Tactics+--+Somme



As you all know, the Battle of the Somme was one of the most important battles in World War One and took place during the 1st of July till the 18th of November, 1916. It was a battle fought between the invading German army and the defending Allies; a battle destined to determine the very course of the war itself.

During this most historic battle many new tactics and strategies were employed, ways of fighting that were never before seen in warfare. The first of these is undoubtedly the use of trenches.

Trench warfare was an altogether new type of warfare, something that had only recently been put into practice. As such none of the Allied nor German commanders knew how to deal with this puzzling and untried defensive technique which had led to the introduction of some very enterprising but misled strategies such as the policy of attrition.

Attrition was a new type of warfare, designed so as to overcome an entrenched enemy by bleeding them dry of supplies, soldiers and ammunition. The allies had believed that "for every soldier they lost in battle 3 German soldiers would also be killed," which was the key principle behind attritional warfare, it was also a belief that was tirelessly reinforced by the French commander [|Ferdinand Foch].

General Foch believed that French spirit and the Allies' numerical superiority would be enough to bring them across the ravaged land that is no man's land and allow them to conquer the German army waiting, terrified, across that stretch of land. This concept was continually reinforced by the General and he even argued for it in his book //Des Principes de la Guerre// where he said that as long as the attacker had superiority in numbers there was no way in which the attacker could possibly be defeated. He believed that "brave and energetically commanded infantry can march under the most violent fire even against well defended trenches, and take them." It was a belief no doubt born of patriotic pride but a belief that was, in practice, quite flawed. And it was mainly due to this flawed and misled 'tactic' that the Allies had suffered such horrific losses at the Battle of the Somme.

However the policy of attrition was the not the only new tactic that was implemented at the Battle of the Somme, several new weapons were also deployed at this battle with mixed successes. The first of which was the introduction of the machine gun which provided enough firepower to outgun even a company of riflemen. With the rapid firing action of the new machine guns and the wide open territory that was no man's land the Germans found that it was not even necessary for them to aim to be able to decimate the Allied forces. All they had to do was to "fire into them" as one German soldier once said. Indeed this could not be closer to the truth itself as 95% of all Allied casualties during the Battle of the Somme were caused by the German Maxim gun or machine gun.

Furthermore, the use of never before seen weapons such as the tank was also a key strategical difference that marked the Battle of the Somme as special. Tanks were a new innovation used by the British as a method to transport soldiers across no man's land without exposing their troops to the German machine guns. Tanks, however, proved to be more of a nuisance than a blessing for the Allies, constructed in absolute secrecy not even the workers knew that what they were constructing was actually a fleet of armed vehicles destined for the battlefield; they believed that they were constructing "water tanks" which, as we all know, is the namesake of this extraordinary new weapon. Extraordinary it may be today but this was not the case during the Battle of the Somme, the tanks then were ill designed and prone to mishap; in reality most of the tanks actually broke down //before// even entering the battle (out of the 49 tanks commissioned and "operational" by September 15th, 1916, only 21 made it into the battle)! Even so, the few that worked caused widespread terror in their enemies when they were first introduced to the battlefield on the 15th of September, 1916. Many German soldiers described first seeing the tanks emerging from the thick mist that had obscured no man's land as a sight that struck terror into the hearts of even the stoutest men. They could not believe what was happening, their bullets refused to penetrate the metal armor of the tanks making the some of the German's believe what they were seeing was the work of the devil himself come to exterminate them; which as you can imagine, dealt a huge blow to German morale. Despite being able to overcome barbed wire and machine gun fire, the tanks were still rather unpopular with the Allied soldiers that were ordered to operate them. They were slow and had a top speed of only 2mph and they were incredibly uncomfortable. Unlike the tanks that we see today, the Mark I tanks of the time did not have anything even remotely approaching suspension systems nor did they possess any ventilation system at all. The interior of a Mark I tank was really just a metal box with steel benches for the soldiers to sit on and an engine to drive the tank all crammed into one place. The noise within the tanks was deafening and the temperatures within could reach over 50°C not to mention the constant bumps that the soldiers had to endure whilst driving over no man's land had caused Allied soldiers to despise the new weapon they were given. Indeed many of the tank crews suffered from concussions caused by them or their equipment moving unexpectedly after encountering one of the many potholes that littered no man's land. Despite all this, the Mark I tanks were still able to perform their task at least to a certain degree managing to advance over 3,500 yards at Flers.

In addition to all this there was another new strategy employed by the Allies during the battle, it was called the creeping barrage. This strategy involved a certain degree of danger as the infantry was required to advance under cover of night //with// the artillery bombardment making it all too possible for soldiers to die from friendly fire. To minimize the number of casualties suffered from friendly fire the Allies carefully planned their artillery to shoot just in front of their advancing soldiers, providing the perfect cover for the soldiers. The Germans did not expect the Allies to be willing to condone such a risky act, they believed that no one in their right mind would allow their soldiers to advance whilst artillery bombardment was occurring, it was a belief that cost them the villages of Beaucort and Beaumont Hamel. There was, however, a disadvantage of this tactic. The creeping barrage could only be used when no man's land was wider than about 60 yards, this was because artillery of the day had an accuracy margin of approximately that, and so to effectively prevent friendly fire the advancing infantry had to be about 60 yards behind the zone targeted by the artillery. Because of this if no man's land was any smaller than 60 yards across the creeping barrage simply could not be used because the risk of friendly fire would be too great even to consider. It was due to this that the creeping barrage was only used on 2 occasions during the Battle of the Somme; the capture of Beaucort and Beaumont Hamel.

In the months prior to the battle Lord Kitchener had launched an extremely successful recruitment campaign throughout Britain with the result being millions upon millions of new recruits. These recruits became part of what we know as Kitchener's army and formed the greater part of the reserve force of the Allies. Originally Kitchener had thought of saving these soldiers for the final blow that would force Germany to surrender however the coming of [|Field Marshall William Robertson] changed all that. Robertson believed that to leave an army the size of Kitchener's in Britain so as to allow the soldiers to receive proper training was a complete waste of resources and manpower. As such Robertson ordered Kitchener's army to be thrown into action on the Western front, thinking that such a flood of soldiers would be more than enough to break the German defenses. This was the main reason why the policy of attrition was adopted.
 * __Alternative Tactics__**

However, until this day, there is still debate as to whether the Allies were really using the most effective tactics available to them and whether their use of manpower was, in actuality, economic.

It is widely acknowledged that the debut of the tanks and the use of the creeping barrage as well as the employment of the machine gun in the Battle of the Somme were strategies that were quite successful. Despite this, I believe that the tactics use in the Battle of the Somme on the whole were rather lacking. First of all was the Allies' use of artillery, they believed that - through heavy artillery preparation - it was possible to destroy the barbed wire that the German's had stretched across no man's land. They were mistaken, a fact which no one knows better than George Coppard who served as a machine gunner at the Somme for the Allies:

"Who told them that artillery fire would pound each wire to pieces, making it possible to get through? Any Tommy could have told them that shell fire lifts wire up and drops it down, often in a worse tangle than before." //George Coppard, British machine gunner//

Not only this, but artillery bombardment also had another failing. The Germans knew that no general would be foolish enough to send their soldiers "over the top" whilst artillery bombardment was in process. Thus it was only natural to assume that when the artillery fire stopped the Allies would attack, and whatever the Germans were they were not stupid. Because of this artillery fire soon became the most effective alarm system on the planet and was what allowed the German machine gunners to know exactly when the Allies would go "over the top." This coupled with the fact that the only "success" achieved by artillery bombardment was to provide incentive to the Germans to deepen their trenches, leads me to think that Haig's belief that:

"Defenses of this nature could only be attacked with any prospect of success after careful artillery preparation," //Sir Douglas Haig//

Was, to say the least, deluded. And was, quite possibly, the reason why the Allies had suffered such terrible losses at the Battle of the Somme. Would it not have been better, after repeated failure of this tactic, to attempt an assault without prior "artillery preparation?" Would not an attack in which the enemy had not been given any warning at all have a better chance of succeeding? Imagine, if you will, that the Allies had attacked by sending men "over the top" under cover of darkness and with no prior warning of the assault, an attack of this - blessed with the element of surprise - could have, without doubt, allowed at least one Allied victory.

The War to End Wars 1914 -- 1919 GCSE Modern World History for Edexcel by Steve Waugh and John Wright (Textbook) []
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