Fate of Bradford Pals in Battle of the Somme

Hunter-Weston was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1884. He served in India and was wounded. In 1896 he was on Kitchener’s Staff and became an officer in the Second Boer War. He gained a reputation for reckless courage and coolness in an emergency. He was one of General Sir John French’s Chief Staff Officers from 1904-1908 and Assistant Director of Training in 1911.

When war broke out in 1914, he was a Brigadier General in command of the 11th Infantry Brigade based in Colchester. This unit was part of the 4th Division on the Western Front which fought in battles at Le Cateau and the Aisne. He inspected his men from a motorbike.

At the start of the Gallipoli Campaign he was promoted to command the British 29th Division, in March 1915, which landed at Cape Helles near the entrance to the Dardenelles. Here he was responsible for a series of blunders which cost many lives, and earned him the title ‘the Butcher of Helles’. His plans were very detailed and complex, which often made them incomprehensible. If they failed on the first day, he simply repeated them on the second, and the day after that.

For his efforts he was promoted to Lieutenant-General and given command of the VIII Corps. Again he was responsible for failures and the loss of many lives at the Third Battle of Krithia. At the Battle of Gully Ravine in June 1915, he sent in the inexperienced Scottish 52nd (Lowland) Division, resulting in 50per cent casualties. He had the temerity to claim he had been “glad to have blooded the pups”.

He is also reputed to have awarded the Military Cross to an officer for shooting three of his men who were reluctant to ‘go over the top’. Hunter-Weston was finally invalided out of Gallipoli, apparently with sunstroke and exhaustion. Failures in the Gallipoli Campaign have been blamed on Hunter-Weston for vague orders resulting in confusion and lack of direction. He was criticised for a series of suicidal frontal attacks in broad daylight in the early weeks of the campaign.

He infuriated fellow officers when he was heard to say: “Casualties? What do I care about casualties?”

Hunter-Weston returned to command the VIII Corps when it was relocated to France in 1916. The Bradford Pals, on arrival there, found they were part of the 4th Army under Sir Henry Rawlinson. This was divided into four different corps, with the Pals part of the VIII Corps , divided into four divisions of nearly 40,000 men under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Hunter-Weston. This was to be their misfortune as his decisions had a profound impact on their fate.

Gerald Brenan, artillery observation officer with the 31st Division described him as “one of the worst for spit and polish”. Brigadier-General HC Rees was promoted on June 13 to be in charge of the 31st Division, consisting largely of Pals battalions from the North of England. Their tragic baptism was to be in the attack on the Somme, which got underway 107 years ago this week. Rees was summoned to VIII Corps headquarters to report to Hunter-Weston, who was insistent that a tailor should be sent for to convert his uniform to that of a Brigadier. He then launched into an explanation of the attack which was to be undertaken by his brigade on the German strong point at Serre. The elaborate plan was accompanied by 76 pages of close-typed instructions for his brigade alone.

Rees was far from happy with his brigade’s situation and prospects. The plan was that his men would have to advance across 700 yards of No Man’s Land up a rise at the top of which was a German observation post. His brigade was placed at the northern extreme of the main attack. Beyond lay ground over which no advance could be made, and beyond that the Commecourt sector, the target of a diversionary attack to be mounted by the Third Army. Rees was concerned that his men would be exposed because the Germans could hardly fail to know the extent of the attack and would be able to exert heavy fire power. He suggested to Hunter-Weston that a number of dummy trenches be dug to draw the enemy’s artillery. and argued that the time allowed to capture each objective was too short. After a heated disagreement, Hunter-Weston finally allowed an extra 10 minutes for the capture of an orchard 300 yards beyond the village of Serre. Rees believed he was regarded with suspicion for daring to argue. It was as if Hunter-Weston had planned for everything except the unexpected, which usually occurs in war.

Rees came away still concerned but meticulously tried to carry out preparations by simplifying the mass of instructions into clear orders. On June 29, 1916 Hunter-Weston addressed his men. The soldiers were left with the feeling that they could beat any number of Germans. In any case, they were told, there would be no opposition as the bombardment under preceding days would wipe them out. All they had to do was march towards Serre and German trenches, and capture them. Private George Morgan of the 16th West Yorkshires, who enlisted aged 16, described how Hunter-Weston stressed that Germans were “barbarians who didn’t understand honour”. He said God was on their side, and that it was going to be a tea party. “Some bloody tea party!”

After the speech, the Pals gathered with Leeds Pals. Some went for a walk in orchards near the village of Bus-les-Artois, where they were billeted.The countryside was beautiful; meadows full of flowers, including masses of poppies. Others sat around the church, names were carved on the tower.

A band played, then the musicians switched roles to become stretcher bearers. Some, like Jock Ewart, Bradford City goalkeeper, visited the local bar which had done a roaring trade all week. He had suffered from shell shock, but was to march with the rest of the Pals from Bus the following morning. His City team mate, Dickie Bond of the 18th, checked his Lewis gun, contemplating along with the rest, what tomorrow would bring. It was the last time to write letters home.
In the northern sector on the morning of the Somme attack, Hunter-Weston ordered that the massive Hawthorn Ridge mine should be detonated at 7.20am, 10 minutes before the attack. This had no practical strategic purpose, but it did alert the Germans who were given ample time to repulse the British advance. This grave error was compounded by the decision to lift the barrage on the German front line at the same time.
At Serre the Bradford Pals launched their attack on the morning of July 1, 1916. As they began the assault there was a hint of mist in the valley. The night before, Pals witnessed mass graves being dug off the Euston Road. It turned out to be the last resting place of many of them. 
The Somme valley had been chosen as the location ‘to end the war’; the objective to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun, stop the transfer of enemy troops from the Western Front, and wear down enemy forces. As it turned out, Field Marshal Douglas Haigh had chosen the most perfectly defended position. Hunter-Weston’s divisions suffered the worst casualties. They failed to capture any of their objectives. The Germans had the advantage of higher ground, and survived extensive bombing as they were dug in much deeper underground and had far more guns than anticipated. When the attack came they picked off soldiers with rapid machine gunfire.They were sitting ducks!

Hundreds of soldiers kept charging forward, German guns firing round after round. There were over 60,000 British casualties on the first day. Of the 1,394 Bradford Pals, 1,060 were killed or wounded. The ‘Big Push’ failed to bring an end to the war. Many more thousands of men were needed to take the places of fallen lions.
The Somme was a regarded as a terrible failure, with the finger of blame pointed at Hunter-Weston, who would not be involved in any further major offensive. The 1st Bradford Pals went in with 24 officers and 750 other ranks. From June 30 to July 3 they lost 11 officers, one missing and 10 wounded; 69 other ranks were killed or died of wounds; 111 were missing and 313 wounded, a total of 515, or nearly 67 per cent of its strength. The Second Pals’ casualties were 16 officers and 400 other ranks. Cemeteries and memorials tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission bear testimony to these brave young men. 
Public schools and grammar schools set up officer training corps to supply junior officers for the Bradford Pals. Nick Hooper, Bradford Grammar School retired Head of History, has spent years researching the 209 ex-pupils on the school war memorial. The junior officers led bravely from the front. It has been estimated that the life expectancy of a lieutenant was 42 days.
It wasn’t until July 4 that survivors of the First Bradford Pals were relieved by the Worcesters. They were led back to Bus-les-Artois with nerves shattered. The 2nd Pals were relieved later under darkness. They ploughed through mud and rain, shattered and confused. Some trenches were four feet deep in water. On July 5 the Pals were addressed by Hunter-Weston who told them next time “we will not only pull our weight, but will pull off a big thing”. 
Back in Bradford, families had no idea what the Pals had gone through. On July 7, the Bradford Daily Telegraph reported “very few deaths”, reflecting War Office propaganda, but in the next few days, lists of casualties appeared. Data by the War Graves Commission for the two Bradford Pals Battalions records that the largest single group of casualties was aged 19. A fifth of all casualties were under age when they joined up, half were 22 or younger when killed. From the First Bradford Pals, 122 officers and men are recorded on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. There are 74 names from the Second Pals. 
‘Hunter-Bunter’, as he was nicknamed, was elected Conservative MP for North Ayrshire in October 1916. He was an MP until 1935. He’s been described as a preposterous figure, self important, vain and one of the most incompetent commanders of the First World War. Cuthbert Headlam, his Staff Officer, frequently questioned his sanity. 
The Bradford Weekly Telegraph, on July 18, 1916, noted that “the noblest youth of the country walked open-eyed to their deaths on the ridges of the Somme.”

Bradford Pal survivor George Morgan wrote: “We were all pals, happy together. They were fine young men. That spirit lasted until July 1, 1916. We had so many casualties that we were strangers after that. After July 1, I hated the generals and the people running the country and the war. I felt we’d been sacrificed. We didn’t win a thing.”
On July 1, 1916, 100,000 Allied infantrymen attacked across the valleys. After four months the death toll on both sides totalled nearly one-and-a-quarter million. The brave British lions lost 600,000 to gain 45 villages, eight sizeable woods and an advance of nearly six miles. Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, stereotypical donkey general, died in 1940 when he fell from the turret of his ancestral home at Hunterston, Scotland.

Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, which bears the names of Bradford men (Image: Newsquest)

l Dave Welbourne recently travelled to France with Bus to Bradford, a group which commemorates Bradford men in the First World War. 

Bus to Bradford pays respects at Bradford Pals memorial, right (Image: Dave Welbourne)