 1st Irish Fusiliers behind a heavy "box" barrage, and took six prisoners. From the evidence of German prisoners taken subsequently, it appeared that the most the enemy gathered from the examination of his captives was that an attempt to capture Havrincourt might be expected. This aroused in the German command no great uneasiness. On the 16th, the 14th Rifles had taken over the whole front of the 109th Brigade to permit the other battalions to train for their task, This training was carried out by General Ricardo over trenches laid out to scale with the plough, upon a front of four thousand yards.