Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  Meanwhile the troops awaited the carnage. In front of Harry Cholmeley controversy raged over the detonation of the Hawthorn Redoubt mine. Hunter-Weston, for some odd reason, wanted it detonated a full four hours before his men went over the top into battle which, to say the least, detracted from the element of surprise. Haig wasn’t having any of it, but eventually a ridiculous compromise was worked out whereby the mine would be sent up at 7.20 a.m. This would give the Germans ten minutes; ostensibly just enough time to regroup, man their machine guns and brace themselves for impact when the attack began. Hunter-Weston had also arranged for the artillery bombardment to be lifted off the enemy as the mine went up. To add to Harry’s problems, the random achievements of the week-long artillery bombardment had not been kind to his sector. The momentous nature of the upcoming attack was not lost on Harry Cholmeley. Three days before he went up to the trenches in preparation for the attack he wrote to his brother Guy further up the line: ‘Well, here goes – we either go to Hugh or Blighty’.

  At 6.30 a.m. a final flurry of shells was thrown towards Beaumont Hamel and now the Germans, who had quietened their artillery to keep its remaining strength under wraps, unleashed a torrid fire back in the other direction. In front of Harry barbed wire had been removed and ladders put up to help the men out into the fray. At 7.20 a.m. the earth heaved and the Hawthorn Redoubt mine was detonated. It obliterated those close by, but for the enemy troops sitting in their deep dugouts it was far from devastating and now they knew full well that the British were coming. The chalky ground was blown sky high and when it came back to earth it looked like it had been snowing. When the attack came the Germans, now on alert, would be far closer to the crater that had been blown and far better positioned to occupy it.

  All along Harry’s part of the front it was devastating. From the second that they mounted the parapet and went over the top they were sprayed with machine-gun fire, shells and rifle bullets. To compound their misery, large amounts of enemy barbed wire remained uncut and needed to be traversed in the midst of the German onslaught. Dead men lay on it whilst others tried to cut their way through and begin climbing the ridge, exposed to everything that the enemy could throw at them. The timed British artillery barrage left them behind and wandered forward of its own accord. The attack did not even reach the German front lines before it utterly failed.

  Sir Edward ‘Harry’ MacNaghten had arrived at Hugh MacNaghten’s house some eighteen months after George Llewelyn Davies in January 1909. On 1 July 1916, just across the River Ancre from Harry Cholmeley, the 20-year-old was waiting to go over the top with his platoon of the 12th Royal Irish Rifles. It was apt that the battalion belonged to the 36th (Ulster) Division, as it comprised volunteers from County Antrim where his family home was situated. He and his men had been given a monumental task for the opening day of the offensive on the Somme: attacking two solid lines of German defences on the high ground at Thiepval, which was daunting in itself without the obscene concentration of machine guns and fortifications in the way. If they could take it, it would be a hugely significant boost as the British would then overlook German positions to the north and south, but the bold plan of attack had them sweeping the German front-line in one hit. To the right of Harry another division was attacking Thiepval itself and if they failed, the knock-on effect could have catastrophic consequences for the Ulstermen who would be exposed if a gap opened between the two forces.

  Until 7.30 a.m. the Germans were treated to ‘a perfect hurricane of shells’. As soon as the barrage lifted Harry helped lead the attack at the head of his platoon. He was one of the first to jump in to the enemy trench as they rushed the front line, which baffled his old housemaster back at school: ‘as you will remember he was very slow at Eton’. The German wire had actually been cut quite effectively but after their initial surprise the enemy found their feet and turned their artillery on supporting troops coming up. Behind the front lines the German position was strongly held and Harry’s men were now taking very heavy machine-gun fire. The enemy stood up on the parapet of their second line and threw bombs into the trench while the platoons coming up behind were subjected to more heavy machine gun fire and half of the platoon coming up to support Harry had been lost before they even jumped into the trench. An order to retire was shouted but as Harry clambered out of the trench to relay it to the men he was shot in the legs by a machine gun just a few yards away and fell back into the trench.

  In front of Fricourt, James Knott and the 10th West Yorkshires were due to attack in four waves. They waited anxiously in position at 7 a.m., listening to the final bombardment sailing over them and furiously crashing into the German lines. At 7.30 a.m. the guns lifted and the battalion swept over the top. The village itself was to be skirted rather than attacked frontally and the two leading companies got across no-man’s-land relatively unscathed. They were, unfortunately, compelled to wait for a battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment so that, together, they could drop into trenches and bomb their way towards Fricourt.

  The artillery was to keep up a bombardment to assist in pinning the enemy in their dugouts, but it was insufficient and the Germans flooded towards them. James Knott left with a second wave of West Yorkshires in the company of the battalion’s commanding officer. As they proceeded the whole contingent was met with a scathing machine-gun fire. The men were simply cut down.

  The attack collapsed. That night, the survivors had to crawl back to where they had started from. They had been left with no support and they were all but surrounded. Split up and confused they were picked off one by one by German rifles. Elements of both the Yorkshire Regiment and the East Yorkshires tried to get to them but German fire held them back.

  Just to the north of James Knott was yet another OE and an unlikely soldier. Desmond Darley was a musician, a pianist and hardly seemed to have a temperament suited for war. None the less he was one of a number of Cambridge University men who had joined a New Army battalion of the Suffolk Regiment.

  Like Harry Cholmeley, Desmond sat opposite a large mine at dawn on 1 July, this time at La Boiselle. At 5 a.m. his battalion, who had yet to see battle, left the shelter of a wood for their jumping off point. At 7.28 a.m. 80,000 pounds of ammonal blew a permanent hole in the French countryside just to the left of the 11th Suffolks but it soon became evident that the enemy at La Boiselle was entrenched in a particularly strong position. In front of Desmond and his battalion the 10th Lincolns led the brigade out into the face of a monstrous storm of enemy fire. The leading men had hardly climbed out of the trenches when they were cut down. They swung around dead and dropped back into the trench behind them. The casualties mounted before the Suffolks could even get into formation. Isolated survivors began to join together to try to advance hopelessly towards oblivion.

  After just half an hour the assault on La Boiselle was a write-off. The odd few men who tried to rush a German strongpoint were ignited by liquid flames as they climbed out of the parapet. ‘The sight of their crumpled figures staggering back from the tongues of flame and smoke, tearing helplessly at their burning clothes and then falling one by one was terrible to behold.’ Survivors sat isolated in no-man’s-land for two days until reinforcements were scraped together. Not until 4 July was their ordeal over.

  Although the attack at Gommecourt was a subsidiary one, it did not mean an easy time. On the evening of 30 June Cedric Dickens’ men were issued two hot meals before being led up to an assembly area, picking up extra ammunition, shovels and sandbags along the way.

  Cedric had command of A Company and rather than a straightforward attack he had a special task. Whilst Guy Cholmeley and the London Rifle Briagde would be attempting to help execute the southern part of the pincer movement around Gommecourt, Cedric would be going out into no-man’s-land to dig a trench that would face the main attack on the Somme and act as a defensive flank. The 27 year old had under his command snipers and observers to protect his digging party, covering fire from two more companies of the Kensingtons, and a plato
on of another regiment ready to wire the trench when it was done.

  At 6.25 a.m. ‘the clamour of the guns shattered the quiet of the summer morning’. German shells began dropping into the assembly trenches. ‘The roar of the guns and the crash of bursting shells rose to a fury’. At 7.26 a.m. the smoke cloud was discharged.

  The leading companies of the London Rifle Brigade, including the one led by Guy Cholmeley, formed up at lines of tape which marked their starting point and waited for the whistles to sound. Into the enveloping smoke they went towards Gommecourt, just as the Germans turned the full weight of their artillery on to them.

  Cedric Dickens was nervously waiting. He was to sit tight until a battalion of the London Scottish reached its objectives, then venture out and commence his trench-digging expedition. Unfortunately that battalion was wandering lost in its own smoke, which had turned out to be far thicker than the veil that they had encountered in rehearsals.That and German opposition contrived to leave them in utter confusion. All the while, whilst they waited for word to proceed, Cedric and his men were being shelled. Their assembly trenches had been dug in a hurry and lacked sufficient cover. Casualties began to mount.

  After a positive beginning things were taking a turn for the worse for Guy Cholmeley. The London Rifle Brigade had reached the enemy trenches quickly and relatively unscathed despite the horrific shellfire being flung at them. Their formation was somewhat disrupted but they had managed to get into the German trench system as planned.

  Just after 8 a.m., John Somers-Smith, another OE in the London Rifle Brigade, set out in Guy’s direction to try to make sense of what was occuring. Captain of the VIII in 1906, the same year that George Fletcher was present in the crew, John had gone up to Magdalen College and had the misfortune to be the spare man for the Oxford VIII in the Boat Race twice. A solicitor by trade, he had married a matter of weeks before Britain declared war on Germany, but nonetheless departed for France in 1914 with the rest of his territorial battalion. He was awarded the Military Cross just as his elder brother, Richard, another Old Etonian, was killed with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps on the Salient in 1915.1

  John had crossed no-man’s-land with one of the rear waves of troops on 1 July to oversee events in the enemy lines. He sent a message back to say that all companies bar Guy’s were in position and that his fellow OE looked to be having a hard time in the park, which was swarming with Germans. A small number of men were sent out to assist him but could not get across. Guy, commanding the left-hand side of the assault, had been wounded in the shoulder as he went over the top, but he carried on regardless. He eventually managed to get his men into the park area before going back to report that the whole wood was in tatters and still populated by Germans.

  At battalion headquarters they began to doubt, quite rightly, whether Somers-Smith had enough men to clear the park. They sent a message to find out but, like other runners being wiped out across the battlefield, the man never reached his destination. The scene was chaotic. The maze of trenches had been reduced to a collection of large mangled shell holes and the system was falling in on itself. Rifle fire came from every direction and nobody could figure out if from friend or foe. Bombs sailed randomly into the trenches. One German burst into view waving his hands in the air and they shot him anyway. ‘There was no time to figure out whether it was a ruse or not.’

  John Somers-Smith had ordered the prisoners rounded up and either herded into dugouts or escorted back across no-man’s-land. Their efforts though, to secure the German strongpoint were hampered by the British artillery, which was still firing on the position. At about midday the situation began to get critical. The assault that was mirroring their own to the north of Gommecourt had spectacularly failed and this enabled the Germans to turn their entire barrage on the Londoners approaching from the south.

  The troops in the trench system had begun to run out of bombs and using venetian shutters they frantically began signalling back for more. The Germans began a fierce counter-attack and the London Rifle Brigade was forced back, inch by inch, trench by trench. The prisoners they had been holding simply ran away.

  Slightly to the south of Guy, Cedric Dickens had carried on waiting. The London Scottish had been well and truly raked by the machine-gun fire from the park and the first that Cedric heard from them was a desperate cry for more bombs. He immediately started sending men of his company up to them with supplies through the shower of German artillery until the intensity of the bombardment made it nigh on impossible. Another company of Kensingtons attempted to help but their commanding officer ended up dead for his trouble.

  The fate of the London Scottish and the result of its attack was completely unknown so a patrol was sent out. The officer leading it saw his entire platoon wiped out but eventually made it up to them on his own to find survivors clinging on for dear life. Gaps had opened in the line but the weight of the barrage was such that sending any more men up to fill them was tantamount to suicide.

  Cedric, who in this bewildering scenario had not even come close to his allotted task of digging a trench, sent a message back to say that he had just fifty men left. The rest had all been picked off or blown apart by artillery fire. Unaware of whether or not his messages were getting through, he sent another at lunchtime reporting that the trench he was in was practically untenable. What should he do?

  Half an hour later it was impossible to move in Cedric’s trench owing to German shells. ‘Every party that enters is knocked out at once,’ he informed battalion headquarters. ‘Our front line is in an awful state.’ Digging the trench was out of the question. Fifteen minutes later Cedric’s despair had increased. ‘I have as far as I can find only thirteen men left besides myself. Trenches unrecognisable. I am the only officer left. Please send instructions.’

  As evening approached survivors crawled with the wounded on to the road behind. At 5.30 p.m. the German bombardment finally began to slacken and then died away. The battalion finally gave up at about 7.p.m. and made a run back in the direction that it had come from.

  The scene as dusk descended on Gommecourt was just as pitiful as far as the London Rifle Brigade was concerned. John Somers-Smith had simply vanished. He was still alive in the middle of the day because he sent a message back ordering another officer to withdraw to the German front line, but after that he was never heard from again. He left his widow with a 1-year-old little boy named Henry.

  Guy Cholmeley was the only officer to go over the top at 7.30 a.m. that the commanding officer of the battalion ever laid eyes on again. His war was over. After carrying on with his wounded shoulder Guy was hit in the chest by shrapnel, similar to his brother Hugh. Despite surgery a large splinter remained in his lung and he was never cleared for active service again. He became an instructor at home and eventually joined the family firm in 1921.

  At the top of the tree and completely misinformed, Rawlinson thought that casualties amounted to just a third of their actual numbers. ‘I feel pretty confident of success myself,’ he had written the night before the battle.

  His confidence did not bear fruit. At Gommecourt too the attack was a failure. The London territorials had faced unprecedented levels of artillery fire and the enemy troops in the park had wreaked havoc. The Kensingtons had lost sixteen of twenty-three officers and 300 men out of 592. Cedric Dickens had somehow managed to survive and with the remainder of the battalion he spent the night dragging badly wounded men to safety and attempting to bury the dead where they had fallen.2

  At Beaumont Hamel poor or unsuccessful preparations doomed the likes of Harry Cholmeley to failure before they even set out. Statistically the worst fate of the day had befallen the central part of the offensive. The troops commanded by Hunter-Weston met with total disaster, many of them massacred as they staggered over the bodies of their own men before they reached their own front lines. Harry Cholmeley was yet another OE whose fate was utterly unknown. Fate had sent Harry to Hugh and Guy to Blighty.

  La Boiselle was also
a dismal waste of men and resources. What made it worse was that given the terrain and the failure of the preliminary bombardment, it was inevitable, and that inevitable failure cost Desmond Darley his life. The raw 11th Suffolks suffered the highest casualties in their division: 691 men and eighteen officers in its first action. Somewhere in the chaos the 21-year-old died. Nobody knew when across the four days, or how, and for his family it was another example of false hope gradually ebbing away.

  A rifleman, Kane, who was close to Harry MacNaghten as he was shot in the legs, bayoneted the German who was wielding the machine gun. Harry’s company then fell back behind the ridge where it was consolidated by a surviving officer who arranged a second charge at the Germans. He was very severely wounded almost as soon as he gave the order but carried on until he fell. Then Harry’s surviving sergeant rallied the men and went again. Almost every single officer of the 12th Irish Rifles was a casualty and they eventually had to fall back on their own trenches. The fate of wounded men on the battlefield was harrowing. One of Guy Cholmeley’s fellow officers was found in no-man’s-land a full three days later with a severe wound to the head. Rendered blind he had crawled pitifully about, feeling his way along and trying to find the British lines.

  Whether a similar fate had befallen young Harry MacNaghten was never established. After being shot in the legs he was lost in the chaos and listed simply as ‘missing believed killed’. For all of its initial success in jumping into the German front lines, the Ulster Division too had failed in its endeavours. The importance of the assault on the Thiepval area was not lost on the men in command as they ordered their troops forward again and again. Every available man they could find was collected and assembled; forty-six out of an entire battalion, commanded by NCOs. With so few men the Royal Irish Rifles were then pulled back to consolidate their position instead.