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Authors: Patrick Lindsay
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off the assault, he had lost almost 13,000 men against the German machine guns and artillery for no territorial gain.
Despite these shattering losses, less than two months later the British tried to storm Aubers Ridge again. The attack ran along a 15 kilometre front from Bois-Grenier, just south of Armentières, to Festubert, south-east of Neuve Chapelle, with the main thrust at Rouges Bancs, on the flat in front of Fromelles.
After the first attack, the Germans had worked overtime to repair and then greatly improve their defences, building thicker concrete bunkers and emplacements and adding shrapnel-resistant, heavy-gauge barbed-wire entanglements protected by earthworks. These were covered by a patchwork of machine-gun emplacements that could direct withering fire at troops held up by the entanglements.
The British attack was once again a costly failure. Around Aubers Ridge when the offensive was called off after less than 24 hours, 10,000 British and Indian casualties had fallen victim to the German machine guns and artillery. Among the thousands who perished around Neuve Chapelle was 31-year-old New Zealand-born Anthony Wilding, one of the finest tennis players of his generation, who had won Wimbledon from 1910 to 1913 and who was beaten in the final in 1914 by Australia’s Norman Brookes. To the south-east at Festubert, the fighting continued for two weeks before the British High Command ordered the troops there to dig in and hold the line. Another failure, another 17,000 British casualties.
It was symptomatic of the system and the times that neither of the key British commanders of these total failures was held accountable. In fact, both Haig and the Corps Commander, General Sir Richard Haking, emerged with their reputations unsullied. Haking was to play a seminal role in the Battle of Fromelles, but before that he would reprise his failure at Aubers Ridge in late September 1915 at Loos, about 15 kilometres to the south.
At Loos, for the first time, Haking commanded the British XI Corps – two divisions totalling perhaps 40,000 troops. As always, Haking brimmed with confidence before the battle, as author Lyn MacDonald wrote in 1915: The Death of Innocence :
He compared the German line to a crust of pie – one thrust and it would be broken and behind it he expected there would be so little resistance that they would have no trouble in carving a way through.
The now recurrent Haking characteristics were again present: poor intelligence and reconnaissance; lack of surprise; insufficient preliminary bombardment; chaotic behind-the-lines organisation of reinforcements and casualty evacuation; flawed and insufficient training and acclimatisation; and, bizarrely, the removal of cooking facilities so that many men went into battle hungry.
Nevertheless, Haking threw his troops against the German ‘pie crust’ with abandon, only to see two of his divisions destroyed and then replaced by another two which he fed into the meat grinder. Apparently, neither he nor Haig considered the impossible odds facing their men as they poured them into the killing zone. Alan Clark, in The Donkeys , writes that Haking’s men were
expected to cross No-Man’s Land in broad daylight with no gas or smoke cloud to cover them, with no artillery support below divisional level, and attack a position as strongly manned as had been the front defences and protected by a formidable and intact barbed wire entanglement.
The slaughter was so terrible that even the Germans were moved and they didn’t fire a single shot at the British for the rest of the day. In three and a half hours, the British had lost more than 8000 men. The Germans did not lose a single man. Author Robin Corfield notes in Don’t Forget Me, Cobber! that of 59,247 total British losses in the battle, Haking’s command contributed 16,830. In six months, he had racked up more than 20,000 casualties.
Such was the man and the situation awaiting the Australians.
The Germans
Despite these shattering losses, less than two months later the British tried to storm Aubers Ridge again. The attack ran along a 15 kilometre front from Bois-Grenier, just south of Armentières, to Festubert, south-east of Neuve Chapelle, with the main thrust at Rouges Bancs, on the flat in front of Fromelles.
After the first attack, the Germans had worked overtime to repair and then greatly improve their defences, building thicker concrete bunkers and emplacements and adding shrapnel-resistant, heavy-gauge barbed-wire entanglements protected by earthworks. These were covered by a patchwork of machine-gun emplacements that could direct withering fire at troops held up by the entanglements.
The British attack was once again a costly failure. Around Aubers Ridge when the offensive was called off after less than 24 hours, 10,000 British and Indian casualties had fallen victim to the German machine guns and artillery. Among the thousands who perished around Neuve Chapelle was 31-year-old New Zealand-born Anthony Wilding, one of the finest tennis players of his generation, who had won Wimbledon from 1910 to 1913 and who was beaten in the final in 1914 by Australia’s Norman Brookes. To the south-east at Festubert, the fighting continued for two weeks before the British High Command ordered the troops there to dig in and hold the line. Another failure, another 17,000 British casualties.
It was symptomatic of the system and the times that neither of the key British commanders of these total failures was held accountable. In fact, both Haig and the Corps Commander, General Sir Richard Haking, emerged with their reputations unsullied. Haking was to play a seminal role in the Battle of Fromelles, but before that he would reprise his failure at Aubers Ridge in late September 1915 at Loos, about 15 kilometres to the south.
At Loos, for the first time, Haking commanded the British XI Corps – two divisions totalling perhaps 40,000 troops. As always, Haking brimmed with confidence before the battle, as author Lyn MacDonald wrote in 1915: The Death of Innocence :
He compared the German line to a crust of pie – one thrust and it would be broken and behind it he expected there would be so little resistance that they would have no trouble in carving a way through.
The now recurrent Haking characteristics were again present: poor intelligence and reconnaissance; lack of surprise; insufficient preliminary bombardment; chaotic behind-the-lines organisation of reinforcements and casualty evacuation; flawed and insufficient training and acclimatisation; and, bizarrely, the removal of cooking facilities so that many men went into battle hungry.
Nevertheless, Haking threw his troops against the German ‘pie crust’ with abandon, only to see two of his divisions destroyed and then replaced by another two which he fed into the meat grinder. Apparently, neither he nor Haig considered the impossible odds facing their men as they poured them into the killing zone. Alan Clark, in The Donkeys , writes that Haking’s men were
expected to cross No-Man’s Land in broad daylight with no gas or smoke cloud to cover them, with no artillery support below divisional level, and attack a position as strongly manned as had been the front defences and protected by a formidable and intact barbed wire entanglement.
The slaughter was so terrible that even the Germans were moved and they didn’t fire a single shot at the British for the rest of the day. In three and a half hours, the British had lost more than 8000 men. The Germans did not lose a single man. Author Robin Corfield notes in Don’t Forget Me, Cobber! that of 59,247 total British losses in the battle, Haking’s command contributed 16,830. In six months, he had racked up more than 20,000 casualties.
Such was the man and the situation awaiting the Australians.
The Germans
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