BOOKS.
THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME.*
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, in the third volume of his excellent history of the war, is mainly concerned with the battle of the Somme. His account of that mighty conflict is well planned and very readable, but its special interest lies in its detail. The author has been allowed to give for the first time the British order of battle and the identity of the units engaged in each action, with some very remarkable figures of casualties. These facts throw a terribly clear light on the nature of modern war, and incidentally have an important bearing on the probable course of the present battle, which is on an even vaster scale than the Somme Battle, and in which the artillery fire is still more deadly than it was two years ago. The object of the offensive in July, 1916, was, besides relieving the pressure on Verdun and detaining the Germans on the Western Front, " to wear down the strength of the forces opposed to us "—to quote Sir Douglas Haig's despatch—and the object of the present defensive is very much the same. The layman naturally seeks for some standard by which to measure the rate of attrition. We cannot know the enemy's actual strength, or the extent of the losses which he is willing to suffer in his attempt to destroy our Army. Nor can we learn with any degree of precision the casualties that he incurs in each action. But this history of the Somme, in so far as it gives the real losses suffered in attacks on strong positions under heavy machine-gun and shell fire, supplies a basis, at any rate, for speculation. Experience would seem to show that a division making an attack on a resolute and well-placed enemy will lose from a fourth to a third of its strength, and may lose even more. The Forty-sixth Division, which attacked north of Uommecourt on July 1st, 1916, with magnificent but unavailing gallantry, lost two thousand seven hundred men in a few hours. Tho Eighteenth Division, which took Thiepval on September 26th, lost fifteen hundred men, and in its simultaneous attack on the Schwaben Redoubt, which did not end till October 5th, lost two thousand more. The Forty-first Division, which took Flers on September 15th, lost about three thousand officers and men out of seven thousand five hundred, or forty per cent., in two days' fighting. Some units, engaged on the northern front on July 1st, were literally destroyed. One battalion at roll-call was represented by the Colonel and six orderlies. Another had thirty survivors. A brigade attacking east of Albert virtually disappeared, though a few hundred wounded men were brought back from the enemy's front lines. It will be seen, then, that the war correspondents' accounts of the effect of heavy fire on attacking forces are not by any means exaggerated. If we remember that the enemy attacks in much denser formation than British troops need to do, that his new Flanders front is fully as long as our Somme front line, that his battle-front on March 21st was more than twice as long, and that our rifle-fire is better than his ever was, while our artillery and machine-gun fire is probably much heavier than his was in 1916, we shall be able to form some conception of the punishment that is being inflicted on him. Every German attack on a wide front means thousands of cdtaialties, and a resolute attack, as at Arras on March 28th, which is pushed home and yet fails utterly, involves the destruction of at least a third of the forces engaged. The war of attrition seems slow and clumsy to some amateur strate- gists, but it is deadly and it is certain, provided of course that we keep our Army properly supplied with men so that it may be ready in its turn to take the offensive when the right moment comes.
To the superb bravery and grim endurance of our troops Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pays an eloquent tribute. The epic of the
• The Drain& Campaign in France and Flanders, 1910. By Arthur Conan Doyle. Laudon: Hodder and Stoughton. 16a. net.i
Somme is so rich in stirring incidents that it seems almost invidious to select from them, and it would need many volumes to recount them all. A battle which opened with an attack by two hundred and thirty thousand British troops on a twenty-mile front, a battle in which, from first to last, nearly three million men were engaged, and in which the total casualties were at least three-quarters of a million, was on so vast a scale that a short history like this can barely take account of a single battalion, though the author has tried to mention as many as possible of the battalions which did specially fine work. Occasionally, however, he describes an indi- vidual feat of heroism, as at the taking of Morval by the Fifth Division on September 25th, 1916 :- " The 1st Cheshires particularly distinguished itself ; and it was in this action that Private Jones performed his almost incredible feat of capturing single-handed and bringing in four officers and 102 men of the 146th Wurtemberg Regiment, including four wearers of the famous Iron Cross. The details of this extraordinary affair, where one determined and heavily-armed man terrorised a large company taken at a disadvantage, read more like the romantic exploit of some Western desperado who cries Hands up ! ' to is drove of tourists, than any operation of war. Jones was awarded the V.C., and it can have been seldom won in such sensational fashion."
We may cite a typical passage from the account of the taking of Montauban by the Thirteenth Corps under General Congrevo on the first day of the battle :-
" The hardest fighting of any fell to the lot of the 55th Brigade upon the right. The advance was made with the 8th East Surrey and 7th Queen's Surrey in front, the latter to the left. Tho 7th Buffs were in support and the 7th West Keats in reserve. No sooner had the troops come out from cover than they were met by a staggering fire which held them up in the Breslau Trench. The supports had soon to be pushed up to thicken the ranks of the East Surrey—a battalion which, with the ineradicable sporting instinct and light-heartedness of the Londoner, had dribbled foot- balls, one for each platoon, across No Man's Land and shot their goal in the front-line trench. A crater had been formed by a mine explosion, forming a gap in the German front, and round this crater a fierce fight raged for some time, the Germans rushing down a side sap which brought them up to the fray. Into this side sap sprang an officer and a sergeant of the Buffs, and killed 12 of the Germans, cutting off their flow of reinforcements, while half a company of the same battalion cleared up the crater and captured a machine- gun which had fought to the last cartridge. It is worth recording that in the case of one of these machine-guns the gunner was actually found with a four-foot chain attaching him to the tripod. Being badly wounded and unable to disengage himself, the wretched man had dragged himself, his wound, and his tripod for some distance before being captured by the British. The fact was duly established by a sworn inquiry. The brigade was winning its way forward, but the hard resistance of the Germans had delayed it to such a point that there was a danger that it would not be in its place so as to oover the left flank of the 90th Brigade, who were due to attack Montauban at 10 a.m. Such a failure might make the difference between victory and defeat. At this critical moment the officer commanding the East Surreys dashed to the front, re-formed his own men with all whom he could collect and led them onwards. Captain Neville was killed in gallantly leading the rush, but the wave went forward. There was check after check, but the point had to be won, and the Suffolks of the 53rd Brigade were brought round to strengthen the attack, while the West Keats were pushed forward to the fighting line. By mid-day two platoons of West Rents were into Montauban Allay, and had seized two houses at the western end of Montauban, which were rapidly fortified by a section of the 92nd Field Company. The flank of the 90th was assured. A South African officer led the first group of Surrey men who seized Montauban. He is said during the action to have slain seventeen of the enemy."
Other magnificent episodes crowd the pages, like the gallant and fatal attack of the Ulster Division on the Anere line north of Thiepval, or the advance of the 36th Brigade on Ovillers—defended by the Prussian Guard—which they took and held after losing five-sixths of their numbers, or the storming of Guillemont by the 59th Brigade of Englishmen and the 47th Brigade of Irishmen, where " the Riflemen fought in grim silence, but the Irish went through with a wild Celtic yell which, blending with the scream of their pipes, must have added one more to the horrors of the shaken and hard-pressed garrison." But the author never allows the dramatic and human side of his narrative to divert him unduly from his main purpose, which is to give an accurate outline of the course of the battle of five long months. In this respect the book, with its maps and plans and its excellent index, is much the best that has yet appeared, and we shall look with great interest for the next volume.
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