Between July 21st and the 27th there were ‘three encounters with the enemy in the Leipsic Salient.’ On the 21st, he made a bombing attack; on the 22nd, the 4th York and Lancasters ‘attempted to extend our position in the Salient to the east by surprise,’ but were foiled; on the 23rd, the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry made a similar attempt, ‘but consolidation was prevented by a heavy counter-attack from all sides, and our troops retired to their original line.’ From the Army Commander’s point of view, a single entry sufficed for these exploits; the Divisional Commander had to account for nearly five hundred casualties in the period.
Take the 28th of July to the 4th of August. There were 279 casualties in the Division, due, partly, to ‘a considerable amount of trench-mortar fire on the Leipsic Salient and Authuille Wood’; and who shall say but that every wounded man made a definite contribution to the Somme advance? Yet Sir Hubert Gough was content to observe: ‘49th Division left of 12th.’ Or, August 26th to September 1st. General Perceval’s entry on the 27th merely repeats (or we should say, anticipates) Sir Hubert Gough’s at greater length: ‘Divisional Headquarters returned from Acheux to Hedauville, and at mid-day the Command of the line from Thiepval Avenue (exclusive) to River Ancre passed from 25th to 49th Division.’ There is a further entry in this Diary, which, being a record of work done in the ordinary course of duty, the Army Commander did not reproduce: ‘With a view to an attack on German trenches north of Thiepval Wood, the new saps and parallels to the north of the Wood have been completed, ammunition-trenches improved, and dumps formed and filled with ammunition, bombs, R.E. stores, etc.’
So far the Divisional Commander, in expansion of Sir Hubert Gough. There are next the Battalion Commanders to be consulted; and, still omitting at present the Divisional record of the week including September 3rd, when ‘49th Division attacked,’ we may once more enlarge the angle, and examine this preparation for attack from a Battalion Commander’s point of view. Thus, we read that:
‘On August 26th, the Battalion[63] was sent up to the trenches on the right of Thiepval Wood.... Captain R. Salter was killed instantaneously by a shell as soon as he got to Battalion Headquarters. We were in this line for only two days, but had 52 casualties as there was a good deal of shelling.... The Battalion was relieved on August 28th by the 5th K.O.Y.L.I., and went into huts in Martinsart Wood; from here we had to find large working parties in the front line for two or three days, and then had a rest until the attack on September 3rd.’
We are brought back, like Master Pathelin, à nos moutons. The ‘long step forward’ was achieved, the Battle of the Somme was won, by the Allied Armies working to the plans of Sir Douglas Haig and Marshal Joffre. Those plans included the provision of a separate Army on the Ancre, to hold the German forces in that area, and to make what progress they could. The Commander of that Fifth Army was Sir Hubert Gough, and Major-General Perceval’s West Riding (49th) Division was included as a unit of its Xth Corps. What happened, then, on September 3rd, when the new saps and parallels had been constructed, the communication-trenches improved, and the dumps filled with bombs and ammunition? How did the 49th attack, and what have the Officers Commanding its Battalions to add to the bare record of Sir Hubert Gough or the more expansive Diary of the Divisional Commander?
The units immediately concerned were the 4th and 5th Battalions, West Riding Regiment, and the 6th and 8th Battalions, West Yorks. The 7th Battalion of each Regiment was stationed in reserve. The week’s casualties in the Division were high:
| OFFICERS. | OTHER RANKS. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Killed | 14 | 196 | |
| Wounded | 47 | 994 | |
| Missing | 17 | 611 | |
| 78 | 1801 | ||
| Total | 1879 |
and the bulk of them occurred on September 3rd. The large percentage of missing in all ranks (more than a third of the whole) seems to indicate a hasty retreat from untenable positions.
The presumption is borne out by Battalion records. These agree that co-operation was interrupted by a bad block in communication, and that Battalions were not able to render one another all the support that was expected. Each unit tended to believe that its own advance was held up, or, rather, that its withdrawal was necessitated, by what had happened on its right or left; and, consequently, the exploits of individuals were more conspicuous than the conduct of the attack. Zero hour was 5-10 a.m., and the Companies left the trenches punctually and went over in good order. But the half-light caused some confusion, and communication proved very difficult. In the instance of several Battalions no definite news was received for three hours or more. Runners failed to get through, and rumours were not satisfactory. At last, about 9 o’clock, tidings began to arrive of heavy losses incurred in trying to consolidate captured positions under a cross enfilade of machine-gun and rifle fire. Remnants of Companies, driven back after a long morning’s heavy fighting told of the exhaustion of their bombs, and of their messages lost in No Man’s Land. Stray parties cut off in the attack, found cover in shell-holes until nightfall. One Commanding Officer frankly wrote, ‘the whole attack failed.’ ‘The objectives were gained,’ he summed up, ‘but the first casualties in Officers and N.C.O.’s were heavy, and therefore the men with power of “leadership” were lost when most needed to hold on. The presence of the enemy in the Pope’s Nose (a machine-gun nest at an early point) upset all chances of reinforcements and supply except across the open’—an almost impossible condition. The runners, as we saw, did not get across, and the light was too bad for the observation posts to give effective help. On the other hand, the daylight was too strong to consolidate under fire the battered German trenches which had been captured. There was, unfortunately, a ‘but’ or an ‘if’ which qualified every record of success; and we may quote the following statement from a Battalion Diary, which gives a very fair impression of the whole episode: