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The Somme
Updated Edition
Robin Prior and
Trevor
Robin Wilson
Prior and
Trevor Wilson

Yale University Press

New Haven and London
 For Heather and Jane
And in memory of John Grigg
Scholar and Friend

Copyright © 2005 by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson

Introduction to updated edition copyright © 2016 Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson

First printed in paperback 2006

This updated edition published 2016

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:
U.S. Office:   [email protected] yalebooks.com
Europe Office: [email protected]   www.yalebooks.co.uk

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015960023

ISBN 978-0-300-22028-5 (pbk)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Contents

List of Illustrations v
Illustrations
List of Maps viv
List of Maps
Acknowledgements vi
vii
Introduction to the Updated Edition
Acknowledgements ix
vii
. The Context 
. The
. ContextAstonishing’: The War Committee and the Military
‘Absolutely 
.
. ‘Absolutely Astonishing’:
Decision-making, The War Committee and the Military
January–February 

. Decision-making, January–February
. March–June 

.
. ‘Grasping
Decision-making, March–June
at the Shadow’: Planning for the Somme, 
February–June
. ‘Grasping at the Shadow’: Planning for the Somme, 
. February–June
‘Favourable Results Are Not Anticipated’: Preparations for Battle, 
June
. ‘Favourable Results Are Not Anticipated’: Preparations for Battle, 
. June
‘A Short Life’: VII and VIII Corps on  July 

. ‘The
. ‘A Short Life’: Fire
Enemy’s VII and
WasVIII Corps on
So Intense’: X Corps
July on  July 

. ‘The
. ‘WaveEnemy’s FireWere
after Wave Was Mown
So Intense’:
Down’:X Corps on on
III Corps  July
July 

. ‘Wave
. afterMen
‘Cowering WaveinWere
FieldMown
Grey’:Down’:
XV andIII Corps
XIII  July
onon
Corps  July 

.
. ‘Cowering on  in
ReflectionsMen Field Grey’: XV and XIII Corps on  July
July 

. Reflections
. on Attacks
‘Ill-Considered July on a Small Front’, – July 

.
. ‘Ill-Considered Attacks
‘Cavalry Sharpening on aSwords’
Their Small ,Front’, – July
 July 

. ‘Cavalry
. Bit Stuck’, –
‘We Are aSharpening Swords’,  July
TheirJuly 

.
. ‘We Stuck’, –
Are a BitWanting
‘Something in theJuly
Methods Employed’, 
 August– September
. ‘Something Wanting in the Methods Employed’, 
. ‘AAugust– September
Hell of a Time’: Pozières and Mouquet Farm, July–August 

.
. ‘A Hell of aTime’:
Summary, Pozières
July– and Mouquet Farm, July–August
September 

. Summary,  July– September 
prelims 28/11/05 11:28 am Page iv

iv Contents

. The Politicians and the Somme Campaign, July–August 

. One Division’s Somme: The First Division, July–September 
. ‘An Operation Planned on Bolder Lines’: Tanks and the
 September Plan 
. Lumbering Tanks: The Battle of  September 
.  September 
. ‘The Tragic Hill of Thiepval’, – September 
. ‘A Severe Trial of Body and Spirit’: The Somme, October 
. ‘We Must Keep Going!’: The Politicians and the Somme Campaign,
September–October 
. The Political Battle: Beaumont Hamel, – November 
. Reflections on the British at the Somme 
2. Epilogue: The End of It All, November  

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
prelims 28/11/05 11:28 am Page v

Illustrations

. The th East Yorkshire Battalion marching to the trenches,  June.

. Shell cases from the preliminary bombardment, before  July.
. Explosion of the mine at the Hawthorn Redoubt,  July.
. The -inch Howitzer.
. Ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles,  July.
. Fricourt,  July.
. Shooting with the Lewis gun in a front-line trench near Ovillers, July.
. -pounders firing a barrage, Battle of Pozières,  July.
. Bodies, Guillemont, August.
. Sir Douglas Haig, General Joffre and Marshall Foch at Château
Beauquesne,  August.
. Men of the th (Irish) Division after the taking of Guillemont,
 September.
. Cavalry moving forward,  September.
. The ruins of Flers,  September.
. The ruins of Morval.
. A posed photograph showing troops in the trenches,  September.
. The battlefield, late September.
. Mr Balfour and General Sir Henry Rawlinson at Château de Querrieu,
October.
. Supplying provisions by horse-drawn wagon, November.

Photographs reproduced by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum,

London.
prelims 28/11/05 11:28 am Page vi

Maps

The Topography of the Battlefield 

The Haig/Rawlinson Plans, April–May 
The Change of Plan, June 
VIII Corps,  July 
X Corps,  July 
III Corps,  July 
XV Corps,  July 
XIII Corps,  July 
– July 
The Plans,  July 
– July 
August 
From Pozières to Mouquet Farm,  July– August 
The  Division on the Somme, July–September 
Tanks in Action,  September 
 September 
Thiepval Ridge, – September 
The Schwaben Redoute, October 
Haig’s October Plan 
The October Battles 
Gains Made, October 
Beaumont Hamel, – November 
prelims 28/11/05 11:28 am Page vii

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the many people and institutions that have
helped them in the research and production of this book about the British
experience at the Somme.
Firstly, they wish to thank their colleagues at their respective university
departments whose encouragement has been much appreciated. In his School
Robin Prior wishes to mention in particular the help he received from
Elizabeth Greenhalgh and for the many discussions with her on the First
World War. He also wishes to thank Bernadette McDermott, Deborah Furphy,
Elsa Selleck, Julie McMahon, Shirley Ramsay, Marilyn Anderson-Smith and
Lyn Weaver for helping in various ways, not least in preparing a readable
manuscript – no mean feat given his handwriting.
To Robert King, the former Rector of UNSW@ADFA, Robin Prior owes
special thanks. It is a rare university administrator who still thinks that the
Head of a School should have the right to undertake scholarly research.
The authors wish to thank the following research institutions for granting
access to material in their archives. In London: the Public Record Office (now
sadly renamed the National Archives), the efficiency of which is a marvel; the
Liddell Hart Centre at King’s College; the Royal Artillery Institution in
Woolwich; and the Imperial War Museum, where Rod Sudderby and his expert
staff make research work a pleasure. Robin Prior wishes especially to thank
Rod for drawing the Horne Papers to his attention. In Canberra: the Australian
War Memorial.
Robin Prior expresses his gratitude to the Institute for Advanced Studies at
the Australian National University for offering congenial facilities and company
for a semester in 1997. He would also like to thank Professor Joanna Bourke of
Birkbeck College, London; Professor Carl Bridge at the Menzies Centre in
London; and Professor John Moses at the University of New England for
opportunities to test chapters of this book on expert audiences.
prelims 28/11/05 11:28 am Page viii

viii Acknowledgements

Both authors wish to thank Keith Mitchell for preparing the maps from their
often incomprehensible drafts.
The authors would like to thank their publisher, Robert Baldock, and his
expert team at Yale University Press, London. Robert is a publisher par
excellence and a great friend. It is also a pleasure to deal with people of the
professionalism of Candida Brazil and Ewan Thompson. Their efforts have
improved the text and saved us from many errors and grotesqueries (a word
they would not approve) of style.
Robin Prior owes an even greater debt to his wife than usual. She not only
read the entire manuscript several times and made many improvements,
she also assisted in a considerable way with the research. About 600 British
battalions fought on the Somme and without Heather’s help many of their
war diaries would have remained uncopied and unseen and this book would
have been the poorer. Robin would also like to thank his daughter, Megan, for
help in compiling the index.
Introduction to the Updated Edition

Just over ten years have passed since the first publication of The Somme. In this
new introduction we want briefly to restate the major points made in the book
and then investigate some of the work published on the battle since 2005 to
establish whether, in any of the areas we investigated, a fresh approach or
different conclusions are warranted.
One way in which we took a broader approach to the battle than most
previous work was to integrate the political story with the military. Britain, in
1916, was a parliamentary democracy – an imperfect one, admittedly, but one
in which it was not the military that called the shots but its political masters, as
long as they chose to exercise that power. It follows that the battle of the Somme
could not be inflicted on the civilian leadership by a bunch of boneheaded
militarists in France unless that leadership broadly approved.
We noted that as far as the battle of the Somme was concerned, the politi-
cians did keep a continuous eye on its planning. It was the politicians at the
Chantilly conference of December 1915 who decided that the Allies would as far
as possible conduct coordinated offensives in the spring and summer of the
following year. Over the subsequent weeks and months that plan collapsed. In
the first place, it soon became apparent that the Russians were in no position
to conduct offensive operations in the first half of the year. Secondly, in
February 1916 the great German offensive at Verdun soon called into question
French participation in any additional operations on the Western Front.
Nevertheless, the War Committee (the cabinet committee delegated to over-
seeing the war), while observing these events, never deviated from the view
that a British offensive should go forward. We must reiterate that the politi-
cians reached this decision not because they feared for the French. Although
they had noted the German attack at Verdun, they hardly seemed to think it
was a matter for concern, or that the French needed rescuing. Indeed, they
appeared rather content that the attack on the Somme (by then the chosen
battlefield) would be largely a British affair.
x Introduction to the Updated Edition

As the day of battle drew closer, the War Committee sought assurances
from General Robertson (the CIGS) that the British army would have suffi-
cient troops for the battle (in this sense, conscription was already looming as
an issue), and from Lloyd George, who was of course one of their number, that
as Minister of Munitions he could provide enough machine guns. Such assur-
ances on both issues were readily given. Thus the War Committee seemed to
have done its duty concerning preparations for the offensive. Then, on the very
eve of battle, Robertson told them that the British army would be inferior in
guns. Arthur Balfour (First Lord of the Admiralty) immediately expressed
alarm, noting that guns were the only weapon that really counted. This was
acute of Balfour, and demonstrated that at least one politician was well aware
that artillery was now the determinant of victory on the Western Front.
However, as was not uncommon with the War Committee, its members did
not press the issue further: either the date of the offensive was too near to look
into it, or the War Committee was uneasy about pressing what was a technical
military matter, or its members could not muster the requisite concentration
to carry the discussion further. The debate petered out.
For all their deficiencies, however, the British leadership had been involved
from the first in the decision-making that led to the Battle of the Somme. They
knew that the battle would be largely a British affair, knew that their army had
a deficiency of guns, and were apparently content with the site of the engage-
ment. In these circumstances the disaster that was the first day might reason-
ably have shocked and surprised the politicians. But bizarrely, despite the
British army having suffered its greatest ever number of battle casualties in a
single day, the War Committee never issued a single comment, even when the
extent of the casualties on 1 July became evident.
As the days went by and it became clear that the British cavalry were not
bursting through, and that neither were the Germans throwing in the towel,
still the political leadership did not question the battle’s course. To do so was
perhaps expecting too much of a group of men without extensive military
knowledge. But a Member of Parliament, who until recently happened to have
held high office, then came forth with a disturbing paper. Winston Churchill,
with assistance from sources inside GHQ or the War Office, suggested that the
offensive had utterly failed in its intent and was costing the British army consid-
erably more men than their German opponents, all to achieve advances of the
utmost insignificance. Attrition was succeeding, therefore, but to the advantage
of the enemy. The War Committee did not even investigate Churchill’s allega-
tions or discuss his paper in committee. Instead they were fobbed off with
palpably dodgy figures put forward by Robertson (he claimed that the Germans
had already lost 1.25 million men – that is, losses of 200,000 men or twelve
 Introduction to the Updated Edition xi

divisions for each week of battle) and by equally spurious arguments from
Haig to the effect that the British army was in ‘excellent heart’, that the offensive
had produced (unspecified) great results, and that the only policy was to
continue its vigorous prosecution. In no time at all the politicians, convinced
that all was going reasonably well, had assured Haig of their full support.
As it happened, there was another intervention that could have stopped the
battle – but it was not the result of second thoughts on the War Committee’s
behalf. Astonishingly, it came from Haig. In early October, and for reasons that
are obscure, he sought permission to continue the offensive. By this time the
tanks had suffered crippling casualties, the rains had come, and if the War
Committee had glanced at a map they might have noted that Haig was
advancing into a swamp. In short, the attractions of sanctioning further opera-
tions did not seem overwhelming. But once more, the War Committee was not
concentrating. Its discussion wandered from the Western Front to the Balkans,
with great concern being expressed about the fate of Roumania, and Lloyd
George suggesting that further operations from the allied enclave at Salonika
should be undertaken. The committee was pulled up by Robertson’s threat to
resign if Balkan options were pursued. But the debate never returned to the
Western Front and the only issue that mattered: namely, whether their army on
the Somme should continue its efforts under increasingly difficult conditions.
The War Committee’s silence meant that the battle would go on – with heavy
casualties, and for no advantage. Such was the politicians’ Somme.
As far as the planning of the action was concerned, two conceptions of
battle on the Western Front seemed to be in play. The first was that of
Rawlinson’s ‘bite and hold’, involving a modest amount of territory that the
artillery could deluge with shells so that the infantry could then move in and
occupy it for only modest cost. The attack would then be stopped, the guns
brought forward and the whole process repeated. The primary aim in this form
of battle was not to gain territory but to kill as many of the enemy as possible
for as little loss to one’s own troops. In that sense it was true attrition.
Against that there was the breakthrough battle concept favoured by Haig.
Here the entire enemy defensive system or systems had to be neutralised by the
guns to allow the cavalry to sweep through en masse and roll up a considerable
section of the entire German front. This promised rapid victory on a large
scale, but it was highly ambitious. Haig was aiming to subdue a German trench
system of some depth and complexity. It might be thought that in planning
this type of offensive he would make at least some general calculations to
establish whether he had sufficient guns or ammunition to carry it through.
Indeed, some rudimentary calculations along these lines had been carried out
for some of the battles in which he had participated in 1915, so he was familiar
xii Introduction to the Updated Edition

with the concept. However, there is no evidence that Haig ever considered
undertaking this work for the Somme. Apparently, the fact that he had an
unprecedented number of guns dazzled him; that he had an unprecedented
defensive system to subdue passed him by. Thus, in attempting to subdue three
German defensive systems, his artillery failed to subdue even the first, leaving
its defenders free to wreak havoc on the advancing troops.
Haig might also have asked himself another question. Could the large
number of horsed soldiers he had assembled be effective on a battlefield domi-
nated by artillery and machine-gun fire, and which was interlaced with
trenches, barbed wire, shell holes and other obstacles? No such thought seems
to have occurred. The cavalry was the only weapon of exploitation available to
him, so he deemed it able to exploit. The whole planning process was thus
skewed to suit an arm that would never play a major role in any battle on the
Western Front.
It might be thought that the opposing views of Haig and Rawlinson – who,
to his credit, had realised (for the moment, at least) that cavalry had no place
on a modern battlefield – would have been thrashed out in the planning phase.
They were not. Rawlinson soon buckled and accepted Haig’s views. Whether
this was down to the authority structure in the British army, or whether
Rawlinson had a less than secure grip on the essentials of ‘bite and hold’, is not
clear. What is clear is that because of Haig’s poverty of conception, his army –
lamentably – was to sustain a record number of battle casualties on 1 July, and
on two-thirds of the front of battle to gain not a yard of ground.
In detailing the disaster that was the first day of the Somme we noted that
it was not the infantry advancing arm-in-arm at a slow pace that accounted for
the casualty bill. In the event, very few infantry battalions advanced in this
manner. The junior officers (if not the high command) were well aware of the
dangers in so doing and had developed well thought-out infantry formations
to make the perilous passage of no man’s land as efficient as possible. That their
good work counted for nothing was due to Haig’s quite inadequate artillery
preparation, which meant that the German gunners and machine-gunners
were still in place and able to inflict a fearful toll on the British infantry which-
ever method of advance had been chosen. We also observed the melancholy
fact that about one-third of all British casualties occurred behind their own
front line. Any deficiencies in training that the ‘new armies’ might have had
must take account of the fact that training could only be effective if the troops
could actually get to grips with the enemy.
The planning of the next major battle (on 14 July) showed at least some
improvement on the 1 July showing – not, it needs to be noted, a particularly
high benchmark. The attack was to be carried out at night, not a guarantee of
 Introduction to the Updated Edition xiii

success, but in stark contrast to 1 July the artillery bombardment was confined
to a single German system (in this case, their old second line between the
Bazentins and Guillemont). Bizarrely, given their earlier positions, Rawlinson
then sought to exploit any breakthrough by the employment of cavalry while
Haig (rather ineffectually) urged caution on the use of the horsed soldiers. As
it turned out, this hardly mattered: the German system was captured but there
was never an opportunity for the cavalry to storm through. And in fact, had
they managed to gallop through the maze of German trenches and wire, a
grisly end would have awaited them. (We will say more about the cavalry and
their chance of exploiting a victory later.)
The period between 15 July and 14 September on the Somme has been little
studied and, when looked at in detail, it reveals some strange aspects. Haig’s
army was attempting to advance in three different directions simultaneously.
On the left of the front, Anzac and British forces in the Reserve or Fifth Army
were advancing north-west to capture Mouquet Farm and Thiepval. In the
centre, the left of Fourth Army was endeavouring (mostly without success) to
advance due north to capture such objectives as High Wood and Intermediate
Trench. Meanwhile, the right of Fourth Army, in conjunction with the French,
was trying to capture Guillemont and Ginchy to its east. Success would have
seen these armies split apart – but, especially considering how these operations
were carried out, success was never on the cards.
A major problem was that on hardly any occasion were the operations on
the three sections of front coordinated. This meant that, on any given day of
battle, only a few battalions, unsupported on either flank, were left to face
concentrated German artillery fire and attempt to struggle forward to capture
a series of insignificant objectives. And although there has been little comment
on these battles, the casualties suffered were very high. Indeed, on most days of
battle the casualties as a percentage of troops involved equalled those on the
first day – that is, 50 per cent. The fact that masses of troops were not involved
in these operations should not blind us to their cost and their futility. This is
the true face of battle on the Somme.
Haig and Rawlinson seemed quite bemused by this situation. They were in
command of the battle but not in control. Haig was the first to realise that
events could not be allowed to continue in this manner. In August he attempted
to draw Rawlinson’s attention to the fact that he had to make ground on his
right to straighten the British line for the coming offensive in September.
Rawlinson at first simply ignored him. Haig came back late in August with a
more straightforward directive: Rawlinson must hold in the centre and get
forward on the right. Once more, Rawlinson did not attend. Eventually ground
was made on the right through a combination of factors (luck, weather) that
xiv Introduction to the Updated Edition

owed nothing to the high command. Meanwhile, on the left of the battlefront,
Gough seemed to fight his own battle without reference to the commander-in-
chief, who for his part never sought to impose any kind of logic on these opera-
tions. The capture of Mouquet Farm that cost so many Australian, British and
Canadian lives was an objective of no tactical importance. When eventually it
was captured, nothing followed. Haig’s army would have been in far better
shape had it not taken place.
The September battles on the Somme were the high point of the campaign.
Haig sought to integrate a new weapon – the tank – within his army at the first
available moment. This was a courageous decision. That his corps commanders
had trouble in arranging artillery barrages to suit the new weapon was hardly
surprising. On the day of the first tank battle (15 September), Pulteney (III
Corps) attempted to send his tanks across the ruined stumps of High Wood. In
the event, 25 tanks out of 50 failed to make the starting line due to mechanical
failure. Nevertheless, where a few tanks did advance (near Flers), the German
infantry streamed back to the rear, thus allowing the British some modest
gains. This was encouraging: if the going was good, tanks could push an
infantry advance a little further. What they could not do was break through.
That the artillery was still the major weapon was quickly reasserted on 25
September when, with few tanks able to take part, an accurately fired barrage
allowed another reasonable advance at modest cost.
Had Haig halted operations in late September he would have at least been
able to offset the first day and the meanderings of August with a respectable
achievement. He had warrant to do so. His armies stood on the lip of an exten-
sive depression into which he would have to advance, and it was late in the
season: rains came in October in Picardy with reasonable regularity. Moreover,
his armies were tired and in need of some rest and recuperation. But as we saw,
it was at this time that Haig sought permission from his civilian masters to
continue. He did more. As soon as permission was received, the cavalry was
massed and objectives such as high ground east of Arras, some 70 miles away,
were entered into the operations orders. This was surpassing folly. In moderate
weather Haig’s armies had progressed 10 miles in three months. In uncertain
weather he considered an advance of 70 miles a distinct possibility. Needless to
say the results fell far short of Haig’s expectations: in fact, the line hardly
moved. Poor weather blinded the artillery and as a consequence the infantry
were left to their own devices to struggle forward. This was to be the pattern for
the remainder of the battle. In deteriorating weather, into what an observer
described as an inland sea, Haig propelled his armies into one futile attack after
another. The commander-in-chief was well aware of the conditions. Liaison
officers such as Lord Gort (the future C-in-C of the BEF in 1939–40) informed
 Introduction to the Updated Edition xv

him directly of the impossible conditions. So did some of the more forthright
corps commanders such as Cavan. Haig persisted still, until the snows and
impenetrable mud of winter halted major operations.
Some have held that the capture of Beaumont Hamel on the northern wing
of the front in November redeemed the battle. It redeemed nothing. The ruins
of the village were of no tactical importance, the cost in casualties was high, and
the fact that it had been listed as an objective for the first day of operations on
1 July should only have served to demonstrate how badly the battle had gone.

What then of more recent literature? On the political side this can be dealt with
rapidly: there has been nothing of substance. This in itself calls for comment.
It is strange that there is yet no modern account of the British war-making
machinery, not only for the Somme but for the entire war. The War Committee
(under its various names) lacks an historian. Yet in Britain, even in 1916, it was
the politicians who made the crucial decisions rather than the military. We
await an account of their proceedings.
Our book was concerned with the British army on the Somme. Except on
specific occasions the French fought a separate battle on the right flank of
Haig’s army and an entirely separate battle south of the Somme. Their efforts
have found their historians but it is our intention only to discuss these works
to the extent they affect the British.
The German army is different. During the writing of this book, where we
could, we had German sources that were available to us translated. Since 2005
some new books using German material have appeared in English. Christopher
Duffy’s Through German Eyes: The British and the Somme 1916 (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008) is extremely useful. Duffy has taken material
from a variety of German sources in which the Germans specifically comment
on the performance of the British army. He has found that, in particular, the
Germans were impressed or appalled at the ferocity and persistence of British
artillery fire and at the tenacity of British infantry in carrying out their attacks.
This squares with the sources we used in translation. That the Battle of the
Somme was an ordeal for the German as well as the British army is beyond
doubt. The fact that much of the artillery was misdirected, or that the attacks
only made small gains, does not detract from this picture. The Germans were
obviously surprised that they now had two first-class military powers to deal
with on the Western Front. Jack Sheldon in The German Army on the Somme
1914–1916 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2005) adds support to Christopher Duffy’s
view. He has made good use of primary sources in the Bavarian State Archives,
and there is a useful pre-battle section that describes the build-up of the
German defensive systems in 1915 and early 1916.
xvi Introduction to the Updated Edition

More on the German defences can be found in the two volumes written
by Ralph J. Whitehead and collected under the title The Other Side of the
Wire (Birmingham: Helion, 2013). The first volume takes the corps from the
first days of invasion in 1914 to the end of the British preliminary bombard-
ment; the second, to the end of the first day of battle. This is a major work
and Whitehead writes well about the fate of the German soldier under
British guns. The bombardment might not have done the job Haig expected of
it, but it was an unfortunate time to be manning the immediate German
defences. Whitehead also emphasises the toughness and professionalism of
ordinary German soldiers and how their command and control systems with-
stood the deluge of shells, enabling the Germans to man their parapets and
mow down the British in great numbers. The slaughter on the first day is
vividly illustrated and accounts of the cries of the wounded in no-man’s-land
quite haunting.
Robert Foley has demonstrated that the Germans, while on the defensive,
could also be innovative. His article ‘Learning War’s Lessons: The German
Army and the Battle of the Somme’ (Journal of Modern History, vol. 75, 2011, pp.
471–504) notes the change in German defensive tactics with the removal of
Falkenhayn from the command. From August the Germans moved from a
linear to an area defence with interlinking strongpoints. This meant that, to
subdue the defenders, the British now had to bombard whole areas instead of
merely lines. As they had failed pretty comprehensively against lines, it is not
surprising that the new defence presented insuperable problems for them.
One new book has appeared on the British artillery: Sanders Marble’s
British Artillery on the Western Front in the First World War (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2012). This is very welcome and we hope that more work from this author
follows. However, only one chapter in the book is devoted to the Somme and
that deals with artillery developments by topic. It is difficult therefore to follow
the progression of artillery as part of any particular battle plan. We had also
hoped that a new author would engage with us on the many artillery statistics
in this volume. That is yet to happen.
Andy Simpson has produced Directing Operations: British Corps
Commanders on the Western Front 1916–18 (London: Spellmount, 2005). This is
the first book dedicated to this level of command, although it must be said that,
in general, it will not enhance the reputations of many who form its subject.
Very few stars glow in the Somme’s firmament, Cavan being one exception.
Overall, Simpson’s view reinforces our own, that when the corps got down to
planning they were no better at it than GHQ. By 1918, as Simpson documents,
there was a different tale to tell – but that lies outside the scope of this
introduction.
 Introduction to the Updated Edition xvii

One excellent account of the disastrous Pozières–Mouquet Farm operation

will appear shortly: Meleah Hampton’s Attack on the Somme: 1st Anzac Corps
and the Battle of Pozières Ridge, 1916 (Birmingham: Helion, 2016). This account
demonstrates in graphic detail the tactical nihilism (from GHQ down to divi-
sional and brigade command) into which the middle period of the Somme
campaign had descended. It also illustrates that determined lower-order
commanders could redeem some actions but not the campaign.
It is not our intention to discuss the many memoirs drawn from personal
experience that have appeared since 2005. Many are excellent accounts of the
ordeal of battle but they are not part of the particular command story that we
have to tell. We must, however, make one exception. Peter Hart has produced a
splendid account of the battle, skilfully assembled from many diaries and
letters: The Somme (London: Cassell, 2005). We recommend this volume to
anyone who is seeking the ordinary soldier’s perspective of combat in 1916.

This leaves us with just two issues to discuss: the cavalry, and William Philpott.
That we feel compelled to discuss the cavalry as a weapon of major impor-
tance on the Western Front is as startling to us as a re-assessment of the phlo-
giston theory would be to a physicist. Nevertheless, we must steel ourselves (as
it were) to the task. David Kenyon in Horsemen in No Man’s Land: British
Cavalry and Trench Warfare 1914–1918 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2011) berates us
for ‘denigrating the cavalry’. Indeed he goes further and claims that such deni-
gration ‘undermines the credibility of the remainder of their work’. This is a
very serious charge and it is concerning to learn that our lives’ work may be
seen by some as crucially compromised by our attitude to horsed soldiers on
the Somme. (Kenyon also criticises us for using that term, but it seems to us
more accurate than his own ‘horsemen’. At least we realise that there were
soldiers on the backs of the horses.) We do not of course ‘denigrate’ the cavalry.
We merely cast doubt on their usefulness as a weapon of war in 1916. But for
Dr Kenyon this is to fall into the error of technological determinism: we are
blinded by the guns to the extent that we cannot see the virtues of the cavalry.
Our work does indeed concentrate on artillery and such weapons as machine
guns, but it does so because we believe this approach has explanatory power.
For example, we cannot think of a single instance on the Western Front where
an advance was made after an artillery bombardment had failed. The artillery
inflicted 60 per cent of all casualties on that front, and those inflicted by
machine guns made up the bulk of the remainder. It was, in other words, a
technological war. Kenyon might want to wish this away because it is not the
kind of war he wants to write about, but unfortunately for him, that is the kind
of war it was.
xviii Introduction to the Updated Edition

Let us, however, indulge him. Imagine that, on 14 July, the German machine-
gunners and artillerymen fell asleep and some 1,500 cavalrymen burst through
the German second position and galloped forward towards Flers and other
locations.1 That many German troops would have viewed the horsed soldiers
with the utmost alarm is beyond question. That some of them would have fled
is a reasonable proposition. But if just one or two German machine-gunners
had remained alert and not panicked, can anyone doubt what the result would
have been? With weapons that fired 600 rounds per minute, the cavalry (or at
least their horses) would have been slaughtered. And this fate would have been
inflicted on them well before supporting arms such as infantry or artillery could
have been brought forward. If Dr Kenyon cannot see this, then the past to him
is not just a foreign country, it is a faraway planet about which he knows little.
Kenyon is not alone in his obscurantist view of the Western Front, however.
Stephen Badsey in his book Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880–
1918 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) holds similar views to Kenyon. But Dr Badsey
adds another twist. It transpires that our ‘technological determinism’ comes
about because we are not British and therefore lack an understanding of the
British way in warfare. Such statements imply that Badsey should consider how
history is written and what the so-called British way in warfare actually is. We
do, indeed, live in Australia: but we are historians of Britain who use docu-
ments generated in Britain and held by British institutions to write our history.
Our conclusions are arrived at by a study of those documents irrespective of
our place of birth. We would also point out that Britain has won most of its
important twentieth-century battles via the application of technology. We note
the victories at the Hindenburg Line and the Canal du Nord in 1918, El Alamein
in 1942, the Mareth Line in 1943, Normandy in 1944. We draw his attention to
the strategic air offensive against Germany from 1942 to 1945. We had hoped
that the so-called British way in warfare as propagated by Liddell Hart had
been thoroughly discredited. Obviously in some quarters there is still some
way to go.
William Philpott, we are happy to report, though born in Britain is not
terrified of technology. Indeed one of his points in his major study of the
Somme, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the
Twentieth Century (London: Little Brown, 2009), is that the Somme was the
first major technological battle and thus ‘made’ the twentieth century – a prop-
osition, we might add, that he never substantially argues. This book makes an
important contribution to the historiography of the Somme, however, and
though it ranges much wider than 1916, in our view the most important section
of the book deals with that year and especially with the French contribution to
the battle. We did not venture into this territory and we recommend Professor
 Introduction to the Updated Edition xix

Philpott’s narrative in this regard. Perhaps, though, in endeavouring to empha-

sise the ‘Frenchness’ of the battle, Philpott has gone too far. He claims that the
French were not only present at the Somme but that it was ‘a French-directed
battle’. If he had utilised what he calls the ‘GHQ Papers’ in the National Archives
(they are in fact the war diaries of the British units that fought on the Somme)
he would have found not a shred of evidence that Haig was under Joffre’s direc-
tion. Haig, rightly or wrongly, planned his own battle without reference to the
French. Had his plans succeeded his armies would have turned north, away
from the French, in an autonomous attempt to roll up the German line.
Nor can we agree with Professor Philpott that the Somme represents the
start of an ultimately successful attritional campaign by Haig and others to
defeat the German army. Certainly, what happened at the Somme was attri-
tion; but was that what Haig, with his dreams of cavalry breakthrough,
intended? Certainly not. And did attrition on the Somme favour the Allies?
Again, certainly not. To argue otherwise is to ignore the compelling evidence of
M.J. Williams and McRandle and Quirk together with substantial statistical
analyses pointing to an allied preponderance of casualties at the Somme.
Neither can we see a straight line stretching from his dubious ‘victory’ at the
Somme to the defeat of the German army in 1918. As Philpott himself chroni-
cles, such a line was subject to many twists and turns. In 1917, which he hardly
treats in depth, the Russians left the war, the Americans joined, the British
suffered mightily at Passchendaele and the French army, just after their ‘victory’
at the Somme, mutinied. How can anyone extract from this multiplicity of
events evidence of an Allied success accruing to planned battles of attrition? In
1918, when attrition undoubtedly did favour the Allies, it was not due to Haig,
but to the folly of Ludendorff whose overambitious offensives cost his armies
900,000 casualties.
Any hopes that Philpott might have entertained of exonerating the British
high command by portraying their failures at the Somme as presaging a
cunning plan for victory must also founder in the face of all the other factors
(relative efficiency of industrial mobilisation, the development of the Allied
all-arms approach to battle in 1918) that ultimately led to German capitulation.
In a two-bob-each-way bet, Philpott does at times appear to acknowledge this
but he is too eager to push his ‘victory at the Somme’ argument to take the
wider perspective.
We are alarmed to report that Professor Philpott also lapses into geograph-
ical determinism (p. 250 of his book). Here he castigates us among others for
falling into ‘a genre of high command criticism’ that is ‘particularly virulent in
Australia’. He states that this genre began with C.E.W. Bean (the official histo-
rian of Australia in the Great War) and has been handed down to us as well as
xx Introduction to the Updated Edition

to other Australian historians such as Denis Winter and John Laffin. He is

thankful that British and New Zealand writers are redressing the balance. This
is shaky ground. Of the four so-called disciples of Bean, one is British and one
a New Zealander. Also, we have been severe critics of Bean, Winter and Laffin.2
It is clearly unacceptable to conduct historical controversy on the irrelevant
grounds of historians’ national origins.

The literature encompassing the Battle of the Somme has grown since 2005
and will continue to expand exponentially in 2016.3 However, nothing that we
have uncovered suggests the need for a major rewrite of our book. New readers
may purchase it with confidence. In fact many authors have reinforced the view
we took of the battle, especially those now bringing the German side of it into
the light. What we have found surprising is that very few of our main argu-
ments concerning artillery statistics, attack formations on the first day, the
incoherence of the middle period of battle, and the folly of the continuing
battle in October and November, have been engaged with by any of the authors
surveyed. Surely these issues call for serious consideration, alongside putting
an end to the notion that it is illegitimate to write on such issues outside the
United Kingdom’s borders. We look forward to studies of the Battle of the
Somme coming of age.
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