For the majority of British and Commonwealth visitors who journey to the Somme each year to mark the anniversary of the battle, the annual service at Thiepval, beneath the great Lutyens Memorial to the Missing, almost invariably provides the main focal point for their commemorative activities. In recent years this experience has undoubtedly been enhanced by the new Visitor Centre, which was opened at Thiepval on 27 September 2004 and which is situated beside the road leading from the village to the Memorial to the Missing. I was personally involved in the planning and preparation of the Visitor Centre, having played a role – along with Nigel Cave, Michael Stedman and Jack Sheldon – in deciding upon its historical content and presentation, in undertaking relevant research, in drafting exhibition texts and in helping to select the photographs and film footage used in the displays. It was a privilege to be part of the Visitor Centre ‘team’ as I have been to Thiepval many times on battlefield tours since I first went there with my Imperial War Museum colleague Rose Coombs in the 1960s, and with the completion of the new Centre, I felt that at last I had been able to give something back to a place which has afforded me a great deal of rewarding study and inspiration over some forty years. Moreover, for much of that time, and particularly since the late 1970s, I have had a special interest in the 18th (Eastern) Division, the formation which captured the village on 26–27 September 1916. The 18th Division’s memorial at Thiepval stands only some 200 yards west of the Visitor Centre and about 150 yards south-west of the site of the pre-1914 Thiepval Chateau.1 However, my own observations over the years suggest that most visitors to the Lutyens Memorial or to the Ulster Tower, especially on 1 July, barely give the 18th Division’s memorial a second glance.
This seems to me a pity because, like that of the 12th (Eastern) Division (see Chapter 8), the story of the 18th Division offers us a particularly rewarding case study. In the manner of its raising, in its composition, in its early painful experiences and shortages of uniforms and equipment, and in its battle honours, it was a typical British New Army division and, although not all British divisions could ultimately match its distinguished battlefield performance, it can nevertheless be seen as a symbol of the overall improvement of the BEF between 1915 and 1918. Its history reveals just what could be, and was, achieved, following an unpromising and chaotic start, by an ‘ordinary’ Kitchener division of citizen-soldiers which initially possessed neither the social and geographical cohesion of most Pals and Territorial units nor the sectarian and political binding of the 36th (Ulster) Division.2 While the 18th Division made several successful assaults in the course of the Somme offensive, its capture of Thiepval in September 1916 was one of its most significant operations before 1918 and therefore, perhaps, deserves more detailed examination as a possible benchmark of the performance of New Army divisions on the Somme and of the tactical improvements wrought in the BEF as a whole during, and immediately after, the battle. In other words, was the capture of Thiepval a key point in what is now widely described as the BEF’s ‘learning curve’ or ‘learning process’, given that the German defences in that sector, including the formidable Schwaben Redoubt, had successfully withstood previous British assaults by the 32nd and 36th Divisions on 1 July and by the 49th (West Riding) Division on 3 September?