Battle of Albert (1916) - Haig's Desire To Break Through Versus Rawlinson's "bite and Hold"

Haig's Desire To Break Through Versus Rawlinson's "bite and Hold"

General Rawlinson, as the commander of the British Fourth Army, which had the major responsibility in the battle, originally proposed an initial offensive limited to gaining a foothold in part of the German first line and holding it against expected German counterattacks. One reason was to avoid having the infantry advance beyond the range of their supporting artillery, which would find it difficult to advance across the battlefield because the Somme was farming country with few roads. Another was that the first German line was situated on "forward" slopes i.e. on or below the crests of the ridge of low hills facing the British along the line Gommecourt - Serre - Beaumont Hamel - Thiepval - Ovillers - la Boisselle - Fricourt. This meant that the German first line was above but at least visible to British artillery - trench lines cut in the white chalk showed as white stripes across the hills. Only on the sector further south from Fricourt - Mametz - Montauban did the British observers actually overlook the German first line positions.

However, the second German position was situated some 2 miles behind the first position, on "reverse slopes" visible only to aircraft, on the other side of the ridges running Beaucort - Mouquet Farm - Contalmaison - Bazentin-le-Grand - Longeval, which Rawlinson believed presented a different problem. The barbed wire in front of the German second position was effectively outside the range of the British 18-pounder guns and trench mortars assigned for wire-cutting, as they stood at the start of this battle. In fact reverse-slopes could only be attacked by howitzers and mortars due to their ability to fire over the crest of hills, but the British did not yet possess an instantaneous fuze which was needed to enable field howitzers to cut barbed wire using high-explosive shells. Without an instantaneous fuze, high-explosive shells penetrated the ground slightly before exploding and hence wasted most of their energy in digging holes. Fuze No. 106 became available after the Somme battles and gave the British the capability to burst high-explosive shells at ground level and hence eliminate barbed wire in any position. On the Somme the British had to rely on flat-trajectory guns firing shrapnel, and "toffee-apple" mortars, with a range of only 570 yards, to blow aside barbed wire.

Rawlinson first wanted to capture and consolidate along the German first line from Serre to Maricourt, advance his artillery then plan and stage a separate assault on the German second line, in accordance with his cautious doctrine of "bite and hold". Haig rejected this :

"His intention is merely to take the enemy's first and second system of trenches and 'kill Germans'. He looks upon the gaining of three or four kilometres more or less of ground immaterial. I think we can do better than this by aiming at getting as large a combined force of French and British across the Somme and fighting the enemy in the open !".

Haig demanded and got a plan for a breakthrough battle that aimed at capturing the German second line in the initial assault, even as far as Bapaume, 7 miles from the start line. One implication of this was that the initial week-long British artillery bombardment was over-extended and diluted by being spread in depth over both first and second German defensive positions, the first consisting of up to three trench lines and the second position of up to two trench lines, instead of being concentrated on just the first German position. This extended the zone bombarded from 1,250 yards to an average of 2,500 yards.