Official announcement was made on New Year's Day by the British Prime Minister's Department that General Sir Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the British armies in France, had been promoted to the rank of field marshal. His chief aids on the French front, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Rawlinson and Major General Sir Hubert Gough, commanding the Fourth and Fifth Armies respectively, were also gazetted for promotion.
In reviewing the work of the Allies for the past six months Field Marshal Haig made no secret of the fact that he had been forced by circumstances to assume the offensive in July somewhat earlier than he intended. Had he waited until his munitionment was complete and his raw drafts had acquired more experience, the Battle of the Somme might not have resulted so favorably to the Allies. The Germans were near the outskirts of Verdun and striking hard, and the moral and political consequences of the fall of Verdun would have been so serious that it was impossible to delay the offensive. Field Marshal Haig stated in his summing up that the Battle of the Somme was begun to save Verdun, to prevent the transfer of further German reenforcements from the west to the Russian or Italian fronts, and to wear down the strength of the enemy forces, and that all these purposes were fulfilled.
The brief period of so-called "peace" which had prevailed along the Somme during the closing days of 1916 was broken on New Year's Day, when a strong German patrol attacked the British trenches north of Vermelles. The British troops defending the position having foreknowledge of the attack, were quite prepared for a vigorous resistance and the Germans were driven off with sanguinary losses, leaving a number of dead and wounded on the field. In the evening of this date, under cover of a heavy bombardment, a German patrol consisting of about forty men made an attempt to reach the British lines to the north of Ypres. A few of the German troops succeeded in gaining the British trenches, but were ejected after a brief struggle. At other points on the front between the Somme and the Ancre the British troops started the new year in spirited fashion by carrying out effective counterbattery work and heavy bombardment of German positions in the neighborhood of Neuve Chapelle and Armentières.