THE B A T T L E O F THE SOMME 1916–2016
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<strong>THE</strong><br />
B A T T L E O F <strong>THE</strong> <strong>SOMME</strong><br />
<strong>1916–2016</strong><br />
www.rbl.org.uk/somme100
As day breaks through wind and rain we form a line<br />
on rough terrain, to face a foe we’ll never know, we<br />
will fall and die where poppies now grow. Remember<br />
us the chosen ones, the lads the dads and someone’s<br />
sons. Be not sad, just be glad, knowing we gave all<br />
we had. As you walk on our fields of doom, places<br />
where our bodies were strewn, we will gaze on you<br />
through heaven’s door and hope our words stay for<br />
evermore. When you leave save a tear, for here we<br />
stay year on year, the lads the dads and someone’s<br />
sons, the boys who fell before German guns.<br />
Dave Callaghan<br />
Taken from the wall of remembrance at<br />
w w w.s o m m e - b at t le fi e l d s.c o m
<strong>THE</strong><br />
B A T T L E O F <strong>THE</strong> <strong>SOMME</strong><br />
<strong>1916–2016</strong><br />
01 FIELD MANUAL<br />
© IWM (Q52)
CONTENTS<br />
The Battle of the Somme<br />
From an original work for The Royal British Legion<br />
by Professor Sir Hew Strachan FRSE FRHistS<br />
Introduction ................................. 03<br />
The Soldiers ................................. 04<br />
The Battle ................................... 08<br />
Commemoration ................................ 12<br />
Facts and Figures ............................ 14<br />
CD Content includes<br />
Video Clips and Images<br />
Commemorative Music<br />
Two Minute Silence Video<br />
02 FIELD MANUAL
INTRODUCTION<br />
The British folk memory of the Battle of the Somme<br />
is dominated by one moment: 7.30am on 01 July 1916.<br />
It was a bright summer’s day, the sun well up, and<br />
falling from the east on the backs of the German<br />
defenders and into the faces of the British. Officers<br />
sounded their whistles, and their men scrambled up<br />
ladders to get out of the trenches and into No Man’s<br />
Land. Sergeant R.H. Tawney, with the 22nd Battalion,<br />
the Manchester Regiment near Fricourt, recalled that:<br />
“[We] lay down, waiting for the line to form up<br />
on each side of us. When it was ready, we went<br />
forward, not doubling, but at a walk. For we had 900<br />
yards of rough ground to the trench, which was our<br />
first objective.<br />
“By the day’s end 19,240 British soldiers had been<br />
killed and nearly twice that number wounded: the<br />
total of 57,470 casualties was and remains the<br />
highest suffered by the British Army in a single day.<br />
This single fact ensures that for most Britons the<br />
Battle of the Somme defines what they mean when they<br />
talk of the ‘tragedy’, the ‘waste’ and ‘futility’ of<br />
the First World War. Apart from the war’s opening<br />
and closing dates (for Britain 04 August 1914 and<br />
11 November 1918), 01 July 1916 was the first day<br />
picked out for national observance when plans for the<br />
commemoration of the centenary were being drawn up.<br />
“On 01 July 2016, it will be 100 years since the<br />
beginning of the Battle of the Somme. This was one of<br />
the largest battles of the First World War fought by<br />
the British and the French against Germany. It took<br />
place on both banks of the River Somme in France, and<br />
is remembered as one of the most tragic episodes in<br />
human history.”<br />
FIELD MANUAL<br />
03
<strong>THE</strong> SOLDIERS<br />
Going over the top at the Somme was the first taste<br />
of battle many of these men had, as many were part<br />
of ‘Kitchener’s Volunteer Army’ and were made up of<br />
the Pals battalions, mainly recruited from the North<br />
of England.<br />
The losses to Pals battalions in particular gave the<br />
battle special resonance for local communities. Pals<br />
battalions were made up of groups of friends, of team<br />
mates in sports clubs or colleagues at work, who had<br />
joined together and expected to fight together. The<br />
result of such tight local links meant that heavy<br />
losses in one battalion could be felt in towns and<br />
cities down to the level of individual streets and<br />
corner shops. The Pals battalions therefore explain<br />
why the effect of the first day of the Somme had such<br />
a profound effect in Britain itself: the losses were<br />
felt locally as much as nationally.<br />
Pals battalions had their origins in Lancashire but<br />
Yorkshire suffered as much as anywhere. At Serre<br />
whole sections of the 12th (the Sheffield Pals)<br />
battalion, the York and Lancaster Regiment were wiped<br />
out by German machine guns, and Accrington, Barnsley<br />
and Bradford, all with units in the same division,<br />
suffered as grievously. Scotland had very few Pals<br />
battalions: the most obvious were the 15th, 16th<br />
and 17th battalions of the Highland Light Infantry<br />
from Glasgow and the 16th (McCrae’s) battalion of<br />
the Royal Scots from Edinburgh. By the afternoon<br />
of 04 July 1916, the latter, with a large number<br />
of footballers, including Hearts players, reckoned<br />
that 12 out of 21 officers and 624 of 793 other ranks<br />
were missing. Ireland to all intents and purposes<br />
had no Pals battalions, but was still grievously<br />
hit on 01 July. The 36th (Ulster) Division, many<br />
of its men having been recruited from the Ulster<br />
Volunteer Force, faced the Schwaben Redoubt and made<br />
the greatest progress of any British formation on the<br />
opening day. Irish Nationalists had joined the 16th<br />
Division and it entered the battle later, in early<br />
September. Recruiting in Wales had proved sticky,<br />
and Lloyd George’s ambition to form a Welsh Corps<br />
had to be modified to a division only, the 38th. It<br />
entered the fighting on 07 July, clearing the Mametz Wood<br />
by 12 July.<br />
04 FIELD MANUAL
Of the Dominions, Newfoundland (then still separate<br />
from Canada) was as badly affected as any northern<br />
town on 01 July. Its battalion attacked as part of<br />
the second wave at Beaumont-Hamel, and suffered 91%<br />
casualties, with every officer killed or wounded.<br />
The Canadian Corps, which had arrived in France in<br />
spring 1915, did not enter the battle – having been<br />
further north – until September. The Australians<br />
and New Zealanders came (like the Newfoundlanders)<br />
by way of Gallipoli. The Australians joined Gough’s<br />
Reserve Army and took Pozières on the Albert-Bapaume<br />
road on 23 July. They held the village and their<br />
units were rotated through the sector for the next<br />
six weeks. The New Zealanders moved into the line at<br />
Fricourt in late August, and took part in the Flers<br />
attack on 15 September. On 15 July the South African<br />
Brigade took Delville Wood, a thick tangle of trees,<br />
and held it against successive counter-attacks and<br />
under shellfire that shattered the forest. Of their<br />
original strength of 3,153, just 143 left the wood five<br />
days later. The South African memorial at Delville<br />
Wood became, in the era of apartheid, a symbol of<br />
white domination.<br />
Unsurprisingly, many famous individuals fought<br />
at the Somme. To name two is invidious, but they<br />
caught the public imagination then and now. One was<br />
Raymond Asquith, Fellow of All Souls, and son of<br />
the Prime Minister. The latter visited the front in<br />
early September and saw his son. It was their last<br />
meeting, as Raymond was killed near Lesboeufs with<br />
the Grenadier Guards on 15 September. His father<br />
was shattered but so were those for whom Raymond’s<br />
abilities made him the embodiment of what came to be<br />
called ‘the lost generation’. Serving alongside him,<br />
and wounded, was another prime minister (albeit of<br />
the future), Harold Macmillan.<br />
Siegfried Sassoon, nicknamed ‘Mad Jack’ by his<br />
comrades, won the Military Cross serving with the<br />
Royal Welch Fusiliers at Mametz in July 1916.<br />
Although his Memoirs of an Infantry Officer would not<br />
be published until after the war, his poetry made him<br />
well known during the war, and his decision to throw<br />
his Military Cross in the Mersey in 1917 in protest<br />
against the war prompted the War Office to regard him<br />
(not without reason) as suffering from shell shock.<br />
FIELD MANUAL<br />
05
© IWM (Q4079)<br />
06 FIELD MANUAL
© IWM (Q3996)<br />
FIELD MANUAL<br />
07
<strong>THE</strong> BATTLE<br />
In 1914 the principal army on the Western Front was<br />
that of France, but by 1916 the growth of the British<br />
Army through Kitchener’s recruitment of volunteers<br />
had begun to change the balance of power. On<br />
14 February 1916, the British commander-in-chief,<br />
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, agreed that the main<br />
offensive should move to a sector in the south of<br />
France, in Picardy, astride and to the north of the<br />
river Somme. The plan was for a joint attack, with<br />
both armies supporting each other, but the French<br />
taking the larger part.<br />
By 01 July, the French contribution to the joint<br />
effort had been cut from a front of 40km to 15km,<br />
from 39 divisions to 12, and from 1,700 guns to 688.<br />
This caused Britain to take on a proportionately<br />
larger role in the battle than had been planned, and<br />
also resulted in pulling the weight of the unfolding<br />
battle further north in the direction of Arras,<br />
giving a British front that totalled about 25km, and<br />
increasing the risk of fatalities.<br />
The Somme – despite the resonance of its name –<br />
is only a sluggish stream at the point where it<br />
intersects with the 1916 front. Because the British<br />
troops were to its north, the river played little<br />
part in their experience of the battle. Much more<br />
important was the Ancre, which runs from Miraumont to<br />
the south west and joins the Somme at Corbie. Rural<br />
Picardy lacked the transport networks and other<br />
infrastructure to sustain a major army fighting a big<br />
battle. The principal north-south railway line lay<br />
to the rear, with its junction at Amiens. The roads<br />
forward from there were narrow and as ill-adapted to<br />
support the movement of troops, guns and supplies as<br />
they are today to ferry tourists to the key points<br />
of the battlefield. The decision to fight here required<br />
the allies to establish from scratch the equivalent<br />
of a modern urban infrastructure in a backward and<br />
under-developed landscape.<br />
The soil is chalky and so was less likely to become<br />
waterlogged than the ground further north in Flanders.<br />
In high summer the ground was firm and well-adapted to<br />
support an attack. However, by October and November,<br />
when mud had formed, it was different from that of<br />
Flanders. The thin topsoil mixed with the chalk to<br />
produce ‘a liquid grey yellow mud… extraordinarily<br />
buoyant, like quicksilver’. It was sticky and formed<br />
quicksand. This was as good a reason for closing down<br />
08 FIELD MANUAL
the battle in October as any. The chalk also benefited<br />
the Germans: they had had 18 months in which to cut<br />
into it to create deep defensive positions, in a way<br />
that was impossible further north, where the water<br />
table was higher.<br />
The Battle of the Somme did not produce a ‘decisive<br />
victory’ of the sort that was alleged to have<br />
characterised earlier wars, but the Somme could<br />
be seen as a waypoint on the route to winning the<br />
war in 1918. Certainly the Somme redefined modern<br />
industrialised warfare, and was fought as a battle<br />
of attrition. Within the ‘battle’ of the Somme were<br />
scores of other battles – the battle of Albert, the<br />
battle of Flers-Courcelette, the battle of Ancre; by<br />
the standards of the previous century, the Somme was<br />
a war within a war.<br />
The control of Picardy was not massively significant<br />
for the outcome of the war. So the Somme offensive,<br />
deprived of any obvious strategic objective in<br />
geographical terms, had to find another rationale.<br />
In 1915 many senior officers had begun to conclude that,<br />
given the difficulty of achieving a breakthrough, the<br />
aim of an offensive should not be defined territorially<br />
but economically. The answer was to force the enemy<br />
to fight so as to exhaust his reserves, and ideally<br />
to force him to attack you – and so suffer more<br />
casualties – rather than the opposite.<br />
The opening stages of the battle were filmed, by<br />
Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell. The result<br />
– The Battle of the Somme – was released on<br />
21 August 1916 and seen by one million people in<br />
Britain within a week. In six weeks up to 20 million<br />
had seen it in nearly 2,000 cinemas. Malins produced a<br />
follow-up – The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance<br />
of the Tanks, released in January 1917. His footage<br />
is used as the default for any and every First<br />
World War documentary, regardless of its specific<br />
relevance, and although some of the sequences were<br />
staged, the majority were not. The film shows the<br />
private soldier’s war, with no sign of senior officers<br />
and no attempt to explain strategy. Soldiers of all<br />
ranks saw it at the front, some in earshot of the<br />
later stages of the same battle, and pronounced it<br />
realistic. The film may have been light on gore, but<br />
it brought the battle to the public in an immediate<br />
and dramatic way, and for the first time.<br />
FIELD MANUAL<br />
09
10 FIELD MANUAL<br />
© IWM (Q70167)
© IWM (Q79501)<br />
FIELD MANUAL<br />
11
COMMEMORATION<br />
None of the cemeteries of the Commonwealth War Graves<br />
Commission on the Somme compares in scale with those<br />
at Ypres. They are scattered throughout the landscape,<br />
behind folds in the ground and in isolated copses, the<br />
sites of particular actions or of casualty clearing<br />
stations. They therefore reflect the ebb and flow of<br />
the battle. Today they have become the focus for<br />
regimental acts of commemoration, often held not on<br />
01 July (when the main event to mark the battle is<br />
held) but on the day appropriate to the action of a<br />
particular Pals battalion.<br />
Many of the memorials erected by the British empire in<br />
the early 1920s were symbols of victory as much as of<br />
loss: those of the 1st Australian Division at Pozières,<br />
the South African Brigade at Delville Wood and the New<br />
Zealander Division at Flers. The most obvious Scottish<br />
memorial on the Somme is that to the 51st Highland<br />
Division at Beaumont-Hamel, which in contrast to that<br />
of the Newfoundlanders on the same site, also marks<br />
success: the capture of Y Ravine on 13 November 1916. So<br />
does that of the Welsh dragon at Mametz. Most striking<br />
of all in this respect is the Ulster Tower, erected on<br />
the site of the 36th Division’s attack, and modelled<br />
on Helen’s Tower in Clandboye.<br />
The Ulster Tower was opened in 1921. With the passage<br />
of time the sense of victory, not just at the Somme<br />
but in the war as a whole, was eroded. As a result,<br />
commemoration changed its tone. Subsequent memorials<br />
have conveyed different messages. Today’s Australians<br />
are probably more aware of Fromelles, the site of<br />
a failed diversionary attack, at the end of which<br />
the Australian dead, together with some British, were<br />
buried in a mass grave. Its discovery in Pheasant Wood<br />
led to a new cemetery, which was opened in 2010.<br />
The most striking manifestation of this change of<br />
mood is Sir Edwin Lutyens’s Thiepval arch, visible<br />
from many points of the battlefield and sited on the<br />
ridge which was the centre of much of the fighting. It<br />
was inaugurated in 1932 and commemorates the 72,000<br />
British and South African soldiers who were killed on<br />
the Somme and have no known graves. Their names are on<br />
the sixteen pillars, although some are so high up as to<br />
be difficult to read. The design, which consists of four<br />
superimposed arches of increasing heights, owes its<br />
inspiration to classical models for triumphal arches,<br />
even if its materials (it is faced in brick) and its<br />
massing are very much of the 20th Century. Thiepval is<br />
the location for the annual service of remembrance on<br />
01 July.<br />
12 FIELD MANUAL
© IWM<br />
FIELD MANUAL<br />
13
<strong>THE</strong> BATTLE<br />
OF <strong>THE</strong> <strong>SOMME</strong><br />
01 JULY – 18 NOVEMBER 1916<br />
Somme<br />
FRANCE<br />
19,240<br />
British soldiers<br />
had been killed<br />
by the end of the<br />
first day.<br />
1 ST<br />
The first tank to<br />
engage in battle<br />
was designated D1, a<br />
British Mark I Male,<br />
during the Battle<br />
of the Somme on<br />
15 September 1916.<br />
14 FIELD MANUAL<br />
141 DAYS<br />
The Battle of the<br />
Somme lasted from 01<br />
July – 18 November 1916.<br />
5 MILES<br />
was the furthest<br />
advance of any allied<br />
force during the<br />
whole battle.<br />
1,700,000<br />
shells were fired on to<br />
the German lines by<br />
1,600 pieces of British<br />
artillery during the<br />
eight-day preliminary<br />
bombardment.(est)
FIRST DAY OF BATTLE<br />
TOTAL CASUALTIES<br />
GERMAN CASUALTIES<br />
500,000<br />
BRITISH CASUALTIES<br />
419,654<br />
FRENCH CASUALTIES<br />
204,253<br />
BRITISH CASUALTIES<br />
57, 470<br />
Casualties including the<br />
19,240 soldiers killed,<br />
was and remains the<br />
highest suffered by the<br />
British Army in a single<br />
day. In comparison, the<br />
French Army had around<br />
1,600 casualties and the<br />
German had 10,000–12,000<br />
casualties.<br />
30KG<br />
The average British<br />
infantryman carried<br />
30kg of equipment<br />
as he went over<br />
the top during<br />
the first phase of<br />
the battle.<br />
67<br />
The oldest British<br />
soldier to die during<br />
the battle was Lt<br />
Henry Webber, 7th<br />
South Lancashire<br />
Regiment. He was 67<br />
when he died on 27th<br />
July 1916.<br />
49<br />
tanks of the Heavy<br />
Branch of the<br />
Machine Gun Corps<br />
of the British Army<br />
were sourced and<br />
were to reach Somme<br />
by September 1916.<br />
However, due to<br />
mechanical and other<br />
failures, only 36 of<br />
them participated<br />
at the Battle of<br />
the Somme.<br />
DID YOU KNOW?<br />
During the Battle of the Somme, 51 Victoria Crosses were<br />
awarded – 17 of them were awarded posthumously.<br />
FIELD MANUAL<br />
15
16 FIELD MANUAL<br />
© IWM
As day breaks through wind and rain we form a line<br />
on rough terrain, to face a foe we’ll never know, we<br />
will fall and die where poppies now grow. Remember<br />
us the chosen ones, the lads the dads and someone’s<br />
sons. Be not sad, just be glad, knowing we gave all<br />
we had. As you walk on our fields of doom, places<br />
where our bodies were strewn, we will gaze on you<br />
through heaven’s door and hope our words stay for<br />
evermore. When you leave save a tear, for here we<br />
stay year on year, the lads the dads and someone’s<br />
sons, the boys who fell before German guns.<br />
Dave Callaghan<br />
Taken from the wall of remembrance at<br />
w w w.s o m m e - b at t le fi e l d s.c o m