Why were British soldiers ordered to walk shoulder to shoulder, slowly towards the German trenches.?

Question

Im doing an essay on "Was General Haig to blame for the deaths in the battle of the Somme?" and i have to base it on all these statements:
1. The barrage failed to destroy the German trenches.
2. The German planes saw that the British were building up forces in their front line.
3. Soldiers were ordered to walk shoulder to shoulder, slowly towards the German trenches.
4. Haig had to change his plans and attack earlier at the Somme to relieve the French at Verdun. Only 5 French
divisions were available to help the British.
5. The Germans simply hid in their deep dugouts for the seven days of the bombardment
safe from the British guns.
6. The barbed wire was not destroyed by the shelling. In fact it was more twisted and
difficult to cross than before.
7. The British soldiers walked in long lines across No Man's Land and were mown down
by the German machine guns.
8. Many of the British shells fired at the German trenches had failed to explode and so
the damage was limited.
9. The soldiers were ordered to carry 30kg of equipment with them.
10. The soldiers were ordered not to retreat.
11. Haig was over confident that the attack would succeed.
12. Haig never visited the front lines.
13. Haig had to attack to keep the support of the French.
14. The British would not change the timings of their barrages.
15. Communications were poor, mixed messages were sent to the commanders.
16. Haig did not change the tactics used in earlier battles that had failed.
17. Inexperienced British soldiers had been poorly trained.


at the moment im on number 3.. and can't remember why they were ordered to walk in a straight line.
please help
and also if anyone could write an expansion on one/some of those statements would be great!

Answer 1

At that time they used a technique called a "rolling barrage" wherein the artillery would place a screen between the advancing troops and the enemy line that would advance ahead of the friendly troops. They would also use machine gun fire from the flanks that would place a curtain of suppressing fire in front of the advancing line to prevent enemy counter attacks and to keep the enemy's head down.



If you moved to fast you risked running into your own artillery and machine gun fire

Answer 2

The "rolling barrage" or "creeping barrage" was used at the Somme, but it was still in its infancy - no one knew how fast it had to move, or how fast the infantry had to move behind it, or how close they needed to be. At the Somme, it moved too fast for the infantry and was too far ahead of them - the Germans had time to get out of their bunkers and man their guns. It was only later in the war that it became clear that the infantry had to be so close to the barrage that many of them would be wounded or killed by their own guns (but many fewer would die overall).



The soldiers needed to move slowly and in formation because many of them were volunteers who joined after the war had started - the British generals were not convinced they could fight except in formation (maybe they were right, we can't tell).



They were also weighed down with so much equipment because they needed to be able to get up their own defenses once they got into the German trenches - German doctrine was to counterattack immediately, to push the enemy back out before they could prepare themselves to defend their newly captured territory. The British knew they would receive a massive counterattack - the bombardment had alerted the Germans where the attack would come - and so they needed their men to carry their equipment with them (you couldn't move trucks or horse-drawn wagons across no-mans land with so many craters).



Note that not every soldier advanced slowly and in formation, but it did happen fairly often. The training, technology, and situation simply didn't exist for anything else to be possible - the only way to avoid those losses was for the British to refuse to attack (which means they don't develop the tactics they need to win), which could easily have broken the alliance with the French and lost the war. There was little that Haig or Rawlinson could have done better.



It is true that many shells didn't explode, but that's mostly the fault of the British government to provide working shells. However, the British bombardment was spread out over too large an area, limiting the damage to any one place. The bombardment was designed to destroy the German fortifications, rather than target and neutralize German artillery (artillery killed most of the men, not machine guns) and force the infantry to stay under cover and thus unable to fire. Also, the length of the bombardment meant that surprise was impossible, and the creeping barrage wasn't effective. Learning how to fix these problems needed new technologies (flash spotting, sound ranging, improved aerial reconnaissance, and so on to spot German artillery and target it without warning them beforehand) and much experience in battle - while some of it could have been theorized beforehand, actually doing it was another matter. I don't see a better bombardment being possible in 1916.



I'd also note that every single British offensive after the Somme saw some major change in their tactics - better creeping barrages, better surprise bombardments, better use of tanks and aircraft, and so on. The British gradually improved over time, and by 1918 were the most powerful army in the world and probably the most powerful the British Army has ever been.

Answer 3

Your making the mistake of judging an historical event using hindsight, I have spoken

to men who took part in the Battle and they all had a high opinion of Haig some

of your points are not true including No 12 and others have nothing to due with

Haig. They did not advance shoulder to shoulder but in extented order

Answer 4

It was a mixture of old tactics and new technology.

The traditional approach to infantry was to have your men march around in nice neat rows and columns.

That was because until rather late in the 19th century the main weapon of the infantry as the bayonet - for the first few centuries of gunpowder warfare soldiers used smooth bore muskets with black powder which took for ever to load and it was amazing if you hit anything.

It was though quite easy to coordinate a single platoon moving as one.

Now jumping to WWI they still fought like that with better weapons- and they developed the creeping barrage which was expected to tear up the german defences and keep their heads down until the Tommies jummped in the trench.

Later they devided the platoons into sections (Squads in the US)

and started using bounding over watch where one team would lay down suppressive fire with rifles and light machine guns while the other charged.

Answer 5

Because General Haig got his training in the traditional Napoleonic tactics of battle many decades before. Failings among British officers - if they were connected to royalty or politics - did not mean that they lost their jobs.



Sort of like being a Service Academy graduate here in the States.

Answer 6

They were told to 'walk not run' because they thought the Germans would surrender and they would be safe because most of them would be killed or wounded by the shelling.It also might be because they were using Lee Enfield rifles and in a group of men firing them is like a 'machine gun'. Unfortunately the Germans hid in bunkers underneath the trenches and the shells couldn't penetrate the amour of the bunker and some didn't explode (point 8)

Answer 7

You have to understand. Back then, all the generals knew were infantry and cavalry charges. There were no tanks or armored vehicles to speak of. No decent bombing to speak of.



You pounded the crap out of the enemy trenches with your artillery, hoping to destroy their fortifications and then you made an infantry charge. That's pretty much all you had.

Answer 8

That is a very old military tactic . That way were when the soldiers were using shields to protect them from arrows . That was not a very brite idea .