SOMME
Page 45
In a mood of understandable pique the Germans ordered the survivors to clear the dugouts of bodies and then, with the dregs of their strength, to carry the wounded back to the transport lines on the other side of the hill. Then they marched them to Brigade Headquarters for interrogation. Starving, filthy, frozen, exhausted and on the verge of collapse, they stumbled to attention in front of a German Major. An interpreter was present. Long years later, Private Dick Manson remained convinced that there was a touch of admiration in his glance as he translated the Major’s words.
‘Is this what has held the Brigade up for a week? Who are you and where have you come from?’
They replied with name, rank and number. They were too weary to say more. But they might have answered that they had come, by a roundabout route, from Glasgow. That they were a representative cross-section of their Battalion – shipping clerks, errand-boys, stevedores, railway porters, grocers’ assistants, postmen. That they were, in short, fifteen soldiers of Kitchener’s Army.
The valley in front of Beaumont Hamel from which British troops attacked on the First of July.
The old trenchlines can still be seen as chalk-marks on the ground. Here on the Thiepval plateau the German line took a sharp turn to run down to the valley of the Ancre and up beyond it to stand guard in front of Beaumont Hamel.
In the fields between Hébuterne village and Gommecourt Territorials of the 56th Division were decimated by shellfire as they struggled to cross the land to the right of the village to reach the remnants of their first waves, cut off on the high ground beyond. The scars of the intense shelling can still be seen in the foreground. The tip of the wood was the westernmost point of the Germans’ trenchline in France. It was known as the Kaiser’s Oak.
In front of the British jumping-off line which can still be discerned running across the top corner of the ploughed field on the right and continuing to the edge of the copse on the left, the boys of the Pals Battalions, unprotected by the British barrage for ten minutes before the assault, waited to attack the German line on top of the hill in front of Serre village.
A German’s eye view, shot from the lip of the Hawthorn mine crater, of the ground from which the British attacked their line at Beaumont Hamel. Saps were dug right through to the sunken lane to the right of the monument and on the low escarpment of the White City there are many traces of the old tunnels and dugouts. Geoffrey Malins filmed the First of July attack from a position constructed for him by Royal Engineers. Its remains can still be seen where the escarpment runs down to the bend of the track to the left of the memorial to the Scots who eventually captured Beaumont Hamel in November, four and a half months later.
Fortress Thiepval. The complex of German and British front-line trenches in front of Thiepval village, now a small hamlet. The farm buildings to the right of the church are on the site of the old château. The rectangle which encloses them is the line of the original foundations. On the right is the vast Thiepval Memorial to the Missing which records the names of more than 72,000 men who died on the Somme and who have no known graves.
Looking from the German trenchline in front of the old château. The British line followed the edge of Thiepval Wood in the foreground, and ran in front of Hamel village up the slopes on the other side of the valley, facing the German line in front of Beaumont Hamel. On the extreme right of centre is the Ulster Tower, on the site of the ‘Pope’s Nose’, which commemorates the 36th Ulster Division who attacked this sector on the First of July.
The present-day view to the right of old Thiepval village (shot from the Thiepval Memorial). The large mass of woodland on the opposite slope is Aveluy Wood; in the nearer centre is the village of Authuille. The British trenches ran across the slopes of Thiepval Ridge above the village and swung round along the edge of Nab Wood (left centre). The isolated clump of trees on the left surrounds the small quarry which was the nub of the German defence in the Leipzig Redoubt.
Rose Vaquette (Madame Glavieux) pointing to the spot where her father, Borro-mée, was shot on 27th September, 1914, coincidentally on the site where the Germans later constructed their Leipzig Redoubt. The swell in the ground, running from the indentation on the nearside verge of the track marks the front-line trench in its ‘snout’. In the background the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing stands on the crest of the ridge.
The old well of Thiepval village still looks out across No Man’s Land to the old British line round Thiepval Wood.
As this German photograph shows, the walls of Thiepval Château still stood, although ruined and battered, in 1915. It was snapped from the window of the church, which was likewise fairly intact, and the walled village pond in the left foreground still contains water.
A heap of stone in a farmyard – all that remains of the noble Thiepval Château above Thiepval Wood. Beyond it is the Mesnil Ridge and, on the left, the edge of Aveluy Wood.
Thiepval village rebuilt, but a mere hamlet now. The farm in the foreground stands on the site of the old Thiepval Château and the foundations can still be traced. Opposite, in front of the new church the rough uncultivated corner of what is now a field is the site of the village pond. As it was communal property no one, presumably, has the right to use it.
By the summer of 1915 the Germans had built a formidable network of well-constructed trenches like this one which was part of the Ovillers defences.
The Albert-Bapaume road separates the twin village of Ovillers and la Boisselle where the ground still bears witness to the magnitude of the German defences.
The formidable German line still reaches across the fields to the left of la Boisselle to the massive crater of the mine that breached it. Rising from the village the road runs over the Tara and Usna hills on its way to Albert. The village in the distance is Aveluy.
Boromée Vaquette, the first man to die on the Thiepval Ridge, lies in the family plot, under a modern headstone, in Authuille village cemetery.
‘… the first one I saw were my chum, Clem Cunnington. I don’t think we’d gone twenty yards when he got hit straight through the breast. Machine gun bullets.’ Private Ernest Deighton Clem Cunnington’s grave in Ovillers Military Cemetery.
Reg Parker (on left) with two comrades of the Sheffield Pals. He took the water cart up to the Battalion in the trenches at Serre on the night of the First of July but failed to find his brother Willie who had gone ‘over the top’ that morning.
Reg Parker’s brother Willie who fought his way out of his ‘reserved occupation’ job as an engineer to rejoin the ranks of the Sheffield Pals in time to go over the top with them at Serre on the First of July. He was killed in the first wave of the attack.
A view of the still-visible trenchlines to the left of Contalmaison attacked alone by the 13th Rifle Brigade on the evening of 1oth July. The chalk-pit in the centre of the photograph was in the 3rd German line. After word reached them that the abortive attack was cancelled more than half the battalion was wiped out by shellfire as they struggled to get back across the land in the foreground of the photograph.
The road from la Boisselle to Contalmaison, just to the right of where the 13th Rifle Brigade made their unsupported attack on 10th July.
There are still traces in the foreground of the line that formed the Fricourt Salient. Beyond it the line swung east and from the slopes above Fricourt in the top-right of the photograph the British attacked almost straight ahead to capture the villages of Mametz and Montauban.
Contalmaison Château in 1917, a year after its capture.
Entrance to a (possibly British) dugout, one of a line in a sunken road near Contalmaison.
Reserve trenches on the Somme.
The ground attacked on 14th and 15th July, with the two stumbling blocks of High Wood and Delville Wood.
As Forward Observation Officer Fred Beadle lost his way and turned up this German communication trench to the right of the Crucifix Corner. To his horror he found that it was leading him straight to the enemy line at High Wood.
On
the left are the remains of the windmill which concealed a deep dugout. It was from here that astonished British officers were able to look across the waving corn to High Wood and, exploring further, found it empty.
From the windmill above Crucifix Corner, Bazentin, looking across to Longueval and Delville Wood. Although there was still fierce fighting and shelling at Longueval the cavalry galloped across this open country to make their abortive attack on High Wood witnessed by Fred Beadle. The long clump of trees above the remains of the windmill in the foreground is the approximate site of the German communication trench in which Fred Beadle accidentally found himself.
Part of Ethel Bath’s letter.
2nd Lieutenant Reginald Bath, killed in action in Leuze Wood.
Bill Turner of the 15th Highland Light Infantry with his girl-friend Maggie Gaffney. They were photographed together two days before he was to leave for France – but he was hauled off the train at the last minute when his mother revealed that he was under age.
Jack Beament of the Church Lads Brigade.
Some of the Church Lads of the 16th Battalion, Kings Royal Rifle Corps. Jack Beament (second from left, middle row) and Jack Brown (fourth from right, back row) later crawled together out of the debacle at High Wood.
Death Valley and, running away from it on the right, Caterpillar Wood and valley. It was the only sheltered route to the line as the fighting progressed and the ground still shows the battering it received from the passage of troops and guns.
Looking across to Longueval and Delville Wood from the corner of Trones Wood on the road to Guillemont. The tower-like building in the centre is Waterlot Farm (now a sugar-beet refinery) and the rebuilt Guillemont Station is on the right. Since the railway track has been abandoned it is once again falling into ruins.
After the War the deep dugouts and galleries the Germans had burrowed into the depths of the chalky uplands of the Somme were filled up with the debris and rubble of the ruined villages and the entrances levelled. But this one at Guillemont was overlooked. The kennel-like concrete entries, close to the earth, lead steeply down to a double-chambered German command post, once part of a more extensive underground system.
The remains of a machine-gun post in the Triangle, attacked by the 6th West Yorks. on 3rd September, still looks across the fields to their jumping-off line on the edge of Thiepval Wood.
This panorama of the Ancre Valley and the Thiepval Ridge clearly shows the area where the West Yorks. attacked from the edge of Thiepval Wood on 3rd September, and both the Pope’s Nose (although the trees surrounding the Ulster Tower mask part of its area) and the infamous Triangle can still be picked out by their outlines on the ground. (Photograph Richard Dunning)
The first message to be transmitted by the ist Anzac Wireless section, under the command of George Middle, during the battle for Poziéres.
The statue of Sir Douglas Haig at Montreuil-sur-Mer which was British General Headquarters from 1916 to 1919. The statue was destroyed by the occupying German army in 1940, reerected after the War and narrowly escaped destruction for a second time when extracts from Sir Douglas Haig’s private papers were published in 1952 and what were deemed to be uncomplimentary references to the French Army received wide publicity in the French newspapers, caused a national scandal and violent demonstrations by groups of anciens combattants demanding the removal of the statue. The row was smoothed over by the Mayor of Montreuil (the same Raymond Wable who, as a schoolboy, had seen Haig in Montreuil during the War) and the statue still stands today in the market square in front of the old Theatre which was the Army’s telephone exchange and main communications centre. As an extra precaution there were duplicated lines in a deep dungeon in the Citadel.
A view of the land between and beyond Ginchy and Guillemont, the scene of the September fighting.
The formidable defences of the German Second Line at Ginchy – still clearly visible as chalk-marks on the ground – captured by the Guards Division. The small quarry to the right of the village served as Brigade Headquarters.
Ginchy, Autumn 1982. Almost seventy years on the farmlands of the Somme still yield an annual harvest of steel.
Where the Switch Line ran.
The site of the Triangle and the Quadrilateral from the Guards Memorial on Ginchy Ridge.
Christchurch Boys’ High School cricket team in 1908, the year in which they won the Heathcote Williams Shield for the best team in the Dominion of New Zealand. Four of the eleven were killed in the War. Rupert Hickmott is seated left of the shield.
The menacing Quadrilateral which blocked the advance from Guillemont (in background). Nearly seventy years later its massive concrete positions still stand – successive attempts to blow them up have merely tilted them.
The invitation to Arthur Agius’s wedding.
The Butte de Warlencourt and the land beyond le Sars where the fighting came to a standstill at the end of the Battle of the Somme in November 1916.
The valley behind Beaumont Hamel and the slopes to the right above it where the boys of the Glasgow Tramways Battalion were cut off in Frankfurt Trench and fought a private battle of their own after the Battle of the Somme officially ended and all attempts to rescue them had to be given up.
The British and German lines on either side of the present-day Newfoundland Park where the trenches (which are chalk-marks beyond it) have been preserved by the Canadian Government as a memorial to the men of the Newfoundland Regiment who died here. Y-Ravine runs just behind the slope on the right and past the foot of the trees in the park.
The valley behind Beaumont Hamel (Station Road) with the Thiepval Ridge to the east, which for obvious reasons had to go before Beaumont Hamel could be captured. The old deep dugouts, so joyfully explored by the boys of the 13th Rifle Brigade after they had helped the Royal Naval Division to capture the valley and many gun positions, can still be seen in the lee of the bush-covered bank in the foreground.
The ‘fortress’ village of Beaumont Hamel sheltered in the cleft of its valley. The German front line ran across the slopes of the rising ground on either side. The white chalk-marks in front of the copse on the left mark the perimeter of their outpost wired defences, but the ditch-like vestiges of trench running towards the village in the right of middle foreground was dug, after its capture, as a British communication trench. Munich and Frankfurt trenches were on the left of the rising ground behind the village.
Station Road, running from Beaumont Hamel village to Beaucourt station, which was the ‘Green Line’ captured by the Royal Naval Division supported by the 13th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, on 13th November. The terrain has been long ago returned to farmland but the rugged vestiges of dugouts, trenches and gun positions show how formidably it was fortified.
The Order issued from G.H.Q. on the eve of the First of July which was later denied to be an instruction to ‘take no prisoners’.
All that remains of old Beaumont Hamel village is a single pane of stained glass depicting the head of the Virgin Mary. In 1916 a German officer picked it out of the rubble of the old church and took it back to Germany as a souvenir. In 1978 he returned it to the village and it was incorporated into a window of the ‘new’ church (rebuilt in 1922).
This photograph was found by a British soldier in the wallet of a dead German.
Above three: The letter Captain Agius received from Harold Scarlett’s widow Florence.
‘Fond Love to my Dear Boy’. Such postcards were more popular with the senders than with the recipients.
The New Recruits: Joe Hoyles (standing), Fred Lyons and Sid Birkett, photographed the day they joined up.
The Seasoned Warriors. Len Lovell at home on convalescent leave.
George Roy Bealing, MM 6th Wilts. 19th Div. 1914–18.
Tom Easton of the Tyneside Scottish in 1914.
Bibliography
Author’s Note
Index
Bibliography
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1914, Vols. 1–2, co
mpiled by Brigadier-General Sir James E. Edmonds (Macmillan & Co., 1925)
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915, Vols. 1–2, compiled by Brigadier-General Sir James E. Edmonds (Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1928)
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1916, Vols. 1–2, compiled by Brigadier-General Sir James E. Edmonds (Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1932)
Medical Services General History, Vol. 3, Major-General Sir W. G. Mac-Pherson, KCMG, CB, LL D (His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1924)
The Guards Division in the Great War, 1915–1918, Cuthbert Headlam, DSO (John Murray, 1924)
The Story of the 55th (West Lancashire) Division, The Rev. J. O. Coop, DSO, TD, MA (Liverpool Daily Post Printers, 1919)
The Eighth Division in War, 1914–1918, Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Boraston, CB, CBE, and Captain Cyril E. C. Bax (The Medici Society Ltd., 1926)
The History of the Rifle Brigade in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. 1, Reginald Berkeley, MC (The Rifle Brigade Club Ltd., 1927)
The History of the Rifle Brigade in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. 2, William W. Seymour (The Rifle Brigade Club Ltd., 1936)
The 47th (London) Division 1914–1919, edited by Alan H. Maude (Amalgamated Press, 1922)
The West Yorkshire Regiment in the War, 1914–1918, Vol. 1, Everard Wyrall (Bodley Head)
The 56th Division (1st London Territorial Division), Major C. H. Dudley Ward, DSO, MC (John Murray, 1921)
The Worcestershire Regiment, Captain H. FitzM. Stacke, MC (G. T. Cheshire & Sons Ltd., 1928)
The New Zealand Division, 1916–1919, Colonel H. Stewart, CMG, DSO, MC (Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., Auckland, 1921)
The Cambridgeshires, 1914 to 1919, Brigadier-General E. Riddell, CMG, DSO, and Colonel M. C. Clayton, DSO, DL (Bowes & Bowes, 1934)
The Royal Naval Division, Douglas Jerrold (Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1927)
The Story of the Tyneside Scottish, Brigadier-General Trevor Ternan, CB, CMG, DSO (The Northumberland Press, 1918)
The History of the 13th Battalion A.I.F., Thomas A. White (Tyrrells Ltd., Sydney, 1924)