Over in 89th Brigade’s sector, adjacent to the French, Lieutenant Willmer noted ‘some mist about but the sun broke through and glinted on the men’s bayonets’ as they began moving forward. ‘There was no hurry and so far as our battalion was concerned, very little resistance.’70 Private Francis Woods, 17th King’s, said he ‘bombed and searched dugouts, cleared trenches of prisoners and dead, and held on.’71 Some German soldiers were pleased to be captives: ‘They were in a fearfully unkempt condition, with days of growth on their faces, and some of them looked to be quite fiftynine years of age.’72 One diminutive Liverpudlian held 16 Germans prisoner at the point of a bayonet and unloaded rifle; another thought the scene ‘too funny for words, and I’d have given anything to have had a camera.’73 Private Robert Fleetwood, 20th King’s, was hooked in some barbed wire and dropped his rifle to free himself. ‘When I turned around to pick up my rifle, I got a shock. A German had it, and he was pointing it right at me. I thought my last day had come.’74 The German did not shoot; he bolted. ‘I took a rifle from a dead German but found I didn’t know how to use it!’75 Corporal Quinn, not far away, was bemused by the language of soldiers snared in wire: ‘It was such glowing hot language that the wire should have melted away.’76 He soon reached Dublin Trench. ‘It all seemed too easy, much easier than when we had practised it behind the lines. Of course shells were dropping all about us, but we took them philosophically.’77
Ninetieth Brigade moved forward at about 8.30 a.m. with orders to leapfrog 21st Brigade and take Montauban. It took the 90th about an hour to get to the Train Alley area, its three attack battalions also suffering heavy casualties from machine guns in 18th (Eastern) Division’s sector and occasional shrapnel bursts overhead.78 Sixteenth* and 17th Manchesters† advanced in linear waves.79 They were followed by the rump of 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers,* which had some platoons attached to the 16th and 17th for mopping-up.80 Eighteenth Manchesters† provided carrying parties.81 German shellfire did ‘little damage owing to the formation adopted and to the soft nature of the ground.’82 Captain Ernest Sotham, 16th Manchesters, wrote: ‘The advance took place in quick time with rifles slung & the Trench bridges were carried & each man carried in addition to his extra S.A.A. [small-arms ammunition], several bombs, sandbags, full marching order with the next day’s ration.’83
Ninetieth Brigade’s attacking battalions arrived at their battlefield jumping-off line about 15 minutes early, before the barrage ‘plastering’ Montauban had lifted.84 Leading waves sheltered in the trench; the rest waited bellies to ground a little behind. The German machine gun in 18th (Eastern) Division’s sector was finally silenced. Officer casualties in the Manchester battalions meant the 90th’s advance was delayed. It finally began at about 10 a.m. when the shellfire lifted off brickheap-like Montauban and a fusillade from a solitary machine gun broke the inertia. Orderly attack structure was lost; men from 16th and 17th Manchesters, along with 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers, bunched into two dense lines about 400 yards apart and continued ahead quick time, although some walked.85 A smoke screen on the open ground before Montauban hid their vulnerability. The trench around the village’s southern outskirts was undefended and overrun, with the Manchesters and Royal Scots Fusiliers entering the tumbled-down village and ratting its ruins for enemy soldiers from about 10.05 a.m. Second-Lieutenant Alfred Fraser-Harris, an observation officer for Brigadier-General the Honourable Charles Steavenson’s 90th Brigade headquarters, looked on: ‘I plodded on keeping my eyes on Montauban which seemed hundreds of miles away. Eventually I got near enough to see the first line of troops entering the village. And they had not had much trouble. Then I ran back as fast as I could and reported to the Brigadier.’86 Within the hour the Manchesters had moved through the village, and at about 10.30 a.m. seized their portion of Montauban Alley, a few hundred yards beyond its northern houses, and with it the 30th’s final objective.
‘Shells were exploding all round us & there was a steady drone of small arms fire,’ said Private Squire Brookes, 16th Manchesters, of the advance to Montauban.87 ‘Men went down with increasing frequency.’88 Lance-Corporal Frank Gudgeon, 16th Manchesters, thought someone had kicked him in the right calf muscle. It was a bullet. Another cut through the instep of his boot, a third lodged itself in his field dressing and two more passed between his tunic and pack. Gudgeon sheltered in Montauban Alley and chatted to a silent German soldier sitting on the fire-step nearby: ‘I touched him and he fell off the fire step. I then saw his shirt front was open and [he had] a bullet wound near the heart. He had some photos in his hand, evidently of his wife and family.’89 Private Allan Bell, 17th Manchesters, thought the attack so well planned that the ‘actual thing was like another rehearsal.’90 He saw an officer shot in the head who ‘must have died that instant.’ He also saw a ‘Jock’ of the 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers shot through the jaw and in lingering pain. ‘When I got to the far end of Montauban I at once lay down and fired at a retreating German gun team who were dragging a field gun by a rope. I well remember adjusting my aim for the weight of the bayonet, as taught.’91 A bullet punched through Bell’s helmet and creased his scalp. ‘Yer wanna be more careful,’ he was told a few days later when issued a replacement helmet, as if he needed the advice.
‘I didn’t get far,’ recalled Corporal Norman Menzies, 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers, who was shot in the left thigh near the old German front line.92 ‘I lay on “Fritz’s old firing step” waiting on the stretcher-bearers to come for me, the sun burning tremendously and the “whiz-bangs” coming over every three minutes.’ At about 3 p.m. Menzies struck out for safety. ‘I managed to roll off the firing step into the bottom of the trench, and with the aid of a rifle used as a crutch hobbled painfully towards the dressing station.’ It took him five hours to get there.
Montauban was a ruin of skeletal buildings and piles of bricks, with all kinds of debris and corpses strewn about. Captain Hubert Worthington, 16th Manchesters, thought it a ‘scene of complete devastation so that even the alignment of the streets could scarcely be traced.’93 Enemy soldiers who resisted were ‘driven into cellars and dug outs & bombed.’ Hundreds of enemy soldiers surrendered to the leading wave as it passed through the ruined village. Another Mancunian said that ‘most of the houses had been knocked head-over-heels. The only ones I saw standing were a couple of cafes.’94 He added that while plenty of German soldiers had fled, others were ‘monkeying about the ruins.’95 Small groups of Manchesters worked from one collapsed building to the next, bombing nests of resistance into silence. The same soldier contined: ‘We saw some Huns in a ground-floor room, so we dropped a Mills bomb through the window, and didn’t wait for an answer.’96 A Sergeant Watkins, Manchester Regiment, was in one of the Montauban mopping-up parties:
The Germans put up a better fight here than they had done in the first three lines of trenches. They had constructed a veritable rabbit warren of communication trenches until they formed a regular ring around the village. Each house was connected with the other, so that the British had a terror of a time in rounding them up. No sooner did we enter into one cellar than they ran into the next and sniped at us all the time. But our men were not to be beaten like that. They became like bloomin’ ferrets and drove them out. Fritz doesn’t like cold steel.97
Although the attack’s vanguard had moved on through Montauban to secure the final objective, it was several hours before all resistance in the village was cowed and its ruins cleared of enemy soldiers.
The view from Montauban Alley was over the deep east–west-running scoop of Caterpillar Valley. On the far side, the British soldiers could see the infamous horseshoe of woods — Caterpillar, Mametz, Bazentin, High, Delville, Trônes and Bernafay Woods — that would later become notorious death traps, as well as, and all a mile or more away, Longueval to the northeast, the two Bazentin villages to the north and Contalmaison to the west.98 A stream of German infantry was retreating down the Montauban–Bazentin-le-Grand road and artillery observers who reached the forward are
a quickly enough lost no time in directing shellfire onto them. A trinity of advanced German field guns in Caterpillar Valley was rushed and captured at about 11 a.m., the first of the Somme offensive. For any weary, sweaty foot sloggers taking all of this in from the outskirts of Montauban, it looked as if much more could be achieved, but — as we shall soon see — it was never going to be quite that simple.
Oberst Leibrock, commanding BRIR6, was surprised when a lone British soldier demanded the surrender of his regimental headquarters staff at La Briqueterie, near Bernafay Wood.99 The stray soldier was himself taken prisoner by Leibrock’s men at about 10 a.m. He told his captors that Montauban was under attack and that the situation for the Germans at Mametz further west was grim.100 It was the first indication that Leibrock had of ‘something bad’ being afoot.101 Two-and-a-half hours later, La Briqueterie was under attack by a company of 20th King’s. It went forward at 12.30 p.m., after a 30-minute bombardment, to clear the brickwork’s ruins, which were strewn with dead, and whose chimney had previously been used as an observation tower. Attempts by Leibrock and his staff to bring a machine gun into action failed; they were cornered in their dugout. Grenades were tossed down the stairs, casualties increased.102 As Leibrock told it:
An English breakthrough, such as the one described by the captive Englishman, appeared to me ever more likely. Under these circumstances I considered further sacrifice to be pointless and I also could not expect a counter attack in view of the total silence of the German artillery, therefore I decided after still further discussion with remarks to the officers to surrender.103
The company of 20th King’s held the pulverised ground of La Briqueterie throughout the afternoon under shellfire, its casualties steadily mounting. Patrols went forward to probe the southern outskirts of Bernafay Wood, about 250 yards away, there finding ‘many German corpses and bringing back a good many prisoners.’104 Kanonier Heinrich, the gunner in FAR21, said when these patrols reached the wood they ‘appeared to have a leisurely walk around’ before withdrawing.105 Bernafay Wood remained in German hands.
British infantry quickly began consolidation ahead of an anticipated German counterattack. Montauban Alley was converted into a crude front-line trench with a fire-step facing Caterpillar Valley, while defensive strongpoints were pushed forward at pre-allocated points.106 ‘The digging of trenches was very difficult owing to the fact that the village was a mass of shell holes & loose crumbling earth. The total inadequacy of trenches in such soil was abundantly proved in the next 48 hours,’ wrote the battalion war diarist for 17th Manchesters.107 Sniper, machine-gun and sporadic shellfire caused a constant trickle of casualties, which increased from early afternoon as retreating German gunners regrouped and began shelling the eastern half of the village and surrounds with shrapnel and high-explosive projectiles.108 The 201st Field Company, Royal Engineers (RE), suffered heavy casualties while working in Montauban’s ruins throughout the afternoon.109 Captain Worthington, wounded that afternoon, described the tactical situation:
The field of fire from Montauban Alley was limited as the ground in front fell away rapidly into Caterpillar Wood Valley. Spur Point [better known as Triangle Point], an important position in advance of Montauban Alley which commanded the valley, could not be occupied, as our guns were shelling the spot. . . . Unlike the 16th, the 17th Manchesters on the right had an excellent field of fire with clear vision down and up to Longueval and across to Bernafay Wood. It had been expected that the counter attack would come from Bernafay Wood but this did not happen [at this time].110
Sixteenth and 17th Manchesters held an exposed salient. To the left, 18th (Eastern) Division had yet to come up alongside them, while to the right approaches from Bernafay Wood a few hundred yards away were also open. It would be another five to six hours before the 30th’s left flank was shored up, and even then sporadic hostile shellfire continued.111
Shea, the ‘smart fellow’ with ‘plenty of brains and energy’ at the helm of 30th Division,112 found little cause for complaint with his division’s performance. The divisional war diary is studded with entries outlining its quick gains. Reports confirmed that the French were also progressing well to the east, but that Maxse’s 18th (Eastern) Division was lagging behind in the two-and-a-half hours to 11.45 a.m.113 ‘Once the [enfilade] fire from the left was neglected [sic] and the advance pushed on, the village of Montauban fell an easy victim,’ Shea wrote in an after-battle report.114 The 30th had performed so well and — barring the casualties and temporary hold-ups here and there — so closely to plan that Shea was largely surplus to requirements: there simply was no reason for him to intervene in the flow of a battle that his men had prepared for, rehearsed and executed so thoroughly and effectively.
The 30th racked up 3011 casualties. These comprised 828 fatalities (including one battalion commander),115 2118 wounded, 53 missing and 12 prisoners.116 BRIR6 incurred 1809 casualties between arriving on the Somme and withdrawing overnight on 1 July.117 Of these, 806 were in its five front-line companies facing XIII Corps on battle day, and included 308 dead, 418 prisoners, 77 wounded and 3 missing.118 IR62 recorded 737 casualties for 1 July, with an estimated 250 fighting against the 30th.119 The rest of IR62’s and BRIR6’s casualties were suffered against the French further south. Thirtieth Division’s victory cost 2.9 casualties for every one German, although the German figure included a significant number of prisoners.
Lugging tools and coils of gleaming barbed wire forward to consolidate the captured ground was no easy task. Corporal Quinn, 20th King’s, watched supply columns labour forward: ‘Suddenly a “Jack Johnson” would scream over our heads and appear to burst within twenty yards of the carrier. At any rate, the smoke from it would clear away and you would again see him like the man “off to Philadelphia,” striding forward.’120 Private Ernest Grindley, 19th Manchesters, had a kerosene tin of water in one hand, a bag of corned beef in the other, semaphore flags tucked into his backpack, and a rifle slung over his shoulder: ‘How we managed to get the food to them in the face of all the gun fire without becoming victims was just a case of “You were lucky, mate.”’121 Private Harold Dunn, 19th King’s,* found the haul up to Dublin Trench heavy work. ‘The heat of the sun was intense, and we were like grease spots.’122 Dunn and his group were soon digging a strongpoint, their tunics and webbing off while they swung pick and spade. Then some shrapnel shells burst overhead and a few high-explosive projectiles landed nearby:123 ‘It was just about then that I received my first wound. It [was] a piece of shrapnel entering my right leg above the knee. At the same time three of my pals were killed (blown to atoms) and two more wounded.’124
‘I CAN’T TELL you the feeling I had. It was a mixture of all kinds of madness,’ recalled Private Clifford Barden, 7th Royal West Kents, of the minutes before 18th (Eastern) Division began its attack.125 Second-Lieutenant William Tullock, 53rd Machine-Gun Company, remembered a ‘great deal of jesting’ about the likely mortality rate:126 ‘Clearly there was a tension which none could wholly conceal.’127 Tullock, killed on 20 July and buried at Péronne Road Cemetery near Maricourt, said the intense shellfire provided a ‘memory never to be erased from the mind.’128 Private Norman Norton, 8th Norfolks, had a ‘nasty feeling in the stomach.’129 Lieutenant Philip Heath, 55th Trench Mortar Battery, wondered ‘how much more of it I could stand without bursting my eardrums or going crazy.’130 Private Clarrie Jarman, 7th Queen’s, said with the ‘blast of whistles and after wishing our chums the best of luck, over the top we went expecting, as we had been told, just a walkover.’131 Lance-Corporal John Cousins, 7th Bedfords, was impatient: ‘For God’s sake let us get going, it’s a relief to hear the whistle signal. We start to scramble out of our trenches through the gaps previously cut in the barbed wire and start to trot forward.’132
No-man’s-land was 100–400 yards wide, but mostly about 250 yards, and the 18th deployed about six battalions abreast across its divisional sector, on varying frontages of 200–400 yards. All would push forward
in a slight northeasterly direction. Those with less distance to travel to the German line — 11th Royal Fusiliers and two platoons of 7th Buffs — began at 7.30 a.m, the rest two to three minutes before Zero, when their leading companies moved into no-man’s-land to form up before formally starting.133 All used variations of the standard four-wave formation. The leading waves of 11th Royal Fusiliers, 7th Bedfords, 6th Royal Berkshires, 7th Queen’s and 8th East Surreys went forward in extended lines, with at least some of those following deployed in artillery formation to mitigate the damage caused by anticipated German defensive shellfire.134 Only 8th Norfolks advanced in four linear waves, and it is probable that the half company of 7th Buffs at the Carnoy craters used a similar formation.135 The Carnoy craters was an area of no-man’s-land east of the Carnoy–Montauban road that was heavily dimpled with cavities from the blasts of multiple mines in the 18 months to 1 July. Meantime, support battalions — 10th Essex, 6th Northamptons and the remainder of 7th Buffs — provided one or two platoons to work as mopping-up teams for the battalions leading the attack, the remainder being used to hold the old front line, provide carrying parties or act as reinforcements.136
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