July 1st 1916 (THE SOMME)

[PADDY]

Just spare those young men a moment of your time. 20,000 killed in the first day of this offensive on the Western Front. I'll be going there in August to pay my respects at Thiepval to the many Irishmen of the 36th Ulster Divison who died, needlessly (90th Anniversary). NIHQ (Army HQ)in Lisburn, Co.Antrim (just outside Belfast) is named after Theipval, in memory to this debacle.

There are a couple of Ulstermen on the Forum here, so they will realise the significance of this date (July 1st) in our history. There were young men from all sides of our community who suffered, endured, survived and died together against a common enemy. But never forget, many young men and women of various nationalities, wearing different uniforms, suffered in this ironically named; "GREAT WAR."

(apologies, not strictly WW2 but this section was the only relevent place for this piece)

(Tyneside Irish) below:

 

[mikepara]

Here here Paddy! Respect to the men who Climbed out of there trenches for the 'unopposed' walk across no mans land on July 1st 1916 and were meant to be home for tea and medals by Xmas.

Respect to ALL men of whatever nationality who endured and in most cases died in the Great War for Civilization.

My private thoughts however will be for those Tyneside Irishmen, pictured advancing below. All sadly long gone.[picture borrowed from Paddy.]

 

[Lincsong]

I heard just a small mention of this on the radio yesterday. Could you please gives us Yanks a recap of what happened on this day.

 

[Salv]

I heard just a small mention of this on the radio yesterday. Could you please gives us Yanks a recap of what happened on this day.

The first day of the battle was preceded by an artillery barrage lasting 8 days, designed to crush any German resistance. Unfortunately the Germans were too well protected in concrete bunkers which suffered little damage. Also the front line of barbed wire wasn't affected. The following is taken from firstworldwar.com - for the complete article, with an overview of the planning and the subsequent months-long Somme battle, click here

27 divisions of men went into the attack – 750,000 men – of which over 80% were comprised from the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Ranged against them in the German trenches were 16 divisions of the German Second Army. The odds were apparently stacked heavily in the attacking force’s favour.

However the advance artillery bombardment failed to destroy either the German front line barbed wire or the heavily-built concrete bunkers the Germans had carefully and robustly constructed. Much of the munitions used by the British proved to be ‘duds’ – badly constructed and ineffective. Many charges did not go off; even today farmers of the Western Front unearth many tons of unexploded ‘iron harvest’ each year.

During the bombardment the German troops sought effective shelter in such bunkers, emerging only with the ceasing of the British artillery bombardment, when the German machine guns were manned to great effect.

The attack itself began at 07:30 on 1 July with the detonation of a series of 17 mines. The first, which was actually exploded ten minutes early, went off at 07:20.

The detonation of this mine, the Hawthorn Crater – which remains visible today – was captured on moving film by official war photographer Geoffrey Malins.

The first attacking wave of the offensive went over the top from Gommecourt to the French left flank just south of Montauban. The attack was by no means a surprise to the German forces. Quite aside from being freely discussed in French coffee shops and in letters home from the front, the chief effect of the eight-day preliminary bombardment served merely to alert the German army to imminent attack.

As a consequence of the lack of surprise generated by the advance bombardment, and the lack of success in cutting the German barbed wire and in damaging their underground bunkers, the BEF made strikingly little progress on 1 July or in the days and weeks that followed.

More success was achieved by the French forces at the southern tail of the line, possibly because their advance bombardment was sprung only hours before the attack, thus ensuring a degree of surprise. In addition, von Falkenhayn believed that the French would not attack at all on account of their heavy losses at Verdun. By advancing in small groups, as they had at Verdun, the French troops achieved most of their objectives. Even so, the gains made here were consolidated upon rather than exploited.

The British troops were for the most part forced back into their trenches by the effectiveness of the German machine gun response.

Many troops were killed or wounded the moment they stepped out of the front lines into No Man's Land. Many men walked slowly towards the German lines, laden down with supplies, expecting little or no opposition. They made for incredulously easy targets for the German machine-gunners.

 

[scotrace]

I am glad to be awakened to this

What a terrible sacrifice in men. Our family did remember this date yesterday, thanks to Paddy's timely reference.

 

[Warden]

What ho chaps

Not sure if you good people are in Great Britain and saw the BBC programme Somme Defeat to Victory?

It was part of the BBC's contribution to the remembrance events for the Battle of the Somme.

See http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=9097

If you did see the programme, I was the poor chap trying to dig the tank out of the mud.

Tinkery Tonk

 

[nightandthecity]

There was an excellent article by Max Hastings on the Somme in Saturday's Grauniad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1810319,00.html

 

[Warden]

What ho,

Just found a picture of me taken from the TV programme 'Somme, Defeat to Victory'

I am the chap digging at the rear of the tank,

Warden 'Harry' D

 

[PADDY]

Good drama/doc Harry on 'The Somme'

Yes, the tank caught my eye Harry, as it was such an unusual feature and of course it got stuck in the notorious treacle type mud.

What an interesting project to have been involved in Harry. As you'll realise, quite a few of the ladies and gents here are into reenacting and a few have been on TV/Move projects.

Reading in the Daily Mail (UK National newspaper), it pointed out that there are only 3 surviving UK Vets of WW1 left. the oldest is 110 years. They won't be around for the centenary. We need to keep carrying the torch for those boys who endured things that no human being should have to endure or experience.

"We will remember them."

 

[Benny Holiday]

A tragic waste of life

There have been many commemorative services here in Australia, as more Australian soldiers died at the Somme than in any other battlefield of WWI.

It's awful to think of the generals using their troops like pawns in a horrific chess game; the First World War ushered in a new era of mechanical warfare that required tactics much different than those used in the previous century, and the guinea pigs were men whose sacrifice and suffering must never be forgotten.

 

[Robert Conway]

>Just spare those young men a moment of your time. 20,000 killed in the >first day of this offensive on the Western Front.


It just boggles the mind to think of such casualty figures.

I read somewhere that the majority of those loses took place with in a matter of perhaps minutes or less than an hour, as the British walked straight in to the German MG nests. Reportedly it was such a slaughter that it even traumatized the Germans soldiers manning the guns. Entire companies were mowed down in neat rows. I think that day is now known as the Black Day of the British Army (someone correct me if I am wrong about this).

I think the scale of this slaughter (and there really is no other word to describe it) wasn't exceeded until the massive encirclement battles at the beginning of the invasion of the USSR in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa).

If more people knew just how horrific war really is, they would probably lose all appetite for it. My grandfather served in the medical services of the US Army during WWI. Unfortunately I never had a chance to meet him as he died long before I was born.

 

[Alan Eardley]

Battle of the Somme

My grandfather was in the Royal Field Artillery during the Somme offensive and for the rest of World War 1. As he lived with us, I grew up with him and we often used to talk about the war, but particularly about the First Battle of the Somme, which obviously affected him deeply, to the extent that he had a nervous breakdown almost exactly thirty years after the battle.

His battery began a bombardment of the German trenches in the Northern sector (coal mining country) on 24th June 1916 and they fired constantly, day and night for six and a half days. According to Bill, the aim was twofold - first, to cause so many casualties among the Germans that resistance to an infantry assault would be seriously reduced, and second, to cut the wire (some twenty yards deep in places) to allow the massed infantry an unimpeded advance towards the German trenches.

That was the plan. Unfortunately it didn't work, and the historians give us different reasons. Here, for what it is worth, is a version from a man who was there. The type of ammunition they used in the bombardment was an 'air burst' HE shell with shrapnel, designed to explode in the air over an enemy trench, sending down a lethal hail of lead balls. This was supposed to overcome the problem of deep mud reducing the effectiveness of 'ground burst' shells, as had happened in previous battles. The Germans, however, had taken advantage of the 'good ground' (remember the coal mines?) to dig deep bunkers which the shrapnel could not penetrate. Even worse, cutting dense barbed wire with shrapnel shells at bombardment range had never actually been proven to work.

According to Bill, anyone with a trench periscope or binoculars could see that the defenders were deploying Maxim guns even as the advance was signalled and that the wire barrage was still substantially intact. Everyone except the generals that is...they had a plan, and they were going to stick to it. Having ceased fire, Grandad watched with increasing horror though his Bausch and Lomb 6 X 30 binoculars as thousands of men in his sector were cut down as wave after wave went forward. I have the binoculars in front of me as I write this. It is sobering to think what they have witnessed.

The rest, as they say, is history. Almost six miles of salient, containing no discernible strategic target was won by the Allies in a little more than five months at a cost of just over a million lives on both sides. Tragic, wasteful attritional warfare.

Alan

 

[Shanghailander]

I may be mistaken, but another terrible aspect of this battle is that it was where many of the "Pals" battalions first saw action. It was believed that if men joined up, and trained, and fought, together with other men of their home village, factory, or profession, they would be better soldiers. Units with names such as the "Artists's Rifles" or "Accrington Pals" were formed.

In some sectors, the men went "over the top" and kicked soccer balls back and forth bwtween themselves before they began to be cut down in the slaughter.

What was not forseen was that when the "Pals" battalions took casualties, it would mean small villages or groups back in Blighty would see horrible casualty rates.

A similar thing happened during the first Gulf War when some National Guard Units took heavy casualties - it meant that some small county back in the US lost a large proportion of their residents.

 

[Alan Eardley]

War and football

True on both counts.

Lord Kitchener's recruitment drive of 1915 used a number of techniques that would be admired by the most creative (or cynical?) of modern 'marketeers'. As well as the idea of the 'pals' battalions (so young men would be more likely to enlist if their friends and aquaintances did) his recruiting team encouraged women to give young men who were not in uniform a white feather as a symbol of cowardice.

Kitcheners 'new army' was given little training in preparation for the Somme offensive and an obvious drawback of having uniits made up totally of raw recruits was that it prevented 'veterans' from passing on their experience of battle - such as self preservation under enemy fire.

You're right about the footballs (soccer balls) too. The 16th Northumberland Fusiliers advanced near Poziers on the 1st of July - preceded by a football (soccer ball) kicked ahead. out of the trenches. Their losses were enormous. Further south near Montauban Captain Nevill of the 8th Battalion the East Surreys issued footballs to his unit for the same purpose, promising a prize for the first man to kick a ball into the German trenches. The prize was actually won! One of these balls is preserved in the Imperial War Museum (North) in Manchester and another is in the Queen's Royal Surrey's Museum (see http://www.queensroyalsurreys.org.uk/museum/agq_0105.html.

Alan

 

[PADDY]

(YouTube) The Somme (Salford Pals) 'From Defeat to Victory' Great history lesson!

THE SOMME (BBC VIDEO)

 

[Twitch]

These are the sober moments in history when we must look at the hoopla over 3,000 killed in several years by comparison.