All language subtitles for 1964-The Great War(BBC)-EP07-We Await the Heavenly Manna-E

It was 1915, the beginning of a new year,
the beginning of new hopes.

The old hopes, the
glorious ones of 1914, were

buried in the mud and
clay of trench warfare.

The Schlieffen Plan, Plan 17, the Russian
steamroller, in the hangover of this cold

dawn of 1915, they were
only memories of the time when

all Europe had been drunk
on the wine of quick victory.

It was stalemate, puzzling to generals
reared on the concept of the sweeping

manoeuvre, frustrating
to soldiers trained for

wars of movement,
disillusioning to new arrivals.

We'd been brought up on histories of the
Boer War and patriotism and heroics and

everything, and we thought the war was
going to be over before we could get there.

However, in about half a minute,
all that had gone.

I just wondered what the devil had got
into, because it was nothing but mud and

filth, and all the chaps who were already
there were, well, they looked like tramps.

They were all plastered and filth and dirt
unshaven.

During the long winter, General Joffe,
the French commander-in-chief,

pondered the new problems of trench
warfare.

The enemy had been driven back.

But he had firmly fastened himself upon
our soil, and we had been obliged to leave

in his hands for a length of time,
whose duration no one could now estimate,

a rich part of our country.

It was not enough that we had prevented
the enemy from winning the war.

It was essential to achieve a complete
victory over him, reconquer Belgium,

the north of France, and our precious
provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

This was the heartbreaking problem which
faced me.

To hold their conquests, the Germans were
building a fortress.

They threw up earthworks, they dug
defensive interlocking trench systems,

they strengthened their lines with barbed
wire and machine guns.

Wire and guns saved men.

Men to form a new striking force.

Falkenhayn, chief of the German General
Staff, had wanted to use it to smash the

British into the sea while they were still
weak in numbers.

But Germany had two fronts, west and east.

And in the east, the Russian
masses were pressing Germany's

Austrian allies back and
back into the Carpathian passes.

Beyond were the rich plains of Hungary's
homeland.

Falkenhayn had to give up his plan to
attack the British.

The need for some relief
to the Austrians by means

of an attack in another
spot became imperative.

With a heavy heart, I
had to make up my mind to

employ my only available
reserves in the east.

For this relief attack, Falkenhayn chose
the Masurian Lakes region of East Prussia,

where the Russians still occupied a wide
tract of pine forests and lakes,

carved out by the glaciers in the ice ages
of long ago.

Now it was winter, January 1915.

Through blizzards and temperatures below
zero, men and beasts of two German armies

moved up to their assault positions
opposite the Russian 10th Army.

The German plan was bold and simple.

Outflanked the Russians
from the north, curl round them,

and herd them into the forest
of Augustov and destroy them.

By the beginning of February, just as the
Germans were ready, fresh blizzards

screamed through the endless forests, piling
snowdrifts across the roads and tracks.

Movement became almost impossible.

But Hindenburg, the duer and massive
commander-in-chief, gave the order to attack.

On February the 8th, the two German armies
struck.

Behind fire from
batteries of howitzers, they

stormed forward, driving
the Russians before them.

Once more, a great Russian army was
retreating like a clumsy, helpless,

and bewildered beast under the blows of a
drover.

For ten days, 350,000 men floundered through
the snow to escape the German pincers.

But always they were remorselessly
shepherded south and surrounded.

By the 21st of February, the German
victory was complete and terrible.

The corpses of a
hundred thousand peasant

soldiers of the Tsar
lay frozen and forgotten.

The horror of the campaign chilled even
Hindenburg himself.

The name of the winter
battle in Mosuria charms

like an icy wind or
the silence of death.

Men will ask themselves, Have earthly
beings really done these things?

Or is it all but a fable or a phantom?

Are not these marches in the winter
nights, that camp in the icy snowstorm,

that last phase of the
battle in the forest of

Augustov, but the creation
of an inspired human fancy?

The people of Petrograd were told the
stark facts of the disaster.

A hundred thousand
dead, a hundred and ten

thousand prisoners, and
three hundred guns lost.

But the reason for the defeat was
concealed from them.

The Russian army was starved of weapons
and ammunition.

In December 1914, the
Russian chief of staff at

the front had written
to the minister of war.

The men are saying, Why should we perish
of hunger and cold, without boots?

The artillery is silent, and we are killed
like partridges.

Russian prisoners liberated by the
Cossacks abused their rescuers.

Who asked you to rescue us?

Fools!

We don't want to hunger and freeze again.

The Russian guns needed 45,000 shells a
day.

In February 1915, Russian factories were
supplying them with only 20,000.

This was not a war for soldiers alone.

It was a war for industry too.

And only Germany, the most modern industrial
power in Europe, was equipped for it.

Yet, short of heavy guns, short of
ammunition, short even of rifles,

the Russian army in Galicia
continued with indomitable

peasant courage to
force the Austrians back.

Before them, stood the Austrian fortress
of Przemysl, the last rock against the

Russian tide that threatened to engulf
Hungary.

Behind the shattered forts of the
perimeter, the Austrian garrison had been

cut off for three months, and
food was now so short that the

population were eating cats
and dogs as well as horse meat.

The Austrian commander decided on a last
desperate attempt to break out.

It failed, and on March 22nd, the great
fortress surrendered.

107,000 men and 20,000 sick and wounded
fell into Russian hands at Przemysl.

Croats and Ruthenians and
Hungarians and Germans, the

unwilling and the willing
soldiers of the Emperor Franz Josef.

The feeble state of the Austrian army
haunted Falkenhayn.

The appeals of the Austrians for
assistance never ceased.

Symptoms of disintegration
became more and more evident

in formations of Czech
and southern Slav recruits.

Once more, Germany had to help Austria
against the Russians.

But how?

Hindenburg and
Ludendorff still passionately

believed that the war
could be won in the east.

They repeatedly told the Kaiser that if
only enough forces were given them,

they could destroy the whole Russian army
by huge pincer movements.

But in the end, the Kaiser
rejected their grandiose

ideas and accepted
Falkenhayn's less ambitious plan.

Falkenhayn proposed a breakthrough between
the towns of Gorlice and Tarnow,

followed by a lightning pursuit
across the communications

of the Russian armies
that threatened Hungary.

It wouldn't win the
war, but it would be a

smashing blow that would
paralyse the Russian army.

April brought Europe her first wartime
spring.

The grim Russian winter melted into a
landscape of astonishing beauty.

The troops of Falkenhayn's
striking force settled down for

the long train journey to
the wide horizons of the east.

This was an army made for victory.

Only the Marne and First
Ypres marred a record of success,

stretching back through
Sedan in 1870 to Waterloo.

At fixed intervals, the packed trains
rolled eastwards.

Speed, 19 miles an hour.

180 trains to each army corps.

With the army went the now familiar German
battering ram, medium and heavy howitzers.

Huge stocks of shells to sweep away the
Russian defences like a cyclone.

The breakthrough was to be made by the
11th Army, under von Mackensen.

His orders were clear.

The 11th Army must make quick forward
progress.

This is of fundamental importance.

Only in speed lies the
guarantee that we should be

able to stop the enemy
bringing up his reserves.

By the 28th of April,
170,000 men and 1,000

guns had been slotted
into an 18-mile front.

No shortage of ammunition here.

Falkenhayn wrote...

By the spring of 1915,
GHQ was relieved of any

serious anxiety with
regard to munitions supply.

May the 2nd.

From 6 till 10 in the morning,
a thousand guns, half of them heavy,

smashed the Russian defences to shreds.

Neither fire, nor trenches, nor barbed
wire could stop the assault.

Although our ranks became thinner and
thinner.

After 35 minutes, and despite the tropical
heat, we reached the enemy.

The Russians clung ferociously to their
trenches, but in another 10 minutes,

the job was finished.

Von Mackensen signalled to the Kaiser.

I report to your majesty that the order to
make the enemy's positions in the

Carpathians untenable has been carried
out.

The enemy is in retreat along the whole
line.

Against the weight and power of the German
pursuit, the Russians could do nothing.

A Russian commander
wrote, The retreat from

Galicia was one vast
tragedy for the Russian army.

No cartridges, no shells, bloody fighting
and difficult marches, day after day.

No end of weariness, physical and moral.

Faint hopes followed by sinister dread.

For 11 days, the German
heavy artillery swept away whole

lines of our trenches and
their defenders with them.

We hardly replied.

There was nothing to reply with.

A Russian general had sent an urgent
message to Petrograd.

There are no rifles.

150,000 men are without rifles.

From hour to hour it is worse.

We await the heavenly manor from you.

At the end of May,
Mackensen's troops marched

in triumph into the
fortress city of Przemysl.

It had been in Russian hands for only two
months.

The victorious Germans and
Austrians had marched more than a

hundred miles through the heat
and dust of the Galician summer.

They had forced the Russians to retreat
along the whole Carpathian front.

As they entered Przemysl, their triumphant
progress was being celebrated 450 miles

behind them in Berlin
with flags and bell ringing

and the cheers of a
proud and grateful nation.

The fall of Przemysl marked
yet another stage in the

dumb but terrible agony of
the Russian peasant armies.

The Russian soldier was a very good
soldier provided he was properly led.

But without officers...

See, officers were wounded or killed.

The simple Russian mushyk had not much
initiative.

After all, they were mostly peasants.

Very simple, good-natured men.

Very big and tough.

But without guidance, they were lost.

And very often, they...

To our great surprise, they surrendered in
droves.

By the time they were
captured, some Russian

soldiers had been
retreating for a month.

Over a hundred thousand of their comrades
had been killed.

The Russian army was at the end of its
power.

The uninterrupted fighting in the
Carpathians had costed heavy losses.

The deficit in officers and men was
terrifying.

The lack of arms and ammunition was
catastrophic.

For the Russian prisoners, the unequal
struggle against Germany's might was over.

And they celebrated the miracle of still
being alive.

On the Western Front, spring brought new
hope.

It was a time for battle again.

And the Germans knew it.

Their 400 miles of trenches, behind barbed
wire, sometimes as thick as a thumb,

walled the French off from their lost
lands.

As the weather improved, the French would
be coming to take them back.

The Germans watched and waited for the
attacks they knew must come.

Opposite them,
sometimes half a mile away,

sometimes only 20 yards,
the Allies also waited.

The temporary lines where
the balance of war had settled

at the end of 1914 were
acquiring a squalid permanence.

Haphazard sections of trench were deepened
and joined to each other.

Drains were scooped in the mud.

Holes in the ground had been converted
into dug-outs.

They were at least
splinter-proof, which meant

much to an army
fighting an artillery war.

The soldiers knew something must happen
soon.

A French dragoon wrote, In spring,
the benumbed army stirred itself,

stretched its legs and awoke to the fact
that a new era was about to begin.

The change took place with the greatest
mystery.

Rumours, coming no one knew where from,
began to circulate.

The basic question
of 1915 was, Could the

Allies break through the
German defensive works?

Lord Kitchener expressed the widespread
doubts.

I suppose we must recognise that the
French army cannot make a sufficient break

through the German lines of defence to
cause a complete change of the situation.

The German lines in
France may be looked upon

as a fortress that cannot
be carried by assault.

But the Germans left General Joffe, the
French commander-in-chief, with no choice.

The best and largest portion of the German
army was on our soil, with its line of

battle jutting out a mere five days' march
from the heart of France.

This situation made it clear to every
Frenchman that our task consisted in

defeating this enemy and driving him out
of our country.

But how?

French observers peered at the German
front line.

Week by week, month by month,
battle by battle, the Germans

had strengthened and deepened
their defensive position.

From behind the trenches, the gun flashes
told the Allies of the power and numbers

of the artillery supporting the German
soldiers.

The answer, the French concluded,
lay in artillery and high-explosive shell.

Given enough, the infantry
would merely occupy German

defences already ploughed
up and made harmless.

In the words of Sir Douglas Haig,
commanding the British First Army,

when there were
sufficient shells, we could

walk through the German
lines in several places.

But were there sufficient shells,
sufficient gun power?

When war broke out,
France had only 300 heavy

guns to oppose 3,500 German
medium and heavy guns.

Since then, only 48 new
heavies had been delivered,

and 18 of those had blown
up in the gunners' faces.

Now, in a desperate attempt to catch up,
they were pressing into service the old,

slow-firing big guns stripped from
fortresses like Verdun and Toul.

The BEF, by the first
half of 1915, had only 10

heavy guns per division
against the German 20.

Incidentally, every time our artillery
opened up in them at that particular time,

they would come back tenfold.

If our artillery fired about five or six
rounds, they'd fire 50 to 60 back at us.

But all worse, it was that unequal bashing
that got the infantrymen.

We couldn't, if we'd
got a gun at all, we had a

machine gun, it's true,
but that was a puny effort.

It was these colossal shells that rained on
and on, and we could do nothing about it.

The earthworks and
the barbed wire, such as

they were, had been
blown to pieces long since.

And the result was that practically the
whole of the front line around the town of

Ypres was a series of holes in which men
crouched and waited for the end.

In February, Sir John French
rationed his heavies to eight

rounds a day and his field
guns to ten for ordinary purposes.

A British gunner wrote to Lloyd George,
We don't know or care who is to blame.

We only know that we are being starved to
death for want of shells, and our infantry

are being fated daily to a more and more
terrible task.

Trench mortars and mine throwers were
lacking too.

The soldiers of the country
that thought itself the

workshop of the world were
reduced to homemade equipment.

They invented the hairbrush
grenade, a slab of gun cotton

fastened to a piece of wood
and lit with a match or cigarette.

There was also a jam tin filled with
shredded gun cotton and nails.

Some units improvised trench mortars.

A corporal said to me,
Come along here, we are

going to let our mortal
come and have a look at it.

It was a homemade mortar.

It looked to me like a piece of rainwater
pipe.

And it was bound all
round with what appeared

to be a leather throng
to take the resistance.

There was a plate bolted on the back and a
touch hole with a piece of fuse in it.

The charge was a screw of gunpowder in a
paper screw.

And the bomb was a jam tin, filled with
explosive.

They lit the fuse and all stood well away.

Well, the bomb just went off, whizzed
over, tumbled over two or three times and

dropped somewhere near the German French
and went off with a big bang.

The French had to improvise too.

In some parts of the country, the manufacture
of munitions became a cottage industry.

As the day of the Allied
offensives approached, the shell

shortage remained desperate
at the British base depot.

It was the base ammunition depot of the
Southern Armies.

And it was, I suppose, an ex-builder's
yard.

It consisted of about a
couple of sheds, room

to put a couple of railway
trucks or wagons in.

And the total stock
couldn't have exceeded

about 2,000 rounds of
ammunition of all kinds.

We used to issue it in
half-dozens, dozens, and

sometimes single rounds to
some of the bigger batteries.

And I suppose one day's loading would be a
couple of railway trucks.

And, of course, it was perfectly absurd.

The ammunition we had was treated as if it
were gold ingots.

It was laid out in very neat rows.

It had to be counted every day and lined
every day and dusted every day.

Early in 1915, the Allies
began a series of attacks

to wear down and soften
the German defences.

Suddenly, a thunder clap right beside us.

An enormous fountain of
black smoke seems to spring out

of the ground, hurling
hundreds of clods up to the sky.

And they rain down like hailstones on our
heads.

It's a heavy melanite shell just a few
feet away.

We run in all directions.

Then, one by one, we recover.

The French spring offensives cost them
240,000 men, killed or wounded.

On March the 10th, the British attacked at
Neuve Chapelle.

There were enough hoarded shells to smash
the German frontline trench.

But the German second line was not
destroyed.

The attack could go no further.

On April the 6th, the French attacked at
Saint-Mille to pinch out the German salient.

They failed.

But these were only preliminary attacks.

The real attempt to break through the
German defences was planned for May.

But it was the Germans who attacked on
April the 22nd.

Their purpose was to cover
up their troop movements

away from the Western
Front to Gorlice Tarnow.

Against the French sector at Ypres,
they let loose a hideous new weapon,

which science had added to the German
soldiers' armoury.

Poison gas.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon,
there was a very heavy bombardment started.

And a little later on, we saw the effects
of this.

The first thing was, hundreds of French
troops running away.

They were just like ants.

They weren't sticking to roads or paths or
anything else.

They were all over the fields and breaking
through hedges and everything.

No arms.

They'd all gone.

Clutching their throats and saying,
Gaz, gaz, and so on.

We tried to rally them as they got level
with us.

And they wouldn't stay.

And all we got from them was alley man,
bum, bum, milad, milad.

And they kept going.

And we could all just turn around and
shoot them, which we did.

Run away from us.

And momentarily, we looked in here.

We saw this green cloud coming along the
ground.

The gas attack made a gap in the allied
lines four and a half miles across.

The Canadians were thrown into the breach.

And for three weeks, they
held on alongside British

and French troops and
braved the new horror.

One chap had his hand blown off.

And his wrist was fumbling around,
tearing at his throat.

The effect of this gas was to form a sort
of foamy liquid in one's lungs.

And more or less, in time, drown one.

If you were unlucky.

Because a lot of the men died pretty
quickly.

Others were soon down, dying.

They were, in fact, drowning from this
beastly foam coming up from their lungs.

There must have been two or three hundred
men.

And they were wriggling and wreathing in
all positions, tearing at their throats,

their faces black.

And an RAMC sergeant, he stood by there.

And he was... he looked... Well, I've
never seen a man look so despondent.

He says, look at the bald bastards.

He said, we can't do anything for them.

A young German officer wrote, The effects
of the successful gas attack were horrible.

I do not like the idea of poisoning men.

Of course, the entire world will rage
about it, at first, and then imitate us.

This was the day when the last vestige of
glamour and glory went out of war.

Behind its ancient moat
and ramparts, Ypres itself

became a symbol of resistance
and unstinted sacrifice.

The great German shells set the town
ablaze.

Centuries of history crumbled at each
blast.

But on a sudden, fierce destruction came
tigerishly pouncing.

Thunderbolt and flame
showered on her streets to

shatter them and toss her
ancient towers to ashes.

The shelling had started again in Ypres.

And by the time we got
up, marching up to the town,

it looked as though the
whole place was on fire.

Buildings right and left of us were
blazing away.

And the heat was so intense in some of the
narrow streets that, as we were marching

up in column of four, the
men on the flanks had to

creep into the middle to
avoid the blistering heat.

And one could see the
haggard desolation on their

faces as they also surveyed
the havoc around them.

The German attacks at Ypres rammed home
the terrible lesson.

This was a new kind of war.

A war of engineering and chemistry and
industrial power.

The German successes at Ypres and in
Russia had been gained in the Ruhr.

Lloyd George, the
British Chancellor of the

Exchequer, saw what
the Allies were up against.

The Germans and Austrians, between them,
had, even at the commencement of the war,

much larger supplies of war material and
more extensive factories for the turning

out of supplies than the Allied countries
possessed.

And they have undoubtedly since made much
better use of their manufacturing

resources for the purpose of increasing
that output.

Germany is the best organised country in
the world.

And her organisation has told.

In Britain, guns and shells
were still being produced

by a system designed for
small armies and small wars.

The main supplier was Woolwich Arsenal.

Woolwich was an arsenal, not a factory
like Krupp's, geared for mass production.

By the spring of 1915,
the war office had placed

munitions orders with
over 2,500 firms in Britain.

But there is a long gap between demand and
delivery.

Less than a quarter of what had been
contracted for was actually delivered in time.

And no attempt had yet been made to
mobilise the whole of British industry.

For Lloyd George, a Crusader by nature,
here was a cause.

Soldiers were dying in
France, and muddle and

inefficiency at home
were letting them down.

On February the 22nd, he wrote to Aswith,
the Prime Minister.

I sincerely believe that we
could double our effective

energies if we organised
our factories properly.

All the engineering works
of the country ought to

be turned on to the
production of war material.

While this process is going on,
the population ought to be prepared to

suffer all sorts of deprivations and even
hardships.

On May the 9th, the French and British
armies launched a new offensive.

The British artillery
had enough shells for

only three quarters of
an hour's bombardment.

And nine out of ten shells were shrapnel,
useless to smash deep defensive works.

Once more, the Allied
soldiers opposed their

muscles and flesh to the
cruel lash of German steel.

Half of us were knocked out, either killed
or wounded.

And going across the meadow, there were a
lot more killed.

And we all stopped and laid down,
trying to get what shelter we could from

the tremendous rifle fire which was coming
over.

And then a sergeant just in front of me
jumped up and said, come on men, be British.

We jumped up and followed him and he ran
about six yards and he went down.

Well, we ran on about another 20 yards
toward the German trenches.

The German trenches were literally packed.

They were standing about four deep, firing
machine guns, rifles, straight at us.

The attack on the Aubert ridge had been
stopped in its tracks.

But the worst of the shell
and gun shortages was yet

to come in the offensive
at Festubert a week later.

We were in a battery of 15 pounders,
four guns, and consistently short of

ammunition, being allowed four rounds per
day for registering, etc.

As the intensity of the battle grew to May
the 24th, we ran completely out of

ammunition and were left there absolutely
helpless.

Silent guns, a mutilated army,
spring hopes dashed.

Yet all this was still hidden from the
British people at home.

In their censored newspapers
they read comforting

accounts of devastating
British gunfire.

At 5am the bombardment began.

Then the infantry swept forward.

The day's German soldiers in their front
line trenches were helpless, under the

weight of the intense bombardment and
determined attacks of our British men.

It was Sir John French himself,
the commander-in-chief in France,

who put an end to the conspiracy of
silence over shells.

He told the story of
the shortages and their

effects to the military
correspondent of the Times.

On the 14th of May, the truth was out.

The infantry did splendidly.

But the conditions were too hard.

The want of an unlimited supply of high
explosive was a fatal bar to our success.

The reality of the war
was at last coming home to

Britain, as it had already to
the French and the Russians.

The reality of a new kind
of war, a war of industrial

might, in which Germany
was so far overwhelming.

This was a war which France and Britain
had hardly begun to fight.

And this was a war which was wrong but it
made its massive impact, which.

And the military had to force the modern
magic set of intelligence to the