The Somme

The Epic Battle in the Soldiers' own Words and Photographs

Richard van Emden

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781473855212
• eBook ISBN: 9781473855229
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

The epic and brutal WWI battle is vividly recounted through the words and photos of the soldiers who lived through it.
One of the most famous battles of the Great War, the offensive on the Somme took place in 1916, from July and November. It was there that Kitcheners famous Pals Battalions were first sent into action en masse. It was a battlefield where many of the dreams and aspirations of a nation, hopeful of victory, were agonizingly dashed.
Because of its legendary status, the Battle of the Somme has been the subject of many books. Yet this volume is the first of its kind, in which the soldiers' own stories and photographs are used to illustrate both the campaign's extraordinary comradeship and its carnage.

Damaged houses in the summer of 1915, probably in Albert.

1 Live and Let Live

Men of the 1/6th Seaforth Highlanders relax in the Somme village of Bouzincourt.

‘I must confess that I was far from happy at being expected to project my head well above the parapet … When, however, the French officer escorting us did this with complete sangfroid, honour compelled me to do likewise. When he came to the end of our part of the front line he suddenly mounted the fire step, and with a wave of his hand towards the Boches, exclaimed ‘Voila! C’est chic,’ a somewhat surprising epithet to apply.’

Lieutenant Victor Eberle, 2nd Field Company, Royal Engineers

The names of dead and wounded soldiers published daily by The Times newspaper brought home to the British people the bleak reality of international war. But while the lists appeared painfully long, the numbers were relatively small, indeed insignificantly trivial when placed beside the catastrophic losses that Britain’s ally France had suffered on the Western Front in 1914 and 1915. Right from the start, the German army had unleashed its might against French and, to a much lesser extent, Belgian forces, while the British had been important but little more than peripheral participants. Mons, Le Cateau, the First and Second Battles of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Loos were all names that would burn themselves into the British consciousness, but context is everything. The British at Mons lost about 1,600 men killed, wounded and taken prisoner; the previous day, 22 August, the French had suffered 27,000 dead. British soldiers might fight and die in what had appeared to be bewildering numbers, but in reality the French army took the brunt of the fighting.

The small but highly efficient British Expeditionary Force of regular soldiers was dispatched to the Continent in August 1914 and had been quickly augmented by the embarkation of the Territorial Army, a home defence force, swiftly utilized to help shore up the front line. It would be many months before a new army could be sent overseas, an army of volunteers drawn from the civil population who responded with overwhelming enthusiasm to Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener’s appeal for 100,000 men. By the end of 1914, 1.1 million men had volunteered but it would take time and scant resources to mould them into a worthy fighting force. Meanwhile, the French continued to take the strain, an arrangement of enforced circumstances that would wear thin, very thin, in 1915. The French wanted, indeed desperately needed, the British to rapidly expand their commitment to the war; the Battle of Loos had been the first joint Allied offensive in September, but this battle and other earlier offensives had proven inconclusive at best, utter failures at worst. In the summer of 1915, and as a signal of London’s willingness to shoulder more of the responsibility, British troops marched south from Ypres, from Ploegsteert, and from Festubert, to take over French positions north of the river Somme, an unspoilt and relatively peaceful rural backwater where German and French troops had cleverly learnt to avoid unnecessary antagonism.

Second Lieutenant George Webb, 1st Dorset Regiment

31 July, 1915

Dear Mother

We have reached our new destination and are now no longer in Belgium but are in the depths of France. … We are at present in a delightful little village some way east of Amiens. In a few days I expect we shall move up nearer the firing line as we are going to relieve the French in this district.

The inhabitants seem delighted to see us as there have been no British troops here for a very long time, not since the retirement, I believe. The country is simply superb. I have never seen anything in England to compare with the valley of the Somme. It is one mass of lakes and fords in a broad valley for miles and miles and the woods are beyond all description. … How I wish I was here for a pleasure trip instead of on this beastly job. It seems so foolish to set about destroying everything that is beautiful, all because a few people are objectionable.

Private James Racine, 1/5th Seaforth Highlanders

After two or three days’ [rest] we entrained and, after a fourteen-hour journey, reached the Somme area. The transport was unloaded at a place named Corbie and we were marched to Pont Noyelle[s]. Windows of houses were raised and the inhabitants gazed at us as we passed by in the dark of the night. We were now about 15 miles from the front line and speculated what kind of sector we would be called upon to hold. …

The harvest is gathered in behind the front lines: Bouzincourt, September 1915.

On the top of a hill near the village, I visited the monument which had been erected to commemorate the Franco–German war of 1870. I entered into conversation with two aged inhabitants of the village and they informed me that the Uhlans had visited that part in the early days of the [current] war and they remembered the Germans being there during the 1870 war; bullet marks in the door of their house were pointed out in confirmation.

Two days later, we commenced a 15-mile march towards the front line and, during the journey, the field kitchens prepared food for us to have during one of the short rests.

Second Lieutenant Frederick Roe, 1/6th Gloucestershire Regiment

In view of the almost daily marches, very serious attention had to be given to care of the feet and legs. As often as possible, clean socks had to replace the dirty wet ones, and boots and puttees had to be dried out. We soon found out that drying out the leather too near a fire quickly killed its suppleness. … Puttees became sodden daily in the rain and, if unattended to, quickly brought trouble to the skin of the legs. Taking off and putting on wet and muddy puttees which had to be wrapped carefully round the leg and finished off with not-too-tight tapes below the knee was a most distasteful job. Feet blisters were considered to be bad soldiering but they were something inevitable and gently pricking the blisters and disinfecting was all too familiar a task. …

Sometimes we were lucky to get two nights and the day between as a rest either in a farmhouse or in a barn full of lovely soft dry straw. This leisure was a real luxury and gave the men a chance to clean and oil their rifles thoroughly. Socks could be mended from a ‘housewife’ which was our sewing kit. The thick grey army issue socks were indisputably without rival for warmth and good wear. Meals could be leisurely. From time to time we were sent to a real farmhouse. One I remember was run by an elderly couple. Madame was the undoubted commander. She was a strong well-built formidable lady with a husband called Jules, a name she pronounced with a high-pitched short sharp hiss. The British soldiers would call him a would-be scrounger and he was literally hounded by Madame and on the run all the hours of daylight.

Three of us subalterns set up a temporary officers’ mess in the kitchen of a much larger house nearby. After supper when I returned to my billet where Madame had given me a bedroom, I found that it was a miniscule glory hole. Worse still was the fact that the only way I could get into it was through the bedroom occupied by Madame and Jules, both sound asleep. They both woke up when I clumsily tried to tiptoe through, feeling thoroughly embarrassed. He greeted me however with a cheery, ‘Bon soir, Monsieur, et bonne nuit.’

Captain Francis Smith, 1st Royal Scots

In the afternoon [we] met a lot of French troops on the march. … They look very fit but not in the least smart, and all wear the very long light blue overcoat, with the skirts folded back. They have either light or dark blue trousers – no red now. Their transport is funny – any old farm cart laden up in the most extraordinary way, and we met a cab – an actual cab, also laden with stores, following behind a battalion!! They keep little or no march discipline and just struggle along with no attempt at step or keeping in fours. Apparently they don’t believe in it. …

The country rolls in great waves and the roads are all white with chalk and great chalky clouds of dust are kicked up by any traffic.

Private Victor Cole, 7th Royal West Kent Regiment

French roads were mostly cobbled across the crown leaving 4 or 5 feet of soft going on either side. When marching in fours and keeping to the right of the road, two men of each four would be on the cobbles, number three would have one foot on cobbles and one foot on soft ground and number four would be altogether on the soft going. A halt was called at the end of every hour and a changeover made, the outside man went to the inside and the other moved up a place.

After one night at Bray-sur-Somme we pushed off by road and duckboard track to a strongpoint called ‘The Citadel’ near Carnoy Farm. This sector was being held by the First Battalion, and we, the Seventh, were to go in with them for instruction in trench warfare. For the signal section this meant telephone maintenance and line laying under actual combat conditions.

I was posted to a nice snug signal dugout and slept comfortably in a wire netting bed until early morning, when, with a sudden rush of sound, four shells burst in rapid succession just outside the door. They made a great deal of noise and splinters whined all over the place. This seemed to be the cue for everybody to wake up and get on with the war, for within moments our guns had opened up, firing over our heads towards Fricourt and Mametz. The Germans, not to be outdone, then lobbed a lot of heavy stuff over in the direction of Albert.

Gunner Cecil Longley, 1st South Midland Brigade Royal Field Artillery

The country is at its best now; a distant view of two small towns – one in German hands [Bapaume] and the other immediately behind our trenches [Albert] – is lovely; the red tiles of such houses as still have a roof, the deep blue sky, the green trees and green and brown earth, with huge patches of yellow turnip flower, forming a kaleidoscopic landscape; but a closer inspection of these little towns and villages is a horror that will haunt all who see them to the end of their lives. Towerless churches, streets pockmarked by heavy shellfire into craters that would hide a dozen men. Here is to be seen a disembowelled house, with carpeted floor bared to the sky, there a roof resting on chipped walls, with nothing underneath it but a mass of crushed bricks and household furniture – not a whole house or a living soul to be seen; everywhere one turns there are shell-rent buildings, roofs shattered and twisted into every conceivable shape, with jagged rafters pointing up into the heavens, as witnesses to God of the havoc around, which is one of the brands burnt by a cultured Christian Power into the face of a little brother nation.

Swimming in the river Ancre near Aveluy, after a stint in the front line trenches.

Private James Racine, 1/5th Seaforth Highlanders

We came to rest in the village of Authuille, which is situated at the foot of a hill just behind the line. We were the first division of British troops to relieve the French on the Somme.

The sector was extraordinarily quiet, especially in comparison with Festubert and, although the village was in such close proximity to the front line trench, it had been very slightly damaged. Several estaminets still dispensed their refreshments.

Here we found large dugouts and the French troops had evidently believed in comfort, for they had constructed beds, made from struts and covered with wire netting, which were very comfortable. They had also constructed rustic tables and chairs. In an old house I found a very much out of tune piano and accompanied a mixture of French and British troops in a sing-song. The French troops gave us a hearty welcome and informed us that the sector was extremely quiet and that only eight light shells a day were fired into the village. They were sent over in pairs at the following times 11.00 am, 2.00 pm, 4.00 pm, and 8.00 pm, and the French artillery replied similarly.

At the times stated, the trench troops had gone into the dugouts while the shells burst, and returned to the estaminets at the conclusion of the comic bombardment. We thought this to be an extraordinary way of carrying on war but were prepared to enjoy our improved surroundings. We were also informed that, previous to our arrival, the enemy had shouted across to the French that they were being relieved by Scottish troops and the French had ridiculed the idea. The secret intelligence of the enemy was extraordinary and he seemed to know, in detail, the movements of our troops. …

At dawn on the first day, we found on our barbed wire entanglements a piece of paper on which was a written request that two or three of our men would, at a given time, proceed halfway across no-man’s-land and meet a similar number of Germans in order to exchange periodicals and souvenirs, as the French had been accustomed to do.

After a consultation, our interpreter and two men agreed and, at noon, met the enemy halfway; the heads of the troops on each side were above the parapets and no firing took place. Later, when we left the trenches, we were paraded before the Commanding Officer and severely reprimanded. He stated that ‘it was impossible to fight a man with one hand and give him chocolates with the other.’ We were given to understand that any similar action in the future would be severely dealt with.

Private Victor Cole, 7th Royal West Kent Regiment

I was sent to do duty at a small telephone post dug into the side of the trench and here for the first time I began to realize what I had let myself in for. Fritz was throwing over Minenwerfers [mortars]. The blast from these things almost stopped one’s breath and usually the telephone line would go dead, necessitating an exploratory trip along the wire to find and repair the break.

Battalion Headquarters at Bécourt Chateau was much knocked about but still habitable on the ground floor and in the cellars. A shell-burst in the small library had scattered books all about the place. They were torn and dusty but one could see amongst them the beautiful bindings of old volumes inscribed on flyleaf or cover with the name ‘Comte de Valmont’. A little chapel adjoined the chateau. It was almost undamaged but there were graves of French soldiers in the garden and the water supply in the well was foun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Live and Let Live
• Chapter 2: Bedding-In
• Chapter 3: Awed and Shocked
• Chapter 4: Batter and Hold
• Chapter 5: Toil and Strife
• Chapter 6: Nut Cracking
• Chapter 7: Mud and Guts
• Chapter 8: Fighting Cold
• Acknowledgements
• Sources and Permissions