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Western Front: Battles

Bullecourt 1917 and Hamel 1918

Dr Eric Andrews

 

From this tutorial you will learn about the nature of trench warfare and attempts to break the stalemate on the Western Front.

This tutorial:

Content

Historical background - including the battle of the Somme

After the battles of 1915 (such as Loos) the British decided on a massive assault to overwhelm the Germans. The battle of the Somme began on 1 July 1916 and is widely known for its inadequate artillery bombardment and lineal frontal attacks on the first day, when the British army suffered 58 000 casualties. It dragged on for five months of bitter fighting with increasing artillery bombardments (the Australians long remembered Pozieres) and machine gun fire. Half a million men died.A View of the Hindeburg Line

That winter the German army withdrew behind its 'Hindenburg Line', an immensely strong series of fire and support trenches, with wide belts of barbed wire, based on the new system of defence in depth. The sheer size of the armies, numbering in the millions, was a drawback. The generals had no experience in managing such vast numbers, and it was difficult to organise them or control them in battle.

The communications technology of the day was primitive, basically the cabled telephone. Stress on discipline based on a series of ranks (that is, a strictly hierarchical system) and courage was not enough. The graded series of ranks made it difficult for the leaders to understand the reality of the front for the ordinary soldier. The best example was Haig's refusal to accept that the German wire was not cut before the first day on the Somme.

Haig has been accused of underestimating technology, but his real weakness was not knowing how to use it. He and most of his senior generals were nineteenth-century men. It took long years of war to weed out the older generals and for newer commanders who understood the realities to gain command.

This can be seen in two battles: the twin efforts at Bullecourt in April and May 1917, and Hamel in July 1918. They were approximately the same size using a division each but had totally different outcomes. Bullecourt was one of the great Australian disasters, losing 10,000 men in nine days (ten times the casualty rate on Gallipoli!). Hamel, a little over a year later, was a brilliant success. Monash gained all his objectives in an hour and a half, and captured about 1400 prisoners for about 1000 total casualties and possibly 150 dead.

Questions: Why was there this enormous difference? Was it improved technology, a weaker German army, or better leadership? More importantly, what does it tell us about the First World War, and about 1918?

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The Battles of Bullecourt, 10-11 April and 3-9 May 1918 - Strategies and Tactics

These were twin battles fought in the same area, the first on the night of 10-11 April and the second from 3 to 9 May 1917. Haig and his generals assumed the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line was a sign of weakness, so they agreed to cooperate with the French General Nivelle to break through. General Gough's 5th Army, which 1st ANZAC Corps had just joined, would attack at Bullecourt, near Arras.

The map of the area shows why it was a bad place, a re-entrant in the German line, so the attackers were shot at from three sides. The artillery was still struggling through the old Somme battlefields up to the new front. Gough, therefore, could not resist the offer of the new 'Tank' men to lead the way. However, they were using primitive Mark 1 tanks, clumsy machines with thin armour riveted on, unsprung, weak engines and a maximum speed in battle of about 3 k/hr. The armour was so thin that machine gun bullets went through it, and what happened when a shell hit a tank can be seen from the photographs of some of the tanks destroyed at Bullecourt. After a false start, when the tanks did not arrive, the first attack went ahead and ended in total disaster. The tanks broke down or were destroyed, and the 4th Australian Division lost approximately 3000 men.

The second attack was a set-piece artillery and infantry battle. On 3 May 3 Division attacked. The left flank, the 6th Brigade, fought its way into the Hindenburg Line, but the right, the 5th, collapsed. The battle then degenerated into a mincing machine, which dragged in other divisions and finally led to the loss of over 7000 more men. The German command finally tired of it all and pulled out of Bullecourt itself. But that was all. The Australians had lost 10,000 men for one ruined French village.

Questions: What went wrong? Some possible answers:

  1. frantic haste in planning the attacks
  2. ambitious distant objectives
  3. misplaced trust in the primitive tanks
  4. in the second battle a totally incompetent artillery plan [Map 1: the artillery plan of Bullecourt]. Notice that the right flank is completely uncovered by artillery fire! See enlargement [Map 2: detail]. This was fatal: there had to be machine guns on the right flank, and it was from there that the Australians were mowed down
  5. the hour of the attack: 3.30 am was too late as the sun was about to rise, and it lit up the battlefield
  6. dismissal of a smoke screen.

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Conclusions

The place of the attack was chosen by Haig and Gough, and therefore the disaster at Bullecourt had its origin in the British high command. However, the Australian leaders, Birdwood and White, made incredible blunders and contributed to the slaughter of their own men.

Interval

Later in the same year the British tried again in the long-running Third Battle of Ypres. Some parts of this were successful, such as Plumer's attack at Messines in June, but in autumn the inevitable rains turned the battlefield into a swamp at Passchendaele.

In 1918 the German General Hindenburg decided that he had to break the British and French before the American army arrived in vast numbers. He made a series of great attacks. The British 5th Army collapsed; Haig sacked Gough, its leader, and promoted Birdwood in his place, and he took White with him. The ANZAC Corps went into the 4th Army under General Rawlinson. The Corps itself was led by General Monash (with Blamey as his second in command).

The German offensives in the spring of 1918 had badly weakened the German army, while the standard of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) had improved immensely in the previous twelve months. Moreover, technical advances had been made.

  1. The artillery had begun to improve in both weight and accuracy.
  2. The fire power of the infantry had been increased by the greater availability of the light machine gun, the Lewis gun.
  3. Communications had also improved, with continuous wave wireless sets.
  4. The Mark V tank was vastly better than earlier models.
  5. Most important of all, the skill of the leaders had improved. This is illustrated by the battle of Hamel.

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The Battle of Hamel, 4 July 1918

This was a joint infantry and tank assault, backed by an extremely careful artillery plan seen in three maps. These are copies of the maps issued to the Australian artillery beforehand, except that the front line has been added as a thick line and the names of the two armies and the direction of the Australian attack have also been included.

Map 3: Field artillery barrage map, Hamel

Map 4: Heavy artillery barrage map, Hamel

Map 5: Machine gun barrage map, Hamel

Things to note

  1. Monash had the heavy artillery barrage go forward in a series of five big lifts while the field artillery barrage moved in a series of nine smaller ones.
  2. Both stopped at a joint halt line (marked for the infantry by a thick smoke screen). The barrage paused here for ten minutes so that the soldiers could mop up any remaining Germans and prepare for the next advance.
  3. The heavy and field artillery then combined in fourteen lifts at the rate of 100 yards every four minutes to a final "protective line".
  4. Even then Monash was cautious. The field artillery stayed there, but the heavy artillery ranged forward for up to 3000 yards (to break up possible counter-attacks) before pulling back.
  5. The machine gun barrage was carefully coordinated with the artillery.

It was all planned with great care and in great detail. All three maps overlay one another to form one coherent fire plan. It had a limited practicable objective.

Additional points

Monash was helped by his engineering education and experience, which had given him the ability to recognise a technical problem and work out a practical solution. He used all forms of technology available to him, particularly wireless and tanks (not only for leading the attack, but also as ammunition carriers), to save the troops. Four carrier tanks hauled ammunition and supplies that it would have taken 1200 men to shift. He used planes, not only for observation, bombing enemy formations and intelligence in battle, but also to fly over the lines to drown out the noise of the tanks lining up, and to drop ammunition by parachute.

He also used smoke extensively (cf. White in the second battle of Bullecourt). Monash fired a mixed smoke and gas barrage daily before Hamel, so that the German soldiers always thought of gas when they saw smoke. On the morning of the attack he used smoke only; the Germans assumed the usual mixture and wore their masks, while the attacking Australians were free.

Monash was also keenly aware of the importance of the timing of the attack. He had tests held to work out the exact hours of darkness, and enforced an early start so that the men did not attack when the sun was rising. Finally, great stress was laid on secrecy so that the element of surprise operated in this battle, unlike others in the First World War.

The result

The battle was over in an hour and a half, with the Australians capturing approximately 1400 prisoners and gaining all their objectives for just over 1000 total casualties and possibly 150 dead. It was a brilliant success and used as a model by the British high command. It shows how effective the ANZAC Corps had become under Monash in 1918.

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General conclusions - The success of changed strategies, tactics and attitudes

The Australians and their commanders had greatly improved between 1917 and 1918. Quite clearly, leadership counts. To run a battle effectively requires a lot of work and thought on the part of the top leaders. The failure at Bullecourt was caused by poor planning and inadequate use of technology. Hamel was good because Monash and Blamey took care, thought of everything, held conferences to discuss all possible problems, and used the new technology effectively. But this sort of thing could only take place when the old leaders had either been sacked (like Gough early in 1918) or promoted out of harm's way (as Birdwood and White were). The new approaches to war came from the middle-ranking commanders who finally made it in 1918. That was one reason why the allies won in that year.

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