‘The general conduct of the war has been entrusted to incompetent men — there the trouble lies.’
War Diary of King Albert of the Belgians, 5 December 1916
Few campaigns of recent history provoke such emotive opinions as those frequently expressed in a discussion of ‘The Battle of the Somme’ in 1916. There are two main camps: those who believe the British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, to have been an incompetent butcher who covered up his mistakes (e.g. Denis Winter in his 1991 book, Haig’s Command - A Reassessment) and those who, for whatever reason, profess admiration for his moral and leadership qualities (e.g. Duff Cooper’s ‘Haig’).
Apart from the growing awareness among the general public of the human cost of the two World Wars, the inclusion of these wars in the history syllabuses of British schools, and perhaps most significantly, the Centenary of the Somme 1916 and 1918 battles, there is the visible evidence of war memorials and cemeteries scattered beside the trans-Europe holiday routes to serve as a lasting reminder and to prompt enquiring minds.
Over the past approaching 40 years we have travelled the battlefield of the Somme alone or in the company of hundreds of such enquiring minds, aged from 9 to over 100, each striving to come to terms with the grim statistics of World War One, and in particular with the casualties suffered by the British on 1 July 1916, the first day of the battle, one of the worst single days in the history of the British Army.
Some modern historians, like Professor Peter Simkins, formerly of the Imperial War Museum, the late John Terraine and Lt Colonel Phillip Robinson of the Durand Group (qv), in their careful analysis of the casualty figures for the whole war, are anxious to dispel what they consider to be the emotional myth of a whole generation of Britain’s youth being wiped out. But there is no disputing the horror of that single, black day, and its effects in the home towns and villages of the Pals Battalions of the Midlands, the West and the North. Almost 60,000 men were killed, wounded or missing. In a single column, spaced at arm’s length, they would stretch 30 miles. Their nominal role would take two weeks to read.
Many of the professional soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force, the ‘Contemptible Little Army’ of Mons, le Cateau, Neuve Chapelle and Loos were already dead or had ‘Blighty ones’. It was, therefore, on the whole, a brave new army that climbed over the top on that hot summer’s morning. It was a citizen army, Kitchener’s Army, volunteers all, most new to battle, most young and most to become casualties. One-third of the latter still lie under the battlefield.
In March 1918 the German Army launched ‘Operation Michael’, a final, all-out attempt to win the war. It nearly succeeded. German forces were stopped just 10 miles from Amiens by British and Australian tenacity and the blame for the near disaster was laid upon General Gough and his Fifth Army. Foch became Supreme Commander, tank fought tank for the first time, the fresh and enthusiastic Americans joined the battle and a final Allied drive to Victory began.
In addition to the host of wartime memoirs, some of which appeared as factual accounts, others disguised as novels, the tradition of guidebooks about the battlefields of the Somme is a long one. As early as 1917 John Masefield published The Old Front Line. From 1919 the Michelin series of Guides to the Battlefields were published - with two volumes on ‘The Somme’ and a separate volume on ‘Amiens’. In 1928 H. A. Taylor, Capt (retired) Royal Fusiliers and General Staff, wrote Good-bye to the Battlefields and in 1935 Lt Col Graham Seton Hutchison DSO, MC, wrote Pilgrimage. Seton-Hutchinson, who at the age of 27 commanded a Machine Gun Corps battalion on the Western Front, had also served in Egypt, the Sudan, South Africa and Rhodesia. A friend of Maj Gen Sir Ernest Swinton, originator of the tank, he became a member of the Army Society for Historical Research and fellow World War I soldier, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, wrote a glowingly complimentary foreword to Seton-Hutchison’s 1945 book The British Army.
Since the end of World War II there has been a resurgence of such books. This particular guidebook conducts the reader to those memorials and sites of both the 1916 and 1918 battles, and the actions of 1917, that have been most requested over the years by our travellers. The brief commentaries at each stop are designed to summarise events and to orientate the reader so that he or she knows broadly who was where, and what happened. A continuous description of the various parts of the Somme battles are given in the Historical Summaries below.
International Circle of Death, Basilique behind, Notre-Dame de Lorette
It is also our aim to prompt more questions than we answer: it must not be sufficient merely to tour the Somme battlefield and to say, ‘So this is where it happened’. We must ask, ‘Why?’, and then each seek an answer.
Certainly the number of new Museums, Information Centres, accommodation and refreshment facilities that have sprung up on the Somme would indicate that the flame of interest and remembrance is burning even more brightly than ever. This interest has been accelerated by the Centenary of the 1916 and 1918 Somme Battles, in preparation for which a proliferation of new Interpretation Centres, road-widening, parking projects and memorials has sprung up. They include the important Information Centre at Villers Bretonneux, the new Museum at Bullecourt, the new Interpretation Centre/Museum at Thiepval, the redesigning of the Historial at Péronne, the impressive Circle of Death and the WW1 Interpretation Centre at Notre-Dame de Lorette.
New projects are still being planned and executed, others are modified by the constraints of budget or changes in policy/personnel as a consequence of national, departmental and local elections. It is therefore advisable to check these informative websites before embarking on a tour: www.somme-tourisme.fr www.somme-battlefields.com/about-centenary www.ww1westernfront.gov.au www.anzac-france.com www.cwgc.org
Also therefore consult the websites of Museums & Interpretative Centres in the Itineraries for recent changes.
Incorporating these new developments plus covering some aspects of the adjoining 1917 Battles for Arras and Bullecourt, The Kaiser’s Offensive of March 18918, the 1918 American, Canadian and French sectors and adding some suggested walking tours, has vastly expanded the scope and range of this book to make it a veritable encyclopaedia of the Somme and surrounding WW1 Battles. There are well over 100,000 individual stories on one side alone, of valour, of loyalty and of endurance that could be told to bring alive this historical battlefield. By highlighting some of them we hope to perpetuate the battlefield and the memory of the men who fought, and often died, here.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Charter states that the British and Commonwealth memorials and cemeteries should be maintained ‘in perpetuity’. Just how long is ‘perpetuity’? It is up to those who seized John McCrae’s torch to make sure that it means ‘forever’.
Tonie & Valmai Holt
Woodnesborough,
Spring 2016