The birth of the tank at High Wood, Somme

 

"High Wood to Waterlot Farm,

 All on a summer's day,

 Up you get to the top of the trench

 Though you're sniped at all the way.

 If you've got a smoke helmet there

 You'd best put it on if you could,

 For the wood down by Waterlot Farm

 Is a bloody high wood."

Lieutenant E A Mackintosh MC, 1893-1917

5^th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, 51^st (Highland) Division

High Wood, in the southern sector of the Somme front, sits halfway between the villages of Martinpuich to the west and Flers to the east, dominating the Bazentin ridge. In 1916, its position atop this low rise in an otherwise flat landscape gave it a tactical significance. For two months before the arrival of the tanks, the British threw men at the wood, trying to dislodge the Germans from their strong defences; all to no avail.

 

But the British didn’t give up, and in September, 1916, they decided to try again; this time, with a trick up their sleeves.

One hundred years ago, on 15^th September, across the whole front at Flers-Courcelette, fifty tanks trundled forward under cover of night to their allotted start points.

The tank had been in development for a very short time. Only in February, 1916 had the prototype, Big Willie (also known as Mother) been driven around Hatfield Park, the grounds that surrounded the Jacobean Hatfield House, home of the 4th Marquis of Salisbury. Members of the Admiralty’s Land Ship Committee liked what they saw, and made an initial order from Fosters of Lincoln. Six months later, these tanks were in action. From prototype to first action in 180 days is astounding.

 

Little Willie

Big Willie - possibly at Hatfield Park

 

The Londoners go in

The 47^th Division were assigned the ticklish task of prizing the wood from the Germans. The British lines are very close to those of the Germans in High Wood, and so Lieutenant-General Pulteney, the III Corps commander, decided that there was to be no artillery bombardment on High Wood before the men of the 47^th Division went in.

General Barter, OC 47^th Division, took his concerns about this lack of artillery support to the Fourth Army commander, General Rawlinson. But Rawlinson was enamoured of the idea of the tank, and reassured by Pulteney’s assertions that the tank could cover the ground with sufficient speed to provide the support required by the assaulting infantry of Barter’s division. Rawlinson discounted Barter’s objections.

And so the assault went in without artillery support. The Londoners of the 47^th Division had three objectives, High Wood being only the first.

This, from the Divisional History of the 47^th Division:

The final objective was prolonged westwards along Prue Trench in the valley. On the right the 8th Battalion were to pass through the 7th and 15th, and capture the Starfish Line, and the 6th Battalion to pass through them again to the Flers Line. On the left the 19th and 20th Battalions were to capture and consolidate the second and third objectives. The 142nd Brigade, under Brigadier-General Lewis, was in reserve about Mametz Wood, ready to move forward at zero to Bazentin-le-Grand, where it would be immediately in support of the attacking brigades. Zero was at 6.20 a.m.

Some thirty minutes before zero, men of Barter’s division clambered out of their forward trenches and walked forward a few hundred yards before lying down, thus closing the distance they had to cover to their first objective: High Wood itself.

The tanks arrive

Officers of D Company, Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps

At about the same time as the Londoners crept forward, the tanks allotted to the 47^th Division began to make their way into the woods. One can only imagine what the troops lying up in no man’s land must have thought of the vehicles as they became visible in the predawn light.

Trench map with tank start and end points marked

The 47^th Division had been allocated four tanks from the fledgling Tanks Corps, then known as the Heavy Section, Machine Gun Corps: three from D Company and one from C Company. These were:

·       D21, a female tank commanded by Lieutenant Sharp, and driven by Gunner Wilson. The tank lost a track and became stuck in a shell hole.

Female tanks were equipped with Vickers guns, whilst male tanks carried six pounders.

·       D22, a male tank commanded by Lieutenant Robinson. This tank became bogged down in a trench, and soldiers of the 1/17^th Battalion, London Regiment, set to with their entrenching tools to help to free it. It is believed that this tank fired upon British troops in error (the 1/6^th Londons), but if true, the subsequent award of the MC to Lt. Robinson seems somewhat surprising.

·       D13, a female tank, was commanded by Lt. Sampson. Perhaps inevitably, he gave the name ‘Delilah’ to his tank. Sampson was wounded in the action, steel splinters entering his eyes. Of the four tanks in the wood, D13 came closest to reaching its objectives, and this shows considerable courage and skill on the part of the crew. For his part in the action, Lt. Sampson was awarded an MC. Gunner Chandler, a big man, climbed out of the very small rear door of the D13, under heavy German fire, to rehang it when it had fallen off; for this conspicuous act of bravery, he was awarded the Military Medal (MM).

Delilah - ditched after being struck by shell

 

·       C23. This fourth tank was male, and commanded by Lt. Henderson. I am uncertain about the name, but believe the tank was called Clan Ruthven. I also have no information about the crew. C23’s action was short, as it became stuck a mere fifty yards from its start point. It was able to continue to provide covering fire support with its six pounder guns, although this covering fire was too close for Lt. Sampson, and he left the safety of Delilah, ran across the wood and asked the surprised Henderson to be careful where he shot his guns.

 

C23 - hopelessly stuck

 

It is difficult to imagine the conditions in these vehicles when they went into action (but you can get some idea at the excellent Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset).

 

Aside from the noise, the fumes and the splinters of hot metal slicing through the air within the tank, the crews were inexperienced, the ground totally unsuitable and the numbers of tanks involved too small to make up for the lack of artillery support.

By this stage, the wood was no more than a slight bump in the surrounding terrain, surmounted by shattered tree stumps and shell holes, filled with the rotting corpses of two months of fighting. A quick look at the attached photographs shows what the terrain was like; no place for any vehicle.

Of the fifty tanks allotted to the attack, eleven failed even to reach their start points and a further seven failed to reach the British front-line, leaving only thirty two for the actual attack. Only nineteen of these reached their first objectives.
 

High Wood is captured

By 8’oclock in the morning, after bitter fighting, the Londoners captured High Wood.

More from the Divisional History of the 47^th Division:

The troops attacking High Wood were at once engaged in heavy fighting. Four Tanks accompanied the attack, but could make no headway over the broken tree-stumps and deeply-pitted ground and were stuck before they could give the help expected from them. The infantry, thus disappointed of the Tanks' assistance, were also deprived of the support of the guns, which were afraid to fire near the Tanks. The 17th and 18th Battalions and half the 15th Battalion had a desperate fight for every foot of their advance. The enemy met them with bombs and rifle-fire from his trenches, and machine-guns from concrete emplacements, still undamaged, mowed them down. With the second wave of attack the 19th and 20th Battalions and part of the 8th joined the fight, and during the morning five battalions were at once engaged in the wood. Casualties were very heavy.

Aftermath

Burials for men of the London Regiment at the London Cemetery, High Wood

At the end of September 1916, because of their failure to secure their other objectives, Barter was dismissed from his post, ostensibly for ‘wanton waste of men’. At the same time, there was criticism for his ‘lack of push’, despite the fact that his division suffered over 4,500 casualties in the successful attack on High Wood. This figure included two battalion commanding officers killed in the assault (including Major Trinder of the London Irish Rifles, who was shot through the head whilst supervising the removal of German prisoners).

Within the 47^th Division, the First Surrey Rifles had the dubious honour of suffering particularly horrendous losses, with only 62 men answering roll call on the morning of the 16^th September.

This is not the time for a discussion on the merits of the tank on the 15^th September, and I advise the reader to consult some of the sources I cite below in the acknowledgement below to make up their own minds. However, it’s my opinion that Barter was right, and that the tank was not suited to the task assigned to it in High Wood. That said, this now ubiquitous weapon played an important role elsewhere in the wider battle of Flers-Courcelette; indeed, in the village of Flers, to the right of High Wood, tank D17 with the 41^st Division, commanded by Lt. Hastie of the Highland Light Infantry, drove up what was left of the High Street of Flers virtually unopposed, the enemy having fled in terror. It was reported that:

“A tank is walking up the high street of Flers with the British army cheering behind”.

Whatever the truth of this last statement, by the end of the following year, the tank better displayed its potential in November 1917, in the all-arms Battle of Cambrai.

In the end, what enabled the infantry of the 47^th Division to secure the woods where so many other divisions had failed in the preceding two months was the humble trench mortar. It is likely that the action of Captain Goodes of the 140^th Trench Mortar Battery, who had the foresight to move his eight new Stokes mortars into the front-line the night before the assault on High Wood, helped ensure the success of the action. Captain Goodes ordered his men to fire, and his crews fired a staggering 750 rounds in a matter of minutes, utterly demoralising the German defenders in their part of the wood, and helping to ensure that the infantry assaults across the rest of the wood were successful.

But despite the localized success, the action did not lead to a breakthrough, and as the autumn approached, and the weather turned cold and wet, the wider Battle of the Somme slowed, and in November, finally ground to a halt. With over four hundred thousand casualties, many have called the Battle of the Somme a disaster for the British. But, it was at the Somme that the British learned about modern warfare, and in the second half of the war, they applied these hard learned lessons and went on to defeat the Germans.
 

Memorial to men of the London Division in Camberwell, London

Memorial to men of the London Division at High Wood, Somme

You can walk around the edge of High Wood, but do not enter the wood itself unless you have permission from the land owner. And be aware that it remains the final resting place of around 8,000 men who died in the struggle to take and hold it.

The history of the development of the tank and its first use in anger at High Wood is the background to one of my novels, Farewell Leicester Square, available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IGBRJFE.

Acknowledgements

The Tanks at Flers, Trevor Pidgeon

The Landships of Lincoln, Richard Pullen

Beyond the Green Fields, Richard Pullen

The History of 47th (London) Division 1914 – 1919, Alan Maude

The Hell they Called High Wood, Terry Norman

The Somme, Peter Hart

Somme, Lyn MacDonald

 

Photographs from "The Tanks at Flers, Trevor Pidgeon" and author's own library