The time of preparation was nearly over. The appointed hour of action was close at hand. ‘It was agreed’, we remember, between General Joffre and Sir Douglas Haig, ‘that the combined French and British offensive should not be postponed beyond the end of June.’ Before the curtain rises on that drama, opened punctually on July 1st, and on the part taken at the opening by the gallant Battalion which we have accompanied from Wormhoudt, we may glance more rapidly at the experience of other units in the Division which Major-General Perceval led to the Somme.
Take the 5th Battalion, York and Lancasters. On February 3rd, they entrained for Longeau, marched four hours to Ailly, and reached Oissy by motor-’bus on the 4th. ‘Hilly country,’ they note again with satisfaction. Their machine-gunners were struck off strength to form a Machine-Gun Company under Captain Rideal. March was spent in railway work and training: ‘Regular hours and a fortnight’s rest have worked wonders with the Battalion,’ we read after a month’s manual labour. ‘The slackness due to nearly a year’s trench-life is no longer apparent, and an entirely new stock of N.C.O.’s are beginning to give promise for the future.’ And the future began to show more clearly. A whole week’s work at the end of April was ‘devoted to training,’ especially to an ‘attack on trenches south of Naours, which undoubtedly represent the German lines opposite the Authuille Section. The 49th Division in reserve attacks the German 3rd Line, the 1st and 2nd Lines already having been taken by other Divisions, probably of the Corps’ (we are quoting from an account of training-practice); and the Officer Commanding the Battalion, Lt.-Col. Shuttleworth Rendall, D.S.O., added with keen anticipation: ‘All training and the similarity of the ground seem to point to the fact that, at a date not far distant, the 49th Division will attack the actual 3rd Line of the German trenches in front of Authuille.’ It happened very much as Colonel Rendall foresaw; and, when we come presently to the actual fighting, we shall see that this gallant Officer was, unfortunately, severely wounded shortly after the ‘date not far distant’ from the rehearsal which he here reports. Meanwhile, on June 26th, Brigade Operation Orders were received at Battalion Headquarters: ‘the utmost secrecy still preserved. Day of attack, alluded to as Z day, not yet notified. On Z day at Zero hour, artillery bombardment will lift from German front line and attack will commence.’
There were four X and Y days still to run. Bad weather accounted for a postponement from the 28th to the 30th June; and, while awaiting the summons to the Assembly-trenches in Aveluy Wood, we may follow the story of preparation in the log-book of yet another unit, the 4th West Riding (Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment, with which we first made acquaintance in Chapter II.
On January 15th they marched from Houtkerke, where they had lived for a fortnight in farm-billets, to similar accommodation at Wormhoudt. The Battalion remained in rest: ‘Company-drill, bayonet-fighting, route-marching, bomb-throwing, etc., have been carried out, and the men appear to have greatly benefited by the change’. On February 2nd came the move to Longeau, and the march through Amiens to Ailly, which preceded, as with other units of the Division, the tours in the trenches north of Authuille and the working-parties of March to May. Lt.-Col. (later, Brig.-General) E. G. St. Aubyn, D.S.O., at that time in Command of the Battalion, was allotted special duties at Corps Headquarters at the end of June, when Major J. Walker took Command. (Major E. P. Chambers had been attached since early in April as Claims Officer to the Division). The Birthday Honours included a D.S.O. for Major R. E. Sugden, two Distinguished Conduct Medals and a Military Medal. At 2 p.m. on the last day of June, the Battalion moved to Senlis, ‘to take part in operations.’
Every unit repeated the same experience: rest and recuperation in January from the severe strain of the trenches on the Yser; a move south-south-west early in February to the hilly country about Amiens; trench-work and trench-warfare in the valleys of the Somme and the Ancre; intensive training in offensive; elaborate, tireless fatigue-duty in all kinds of labour behind the line: railways, tramways, causeways, dressing stations, magazines, water-mains, communication-, assembly- and assault-trenches, mining operations, and so forth; often under enemy fire, with the weather ‘bad, on the whole,’ and ‘the local accommodation totally insufficient,[54]’ and, at last, at the end of June, on the agreed date, ‘to relieve the pressure on Verdun.’
II.—OPERATIONS ON THE SOMME
We are to remember in the first instance that the French and British objective was limited. In order to relieve the German pressure on Verdun, it was not necessary, however desirable it might be, to drive the enemy out of France and Belgium. Strictly speaking, he was never driven out; he begged an armistice for retirement; and, though his retreat became a rout, it falls into its place in the war-history, as Sir Douglas Haig indicated in his last Despatch, as the final stage of a gradual process, in which, compared with older battles, months and miles were consumed like hours and yards. A fairly clear perception of what was happening, albeit two years before the end, was present to the mind of the British Commander when he wrote his Second Despatch in December, 1916. There he represented the Battles of the Somme as a phase, or stage, in a longer battle, and the objects of the fighting on the Somme as subsidiary to the objects of the war. Accordingly, we are not to expect, as at home, and racked with acute anxiety, we were eager to expect at the time, that the German defeat on the Somme would be equivalent to an Allied victory in the war. Still less are we to repeat the practice, too common in 1916, of dividing the yards of Allied gains into the miles of territory in German occupation, in order to calculate a time-ratio from the quotient. Space and time were never measurable by one calculus. Even a surrender of space, as General Petain proved on the Meuse, and as Marshal Foch was to prove in 1918, might diminish instead of increasing the force of the enemy’s offensive. Always the war was greater than its battles, and always a chief object at every stage was to wear down the enemy’s resistance. Sir Douglas Haig, as we saw in the last chapter, was well aware that the Battles of the Somme had not broken the enemy’s strength, ‘nor is it yet possible to form an estimate of the time the war may last before the objects for which the Allies are fighting have been attained. But the Somme battle,’ he declared with conviction, ‘has placed beyond doubt the ability of the Allies to gain those objects.’ This, after all, was all that mattered, and we do well to see the view from Olympus before descending into the valley of the Somme.
It is the evening of June 30th, 1916. The diaries of units agree in their accounts of these crowded, fateful hours. The 1/7th West Yorkshires’ record says:
‘June 30th. Battalion marched to Aveluy Wood, via Hedauville, Englebelmer and Martinsart, after dark. All transport moved to position south-east of Hedauville, between that village and Bouzincourt.
‘Not more than 25 Officers per Battalion were allowed to go into action; the remainder, with a certain number of Signallers, Lewis Gunners and Bombers went to Bouzincourt, ready to be called upon when wanted.