Wasted lives at Arras

There has long been a tendency to decry all forms of British generalship during the Great War. Indeed it has formed the stock-in-trade of several "revisionist" historians, including one notorious Australian contributor who more or less fashioned a career from it. A lot of the criticism is nonsense, but some, however, is well-targeted.

I'll illustrate this with an episode from the Battle of Arras in 1917. The battle had opened on April 9th but, after some initial successes, had ominously begun to bog down into the all-too-familiar cycle of attrition and stalemate. There would be a total of 84,000 British casualties before it finally ground to a halt a month later.

The ruins of Feuchy after it's capture on 9th April (Imperial War Museum).

The Regimental History by Colonel J. M. Cowper describes an action undertaken by the 8th Battalion on April 11th, three days into the battle:

When 8/King’s Own returned to the line on May 10 it occupied trenches in front of Monchy and was therefore in the sector next to the 1st Battalion, on the other side of the river. Three weeks’ continuous shelling and sniping had reduced it to three hundred and fifty rifles and it was hardly numerically strong enough to hold the front allotted to it. During the previous week when the battalion was theoretically resting, it had been continuously employed digging communication trenches, and the men were worn out by strain and want of sleep. On the first day in the trenches Second-Lieutenant A. W. Holgate, who had been commissioned from the ranks only a short time before, was wounded. It was in the afternoon of the 11th that the battalion was ordered to attack a trench which was to be incorporated in the British front system, and after three minutes’ drum fire the men went over the top at 6 p.m. Their failure to reach their objective was due to a cause as unfortunate as it was unexpected. They were subjected to heavy enfilade machine-gun fire from both flanks and they were also caught in their own machine-gun barrage which, though accurately laid on the enemy trenches, swept in its trajectory the crest of a rise over which the battalion had to pass. Assailed on all sides, the attack launched in two waves on a three-company front had not enough momentum to carry it through. Five officers were wounded as soon as the battalion rose from its trenches and thirty-eight other ranks were killed or missing. When the survivors struggled back under cover of darkness, the battalion numbered only a hundred and sixty-seven.

One of the casualties that day was Second Lieutenant Frederick Wilkinson from Haverthwaite. He was 20 years old and had only been in France about three months.

An ex-Ulverston Grammar School pupil, he had joined the Inns of Court O.T.C. as a private, being discharged to a commission in the King's Own in November, 1916. A fellow officer (a Captain O'Brien, of Kent's Bank) wrote to his parents explaining the circumstances of his death:

“We made an attack in the early morning and were held up by machine-gun fire and had to dig in. In the afternoon another attack was made by the remainder of our brigade from behind us, and we had to reorganise our men to support the attack and advance with the other regiments when they came through us. We had no trenches, but were sheltering in shell holes. Your son was collecting his men and preparing to assist the attack when he was hit in the head by a bullet. Death was instantaneous and he could have suffered no pain at all. We were afterwards very heavily shelled. When it was dark we went to look for his body, so as to collect his papers, but were unable to find him: in addition to that about 2 in. of snow had fallen, so our task was almost impossible. Your son’s death is an immense loss to the battalion, and he is very much missed by the other officers, with whom he was very popular. We all sympathise with you very much, but perhaps the knowledge that he died bravely will help you. He had already been wounded twice, but he still stopped at duty with his platoon."

One has to wonder at just how much the truth was disguised to assuage the feelings of his bereaved parents; in letters of this nature no one ever seemed to die a lingering death, screaming in pain. Certainly there was no mention that the bullet that killed him was just as likely to have been made in Birmingham as in Berlin.

If his body ever was found in the aftermath of the slaughter at Monchy then it was never identified, for to-day he is commemorated on the Arras Memorial, his young life wasted in pursuit of a completely futile and dreadfully-planned attack. I'll let Siegfried Sassoon have the final words...

"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He’s a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.