The attacks on the Quadrangle and Mametz Wood are unusual in as much as that they resulted in the two divisions concerned both having their commanders removed. The generals could not have been more different.
Major-General T D Pilcher was born in 1858 and was a soldier of distinction who was first commissioned in the Northumberland Fusiliers at the age of twenty one. He saw considerable service abroad in West Africa, South Africa and India. In South Africa he commanded the 3rd Corps M.I. for a period and at a time when things were not going well he obtained a much needed victory, which was not as significant as its subsequent popularity in the British press. Nevertheless Pilcher’s name was familiar in many households. He was promoted Major-General in 1907 and later appointed an A.D.C. to King George V. He was given command of the 17th Division in January 1915 but, as with many others in his position, found mechanised warfare quite different to his previous experience. As we have seen he was prepared to question his orders and press his argument to the limit.
It is also possible that at the age of fifty eight he found the pressure in Divisional Headquarters too great. Writing after the war, Brigadier-General R J Collins, who was then attached to the 17th Division as a staff officer recorded that the average working day could be up to eighteen hours and implies that Pilcher’s demise was as much the result of exhaustion as his unpopularity at XV Corps Headquarters.
Pilcher himself, writing after the war, admits he had no appetite, for some of the tasks he was ordered to perform and finding himself ordered to repeat a frontal attack in broad daylight immediately following the failure of a night time assault wrote:
‘I protested… and begged to be allowed to confine my operations to a bombing attack, but the reply I received was a definite command to make a frontal attack. For several minutes I pondered and once again took up the telephone with the object of informing the corps that I must refuse to carry out that order, and begged to resign my command. Then I thought that the only consequence of such action would be that someone else would be put in my place and would probably carry out the operation in such a manner that far greater losses would be incurred than if I were to undertake it myself, and I issued orders in accordance with the instructions I had received, employing a minimum number of men. If four times as many had been launched the only consequence would have been four times as many casualties. Neither Mametz Wood, the high ground on my right, nor Contalmaison, the height on my left, had fallen, nor indeed were they being seriously attacked and in such circumstances to attack the low ground between these heights was iniquitous folly Two subsequent attacks were ordered by the corps with the same result.
When four or five days later Contalmaison and Mametz Wood were carried Quadrangle Support fell of itself.
If I had obeyed the corps more literally, I should have lost another two or three thousand men and have achieved no more. I was, as you know, accused of want of push, and consequently sent home. It is very easy to sit a few miles in the rear, and get credit for allowing men to be killed in an undertaking foredoomed to failure, but the part did not appeal to me and my protests against these useless attacks were not well received.’
Major-General T D Pilcher
Pilcher’s service as commanding officer of the 17th Division is not recorded in the Army Lists.
Major-General I Phillips, by contrast to Major-General Pilcher, had more limited military experience and prior to the war had only attained the rank of Major before leaving the army and entering the world of politics. At the outbreak of war he was in the Pembrokeshire Yeomanry (Territorials) and had been Member of Parliament for Southampton for eight years and was very well connected too. He was a Liberal friend of David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer soon to become Prime Minister.
Even allowing for the passage of time and our opportunity to analyse the Great War in armchair contemplation it is not easy to understand why Phillips was so eager to put his comfortable existence to one side and seek to resurrect his army career. He was quickly promoted Brigadier-General in charge of the newly recruited 3 Brigade and within two months was again promoted this time to the Generalship of the Division, albeit with the suspicion of political tinkering. The urgency and fervour of the time and ignorance of what was to come may have had something to do with his decision making but he deserves credit, nevertheless, for coming forward when it would have been easy to stand back and let others take the lead. There must have been someone else more suitable even allowing for the shortage of officers.
Whatever his abilities as a general, however, he came into the war with the major liability of being a politician. Politics, as we know, can engender much division and as a Liberal he would have had enemies. Moreover he was prepared to operate politically and enjoyed direct contact with Lloyd George. This in turn would be threatening to his superiors, someone who could step outside the chain of command and according to one report was prepared to do so; for example, when the commanding officer of the 16th Royal Welsh Fusiliers was sent home by Phillips at the request of Lloyd George to become his Parliamentary Private Secretary. XV Corps apparently knew nothing of this until later. It is alleged that the 38th Division had a strong political atmosphere permeating through its command and there was considerable friction.
As far as his military prowess is concerned Phillips never had much opportunity to prove himself, nor for that matter to fail either. He merely acted as the ‘go-between’ passing orders from XV Corps to his brigades. Any variance to the orders was quickly spotted by XV Corps, as with the orders for the attack which was never launched and for which he was dismissed. His proposal to attack with a battalion was soon countermanded and replaced with a platoon.
He never seemed to have questioned XV Corps strategy as Pilcher did. However his order to his troops to fall back in the face of machine guns and await another bombardment, made from the background of recent civilian life, might have seemed realistic and sensible to him but would not have had the approval of his senior commanders.
There are other instances when much larger attacks failed to materialise, for example, the attack of the 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers on Strip Trench, but the commander of the 7th Division who was responsible, Major-General Watts, was thought to be well suited to taking over from Major-General Phillips. It is more likely that as Phillips’ appointment was political so his dismissal was similarly engineered.
Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Horne was born in 1861 and first commissioned with the Royal Artillery in 1880. Progress thereafter appears to have been slow and it was some twenty five years later that he achieved the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. By 1910 he was a full colonel, thereafter his career moved on at considerable pace.
In May 1912 he was appointed Brigadier-General. Seventeen months later he was promoted to Major-General. Fifteen months later in January 1916 he was appointed Lieutenant-General in command of XV Corps. Although the events at the Quadrangle and Mametz Wood are not one of the better episodes of his career the overall view of the relative success in the south of the Somme battlefields of which he was a part probably resulted in his appointment as Commander of the First Army in August 1916 and he received a knighthood.
He was considered to be the foremost expert on artillery methods and innovation and is credited by some as having invented the creeping barrage.
After the war he retired and like Brigadier-General Evans started a family late in life before he died in 1929.
Brigadier-General H J Evans was born in 1861 the son of the Reverend T H Evans of Preston Capes, Northampton. On leaving Sandhurst he was gazetted into the King’s Liverpool Regiment and saw active service on the North West Frontier and in South Africa.
In 1914 he was Colonel in Charge of the Army Records Office at Shrewsbury. He was promoted Brigadier General of 115 Brigade which he took to France. He had a lively mind and some of his ideas were seemingly ahead of his time having resemblance to commando methods. Like Pilcher, he too was frustrated by the obduracy of those above him and often expressed that frustration.
While he expected to be sent home after the failure of 7 July at Mametz Wood he was not dismissed in the same manner as Pilcher or Phillips and it was some six weeks later he was replaced. He retired to Penralley, Rhayader the home of his wife who subsequently gave birth to a son. He involved himself in local politics and youth work with the scouts. He is described as becoming sad and melancholy in later years feeling he had failed in the latter part of his career. Writing in 1958 his son stated that he always thought his father had been sacked but his later conclusion that he was discarded because of his age and challenging nature was supported by Wyn Griffith at that time. Evans died in February 1932.
Brigadier-General H J Evans