Shot to Pieces: Vivid Pictures of Somme Offensive.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 249, 9 February 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

Shot to Pieces: Vivid Pictures of Somme Offensive.

By PHILIP GIBBS, in London "Daily Telegraph."

(In the following article, Mr. Philip (abbs gives a vivid picture of the great struggle on the Somme —as far as it extended along the British front from the German point of view.

iiritish Headquarters (France). fIULE capture of Bea union t-Hamel, on • tho 13th day of November, with v. 010 than 6000 prisoners, after a lull in which tho progress of our offensive seemed to have been brought to a halt by the weather, was undoubtedly the biggest surprise and shock .we have yet given to the German High Command on the Western Front. There may be ether surprises of the same kind in store for it —I think there will lie —but now r, is a good time to look back a little and see as closely as possible what our soldiers have achieved, actually, by so much heroism and so much sacrifice. Hiere are people among us whose hopes •vvero so high at the beginning of tho offensive- that nciw, not finding them realised to the full, they suffer from reaction and depression. They look fit the amount of territory gained, and say "After all, it is only a few square miles." They were expecting a complete ' break-through," and see that our men are still facing formidable lines. They were hoping, and some of them praying, for a decisive blow which would end all this blood and agony in Europe by the unconditional surrender of the enemy, end they think they see that the enemy i nstill as strong as ever against us, lidding his lines with new masses ot men, in spite of all those who have been captured and destroyed, with inexhaustible reserves of strength.

They will be confirmed in their view when I tell them, at the outset, that Germany has about a dozen more divisions on the Western front than she had in January of last year, and they will not be much comforted when they learn that this increase in strength comprises about a score more battalions, tho new divisions having been formed by a readjustment of infantry units and not by a real increase in effectives. It is true that the enemy is still strong against us, that in spite of all our bombardments and counter-battery work he has been able to maintain his gun-power to the strength of something like 1200 since July 1, and that instead of having "broken through" in the old sense of the words, we are still confronted by l'nes which he is making stronger by feverish industry within and' beyond tho r.one of our shell-fire. GERMANY'S REAL POSITION. From January to May, 1916, the German command on the western front was concentrating all its energy and all its available strength in man-power and gun-power upon tne attack against Verdun. The Crown Prince had staked all iiis reputation upon his adventure, which he believed would end in the capturo of the strongest French fortress and the destruction of the French armies. He demanded men and more men, until every unit that could be spared from other fronts of the line had been thrown into this furnace. Divisions were called in from other theatres of war, and increased the strength on the western front to a total of about 130 divisions.

FEAR OF BRITISH OFFENSIVE. It was our offensive that the German command feared most for they had! no txact knowledge of our strength or of the quality of our new troops. They knetf that «ur Army had grown prodigiously since the assault on lioos, nearly a year before . They now heard jf the Canadian reinforcements, and the coming of the Australians, and the steady increase, of recruiting in England. iand month by month, they had hoard the louder roar of our guns along the line, and had seen their destructive effect spreading and becoming more teriib!e. They knew of the steady, quiet concentration of batteries and divisions on the north and south of the Ancre. The German command expected a hea.vy blow, and prepared for it, but as yet had no knowledge of the driving force behind it. What confidence they had of being able to resist the British attack was based upon the wonderful strengthof the lines which they had 1 been digging and fortifying since the autumn of the first year of war —" impregnable positions" they had called them —the inexperience of our troops, their own immense quantity of machine-guns, the courage and skill of their gunners, and their profound belief in the superiority of German generalship. The German armies which held the lines against us were commanded by a rumber of experienced leaders. PREVENTING ESPIONAGE. In order to prevent espionage during tho coming struggle, and to conceal the movement of troops and guns, they ordered the civil populations to be removed from villages close behind their positions, drew cordons of military police across tne country, picketed cross-roads, and established a network of counter-espionage to prevent any leakage of information. Great stores or material and munitions were concentrated by railheads and dumps ready to bo sent up to the firing-lines, and the perfection of German organisation may v.0'.l have seemed flawless —before "the attack began. The British attack l>egan with the «reat .-ombardinent several days before July 1, and was a revelation, to tho German Command and to the soldiers who had to endure it, of the new and enormous power of our artillery. A number of batteries, were unmasked for *ho first time, and tlie German gunners found that in heavies" and in expenditure of high explosives they were outclassed. They were startled, too, by the skill and accuracy of British gunners, whom they had scorned as "amateurs," and by the daring of our airmen, who flew over their lines with the utmost audacity "spotting" for the guns, and registering on batteries, communication trenches, cross-roads, railheads, and every vital point of. organisation in the German war-machine working opposite the British lines north and south of tho Ancre. Even before the British infantry had left their trenches at dawn 011 July 1 German officers behind the firing lines saw witn an anxiety that all tho organisation which had worked so smoothly in times of ordinary trench warfare was now working only in a hazardous way under a deadly storm of shells • Food and supplies of all kind-i cou'd not bo sent p to front-line trenches without many casualties, and sometimes could not be sent up at all. Telephone wires were cut. and communications broken between the front and headquarters staffs. Staff officers sent up to report were killed 011 the way to the lines. Troops moving forward from reserve areas came under heavy fire and lost many men before arriving in tho support trenches. Prince Rupprecht of Baavria, sitting aloof from all this in personal safety, must have known beforo .luly 1 that hr» resources in men and material would lie strained to the uttermost by tho British attack, but he could take a broader vi-w than men

closer to the scene of battle, and taking into account the courage of liis troops (he had no need to doubt that), the immense strength of their positions, dug and tunnelled beyond the power of high explosives, the number of his ma-chine-guns, the concentration of his ar. tilery, and the rawness of the British troops, he could count up the heavy price to pay, there would be no great break in his lines. BEGINNING OF THE ATTACK. At 7.30 a.m. on July 1 the British Infantry left their trenches and' attacked on the right angle southwards from Gommecourt, Beaumont-Hamel, Thiepval, Ovillers, and La Boiselle, and eastwards from Fricourt, below Mametz and Alontauban. For a week the German troops —Bavarians and Prussians—had lieen crouching in their dug-outs, listening to the ceaseless plashing of the British "drum-fire." In places like Beaumont-Hamel the men'down in the deep tunnels some of them large enough to hold a battalion and a half —were safe as long as they stayed there. But to get in or out was death. Trenches disappeared into a sea of shell-cra-ters, and the men holding them—for some men had to stay on duty there — were blown to fragments of flesh. Many of the shallower dug-outs were smashed in by heavy shells, and officers and men lay dead there as I saw them lying on the first days of July in Fricourt and Mametz and Montnuban. The living men kept tlieir courage, but below ground, under the tumult of bursting shells, wrote pitifu'l letters to their people at home describing the horror of those hours. "We are quite shut off from the rest of the world," wrote one of them. "Nothing comes to us. No letters. The English keep such a barrage on our approahes it is terrible. To-morrow evening it will be seven days since this bombardment began. We cannot hold out much longer. Everything is shot to pieces." Thirst was one of their tortures. In many of the tunneled shelters there was food enough, but water could 1 not be sent up. The German soldiers were maddened by thirst. Wheu rain fell many of them crept out and drank filthy water mixed with yellow sheil sulphur, and then were killed by high explosives. .Other men crept out, careless of death, but compelled to drink. They crouched over the bodies of the men who lay rtbove, or in the shell-holes, and lapped up the puddles, and then crawled down again if they were not hit. When our infantry attacked at Gommecourt and Beaumorit-Hflmel and 1 Thiepval they were received by waves of machine-gun bullets, fired by men who, in spite of the ordeal of our seven days' bombardment, came out into the open now at the moment of attack, which they knew through their periscopes was coming. They brought their guns above the shell craters of their destroyed trenches under our barrage and served .them. They ran forward even into No Man's Land, and planted their machine-guns there and swept down our mien as they harged. Over their heads the German punners flung a frightful barrage, ploughing gaps in the ranks of our splendid men, who would notJbe checked whatever their losses might be, until they had reached the enemy's lines. On the left, by Gommecourt and Beauniont-HamcJ, the British attack did not succeed in all its objectives, though the German line was pierced, and if this had been all the line of battle the enemy's generals at the end of that day might have said, "It is well. We can hold them back!" But southward the "impregnable" lines were smashed by a tide of British soldiers as sand castles are overwhelmed by the waves. Our men swept up to Fricourt, struck straight up to Mofitauban on the light, captured it, and flung a loop 'ound Mametz village. For the German generals receiving their reports, with great difficulty, because runners were killed and telephones broken, the question was, "How will these British troops fight in the open after their first assault? How will our men stand between the first line and the second?" As far as the German troops were concorned,there was no sign ofcowardice, or "low morale" as we call it more kindly, in those early days of the struggle. They fought with a desperate courage, nolding on to positions in rearguard actions when our guns were slashing them, and when our men were .getting near to them, making us pay a heavy price for every little copse or gully or section of trench, and, above all, serving their machine-guns at La Boiselle, (Miters, above Fricourt, round Contalmaison, and at all point 9 of their gradual retreat, with a splendid obstinacy until they were killed or captured.. But they tould not chock our menj or stop their progress* YALOCR, SKILL, AND CUNNING. After the first week of battle the German General Staff had learnt the truth about the qualities off those British ' New Armies," which had been mocked and caricatured in German comic papers. iliey learnt that these "amateur soldiers" had the qu<alities_of the finest troops in the world —not only extreme valour, but skill and cunning, not only a great power of ondurance under the heaviest fire, but a spirit of attack which was terrible in its effect. They were great bayonet fighters. Once having gained a bit of earth or a ruined village nothing would budge them unless they could be blasted out by gunlire. General Sixt von Arnim put down some candid notes in his report to I riiice Rupprecht. "The English infantry shows great dash in attack, a factor to which immense confidence in its overwhelming artillery greatly contributes. . . "

The German losses were piling up. The great ngonv of the German troops r.nder our shell-tiro was reaching unnatural limits of torture. The early i»i isoners I saw—Prussians >id Bavariaiia of the 14th Reserve . }rps —were t ervo-broken, and told frig«rfful stories of the way in whioh their regiments iiad been cut to pieoes. The German generals liad to ml up the gaps, to put new barriers of men against the waves of British infantry. They flung new iroops into the line, called up hurriedly from reserve depots. But now, for the first tjme. their staff work showed ngns of disorder and demoralisation. When the Prussian Guards reserves were brought up from Valenciennes to counter-attack at Contalmaison they were sent on to the battlefield without maps or local guides, and walked straight into our barrage. A whole battalion was cut to pieces, and many others suffered frightful things. Some of the prisoners told: me that they had lost three-f|uartors of their number in casualties, and our troops advnnucd '»ter heaps of killed and wounded. The 'i22ud bavarian Itegiment in lVut.ab maison waa among those which milTered norribly. Owing to our guti-

fire they could got no food supplies and ,io water. The dug-outs wore crowded, 60 that they had to take turns to get inside these shelters, and outside our shells were bursting over every yard of ground.

"Those who went outside," a prisn*«si told me, " were killed or wounded. Some of them had their heads blown oC, and some of them had both their legs urn off, and some of them their arms. But wo went en taking turns in the hole, although those who went out knew that it was their turn to die, most likely. At a.«t most of those who camp into the hole were wounded, some of them badly, so that we lay in blood. It is one little picture in a great panorama of bloodshed. The Gorman command was not thinking much about the human suffering of its troops. It was thinking nooessarily, of the next defensive line upon which they wou.~ have to fall back if the pressure ot the British offensive couto be maintained—the Longuevai-Bazentin-Pozieres line. It was getting nervous. Owing to the continuous efforts made In the Verdun offensive the supplies of ammunition were not i dequate to the enormous demand. The German gunners were trying to compete with tbo British in continuity of bombardments, and the shells were running short. Guns were wearing out under this incessant strain, and it was difficult to rep/lace them. General von Gajlwitz received reports of "an alarmingly >large number of bursts in the bore, particularly in field guns." General von Arnim complained that "reserve supplies of ammunition were only fvailable in very smaK quantities." The German telephone system proved "totally inadequate in consequence of the development which the fighting took. The German air service was smprisingiy weak, and the British airmen had established a complete mastery. "Tho numerical superiority of the enemy's airmen," noted General von Arnim, " and the fact that their machines were better made, became disagreeably apparent to us, particularly in thoir aiiection of the enemy's artillery fire and in bomb-dropping." "The English airmen are constantly over our lines," write an officer of the iiOth Regiment, "and they discover our batteries so that they may be peppered, and are always attacking our captive balloons, which is the same thing as putting our eyes out. Meanwhile the sky is black with enemy captive balloons and alive with their aviators. . . It makes one despair." On July 15, one of the greatest days ih tho h ; story of the Somme battfes, the British troops broke the German second iino at Longueval and the Bazentins, and inflicted great losses upon the enemy, who fought with their usual courage until the British bayonets were among them. A day or two later the fortress of Ovil'.ers fell, and the remnants of the garrison—lso strong — after a desperate and gallant resistance in ditchos and tunnels where they fought to the last, surrendered with honour. Then began the long battle of the woods —Devil's Wood, High Wood. '1 rones Wood—continued through August with most fierce and bloody figlitnig, which ended in our favour and forced tho enemy back, gradually but steadily, in spite of the terrific borobrdmens wlricn filled theose woods with hell-fire, and the constant counter-at-tacks delivered by the Germans. " Coun-ter-attack!" came the order from the German *taff—and the battalions of men marched out obediently to certain death, sometimes with incredible folly on the part of their commanding officers, who ordered these attacks to be made without the slightest chance of success. In all the letters during those weeks of fighting and captured by us from dead or living men there_is one great cry of agony and horror. " I stood on the brink of the most terrible days of my life," wrote one of them. "They were those of the battle of the Somme. It began with a night attack on August 13-14. The attack lasted till the evening of the 18th, when the English wrote on our bodies in letters of blood: 'lt is all over with you.' A handful of halfmad, wretched worn out in oody and mind, were all that was left of a whole battalion. We were that! handful." STAGGERING LOSSES. The losses of many of the German battalions were staggering, and by the middle of August the morale of the troops were severely shaken. So far as I can ascertain, the 117 th Division by Pozieies suffered very heavily . The 11th Reserve and 157 th Regiments each lost nearly three-quarters of their effectives. The 9th Reserve Jaegar Battalion also lost about threequarters, the 84th Reserve and 86th Reserve over half. On August 10 the 16th Division had six battalions in reserve. By August. 19, owing to the large number of casualties, the.greater part of those reserves had been absorbed into the front and' support trenches, leaving as available reserves two exhausted battalions. The weakness of the division and the absolute necessity of reinforcing it led to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment (2nd Guards Division) being brought up to strengthen the right hank in the Leipzig salient. This regiment had suffered oasualtes to the extent of over 50 per cent, west of Pozicres during the middle of July, and showed no eagerness to return to the light. These are but a few examples of what was happening along the whole of the German front on the Somme. It became apparent by thio end of August that the enemy was having con•derable difficulty in finding fresh troops to reuevo his exhausted divisions, and that the wastage was faster than the arrival of fresh troops. It was also noticeable that he left divisions in tho line until incapable of further effort, rather than relieve them earlier so that after resting they might again be brought on to the battlefield. The only conclusion to l>e drawn from this was tuat tho enemy hud not sufficient formations available to make tho necessary reliefs. Tha British and French offensive was drawing in all the German reserves and draining them of their life's blood. ' Wo entrained at Savigny," wrote a man of oue of these regiments, "and ft onto knew our destination. It was <ur old blood-bath —the Somme." In many letters this phrase was used. The bomme was called the "Bath of Blood'' i>y the German troops who waded across its .shell-craters, and in the ditches which were heaped with their dead. But what I havo described is only the beginning of the Iwttlo, and the bath was to bo filled deeper in the mouths that iol. lowctj.