The Somme 1916: The First of July

INTRODUCTION

‘Keeping in line and extended order, men began to fall, one by one. Our officers said we were alright, all the machine guns were firing over our heads. This was so, until we passed over our own front line and started to cross No Man’s Land, then the machine guns began the slaughter, men fell on every side screaming, those who weren’t wounded daren’t attend to them, one must press on regardless. Hundreds lay on the German barbed wire, which was not all destroyed, their bodies formed a bridge for others to pass over and into the German front line.’

Private Thomas Easton

21st Northumberland Fusiliers, 2nd Tyneside Scottish

At 7.30 a.m. on the morning of the first of July 1916, under a clear blue sky, the whistles blew; the signal for the first waves of more than100,000 British soldiers to leave their trenches to begin what was the Battle of the Somme. What happened next will forever be remembered as the bloodiest day in British military history. On that first fateful day of the battle, along a thirteen mile front, from the villages of Gommecourt in the north to Maricourt in the south, men, many of whom were part of Lord Kitchener’s volunteer army, including the ‘Pals’ battalions, advanced into a maelstrom of rifle, machine gun and artillery fire. It would leave 19,470 of them dead, with another 35,493 wounded or missing.

Almost half of the troops who assaulted the German positions that day became casualties; a figure that still resonates in the public’s memory. With the possible exception of the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, no other battle of the First World War came to typify more the horrors endured by the soldiers of Britain and her Dominions during four years of bitter fighting on the Western Front.

It is now more than a quarter of a century since I first visited the Somme. I came to research the battlefield as part of my preparation for filming the television series – The Somme 1916. The footage shot then would ultimately become part of another set – Great Battles of the Great War, which in turn, led to a series of films made for regional ITV companies in the north of England and Scotland. It is a combination of edited extracts from the original scripts, soldier testimony and much research (aided by many), that forms the narrative for this book; drawn from many filming trips to the Somme.

The three films in the Great Battles series featured Gallipoli, the Somme and Ypres. Each was to make a strong impression as I walked the land where the actions had taken place; the battlefields where so many had fought and died, where so much had been lost and won.

While the sun-drenched landscape of the Gallipoli Peninsula offered fantastic views (the land around Anzac Cove newly denuded of undergrowth and trees, thanks to the efforts of a young shepherd boy who managed to set fire to the thickly wooded area of national park that covered much of the battlefield); and the many cemeteries and memorials in and around the town of Ypres told of the cauldron of fire that was the Salient; yet it was the gently rolling landscape of the Somme that had the most powerful effect.

It was here, in the Picardy region of northern France, over a series of hills and valleys, north of the River Somme, that the armies of Britain and France launched an offensive designed to break through the German lines; to deliver a blow that would end Germany’s hopes of winning the war. Over the four and a half months, between the first of July and the eighteenth of November 1916, 142 days of desperate fighting would leave more than a million casualties from all sides.

That great number of dead, wounded and missing, is a figure still difficult for us to imagine now when compared to the small, though still sad, number brought back from today’s foreign wars.

During that time the pastoral landscape was transformed, from the rich greens and browns of summer, to the devastated wilderness of mud and freezing conditions that was the winter of 1916. This was the Battle of the Somme, the place where many thousands of young men were lost in a series of battles that changed the way the British army fought. It started with a catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions for the British, and ended with the German army retreating up to twenty five miles to the Hindenburg Line, having sustained losses of half a million men.

At the end of the battle, no clear-cut victory could be claimed by either side. For the British, it was a steep learning curve. Under the leadership of General Sir Douglas Haig (appointed Field Marshal in January 1917), Commander-in-Chief of the British Army on the Western Front, they were now committed to a war of attrition. For the Germans it meant a great loss of manpower, losses they could ill-afford. Of equal concern was the effect of the battle on the morale of their soldiers; for them, the Somme became ‘the muddy grave of the German field army’.

As a baby-boomer born in 1947, I grew up in the years immediately after the Second World War, when the memories of that conflict were still fresh. Games with my pals were dominated by warfare of one kind or another, playing ‘soldiers’ or running with my friends, my arms outstretched, pretending to be a Spitfire, shooting down Germans.

This led to a passion to learn more about the history of the Second World War, when I read my way through countless books and war comics. At that time, the First World War seemed like ancient history, as distant as the Romans or Greeks.

Reading history at Stirling University gave me the opportunity to take my interest further, and where I first learnt of the effects of the First World War on the Second. At that time, my study of the First World War meant less about its conduct, rather more about the Treaty of Versailles and the crippling reparations that would lead to the near collapse of Germany, the subsequent rise of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of another, even deadlier, world war.

All that was about to change with my first visit to the Somme in 1992, when I came to research the battlefields as part of my preparation for what would become a series of films made over the years. As I walked the ground with my guides, I was struck, as so many before and since, by the large number of cemeteries and the impressive Thiepval Memorial, with its long lists of the missing. I had been commissioned to make a series of four films, The Somme 1916, detailing the course and history of the battle for Tyne Tees and Yorkshire Television; my first requirement, to research the locations where the north east and Yorkshire regiments had been in action. This led me to the village of La Boisselle, where the Tyneside Scottish and Irish were committed on the first of July.

A minute after zero hour on the morning of 1 July, the Tyneside Irish are seen here leaving their trenches; moments later, as they crested Tara Hill, many of them would become casualties, hit by intense machine gun fire coming from the German first and second line defences in the village of La Boisselle.

Standing on the high ground that was Tara Hill gave me a panoramic view of the village and of the old Roman road from Albert to Bapaume, arrowing off into the distance. It was a view of the battlefield that I remember clearly to this day; in front of me, the village of La Boisselle with the Glory Hole, where the opposing trenches were only a few feet apart, the massive Lochnagar Crater, a hundred and thirty yards wide, the slopes leading to Sausage and Mash Valleys, the places where the Tyneside Irish and Scottish suffered such grievous losses.

I could feel the presence of my surroundings as I stood on the spot where the soldiers of the Tyneside Irish left their trenches. The sensation was made all the more palpable as I looked at the series of remarkable photographs taken on the day, showing the soldiers advancing in ordered lines with their rifles at the slope. In trying to imagine their emotions as they advanced over the same ground where I now stood, I was helped by the words of one of their number, Private Michael Manley, taken from an interview he gave when he was then at the great age of 105. Though frail, his recollections of that fateful day were clear, the events forever seared on his memory.

‘Just before it started we heard the larks, poor things, that was the worst thing, waiting for your turn to go over, to get on the step, ready to follow on. The whole lot went across you see, and they were falling down long before they ever got there. Then it was your turn, you got the word to charge, I didn’t know what to think, just look for a safe place to cross. One lad had a bandolier with Mills bombs, a lump of his side was blown out and his hand was off, he kept begging ‘will no bugger kill me, will no one finish me?’ You didn’t know what to do or say.’

Private Michael Manley

26th Northumberland Fusiliers. 3rd Tyneside Irish.

That interview had a profound effect, it provided a first-hand account of what the novice soldiers had to face, what the reality of war really was for them. Something that I remembered, as I stood on Tara Hill and thought of Michael and the ground he and his mates had to cover before they even reached their own lines, losing so many in the process.

It is a location that I have filmed and photographed many times. For me, it says much about the timelessness of the Somme; that the landscape of the battlefield has changed so little with time. While the trees have grown and features such as ‘Y’ Sap Crater have disappeared, the villages, the woods, the roads, the farms and features are all much the same as they were before the 1916 battle.

It is the photographs that I have taken that are the motivation for this book. This is not a detailed examination of the course of the battle - anyone requiring that, will find it in the many titles published on the subject by Pen & Sword. Rather, this is a personal journey across the battlefields of the Somme, reflecting my many research and filming trips, and my great fondness for the place. Over the years I have made many films, telling the stories of the soldiers, battalions and regiments who fought here. Most of my visits have been during the period when the battle was fought; in the heat of summer, or in the wind and rain of autumn and winter, I have come with my cameras and my companions to explore and research locations for filming. It is these places that provide the narrative for this book; explaining why I chose a particular location to film; to tell the story of what happened there. For me, photography is the satisfaction of capturing the moment, the light, the place.... frozen in time. I determined from the start, that the best way to photograph the battlefield was to walk over it, with my trusted Nikon 35mm cameras, my constant companions over the years.

As part of my original research before filming, I spent many long days in the photographic and film departments of the Imperial War Museum; part of the laborious, though enjoyable process of selection. Many more hours were spent poring over the archives of the regiments we would be filming with; the war diaries, the soldier accounts, the trench maps. My investigations led me to further studies with Peter Liddle and his comprehensively large collection, then at the Brotherton Library at Leeds University. My plan, to find, as much as possible, images which would be new to the viewer; to trace the locations where the original photographs had been taken, so that I might present a ‘then and now’ comparison, to put the viewer in the same place when filming.

This book is not a collection of contemporary images from the Imperial War Museum,