BEF Campaign on the Aisne 1914 Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

  Pen & Sword Military

  an imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

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  Copyright © Jerry Murland 2012

  ISBN: 978 1 84884 769 9

  eISBN: 978 1 78337 839 5

  The right of Jerry Murland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 The Marne

  Chapter 2 A Slow and Cautious Advance

  Chapter 3 Parrying the Blow

  Chapter 4 Bridges over Troubled Waters

  Chapter 5 The Left Flank – 4th Division

  Chapter 6 The Centre Left – 5th Division

  Chapter 7 The Centre Right – 3rd Division

  Chapter 8 The Right Flank – 2nd Division

  Chapter 9 On the Chemin des Dames – 1st Division

  Chapter 10 Trench Warfare

  Chapter 11 The 6th Division

  Chapter 12 Ubique

  Chapter 13 Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

  Chapter 14 Prisoners of War

  Chapter 15 Epilogue

  Notes on Sources

  Appendix I: Order of Battle – British Expeditionary Force September 1914

  Appendix II: The Aisne Cemeteries

  Bibliography

  In memory of Captain Robert Frank Hawes of the 1st Battalion Leicestershire Regiment who fought and died on the Aisne in September 1914.

  A hundred of Thy sunsets spill Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice, Ere the sun swings his noonday sword Must say goodbye to all of this; By all delights which I shall miss, Help me to die, O Lord.

  W N Hodgson

  Acknowledgements

  Once again I owe a heartfelt debt of gratitude to the men who fought on the Aisne in 1914 and recorded their experiences for future generations to read. Without their observations and accounts of the four weeks of the campaign, this book would have been all but impossible to write. In tracking down those accounts I must thank the Institution of the Royal Engineers for permission to quote from the RE Journal, the Imperial War Museum, the British Library, The Grenadier Guards archive, the Royal Air Force Museum, 9th/12th Lancers Museum at Derby, the Somerset Light Infantry archive, the Leicestershire Record Office and the National Archives. To Maurice Johnson I must extend my special thanks for allowing me full access to his extensive personal archive of Aisne material and for his advice and opinions on numerous questions which arose during the writing of the book.

  No book of this nature could be written without first covering the ground on foot and following in the footsteps of those who fought in the valley nearly 100 years ago and in which respect my thanks must go to Dave Rowland, Paul Webster and Bill Dobbs who spent three days with me in March 2012 walking the battlefield and sampling the local brew, and to my wife Joan who first discovered the steep hillsides and valleys of the Aisne with me in 2008. Thanks must also go to the myriad of Great War Forum members who have answered questions, corrected my errors and sent me material. In particular I must thank Doug Lewis, Keith Iles, Stuart Cole, Adam Llewellyn, Jonathan Saunders and John Etheridge who have gone out of their way to collect or transcribe material for me. Sebastian Laudan in Germany pinpointed exactly which German units were involved in the fighting on the British front. Rebecca Jones of Glory Designs in Coventry has again made sense out of my sketches in producing some excellent maps and The History Press very kindly gave permission to quote from Tickled to Death to Go. The photograph of Jock Marden is courtesy of his grandchildren John, Stephen, Tom and Richard Espley through his daughter Hazel. My thanks also go to Jon Cooksey who has once again edited this volume with his usual diligence and enthusiasm. In all instances every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders where any substantial extract is quoted. The author craves the indulgence of literary executors or copyright holders where these efforts have so far failed.

  Jerry Murland

  Coventry 2012

  Introduction

  The question has often been posed whether the trench stalemate would have come to pass if France had possessed a Napoleon.

  Basil Liddell Hart – A History of the First World War

  The First Battle of the Aisne officially ended on 15 September 1914. It was an encounter which, to all intents and purposes, began three days earlier when Brigadier General Hunter-Weston’s 11 Brigade crossed the river under the cover of darkness at Vénizel and very nearly caught the German defence above Bucy-le-Long off-guard. After 15 September the nature of the fighting changed as the two sides paused for breath and began to consolidate their respective positions. As the spade became the most sought after weapon along the British lines, the notion of trench warfare reared its head for the first time and with it, the war of movement, which had characterized the first weeks of the Great War, slowly ground to a halt. For the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) this ‘stalemate’ continued for another three weeks until units of the French Army began to relieve them in early October 1914 to facilitate the move to Flanders where the last great battle of 1914 was to be decided.

  This book does not aspire to be a definitive account of the First Battle of the Aisne – Edmonds’ Official History already serves that function well enough. When I began researching the primary source material for this book, however, I determined to take a fresh look at a battle which has, over the years, been almost forgotten; overshadowed as it was then and is now by the Retreat from Mons and the First Battle of Ypres. My primary intention in re-examining the battle is to give voice to those who took part in the fighting, lived through it and chronicled their experiences in diaries and letters at the time. Consequently the text leans heavily on their written accounts. Needless to say, it is through these accounts that the personal stories of battle allow us to temporarily share the hardship and terror of warfare and the brutality of the battlefield. Perhaps more importantly they provide us with a glimpse of the irrepressible humanity of man which was occasionally allowed to surface – no better illustrated than in Captain Guy Ward’s journal of 18 September 1914 when he records going out under fire with several men of the South Wales Borderers to help bury thirteen Cameron Highlanders because they couldn’t bear to see them lying out in the open so pitifully. Consi
der too, the action of 23-year-old Lieutenant George Hutton of 3/Signal Company who drowned swimming across a swollen River Aisne attempting to take a telephone cable to the north bank. Hutton refused to allow an enlisted man to do so on the grounds that the man was married and Hutton was not. Greater love hath no man.

  In those early weeks of the war the BEF was fighting very closely alongside its French allies but, given the size of the British force, it was a very minor player on the wider strategic canvas then unfurling across France and Belgium. That said, this account of the fighting in the Aisne valley focuses solely on the men of the BEF and the German units they were in contact with and only describes the actions of French army units where it is necessary to provide an appreciation of the wider strategic picture. To place the role of the BEF in perspective, by the time the British arrived on the Aisne in September 1914 the battle line stretched some 150 miles from Noyon in the west to Verdun in the east and it was only along a tiny 15-mile sector in the centre which the British were engaged.

  The geography of the valley of the Aisne was very much on the side of the defending German Army and held few, if any, advantages for the British whose efforts were directed at pushing the enemy off the northern rim – the Chemin des Dames ridge – a hog’s back feature which acquired its name in the eighteenth century when it was in frequent use by the two daughters of Louis XV when visiting Françoise de Châlus, a former mistress of the king at the Château Boves, near Vauclair. The Chemin des Dames commanded – and in places enfiladed – the whole valley, the river itself was deep and unfordable and for most of September 1914 was swollen to full capacity by almost continuous rain. It flowed through numerous bends along a wide valley which was enclosed by a succession of steep spurs, between which ran deep ravines bordered by woods and dense copses. It was the ideal place for an army to stand firm, an opinion echoed by the Northamptonshire regimental historian, ‘The battalion was confronted by hostile forces determined to stand their ground and to maintain their hold upon the strong natural position they had occupied’.

  There were three battles on the Aisne during the Great War and the focus on each occasion was the Chemin des Dames ridge. The 1914 Battle of the Aisne came about as a direct result of the German retirement from the Battle of the Marne as the huge conscript armies of France and Germany jostled for position over great swathes of Belgium and France. In 1914 the German Army held onto its positions along the Chemin des Dames and although the French gained ground during the Nivelle offensive of April 1917 and established themselves on the Chemin des Dames, they lost heavily in both casualties and morale. (In the first week’s fighting alone the French suffered 96,000 casualties of which over 15,000 were killed). The French gains were short-lived as their efforts were reversed in the German Blücher-Yorck spring offensive of 1918 when many of the British Regiments which struggled on the Chemin des Dames in 1914 were represented again by legions of fresh-faced youngsters in the ranks of IX Corps.

  When war was declared on 4 August 1914, overall command of the BEF was placed in the hands of Field Marshal Sir John French; his chief of staff was Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, with Major General Henry Wilson as his deputy. The principle staff officer with responsibility for operations (GSO1) was Brigadier General George Harper, and GSO1 (Intelligence) was Lieutenant Colonel George Macdonogh. This core group of senior staff officers formed the nucleus of the British General Headquarters (GHQ) whose task it was to exercise overall command and control of the BEF. Sir John French was 61-years-old in September 1914 and had made his reputation commanding the British Cavalry Division in the South African War. Nevertheless, this brave and resourceful soldier was not in tune with the management of strategic command. He was one of the few senior officers in the BEF who had not attended the Staff College at Camberley and in the opinion of many – including Sir Douglas Haig – lacked the intellectual focus necessary to exercise effective command and control over a force as large and complex as the BEF.

  Exacerbated by fears in England of a German invasion of the home country and the recent trouble in Ireland over Home Rule, the British Government was initially cautious and had committed only four of its six available infantry divisions and one cavalry division. Consequently the fighting strength of the BEF was made up of I Corps (1st and 2nd Divisions) commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Douglas Haig, II Corps (3rd and 5th Divisions) commanded by Lieutenant General Sir James Grierson and the Cavalry Division under the command of Major General Edmund Allenby. In addition there were five infantry battalions designated for the protection and maintenance of the lines of communication clustered together in 19 Brigade. Sadly Grierson died from a heart attack on the way to Le Cateau on 17 August and was replaced by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien two days later. The 4th Division would arrive just in time to take part in the Battle at Le Cateau on 26 August and the 6th Division would make its first appearance on the Aisne in mid-September.

  Almost immediately upon the declaration of war nearly 70,000 reservists began to pour into regimental depots across the country as the smooth machinery of mobilization organized Britain’s army for its first war on the continental mainland of Europe in almost 100 years. Screened by the ships of the Royal Navy, embarkation began on 11 August and was completed nine days later when the BEF assembled near Maubeuge. By 22 August – the eve of the Battle of Mons – the BEF was in position on the left of the French Fifth Army. Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps lined the canal between Mons and Condé facing north while Haig’s I Corps was posted along the Beaumont–Mons road facing northeast. To the west Allenby’s cavalry and units of 19 Brigade guarded the canal crossings as far as Condé. The battle along the canal at Mons on 23 August was the BEF’s first clash with the German First Army commanded by General Alexander von Kluck. The outcome was inevitable, outnumbered and out-manoeuvred and with General Charles Lanrezac’s French Fifth Army already retiring on his right flank, Sir John French had little recourse but to retire. It was a retirement which eventually saw the BEF reach a position south of the River Marne and drew attention to Sir John’s shortcomings as a commander-in-chief.

  In fairness to Sir John and his commanders, they were faced with a huge task in August 1914, a task which placed a massive burden of responsibility on men who had very little experience of manoeuvring such large masses of troops over extended periods of time. Even so, at Le Cateau, Horace Smith-Dorrien defied an order from GHQ to continue the retreat of II Corps and stood his ground with three divisions along the line of the Le Cateau-Cambrai road. History agrees that this decision was not only courageous, but the correct one in the circumstances; nevertheless it did add fuel to the long-held animosity between Sir John and Horace Smith-Dorrien.1

  The retreat from Mons was an episode from which the BEF emerged by the skin of its teeth. It was not handled well by GHQ which was conspicuous by its absence and achieved notoriety for the ambiguity of its operational orders. To the eternal credit of the British soldier the end of the retreat and the subsequent advance to the Marne was seen as an opportunity to hit back at the enemy, Exhausted and footsore they turned to pursue what they understood to be a thoroughly demoralized German Army. Brigadier General Count Edward Gleichen noticed an enormous difference in the spirits of his men as the BEF moved north, a mood which was unfortunately not replicated at GHQ where senior officers were still hesitant to engage the enemy. Even after it became obvious that the German Army was in full retreat British staff officers handled the logistics of the advance badly due to inexperience. The daily operational orders which issued forth from GHQ gave little direction to the fighting units and even within divisions staff officers failed to deliver effective movement orders or to prevent instances of friendly fire as divisional boundaries became blurred in the move north. The end result was inevitable; the German Army escaped and proceeded to withdraw in an orderly fashion to the Aisne while the BEF struggled to pursue them, leaving an astonished Lieutenant Alexander Johnston to express surprise that they had not ‘tried anything in t
he nature of a night advance or night attack, particularly when the Germans are in retreat’.

  The BEF advanced to the southern heights above the Aisne Valley expecting the German Army to be in headlong retreat. The Germans, however, having been reinforced with troops and artillery from the fall of Maubeuge, found themselves in a stronger position than previously thought and were thus determined to hold the line of the Chemin des Dames if at all possible to give them time to reorganize. They were still a formidable fighting force and never far from the thinking of the strategists at German General Headquarters (OHL) was the possibility of outflanking the Allied armies by moving west – a strategy which was mirrored by the French and British – and as the Aisne fighting lurched into stalemate, so the sidestep movements towards the channel coast to the north gathered pace.

  Expecting to advance in pursuit of a beaten enemy, GHQ had neglected to order any advanced technical reconnaissance by Royal Engineers officers to make assessments as to the equipment required to effect temporary crossings of the Aisne. The heavy bridging trains were still at least a day’s march behind the main body of the BEF and there appeared to be a naivety overshadowing the ability of GHQ to consider that the situation ahead of them was fluid and could change at any moment. Yet there was a least one reconnaissance north of the river conducted before the main body of the BEF arrived. Lieutenant Archibald Harrison and trooper Ben Clouting of 4/Dragoon Guards crossed the river on 11 September and reconnoitred as far as the village of Moulins where they apparently remained until the British arrived in the village a few days later. Rather frustratingly Clouting does not disclose if any useful intelligence was gathered and to whom it was delivered and we can only speculate as to why GHQ failed to appreciate that the situation north of the river on the nights of 11 and 12 September was entirely different to that of 13 September. Had Operational Order No. 22, issued on 11 September, been notice of a coordinated plan of attack – instead of one of pursuit – and had Sir John demanded a vigorous assault, there may have been a different outcome to the battle. In fact none of the operational orders issued at this time ever disclosed the intentions of Sir John French.