It is impossible to visit these cemeteries today without being moved by the scale of the sacrifice in 1916. The cemeteries are beautifully maintained by the gardeners and stonemasons of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. A blend of traditional British flowers are mixed with plants common in that part of France. The cemeteries are immaculate and provide oases of peace and quiet in which to reflect on the scale of the losses. In addition, more than one hundred separate memorials commemorate the actions of individual divisions or battalions. By exploring the battlefields today it is possible to gain some understanding of the dreadful odds that faced the soldiers trying to advance across this landscape.
What follows is a very brief guide to the sites accessible to the visitor today at some of the locations referred to in this text. From north to south:
Gommecourt No. 2 Cemetery is located in the centre of what was No Man’s Land on 1 July 1916. It began as a burial ground for men from the 56th (London) Division who went over the top here. One of these was Arthur Hubbard, who was badly traumatised by the experience (see Chapter 7). The cemetery provides a good view of Gommecourt Wood and contains 1,357 bodies (682 unidentified).2
The Sheffield Memorial Park commemorates many of the Pals battalions that went over the top in this sector just west of Serre, including the 12th Yorks and Lancs, known as the Sheffield City Pals (see Chapter 1). The 31st Division was a New Army division made up of twelve battalions, of which ten came from Yorkshire. The land was acquired by the city of Sheffield in 1928, and in the park it is possible to pick out the outlines of many shell craters and trenches. In the south-east corner, where as the 11th East Lancashires they went over the top, is a monument to the Accrington Pals.
Beaumont-Hamel is the site of the large Newfoundland Memorial Park, preserved by the Canadian government; it includes an orientation centre and walks across the section of the front where the Newfoundland Battalion was massacred (see Chapter 5). The park is still full of shell craters and some trench lines. At the far side is a statue of a giant Highlander standing on a cairn; a memorial to the 51st Highland Division, which finally took Beaumont-Hamel on 13 November (see Chapter 8), it is known as the ‘Jock on the Rock’. A short distance to the west of the village is the sunken road in the middle of what was No Man’s Land where Geoffrey Malins filmed the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers about to go over the top (see Chapter 5). The Beaumont-Hamel British Cemetery, a little to the east, contains many of these soldiers’ graves.
The Ulster Memorial Tower was built near the site of the Schwaben Redoubt, stormed magnificently by the men of the 36th Ulster Division in their assault on the morning of 1 July (see Chapter 6). Its design was based upon a well-known Ulster landmark, Helen’s Tower in County Down, where the 36th Division trained. It is easy to see the difficulty faced by the Ulstermen that morning as they charged up the steep slope in front of the tower. There is a café next to the memorial, staffed by friendly Ulstermen and women, and several cemeteries nearby where the Ulstermen who fell are buried. 1 July is still marked with solemn ceremonies across Northern Ireland.
Dominating the Somme skyline today is the Thiepval Memorial, commemorating more than 72,000 British and South African soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, clad in brick and faced in Portland stone, it has a central arch 140 feet (43 metres) high. Inaugurated in 1932 by the Prince of Wales and the President of France, it is an ugly monument but one that is still the centrepiece of many visits to the Somme today. It contains a visitor centre, an exhibition and a bookshop. It also serves as an Anglo-French memorial and a reminder that the battle was not an exclusively British operation. A ceremony of commemoration is held here annually on 1 July.
The Lonsdale Cemetery, Authuille is a remote and beautiful spot just in front of Authuille Wood where the 11th Borders, the Lonsdales, assembled on the night of 30 June. Their advance towards the Leipzig Salient at 8.30 a.m. on 1 July took place about 500 metres east of the cemetery in full view of the Nab Valley and the Nord Werk, the German machine gun position (see Chapter 6). The cemetery contains 1,542 burials, not only from the Lonsdales but also from the 1st Dorsets, who were alongside them, and from several other units who tried to advance in this section of the front. Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Machell is not buried here, as his body was taken down the line; he lies in the Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery, about five miles west of Albert.
Pozières, the village on the ridge successfully captured by the Australians at the end of July (see Chapter 8), attracts many visitors. The memorial to the 1st Australian Division is now linked to a walk that takes in seven other stations in a circuit around the village. A few hundred metres further east is the site of the windmill finally captured by the Australians on 4 August. Here a plaque commemorates the fact that the Australian dead lay ‘more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefield of the war’. On the other side of the road is the Tank Memorial, surrounded by four models and marking the advance at nearby Flers and the first use of tanks on 15 September.
The Lochnagar Crater just south of La Boiselle has been left intact as a reminder of the scale of the huge mining explosions under the German lines that ushered in the assault just before 7.30 on the morning of 1 July. It was the biggest of the explosions as the mine was packed with 60,000 lb of ammonal. Earth rose some 4,000 feet into the air. The huge crater, 300 feet (91 metres) in diameter and 70 feet (21 metres) deep, is privately owned but is open to the public as a Garden of Remembrance. Nearby is the area known as the Glory Hole; here a group of volunteers are carrying out archaeological work in the craters and dugouts that make up this section of the front, where the British and German lines were only 50 yards (45 metres) apart.
The Devonshire Cemetery is a small and very moving memorial just south of Mametz. Here the 8th and 9th Devonshires went over the top on 1 July in their suicide assault (see Chapter 5). The location of the German machine gun that cut them down can be seen in a civilian cemetery on the other side of the valley. Despite the massacre of the two Devonshire battalions, the attack here was one of the success stories of 1 July and Mametz was captured during the day. About 160 bodies were brought back and buried in the old front-line trench, inspiring the epitaph ‘The Devonshires held this trench. The Devonshires hold it still.’
The New Zealand Memorial at Longueval marks the Switch Line near High Wood, successfully captured by the New Zealand Division on 15 September (see Chapter 8). A short distance away is the Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, where many New Zealand dead are buried.
Delville Wood, where Archibald Burgoyne (see Prologue and Chapter 7) fought and where the South African Brigade ‘covered themselves with glory’, is now the site of the huge South African Memorial. Built to commemorate all South Africans who fought and died in the Great War, the memorial was unveiled in 1926.
The last cemetery to be constructed along the Western Front was at Fromelles, just over thirty miles north of the Somme at the site of the disastrous diversionary attack on the night of 19–20 July (see Chapter 8). In May 2008 a mass grave of 250 bodies, mostly British and Australian, was uncovered. The Germans had buried the bodies immediately after the battle and details of its location had been lost. Using a variety of modern techniques of forensic archaeology, including DNA profiling, a little under half of the bodies were later positively identified. A new cemetery called Pheasant Wood Cemetery was inaugurated in 2010. The process of finding, identifying and burying the dead who had lain in mass graves for nearly one hundred years has been described as making ‘a new cemetery for a new century’.3
Acknowledgements
The idea for this book came out of research carried out on my previous book, Secret Warriors, whose subject was the role of scientists in the First World War. Researching and writing this study has offered me an opportunity to dig deeper into one specific area that had broad implications for the conduct of the war.
Much has been written in recent years on the subject of shell shock and the psychiatri
c casualties of the First World War. One research institute alone published sixty-four papers on subjects relating to shell shock and war trauma in the years 2013 and 2014. As I explain in the Prologue, much of this recent interest and research has explored the psychological debate around shell shock as the first step on the long journey to an understanding of what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. My approach to the subject is quite different, focusing on the military response to shell shock during the long Battle of the Somme from July to November 1916. But I am very aware of my debt to some of the outstanding histories of shell shock published in recent years. Ben Shephard was a pioneer with A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914–1994 (2000). Peter Barham’s Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War (2004) and Fiona Reid’s Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery 1914–1930 (2010) were both inspirational. And Edgar Jones and Simon Wessely’s superb textbook Shell Shock to PTSD (2005) is a must-read for anyone interested in the subject. The many other works from which I have drawn inspiration and information are listed in the Bibliography. Wherever possible I have tried to use as source material documents or publications written at the time or very soon afterwards, when memories were fresh even if emotions were still raw. I have also found the many official histories written in the 1920s and 30s a superb source of detail as well as a guide to official thinking about the Great War in the inter-war years. Brigadier Sir James Edmonds’ volume, telling the story of the build-up to and the events of 1 July 1916, is still a powerful and enthralling read today, just as it must have been eighty years ago. And Charles Bean’s Australian Official Histories provide a gripping read, informed as they are by Bean’s work as a war reporter, living alongside and suffering with the soldiers about whom he writes.
Several leading historians have in conversation helped to inspire and encourage me. I should like to thank Professor David Cannadine of Princeton, Professor Gary Sheffield of Wolverhampton, and Professor Jeremy Black of Exeter. Professor Edgar Jones of the King’s Centre for Military Health provided help on the statistical record of shell shock during the Somme. Dr Walter Busuttil, the Medical Director of Combat Stress, the principal mental health charity dealing with military veterans in the UK today, was very generous with his time in showing me around a twenty-first-century version of Craiglockhart.
Historians are always reliant upon the vital work done by archivists in collecting, assembling, cataloguing and preserving the records that are the raw material for all historical writing. I am particularly grateful to Anthony Richards, Head of Documents and Sound at the Imperial War Museum, who was also behind the republication ten years ago of the essential 1922 Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into ‘Shell Shock’. Anthony gave me invaluable advice on exploring the private papers held in the museum’s Documents Section. I am grateful to the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum for allowing me access to the papers in the Documents and Sound Section of the IWM and for granting me permission to quote from the papers for which the Crown holds the copyright. I am also grateful to Gillian Ankers for permission to quote from the Archibald McAllister Burgoyne papers. With many of the letters and diaries written one hundred years ago it has proved difficult to trace the copyright owners, although every reasonable effort has been made to contact them and seek their permission. Any omissions will be rectified at the first opportunity.
I am also very grateful to the archivists and librarians at the Basil Liddell Hart Military Archives at King’s College, London; at the Wellcome Library in Euston; at the National Archives in Kew; at the London Library; and at the Institute of Historical Research at Senate House, part of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. I spent a fascinating few days at Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life, located in the magnificent Carlisle Castle, researching the story of the 11th Battalion The Border Regiment. I am very grateful to the museum’s curator, Stuart Eastwood, and assistant curator, Tony Goddard, for sharing so much information from their archive with me.
At Little, Brown it has been my pleasure and privilege to work with the same highly professional team as before. I should wholeheartedly like to thank Iain Hunt for his hard work as editor, Linda Silverman for tracking down the photographs and Steve Gove for his work on the manuscript. Tim Whiting has overseen the whole project from the first discussions to the final edits and as ever he has been tremendously positive in providing encouragement and direction.
Anne has lived through all the stages of writing this book and has cheered me up when researching some of the tragic stories related here got me down. As always, my final thanks are to her.
Taylor Downing
September 2015
The Face of Shell Shock.
One of the first war photographers, Roger Fenton, records shell-shocked and dishevelled Captain Lord Balgonie of the Grenadier Guards, Crimean War, 1855.
Frame of film promoting the work of Dr Arthur Hurst shows a shell shock victim. Note the staring eyes. (© Quint Lox / Photoshot / © Wellcome Library, London)
The Lonsdales, 11th Battalion, Border Regiment.
Drilling at Blackhall racecourse before uniforms arrived.
Marching out of Carlisle, May 1915.
(© Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life Carlisle Castle)
The officers when the battalion left for France, November 1915. Second row, third from left is Lieutenant Colonel Percy Machell, next to him (centre) is the Earl of Lonsdale, next to him is Major Diggle, second-in-command. Lieutenant Kirkwood, Medical Officer, was absent. Only six officers survived the 1 July assault. Second Lieutenant Ross, front row, cross-legged second from left, led the failed raid on 9 July.
(© Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life Carlisle Castle)
The Guns.
Eight-inch howitzers firing from the Fricourt-Mametz valley, August 1916.
The destruction caused by a single shell on a German machine gun post near Guillemont, September 1916. Men had to live at all times with the prospect of sudden death or mutilation from a shell fired from miles away.
(© IWM/Getty Images / © Windmill Books/Getty Images)
Over the Top. Top: anxious faces of Lancashire Fusiliers waiting to go over the top in a sunken road near Beaumont Hamel, 1 July 1916. Middle: men lined up ready to go forward on the Somme. Bottom: a shell shock victim staggers back from the front and needs help to walk. Top and bottom are frames from The Battle of the Somme film, August 1916.
(© IWM)
Doctors and Patients.
William Brown, William Halse Rivers (seated) and Grafton Elliot Smith at Maghull Hospital near Liverpool.
Captain Siegfried Sassoon; Charles Samuel Myers, after the war; Lieutenant Wilfred Owen.
(© John Rowlands / © National Portrait Gallery, London / © George C. Beresford/Stringer/Getty Images / © Fotosearch/Stringer/Getty Images)
Shell Shock Victims.
Patient suffering from chronic movements, classed as ‘Shell Shock W’ and wearing the distinctive wounded uniform of blue suit, white shirt and red tie.
Private Harry Farr; from May 1915 treated for five months with shell shock; on 18 October 1916, executed for cowardice.
(© Royal Army Medical Corps Muniment Collection/Wellcome Images / © PA/PA Archive/PA Images)
Aftermath.
Roehampton Hospital, 1916–17. 240,000 men lost limbs in the war but the physically disabled found it far easier to find work than those who suffered from mental problems.
A group of long-term shell-shock sufferers pose for the Ex-Services Welfare Society at their home at Eden Manor, Beckenham, 1929. Today known as Combat Stress, it is the leading veterans’ mental health charity in the UK.
(© Science & Society Picture Library / Getty Images)
Notes
Abbreviations used
BLHMA: Basil Liddell Hart Military Archives, King’s College, London
Cumbria: Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life, Carlisle
IWM Art: Imperial War Museum Art Department, London
IWM Documents: Imperial War Museum Documents Department, London
IWM Film: Imperial War Museum Film Archive, London
IWM Sound: Imperial War Museum Sound Department, London
RWOCESS: Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into ‘Shell Shock’
TNA: The National Archives, Kew
Wellcome: Wellcome Archives and Manuscripts, The Wellcome Collection, London
Prologue
1 All extracts from Burgoyne’s diary are taken from IWM Documents 20330: Papers of Archibald McAllister Burgoyne.
2 Burgoyne seems to have been more severely wounded later in the war, he returned to South Africa and died in Mafeking in 1920, aged forty-six; TNA: WO 154/36, 9th Division War Diary.
3 Letter extracts from IWM Documents 12825: Papers of Major F. St J. Steadman.
4 BLHMA: Montgomery-Massingberd Papers 7/41, The Official War Diary of Fourth Army. The breakdown is 18,057 officers and men killed (this is lower than the actual figure confirmed later); 81,104 wounded; 26,372 missing. Of those listed as missing the diary notes that ‘about 50% were subsequently found wounded in CCSs, 25% were probably killed and the remaining 25%, wounded and unwounded, [were] prisoners in the enemy’s hands.’
5 Sir Archibald Montgomery assumed the additional name of Massingberd in 1926 when his wife, Diana Massingberd, inherited through her mother the Massingberd estates in Lincolnshire. During the war he was known as Montgomery, so for simplicity I shall refer to him by this surname throughout. He was no relation of the famous Second World War general, Sir Bernard Law Montgomery.
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