Leave the cemetery and continue on the track towards Sheffield Memorial Park. Enter the park and gather your group in what remains of the front line trench, looking back up towards No Man’s Land.

Context

Preserved area of front line trenches from 1 July and numerous shell holes.

Orientation

Looking from inside the park towards Serre No 3 or Queen’s CWGC Cemetery, you are looking towards No Man’s Land and German positions.

Spiel

If, during the course of your visit to the Western Front, you are to stand in a position and truly live history, then this is that place. You are standing in what remains of a front line trench in the British line from 1 July 1916. This is the view that those men, however briefly, would see on that day.

This stretch of the line was made up of men from the 31st Division. These were Pals Battalions; men who volunteered for Kitchener’s New Army. All but two of the twelve battalions in the 31st Division were from Yorkshire. This preserved section of the front is named Sheffield Memorial Park after the 12/York and Lancaster Regiment, the Sheffield City Battalion. The 11th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment, also left their trenches on 1 July from this section of the line. Memorials to these battalions, and to many others of the 31st Division who all fought in this vicinity, can be found in this park. For example, the memorial to the Accrington Pals is built out of red iron NORI brick – a brick made in Accrington. It was thought that putting the inexperienced Pals Battalions in this stretch of the line was no risk at all – remember, the artillery bombardment was supposed to have cleared the enemy from the face of the earth. Kitchener’s recruits should have been able to stroll across No Man’s Land, occupy the German positions and wheel left to roll up and push north.² These men were not ready for the reality.

On 1 July, thousands of men stood waiting for the whistle to sound at 0730. In this sector, the most northerly sector of the Somme attack – apart from the diversionary one at Gommecourt – the immediate aim was to break through and capture the village of Serre, a few hundred yards beyond the German front line positions.

What is particularly stark when looking out from here is the realisation of just how exposed the British position was. German machine guns were sited just on the lip of the shallow, but tactically vital, rise ahead. When men left this trench, they could easily be seen by German gunners.³

Serre is a fine example of the failures associated with the first day. In preparation for the assault, men dug tunnels out towards the German positions in an attempt to edge nearer to the enemy front-line and to provide instant communication trenches. Some of these had been located and destroyed by the Germans. Therefore, instead, British troops had cut routes through the barbed wire in No Man’s Land and laid white tape to act as direction pointers for advancing soldiers. Much of the tape had simply blown away by the morning of 1 July or acted as a convenient target for German gunners to aim upon, in effect meaning that advancing soldiers would traverse a tunnel of death.