have been horrified to discover that Haig regarded him ‘as quite unfit for this great command at a time of crisis in our Nation’s history’.46 French found Smith-Dorrien far less sympathetic, resented the fact that he had been sent out without consultation to replace the commander of II Corps when he died of a heart attack on his way to the concentration area the previous August, and likewise felt that his decision to fight at Le Cateau had been unwise. The attack was intended to be part of a wider Allied venture, but Sir John was unable to guarantee sufficient high-quality reinforcements to take over a section of the French front, upon which Joffre withdrew his support.
The British attacked anyhow, at Neuve Chapelle on 10 March. Their initial assault went well, largely because they had one gun for every 6 yards of front, and, because they were short of ammunition, they fired what they had in a rapid bombardment just before the attack. The Germans managed to prevent a breakthrough, though the British gained a maximum of 1,000 yards on a front of some 4,000. French hoped to repeat the process as soon as he could, but lacked sufficient artillery ammunition to do so. On the 18th he told Kitchener that:
If the supply of ammunition cannot be maintained on a considerably increased scale it follows that the offensive efforts of the army must be spasmodic and separated by a considerable interval of time. They cannot, therefore, lead to decisive results.47
The Germans responded to Neuve Chapelle by rejecting the prewar defensive doctrine of ‘one line, and that a strong one’, and by beginning the construction of a second defensive position, itself composed of several trenches, far enough behind the first to compel an attacker to mount a distinct assault on each. The British found the battle’s lessons less easy to discern. One critic recalled seeing follow-up waves ‘packed like salmon in the bridge-pool at Galway’ as they awaited the word to go forward, and the battle did highlight the serious problem, never fully solved during the war, of how to establish effective communications between attacking troops and their reserves. The high concentration of artillery was actually higher than that achieved at the beginning of the Somme offensive in the summer of 1916, and it was to transpire that what was eventually to become known as a lightning bombardment was actually more effective than a more methodical preparation.
The logic that encouraged the Allies to attack on the Western Front, to recover friendly territory, worked in reverse for the Germans, and persuaded them to remain on the defensive, holding gains which would prove useful bargaining counters if there was a compromise peace. They made only three major exceptions, in 1915, in 1916 at Verdun, and in the spring of 1918. The first was on 22 April 1915, when the Germans launched an attack north of Ypres, just west of the junction between British and French troops, behind a cloud of chlorine gas. Like the British at Neuve Chapelle they were unable to exploit the very serious damage done to the French defenders. The very gallant stand of 1st Canadian Division helped check the exploitation, and there followed a broken-backed battle as the British launched repeated, badly-coordinated counterattacks. This second battle of Ypres cost the Allies over 60,000 casualties, most of them British. It cost Smith-Dorrien his job, largely because of Sir John French’s long-standing prejudice. He was replaced by Sir Herbert Plumer, under whose direction the British held a much reduced salient east of Ypres.
The British attacked again that spring. On 9 May 1915 they assaulted Aubers Ridge, in a movement designed to support a French offensive further south, losing 11,500 men for no gain. This time Sir John French squarely blamed is failure on lack of shells: he had been ordered to send 22,000 to Gallipoli, and The Times correspondent, Charles Repington, a retired officer who was staying at French’s headquarters, supported his line, declaring on 19 May: ‘Need for Shells: British attacks checked: Limited supply the cause: A lesson from France.’ French also sent two of his staff to London to pass documents to David Lloyd George, a member of Asquith’s Cabinet, and to opposition leaders. The government might have survived the shell scandal had it been an isolated problem, but the resignation of Lord Fisher as First Sea Lord persuaded Asquith to form a coalition government. Lloyd George took up the newly-established portfolio of Minister of Munitions, but, although he made a point of appointing ‘men of push and go’ who could ‘create and hustle along a gigantic enterprise’, the first consignment of ammunition ordered by the new ministry did not arrive until October 1915: the heavily-criticised War Office had in fact succeeded in generating a nineteen-fold increase in ammunition supply in the first six months of the war.
On 16 May the next British offensive, at Festubert, just south of Aubers Ridge, fared little better, gaining 1,000 yards on a front of 2,000 for a cost of 16,500 men. Another attack, this time at Givenchy, went no better, and Lieutenant General Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose IV Corps had played the leading role in all these spring attacks, found himself passed over for command of the newly-formed 3rd Army, which went instead to General Sir Charles Monro, who extended the British line further south as far as Vimy Ridge.
French and Joffre met at Chantilly on 24 June and declared themselves committed to continuing offensives on the Western Front: without them the Germans could shift troops to another front for an attack of their own. Passive defence was, therefore, ‘bad strategy, unfair to Russia, Serbia and Italy and therefore wholly inadmissible’. An Anglo-French meeting at Calais on 6 July gained Kitchener’s somewhat grudging support for a large-scale offensive, and a full Allied conference at Chantilly the following day confirmed the principle of a co-ordinated Allied attack on all fronts. Joffre’s strategy for the Western Front had actually changed little. Previous British attacks had been designed to support French thrusts further south. And now he proposed that the BEF should attack at Loos, in the shadow of Vimy Ridge, with one French army attacking just to its south and the main French blow falling around Rheims in Champagne.
Sir John French was not happy. On 12 July he looked at the Loos sector, and thought that ‘the actual terrain of the attack is no doubt difficult, as it is covered with all the features of a closely inhabited flourishing mining district – factories – slag heaps – shafts – long rows of houses – etc, etc’.48 He proposed to fight chiefly with artillery, but Joffre demanded ‘a large and powerful attack … executed in the hope of success and carried through to the end’. Then Kitchener threw his weight into the balance: Sir John was ordered to help the French, ‘even though, by doing so, we suffered very heavy losses indeed’.49 Once he had received this unequivocal order French’s spirits lifted, and he hoped that gas, which would now be available to him in retaliation for German use of gas at second Ypres, would be ‘effective up to two miles, and it is practically certain that it will be quite effective in many places if not along the whole line attacked’.50
The battle of Loos was to be the biggest fought by the British army in its history thus far. First Army was to attack with the six divisions of I and IV Corps, with the newly-formed XI Corps, comprising the Guards Division and two inexperienced New Army divisions, in reserve to exploit success. Early on the morning of 26 September Haig gave the order to launch the gas from its cylinders, and the infantry went forward at 6.30. On the southern part of the front there was considerable success: Loos itself was taken, and the German first position overrun. However, it proved impossible to get the reserves up in time to exploit these gains. French, probably concerned that Haig might commit them prematurely, had unwisely retained control of them, and it was typical of his old-fashioned style of command that when he heard of the break-in he drove up to see the corps commander and give his orders in person. Precious time was wasted.
The two New Army divisions, moving up along busy roads with rain hammering down, were not in fact ready to go forward till mid-morning on the 26th. When they reached the intact German second opposition they were very roughly handled: the twelve attacking battalions, some 10,000 strong, lost 8,000 officers and men in under four hours. The history of the German 26th Infantry Regiment is deservedly much-quoted.
Never
