After listening to my war stories and some dedicated blog reading, Rachel decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about, so on the long weekend in May, we did a World War one tour. In 2 and a half days we wouldn’t have time to cover the whole war, so we concentrated on the Somme and Arras. This post covers the Somme.
The Somme battlefield was the site of a tremendous number of casualties and total destruction but is really a very compact area. In order to visit the Somme, we drove to Albert on Friday night to get an early jump on the region. We hit a number of highlights on the tour, but it was only a total of 45 minutes driving time from our townhouse to Sheffield Park at the northern end of the Somme with many stops in between. Wine Bob and I had done a similar trek in January, so we stayed at the same location, had dinner at the same Bistrot, breakfast at the same patisserie, and got some sandwiches to go once I explained that it was the guest’s obligation to pick up the tab in the Michelin Starred restaurant in the Ancre Valley.
The first stop was the Lochnagar Crater, the largest mine blown during the first world war. The Crater was 69 feet deep and 330 feet wide and was blown at 0728 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 01 July 1916.
The crater was one of 19 blown on the first day of the Somme, and the best-preserved example of a mine crater.
The location of the trench lines is shown on the map. The crater was under the German front line, and the plan was to blow the crater then capture it as a forward operating trench.
The tunnel to set the mine was 95 feet deep and over 900 feet long, and the explosive chamber filled with 60,000 lbs of explosive. The British successfully occupied the crater and gained ground, one of the few successes of the day. The view from the crater overlooking the British front line where the mine tunnel was started.
The crater was privately purchased in 1978 by Englishman Richard Dunning to preserve the battle site and prevent the crater from being filled in. There a number of memorials on site including the memorial to the nurses.
And of course, a memorial to the tunnelers, who dangerous work deep under ground made the crater possible.
One of my favourite memorials is the empty chair, symbolizing the loss to the families at home when their soldier did not return.
Our next stop was the Pozieres Memorial to the Missing. The Memorial commemorates over 14,000 casualties of the United Kingdom and 300 of the South African Forces who have no known grave and who died on the Somme from 21 March to 7 August 1918.
In addition, there are now 2,758 Commonwealth servicemen buried in this cemetery. 1,380 of the burials are unidentified. The majority of the soldiers are from the latter phases of the 1916 Somme Conflict, but a few are from 1918.
The scale of the cemetery is overwhelming. The numbers become more real as you absorb the rows of headstones and glance at the number of cemeteries you drive past.
We made a stop at the Tank Memorial just up the road. The memorial commemorates the first use of tanks at the battle of Flers-Courcelette.
A total of 6 tanks went forward with the Canadian assault. Only one tank made it to the German lines, but this secret weapon had a psychological effect on the Germans and provided the debut of an entirely new class of weapons.
Across the road is the Australian memorial commemorating Australian losses on the Somme.
The major contribution of Australian troops to the Somme offensive was in the fighting around Pozières between 23 July and 3 September. The 1st, 2nd and 4th Australian Divisions suffered more than 24,000 casualties at Pozières, including 6,741 dead. Official war correspondent C.E.W. Bean described the small village as “more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth”.
On a clear day, obviously not the day Rachel and I were there, the Thiepval memorial is visible from this height of land.
This memorial is at the former site of the Pozieres Windmill, the highest point on the Somme. Directly behind the memorial is the World War One Animal War Memorial, commemorating the animals who served in the war.
There are memorials to dogs, horses, donkeys and pigeons, all who played a vital role in supporting the troops.
We continued up the Albert-Baupame Road to the Courcelette Canadian Memorial. This memorial celebrates the Canadian action on the Somme, particularly the capture of the village of Courcelette. Canadians suffered over 24,000 casualties between 15 September and 18 November in the Battle of the Somme.
From the back of the memorial, the spire of the Church at Courcelette is visible, and the Courcelette British Cemetery is behind the trees in the middle distance.
Just past the village of Courcelette is the Courcelette British Cemetery. You may remember from previous posts, my Grandfather William Johnston was wounded at Courcelette on 16 September, just up the track from the cemetery.
Despite the bad weather and muddy track, we hiked to farm track that was just in front of the trench Grandfather came out of when he was shot. We made it to the intersection on the trench line but did not walk the entire line as the track became a single long mud puddle.
The Canadians were advancing in this direction. Over our shoulder the group of trees is at the Regina Trench Cemetery which would take 2 months and 24,000 casualties to finally capture
Standing on the ground where my Grandfather fought and was wounded is very emotional. The connection to the man I never knew is extremely powerful. William lied about his age and joined up when he was 16. He was only 17 when he was wounded in the first major battle he was involved in. He joined the 58th Battalion in July 1916 after their losses at Mont Sorrel and spent the next two months mainly in rear positions.
He was wounded in the left upper arm. A few inches to the right and there would be no family stories, a few inches to the left and he would not have received a wound that was just serious enough for him to spend the rest of the war in England where he met and married our Grandmother Annie Goodfellow and there would also be no family stories.
After slogging back through the puddles, we went to the Ulster Memorial, raised in memory of the 36th Ulster Division who fought on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The Ulster tower is a replica of Helen’s tower in County Down, Ireland where many of the Ulstermen trained before heading to France. The Ulster tower was raised in 1921 and was the first memorial on the Western Front.
The tower is staffed by Ulster personnel who come to the Somme for extended periods to do maintenance of the grounds and offer tours of Thiepval Woods where the 36th Division was dug in on the first day of the Somme.
I have done the tour a few times, and highly recommend anyone in the area take the tour. The Irish are excellent story tellers, and the association has conducted archaeological digs in the woods and recreated trenches and bunkers. The combination of factual and personal stories really helps put you in the trenches with the troops. We did the tour with a high school group from Essex, England and the presentation impacted the students as well as ourselves.
The Ulstermen had their front-line trenches in the woods, and the night of 30 June, moved forward to the sunken lane, and laid on the ground as close to the German front lines as possible. The morning of the attack, the 36th Division ran forward quickly taking the first- and second-line trenches, and several men made it to the 3rd line trenches at the Schwaben Redoubt. Unfortunately, the attacking Divisions on either side of them could not progress at all, so the Germans turned their guns on the successful troops, and they were decimated as they were forced to retreat that night. A total of 5,300 members of the 36th Division were casualties that day, victims of their own success.
An original trench slowly being reclaimed by nature.
The view from the road, which was a sunken lane at the time of the battle. As usual, the Germans had the high ground and the Allies were always attacking up hill, usually over open ground. The structure on the left is the gate for the Mill Road Cemetery.
The 36th Division had 9 Victoria Cross recipients during the war, four of them on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. All of the stories are inspirational, but two of them always get me.
The first story is of Rifleman Robert Quigg. Robert worked on an estate in Ireland, and his platoon officer was the son of the landowner. His citation reads:
For most conspicuous bravery. He advanced to the assault with his platoon three times. Early next morning, hearing a rumour that his platoon officer was lying out wounded, he went out seven times to look for him under heavy shell and machine gun fire, each time bringing back a wounded man. The last man he dragged in on a waterproof sheet from within a few yards of the enemy's wire. He was seven hours engaged in this most gallant work, and finally was so exhausted that he had to give it up.
The second story is of Rifleman William McFadzean. William had trained as a bomber (grenade thrower). He was 20 years old, married and a keen rugby player. His citation reads:
While in a concentration trench and opening a box of bombs for distribution prior to an attack, the box slipped down into the trench, which was crowded with men, and two of the safety pins fell out. Private McFadzean, instantly realising the danger to his comrades, with heroic courage threw himself on the top of the bombs. The bombs exploded blowing him to pieces, but only one other man was injured. He well knew his danger, being himself a bomber, but without a moment's hesitation he gave his life for his comrades.
William knew he had four seconds and made the ultimate sacrifice for his fellow soldiers. The tour guide asked the kids what they would do. There wasn’t really a response, but it definitely set the tone for the rest of the tour.
The next stop was the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. The Thiepval Memorial commemorates the more than 72,000 British and South African soldiers who died on the Somme battlefields from August 1915 to 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. The monument stands 140 feet high and is visible from a distance in several different directions.
Next to the memorial is Thiepval Anglo-French Cemetery which contains equal numbers of British and French casualties (300 each), cementing the links between the British and French Military forged on the Somme battlefield.
Named on the memorial is Cpl Percy Fowler, Great Uncle of Wine Bob, and Lance Corporal Leonard Martin (Percy’s good buddy) of the Buffs, East Kent Regiment. They are commemorated on pillar 5D which is near the back stairs on the left of the monument. Percy’s name is 8 down in the second column under the Buffs and Leonard’s name is 5 down from the top in the third column. It is always more meaningful to be able to pick out a name that you know otherwise you tend to get overwhelmed with the number of lost soldiers.
Next, we moved on to Newfoundland Park at Beaumont Hamel. I always try to visit this site as the description at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa of the devastation of the Newfoundland Regiment on the First Day of the Battle of the Somme was the catalyst that started my passion for the First World War.
Newfoundland Park is also one of the largest unreclaimed battle sites on the Western Front and the entire battlefield is visible.
At the base of the Caribou is the plaque listing the 820 Newfoundlanders with no known grave.
The second line trench passes just in front of the Caribou and the first line trench is near the path.
On the morning of 01 July, the Newfoundland Regiment was in the third wave of the attack. When they moved up for the assault the communication trenches were jammed with the dead and wounded from the first two assaults. Tragically, the Regiment was ordered out of the trenches to proceed overland. The Essex Regiment was supposed to advance at the same time but did not because of the blocked trenches so the Newfoundland Regiment was the only unit moving at the time, so all of the German Fire concentrated on them.
Most of the Regiment was gunned down before they made the British Front Line. Those who did headed toward one of the few breaks in the wire near the Danger Tree, which was a far as most of the Regiment made it.
The estimates of the casualties vary, but from the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum, 721 men went over the top, 231 were killed and 386 wounded, so the casualty rate was 85%. Only 68 men reported for Roll Call the next morning. All of the officers were casualties.
The trench systems are in the actual locations of the original trenches, and have been slightly modified to accommodate foot traffic.
The grounds crew were out in force, not looking overly impressed with their summer haircuts.
The first time I visited Beaumont Hamel was on the Canadian Liberation Tour with 25 folks including a retired teacher from Newfoundland. She read a letter from a soldier written the night before that battle which was very emotional.
Private Ernest Leslie Chafe, age 25, was killed on 01 July, and is buried in Y Ravine Cemetery on the Newfoundland Park Grounds. I always visit his grave to pay my respect. There are 2 names on several headstones in the cemetery as the bodies were buried close together.
Another grave I always visit is Pvt Harry Butler, age 20. Harry joined on 13 October 1915, and immediately was shipped to the Newfoundland training facility in Ayr, Scotland. He arrived in France on 15 June. Harry was part of a 68-man draft who arrived at the unit on 30 June, one day before the assault, and was killed the next day. He was reported missing for some time, then buried in Y Ravine Cemetery. He is reported as “Believed to be Buried in this Cemetery” as there was a burial record, but his burial location could not be positively identified.
After Beaumont Hamel, we made our way to the Sunken Lane and Hawthorn Crater. The Sunken Lane is famous as the attack of the Lancashire Fusiliers was filmed from this location. The silent movie called the Battle of the Somme (1916) was recorded on the day, and widely played in the UK. The film is available on You Tube:
The map shows the locations of the sites and the elevation changes along the blue line from the Sunken Lane to Hawthorn Crater. The lowest point is the road with a 13 m rise to the crater.
The view from the bottom shows the imposing rise up Hawthorn Ridge. The Hawthorn mine was blown at 0720 on 01 July, 10 minutes before the attack. The idea was to give the British time to capture the crater, but really just provided a warning for the Germans of the impending attack. The trees in the middle of the picture are in the Hawthorn Crater.
The view from the Crater’s edge makes it clear the advantage the Germans had. The British had to attack up a steep hill over open ground, facing machine gun and artillery fire. The sunken lane is in the row of trees just to the right of the memorial in the centre. The Beaumont Hamel Cemetery on the right is about as far as most of the British troops made it.
Rachel ventured down to the bottom of the crater, to provide some perspective. The crater is about 300 feet wide and 80 feet deep. A second crater was blown in November 1916, so the crater is not conical.
View from the bottom of the crater.
Our final stop of the day is the Sheffield Park Memorial, site of another First Day of the Battle of the Somme Disaster.
We made it as far as Serre Road #3 Cemetery, but going down the hill to the park on a greasy farm track was a bridge too far. This park is yet another uphill, exposed attack that the British attempted on 01 July. The Park is in the clump of trees in the centre of the photo. Originally there were four separate Copses of trees named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but the trees have grown together over the years. The trench lines were in the trees. Although it is not visible Railway Hollow Cemetery is at the bottom of the hill.
The view from the British Trench Line up the hill. Although the rise is only a few metres, the Germans had the dominant position, and were able to fire at the troops as soon as they exited their trenches. The battle was over in less than 30 minutes with each battalion losing between 300 and 600 men. Few men made it to Queen's Cemetery on the crest of the hill.
The line of cemeteries defines the British Front line. From Serre Road we can see Queens Cemetery in the middle distance, and the Cross of Sacrifice from Luke Copse Cemetery, down the hill and to the left of Queens Cemetery.
Propped on the wall of the cemetery was a part of the Iron Harvest, a shell unearthed during the spring plowing.
This was an easy tour to complete in the summertime as it is light until 10 PM. When Wine Bob and I did the tour in January we saw both sunrise and sunset on the battlefield. One of the things that really struck Rachel was how close together everything was and the number of cemeteries. There are 150,000 Commonwealth Casualties buried at almost 350 sites on the Somme. When you first go there, you feel you want to stop and visit every cemetery. That feeling is tempered by reality as often there are cemeteries on either side of the road, and a third one visible.
The First Day of the Battle of the Somme was the bloodiest day in British Military history. They suffered 60,000 casualties, most of them in the first few hours of the attack, including nearly 20,000 killed. The British were convinced their weeklong barrage will destroy all the barbed wire and kill most of the Germans, but the Germans held almost all of the high ground and the British paid dearly for their assumptions.
That was somme tour, Rachel. Glad our January Bistrot & patisserie recce was successful.
I think you’ve reached your tour report culminating point, Paul.
VR
This is another informative and tear causing report of the Battle of the Somme. So many died. I am glad you visited Bill again. Mom told us so many stories about him--some proven true and some just conjecture. So many young men were taken from their loved ones and died in this far away mud filled place. I am like Rachel amazed how close everything is and how many cemeteries there are. You will be conducting tours yourself next summer.