Amabel Williams-Ellis

THE GERMAN ATTITUDE—“MAN-TRAPS AND GINS”—THE BATTLE OF BAPAUME

I

We had, as we have said, called a halt to the Battle of Amiens.

But the pause was to be only one of a few days.

The new battle was to be fought in the area which lay between the rivers Somme and Scarpe, and for his selection of this particular place Sir Douglas Haig in his Despatch gives two reasons.

It is interesting to see how high a place Tanks now held in the estimation of the General Staff, and how carefully their peculiarities were considered.

But it was not only the British High Command which had begun to busy itself with the natural history of the Tank.

Since the lesser battles of July and the greater battle of August 8, the attitude of the German G.H.Q. had entirely changed.

When we first began to use Tanks it will be remembered that the Germans, though perfunctorily alluding to them as “cruel and detestable,” had in effect sneered at them as makeshifts by which we hoped to supplement our scanty supply of more legitimate munitions of war.

Besides, their contempt for all we did being sincere, the Tanks’ British parentage damned them without further investigation.

“Search and see, for out of Galilee cometh no good thing.”

The Germans themselves made their attitude perfectly clear.

Their policy was masses of men rather than mechanism, quantity rather than quality.

The best men went to machine-gun units and to assault troops. In many cases the remainder of the infantry were of little fighting value, though many of the men might have been otherwise usefully employed in a war which, if not one of material, was at least one in which economic factors played a large part.

The German Higher Command was able, however, to look at an order of battle, showing some 250 Divisions on paper.

But the Germans were thus naturally not in a position to find the labour for the construction of additional material, such as Tanks; they were, besides, concentrating any labour and any suitable material they possessed upon the work of submarine making.

It seems clear that the whole policy, at least as far as Tanks was concerned, was regretted before the end of the War.

The following now well known extracts from German documents indicate the effect of our Tanks on the German Army:

“Staff officers sent from G.H.Q. report that the reasons for the defeat of the Second Army81 are as follows:

“1. The fact that the troops were surprised by the massed attack of Tanks, and lost their heads when the Tanks suddenly appeared behind them, having broken through under cover of natural and artificial fog.

“2. Lack of organised defences.

“3. The fact that the artillery allotted to reserve infantry units at the disposal of the Higher Command was wholly insufficient to establish fresh resistance with artillery support against the enemy who had broken through and against his Tanks.

“Ludendorff, 11. 8. 18.”

II

The first efforts at combating Tanks made by the German High Command were half contemptuously instituted chiefly to reassure their infantry, who seemed to them, for no particular reason, liable to extraordinary fits of nerves and panic upon the approach of their new assailants.

The measures of defence were ill devised and carelessly used.

In the autumn of 1917, it will be remembered that the Germans had captured a number of our Mark IV. machines.

These they used for the purposes of propaganda, parading them in the streets of Berlin and showing them to the Army, as a man might demonstrate the harmless nature of snakes by the aid of a tame cobra.

The infantry were lectured to about the miseries endured by the crews who manned Tanks, as to their mechanical defects, their vulnerability and general worthlessness. For example, the following passage appeared in an Order issued to the 7th German Cavalry Division. It will be gathered from the text that the Order was illustrated by detailed drawings.

But the enemy was not content with a merely dialectical defence. Among other practical measures the Germans, with curious inconsequence, decided to form a small Tank Corps of their own, partly armed with new Tanks of German manufacture and partly with captured British machines.

But here a little unexpected awkwardness arose. The infantry from whom they now wished to recruit their Tank crews, had unfortunately been completely convinced by the unanswerable arguments which they had just heard, and now thoroughly believed in the perfect uselessness, the extreme vulnerability, of Tanks.

Thus it came about that the German Tank Corps was made up of a quite astonishingly reluctant and half-hearted body of men. Altogether, only fifteen German Tanks were ever manufactured, and only twenty-five captured British Mark IV. Tanks were repaired, so that the whole affair amounted to but little.

The German Tanks were, as we have said, much heavier and larger than the British or French heavy Tanks, though, as we have noted, they rather resembled the French St. Chamond. They could not cross large trenches or heavily shelled ground, owing to their shape, and the lack of clearance between the ground and the body. On smooth ground, their speed was good—being about eight miles an hour.

Their armour was thick and tough, capable of withstanding armour-piercing bullets, and, at a long range, even direct hits from field guns not firing armour-piercing shells. Only the front of the Tank was, however, sufficiently strong for this, and the roof was scarcely armoured at all.

They were very vulnerable to the splash of ordinary small arms ammunition, owing to the numerous crevices and joints left in the armour-plate.

The most interesting feature of these otherwise exceedingly bad machines was the fact that they ran on a spring track. The use of springs for so heavy a Tank was the one progressive departure in the German design.

Their crew consisted of an officer and no less than fifteen other ranks. This huge crew, twice that of a heavy British Tank, actually went into action in a Tank 24 feet long by 10 feet wide. However, the close association of the crew was merely physical, for they were composed of no less than three distinct arms, and appear to have done little or no training together as a crew.

There were the drivers who were mechanics, there were the gunners who were artillerymen, and the machine-gunners who were infantrymen. Members of the British Tank Corps were at one time much puzzled by German Tank prisoners’ statements, that on such or such an occasion the infantry had spoiled their shooting, or that the artillery had not backed them up, in circumstances when there was no particular question of co-operation with other arms. They came afterwards to understand that the anathema’d representatives of rival arms were inside the machine, not out.

But in reality rival machines constituted but a small part of the German anti-Tank measures, for, as we have said, after the victories of July and early August, these begin to be panic-stricken in their elaboration, and after the Battle of Amiens, we find Ludendorff himself pouring out his soul on the subject.

He obviously realised that anti-Tank defences had been neglected, and he probably saw also that this neglect was going to be difficult to explain to an Army and a public which, as the result of failures, were about to become extremely critical of their leaders.

After the Battle of Amiens, therefore, the Germans began feverishly to set their house in order, and we find special Staff Officers appointed at the Army, Corps, Divisional and Brigade Headquarters, whose sole duty it was to organise the anti-Tank defences within their formation.

A special artillery was told off and divided into two sections. The first was to provide a few forward silent guns in each divisional sector. They were to remain hidden till the moment of our attack, and then to concentrate upon our Tanks. These guns, however, proved apt to be smothered by our barrage, or not to be able to distinguish their prey in the half-light of our dawn attacks. Secondly, there were to be reserve guns whose duty it was to go forward and take up previously reconnoitred positions after the Tank attack had been launched. It was generally from these pieces that the Tanks had most to fear. Finally, all German batteries, including howitzers, had general instructions to plan their positions in such a way that advancing Tanks would be subject to a direct fire at about 500 or 600 yards range. In the event of a Tank attack, the engagement of our machines was now to be the first call upon the artillery, to the exclusion of counter-battery or any other work. As for the infantry, the chief rÔle allotted to them was “to keep their heads,” and “to keep calm.” Other Orders instructed them to move to a flank in the event of a Tank attack. “No advice was given, however, as to how this was to be done when Tanks were attacking on a frontage of twenty or thirty miles.”

A large armoury of special anti-Tank weapons arose, and of these the most important was the anti-Tank rifle, of which we have spoken before.

Road obstacles, such as carts full of stones, linked up with wire cables, concrete stockades and mines, provided a good deal of the rest of the enemy anti-Tank stock-in-trade. Of mines there was a considerable variety. They ranged from elaborate specially made pieces of apparatus to high explosive shells, buried and hastily fitted with a device by which the weight of the Tank exploded them.

They were sometimes buried in lines across roads, and sometimes extensive minefields were laid. Their singular ineffectiveness always seemed somewhat mysterious to members of the Tank Corps, the proportion of effort to result seeming always many tons of mine to each Tank damaged.

However, we always thought we might some day encounter a really effective type of mine, and possibly the Germans were satisfied if their efforts so much as made our monsters walk delicately, for in an elaborate document, giving every kind of anti-Tank defence instructions, they somewhat pathetically conclude: “Every obstacle, even if it only checks the hostile Tank temporarily, is of value.”

But there was one form of weapon which was, we felt sure, bound to be evolved by the Germans. It was one which we were not at all anxious to encounter. We imagined a weapon which should practically be the machine-gun version of the anti-Tank rifle; that is to say, a weapon which could pour out a stream of high-velocity, large-calibre bullets at the rate of two hundred a minute. Actually it was almost precisely such an engine that the Germans had got in their “Tuf” machine-gun, of which an interesting account is given in Weekly Tank Notes.

The name was an abbreviation for “Tank und Flieger” (tank and aeroplane), for it was against these enemies that this machine-gun was intended. It was to consist of no less than 250 pieces, which were made by sixty different factories, of which the Maschinen Fabrik Augsburg NÜrnberg, was the only one entrusted with the assembling and mounting. The projectile fired was to be 13 millimetres in diameter. From experiments made with captured Tanks, the Germans ascertained that these bullets could pierce steel plates of 30 millimetres in thickness. No less than six thousand of these guns were to be in the field by April 1919, and delivery was to begin early in the previous December—just a month too late.

However, when the Armistice was signed, the firms were already in possession of the greater part of the stores and raw material for the manufacture of the guns, a quantity of which were by then well on the way to completion. Immediately after the signing of the Armistice, all the factories were instructed by telephone to continue manufacturing the “Tuf,” and about November 20 they received confirmation in writing of this order, and were instructed to keep on their workmen at all costs. Our occupation of the left bank of the Rhine proved a serious drawback to a continuation of the manufacture, as it completely interrupted communication between several of the factories. The Pfaff Works of Kaiserlautern (Palatinate) and the great Becker steel works of Frefeld, which played an important part in the manufacture of the guns, had to close down, both being on the left bank of the Rhine.

The Minister of War throughout the period of its manufacture asked for daily and minute reports as to the progress of the “Tuf,” and it was given priority over both submarines and aeroplanes. But once more, as ever in all that concerned Tanks, the Germans were several months too late. We were never destined to face this particular weapon with the Mark V. The modern Tank fears it not at all.

III

Our chronicle has now reached the three last, and the decisive months of the war.

It was a period of continuous fighting, in which a battle begun in any particular sector would spread along the front on either hand, until at last, by the middle of October, the whole line was in roaring conflagration; and by the second week in November the blaze had swept on almost to the borders of Germany, and the forces of the enemy had withered and shrivelled before it.

At first we made a series of more or less set attacks. Then came the break through the Hindenburg Line after the Second Battle of Cambrai, and the hastily-organised running fights of October, which culminated in the complete overthrow of German arms.

The whole period is at the moment of writing exceedingly difficult to dissect and to classify into definite battles, it being usually a matter of opinion when one engagement can be said to have ended and another to have begun. The nomenclature even is still fluid. Take, for example, the vast inchoate battle which raged from August 21 and 23 and culminated on September 2. It was fought by three separate armies. There were at least three principle “Z” days, and the battle seems to be indifferently known as the Battle of Bapaume, the Second Battle of Arras, or even as the Battle of Amiens. Nor if the historian were to attempt to name it by date would it be clearly more proper to call it the Battle of August 23 or 21. There is a good deal to be said for the German plan of christening their battles by some fancy name, or dubbing them “Kaiserchlact” or “Clarence,” according to one’s taste. A campaign of nameless battles is apt to defy Clio’s efforts at dissection and tidy arrangement, and to defeat her longing to see a neat row of actions dried, classified, and labelled in her Hortus Siccus.

We have indicated the changes which had taken place in the attitude of our own and the German High Commands toward Tanks. Much had been learnt by the Tank Corps themselves, and much had been regularised and systematised in their methods. We find that by August, Tank Corps preparation for a battle had been so completely reduced to a routine that to attempt to chronicle the preparation for any of our set attacks would be to make a mere cento, whose pieces might be culled from particulars already recorded for Cambrai, for Hamel and for Amiens. We therefore trust that the reader, without hearing any enumeration of gallons of petrol, tons of grease, or acres of maps, will understand that each of these “formal” battles was preceded by the usual herculean tasks of preparation.

IV

The Battle of Bapaume was, as we have already said, to constitute a sequel to the Battle of Amiens (August 8). On August 21 the 3rd Army was to launch an attack to the north of the Ancre with the general object of pushing the enemy back towards Bapaume. Meanwhile the 4th Army was to continue its pressure on the enemy south of the river. August 22 was to be a “slack” day and was to be used to get troops and guns into position on the 3rd Army front. The principal attack was to be delivered on the 23rd by the 3rd Army, and those divisions of the 4th Army which lay to the north of the Somme, the rest of the 4th Army fighting a covering action on the flank of the main operation. Afterwards, if our efforts were successful, the whole of both Armies were to press forward with their utmost vigour and exploit any advantage we might have gained. If our success was such as to force the enemy back from the high ground he held, thus securing our southern flank, the 1st Army was further to make another attack immediately to the north. This gradual extension of the front of assault was intended to mislead the enemy as to where the main blow would fall and cause him to throw in his reserves piecemeal.

A large number of Tanks were to be concentrated in the 3rd Army area. They were to attack between Moyenneville and Bucquoy with the 4th and 6th Corps. With them the 1st and 2nd Brigades were to operate.

With the 4th Army the 3rd Corps was to attack on August 23, between Bray and Albert, and the 4th Tank Brigade was to assist in this assault. Then, with the portion of the 4th Army which operated south of the Somme, namely, the Australians, the 5th Tank Brigade was as usual to co-operate, their action also taking place on the 23rd. In the course of the two days’ operations the 3rd, 6th, 7th, 14th, 15th, 11th, 12th, 10th and 17th Battalions were to be employed.

The total of 280 machines seems at first sight a curiously small one, considering the number of battalions involved, but it must be remembered that most units had been hotly in action at Amiens ten days before, and that some battalions could not muster more than sixteen fighting Tanks, pending repairs and a fresh issue of machines.

Supply Tanks and aeroplanes were to co-operate as usual, the latter in greater strength than before; for just before the battle No. 73 Squadron, armed with Sopwith Camels, was attached to the Tank Corps, in addition to No. 8 Squadron for counter-gun work.

One of the most prominent features of the whole sector of attack was the Albert-Arras railway, which lay some distance behind the enemy’s front line. It proved to have been carefully prepared for defence by the enemy, being commanded at point-blank range by a large number of field guns, which had been specially and secretly withdrawn from more forward positions, and all the sections of the line where it would be possible for the Tanks to cross—that is to say, the “neutral” portions where the line was neither embanked nor in a cutting—were not only carefully registered, but were blocked by concrete and iron anti-Tank stockades.

The attack was to be opened at 4.55 a.m. on the 21st by the 4th and 6th Corps and their Tanks.

V

The morning dawned in the inevitable white blanket of mist which now always seemed to accompany our attacks. Till nearly 11 a.m. it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the Tanks kept their direction. If, however, the mist was confusing to us, it was doubly so to the enemy. The Germans were completely taken by surprise; we even found candles still burning in the trenches when we crossed them, and papers and equipments were scattered broadcast, bearing witness to a hurried flight.

We carried the front line so easily that we soon realised we must be up against a system of defence rather like that which the Germans had adopted at Ypres. He was keeping his reserves well in rear of a lightly-held outpost line, and, as we have said, unknown to us, his guns had been withdrawn in such a way as to cover the railway.

The Armoured Cars and the Whippets both took an active part in the attack on Bucquoy. At the entrance of the village a large crater had been blown in the road over which the armoured cars were hauled, after a smooth path had been beaten down across it by a Whippet. The cars then sped on through the enemy’s lines, reaching Achiet-le-Petit ahead of our infantry, and silenced a number of machine-guns. Two of the cars received direct hits, one of them being burnt and completely destroyed.

During the attack on Courcelles, Captain Richard Annesley West of the 6th Battalion took charge of some infantry who had lost their bearings in the dense fog. He gathered up all the scattered men he could find. He was mounted, and in the course of the morning he had two horses shot under him; but after the second horse had been shot he went on with his work on foot. Having rallied the infantry, he continued his original task of leading forward his Tanks, and our capture of Courcelles was chiefly due to his individual initiative and gallantry. He was awarded a bar to his D.S.O.

About eleven o’clock the greater number both of Mark V. Tanks and Whippets had reached the line of the railway. A few leading Tanks had even crossed it, when all in a moment the mist lifted with the suddenness of a withdrawn curtain. A blazing sun appeared, and each advancing Tank stood out clearly under its bright light. The German artillery, which was covering the railway, immediately directed a deadly fire on the Tanks, and each individual machine became the centre of a zone of bullets and bursting shells. The infantry as they advanced had to avoid these little whirlwinds of fire. It was at this time that most of the thirty-seven Tanks which were hit by shells during the day were accounted for.

It was a good day for the enemy from an anti-Tank point of view, such a day indeed as they were never to repeat.

Second Lieutenant Hickson of the 3rd Tank Battalion was one of the few who had got his Tank across the line just before the mist lifted. As the sun came out he found himself right in front of the enemy’s batteries at point-blank range. His Whippet was immediately hit, but he managed to get his two men away in safety. The artillery and machine-gun fire was extremely heavy, but without any thought of his own safety, he at once went back on foot to warn a number of other Tanks which were about to cross the railway at the same place. In this he was successful and undoubtedly saved a large number of machines from being knocked out. Later, though the spot was still under heavy fire, he made several ineffectual efforts to salve his Tank.

The weather could hardly have done us a worse turn. Had the mist lasted for half an hour longer the Tanks would have been able to overrun the artillery positions without being seen. However, the lifting of the fog at least enabled the aeroplanes attached to the Tanks to go up. The counter-gun machines at once flew out to attack the hostile batteries, and a good deal of execution was done.

All the rest of the day we fought under a blazing sun.

The German resistance was curiously patchy; here and there we found every inch of our advance disputed, the machine-gunners and artillerymen fighting their weapons till the last moment, and the reserves launching small counter-attacks whenever opportunity offered.

Here and there large parties, a hundred and more strong, would surrender before the Tanks had time to open fire.

The Tank crews,—especially of the Mark V.’s and the Whippets, whose ventilation was less adequate than the old Mark IV.’s—suffered greatly from the terrific heat.

In one or two instances the whole crew of a Mark V. seems to have become unconscious through the appalling heat, the fumes from their own engines, and the gas used by the enemy, the unconsciousness being followed by temporarily complete loss of memory and extreme prostration.

Inside the Whippets, though the men fared slightly better, the lack of ventilation was equally fatal to efficiency.

But evening came at last, and with the darkness the two armies disengaged.

We had suffered more casualties than we had quite bargained for—chiefly owing to the accident of the mist—but upon the whole we were well satisfied with the events of the day.

We had reached the general line of the railway practically along the whole front of attack. We had captured Achiet-le-Petit and Longeast Wood, Courcelles and Moyenneville. Most important of all, the position we needed for the launching of our principal attack had been successfully gained and we had taken over 2000 prisoners.