Men of the 2/3rd London Field Ambulance with patients and nurses at a Casualty Clearing Station in Northern France

Generals and Soldiers:
After the Battle

Contents

The Soldiers	The Generals
The Butcher's Bill	The Overview
Dealing with the wounded    Regimental Aid Post	GHQ's view VII Corps' view
Advanced Dressing Station	Incorrect Assumptions
Main Dressing Station	The Diversion; success or failure?
Casualty Clearing Stations
Ambulance Trains
Base and General Hospitals
Back to Blighty

The Soldiers

The Butcher's Bill

With the fighting over, the men with an enormous jobs on their hands were the doctors, orderlies, nurses, stretcher bearers, ambulance drivers and all those charged with looking after the nearly 4,000 wounded men. On the 56th Division's front 2,355 men were recorded as wounded and on the 46th Division's front 1,411. Lying dead in the trenches and No Man's Land, laid out in the Dressing Stations and CCS mortuaries or one of those whose body had simply ceased to exist were 1,353 men of the London Division and 853 from the 46th Division. Another 559 were missing, many dead.

Total British casualties at Gommecourt were 6,769, nearly five times those of the German defenders.

British Casualties (Missing mainly killed) 56th Division
	Killed	Wounded	Missing	Prisoners	Total
Officers	53	107	17	6	183
Other Ranks	1300	2248	356	227	4131
Total	1353	2355	373	233	4314
46th Division
Officers	50	71	14	2	137
Other Ranks	803	1340	172	3	2318
Total	853	1411	186	5	2455
Total	2206	3766	559	238	6769
German Casualties (Missing mainly prisoners) 2nd Guard Reserve Division
	Killed	Wounded	Missing	Prisoners	Total
Officers	3	10	0	0	13
Other Ranks	182	372	24	0	565
Total	185	382	24	0	578
52nd Division
Officers	9	20	0	0	29
Other Ranks	233	252	136	0	621
Total	242	272	136	0	650
Total	427	654	160	0	1241

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Dealing with the wounded - Regimental Aid Post

For the wounded there was a long and painful path they had to travel before they reached the warmth, safety and care of a Hospital in the UK. Each battalion had its own Regimental Aid Post in a dugout near to the battalion's HQ. Manned by the battalion Medical Officer (MO) with the assistance of some men this was the first staging post on the way to the rear. Stretcher Bearers would labour down the dangerous communication trenches already choked with the walking wounded.
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Advanced Dressing Station

On the 56th Division's front from the Aid Post they would struggle back to the centre of Hebuterne were there were wheeled stretchers used to run the man back to the Advanced Dressing Station (ADS) set in a series of dugouts in a farm house on the far side of the village.

The 46th Division employed two Advanced Dressings Stations, the main one on the western edge of Foncquevillers (next what is now Foncquevillers Military Cemetery) and another at the northern end of the village.

At the ADS men were assessed, labelled, given tea (as long as they did not have a stomach wound), kept warm and sent on the first available ambulance down the road to St Amand (56th Division) and Gaudiempre (46th Division). Only those with immediately life threatening injuries were treated at the ADS but there were plenty of them on 1st July.

As German shells started to drop in the area around the ADS, all available transport was called up and men were packed into ambulances and lorries and sent to the Main Dressing Stations (MDS) at Couin and Gaidiempre. Those that could walked and there was a steady stream of bloodied men that walked past the Field Artillery batteries set either side of the roads out of Hebuterne and Foncquevillers.
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Main Dressing Station

The MDS of the 56th Division was on the edge of the village of Couin next to a large farm house and the crowds of wounded men were likened to a Bank Holiday crowd at Blackheath. Here further treatment was given if required to save life, tetanus shots were administered and more labelling, recording and tea. Next to the main medical area was a tent where the terminally injured were sent, dosed heavily with morphine and left to die. With the overwhelming number of casualties, a strict triage system was in operation and the men who didn't make it are buried in Couin British Cemetery which lies on the right of the road to Souastre.

The 46th Division's MDS was in a field on the edge of Gaudiempre and had been built in something of a rush in the weeks before. Here they operated the same systems as at Couin though the death rate was lower and there is no cemetery linked to this MDS.

There were two destinations from the MDS, the Divisional Rest Station at Mondicourt or, for the more seriously wounded, the Casualty Clearing Stations and Ambulance Trains at Warlincourt Halte.
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Casualty Clearing Stations

Transport, via the ambulances of No. 3 Motor Ambulance, took these men to the two Casualty Clearing Stations, Nos. 20 (46th Division) and 43 (56th Division), that had been established between the village of Saulty and 8 Squadron RFC's base at La Bellevue. Here 16th Motor Ambulance Company shipped men to the waiting trains at Warlincourt Halte.

Warlincourt Halte lies on the Roman road between Arras and Doullens and, parallel to the road ran the railway line along which six Ambulance Trains would take men to the Base Hospitals on the coast or to ports like Le Havre, Boulogne and Calais where hospital ships waited to take the seriously wounded home.
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Ambulance Trains

In all, eight trains were available to the Third Army for the evacuation of the wounded but, soon, they would taking men from the Fourth Army too as the scale of the casualties overwhelmed the medical services everywhere. Three trains left on the 1st July to Etretat, Le Treport and Le Havre with journeys sometimes taking nearly 18 hours. Another six left on the 2nd, four on the 3rd, three on the 4th and one on the 5th July. In all, they carried 7,449 wounded to hospitals the length of the Channel coast from Le Treport to Le Havre.
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Base and General Hospitals

Along the coast and in many major towns like Abbeville, large hospitals had been established some taking over the large hotels in the fashionable resorts that were a feature of the Channel coast.

No. 26 General Hospital at Etaples consisted of 35 wards, accommodation for doctors, nurses and other staff, two operating theatres and an x-ray department. When the hospital opened it was staffed by 39 officers (mainly Territorials), 204 NCOs and men and 73 sisters and staff nurses. Now it was one of many hospitals to receive the wounded of the Somme.
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Back to Blighty

Unless needing further medical treatment, men were normally evacuated back to the UK within a few days. Nearly 25,000 men were evacuated in the first five days of July with nearly half going from Le Havre to Southampton.

At Southampton they were met by cheering crowds, as yet ignorant of the full scale of the disaster on 1st July, put on trains and distributed round the country to military and civilian hospitals from Cornwall to Scotland.
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The Generals

The overview

Three factors stand out in the assessment of the Generals, from Haig downwards, about the outcome of the attacks on 1st July 1916:

1. the scale British casualties was acceptable;
2. the Germans had suffered enormous casualties under the bombardment; and
3. The Germans were finished.

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GHQ's view

Gen Fowke, the GHQ Adjutant General, informed Haig on 2nd July that the overall casualties were a minimum of 40,000. Within a few days, returns from the units involved would have shown figures totalling 61,816 casualties (which went down as men separated from their units returned to duty). Haig's comment was:

"This cannot be considered severe in view of the numbers engaged and the length of front attacked…"

And on 3rd July he wrote:

"Things are going quite satisfactorily for us here, and the Enemy seems hard pushed to it to find any reserves at all."

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VII Corps' view

On July 4th, Lt Gen Snow, VII Corps' commander wrote:

"I was quite content with my show … I think if things are kept humming on all fronts like they are now that the war cannot last long. The Boche losses must be colossal and they can't last much longer. "

At the time he must have known that total casualties for his two divisions were in the region of 7,000.

Snow was, however, concerned about his own position (he had come in for severe criticism from Staff Officers at 3rd Army who wanted him sacked) and the 'failure' of the 46th Division, especially that of the 137th Brigade, allowed him to 'get his retaliation in first' - Maj. Gen, Stuart Wortley was immediately sacked and sent home, the only general to be sacked as a result of the catastrophe of 1st July 1916. To add insult to injury, the 46th Division's conduct was subjected to a Court of Inquiry (again the only one to take place after 1st July) with the men and officers being accused by Snow of 'a lack of Offensive Spirit'. So angry was Snow that he tried to get two battalions, the 1/6th South and the 1/6th North Staffordshires, disbanded but this was successfully resisted by the new Divisional GOC, Maj Gen Thwaites.

The findings of the Court of Inquiry mainly pointed the finger at staff work by the Division but Stuart Wortley would spend the next five years trying to clear his name. He did not seem to realise until it was too late that his true nemesis was the General Commanding the British Armies in France and Flanders, Sir Douglas Haig. He had, at last, got his revenge for the percieved slights surrounding the Hohenzollern Redoubt debacle of October 1915.
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Incorrect Assumptions

The problem with the assumptions of the British Generals about the effectiveness of the attack on 1st July was that, across a large section of the line, German troops had suffered very light casualties under the bombardment, secure, as they were, in the deep dugouts which should have been no secret to GHQ and the Army Commanders.

At Gommecourt, for example, British casualties during the bombardment were heavier than those of the defenders by a factor of some 5:1. Such ratios seem to be supported by evidence from other parts of the front.

As to the Germans not being able to 'last much longer' Fourth Army was still struggling to take in August and September, ground supposed to have been taken in the first rush on the morning of 1st July 1916.
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The Diversion: success or failure?

Whatever else may have happened at Gommecourt, senior officers consoled themselves with the idea that the diversion had succeeded. Sir Douglas Haig re-stated this in his post-battle despatch of the 23rd December 1916 in which he wrote:

"The subsidiary attack at Gommecourt also forced its way into the enemy's positions; but there met with such vigorous opposition that as soon as it was considered that the attack had fulfilled its object our troops were withdrawn."

"Withdrawn"? Withdrawal suggests an organised movement of men, done at the command of senior officers. The movement of the men of the 56th Division, who scurried from shell hole to shell hole as they abandoned both weapons and wounded in the German trenches, cannot possibly be described by such a 'neat' concept as 'withdrawal'. Trapped in the German trenches it had been 'every man for himself'.

And had "the attack fulfilled its object"? The object was to divert men and artillery away from the main attack to the south at Serre. The 31st Division's attack at Serre had collapsed with nearly 4,000 casualties in a little over an hour. The artillery and machine guns liberated from the defence of Gommecourt by the insertion of the 2nd Guard Division shattered the 93rd and 94th Brigades. The artillery then turned its fire on the 56th and 46th Divisions.

Generals Allenby and Snow had been right. Any diversion should have been away from the main attack and aimed at a tactically important but weakly held point so as to attract German reserves.

The Diversion at Gommecourt failed at a cost of nearly 7,000 men. The men of the 56th and 46th Divisions had been sacrificed to no end. It was predictable, it was unnecessary, it was criminal.

The Battle of the Somme itself would drag on until 18th November by which time the line had moved forward about seven miles at its maximum and over a million men from both sides had become casualties.
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Wounded

"… I felt a pressure of tons upon my head. My right eye was sightless, with the other I saw my hand with one finger severed, covered in blood. A great desire came over me to sink to the ground, into peaceful oblivion... The man in front bandaged my head and eye. Blood was pouring into my mouth, down my tunic… I made my way slowly - not in pain, I was too numbed for that."

L/Cpl Davis, 1/9th London Regiment,
Queen Victoria's Rifles

The Advanced Dressing Station

"It is beyond the power of words to convey anything but the feeblest impression of the conditions under which surgical work is carried on at a very advanced unit during a big 'push'…. The dimly lit dugout dressing station, the dust, the wet, the mud, the blood, the noise, the bustle, the numbers of wounded, the appalling wounds, the hopeless shock… "

Lt Col H M W Gray, RAMC

The Main Dressing Station

"Wounded men lying on stretchers covered the whole area of the camp - the huts could only contain a fraction of the cases that poured in - and in 24 hours more than 2,000 wounded were dealt with and evacuated to the Casualty Clearing Stations."

2/1st London Field Ambulance History

The Casualty Clearing Station

3rd July
I was sorry to send only a field card yesterday but we have been having a heavy time. I suppose a C.C.S sees the worst of it. No other link in the chain for evacuating the wounded can have to deal with quite the same thing. Saturday night and Sunday I will not attempt to describe, nor the bad wards as they are today nor the funeral this evening. How to use myself to advantage I hardly knew."

Rev M A Bere, 43rd Casualty Clearing Station

The Ambulance Train

"Many of the cases taken on as sitting were of such a nature that, in a less strenuous time, they would have been lying cases…. All the cases on the train were severely wounded. Many had been lying out for several hours before being dressed."

26 Ambulance Train War Diary

The Dead

"'B' Section were called out one night and put on parade, and volunteers asked to go out and collect the dead. We went to the front line through trenches up to our waists in water - then over the top into No Man's Land. It took us some time to get the bodies out of the mud. Next night 'C' Section were asked to volunteer for the same duty of bringing in the bodies, after which they buried them in the front line trenches - it was a horrible job. The men all returned very wet and muddy but very proud of having carried out their task."

2/3rd London Field Ambulance History

The Base Hospital

"Convoys of wounded still arrive and every bed in the hospital is occupied - even temporary beds have been erected on the floor. Some of the patients, all of them walking cases, have already gone to embark for Blighty."

L/Cpl Appleyard, 1/9th London Regiment,
Queen Victoria's Rifles

The Advanced Dressing Station at Hebuterne

Lt Col Brebner, 2/1st London Field Ambulance and OC MDS, Couin