Part 13

15th to 16th Dec.--General Nivelle (who succeeded General Joffre as French Commander-in-Chief on 12th Dec.) orders new attack at Verdun. Vacherauville, Poivre Ridge, Bezonvaux, Hardaumont recaptured with 11,000 prisoners.

In early 1916 the British army was still finding itself, and its new Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, regarded it as insufficiently trained and equipped for the great tasks which lay before it. As an instrument of war it was still not yet ready. It also remained, if not in a water-tight compartment in respect of the French armies at its side, yet with a separate command and in separate control. This may have been merely the necessary consequence of its state of training; but it is certain that in 1916 there was no one with authority to compel that unity of action and command which in 1918, but not till then, directed the Franco-British armies as one force. Fortunately, perhaps, the German High Command elected to attack the French at Verdun instead of throwing their whole weight on the British, though there were numerous smaller actions along the worn and dangerous Ypres front and elsewhere in the first half of the year.

On 14th Feb. the enemy captured some 600 yards of 'International Trench', south-east of Ypres, but they were regained on 17th March, when a bitter and protracted struggle also began for the mine craters at St. Eloi. These were lost and recovered more than once, with heavy casualties on both sides. The Canadians, who had their full share of these costly operations, were again sorely tried at the beginning of June, when the Germans penetrated their front trenches in a surprise attack on the 2nd of that month. Major-General Mercer was killed in this assault, and General Williams captured. Eleven days later the Canadians atoned for this set-back by completely re-establishing their broken line. Throughout the first half of 1916 the enemy, not only round Ypres, but also round Loos, at Ploegsteert, Givenchy, and elsewhere, persevered in similar local attempts to keep the British occupied and upset their plans, while he was concentrating his chief efforts towards beating down the French defences at Verdun. The attack on Verdun, as already related, ultimately broke down, and the period in which it was at its height was utilized by Sir Douglas Haig to bring his forces as near as possible to the point at which they could undertake with success an attack of the first magnitude against the entrenched German lines. The date of the attack was premature, and was hurried on in order to take some weight off the harassed French armies at Verdun. It began on 1st July; the chosen _terrain_ was the River Somme, and the great offensive, in which the French joined, was over a 28-mile front from Gommecourt, north of the Somme, to Dompierre, south of that river.

_First Battle of the Somme_

The German position in the Somme area was situated on the high ground which is the watershed between the Scheldt and the Somme. The ground runs east-south-east, and its hills fall into long irregular spurs divided by wide valleys. On the forward slopes of the hills the German first-line defences ran from the Somme at Curlu to Fricourt; at Fricourt the defence line turned north, crossing the Ancre, thence passing over the summit of the watershed near Hebuterne and Gommecourt to Arras. Between the Somme and the Ancre a second line of defence had been constructed 2 miles behind the first, and on it had been lavished all the ingenuities of fortification which the German engineers afterwards developed in the so-called Hindenburg lines. South of the Somme, where the French were to co-operate with Sir Douglas Haig, the defences were not so elaborate; it was not here that the Germans, who were fully aware of the impending British attack, expected the blow to fall. They expected the greatest weight to be felt towards the Ancre.

The British preparatory bombardment, delivered by a force of artillery far greater than any British army had heretofore possessed, began on 24th June, and deluged the German positions with shells for a week. It was aided by the efforts of the Royal Flying Corps, which, at this time, had a decided superiority over that of the Germans. The British attack on 1st July began in broad daylight, and was delivered principally by Rawlinson's Fourth Army of five corps, with a subsidiary attack by the Third Army (Allenby) opposite Gommecourt, where one corps only was sent forward. The sectors attacked, beside that at Gommecourt, may be designated: Beaumont-Hamel; River Ancre, including Thiepval; La Boisselle and Contalmaison; Fricourt; River Somme at Montauban. The French attack, designed by Foch and delivered by the French Sixth Army (Fayolle), and Tenth Army (Micheler), was delivered along an 8-mile front, taking in a sector on either side of the Somme from Maricourt, through Frise and Dompierre, to Fay.

Severe as were the British preparatory and final bombardments, they did not succeed in demolishing the German systems of defences, and had left machine-gun nests intact. The efficacy of the machine-gun was one of the bitterest lessons to be learnt by the flower of the British armies of 1916, and the great losses of 1st July were largely due to the German handling of this weapon. Taking the British and French attack as a whole, it may be said to have failed towards the north and succeeded towards the south. The heaviest rebuff was inflicted on the corps of Allenby's Third Army which operated opposite Gommecourt. From Thiepval, across the Ancre, the Germans had massed their best fighting material and the greatest weight of their artillery. The 10th Corps (Morland), which included the famous 36th (Ulster) Division, Highlanders, and North Countrymen, did wonders, and actually penetrated the Thiepval Redoubt but could not hold on to its gains. Hunter-Weston's 8th Corps of picked troops, including the 29th Division from Gallipoli, found the task of assaulting Beaumont-Hamel too strong for them. Farther south there were successes which increased in value towards the Somme. The 13th Corps (Congreve) carried Montauban and Mametz; the 15th Corps (Horne) surrounded Fricourt; the 3rd Corps (Pulteney) forced its way at great cost into La Boisselle.

[Illustration: The Allied Battlefield on the Somme: map showing approximately by the shaded area the Franco-British gains from 1st July to 18th September, 1916]

The French armies, well handled, and aided by the advantage of finding the Germans less on their guard, made ground on either side of the Somme. Three corps participated in the assault--the 20th (Balfourier) from Maricourt to the Somme, where the hardest fighting was at Curlu and Hardicourt; the 1st Corps (Brandelat); and the 35th Corps (Allonier). The last two walked through the Germans, and the French losses were light. As the result of the day's fighting along the whole extent of the front, the British captured 3500, and the French 6000 prisoners; but the casualties of the assailants were close on 50,000. The second day's fighting, though it emphasized the certainty that no great German defeat had been inflicted, enabled both the French and British commanders to enlarge the ground they had won, and the advantage was further exploited in the few days that followed. By the 5th of July over a front of 6 miles the Germans had been pushed back a mile; the British had captured 6000, the French 8000 prisoners.

This was the first blow in the Somme battle. Its results, compared with those of the German attack at Verdun, do not afford warrant for regarding it as a great victory. It became clear that there was no precedent to follow other than that set by the Germans at Verdun, namely that of systematically reducing the enemy's position. This heavy task was entered on by the British forces with unbroken determination; and the effort relaxed scarcely any of its vigour till 18th Sept., while the last big British attack on the Ancre began on 13th Nov. The principal events in this protracted struggle for positions and fortified strongholds after the opening phase already described were:

14th to 15th July.--British attack German second line, capturing Longueval, Trones Wood, Delville Wood, and 2000 prisoners.

23rd July.--Second phase of Somme battle begun. Pozieres captured 26th July.

16th Aug.--French take Belloy near the Somme; 1300 prisoners.

29th Aug.--Total British captures on Somme to date: 266 officers, 15,203 men, 86 guns.

15th Sept.--British advance (third phase of Somme battle) using tanks for the first time; Martinpuich and High Wood taken. Lesboeufs and Morval captured 25th Sept. Combles and Thiepval captured 26th Sept.

30th Sept.--Thiepval Ridge captured.

10th Oct.--French take Ablaincourt, south of Somme, and 1300 prisoners.

21st to 23rd Oct.--British take 1018 prisoners.

12th Nov.--French take Saillisel.

13th Nov.--Battle of the Ancre (fourth phase of Somme battle). British take 4000 prisoners.

29th Dec.--Sir D. Haig's dispatches relating to Somme battle. During the period 1st July to 18th Nov. were captured 38,000 prisoners, 125 guns, 514 machine-guns. The number of casualties inflicted on the Germans has not been made known. Those of the British amounted to 22,923 officers and 476,553 men. A number of these were, of course, not permanent casualties.

_Russian Campaign, 1916_

During the winter of 1915-6 the Russian armies were reorganized by General Alexieff under the nominal command of the Tsar. The Grand Duke Nicholas, as already stated, went to the Caucasus in 1915, and while Viceroy there the successful advance of General Yudenitch to Erzerum (captured 16th Feb.) was made. The Russian armies of the north were placed under General Kuropatkin (Riga to Dvinsk) and General Everts (Vilna to the Pripet), and the commands embraced respectively the Twelfth, Fifth, and First; and the Second, Tenth, Fourth, and Third Armies. In the southern group of armies, commanded by General Ivanoff till April, and by General Brussiloff afterwards, were included the Eighth Army (Kaledin) in the Rovno sector, Eleventh Army of Volhynia (Sakharoff), Seventh Army of Eastern Galicia (Scherbatcheff), and Ninth Army of the Dniester (Lechitsky). Facing the northern group of armies were German forces directed nominally by General Hindenburg, actually by General Ludendorff. The local commanders were von Below and von Scholtz (Riga to Dvinsk), von Eichhorn (Lake Narotch), von Fabeck and von Woyrsch with an Austrian army corps. A force under the nominal command of Prince Leopold of Bavaria connected these German armies with those which faced General Brussiloff (successor to Ivanoff). The Volhynian sector (Third Austro-Hungarian Army) was under von Brlog; Rovno sector (Fourth Army) under the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, stiffened by a reserve under von Linsingen. Farther south were General Boehm-Ermolli's army (Second), and the two armies of Bothmer and Pflanzer-Baltin. The Russians, who had been recruiting far larger numbers than they could feed or employ, were much more numerous. The Germans were well entrenched and superior in artillery.

The German effort in 1916 was diverted to the West. The Russians, who were now better supplied in guns and ammunition than heretofore, seized the opportunity to take and keep the initiative in the East. They began before the end of 1915 with an offensive in Galicia on the Styr and Strypa, and continued their attacks through January; while in February there was severe fighting on the Dniester, in the Bukovina, and in Volhynia. The first full-dress attack was made, however, in the northern sector, where General Everts began the battle of Lake Narotch on 18th March. Fighting here was renewed eight times before 14th April, and the Russian gain on the Vilna road did not warrant the heavy losses (12,000), which were increased by a German counter-attack on 28th April.

The important part of the Russian campaign took place in the southern group of armies commanded by Brussiloff, who used his superiority of numbers against the Austrian generals and their very mixed troops with brilliant effect. On 4th June the Russian armies from the Pripet to the Bukovina were set in motion simultaneously against the long unequally guarded Austrian front, seeking the weak places. Generals Kaledin and Sakharoff, in the sectors nearest the Pripet, engaged the armies of von Brlog and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand; and the Russian columns, though held up in the marshes supporting von Brlog near Kolki, swept through the archduke's defences like paper. They marched swiftly forward over rolling country to the Styr, driving the Austro-Hungarian levies before them. By 16th June the leading Russian columns were 12 miles from Vladimir Volhynok. North of this apex Kolki and Svidniki, on the Stokhod, were captured; south of the so-called Lutsk salient thus created Sakharoff captured Dubno, and was outside Brody on the 16th. In twelve days this most damaging attack captured 70,000 men, 83 guns, and created a salient which, at its greatest depth, was 50 miles from the 80-foot base from which it had been started. Von Linsingen's reserves were sent in, and Ludendorff took matters in hand.

General Scherbatcheff had simultaneously attacked von Bothmer from Kozlov to the Dniester. The Russian general reached Bucacz (8th June) and crossed the Strypa. He also captured 17,000 prisoners and 30 guns, but von Bothmer, athwart a good line of railway, could not be enveloped, and fell back sullenly and without disaster.

General Lechitsky, in the most southerly sector, struck with fury at Pflanzer-Baltin, and cut through his centre on the hills between the Dniester and the Pruth while turning his flank at the Dniester bridge-heads at Zaleszczyki and Biskupie. The net result was the wreck of Pflanzer-Baltin's army, which was forced to retreat across the Pruth to the Carpathians. Lechitsky captured 39,000 men; and Brussiloff's great attack had succeeded triumphantly on both wings. It had made less headway in the centre. There were two lines of subsequent pressure or advance open to him, one, the more northerly, towards Kovel; the other, with, as object, the further destruction of the southern Austro-Hungarian armies, towards Halicz.

[Illustration: Map illustrating the extent of Russian Recovery in the Summer Campaign of 1916]

Ludendorff, however, had by this time formed his plans for the restoration of equilibrium; and Linsingen, with his reserves, was employed to make amplification of the Russian success at the most northerly portion of the salient impracticable. Linsingen struck at the Stokhod River crossings. Brussiloff countered by bringing up a fresh army under General Lesch with the object of outflanking Linsingen in his turn; and another army, under General Rogoza, was ordered to occupy General Woyrsch's attention farther north. These manoeuvres had considerable success, Lesch and Rogoza capturing 17,000 men. But though in these and subsequent engagements the largest numbers of captures fell to the Russians, and though in the extreme south they were again able to advance to the Carpathian passes, no disaster on the largest scale was inflicted. The Germans were able to withdraw their allies and to allow the Russian attack to wear itself out.

Nevertheless, the Russian victories were of immense service to the Allies, and by the autumn of 1916 it seemed that the prospects of the Central Empires were darker than at any period of the war. The Russian advance, in its resolution and generalship, need not shrink from a comparison with that with which Foch ended the war two years later. By the middle of September, Generals Kaledin, Lesch, Sakharoff, Scherbatcheff, with Bezobrazoff and Lechitsky in the south, had captured 370,000 prisoners, 450 guns, and an amount of supplies as great as that which fell into Ludendorff's hands at St. Quentin in 1918.

_Balkan Campaign, 1916_

After the conclusion of Brussiloff's triumphant dissipation of the Austro-Hungarian armies in the early autumn of 1916, the way was open for Roumanian co-operation with the Allies, and Roumania, though neither united nor completely ready, was urged to enter the war. This she did on 28th Aug., when Germany declared war on her, and Italy made a belated declaration of war on Germany. On 29th Aug. von Hindenburg was appointed Chief of the German General Staff in succession to von Falkenhayn, to whom was relegated the task of dealing with Roumania. The Russians during the rest of the year advanced towards the foot of the Carpathian passes and to the junctions of the knot of railways in South-Eastern Galicia, in order to gain complete contact with the Roumanians through the Bukovina. Meanwhile the Roumanians, instead of concentrating on their southern front, where a mixed force of Bulgarians, Turks, and Germans under the command of von Mackensen was preparing to take them in the flank, pressed forward through the easterly passes of the Carpathians into Transylvania. They advanced here some distance, practically striking a blow in the air, but neither raising the Transylvanian population nor capturing any strategic points. On 2nd Sept. Russian forces in aid of Roumania crossed the Danube into the Dobrudja, while on 3rd Sept. Brussiloff's troops won a considerable victory in South-East Galicia, and on 7th Sept. took Halicz. But this success was more than offset by the loss to the Roumanians on their southern front of Tutrakan, on the Danube, with 20,000 prisoners. Occurrences were symptomatic of what was to come; and again, on the Eastern, as on the Western front, the Allies suffered from the lack of unity of command. The Russians and Roumanians joined hands on 10th Sept., but never concerted their strategy. Mackensen continued to advance along the Danube towards the vital Cernavoda Bridge, and so to threaten the whole of Southern Roumania, while the Russian forces which, on the east, had ventured into Roumania, found themselves by 18th and 19th Sept. faced with the new forces concentrated by the Germans against their eastern Transylvanian front. The rest of the Roumanian campaign is the history of the stages by which the two arms of these German-made 'nut-crackers' closed on the Roumanian armies, which had been placed in a false strategical position and were badly led. On neither front did the Roumanian soldiery, who fought well under very trying conditions, with inferior artillery and a poor medical service, give way without a struggle. Mackensen was stoutly held up on 20th Sept. in the Dobrudja, and on the Transylvanian side the Roumanians had a success on 27th Sept. But on 30th Sept. Falkenhayn developed his eastern attack near the Roter Turm Pass, and by 7th Oct. the whole Roumanian front in Transylvania was retiring by the way it had come. A week later it was out of Transylvania and defending the not very defensible passes.

On 20th Oct. Mackensen attacked on the whole line in the Dobrudja, and five days later he was on the vital Cernavoda Bridge. Constanza, the Roumanian Black Sea port, had fallen, and so far from ever being in a position to take Turkey or Bulgaria in the flank, the Roumanians were now themselves on the verge of being outflanked on the Danube. Meanwhile, on the other arm of the nut-crackers, von Falkenhayn, despite trifling set-backs, was pressing on. The Toerzburg Pass (21st Oct.), Predeal Pass (23rd Oct.), Vulkan Pass (25th Oct.), Roter Turm Pass (31st Oct.) were all scenes of Roumanian reverses, and by 15th Nov. the bulletins were bringing the daily news that the Roumanian retreat continued. On 23rd Nov. Falkenhayn was advancing on Bucharest; Mackensen had crossed the Danube at Islatz and Simnitza; and farther west Orsova and Turnu-Severin had fallen. All the German composite forces could now be deployed in Roumania, and the end followed swiftly. Mackensen and Falkenhayn were in touch on 26th Nov.; Campolung was captured 29th Nov.; Bucharest, Ploeshti, and Sinaia fell on 6th Dec.; and with them went the Roumanian oil-fields, the wells of which had, however, been very thoroughly damaged by Captain Norton Griffiths and a small British party in order to prevent their use by the Germans. (They were restored in some eight months.)

On 8th Dec. the Germans estimated their Roumanian captures as 70,000 men and 184 guns; and it is true that only a portion, though a considerable one, of the Roumanian armies was able to effect a retreat with the Russians to the line of the Sereth defences. Fighting went on till the end of the year, and was continued into 1917 until the Roumanians were forced to sign the Treaty of Bucharest--revoked by the Allies at the end of the war.

Roumania's fate, following the tragedy of Serbia and the Allies' withdrawal from Gallipoli, strengthened the Greek military party round King Constantine, which was now openly pro-German. Against these influences M. Venizelos proved powerless, though Greek volunteers were at the same time joining the Venizelos party, and ready to fight with the Allies. This division of opinion in Greece was illustrated in the middle of August (1916), when two divisions of the 4th Greek Army Corps surrendered to the Bulgarians, who had advanced to the Greek port of Kavalla, while the 3rd Division of the same corps joined the Allies at Salonika. The pro-Germans had carried all before them at the last Greek elections (Dec., 1915), when the Venizelists declined to poll; and the danger of finding themselves suddenly attacked in the rear discouraged an Allied offensive against the Bulgarians until the autumn of 1916, when the newly equipped Serbian army arrived from Corfu, ready and eager to fight its way home, joining the force under General Sarrail, which already included Russian, Italian, and Portuguese contingents, besides French and British. Following pro-German riots against the Allied embassies in Athens, too, a 'pacific blockade' of the Greek coast had been enforced, and a firm Note presented to the Greek Government demanding the demobilization of the Greek army and a new general election, to be freely conducted. When these demands had been accepted and a new Government formed--though the king's pro-German sympathies remained as marked as ever--General Sarrail resumed, in September, the offensive against the Bulgarians. The main advance was undertaken by the French and Serbian divisions, with a Russian contingent, in the direction of Monastir, General Milne's British column meantime pushing the Bulgarians back from the Struma line. Two months' fighting saw the Serbians, who had borne the brunt of the attack at this point, marching back into Monastir in triumph, having turned the Bulgar-German forces out of it on 18th-19th Nov. The British, at the same time, kept the enemy busy at the other end of the line, occupying a number of villages, and pushing the Bulgarians back beyond the railway between Seres and Demir-Hissar. With their heavy commitments elsewhere the Allies were for the time being unwilling to extend their military operations beyond Monastir.

_Italian Campaign, 1916_