1917

1917 talk by General Sir Tony Walker KCB 

'When this lousy war is over'

“When this lousy war is over" - by 1917, either side in the Great War might well have chosen that song as their theme.  Mounting casualty numbers (18 killed during the year from here in Hyde, including two, Richard Bryant and Charles Summerbell, who are not named on our war memorial);  little apparent progress on the battlefield; increasing privation at home, including food shortages, these were sapping the energy both of the Central Powers – Germany and Austro-Hungary – and us, their adversaries, the United Kingdom, France and Russia. 

When the war started in 1914 there was widespread patriotic enthusiasm to enlist in the Armed Forces.  The recruiting offices were swamped with young men eager to join the Colours.  But as the war dragged on the initial flood reduced to a trickle.   And so, in 1916, conscription for men was introduced.

There was, however, a procedure by which an individual could be exempt from having to serve in a fighting role and that was by registering himself as a Conscientious Objector.  That is, he stated, formally, that his religion or his moral convictions did not allow him to kill or injure another human being.  In our display at the back of the church you will find more information about    Conscientious Objectors.  But don’t think it was a cushy option.  There was widespread contempt for them in the Press and among the general public. And the procedure for registering was complex.  About 16,000 men became COs during the First World War of whom some 6000 served time in prison, usually for disobeying an order which they could not in conscience accept –  for example, to stack ammunition.

In November 1916, Woodrow Wilson,  was elected for a second term as President of the USA.   One of his most popular campaign slogans was “He kept us out of war”. In April 1917 Wilson invited Congress to declare war on Germany which it duly did.

So what happened in those 5 months between peace slogan and war declaration?  Truth to tell, relations between Germany and the neutral United States were already tense.  Back in 1915 a U-boat had sunk the British Cunard liner Lusitania with the loss of 128 American lives.  As the war progressed, there were more American casualties on British and other Allied merchant ships. 

In January 1917 the Germans, determined to break the British blockade of their ports, declared that neutral merchant ships in the war zone would henceforth be legitimate targets. And in March, five United States ships were sunk.

Also in January came the incident which became known as the Zimmermann telegram.  Arthur Zimmermann, the German Foreign Minister, sent a diplomatic telegram, in code, to the German ambassador in Mexico.  It proposed that Mexico should join the war against the USA.  Germany would assist with their costs and when victorious, the Mexicans could recover their territory lost to the US in an earlier war – California, part of Texas and so on.

Zimmermann sent the telegram from Berlin using the United States’ trans-Atlantic cable.  This was quite normal.  The British had disrupted the German’s own cable and as a neutral power, the Americans allowed other nations to have some use of their facility.  What neither the Germans nor the Americans knew was that Room 40 in the British Admiralty was in the habit of intercepting and deciphering traffic on the cable.  

Room 40 was a forerunner of the Second World War’s operations at Bletchley Park and its chief now faced a dilemma familiar to both organisations  – how to act on the content of the signal without revealing its interception and decoding.  A cover plan was devised and on 19 February the decoded telegram was shown to the US Ambassador in London who forwarded it to President Wilson. The text was published in the American press where it  inflamed anti-German - and anti-Mexican - feeling. Any doubts about the telegram’s authenticity were dispelled when Zimmermann himself vouched for it to the Reichstag in Berlin in late March.

At the time when they declared war, the US Army was very small.  But numbers rose steadily as the draft took hold in the States and a year later, by August 1918, the American Expeditionary Force was nudging one million.

Of particular interest to us is the effect of this reinforcement locally in Winchester.  Today, Morn Hill is a small camping site just off the B3404.  In 1917 Morn Hill was the generic name for a vast military camp which straddled both sides of that road along past St Swithuns School (not yet built) on one side and the cemetery (opened in 1914) on the other.  At first in tents and then developed with huts, it included a hospital, mess facilities, stables, garages and a theatre.  By the end of the war some 2 million men had passed through Morn Hill; 750,000 of those were Americans.

Morn Hill Camp could accommodate more than 50,000 men at a time when the civilian population of the city was only 20,000.  The Americans , (nicknamed Doughboys) would come into town and relations sometimes became strained.   But at the same time there was a nightly six o’clock cathedral service for the American troops and they could be found drinking peaceably in Easton at the Cricketers and the Chestnut Horse – with ale at 4 pence a pint.

By the way, if you seek a memorial to the men who passed through Morn Hill, look for it outside the entrance to the Great Hall here in the city. There’s a simple marble bench sculpted with a soldier’s kit at one end of it.  It looks as if he had just taken his pack and helmet off to stretch his legs at the end of the day. It is inscribed ‘A promise honoured’ and I find it very moving.

Some of you may remember that song from the film “Warhorse”.  And if in 1917 you had chosen to go by road to Southampton, Doughboys from Morn Hill would not have been the only Americans you might have met on their way to embarkation at Southampton.   A few miles outside Romsey, on what is now the A3090, the Army established a Remount Depot to prepare horses and mules for service.  The soldiers whose job it was to break them in and train them were known as “Roughriders”.  The figures are staggering.  Even in 1917 the Army needed a total of 870,000 horses and mules in service.  They were obtained from a variety of sources and more than 400,000 horses and 275,000 mules came from the USA.

A number of these Remount Depots were set up across the UK.  A total of 120,000 animals were processed through Romsey and then taken down the road for shipment from Southampton.  Few of them came back.

I make no apology for coming rather slowly this evening to the actions on the Western Front in France and Flanders.  Modern warfare is complex and events behind the lines can be just as important as the fighting in the front line.  But in essence, until the end of the year, the pattern of operations in 1917 changed little from the preceding years.  I personally think we might look for a parallel in even earlier times, for what had developed was a curious echo of medieval siege warfare.  Instead of a castle, we were trying to break into a trench system.  Instead of battering rams, we had artillery; instead of boiling oil and archers, the defenders had machine guns and barbed wire.  But the result was much the same.  Great numbers of men were hurled against ramparts which rarely broke. 

But before outlining some of the events on the 1917 battlefields, I would like to introduce three individuals who, directly or indirectly, influenced them.  

Lloyd George enthused about the silver-tongued Nivelle.  So much so that he floated the idea of placing Haig and the BEF under his command and thus making the British force subordinate to the French.  Haigs’s was furious and  said that he would rather be court-martialled than agree. When the Chief of the General Staff also threatened to resign, Lloyd George knew he was beaten and he backed down. 

At this point we have to meet one further player – the German C-in-C, Count Eric von Ludendorf.  In March he gave orders which were to have a significant negative effect on Nivelle’s plans.  He ordered his troops to withdraw - not retreat, but withdraw - to a carefully prepared line of fortifications. As they withdrew  to fight on ground of their own choosing, the Germans carried out a scorched-earth policy so as to leave nothing for the Allied troops.  Railways were dug up, orchards destroyed, wells polluted and booby traps laid.

Nevertheless, operations started well for us. On 9th April, which was Easter Monday, the BEF launched an attack north of Arras with the aim of drawing the enemy away from French operations further south.  The Canadians did particularly well by capturing Vimy Ridge, on your sketch-map, under the cover of a particularly accurate “creeping barrage”. But losses were heavy.   Vimy Ridge today is dominated by a massive war memorial bearing the names of 11,500 Canadians killed but never identified for burial.

A week later, on 16th April, General Nivelle launched his offensive further south, along the line of the river Aisne, just off your sketch map to the south.  It did not go well.  The ground was muddy and treacherous so that the infantry had difficulty in keeping up with the creeping barrage.  The Germans, dug in on the reverse slope of their ridge-lines, were able to dominate the crests with machine guns.  By nightfall the French had advanced 600 yards:  Nivelle’s plan had forecast 6 miles.

Faced with a combination of bad going, insufficient force, a well-prepared enemy and – perhaps for the first time as a battlefield factor – weakness of our air effort, the Nivelle offensive failed.   He was relieved of his command, posted to North Africa and replaced by General Petain.

But there was a more significant result of the mauling taken by the French army.  In May, it mutinied.  To be fair, it was a rather civilised mutiny.  Unit after unit simply refused to go back into the front line. Petain reacted swiftly.  He made an extensive tour of his divisions with a combination of stick and carrot.  Several thousand soldiers were convicted of mutiny, but imprisonment and executions were kept to a minimum.  Better rations, more leave and improved medical support were introduced.  By the end of July the French army was back in position, albeit with its morale in a delicate state.

It was partly this fragility which influenced  Field Marshal Haig to pursue his campaign into Flanders.  He wanted to  keep the weight off his French allies.  He was also keen to thrust forward to the French and Belgian coast which was providing bases for the increasingly troublesome German U-boat operations round our islands. 

As a preliminary phase, an attack was planned on Messines Ridge which is on your map.  Because it dominated the surrounding countryside it had been  occupied  by the Germans since 1914.  What they did not know was that throughout 1916 British and Commonwealth engineers, reinforced by coal-miners of assorted cap badges, had dug tunnels into the ridge and planted nearly 500 tons of explosive in 26 mines.

The attack started in the now-conventional manner, with a massive artillery barrage lasting several days. At about 3 o’clock in the morning of the 7th June the British guns fell silent.  The Germans, anticipating an attack, manned their prepared positions.  And at 10 past 3 the mines were blown. The explosion was heard in London, 10,000 Germans were killed instantly and by about 5 a.m. the ridge was in our hands.  As the British Chief of Staff is alleged to have said “I don’t know whether we will change history but we will certainly change geography.”

Haig saw his chance and presented his plan for an advance through Flanders to the War Cabinet. They had considerable reservations, but Haig got his way.

And so the planned advance into Flanders began on 21st July with the conventional artillery bombardment.  Added to the consequences of earlier shelling this left the ground cratered and broken, with much damage to important water-courses.   Ten days later nine British divisions started to advance towards a little ridge on which sat the village of Passchendaele.  The Germans initially withdrew, drawing our troops into range of their guns.  And at 3 o’clock in the afternoon it started to rain.  On and on - the heaviest downpours for thirty years turned the churned ground to liquid mud.  And as General Petain said “One doesn’t fight the Germans and the mud simultaneously.”  The conditions were simply appalling.  Rifles caked with mud would not fire.  Artillery pieces could not be moved.  Men and horses who slipped off the duckboards were in danger of drowning – and some did.

It was on 6th November that Canadian troops finally captured what was left of Passchendaele.  5 miles in 3 months.  325,000 British and Imperial soldiers dead or wounded.  260,000 German soldiers dead or wounded.  And barely a yard closer to those Channel ports. 

So had our efforts in France and Flanders come to nothing in a stalemate of weapons and wire and ground and weather? Well, not quite. There were some shafts of sunlight to brighten the gloomy scene.  

The effect of the air effort on the ground battle became an increasingly important factor and brought a new dimension to operations.  Reconnaissance from the air gave commanders a  view of what was happening “on the other side of the hill”.  Machine gunning and bombing from the air was a new threat for ground troops.  The dog-fight between aeroplanes to keep the sky clear over the trenches became a new form of warfare. 

Unfortunately, the increasing ability of aeroplanes to carry a bomb-load also had the effect of drawing the civilian population more closely into the war.  There had for some time been sporadic air-drops of bombs, usually from Zeppelins but the slow, bulky airships had become vulnerable.  25th May 1917 saw the first air-raid by a squadron of German twin-engined Gotha bombers.  Their target was London but mechanical problems and bad weather forced them to divert and they attacked Folkestone instead.  Just under a 100 were killed, including 60 civilians in one street.  .

And although it is difficult to find much humour in air raids I could not help smiling when I looked at the pictures – which you can find on the internet – the pictures of the public warning methods used before sirens were installed.  The alarm was sounded by policemen.  They set out on their bicycles, blowing their whistles and wearing round their necks a large placard saying “Take Cover”.

The picture of the “all clear” being sounded is even more bizarre.  It shows a boy scout, standing up in the back of an open topped motor car, and playing his bugle. 

We spoke at some length last year about the increasing and invaluable role of women in the war.  By this time – 1917 - they were already providing essential services across the nation, taking the place of the men who had gone away to fight.  The Women’s Land Army had been started in 1915.  By the end of 1917 there were an estimated quarter of a million women working as farm labourers. This was also the year in which women’s military service was formalized by the foundation of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, although, because women could not hold the King’s Commission, their officers had to be given curious ranks such as “Controller” and “Administrator”.

You may have noticed that a number of Hyde soldiers died in 1917 in countries in the Middle East.  Although there is no time this evening to deal in any detail with the war in that part of the world, we should remember that this was known as World War One and that it did not take place exclusively in Europe.  There was fighting in east Africa to remove the Germans from their colonies (Remember Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen?).  And we were engaged in fighting the Turks whose Ottoman empire had spread down into Mesopotamia, or modern-day  Iraq. (Cue another film - Lawrence of Arabia).  We were concerned that the Turks might spread into Egypt and interfere with the vital route of the Suez Canal – remember that India was still a significant part of our empire.  And the security of oil supplies in the Gulf had increasing importance as coal-driven ships, including warships, were replaced by oil-burners.

Toward the end of the year, the Allies suffered a trauma which affected our ability to confront Germany and the other Central Powers. 

Our ally, Russia, had been in internal turmoil throughout 1917.  Food riots and a mutiny in Petrograd had forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate and Russia was left without a head of state and with a collapsing administrative structure.  In October there was a further, more serious mutiny as the Bolsheviks exerted their influence.  And as they became the controlling political power, and with the support of much of the army, the Bolsheviks  put together a plan for a separate peace pact with the Central Powers.  It was agreed before the year’s end.  One consequence was that Germany no longer had to fight on two fronts, east and west, and so she started the transfer of troops from the Russian front to Flanders. 

And so we come back to the fighting on the battlefields which we had come to know so well and to my second glimpse of sunlight.

The folk-song ‘My Boy Willy’ is now the Regimental Quick March of the Royal Tank Regiment.  Tanks had put in an appearance at the Somme in 1916 and at Passchendaele earlier in 1917 but in penny packets and on unsuitable going.  Now they were to be given the chance to prove themselves on the downland close to the town of Cambrai.

So it was that at first light on 20th November, without any preliminary artillery barrage, 380 tanks lurched forward and led the advance.  Not very virile, about four miles per hour, but the Germans were taken completely by surprise and the tanks advanced some 5 miles into the Hindenburg defences.  That distance was unheard of in previous battles and in England the church bells were rung for a great victory, the first time they had done so since the start of the war.

Unfortunately, their chimes were premature.  The tanks’ gains were not exploited and in a series of brave and skilful counter-attacks the Germans restored their position.  But the face of battle had been changed forever and 100 years on there is no army of any consequence which does not have tanks in its armoury. 

I am proud to wear the regimental tie of the Royal Tank Regiment (as, I may say, does Professor Martin Biddle.)  Its colours of brown, red and green have coined our Regimental slogan “ Through brown mud and red blood to the green fields beyond.”  Sadly, perhaps, the reason behind them is rather more prosaic.  On the eve of the battle of Cambrai, the Tanks’ commanding general felt that he ought to have a flag, so he called at a little local draper’s shop.  The only colours of cloth remaining were brown, red and green.  So those are what he bought.  The rest, as they say, is history.

And so we come to the end of 1917.  A year of sorrows but of achievement, too.  Not in terms of territory gained, still less with any clear view of how Europe’s travails would end. But here and there one could at last glimpse an individual or an idea able to point a way forward.  And the often-dreadful conditions in the trenches gave rise to the literature of what have become known as the ‘War Poets’.  Their outlook was often skewed, or partial, but in verse they captured the anguish and the sacrifice of conflict.  That tradition lives on in ‘Arras’ by Richard Ormrod, a living writer.

Another poet was Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, a British diplomat and writer of verse.  He was posted in 1912 as our ambassador in Washington DC.  He brought considerable influence on President Woodrow Wilson to persuade him to join the war.  Just before the war he wrote a poem called “The City of God”.  It was strongly patriotic and rather militaristic.   While he was in Washington he re-wrote it and it became a hymn, “I vow to thee my Country.”