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| Communication trenches from the Battle of the Somme. The front line trenches can be seen. |
The Battle of the Somme took place around the Somme river from July 1 to November 1 1916. This was undoubtedly the greatest blunder ever made by the British top brass. The slaughter of so many men was the "brain child" (or lets rather call it Brain Fart) of Sir General Haig. The casualties on the first morning of the battle was a staggering 57000, with a total Allied loss of more that 1.5 million men during the campaign, making this one of the bloodiest battle in history.
The French were engaged in the deadly Battle of Verdun and the Somme offencive was planned to draw German infantry away from their offencive around Verdun to give the French some relief. The plan was quite simple. Blast the Germans out of existence with a massive artillery bombardment and then just walk over no-mans land and take the German front lines. Sounds simple, right? The Allied troops also built mines under the German lines and these were packed with explosives. At the start of the battle, these would be detonated, causing panic in the German front line. Just by the way, one of these mines which were packed with explosives did not detonate, so somewhere under the ground along the Somme battlefield is a massive amount of explosives which are now nearly 102 years old! Just when will it explode?
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| One of the mines exploding - obviously not my photo, but my photo of a photo at one of the memorial sites. |
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| Around the Lochnagar mine crater. Note the ever present shell holes. |
So the bombardment started and lasted for 5 days. There were 808 10 pounder guns and 202 4.5" Howitzers, these being regarded as small field artillery. There were also a total of 427 Heavy guns. These were the really big boys which could cause serious damage. Due to bad weather conditions the bombardment was extended for another 2 days. A total of 1 738 000 shells were fired at the German front line before the infantry attack.
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| A patch of shell marked battlefield |
After the bombardment, the infantry climbed out over the walls of their trenches and started to walk towards the German front line. They had orders not to run forward! They soon reached the barbed wire which was supposed to be cut by the bombardment. This was not cut! Also, as a result of true German efficiency, the deep, concrete encased dugouts of the Germans withstood the bombardment and once the shelling stopped, the Germans crawled out of their bunkers, set up their machine guns and cut down the advancing British infantry like corn. A slaughter of note.
Three other sites (I have described Delveille Wood in detail in other posts) which I visited on my day long tour of the Somme battlefields were firstly the Lochnagar crater. This was one of the mines which was detonated on the first morning of the battle of the Somme. This is a massive crater which was right under the German front line.
We then moved onto the site of the Devonshire Cemetery. This was a section of the the front line held by the men of the 8th and 9th Devonshire Regiment. Their Captain, Duncan Martin, was aware of a German machine gun on the outskirts of the town of Mametz. He raised his concerns about this machine gun and the 400 yards his men would have to cover in the face of this machine gun. He was accused of being a coward. He was the first out of the trench on the day of the attack, and he was the first to be shot (dead) back into the trench. Many of the men of the regiment were shot and fell back into the trench when the climbed out. After the battle, the trench was closed in and they were berried where they lay. Captain Martin is Grave number 1A at the site. A wooded cross was erected at the grave site and it read, "The Devonshires Held this Trench, The Devonshires Hold it still". This has since be replaced by a more permanent headstone
The final place I visited on this day was the memorial to the Canadian Newfoundland regiment. This is at Baeumont-Hamel and is a 300 000 m2 park of preserved battlefield. It is the largest perserved patch of first world war battlefield. This was the sight of the first engagement of the Newfoundland regiment and 30 mins later, the regiment was no more. They were in the third wave of attack on the first morning of the battle of the Somme. As their time approached to go over the top, they discovered that the communication tranches to the forward trench were so full of the dead and wounded that it was impossible to move forward. They were ordered to attack from the third row of defensive tranches. As they climbed out of the reserve trenches, they were, to a man, shot down. Just a few more casualties which added up to the 57 000 allied soldiers killed on this first morning of the Battle of the Somme!
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| Reserve trench about a 800 meters from the front line. |
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| Largest perserved park from the Battle of the Somme. Men lived and died in these trenches. |
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