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Cut-Down SMLE – A Tunneler’s Gun?
During WW1 both sides dug beneath No Man’s Land to lay explosives to blow up enemy trenches. Sometimes opposing tunneler’s would meet and viscous subterranean fights would ensue. The myths around the use of ‘Obrez’ or cut-down rifles has ground over the years, and while its likely some were used, we’ll probably never know just how many were used.
I recently had a chance to look at a very handy SMLE, which while cut-down, still had its butt stock. I think this made this particular rifle a lot handier to use - still firing one of these in a narrow tunnel in the near-pitch black must have been horrific!
In this week’s TAB video I talk about the concept and realities of an Obrez SMLE and talk about what weapons British/Empire tunnellers used from their own accounts.
Check out the video:
Thanks for watching guys, check out the accompanying blog for more photos over on the TAB site, here!
At the
outset of the First World War the British Army had a motley collection of motor
vehicles including staff cars, trucks and a handful of artillery tractors. The
early fighting on the Western Front saw the hasty deployment of rudimentary
armoured cars but as the front lines became static thoughts began to turn to a
different kind of armoured vehicle. One which could punch through tracts of
barbwire, cross enemy trenches and was impervious to enemy fire. The
development of what later became known as the tank began in early 1915.
The name ‘Landship’ comes from the Landships Committee established by Winston Churchill,
the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was one of a number of key figures that drove the tank’s development. While early designs had been referred to as Landships by February 1916, the new armoured vehicles had been
codenamed ‘tanks’, Landships was believed to be too descriptive.
The following is a brief overview of the evolution of the various tanks developed by the British during the Great War.
Little Willie
'Little
Willie’ evolved from the Foster Company’s first attempts to build a tank, No.1
Lincoln Machine, with improved tracks developed by Sir William Tritton. Powered
by a huge 105 horsepower Daimler engine, the 16 ton 'Little Willie’ was no more
than a proof of concept. The development of a robust and reliable track system
was paramount and 'Little Willie’ was instrumental in testing various track and
steerage systems. Today 'Little Willie’ is displayed at the The Tank
Museum at Bovington.
Caption: Little Willie photographed at
Cricklewood, near London, during trials in late 1915.
Big Willie
Major Walter
Wilson’s design for a vehicle with a track that encompassed the whole
circumference of the vehicle was realised with the construction of 'Big Willie’ in late 1915. 'Big Willie’ also
nicknamed 'Mother’ and 'His Majesty’s Landship Centipede’ weighed in at an
impressive 28 tons and was the first tank to use the instantly recognisable
rhomboid track shape and introduce the gun sponsons either side of the vehicle.
Caption: 'Big’ Willie undergoing testing in
Burton Park in Lincoln, in January 1916. Note the rhomboid shape which formed
the pattern for all future tanks.
Mark I
The Mark I
was Britain’s first tank to see action during the Battle of the Somme in
September 1916. A refined version of 'Big Willie’ it utilised the now standard
rhomboid shape and was built in both male and female configurations. 150 of
this first batch of tanks were built. As lessons were learnt in the field
improvements to the design were made leading the Mark II.
Caption: Tank 'Clan Leslie’ preparing to advance on Flers during the Battle of the Somme, 15th September 1916. Part of the first wave of tanks to go into action.
Caption: A Male Mark I tank that broke down on its way to attack Thiepval on 25th
September, 1916. Note the steering tail and anti-grenade frame on top of the
tank.
The interior of a British heavy tank, note the empty shell racks next to the driver and the exposed engine and gears behind him (source)
Mark II / Mark III
The Mark II (see image #5) differed very little from the earlier Mark Is, incorporating some small changes
it was intended to be used as a training tank but shortages saw them pressed
into service during the Battle of Arras in April 1917. Just fifty
Mark IIIs were built, none saw action overseas, instead they remained in
Britain and were used to train tank crews.
Caption: The drolly named 'Lusitania’, a Mark
II male tank, of the 1st Tank Brigade moving along a ruined street in Arras.
Mark IV
The Mark IV
was the first true improvement over the earlier Mark I, with thicker armour and
shorter 6 pounder guns which were easier to aim. Production began in May 1917,
with over 1,200 built. They first saw action at Messines Ridge during the
summer of 1917 and later more successfully at Cambrai. The Mark IV was the most
widely produced and used British tank of the war.
Caption: A tank crashing through barbed wire
at the Tank Driving School at Wailly, during the special training for the
Battle of Cambrai, October 1917.
The effects of a direct hit could be
devastating, this Female Mark IV lost its tracks and took heavy damage (source)
Mark V
An improved
version of the Mark IV it utilised a new 19 litre six cylinder in-line Ricardo petrol
engine and transmission. 400 Mark Vs were built, first seeing action in the
spring of 1918. Several lengthened variants, the Mark V* and V**, experimented
with carrying a section of infantry but these proved to have poor
manoeuvrability and never saw action.
Caption: A column of Mark Vs carrying fascines
to help them cross the ditches of the Hindenburg line, September 1918.
Mark VIII
The Marks VI and VII were cancelled to enable concentration on production of earlier models and the new Mark VIII 'Liberty’, co-developed and manufactured with the US. The great improvement of the Mark VIII was that the engine was sectioned off from the crew, however, the war ended before any of the new tanks saw action.
Caption: With a twelve man crew the Mark VIII had seven Hotchkiss machine guns and two quick-firing 6 pounders.
Whippet Medium Tank
Designed to
be faster and more agile than the earlier heavy tanks, the Whippet could reach
speeds of up to 8.5mph and was armed with four Hotchkiss machine guns. Again
developed by Sir William Tritton at Fosters of Lincoln, the Whippet was
intended to exploit gaps made by the heavier tanks.
A tank appeared on the left front of my company position which I immediately attacked with machine-gun and rifle fire and also, as it came closer, with hand grenades. These unfortunately caused no real damage because the tank only turned slightly to the left but otherwise just carried on. He crossed the trenches in the area of the company on my left, caused us heavy losses with his flanking machine gun fire on trenches which had to a large extent been flattened, without my men being able to do anything about it.
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Lieutenant Braunhofer, a German officer holding a position near Flers, describes his first encounter with a British tank on the 15th September 1916, during Battle of Flers–Courcelette (part of the Somme offensive).
A rather dramatic photograph of a British MkI tank during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette (source)
The 15th September marked the British Army’s first operational use of the tank. It was hoped that this new secret weapon would break the stalemate and turn the tide. However, their first outing saw mixed results with some success, especially in areas which had been adequately prepared by artillery fire.
We had a convoy of 399 in yesterday but only 70 wounded. By far the majority of the sick were suffering badly from shell shock.
It is sad to see them – they dither like palsied old men and talk all the time about their mates who were blown to bits, or their mates who were wounded and never brought in.
The scene is burnt into their brains and they can’t get rid of the sight of it.
- British nurse Edith Appleton, serving at General Hospital No.1 recalling the sight of shell shocked casualties in early September 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.
Every Englishman has a picture of the Somme in his mind, and I will not try to enlarge it.
-
British author and playwright A.P. Herbert on the horrors of the Somme. Herbert himself was an officer with the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division and fought at both Gallipoli and the Battle of the Somme.
In 1919 Herbert’s book ‘The Secret Battle’ was published based on some of his experiences of the war.
At 0730 on the morning of the 1st July 1916, the Battle of the Somme began with the British Army suffering horrendous casualties. By the end of the first day the British Fourth Army had taken 57,470 casualties, of which 19,240 men were killed - the worst day in the history of the British Army. The French Sixth Army suffered 1,590 casualties and the defending German 2nd Army had lost 10,000–12,000 men. The scope and scale of the battle is difficult to comprehend with 55,000 British and Imperial troops attacking along a 16-mile long frontline to a strict timetable. Over 1,000 allied guns had bombarded the German lines for 7 days. The Germans, however, had in many sectors weathered the heavy bombardment in deep dugouts. In many places when the shelling lifted they clambered from their dugouts and set up their defences and awaited the attack.
The attack at the Somme had been in planning for months and the British had invested heavily in undermining the German lines to destroy strong points. The most spectacular event of the first day was the detonation of 19 mines of various sizes beneath German positions. The mines ranged from 200 lbs to 60,000 lbs of explosive, the explosion of the mines remains one of the largest non-nuclear explosions. Cecil Lewis of the Royal Flying Corps was flying a sortie when the mines were detonated, he recalled:
“The earth heaved and flashed, a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the sky. There was an ear splitting roar, drowning all the guns… The earthy column rose higher and higher to almost four thousand feet.”
The explosion of the 40,000 lbs mine under Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt (source)
Some men were killed before they even left their trenches, others were killed negotiating their own wire, many more were killed or wounded as they crossed the open ground of No Man’s Land. The British had been ordered to walk, not run, across No Man’s Land in open order to maintain cohesion between the advancing waves. Men had been issued with 250 rounds of ammunition, 2 Mills bombs, rations, an empty sandbag and entrenching tools in the expectation that once they reached and occupied their objectives they would need to dig in and defend their gains. This added weight was a death sentence for many as the German machine guns opened fire. When Maurice Symes of the Somerset Light Infantry came under fire and was wounded he jettisoned much of his kit dumping “everything except my water bottle and crawled into a shell hole and stayed there for a bit.”
All along the line experiences differed and Private Fred Ball of the Liverpool ‘Pals’ battalion described the first enemy trench they reached:
“Presently we came to the first enemy trench. How one’s thoughts race at such a time! But the surge of apprehension dropped, the steeled muscles relaxed and our hearts ceased their frantic overtime - at least, mine did - when we saw that our artillery had done its work well and truly. We had to pass this trench, but there was no need to jump over it for it was almost filled in - blown in.”
Just one sector of the battle: British trench map showing the objectives of the 29th Infantry Division for the first day of the Somme. The map has 3 objective lines with the first to be captured by 0750. However, Beaumont-Hamel, was not captured until November 1916. (source)
Elsewhere those that reached the German line found that their defences had not been destroyed as promised. In some areas the allied artillery bombardment had simply coiled the German wire into a huge impenetrable mass. Lewis gunner Ernest Bryan recalled that “the majority of their wire wasn’t cut at all, not by our artillery at all, not even by our trench mortars.” Entire companies were decimated, some battalions lost over ¾ of their strength. Cyril Jose of the 2nd Battalion, the Devonshire Regiment noted in his diary that “out of our battalion twenty-seven answered roll call after the battle.” Thousands of men died from their wounds in No Man’s Land, not only were the stretcher bearers unable to reach wounded men because of enemy fire but there were not enough of them to cope with the huge numbers of casualties. Days later the first wounded started to filter through the dressing stations and field hospitals back to the general hospitals. On the 4th July, British wounded began arriving at British nurse Edith Appleton’s hospital. Serving at General Hospital No.1 she recorded in her diary the insurmountable task medical staff faced:
“Wounded! Hundreds upon hundreds on stretchers, being carried, walking – all covered from head to foot in well-caked mud. We had horribly bad wounds in numbers – some crawling with maggots, some stinking and tense with gangrene. One poor lad had both eyes shot through and there they were, all smashed and mixed up with the eyelashes. He was quite calm, and very tired. He said, ‘Shall I need an operation? I can’t see anything.’ Poor boy, he never will.”
Wounded of the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers being tended in a trench after the initial attack on the 1st July. (source)
While there were some successes during the first day with the French Sixth Army making large gains and taking many prisoners on the right flank, the 17th battalion the Manchester Regiment broke through near Bernafay Wood and the 7th Division captured Mametz but despite these successes poor communications meant that these opportunities were not followed up and the chances of a general breakthrough were lost.
The Battle of the Somme continued for another four months until it finally ground to a halt on the 18th November 1916. Within the battle a dozen smaller, localised battles were fought at Bazentin Ridge, Delville Wood, Pozieres Ridge, Morval, Thiepval Ridge and Ancre. These continued efforts to break through would see further use of gas, mines and tanks. The battle became attritional and the British faced a steep learning curve. By the end of the battle just six miles of ground had been gained and over 1.2 million men on all sides had been killed or wounded.
I wish it to be impressed on all ranks the importance of the operation about to commence. Success will mean the shortening of the war, failure means the war prolonged indefinitely. Success or failure depends on the individual effort and fighting spirit of every single man. The Germans are now outnumbered and outgunned, and will go to pieces if every man goes into the fight determined to get through whatever the local difficulties may be. I am confident the 55th Brigade will distinguish itself in this its first battle. Let every man remember that all England and all the World is watching them.
Good luck. We meet again in Montauban.
- Brigadier General T.D. Jackson commander of the British 55th Infantry Brigade to his men on the eve of the Battle of the Somme.
Dear father, I am just writing a short note which you will receive only if anything has happened to me during the next few days. The Hun is going to get consummate hell just in this quarter and we are going over the top tomorrow when I hope to spend a few merry hours in chasing the Bosch all over the place. I am absolutely certain that I shall get through all right, but in case the unexpected happens I shall rest content with the knowledge that I have done my duty – and one can’t do more. Goodbye with the best of love to all from Percy.
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2nd Lt. Percy Boswell of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry writing to his father on the eve of the Battle of the Somme. Boswell died in the first hour of the Battle of the Somme, on 1st July 1916, he was just 22.
At two thousand feet we were in the path of the gun trajectories and as the shells passed, above or below us, the wind eddies made by their motion flung the machine up and down, as if in a gale. Each bump meant that a passing shell had missed the machine by four or five feet.
Grimly I kept the machine in its course above the trenches, waiting, tense and numb, for a shell to get us, while Sergeant Hall (his observer) worked the old camera handle, changed the plates, sighted, made his exposures. I envied him having something to do. I could only hold the machine steady as possible and pray for it to be over.
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Royal Flying Corps pilot Cecil Lewis describing a terrifying reconnaissance photography sortie during the preliminary bombardment before the Battle of the Somme in late June 1916.
An aerial photographer with a Graflex camera, c.1917-18 (source)
The British Army had entered the war with just two machine guns per battalion. In contrast the Imperial German Army had embraced the new weapon and fully integrated it into their infantry regiments. As the stalemate of trench warfare took hold the British quickly learned how to best use the machine gun and in October 1915, the Machine Gun Corps was formed. Grouping together the infantry’s Vickers Guns into companies of 10 guns which would be attached to a brigade while the infantry were increasingly equipped by the new Lewis light machine guns. New tactics for the massed use of machine guns were developed and published in the official manual ‘The Employment of Machine Guns’. One of the new tactics was ‘barrage fire’ where groups of guns fired indirectly to prevent enemy troop movements, give covering fire, or generally harass and suppress the enemy. The guns were angled high so their fire would arch over the battlefield in a similar way to the trajectory of artillery plunging to create a beaten zone. One of the first uses of this long range barrage technique was by the 100th Machine Gun Company at High Wood, during the Battle of the Somme, who fired a staggering 100,000 rounds over 12 hours. The Machine Gun Corps fought in every major theatre of the war, with its men winning seven Victoria Crosses. The Corps was finally disbanded in 1922 but the venerable Vickers remained in service into the 1960s.
Amid the chaos and carnage of the Battle of the Somme a
small wood became a focal point of the battle.
High Wood had originally been part of the German secondary trench line but when British troops stormed their
frontline it became the centre of their defences. Over three months the British made continued
attacks against the wood but the area’s geography meant British artillery was
unable to support the attacks with accurate shelling for fear of hitting
British troops. It was decided instead
that the next attempt would be supported by a concentrated machine gun barrage
to break up German resistance and hold off reinforcements. The 100th Machine Gun Company were ordered to provide barrage fire in support of the infantry’s attack they eventually fired for an unprecedented twelve hours.
Initial success during the Battle of Bazentin Ridge had seen
the British briefly occupy High Wood on the 14th July but that success was not
capitalised on and the wood was abandoned to the enemy the next day. On the 24th August the 100th Machine Gun Company began
setting up, training their guns on German positions 2,500 yards away. At 5.45pm seven of the Company’s Vickers Guns
opened up barrage fire to prepare the way for the infantry to go in.
Vickers gun crews resting near their guns (source)
At 6.26pm the battery ceased fire as it’s feared their fire was falling short. Captain Graham Seton-Hutchison, the company’s commander, believes the fire is effective and at 6.40pm
firing is resumed. The seven guns of the company again rained down indirect fire
onto the German line. The fire from the guns arced over the battlefield
plunging into German positions as the infantry of the 100th Brigade attacked the
wood.
Later that evening water for the guns’ cooling jackets began to
grow scarce but the company’s guns had no mechanical problems after two hours of continuous fire. The men kept themselves busy loading ammunition into the
Vickers guns’
250-round cloth belts. At 8.00pm the company began to alternately overhaul, clean
and replace the barrels of the guns to maintain their continued fire.
Captain Seton-Hutchinson later recalled:
“Prisoners examined at Divisional and Corps Headquarters reported that the effect of the Machine Gun barrage was annihilating, and the counterattacks which had attempted to retake the ground lost were broken up whilst being concentrated east of the Flers Ridge and of High Wood.”
Hundreds of
rounds per minute rained down on the German line with 67,000 rounds fired onto enemy positions by dusk. Sections from the Highland Light Infantry of the 33rd
Division worked hard bringing up fresh supplies of ammunition and water
for the guns’ cooling jackets which had to be continually refilled. The guns’ barrels became red hot and the company were so desperate for water that during the night the machine gunners gave
up their personal water bottles to fill the guns’ cooling jackets. The three attacking battalions of the 100th Brigade were unable to
break through the German line and had to fall back. They were unable to capture High Wood and attacks in the sector continued throughout August until the wood finally fell on
the 14th September.
The next day at 6.10am the company finally ceased fire, having
fired a total of 99,500 rounds in just over 12 hours, holding German
reinforcements at bay and covering the 100th Brigade’s attack and retreat. The British army continued to use their Vickers guns in the barrage or plunging fire role through the First and Second World Wars until they were finally retired in the 1960s.
On the 24th June 1916, the British Army began its largest bombardment of the Great War so far. The assault in the Somme sector was to be preceded by four days of heavy shelling before the first infantry would advance. A 25,000 yard stretch of German lines was targeted by over 1,000 pieces of artillery of all different shapes and sizes. From trench mortars to 60-pounders to huge 15-inch howitzers. General Sir Henry Rawlinson commanding the Fourth Army claimed “nothing could exist at the conclusion of the bombardment in the area covered by it.”
The largest previous British bombardment took place before the Battle of Loos when 484 (predominantly smaller) guns had shelled German positions. The bombardment at the Somme, however, was to be much heavier and continue for much longer despite being over a larger front. During the course of the preliminary bombardment batteries were allocated up to 3,000 rounds a day with some 1.5 million shells eventually fired.
Despite the large number of shells fired the majority were shrapnel shells, not high explosive, better suited to anti-personnel roles than cutting the thick German wire or destroying dugouts and trenches. This problem was compounded by faulty ammunition which failed to explode. Unlike at Loos the previous year the German forces along the Somme were defending in depth with the artillery fire having to split itself between the German first and second lines.
Private Frank Lindley of the
Barnsley Pals Battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment recalled:
“Their wire was about four times as wide as ours. The quantity of wire they had you couldn’t have got through that in a month of sundays. Our wire was narrow compared to theirs. When they were saying; “our guns will tear up the wire so that you can get through.” I thought “by god I hope so”, but no. We knew all the time we were in for a bashing and we couldn’t do anything about it.”
The Royal Flying Corps had been ordered to carry out reconnaissance sorties to photograph the impact of the artillery on the enemy wire and positions, however, heavy rain had prevented this. The allies decided that in light of uncertainty two extra days of artillery fire were needed and the infantry attack as postponed until the 1st July. The effects of the British bombardment varied massively with some sectors reporting the cutting of gaps in the wire while other sectors saw little impact. The bombardment continued day and night for another five days before the battle began and the first men went over the top.
Sources:
Images: 123456789 (Photographs taken during the course of the battle)
In 1915 the British Army was fast running out of shells for its artillery. The British Army in France had enough guns, but due to slow manufacturing of ammunition, not enough shells to fire. By mid 1915 British guns were restricted to firing only 4 or 5 shells a day. This ‘Great Shell Scandal’ led to the collapse of Herbert Henry Asquith’s government, forcing him to form a new Coalition government in 1916, it eventually led to his replacement by David Lloyd George.
The key ingredient of all ammunition, for both shells and small arms, at the time was cordite. Before the war the key ingredient of cordite, acetone had been purchased from Germany. By 1916 it was discovered that conkers, fallen from trees could be boiled down to make acetone. A new Ministry of Munitions, headed by Lloyd George, was set up and improvements to production and new factories and techniques were put in place. This eventually alleviated the crisis and enabled the manufacturing of up to 50 million shells a year, allowing the large offensives such as the Battle of the Somme to be mounted.
For seven days and nights we were under incessant bombardment. Day and night, the shells - heavy and light ones - came upon us. Our dugouts crumbled. They fell upon us and we had to dig ourselves and our comrades out. Sometimes we found them suffocated, sometimes smashed to pulp. Seven days and seven nights. Soldiers in the bunkers became hysterical. We wanted to run out and fights developed to keep them in the comparative safety of our deep bunkers.
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Stefan Westmann, a German NCO and later medical officer with the 29th German Division, recounting his experience of the immense British artillery bombardment during the Battle of the Somme. The artillery preparation of the German front line lasted seven days with over 1,000 guns in action. In all it has been estimated that some 1.7 million rounds were fired.
While the bombardment was horrific a the majority of the shot fired had little effect, being either shrapnel not high explosive or dud. Due to delays in the timing of advances and the shifting of artillery firing patterns onto reserve lines German infantry in forward positions had time to deploy from their bunkers.
I am just writing you a short note which you will receive only if anything has happened to me during the next few days.
The Hun is going to get consummate hell just in this quarter & we are going over the parapet tomorrow, when I hope to spend a few merry hours in chasing the Bosch all over the place. I am absolutely certain that I shall get through all right, but in case the unexpected does happen I shall rest content with the knowledge that I have done my duty - and one can’t do more.
Good Bye & wish the Best of Love to all,
from,
Percy
-
Second Lieutenant Percy Boswell’s (8th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry) final letter to his father, written shortly before he was killed during the Battle of the Somme on the 1st July 1916.
Above are some panels from graphic novelist/cartoonist Joe Sacco’s 'The Great War’. They make up a panorama of the preparations, build up and Battle of the Somme. Made up of twenty-four black-and-white plates printed on a continuous sheet of paper. The first day of the Battle of the Somme was the British Army’s most costly, in it’s 500 year history with 20,000 deaths and 60,000 casualties.
Inspired by the Bayeux tapestry Sacco’s work is brilliantly detailed, he spent a week researching in the photo archives of London’s Imperial War Museum, with representations of many of the British and Commonwealth units which took part in the ill-fated offensive. In second image above we can see Indian lancers pass Brodie helmeted infantry preparing for the attack. In later panels Sacco shows the men filtering through the trenches and the first moments of the attack with officers leading. He also shows the great bombardment which preceded the attack. He shows scenes from the rear of the frontline too, men digging graves, gunners manning howitzers, medical staff treating wounded and men of the logistics corps moving supplies.
While rooted in accuracy his work seeks more to convey the grand scale of the battle. Sacco’s work took over 8 months to complete and achieves what images and pictorial representations of history achieve best, they grab the viewer by the imagination and give a reality to a topic reading accounts cannot always accomplish.
