The Allied war strategy for 1916 was for simultaneous offensives mounted by the Russians on the Eastern Front, the Italians in the Alps and an Anglo-French attack on the Western Front in the Somme Valley. However, a major German offensive at Verdun commenced in February and the French Government pressured the British Government for the attack in the Somme Valley to become largely a British attack to draw German forces away from Verdun.
Map 5: The Western Front 1915-1916
Source: Department of Art and Military Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, 1950, published as A Short Military History of World War I – Atlas, edited by T. Dodson Stamps and Vincent J. Esposito, available online at http://www.firstworldwar.com/maps/westernfront.htm
The following analysis of the Battle of Fromelles is largely extracted from the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 Volume 3, The AIF in France 1916 Chapters 12 & 13 The Battle of Fromelles. Compiled by C.E.W. Bean, the history devotes almost 120 pages to the Battle of Fromelles (pp 328-447). This is available on line through the Australian War Memorial website www.awm.gov.au.
The Battle of the Somme commenced on 1 July 1916 with the Fourth Army (commanded by Sir Henry Rawlinson) and the Reserve Army (later renamed the Fifth Army and commanded by Sir Hubert Gough) attacking on a front of 15 miles. British casualties were 57,500 casualties on the first day, while German casualties were approximately 8,000, including 2,200 taken prisoner.
Map 6: British gains in the Battle of the Somme July to September 1916.
Source: Department of Art and Military Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, 1950, published as A Short Military History of World War I – Atlas, edited by T. Dodson Stamps and Vincent J. Esposito, available online at http://www.firstworldwar.com/maps/westernfront.htm
The British High Command sought actions to prevent the German Army reinforcing their forces on the Somme. On 5 July prospects of a break-through on the Somme appeared so promising to General Haig, now Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, that he ordered the other armies to prepare attacks in case the enemy was thoroughly beaten there. In that event the Third Army, Commanded by General Allenby, on the northern flank of the battle, would launch an offensive; but Haig on 5 July also ordered:
The First and Second Armies should each select a front on which to attempt to make a break in the enemy’s lines, and to widen it subsequently.
He pointed out that the German armies on the Somme might contemplate withdrawal, and in that case the First and Second British Armies, by attacking, might “turn the retreat on the Somme into a general retreat.”
General Plumer of the Second Army that held the line from north of Ypres to south of Armentieres, noted that where the Second Army joined the First Army opposite the Sugar Loaf Salient, the Germans held their front more lightly and he proposed a joint operation to General Monro, the commander of the First Army. General Monro on 8 July requested General Haking, an experienced and distinguished officer, formerly commanding the British 1st Division and now commanding the XI Corps of the First Army, to draw up plans for an offensive, and to assume that his Corps would be reinforced by a division from the Second Army, together with some of that division’s artillery.
Map 7: Location of Armies on the Western Front 30 June1916
Sources: Official History of the Great War: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1916, Volume 1 Map 3 [extract from The Western Front Association Mapping the Front in association with the Imperial War Museum]
General Haking’s scheme, aiming at the capture of the Fromelles-Aubers Ridge, a mile behind the enemy’s front, was rejected by General Monro, being of opinion that the capture of the Aubers-Fromelles Ridge, though of great advantage if the rest of the front was to remain stationary, would be of little assistance in case of the advance on the Somme, for which he had been asked to prepare.
By then, however, the situation on the Somme had changed and Sir Douglas Haig’s general staff were now looking into several operations recently suggested and concluded that the attack on Aubers-Fromelles, undertaken as “an artillery demonstration,” would “form a useful diversion and help the southern operations.”
Australian troops commenced moving to the Western Front from training camps in Egypt and England from March 1916 with the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF taking over part of the line in the “nursery” sector south of Armentieres. The 4th Division Unit Diary for 2 July noted that the 4th and 5th Divisions were to relieve the 1st and 2nd Divisions so that they could be moved to a reserve area ready for a move to the south (Somme) or north (Ypres) if required. The 4th Division relieved the 1st Division in the Fleubaix / Fromelles area on 3 July while the 5th Division was still arriving in France (from 26 June to 8 July), but on 6 July the 4th Division was also added to the reserve force to move to the south and was relieved the by the 5th Division, which took charge of part of the line on 12 July as part of the First Army under the command of General Monro.
On 14 July, it was decided that an infantry attack should form part of the demonstration, the First Army probably providing two divisions, and the Second Army one. This coincided with the 5th Division receiving its final 5,000 trench helmets. The bombardment was to begin on 14 July with all the artillery then available, and was to last about three days. General Haking’s scheme of attack was therefore approved, its object (according to the First Army order issued on 15 July) being:
“to prevent the enemy from moving troops southwards to take part in the main battle. For this purpose the preliminary operations, so far as is possible, will give the impression of an impending offensive operation on a large scale, and the bombardment which commenced on the morning of the 14th inst. will be continued with increasing intensity up till the moment of the assault.”
C. E. W. Bean reports that General Haking, in a letter read to all troops on 16 July, the eve of the day appointed for the assault (it was later deferred 3 days), explained, firstly, the reason for the operation, and then the methods. In describing the latter he said that the feint bombardments in the south would be continued on the morning of the offensive …
“whilst our guns along the front of our real attack will be getting the exact range of the enemy’s trenches without attracting undue notice. When everything is ready, our guns, consisting of some 350 pieces of all descriptions, and our trench mortars, will commence an intense bombardment of the enemy’s front system of trenches. After about half-an-hour’s bombardment the guns will suddenly lengthen range, our infantry will show their bayonets over the parapet, and the enemy, thinking we are about to assault, will come out of his shelters and man his parapets. The guns will then shorten their range, and drive the enemy back into his shelters again. This will be repeated several times. Finally, when we have cut all the wire, destroyed all the enemy’s machine-gun emplacements, knocked down most of his parapets, killed a large proportion of the enemy, and thoroughly frightened the remainder, our infantry will assault, capture, and hold the enemy’s support line along the whole front. The objective will be strictly limited to the enemy’s support trenches and no more.”
General Haking believed that the rear-most trench of the enemy’s front system would probably be found at from 100 to 150 yards beyond the German front line and that the two allotted battalions of each brigade would suffice for an advance so limited.
Map 8: The Battle of Fromelles – Order of Battle for British and German forces.
Source: Mike Senior, Fromelles, 19/20 July 1916 – A Success After All?, pp 33-36, Stand To: The Journal of the Western Front Association, Number 83, August / September 2008,
The units involved in the attack were to be (from north east to south west):
5th Australian Division:
8th Brigade
Assaulting battalions 32nd (WA) and 31st (Qld, Vic)
Reserve battalions: 29th (Vic) and 30th (NSW)
14th Brigade (NSW)
Assaulting battalions 53rd and 54th
Reserve battalions: 56th and 55th
15th Brigade (Vic)
Assaulting battalions 59th and 60th
Reserve battalions: 57th and 58th
61st Division:
184th Brigade
Assaulting battalions 2/1st Buckinghamshire and 2/4th Royal Berkshire
Reserve battalions: 2/4th Oxfordshire and 2/5th Gloucestershire
183rd Brigade
Assaulting battalions 2/4th Gloucestershire and 2/6th Gloucestershire
Reserve battalions: 2/5th Worcestershire and 2/7th Worcestershire
182nd Brigade
Assaulting battalions 2/6th Royal Warwickshire and 2/7th Royal Warwickshire
Reserve battalions: 2/5th Royal Warwickshire and 2/8th Royal Warwickshire
Of the Australian assaulting battalions, the 60th had not yet been in the front line on the Western Front; the 32nd and 54th had been there for part of a day, and the 59th somewhat longer; the 31st and 53rd for two days. Thus, the 5th Division of the AIF that had recently arrived in the Fromelles area was committed, with short notice, to attack a defensive system that was described as “well developed” 14 months earlier against the troops of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Division that had been holding these defences for all of this time.
Due to wet weather and other limitations, the artillery bombardment, originally scheduled for 3 days was reduced to seven hours, and while intended to commence at 4 a.m., it finally began when the mist cleared at 11 o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, 19 July, with the infantry attack rescheduled to 6 p.m. instead of as originally planned for 11 a.m.
Bean summarised the planning for the Battle of Fromelles as:
Suggested first by Haking as a feint-attack; then by Plumer as part of a victorious advance; rejected by Monro in favour of attack elsewhere; put forward again by G.H.Q. as a “purely artillery” demonstration; ordered as a demonstration but with an infantry operation added, according to Haking’s plan and through his emphatic advocacy; almost cancelled-through weather and the doubts of G.H.Q. – and finally reinstated by Haig, apparently as an urgent demonstration- such were the changes of form through which the plans of this ill-fated operation had successively passed. It was now definitely ordered. Haking arranged that the seven hours’ bombardment should be begun at 11 o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, July 19th, and the infantry attack at 6 p.m. Thus the assault, originally planned to be delivered before noon, was now to be made three hours before dusk.
In response to the bombardment that commenced at 11 o’clock, by 2 o’clock the enemy’s artillery began to answer the increasing British bombardment by shelling the communication trenches and reserve and support lines of both the attacking divisions. In the Australian area the ammunition and bomb-dump of the 31st Battalion was blown up and the battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Toll, and most of his signallers, messengers, and the medical staff of the battalion were wounded. By 3 o’clock, the enemy’s fire upon the trench-lines sharply increased, probably in answer to the bombardment.
The Australian 14th Brigade, having inadequate communication trenches, sent its third and fourth waves over the open fields between the ‘‘300 yards” and front lines at 5:25 and 5:31 p.m. At the same time the infantry of the 61st Division began to file out from its front line through sally-ports leading into No-Man’s-Land. It was with this manoeuvre that the infantry operation really began.
Compiled by Jim Munro, Vice President, Families and Friends of the First AIF.
Sources
Bean C. E. W., Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 Volume 3, The AIF in France 1916, Chapters 12 & 13 The Battle of Fromelles. Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1934
Edmonds J. E., Wynne G. C. and Becke A. F., The History of the Great War: Based on Official Document: Military Operations France and Belgium 1915, Macmillan & Co, London, 1927, pps 63-64, 70, 84,
Senior M., Fromelles, 19/20 July 1916 – A Success After All?, Stand To: The Journal of the Western Front Association, Number 83, August / September 2008, pp 33-36.
Australian Unit Diaries on-line at the Australian War Memorial website www.awm.gov.au
1st Australian Division, General Staff, Headquarters War Diary July 1916, AWM4-1/42/18
1st Australian Division, Administrative Staff, Headquarters War Diary July 1916, AWM4-1/43/18
1st Infantry Brigade War Diary July 1916, AWM4-23/1/12
4th Australian Division, General Staff, Headquarters War Diary July 1916, AWM4-1/48/4
4th Australian Division, Administrative Staff, Headquarters War Diary July 1916, AWM4-1/49/4
5th Australian Division, General Staff, Headquarters War Diary July 1916, AWM4-1/50/5
5th Australian Division, Administrative Staff, Headquarters War Diary July 1916, AWM4-151/2