26 NAVY NEWS, APRIL 2007
● Counter-attack... German troops in their ‘coal-scuttle’ helmets leap out of their trenches at Arras
“Burying our dead became an after sweethearts. Edward Crundall Everything suggested Nivelle marina Continued from page 25
A PLEA FOR HELP
were taught at Frieston, near Boston.
engineering feat, graves being blasted chose his place of birth, Whitfield in should postpone his plan, but the
“On one occasion I got first-class Kent, much to the displeasure of his
Frenchman was unrepentant. “Victory
bombing results,” a delighted Crundall
A BITTER WINTER
out with explosives.”
It was too cold to wash or shave. comrades. They promised him the next is certain,” he blustered. “The enemy
wrote, “but my shooting from the air
Canteens froze; the only way to enjoy
new triplane to reach the squadron if
will learn this to his cost.”
with a machine-gun was not a success:
A PLAN TO END DEADLOCK
a drink was to place the water bottle
he gave it a female name. Crundall
Nivelle was everything Douglas
I failed to hit the target.”
The rain was falling steadily in the
against your chest until the ice thawed.
relented: when Sopwith Triplane No.
Haig was not; he was animated,
The RNAS instructors were
valley of the Somme. It was now the
At night sentries stumbled across men
N5464 reached Naval Eight it was
charismatic, confident. Nivelle spoke
evidently more impressed by Crundall’s
117th day of the battle which bore the
frozen to death as they slept.
christened Doris.
fluent English and used it to persuade
performance in the skies than he was.
river’s name.
When not in the line, the men lived British doubters, unsure of his plans.
He was briefly posted to the air station
Like their comrades on the ground,
in a town of tents, Ovillers camp, a He could not win over Douglas
in Dover to patrol the Channel and
the men of the Royal Flying Corps
place barely less miserable than the A DESERT IN FRANCE Haig’s staff, however.
then, on February 10 1917, he crossed
– the air wing of the British Army
Ancre. By day the camp was shelled “The British Government has
to France, his destination Auchel-
– were hard pressed, so hard pressed
by German artillery, by night it was
MORE FRIGHTFULNESS
handed the British Army in France,
Lozinghem aerodrome near Béthune,
that they asked the Navy to help.
hounded by German bombers. lock, stock and barrel to the tender
home of Royal Naval Air Service
The Admiralty agreed. It asked its
The Steadies – they took their
TERRIBLE DESOLATION
mercy of Nivelle,” a worried John
Squadron No.8 – better known as
admiral at Dover to spare “eighteen
nickname from the battalion motto Charteris wrote. “If the French attack
‘Naval Eight’.
fighting aeroplanes for temporary
Steady, Hood – finally pulled out of
In secret, against a backdrop of a
fails we shall have the whole weight
duty with the British Expeditionary
the Somme in mid-March 1917. They
press blackout and censored letters,
of the German Army on top of us.”
Erich Ludendorff had vowed to ‘put
Force.”
were no longer steady; they were
nearly 400,000 workers and soldiers
things right’ in the West. The diagnosis
The admiral scraped together a
exhausted, weary.
toiled on the new German line of
was simple: the Western Front was too
handful of Sopwith Pup fighters, some
“The battalion made a sad picture,”
defence. They dug anti-tank ditches,
long; it had to be shortened.
Sopwith 1½ Strutters – so named,
wrote Freyberg. “The men [were]
laid barrier upon barrier of barbed
The German soldier died at the
apparently, because of the half struts
footsore and almost bootless while
wire, built underground bunkers, put
rate of almost 1,000 every day in
which connected the fuselage to the
their thin faces told of the mental as
up concrete blockhouses, excavated
1916. Nearly 3,800 Germans were
upper wings – and some French-built
well as the physical strain they had
zig-zag trenches, and laid waste to all
wounded on the Eastern and Western
Nieuport Scouts, and sent them to Le
endured.”
the land in front of the new positions.
Fronts – especially the Western Front
Vert Galant, a rather pitiful airfield
The men marched north. To where
As befitted the Wagnerian title of
– daily.
near Amiens.
and for what reason they did not
the new defensive line, the withdrawal
This was land soaked in German
It seemed even more pitiful in the
know.
to it was codenamed Alberich after the
blood, but Germany was preparing to
rain of October 25 1916 as Squadron malicious king of the dwarfs from in
abandon it voluntarily.
Leader Geoffrey Bromet and a handful
Robert Nivelle was the reason why.
the Nibelungen saga.
The axe would fall on a bulge in
of staff arrived to begin forming the
For better or worse, the fate of the
And malicious the withdrawal
the German front between Arras and
new unit.
British Army in April 1917 rested not
was. Der Gegner muss ein völlig
Soissons; the landsers would fall back
They found just seven sheds and
with a Briton, but with an Anglophile
ausgesogenes Land vorfinden, the
anywhere between half a dozen and
a farmhouse. No infrastructure. No
Frenchman.
German High Command dictated. The
20 miles to a new heavily-fortified
spare parts. No ammunition. Not
Nivelle took charge of the French
enemy must find a land completely
line to be built over the winter of
even any bedding. The men slung
Army in the dying days of 1916,
stripped bare.
1916-1917.
hammocks in a barn and settled in for
convinced he had the recipe for
This was scorched earth on an
The Germans called it the
the night. Thus was a legend born.
success on the Western Front. He
unimaginable scale. “Every village
Siegfriedstellung – The Siegfried
had distinguished himself at Verdun,
was reduced to rubble, every tree
Position. Tommy would label it the
The Royal Naval Division spent the
particularly with the impressive
felled, every road mined, every well
Hindenburg Line.
winter of 1916-17 regrouping and
recapture of its strongest fortress,
poisoned, every stream dammed,
recuperating.
Douaumont.
every cellar blown up or booby-
● The Richthofen scourge...
The sailor-soldiers had earned
Within a week of taking charge
trapped, anything which would burn
Manfred (left) and his younger
eternal plaudits for their efforts on the
of his nation’s Army, Robert Nivelle
was burned,” the soldier and novelist
brother and fellow ace Lothar
Somme. The Battle of the Ancre had
sowed the seeds of a grand offensive.
Ernst Jünger wrote. “We turned the
been an outstanding success for these
The poilu, the ordinary French
land which the enemy would advance
men dressed in khaki who clung on
soldier, would strike along the
THE DEVIL IN RED
across into a wasteland.”
fiercely to their naval heritage.
Chemin des Dames, an imposing 20-
Yet German frightfulness – that
The ranks were naval, the battalions
mile-long ridge northwest of Reims;
THE THRILL OF THE HUNT
word beloved by the British press –
were naval – Hood, Nelson, Drake
Tommy would help him by striking
went far beyond what was acceptable One month before Edward Crundall
– the chat was naval.
east around Arras with a diversionary
even in wartime. had arrived at Lozinghem, a wiry
The war, however, was distinctly
attack. The great offensive, Nivelle
Nicht ärgern, nur wundern. ‘Don’t Silesian officer with short, swept-back
a soldier’s war, a war of trenches and
promised, would reap “a splendid
worry, just wonder,’ one placard hair and icy, deep-set blue eyes, strode le petit rouge – Little Red. And the
craters, of field guns and howitzers,
harvest of glory for the British and
posted by the retreating Germans into the officers’ mess of Jagdstaffel British? The British branded him the
of cold steel and hot steel.
French armies”.
proclaimed. – fighter formation – 11 near Douai, Red Baron.
It was a war which had
Douglas Haig, the British Army’s
Soldiers smashed plates and 15 miles east of Arras.
cost the division 4,000
Commander-in-Chief, was not
crockery, mirrors, they thrust burning Twenty-four-year-old Leutnant April 1917 was a bleak month. The
dead and wounded in
convinced. “DH is sceptical about the
hot pokers into chairs, they looted, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen had Western Front was a wasteland. The
November 1916 alone.
French being able to deliver a decisive
wrecked châteaux for the sake of begun the war as an officer with the men of every side were weary after a
No man had
attack,” Haig’s intelligence chief John
plunder. The civilian populace vaunted uhlans, the Prussian cavalry. relentless winter. The snow would not
distinguished
Charteris recorded in his diary. “If it
– perhaps 100,000 men, women and Within a year, the ambitious stop falling, blanketing the desolate
himself or his
fails we shall be back at the position
children – were forcibly deported. Richthofen had transferred to terrain, thwarting Allied intentions in
battalion in the
of a year ago.”
By the beginning of April 1917 it Germany’s fledgling Fliegertruppe the air and on the ground.
Ancre fighting
● ●
◆
was all over. The German Army had – literally ‘airborne soldiers’ – as an Geoffrey Bromet summoned the
more than For three months Naval Eight was fallen back to its new front line, 15 observer. He longed to be a jäger, a pilots of Naval Eight to his office
Bernard in action with its eclectic assortment to 25 miles behind its old one. When fighter pilot, a hunter. He was not to in Lozinghem aerodrome. A big
Freyberg. He of fighters until it was pulled out of it was all over the Western Front was be denied his wish. offensive was imminent, he told them.
had led his the line and sent to Dunkirk. A new shorter by some 30 miles and Erich In four months from mid-September German observation balloons had to
men from aircraft was reaching the front line: Ludendorff had more than a dozen 1916 to the first week of January be shot down to prevent the enemy
the front the Sopwith Triplane. Fewer than 150 divisions to spare. 1917, Richthofen showed the faith in spotting the Allied build-up.
and led them were built, only the Navy flew them, Too late the Allies realised their his ability was not misplaced. The balloons lay five miles behind
to victory, and they would ensure ‘Bloody April’ foe had gone. In mid-March they He downed 16 enemy aircraft, the German front. Each one along
but he had was bloodier for the Germans than it tentatively probed the German lines earned Germany’s highest military a ten-mile stretch of the line had
been severely was for the Royal Naval Air Service. and found them empty – in some cases decoration, Pour le Mérite – the to be destroyed. The Army’s Baby
wounded. Today it looks hideously obsolete, the Hun had occupied the trenches legendary Blue Max – and command of Nieuports would shoot down the
Now, three a tiny, flimsy fabric-covered wooden barely an hour before. Jagdstaffel 11, commonly abbreviated balloons; the Navy’s triplanes would
months later, the machine whose top speed – 117mph “Masses of beer bottles – to Jasta 11. protect them.
lieutenant colonel – is little greater than many modern unfortunately empty – are strewn On arrival at Douai in his Albatros The weather cleared sufficiently on
returned to his battalion, family cars. about,” one British officer observed, D III fighter, Richthofen took a the afternoon of the fifth for Edward
the Hood. But in the opening months of 1917, “and guncotton, attached to shell momentous decision: he would paint Crundall and his friend Charles
February 1917 was a the Sopwith Triplane was a revelation. cases and grenades, has been left the fuselage and wings of his aircraft Booker to patrol the front.
bitter month. Frost, snow, It was that third wing which gave ready to explode when picked up or red. The pair spied an enemy biplane
wind, all conspired against the aircraft its name; it also gave the accidentally kicked.” “Everyone came to know my red and gave chase into the cloud. Nine
the men of the Royal Naval aircraft its edge over the enemy. It bird,” he wrote rather smugly. “My thousand feet above the front the
Division. was supremely manoeuvrable, able The German withdrawal should have opponents also seemed to have heard clouds parted and German anti-
“Men were forced to to out-turn, out-climb and out-run the taken the wind out of Robert Nivelle’s about the change of colour.” aircraft guns – nicknamed
take cover in shellholes or standard German fighter of the day, sails. As Manfred’s victory tally grew Archie by the British
any suitable depression,” the Albatros D III. Not only had the enemy forfeited so too did his reputation. Germans pilots – took aim.
Freyberg observed. The men painted names on the land Nivelle intended to seize from would come to know him as Der rote “Black puffs of smoke
side of the aircraft to personalise him with his great offensive, he had Kampffl ieger – the Red Fighter Pilot; began appearing around
● Naval Eight ace Lt them: Binky, Lily, Angel, Hilda, also bolstered his defences with the the French dubbed him le diable rouge us,” Edward Crundall
Edward Crundall Gwen, Brenda – mostly named divisions freed by the withdrawal. – the Red Devil – or, more commonly,
Bloody April.indd 2 14/3/07 15:51:15 Bloody April.indd 3 14/3/07 15:52:14
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