Last week we took a quick look at the effects of frontal assaults in the face of modern weaponry at Belleau Wood. Today we examine another First World War battle which has become synonymous with the futility and slaughter of Western Front trench warfare. The Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1, 1916, is not only remembered for its unfathomable bloodshed, but also for the fact that such bloodshed could have been avoided.
After the Germans failed to reach Paris in the first days of war in 1914, it is well known that the Western Front settled into a stalemate for most of 1915. The following year saw both sides attempt to break through the maze of trenches that now stretched from the English Channel to Switzerland. An attack on the Somme River in the Picardy region of France had been planned for a combined Anglo-French force, but the German attack at Verdun in February diverted almost the entire French army to that sector of the front.
To relieve the pressure on the French, the British planned to go ahead with the attack. At the outbreak of war, British Secretary of State for War Horatio Kitchener warned that the struggle would be a long and costly one. To prepare for this, he sent out a call for volunteers, which he hastily trained and equipped for the fighting in France. In an attempt to make up for the number of men being fed into the meat-grinder at Verdun, the British supplemented their forces with these raw recruits, disparagingly known as "Kitchener's Mob."
In such a rush to get these men and the proper ordinance to the front in time for the attack, the British made several key errors. First, as mentioned, the men in the new divisions were not nearly as well trained as the veterans in the British Regular Army. Secondly, the number of artillery shells needed for the assault caused quality control issues at British plants; an unbelievably high number of dud shells would be dropped on German lines July 1. And finally, the shells that were in working condition at the time of the attack were not the high explosive variety needed to dislodge the deeply entrenched German defenders.
All this, in effect, added up to disaster. While French history was being altered in the ten-month slugfest at Verdun, the climactic British moment of the war occurred, for all intents, on a single day. On the morning of July 1, under Hawthorn Ridge on the Somme sector's left flank, 40,000 pounds of high explosives were detonated, signaling the start of the attack. The problems with British artillery meant the week-long bombardment prior to the assault did little to weaken the German line. The mine explosion under Hawthorn Ridge did nothing but alert the Germans to the attack's imminence. Thus, when wave after wave of untried British youth poured over the top of their trenches, the Germans were waiting for them. The scene was a nightmare, the likes of which have not often been seen in a single day of battle, certainly not in British history. By the end of the day, over 57,000 men of Kitchener's new divisions were lost, almost 20,000 of them lying dead in No Man's Land.
Incredibly, July 1 was just the beginning. The battle would last nearly six months, with countless more frontal assaults to follow. British persistence (some would say obstinance) however, was not the only cause for the continued bloodshed. Surely German arrogance played a part as well, for commanders were ordered that every yard of ground lost had to be immediately retaken, resulting in countless see-saw, hand to hand battles. Hindsight suggests that had the Germans given ground in some places, thousands could have been spared without sacrificing the main line of resistance.
Regardless, by the end of the battle in November, 1916, nearly a million men had been lost between the two sides. The Battles of Verdun and the Somme have endured as symbols of the stalemate and attrition of the First World War and serve as a chilling reminder to all of how capable man is at destroying himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment