Somme trenches
The Somme Centenary July 1st 2016
Your King And Country Needs You …(but someone ought to have been shot! )
This was the call to action in August 1914 when PALS battalions began to be formed all over the country, Stockbrokers, footballers, factory workers joined in groups to form battalions to go to France and join in the conflict against Imperial Germany. Worcestershire raised the Severn Valley Pioneers , there were the Barnsley Pals, the Glasgow Tramways Pals – all friends and acquaintances or workers joining together and later dying together This meant that nearly all British families were affected with almost 750,000 men killed out of a total of 10 million. And there were many hundreds of thousands more that came home with disabilities that led to the building of over 100 new and specialised hospitals to deal with them
The Great War lasted four years with catastrophic loss of life and with the Somme battlefield among the heaviest casualties with nearly 400,00 killed . On July 1st 2016 the centenary of the Somme was commemorated at Theipval.
All over the Somme battlefield we saw clusters of graves. Some were large cemeteries such at Delville Wood for South Africans , Beaumont Hamel for the Newfoundland Regiment, Contalmaison for the Manchester battalion, and then there were small cemeteries with six or seven headstones starkly white set against the green of the fields.
It was heartbreaking to visit and read the headstones. ‘ Died July 1st aged 17 years – or 18years ‘. Lines and lines of headstones for young lads who had died on the same day …..July 1st 1916 .
The front line was 25 miles long and shared by the French who fought at Verdun in the south. The plan was to bombard the enemy with artillery for several days before the main assault, this was aimed to destroy the German positions making it easy for the British troops to walk casually over No Mans Land and take over the Front line However, the Germans were entrenched on high ground and had time to dig them selves in. The artillery had little effect on their dugouts 30-40 feet below ground with the result the enemy was able to mow down the British troops with their new Maxim machine guns with devastating effect. The assault started at 7.30am on July 1st 1916. In the first hour over 2000 men had been killed. Total casualties for the day reached over 57,000 of whom 19,000 were killed with the PALS battalions being amongst the heaviest hit.
It seemed incredible that this plan was put into action day after day when it clearly didn’t work on the first day . It took four months to end the battle of the Somme. There was clearly lack of communication between the front line troops and the Generals safely set up in a comfortable chateau several miles behind the line. Supplies to the troops were inadequate, the troops were not experienced, artillery shells were faulty …..this was a 20th century war with 20th century weapons fought with a 19th century mindset.
Theipval Memorial
The Thiepval Memorial commemorated the 73,000 British and Allied soldiers who died on the Somme and who had no known grave. The youngest was 15 years the oldest 54 years.
The commemoration ceremony was a sombre moving affair – extracts were read out from diaries of soldiers to the 10,000 there. We had successfully balloted for tickets and were moved by the occasion However much we had read of the Somme- nothing prepared us for the realisation of the huge numbers killed in such a short space of time.
We will remember them
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