Against the odds, remnants of both the 9th and the 12th breached the German lines here and there along a stretch of about 1000 yards. The enemy wire was little impaired, but better cut before the 9th than the 12th.68 German shrapnel fire was now bursting over no-man’s-land. Some of the 9th made it a few hundred yards beyond the parapet of RIR119, and were allegedly ‘last seen advancing upon Beaucourt Station.’69 All were killed, captured or squeezed out by counterattacks. By 8 a.m. the 36th’s attack north of the Ancre was over.70 Two minor attacks — one late morning, another at 12.30 p.m. — to support operations by the 29th Division failed in tempests of bullets. Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart Blacker, 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers, was unsurprised. He had told Major-General Sir Oliver Nugent, commanding the 36th, of his worries about poor artillery preparation on the morning before battle: ‘I remarked to him “Morituri te Salutant” realising full well the hopelessness of the task allotted to the two battalions.’71 ‘We who are about to die salute you,’ indeed.
On the sharply rising ground south of the Ancre that today holds the Ulster Tower memorial it was an altogether different story. Here, the remainder of 108th and 109th Brigades comprised the first assault wave heading for Thiepval Plateau, with 107th Brigade to subsequently leapfrog the latter for more distant objectives. The 108th’s and 109th’s leading elements left their trenches at 7.15 a.m. and crept to within 100 yards of the German line before buglers sounded the advance at Zero.72 In this area better observation meant that X Corps’ artillery had, helped by French 75-millimetre field guns, cut the enemy wire along about 1000 yards. Mortars firing from at least six of 10 saps pushed out into no-man’s-land prior to 1 July opened fire on the German line at 7.25 a.m.
On the left, the 108th’s 13th Royal Irish Rifles,* followed by the 107th’s 15th Royal Irish Rifles,† adopted a blend of extended lines followed by columns of platoons to move forward, but heavy machine-gun fire from St Pierre Divion caused ‘terrible’ casualties and limited gains.73 The 108th’s 11th Royal Irish Rifles* — using a similar mix of extended lines and columns of platoons — and the 109th’s 9th† and 10th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers‡ — obscured by a smoke screen as they moved forward in columns of platoons with elements following in artillery formation — dashed into the German front trench system when the barrage lifted and overwhelmed the garrison.74 Within minutes of 7.30 a.m., the door to Schwaben Redoubt and Thiepval Plateau was ever so slightly ajar.
German infantrymen were quickly overrun by the 36th. The front-line system was held by a company of Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 8 (BRIR8) and three companies of RIR99, with Schwaben Redoubt garrisoned by another company from each of those regiments. The company of BRIR8 holding the redoubt was effectively destroyed as a fighting force by the Ulstermen. From a nominal strength of about 200 it recorded 187 casualties: 57 killed, four dying later of wounds, 113 prisoners and 13 wounded.75 This company’s fate — the large number of prisoners a reflection of how quickly the 36th was into the German trenches — was more than likely shared by those companies of RIR99 similarly swamped in and before Schwaben Redoubt.
The Ulstermen’s promising start continued as they pushed further northeast, beyond the area broadly marked today by Ulster Tower and Mill Road Cemetery. Support battalions 11th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers§ and 14th Royal Irish Rifles¶ followed on in columns of platoons, with some elements in artillery formation,76 at 7.30 a.m. ‘No sooner were they clear of our own wire,’ noted 14th Royal Irish Rifles, ‘when the slow tat tat of the Hun machine guns from Thiepval village and [also from the general direction of] Beaumont-Hamel caught the advance under a deadly cross fire, but nothing could stop this advance and so on they went.’77
These machine-gunners continued to enfilade the 109th’s exposed right as it pressed into the high ground towards Schwaben Redoubt. Casualties in the right-most battalion, the 9th, were heavy, but ‘the advance was not checked and by 8 a.m. the [German] reserve trench, including the front face of Schwaben Redoubt, had been entered.’78 A sizeable portion of 36th (Ulster) Division’s first objective had fallen. More than 400 prisoners were sent scampering across the old no-man’sland. Hereafter, concentric and increasingly heavy long-range machinegun and rifle fire — from Thiepval to the south, and St Pierre Divion, Grandcourt and Beaucourt in the River Ancre valley to the north — played over the 109th’s advance, which continued until all of the redoubt was taken by about 8.50 a.m.79 The 36th’s forward-most elements had advanced about a mile and were now consolidating a bullet-swept finger of land deep in German territory.
Private Lindsay Hall, 10th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, was quickly into the German trenches: ‘All that could be seen was a few twisted iron spikes and splinters of wire lying in the bottom of shell holes.’80 He jumped into the cratered trench and ‘done for’ some German soldiers exiting their dugouts.81 His platoon moved forward overland. ‘The wounded were crying in agony, and a few chaps lying dead with head or legs blown off. Oh it was terrible.’82 The advance was exhausting. ‘I was terrible thirsty. I never knew how dry I could be. Some chaps took the water bottles off the dead men.’83 Hall was later hit by shrapnel above the knee, but made it back to the British lines. Private Edward Brownlee, a machine-gunner in 108th Brigade, had reached the German wire, ‘when I got hit in the jaw, breaking it at the joint [with the bullet] passing through my tongue and coming out at the left of my Adam’s Apple. I also had one through my left arm above the elbow. I lay from 7.30 [a.m.] to 12 noon with terrible loss of blood and bothered with flies and mosquitoes.’84
Following behind, 107th Brigade had moved up through Thiepval Wood, suffering numerous casualties from shellfire along the way. It began crossing no-man’s-land around 8 a.m. Ninth* and 10th Royal Irish Rifles† advanced abreast, with their lead companies in extended order and those behind in columns of platoons, followed by 8th Royal Irish Rifles‡ in the same formation, into the tempest of shrapnel and bullets.85 Major George Gaffiken, a 30-year-old teetotaller in the 9th, waved an orange handkerchief and shouted to his men: ‘Come on, boys. This is the 1st of July. Let the enemy have it.’86 One sergeant wore an Orangeman’s sash.87 Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Crozier, commanding the 9th, rushed his men forward one company at a time during a lull in the shellfire. Machinegunners in Thiepval had the range and bowled many of the 107th: ‘The majority lie out all day, sun-baked, parched, uncared for, often delirious and at any rate in great pain.’88 One of Crozier’s soldiers was later reported dead. ‘Men in battle see fairies — and devils,’ Crozier said. The soldier was, in fact, a prisoner, and his family was annoyed that he had wrongly been reported killed. Crozier wrote to them: ‘Why not count your blessings?’89 By about 10 a.m., the rump of the 107th had pushed through Schwaben Redoubt and suffered heavy casualties from the British barrage still falling on the German second defensive position.90 It went to ground in knee-length rank grass about 100 yards shy of this trench, the 36th’s final objective, until the shellfire lifted at 10.10 a.m.91
This delay gave a recruit battalion of Infantry Regiment 180 (IR180) rushing up from Grandcourt just enough time to man the line, and a machine-gun company in that village time to get the Ulstermen’s range.92 Machine-gunners about 2000 yards northwest in Beaucourt Redoubt (Feste-Alt-Württemberg) also opened up. So far, 8th, 9th and 10th Royal Irish Rifles had advanced more than 1000 yards beyond the old German front line. North of Schwaben Redoubt they were approaching Battery Valley, which held some abandoned artillery gun pits, and eased down towards Grandcourt. Northeast, they were approaching Stuff Redoubt on the edge of Thiepval Plateau. Here, Unteroffizier Felix Kircher, Reserve Field Artillery Regiment 26 (RFAR26), saw ‘khaki-clothed men with flat steel helmets run up and down our barbed wire.’93 German observers further back spotted the danger and soon their shells joined the British ones screaming down onto the 107th’s leading elements.94 Major Max Klaus, RFAR26, said the gunners’ intervention averted a ‘serious danger.’95 Kircher said it was a decisive moment, but overstated the case when
he said the path to Grandcourt, about a mile away, lay open.96
A small number of men from the 107th entered the German secondline trenches after the brigade started forward again, at about 10.10 a.m.97 At least two platoons went forward towards Stuff Redoubt, maybe more, and some of these men got into the enemy trenches in at least two places.98 One group of 50 dropped into an empty trench, near the redoubt. Of the others: ‘About 35 [of 9th Royal Irish Rifles] men got into “D” line [immediately before Stuff Redoubt] . . . they found “D” line strongly held and a great number of them became casualties through hand grenades.’99 Most of the survivors fell back, but a small group under Corporal Robert Short, 9th Royal Irish Rifles, held out until he was killed in ‘desperate hand-to-hand fighting.’100 Short is named on the Thiepval Memorial. About 500 yards east, some 200 more of the 107th and other units reached the head of Battery Valley.101 The 107th had done well to get even this far, particularly around Stuff Redoubt, but it was over-extended, had suffered heavily, was encountering stiffening resistance and remained exposed to shrapnel and machine-gun fire. Remnants of the 107th had no choice but to retire onto Schwaben Redoubt before noon.
Fighting in Schwaben Redoubt and on Thiepval Plateau was savage. It took place in narrow, tumbled-down trench bays, around corners and in unlit, foul-smelling dugouts. One man likened it to a ‘Belfast riot on the top of Mount Vesuvius.’102 Soldiers were speckled in chalk dust and blood, and were sticky with sweat. ‘The blood had got about the tongue of our boots and our socks were soaked with it.’103 To strike out alone or chance a glance over the parapet was to court death. ‘I peeped over to have a look and found myself looking down the barrel of a German rifle, only twenty yards away. I got the hell out of it as fast as I could,’ said Private Robert Irwin, 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.104 Killing and maiming were done with grenades, bayonets, rifle butts, pistols and clubs. As Private Hugh Stewart, a machine-gunner-cum-infantryman in 109th Brigade, explained:
I had a bayonet in one hand and a revolver in the other. You see I used to shoe horses before I joined up and had powerful strong wrists and it was not a great hardship for me to fire one of them big heavy revolvers. They had a kick like a horse but if you hit a man with a bullet from one of them he gave no more trouble.105
Life and death could be measured in seconds. One Bavarian soldier aimed his rifle at a nearby Ulsterman, but ‘that man was a second quicker than he.’106 The Bavarian died. Few would forget their ordeal: as Stewart recalled, ‘I had never killed a man with a bayonet before and it sent cold shivers up and down my spine many’s a night afterwards just thinking about it.’107
Living were felled by shrapnel balls and bullets and jagged splinters of red-hot metal. Others were eviscerated, blown apart or vaporised by shell bursts. ‘There was a loud explosion near me and part of the torso of a man, clothed in a khaki jacket, landed just in front of my Lewis gun,’ said Irwin.108 Lance-Corporal James Henderson, 14th Royal Irish Rifles, found a man with his leg nearly blown off: ‘He begged me to kill him but I couldn’t do it.’109 Private James Devennie, 10th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, saw a shell hit a man ‘in the throat and his head disappeared.’110 Private Jim Donaghy, same battalion, found a man whose arm had been flayed open from shoulder to wrist, and applied a puttee-cum-tourniquet.111 Soon Donaghy himself was hit in the thigh and throat, and within seconds ‘lost so much blood that I looked like a red-tunicked soldier.’112 Rifleman John Hope, 14th Royal Irish Rifles, found a man shot in the head: ‘His brain is oozing out of the side of his head and he is calling for his pal. . . . In a short time all is quiet, he is dead.’113 Rifleman Davie Starrett, 9th Royal Irish Rifles, took an altogether more brutal opinion of the wounded and dead: ‘On days like that there’s no sympathy in your heart. Over them you go.’114
Many had never seen enemy soldiers up close before. Reactions were situational. In 14th Royal Irish Rifles, Rifleman John Grange saw a wounded German sniper clubbed with his own rifle,115 while Rifleman James Megaw, same battalion, promised to shoot another soldier who had threatened to kill an unarmed prisoner.116 Captives who resisted were often killed:117 ‘Something happened which caused [Sergeant James] Porter’s men to open fire killing some [surrendering Germans] and wounding others.’118 Corporal George Lloyd, 9th Royal Irish Rifles, was captured and covered in blood after bandaging a wounded officer: ‘One of the Germans thought it was German blood and came at me with his bayonet. He would have let me have it if one of their N.C.O.s hadn’t stopped him.’119 Others responded differently: ‘As soon as they [Bavarian soldiers] saw I was badly wounded they passed on, some of them stooping down to shake my hand,’ said Lieutenant James Shannon, 10th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.120 And then there was pity for enemy soldiers badly wounded and beyond medical help. Starrett later remembered a dying Bavarian: ‘Half of his face was blown away.’121 Donaghy saw another young German clasping a gaping stomach together with his hands: ‘He was dying and as he looked up at us he kept repeating, . . . “No bon, . . . No bon.” It really upset us.’122
SEVEN MILES AWAY, Generalleutnant Franz Freiherr von Soden knew quick thinking and decisive action were everything at critical moments such as this. News of the attacks all along his divisional sector quickly reached the headquarters of his 26th Reserve Division at Biefvillers.123 At first, the balding 60-year-old’s picture of events at Thiepval was obscure, hindered by intermittent, delayed and often confusing battle reports. In the hour to around 8.30 a.m., more accurate messages arrived and these confirmed that alarming events were unfolding around Schwaben Redoubt. Soden now knew the redoubt had fallen and that elements of 36th (Ulster) Division threatened to advance further, testing his second defensive line and most advanced artillery positions. ‘The enemy had recognised the great value of the heights,’ wrote one German historian124 — mistakenly, as it turned out. Soden himself said retaking the redoubt was ‘of particular importance for the course of the battle.’125 If the Ulstermen retained even a corner of the high ground above Thiepval, the 26th’s entire position was at risk.126 At 8.55 a.m., Soden ordered a counterattack and began committing his reserves.
Soden’s artillery now became a decisive factor in the battle. Tenth Corps’ pre-battle counter-battery work had simply not destroyed enough of the German guns sited to provide close defensive fire. Soden had long insisted that his divisional gunners conceal their positions, conserve ammunition and retain their pre-allocated defensive capabilities.127 Sufficient German guns had survived the British preparatory bombardment and battleday barrage. From shortly after 7 a.m. some were dropping six shells a minute on the British trenches in Thiepval Wood.128 ‘Plomp, plomp — it is “good-bye,” I think,’ wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Crozier.129 At 7.10 a.m., 20 minutes before Zero, 10th Royal Irish Rifles’ commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Bernard, was killed when his battalion came under simultaneous machine-gun fire from the front, right and rear before even reaching its own front line.130 The 50-year-old is buried at Martinsart British Cemetery. The battalion war diarist set the scene: ‘The Battalion continued to advance [through the wood towards the British front line] suffering heavily from shell and machine-gun fire, the ground being much cut up and difficult to cross.’131 From about 7.30 a.m. the German gunners intensified their fire on two key areas. The first was the ribbon of ground between the old German front line and Thiepval Wood, where a curtain of shellfire cut off the Ulstermen in Schwaben Redoubt and slowed reinforcements pushing forward. By around 9 a.m. the former no-man’sland was impassable to all but the luckiest of souls. In the second area, German observers had spied the dangerous break-in on Thiepval Plateau and directed gunners to pour shells onto this ground to limit the enemy’s gains there. Within one-and-a-half hours of the start of the Ulstermen’s attack, Soden’s gunners had isolated the breach.
The shellfire on Thiepval Wood stripped trees bare. Boughs were broken, stumps overturned. Splinters of bark, wood chaff and leaves flew. Lachrymatory gas shells added to the smoke-laden horror. Teleph
one lines run forward from the wood were frequently cut. Attempts by elements of pioneer battalion 16th Royal Irish Rifles* to dig a communication trench across no-man’s-land were shot into submission.132 This shellfire, in concert with the machine guns in Thiepval, turned the northern fringes of the wood and the former no-man’s-land into a metal barrier.133 One machine gun at Thiepval fired something like 18,000 rounds at this small area. By day’s end, the sunken Thiepval–Hamel road, passing between the present-day Mill Road and Connaught Cemeteries, was a ‘mass of dead heaped up.’134
French road workers found the remains of Sergeant David Blakey, 11th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, beside this road in November 2013. The 26-year-old coalminer turned rugby league player’s bones lay beneath six inches of dirt. A metal identity disc gave up the Gateshead-born man’s name. The married father of two joined the 36th because his wife was from Londonderry. In December 1916 he was posthumously awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the field. ‘None of us can believe it,’ said one relative of the 2013 find.135 Other families were not so lucky: walk through Connaught Cemetery and you will find one headstone marking the single grave of 15 unidentified British soldiers, and another for 12. The singleline epitaph on both of these two headstones: ‘Known unto God.’
Stuttgart-born Soden’s chief frustration throughout the morning was the time it took to organise his counterattack. ‘An over-hasty insufficiently prepared countermove could easily fail,’ a German historian later wrote.136 ‘The attack had to take place as quickly, but as comprehensively as possible, so as not to allow the enemy time either to settle in or orientate himself, nor to give him the advantage of defending against a purely frontal attack.’137 The attack would comprise about 2500 men organised into three groups, recapturing the lost ground with co-ordinated and strong counterattacks closing in from multiple directions. Eight infantry companies of BRIR8 formed its backbone, supported by two recruit companies of IR180, two machine-gun companies, and another of engineers. The problem was that numerous telephone lines were cut, and Soden’s orders had to be run out to these scattered units, which then had to be marched forward and familiarised with the ground and their objectives. All of this was to be achieved under heavy British shellfire, on broken ground and in the midst of battle; lengthy delays were inevitable. Even a direct order from corps commander Stein that Schwaben Redoubt be ‘recaptured at all costs’ could not alter the reality of the situation.138 It would be mid-afternoon before any kind of semi-organised counterattack was launched. For the meantime, Soden would be left to stalk impatiently around his operations room, poring over situation reports and awaiting confirmation that the counterattack had gone in.
First day of the Somme Page 24