• Itinerary One starts at the Town Hall Square in Albert, heads directly towards the German front line along the main axis of the 1916 British attack and then swings north to follow the front line across the River Ancre and ends in Arras.
• The Route: Albert – Machine Gun Corps & other Plaques, Town Hall, Golden Madonna, Musée Somme 1916, Bapaume Post CWGC Cemetery; Tara-Usna Line; Tyneside Memorial Seat; La Boisselle – site of Glory Hole Tunnels, Lochnagar Crater and Memorials, 34th Div Memorial, 19th (Western) Div Memorial; Ovillers – CWGC Cemetery; Pozières – British CWGC Cemetery, Fourth, Fifth Armies Memorial, KRRC Memorial, Australian 1st Div Memorial, RB Plaque, Gibraltar Blockhouse; Mouquet Farm RB Plaque; Thiepval – Carton de Wiart VC, Plaque, Visitor Centre and Museum, Memorial and Cemetery, 18th Div Memorial; Connaught and Mill Road CWGC Cemeteries; Ulster Tower, Memorials and Visitors’ Centre; Hamel – Essex Regt Plaque on Church; Beaumont-Hamel - Newfoundland Memorial Park, Visitor’s Centre, Trenches and Memorials; Mesnil-Martinsart - RIR Memorial; Auchonvillers - Ocean Villas Guest House, Museum, Tea Rooms, Cellar, Trenches, Conference Centre & Estaminet, Auchonvillers Mil CWGC Cemetery; Beaumont-Hamel - Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Memorial, Beaumont-Hamel Brit CWGC Cemetery, Hawthorn Crater, 51st Highland Div Flagpole, Beaumont-Hamel Church; Redan Ridge No 3 CWGC Cemetery; Serre Road No 2 CWGC Cemetery; Braithwaite Cross; Memorial near site of Wilfred Owen’s Dugout; French Memorial Chapel; French National Cemetery; Serre Road No 1 CWGC & Serre Road No 3 CWGC Cemeteries; Sheffield Memorial Park and Memorials; Queen’s CWGC Cemetery; Luke Copse CWGC Cemetery; 12th Bn York & Lancs Memorial, Serre; Ayette Indian & Chinese Cemetery; Arras Centre & Memorials, Boves, NZ Tunnellers’ Memorial, Wellington Quarry, Faubourg d’Amiens CWGC Cemetery & Arras Memorial, Mur des Fusillés.
• Extra Visits are suggested to Authuille - Ancre CWGC Cemetery, Salford Pals 15th, 16th, 17th Bns/HLI,/Northumberland Fus Plaques, SOA Sgt Turnbull; Dorset Memorial, Lonsdale CWGC Cemetery, Leipzig Salient; Beaucourt - RND Memorial, SOA Lt Col Freyburg, VC; Bois d’Hollande, Cpl A. Burrows & other Plaques; Sucrerie Military and Euston Road CWGC Cemeteries; Hébuterne Bradford Pals Mem; the Gommecourt Salient – Owl Trench, Rossignol Wood CWGC Cemeteries; Rossignol Wood bunker; SOA Rev T. Bayley Hardy VC; Redan Ridge - Waggon Road & Munich Trench Brit Cemeteries; Gommecourt Wood New CWGC Cemetery; SOA Capt L. Green VC; CWGC HQ, Beaurains; Point du Jour CWGC Cemetery; 9th Scottish Div Memorial.
• [N.B.] The following sites are indicated:
Albert - Demarcation Stone and Station, 1944 Resistance Plaque; Ovillers – Breton Calvary, Site of Ulverston Street Trench; Pozières – ‘Dead Man’s Road’ & Chalk Pit; Hawthorne Ridge No 1 CWGC Cemetery; Auchonvillers – Mem to 13th Bn, RIR, Auchonvillers Comm Cemetery; Redan Ridge No 2 CWGC Cemetery.
• Planned duration, without stops for refreshment or Extra Visits: 12 hours.
• Total distance: 40 miles.
• Albert Town Hall Square/0 miles/10 minutes/RWC/Map J14/15/GPS: 50.00109 2.65145
The town takes its name from Albert, Duke of Lynes, whose property it became some time after 1619. Noble links remain to this day and the current pretender to the French throne, the Comte de Paris, can still count ‘Marquis d’Albert’ among his titles. The town’s motto is Vis Mea Ferrum (my strength is in iron), reflecting the iron works that once gave it its prosperity. Previously it had been called Ancre (even Encre before 1610) after the river which flowed through it (right below the Basilique). The original station was built in 1846 and Albert became an important rail link, vital to the growing metallurgy industry and the burgeoning pilgrim tourist business (20,000 pilgrims arrived on 27 April 1862 alone). In 1914 Albert had 7,343 inhabitants. By 1919 it had 120.
Fierce fighting around Albert began in the early months of the war, the first enemy shelling being on 29 September 1914. Albert was a major administration and control centre for the Somme offensive in 1916, and it was from there that the first press message was sent announcing the start of the ‘Big Push’. By October 1916, when the Somme offensive had pushed the German guns out of range, the town was a pile of red rubble. Yet it still offered some attractions to the troops fresh from the front line as a place of rest and rough entertainment. The YMCA Club charged 15 francs a day (for four meals and a bed), which John Masefield said was ‘just 5 francs a day less than the mess at Amiens’. He was dismayed when the club was forced to close on 31 March 1917 to make way either for a hospital or another HQ. The ‘Bonza’ Theatre operated near the old station. Some civilians drifted back in 1917 and attempted to salvage their homes and businesses. General Byng made the town his HQ while planning the November 1917 attack on Cambrai. Then, in a rude awakening on 26 March 1918, during their final offensive, Albert was taken by the Germans. It was re-taken by the British on 22 August, the East Surreys entering the town at bayonet point.
After the Armistice, the Imperial War Graves Commission established its Somme headquarters in a collection of huts joined by duck-boards along the Bapaume road. There were architects, stone masons and carpenters, landscapers, gardeners and wardens or ‘caretakers’ as the cemetery guardians were originally called. They were recruited from the willing ranks of ex-servicemen who undertook the often dangerous, always harrowing work of re-interring their ‘pals’ from isolated graves and reburying them in the beautiful garden cemeteries that were being created with help of experts from Kew and the services of the country’s best architects. Mobile teams of workers, with a cook and the inevitable dog, would be driven out each Monday with basic camping equipment to the isolated, ravaged areas of the old front line. Affectionately known as ‘travelling circuses’, they completed their work with extraordinary despatch and cheerfulness.
The plan to declare the area a Zone Rouge (too dangerous to rebuild, like some of the battlefields around Verdun) was strongly resisted by the inhabitants of Albert. Its reconstruction was helped by the city of Birmingham (hence the street name, rue de Birmingham) which funded a ward in the new hospital, and Bordeaux, and it also became a centre for pilgrims – it was claimed that over 160 small cafés existed to serve them. The conducting of battlefield tours by motor vehicle became a thriving industry.
As early as 1917, John Masefield in his classic description, The Old Front Line, prophesied,
“To most of the British soldiers who took part in the Battle of the Somme, the town of Albert must be a central point in a reckoning of distances. It lies, roughly speaking, behind the middle of the line of that battle. It is on the main road, and on the direct railway line from Amiens. It is by much the most important town within an easy march of the battlefield. It will be, quite certainly, the centre from which, in time to come, travellers will start to see the battlefield where such deeds were done by men of our race.”
That still holds today, and the town has two traditional hotels – the 3-star Hôtel de la Paix (qv), 43 rue Victor Hugo, run by Jean Luc Richard, redecorated in 2013, 9 bedrooms with en-suite facilities, popular restaurant and the base for the Friends of Lochnagar, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 01 64, e-mail: hoteldelapaix-albert@voila.fr The Logis de France Hôtel de la Basilique, run by M et Mme Petit, 10 rooms, restaurant closed Sun night & Mon, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 04 71, e-mail: contact@hoteldelabasilique.fr opposite the Basilique as its name implies, also has its faithful regulars. They are joined by the modern, 23-bedroom 3-star Best Western Royal Picardie on the D929 Amiens Road, room service, fitness centre, restaurant, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 37 00, e-mail: royalpicardie@wanadoo.fr and the handily sited 3-star Ibis, with 57 air-conditioned rooms, ‘business corner’, restaurant, on the roundabout with the D929/D938, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 52 52, e-mail: h6234@accor.com - so that more tourists can stay in this, the heart of the British sector.
At a superficial glance the rebuilt red-brick town may appear unlovely, but a quiet, observant stroll around its streets is rewarding in its glimpses of a certain Art Deco charm, revealing delightful tiled pictures and patterned brickworks in its varied façades.
Park in the Square. Walk to the town hall steps and face the building.
The town hall, in splendid Flemish Renaissance style, with an Art Deco interior and stained glass windows that show the town’s economic activities, was opened by President Lebrun in 1932. Inside is a plaque commemorating the reconstruction of the devastated war area. To the left of the steps, on the external wall, is a Plaque to Resistance fighters, the Armies of Liberation and Gen de Gaulle. At the bottom of the step to the left is a Bust to Emile Leturq, 1870-1930, mayor during the reconstruction. To the right is a Plaque commemorating the more than 60,000 casualties suffered by the Machine Gun Corps during 1914-18. It was unveiled at Easter 1939 by Lt Col Graham Seton Hutchison, DSO, MC, artist and author of many books including Pilgrimage. The Colonel had been with 100 MG Coy during the attack on High Wood on 15 July 1916. Another Memorial to the Corps, formed in October 1915, is the figure known as “The Boy David” (designed by Derwent Wood) at Hyde Park Corner in London.
Machine Gun Corps Plaque, Albert Town Hall
[N.B.] 1. On the outskirts of the town to the left of the D4929 as it crosses the railway, is a well-preserved Demarcation Stone (Map J28, GPS: 49.99887 2.63728). The British defensive line ran roughly north to south through here taking advantage of the railway line as a defensive position. The line held during the German March 1918 offensive.
2. At the bottom of the road from the Basilique is Albert Station (GPS: 50.00548 2.64451), rebuilt in Art Deco style. To each side of the main entrance are charming tiled pictures of the surrounding countryside. The picture to the right is captioned, Circuit du Souvenir and shows sites on the battlefield such as the Thiepval Memorial and the Historial at Péronne. The main hall in the station houses a Potez 36 FHZN aeroplane in commemoration of Henry Potez, born in Albert, who founded the aircraft factory at Méaulte which became Aerospatiale. The plane, restored in 1957, had been flown by notables such as Saint-Exupéry, the French World War I ace and writer of Vol de Nuit, and was last flown on the hundredth anniversary of Henri Potez’s birth in 1991.
Albert Demarcation Stone on D4929
Return to your car. Drive down rue Jeanne d’Harcourt and park in the square outside the Basilica.
Albert Station and the ‘Circuit du Souvenir’ tiled picture at the entrance
In the square and around Albert a series of 10 statues by local sculptor Olivier Briquet are progressively being installed: Australian, English (2 with different uniforms,) Scottish, French, (2 with different uniforms), Nurse etc…
Beside the Hôtel de la Basilique (qv), at 9 rue Gambetta, is the ‘Office de Tourisme du Pays du Coquelicot’ (Poppy Country). Tel: +(0)3 22 75 16 42. e-mail: officedetourisme@paysducoquelicot.com. Website: www.paysducoquelicot.com. At the rear is a large hall containing exhibits such as fine maquettes of Albert’s most important buildings. Battlefield tours available, including one of the Basilique.
The site www.somme-100th-anniversary.com details the Pays du Coquelicot’s plans for a variety of events and commemorations for the 4 years of the 100th Anniversaries of the Great War in the area.
On the corner opposite the imposing Basilique, under the shadow of the emotive golden figure of the Madonna is the handy Le Brasserie Hygge, Tel: + (0)3 22 75 47 12. Varied menu, reasonable prices, quick service. Open: Mon-Sat 1200-1430 and 1830-2200. Closed Sunday.
Albert Square Piper Statue
Albert Square Digger Statue
• The Golden Madonna, Basilique, Albert/0.2 miles/10minutes/Map J11/GPS: 50.00373 2.64753
The golden figure of the Virgin Mary holding aloft the baby Jesus stands on top of the church, known as la Basilique, of Notre-Dame de Brebières (Our Lady of the Ewes). Before the war thousands of pilgrims came to see another statue in the church which gave the basilica its name. Legend has it that this statue was found in the Middle Ages by a shepherd looking after his flock in a meadow. It was credited with miraculous properties and attracted large numbers of pilgrims. In 1834 Pope Gregory XVI accorded an indulgence to pilgrims who visited the statue and successively grander churches were built to house it, culminating in the 1890s basilica. This was surmounted by the 5-metre high Golden Madonna (reached by climbing 238 steps) which was coated with 40,000 sheets of gold leaf. The numbers of pilgrims continued to increase and in 1898 Pope Leo XIII dubbed Albert ‘The Lourdes of the North’. In January 1915 German shelling toppled the statue to a perilous-looking angle below the horizontal, but it did not fall. Visible to soldiers of both sides for many miles around, and giving the bizarre impression that the Virgin was about to hurl the baby Jesus into the rubble below, the statue gave rise to two legends. The British and French believed that the war would end on the day that the statue fell (and it is said that the Allied staff sent engineers up the steeple at night to shore up the statue to prevent raising false hopes). The Germans believed that whoever knocked down the statue would lose the war. Neither prediction came to pass. During the German occupation from March to August 1918 the British shelled Albert and sent the leaning Virgin hurtling to the ground. The figure was never found (perhaps it was despatched to Germany in the salvage effort to make new weapons).
Today’s basilica is built to the original 1897 designs, with a splendid gilt replica of the Madonna and Child on its 70-metre high spire that glints in the sun for miles around. The inhabitants of Albert vetoed the idea that she should be replaced in her famous war-time pose (the subject of many postcards, silk and board, embroidered handkerchiefs, painted plates and statues). It contains a magnificent marble pulpit, mosaics, paintings and statues by the sculptor Albert Roze.
Beneath it, with its well-marked entrance to the side, is a museum.
The Basilique, Albert, with detail of the Golden Madonna
Entrance to Musée Somme 1916, Albert, showing Tommy Statue
Tunnel entrance, Musée Somme, Albert
• Musée Somme 1916, Albert/40 minutes/Map J13
This interesting and well-presented Museum, officially reopened on 8 October 1994, is constantly being improved and updated and is well worth a visit.
It has been made in the 250 metre long subterranean tunnels under the Basilica and other parts of the town. They date from medieval times and were used by locals as shelters in times of conflict (including as air raid shelters in WW2). From the entrance hall one descends 61 steps to the 10 metre deep tunnel. To either side of the main corridor are 25 realistic scenes of 1914-18 trench and dugout life – British, French and German - and artefacts. Sound and light effects add to the experience. Visitors emerge into the light in a new extension at ground level where there is an air-conditioned conference room seating up to 80 people with large screen and projector for films and internet work stations (which can be used by students for picnics etc), a well-stocked boutique for books, maps and souvenirs. Drinks and snacks available. Beside it is an impressive ‘Gallery of Heroes’ in ‘Fort Newhaven Hall’, dedicated to nine individuals who distinguished themselves during the war (e.g. German artist Max Pechstein, Canadian Medic Col John McCrae, Aviator Sadi Lecointe, Musician George Butterworth) each with a fine portrait by Mafil and personal stories on the reverse.
Guided visits available in French and English. Run by the pleasant and helpful team under President Thierry Goulin with the charming Christine at the entrance.
Open: every day 1 Feb to 15 Dec 0900-1200 and 1400-1800, June-Sept 0900-1800. Entrance fee payable. Tel: +(03) 22 75 16 17. Fax: +(0)3 22 75 56 33. Email: musee@somme1916.org Eng website: www.somme-trench-museum.co.uk Fr website: musee-somme-1916.eu
Boutique, Musée Somme 1916, Albert
Visitors emerge, into the pleasant arboretum public gardens, formerly the gardens of the château (the red brick walls of which can still be seen), rented to the town by the Comte de Toulouse in 1717, thence up steps back to the square. At the top of the steps is a splendid Mural by Albert Mac Carton, showing the Basilique with the Madonna, leaning perilously, and the figures of allied soldiers. In the small garden below it is a Plaque to commemorate the inauguration of the mural on 29 June 1996.
[N.B.] One can also enter the new wing here through the gardens at the other side via the wrought iron gates that lead from rue Jules Ferry. GPS: 50.00152 2.64623
Opposite the gate, on House No 54, is a Plaque to Léandre Deflandre, Resistance Chief, killed by the Germans on 23 July 1944.
Drive up the rue de Birmingham, turn left and leave Albert on the D4929, signed Bapaume/A1 Lille/Cambrai.
The D4929 heads north east, straight as an arrow, as befits a Roman road, for Bapaume, 19km away. Barely 3.5km away along the road is the village of la Boisselle, which marked the German front line in 1916. The road passes Bapaume Post Cemetery and rises to a crest just before the village, a crest from which the 34th Division set off at 0730 on 1 July 1916 to attack la Boisselle. The ground to the left of the road was in 8th Division’s area and the ground to the right in 34th Division’s. Behind was Albert, under constant German bombardment, teeming with supplies, its cellars full of troops who emerged at night into the streets with their transport and moved up to and over the crest along deep communication trenches and then fanned out into assault trenches in the valley below to await the whistle to go over the top. On their way,
Mural by Albert Mac Carton, Albert
‘Here and there, in recesses in the trench, under roofs of corrugated iron covered with sandbags, they passed the offices and the stores of war, telephonists, battalion headquarters, dumps of bombs, barbed wire, rockets, lights, machine-gun ammunition, tins, jars and cases. Many men, passing these things as they went ‘in’ for the first time, felt with a sinking of the heart, that they were leaving all ordered and arranged things, perhaps forever,’ reported Masefield. In some sectors men even passed rows of coffins.
Drive to the second roundabout.
Here there is the Ibis Hotel (qv) in the grounds of which there is the 4-metre high figure of a British Tommy (GPS: 50.00973 2.67228) clambering out of a trench with his rifle, the initiative of the Somme Museum in 2005, when it proved somewhat controversial.
Continue, following signs to Cambrai/Lille on the D4929 and stop at the cemetery on the right.
• Bapaume Post Mil CWGC Cemetery/1.3 miles/5 minutes/Map J16/GPS: 50.01186 2.67381
This Cemetery, one of the first to be completed in the sector in 1924, lies on the western slope of Tara Hill, and here the divisional boundary crosses the road and swings well left to include the hill known as Usna, 1,000m away to the northeast. Both hills were in the 34th Division area. In the cemetery, which was begun in July 1916, lie more than a hundred Northumberland Fusiliers of 34th Division, two battalion commanders of the Tyneside Scottish Brigade (Lt Cols William Lyle, age 40 and Charles Sillery, age 54, both killed on 1 July 1916) and soldiers of 38th (Welsh) Division, which recaptured the position on 23 August 1918. In Plot I Row G there is an interesting group of burials: 2nd Lt C. Edwards, E Yorks, 29 January 1917, age 28, has the personal message, ‘He responded to Lord Kitchener’s appeal, August 1914’and 2nd Lt J.E.F.T. Bennett, R Warwicks, 24 July 1916, has the soldier’s decoration the MM. He lies near Maj Sir Foster H.E. Cunliffe, Bart, Rifle Bde, 10 July 1916, age 43. Altogether there are 410 burials (181 Unknown), including Canadians, Australians and a South African. It was designed by Charles Holden.
Continue to the top of the crest.
• Tara-Usna Line/1.7 miles/Map J16-17
The crest, which runs from Tara Hill on the right-hand side to Usna Hill on the left-hand side, overlooks the village of la Boisselle, 900m straight ahead. It may be possible to spot Ovillers CWGC 2,500m away at 11 o’clock and the Lochnagar mine crater 1,500m away at 1 o’clock. Moving in the direction in which you are travelling, four battalions of Northumberland Fusiliers – all Tyneside Scottish, part of 102nd (Tyneside Scottish) Brigade, itself part of 34th Division – advanced towards the German lines at la Boisselle on 1 July. On the left-hand side of the road the 1st and 4th battalions moved forward, side by side in extended line, and two minutes after them, in column of platoons, to the right-hand side of the road, came the 2nd and 3rd battalions.
Headstone of Lt Col W. Lyle, Bapaume Post CWGC Cemetery
They had climbed out of their assault trenches in the valley ahead of you moments after the explosion of huge mines at la Boisselle. But although the men had been promised that the opposition would be disorganised by the artillery bombardment and the mines, it was not so. The Germans emerged from deep dug outs, set up their machine guns and mowed down the British infantry advancing as if on parade across the open ground. On the left-hand side no advance was made, the German trenches were not reached and casualties were around 60%. On the right-hand side, where casualties were marginally less, around 50%, a small part of the German line was captured some 700m south-east of the village.
Continue to bottom of hill. On the right is the handy Poppy Restaurant, Tel: +(03) 22 75 45 45. Excellent food with good price range of menus.
Fork right on the D20 and immediately park.
Tyneside Memorial seat, la Boisselle, and detail of bas relief
• Tyneside Memorial Seat, la Boisselle/2.1 miles/5 minutes/Map J17/GPS: 50.01846 2.687727
The curved seat is on the left. Situated close to where the opposing front line trenches crossed the D929, it was unveiled by Marshal Foch, and was the first permanent Regimental Memorial to be erected along the road. It commemorates the attack of the 102nd (Tyneside Scottish) Brigade and their follow-up brigade, the 103rd Tyneside Irish. The latter, storming through the remnants of the 102nd, penetrated beyond the German lines in small parties to the east of the village, but no permanent gains were made astride the road. Their losses matched those of the 102nd.
Opposite, across the D929, after about 100m, is the site of what was the best-known crater in la Boisselle of the mine in Y Sap, blown at the same time as Lochnagar, but now filled in. In his novel, The Golden Virgin, based on his personal war-time experiences, Henry Williamson describes a visit to the 1,300ft-long gallery that led under the German fort of the same name, whose charges were to be blown at Zero Hour on 1 July. It left a crater 165ft in diameter, throwing up a high lip which afforded protection under which the infantry were able to reform. It caused little damage to the enemy as the area had been evacuated prior to the explosion. After the war, locals erected a hut by the great hole from which they sold postcards of the two craters at la Boisselle and on the other side of the road, not far from today’s Poppy Café, was the Café de la Grande Mine.
Continue along the Rue de la 34ième Division, signed to La Grande Mine, for some 100m.
Glory Hole/2.2 miles/Map J18/GPS: 50.01835 2.68897
On the right-hand side can be seen a small fenced-off area of craters known as the Glory Hole (Map J18), which was immediately behind the German forward trenches. Williamson paints a word picture of it as a place of dread, ‘a boneyard without graves’ of British and German corpses, and unexploded British shells. At that time it made ‘a gap of five hundred yards in the British lines, an abandoned no-man’s-land of choked shaft and subsided gallery held by a series of Lewis-gun posts’.
Fears that the craters were to be filled in and built over were allayed and a major archaeological excavation was undertaken here in 2011 which uncovered a fascinating souterrain complex, now unfortunately halted and no longer visitable. For more details see www.laboisselleproject.com/
However there are new initiatives to preserve and hold events here. See the sign placed by the Friends of the Glory Hole (Ilot): http://www.ilotdelaboisselle.com/decouvrir/les-amis-de-l-ilot.html
More research is being undertaken by the Somme Tourist Director, the Breton François Bergez, about the Breton regiments that fought in the area in 1914. There was much aerial activity over the Somme on 1 July. Cecil Lewis, serving with the RFC, describes in his book Sagittarius Rising, ‘We were to watch the opening of the attack, co-ordinate the infantry flares (the job we had been rehearsing for months) and stay over the lines for two and a half hours.’ Continuous, overlapping patrols were due to run throughout the day. The patrol was ordered to ‘keep clear of La Boisselle’ because of the mines that were to be blown. From above Thiepval he watched as,
“At Boisselle the earth heaved and flashed, a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the sky. There was an ear-splitting roar, drowning all the guns, flinging the machine sideways in the repercussing air. The earthy column rose, higher and higher to almost four thousand feet.”
Turn right on the C9 signed La Grande Mine and 100m later fork left on C102. Continue and park at the crater.
Cratered ground, The Glory Hole
• La Boisselle/Lochnagar Crater/2.7 miles/25 mins/Map J19-24 OP/GPS: 50.01605 2.69723
On entering the site one passes through large stone curbs and ‘knife-rests’ then along duckboards and a hedge which completely surround the site. The land containing the crater was purchased in 1978, and is maintained privately, by Englishman Richard Dunning (Tel: 01483 810651, E-mail: Richard.dunning@uwclub.net. See Website: www.lochnagarcrater.org for enquiries about the ‘Friends of Lochnagar’) as a Memorial to all those, of both sides, who fought in the Battle of the Somme. Thus the fate of the other large craters at la Boisselle – of being filled in and built upon – was averted. Richard, who is intensely aware of the historical and spiritual value of the crater, of its ability to shock and evoke the violence of war through its sheer size, raised a simple 12ft high Cross made from church timber originating on Tyneside, replaced with a new green English cross when the original was blown down in 2010. The Cross, with the inscription, ‘Lochnagar Crater Memorial 1914-1918 In Remembrance – A la Mémoire’, is the focal point of the well-attended annual ceremony of remembrance that takes place here every 1 July at 0730 hours. On that day beautifully carved wooden panels which depict the insignia of all the units who took part in the battle, carved by Tim Rogers, are placed around it. There is also a ceremony here on 11 November. All are welcome, but you should contact Richard if you wish to lay a wreath. Please be aware that the July ceremony is becoming increasingly popular (some 3,000 participants in 2014) and parking is problematical; shuttle buses ply from the village. SPECIAL LIMITATIONS APPLY FOR THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATON AND ENTRY WILL BE BY INVITATION ONLY – APPLY TO THE FRIENDS FOR DETAILS. The road from the village has been widened and there is a turning circle for coaches at the far side of the crater. Much work has recently been undertaken by the wonderful ‘Friends of Lochnagar’ with the help of the CWGC, to enhance the feeling that one is entering a very Special Memorial area and a ‘living’ Garden of Remembrance.
When standing at the rim and peering down into its vast depth it is difficult to grasp quite how large this crater is. Note that as the crater is subject to increasing erosion it is strictly forbidden to clamber down into it. Please also remember that the area still contains the remains of many of those killed by the explosion and it is therefore a burial ground. Indeed wooden crosses at the bottom of the crater stood out starkly against the white chalk for many years after the war. Several memorials have progressively been erected in the area. One is a Stone in memory of Tom Easton, a private in the 2nd Battalion of the Tyneside Scottish. Below it is a Plaque to 129364 Gnr Noon, W.G., B/160 RF 34th Div 1916-1919, 1895-1963. To its left is a Memorial Seat on which a Plaque simply states, ‘Donated by Friends who visit in memory of friends who remain’. A further Plaque to John Giles, founder of the WFA, has been added. A brick shelter has been erected to house the Lochnagar Crater Memorial Visitors’ Book (which please sign). It is estimated that there are now over 400,000 visitors to the crater each year (and, encouragingly for future remembrance, many of them are schoolchildren). On the far side of the impressive gaping hole of the crater is a Memorial Seat to Harry Fellows, 1896-1987, ex-12th Northumberland Fusiliers, who fought on the Somme, erected by his son, Mick. The seat was bought from the proceeds of Harry’s moving poetry. Installed for the 2015 ceremony is the Lochnagar Stone - a beautiful 2cwt piece of granite from the very top of Lochnagar mountain - polished, inscribed and brought over by the local RAF Mountain Rescue. It is about 30 yards from the walkway towards the far right hand corner. The new semi-circular Nurses’ Memorial Bench was also unveiled on July 1st - hand-made by Friend Vinny (who constructed the walkway) and faces the nearest nurses’ first aid post in the direction beyond Bécourt Wood.
Nearby is a Seat to the Grimsby Chums, Saturday 1 July 1916, erected in July 1999. From this seat you have the best OP vantage point from the crater’s rim.
Stand with your back to the Seat facing the Cross.
OP. Take the Memorial Cross as 12 o’clock. Just to the left and beyond is the spire of la Boisselle Church and just to its left on the skyline is the Thiepval Memorial, 4,000m away. On a clear day its flags can be seen. A further 4,000m away beyond Thiepval is Beaumont Hamel. At 11 o’clock is the road up which you have driven which runs roughly parallel to, and beside, the German front line trench. At 2 o’clock on the horizon is a long line of poplars. At their left hand end is the wireless mast at Pozières, 4,200m away, which stands on the D929 opposite the Australian Memorial at Pozières Windmill, always a useful reference point around the battlefield and visited on Itinerary 2. In front of the trees, 900m away, is Gordon Dump Cemetery at the north-eastern end of Sausage Valley. The valley curves around from behind you 500m away, and from there to your right-hand side up to the cemetery, which is positioned close to a battlefield track junction once known as Gordon Post. The valley was named ‘Sausage’ after a German spotter balloon which was flown in the area and the christening of the opposite valley across the D929 as ‘Mash’ was inevitable.
The Crater, early morning
Contact QR Post
Memorial made of Granite from Lochnagar (Scotland) placed by local RAF Mountain Rescue Association, 1 July 2015
Commemorative Plaques to 3 brothers, 2 of whom went down on HMS Hampshire with Lord Kitchener.
At the going down of the sun…
Working party of the faithful “Friends of Lochnagar”. A bearded Richard Dunning stands to the right of the Cross as you view it
Commemorative Plaques to 2 VCs; a soldier killed on 1 July 1916; a Nursing Sister; a Soldier “Shot at Dawn”
Thus the general shape of the German front line to the north may be seen: i.e. Beaumont Hamel to Thiepval, Thiepval to the Glory Hole (by the poplars at 10 o’clock) and from there up the road to where you are now standing. At 7 o’clock the Golden Madonna at Albert should be visible on an average clear day, at 10 o’clock in the dip is the Poppy Restaurant and the crest, 1,000m away, running to behind the Glory Hole, is the Tara-Usna line, from which the Tynesiders advanced towards la Boisselle and where you now stand.
Continue round the crater to the cross to the right of the path.
This simple wooden Cross is in Memory of 22/1306 Pte George Nugent, Tyneside Scottish, Northumberland Fusiliers. His remains were found at this spot by Friends clearing the area on 31 October 1998. George Nugent was reinterred in Ovillers CWGC Cemetery (qv) on 1 July 2000.
“… Private Turrall picked up his rifle and opened fire on the bombers”
Mine warfare had been carried on in this area well before July 1916 and there were many craters in No Man’s Land. In June, along the Western Front as a whole, the British had blown 101 mines and the Germans 126. In this area some of the shafts dug, from which tunnels then reached out to the enemy line, were over 100ft deep with tunnels at up to four levels. When dug, the mine here was called Lochnagar, and it was started by 185th Tunnelling Company and packed with two charges of 24,000lb and 36,000lb of ammonal. It was exploded, along with sixteen other British mines along the Somme front, at 0728 on 1 July, and the circular crater measured 300ft across and was 90ft deep. Debris rose 4,000ft into the air and, as it settled, the Tyneside attack from Tara-Usna began.
Following the failure of that attack, the 10th Worcesters were ordered to move up from beside Albert to make an assault at dawn on 2 July. So chaotic were conditions in the communication trenches that the battalion got lost, and the attack did not go in until 3 July. The Worcesters took the crater area and the village, Private Thomas George Turrall winning a VC in the process, (a Gilbert Holiday drawing commemorates the action) but the battalion lost a third of its fighting strength and the Commanding Officer was killed.
An increasingly popular memorial feature is the opportunity to sponsor small rectangular Plaques to individuals with WW1 connections (especially to those who fought on the Somme) on the edges of the wooden planks which make up the Crater’s surrounding path (apply to the Friends as above for details). Samples of these are illustrated.
Return to the Rue du 34th Division and turn right on what is now Rue Georges Cuvillier (Mort pour la France).
Immediately on the left is the Old Blighty Tea Rooms, run by John and Alison Haslock. It is near the site of the café that existed here in the 1920s run by an old British soldier with his French wife. There are some interesting WW1 exhibits in the attractive tea room which serves drinks and light refreshments. There is a small terrace and parking area. Tel: +(0)3 22 64 09 16. E-mail: old_blighty@hotmail.com Website: wwwoldblightysomme.com The large room is available for small groups as a lecture/meeting/function room. Open: Thurs-Mon 1030-1700, Tues: 1200-1600, other times by appointment. Battlefield tours available by prior appointment.
It was in la Boisselle on 2-3 July that the extraordinary Belgian-born officer, T/Lt Col Adrian Carton de Wiart (qv), commanding the 8th Gloucesters, won his VC for forcing home the attack while exposing himself fearlessly to the enemy simultaneously controlling the commands of three other battalion commanders who had been wounded. He himself was wounded many times before and during WW1 (he had lost his left hand at Ypres and his left eye in S Africa and wore a dashing black eye patch) and went on to become Lt-Gen Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, KBE, CB, CNG, DSO, with many foreign awards and distinguished service that took him to Poland, Norway, Yugoslavia, Italy and China in WW2. Well-connected, he had married Countess Federica, eldest daughter of Prince Karl Ludwig Fugger Babenhausen of Klagenfurt in 1908 and married for a second time in 1951 at the age of 71. He died on 5 June 1963 having written his memoirs, Happy Odyssey. He was the model for Brig-Gen Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy.
Continue towards the church, passing a splendid Poilu memorial on the left. Stop beside the octagonal remains of a water tower as the buildings stop and walk up the path to the left.
• 34th Division Memorial/3.3 miles/10 minutes/Map J7/GPS: 50.02123 2.6937
This handsome Memorial, comprising a figure of Victory (who, a few years ago, lost the laurel wreath she was brandishing) on a stone base, which commemorates the Division’s deeds in the area on 1 July 1916, the first battle in which it was engaged, also incorporates the Division’s striking chequerboard emblem. Below the statue the composition of the Divisional Units is inscribed. There is an identical memorial (but with its laurel wreath complete) at Mont Noir in the Ypres Salient (Ypres Map K1). Ovillers CWGC Cemetery may be seen on the slope behind the statue.
Return to the church. Stop at memorial in front of it.
• 19th (Western) Division ‘Butterfly’ Memorial/3.4 miles/5 minutes/Map J6/GPS: 50.02054 2.69522
This Memorial, whose divisional emblem of a butterfly is engraved at the top, commemorates their casualties of 2 July-20 November in la Boisselle, Bazentin le Petit and Grandcourt. The Divisional Units are inscribed on the base. It was the 19th that finally took the village on 4 July. The Division has another memorial at Oosttaverne in the Ypres Salient (Ypres Map M19).
Return to the D929 by turning right behind the Poilu. Turn right on the D929 and after 200m, turn left and follow signs to Ovillers CWGC Cemetery.
34th Div Memorial, la Boisselle
• Ovillers CWGC Cemetery/4.3 miles/10 minutes/Map J4/5/GPS: 50.02847 2.69221
This Cemetery contains 3,265 burials of soldiers (and sailors of the Royal Naval Division) from the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and France (there are about 120 French graves), of which 2,477 are unidentified. It was started as a battle cemetery behind a Dressing Station and was in use until March 1917. After the Armistice, graves from Mash Valley and Red Dragon Cemeteries, as well as many temporary graves from the surrounding battlefields, were concentrated here. There is a Special Memorial inside the front wall to thirtyfive soldiers originally buried in Mash Valley whose graves were subsequently lost. It also contains the grave of Capt John C. Lauder of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, killed by a sniper (a Scottish newspaper in the 1980s hinted that it may have been a British one – young Lauder was not a universally popular officer) on 28 December 1916. His distraught father, Sir Harry Lauder, visited the ‘brown mound’ of his son’s grave, with its temporary wooden cross, in June 1917. At that time there were 500 graves in the Cemetery. Sir Harry was on a strenuous tour, which took him from Folkestone via Boulogne, to Vimy Ridge, Aubigny, Tramecourt, Arras, Athies, le Quesnoy, Doullens, Albert (where he commented on the Leaning Virgin, still clinging to her perilous position) and thence to Ovillers. He gave concerts to entertain the troops at each stop, often coming under fire. Lauder called it the ‘Rev Harry Lauder, MP Tour’, and it was a tremendous morale-raiser. It is chronicled in his book A Minstrel in France published in 1918, which describes his love of, and pride in, ‘My boy, John’, which parallels Rudyard Kipling’s feelings for ‘My Boy, Jack’, his son Lt John Kipling, killed at Loos in September 1915. It was as a result of the shattering blow of his son’s death that Lauder wrote Keep Right on to the End of the Road.
19th (Western) Div Memorial, La Boisselle
Pte George Nugent (qv) whose remains were found at the Lochnagar Crater in 1998, was reinterred here, with full military honours and in the presence of members of his family, on 1 July 2000. His personal message reads, ‘Lost, found, but never forgotten.’ In the French plot are several of the Breton soldiers who were killed in the actions of December 1914, when the French held the sector.
In October 1916 the 2nd/5th Gloucesters moved from their reserve position on Aubers Ridge to the Somme, serving at Grandcourt, Aveluy and Ovillers. With them was the poet and musician, Ivor Gurney, and here he wrote one of his most disquieting poems, Ballad of the Three Spectres:
As I went up by Ovillers
In mud and water cold to the knee,
There went three jeering, fleering spectres,
That walked abreast and talked of me.
Ovillers CWGC Cemetery
Headstone of Capt John C. Lauder
Sir Harry Lauder, whose son is buried in Ovillers CWGC Cemetery
Headstone of Sgt C.C. Castleton, VC, Pozères Brit Cemetery
One prophesied a ‘Blighty one’ for him – correct, as in September 1917 he was gassed at St Julien and sent home. The second predicted that he would die in ‘Picardie’, which he did not do. The third, and most fearsome prediction, was:
He’ll stay untouched till the war’s last dawning
Then live one hour of agony.
It could be said that the mental turmoil in which Gurney lived for the last fifteen or so years of his disturbed life were indeed one long hour of agony.
In the village of Ovillers after the war a Nissen hut stood on the site of the church, proclaiming ‘This was Ovillers Church’. At one time a memorial to the miners, whose tunnels riddled the slope leading up the village, stood in Ovillers. The rebuilt village sits on the site of the old light railway, the bath house and the encampment known as Wolfe Huts. Gurney would have been pleased to know that after the war, Gloucester paid for two wells in Ovillers.
On 1 July 1916 the German front line ran from la Boisselle past the right hand edge of the cemetery and on towards Thiepval.
[N.B.] 1. To the left here is a cart track (which may be driven up if the ground is extremely dry, otherwise it is a 10-minute return walk) signed Calvaire Breton.
It leads to an imposing memorial Calvary (Map J5a, GPS: 50.03178 2.6905) with an imaginative bas relief of crosses with an inscription around the base to ‘les braves du 19 RIF, 7 dec 1914’ and the words ‘Je n’abandonne pas mes bretons’, which has been refurbished, thanks to the instigation of François Bergez (qv). It is also in memory of Capt Henby Baillard and Lt Augustin de Boisanger who fell here and André Pitel, the Regiment’s Adjutant. In the first year of the war this sector was mostly manned by men from the west of France - la Vendée and Brittany.
Breton Calvary Memorial, with detail, Ovillers
[N.B.] 2. Site of Ulverston Street Trench.
As Albert is twinned with Ulverston there was much interest in the inauguration in 2006 (the 30th Anniversary of the Town Twinning and the 90th of the battle) of the site of the trench, part of a system of trenches named after north-eastern towns. Here the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regt and the Seaforth Highlanders (including the poet Lt E.A. Mackintosh) were stationed in the autumn and winter of 1915. The Royal Berks and 2nd Middlesex fought here in July 1916. Main instigators of the project were the historian Michael Stedman with Paula Kesteloot who had been researching the movements of men from her home county, Lancashire. The site may be reached by walking up the sloping track away from the Memorial and just over the crest turning left along a track which is on the line of the old trench which is behind Ovillers Cemetery – some 800 metres in all. At the crest of the track where you turn left, there is a splendid OP: at 9 o’ clock – the Golden Madonna at Albert, at 11 o’ clock – The Leipzig Salient, at 12 o’clock - Thiepval Memorial, with Thiepval church at the end of the trees to the right, at 3 o’ clock Pozières Wireless Mast and Church, at 5 o’ clock 5th Army Memorial, Pozières.
Turn round and return to the junction with the road that leads to the D929 to the right (up which you drove). Return to the D929, turn left signed Bapaume.
As you drive to the crest of the Pozières Ridge the Thiepval Memorial may be seen 2,800m away to the left.
Continue to a large cemetery enclosure beside the road on the left. Stop.
• Pozières British Cemetery and 4th & 5th Armies Memorial/6.2 miles/15 minutes/Map J8/9/GPS: 50.03371 2.71565
The Memorial is the wall that surrounds the cemetery. It is to men of the Fifth and Fourth Armies who have no known grave, and was designed by W. H. Cowlishaw of the (then) Imperial War Graves Commission. It relates to the period of the final German assault of March 1918 and over 14,600 names are inscribed on the wall. Among these the Rifle Brigade, the Durham Light Infantry and the Machine Gun Corps each have over 500. The Manchesters have almost 500, including Lt Col Wilfrith Elstob (qv), CO of their 16th Bn who won the VC at Manchester Hill Redoubt near St Quentin on 21 March 1918. The cemetery contains over 2,700 burials, from the UK, Australia and Canada, including Sgt Claude Charles Castleton, 5th MGC, AIF, who won the VC on 28 July 1916 in this area.
Continue about 300m. Park near a memorial cross on the right.
Memorial to 4th & 5th Armies, Pozières, seen from the Chalk Pit
• KRRC Memorial/6.6 miles/5 minutes/Map H10/GPS: 50.03668 2.72134
The Kings Royal Rifle Corps had two battalions in the original BEF and raised twenty more during the war. There is a similar memorial in the Ypres Salient at Hooge (Holts’ Ypres Map I31) and another in Winchester.
Continue to small road to the right.
[N.B.] This was known as Dead Man’s Road and runs through a depression once known as Smyth Valley. At the end of this narrow, rough track with very sharp stones (negotiable by car only if dry) is the Chalk Pit (GPS: 50.02938 2.72046) where on 15 July 1916 the 8th East Lancs with the remnants of the 11th R Warwicks gathered as they were repulsed by the enemy in their drive from Contalmaison towards Pozières. Battalion HQs were established in the pit under heavy artillery fire and at 1400 hours Major-General Ingouville-Williams (qv), commanding 34th Division, made a visit to assess the situation. He ordered a further bombardment and assault to take place at 1700 hours. This was met by heavy machine gun fire but the East Lancs managed to dig in some 300 yards short of the village. The following day the weary men were relieved and their wounded evacuated to a dressing station in Contalmaison. During the attack the 112th Brigade sustained 1,034 casualties, of which the 8th East Lancs had 365. It was the Kitchener Battalion’s first battle of the war.
The Chalk Pit, Pozières
Turn left almost immediately, signed up a small road to the Australian 1st Division Memorial.
• Australian 1st Division Memorial/1993 RB Plaque & Gibraltar Blockhouse/6.7 miles/15 minutes/Map G47/48/GPS: 50.03778 2.72196
The obelisk Memorial sits on the forward slope of Pozières Ridge, the ground rising to its crest 500m away as the D929 continues on through the village towards Bapaume. At the Memorial entrance is a low bronze, Ross Bastiaan (qv) bas relief Plaque, unveiled by the Australian Minister for Veterans’ Affairs on 30 August 1993 and sponsored by AMPSOC. There are interesting Information Boards beside the Memorial with details of the Australian Remembrance Trail stops around the village, another being at the entrance to Dead Man’s Road. There are now two distinct trails: the Short one is a 2 km circuit within the village itself, the Longer one extends to 10kms around the village and they have a ‘totem’-like marker – see Mouquet Farm, the next stop on this Itinerary). Details of the routes are available in a leaflet from the Albert Pays du Coquelicot Tourist Office (qv) – see the App ‘Australians at Pozières 1916’.
Gibraltar Blockhouse, Pozières
Australian 1st Div Memorial, Pozières
Beyond the obelisk the Thiepval Memorial can be seen on the horizon. The ridge was a major feature, furiously contested by both sides and, with Thiepval towards its northern end, it sits like a barricade across the D929. It was a formidable obstacle, with its fortified cellars, network of defensive trenches and twin OP blockhouses. One, called Gibraltar, is in the bank to your right as you drive up to the Memorial and it has been cleared by the CGS/H to make its entrance easily visible. The other was at The Windmill - see Itinerary Two. There are informative signboards, a large car park and a wooden viewing platform (which gives the German viewpoint and indicates points of interest). The entrance to the blockhouse has been protected and entry is forbidden.
Following the collapse of the night attack offensive which began Part 3 of the Somme Battle on 14 July, four unsuccessful assaults were made on Pozières. The first attack was made by the British 48th Division on the left (Pozières Memorial) side of the D929 and the 1st Australian Division on the right (KRRC Memorial) side, the Australians having moved up from Albert and then through Sausage Valley. The attack went in thirty minutes after midnight on 23/24 July. The main trench, known as Western Trench, of the German garrison, the 117th Division, ran parallel to and on the left beside the small road you have just driven up. The trench and the village were taken on 24 July, but the Germans still held the crest of the ridge (marked by the tall wireless mast) and counter-attacked. Although the Australians held on, after three days the division had lost over 5,200 casualties and had to be relieved. The subsequent actions are summarised in Itinerary Two, Pozières Windmill entry.
Continue to the T junction by the village war memorial. It is surmounted by the cockerel emblem of France. Opposite is the school and Mairie.
Turn left. After approx 100m, shells and other battlefield relics are piled in the garden against the house on the right owned by private collectors.
Continue along the D73 road.
Ovillers is to the left, 2,500m away. This road roughly follows the route of the German Second Line to Thiepval, which can be seen ahead.
In anticipation of the extra traffic along this road during the Centenary years, it was widened and resurfaced.
Continue to the Memorial Plaque on a bend on the right roughly half way between Pozières and Thiepval.
• Ross Bastiaan Memorial Plaque, Mouquet Farm/8.1 miles/10 minutes/Map H15/GPS: 50.04943 2.70818)
This is on the site of Mouquet Farm (known to Tommy as Mucky Farm and to the Aussies as Moo Cow Farm) on the right. A farm has been rebuilt close to the original site. On 10 September 1997 the Plaque was unveiled here by the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tim Fisher. It commemorates the Australians who fell in August/September 1916 in the struggles for Thiepval and is sited close to the line of the German ‘Constance’ Trench. Here is a ‘totem’ marker for Australian Remembrance Trail stop No 23.
Continue to Thiepval village. Follow signs to the Visitor Centre.
The village was virtually wiped out in the war and the present small cluster of church, houses, school/Mairie and farm is far smaller than the original thriving village. To the right of the church entrance is
Ross Bastiaan Plaque, Mouquet Farm behind, Australian Remembrance Trail Marker No 23
• Plaque to Lt-Gen Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO/ 8.9 miles/5 minutes/Map G44b/GPS: 50.05378 2.68813
Instigated by Lt-Col J.P. Schellekens, Chairman of the Belgian National Remembrance Committee, the Plaque was inaugurated on 2 July 2006. This extraordinary soldier and personality won his VC at la Boisselle (qv) commanding the 8th Gloucesters on 2/3 July 1916. The ceremony was attended by the British Ambassador to Belgium, Regimental, Belgian and local dignitaries (including Mme Potié, then-Mayor of Thiepval) and members of the Belgian and Irish branches of the Carton de Wiart families, including la Comtesse Renée-Victoire de la Kéthulle de Ryhove and de Wiart’s grandson, the war correspondent Anthony Lloyd.
Continue, following signs to the Visitor Centre car park.
Plaque to Lt-Gen Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO, Thiepval Church
• The Thiepval Visitor Centre & Museum/9 miles/30 minutes/Map G44a/GPS: 50.05237 2.68814
NOTE that this memorial site has undergone major changes during the Centenary years.
1. New Museum. This is being built in the ground between the existing Visitor Centre and the Memorial and consists of three exhibition rooms.
Room 1 will feature the original of the remarkable Frieze by Joe Sacco which depicts the lives of soldiers fighting in the area in 1916 in vivid detail (a book showing the Frieze is on sale in the Centre.) Beneath the glass floor are artefacts found during the excavation.
Room 2 features the Missing – British, French and German - on the Thiepval Memorial in particular, with personal stories and illustrations.
Room 3 concentrates on the War in the Air with a replica of the Red Baron’s Fokker and stories of the Aces. It links the Unknowns with the ‘famous’.
The exterior, Thiepval Visitor Centre
In the centre is a Saint Chamond Tank replica. It was a French heavy tank, production of which began in mid-1917.
The Foundation Stone was laid on 20 June 2015 by dignitaries from the Franco-British Committee.
The Visitor and Education Centre was opened here in September 2004 by one of its Patrons, HRH the Duke of Kent. The nearly £2 million required was funded half by British donations and half by the Conseil Général de la Somme and EU Regional Funds and is supported by Madame Geneviève Potié, then-Mayor of Thiepval. It is the inspiration of Sir Frank Sanderson who felt that modernday visitors should have some background information about what happened at this historic site and also have a place of rest and refreshment. He fund-raised energetically to find the 50% from some 2,000 different donors and worked with determination to see the challenging project through with the French builders. The idea was regarded as somewhat controversial by purist regular visitors who feared that the building would detract from the classical Lutyens Memorial and that the proliferation of information centres in the area was tending to create a Somme ‘theme park’. Sensitive to these feelings the designers have created a discreet sunken building with a glass façade and original Lutyens bricks which is shielded by trees and which blends into the environment. The Centre has now been accepted as an informative and convenient facility and is very popular with visitors. It is managed by Vincent Laude and his helpful bi-lingual team led by Dawn and is served by a new road leading to a large car and coach park. The Centre contains a book shop, refreshment and toilet facilities, as well as offering historical Information Panels (by Professor Peter Simkins, Brother Nigel Cave and author Michael Stedman) and a databank to enable visitors to trace where relatives – Allied and German – are buried or commemorated. Part of the exhibition is devoted to personal details of some of the 72,000 men who are commemorated on the Memorial and there is a striking and very moving montage of some of their portraits. Another section is devoted to Sir Edwin Lutyens. There is access to the Debt of Honour websites, video displays, a small theatre and a superb panorama of the surrounding area as in 1916. There are facilities for student groups and for bus drivers.
Missing of the Somme display, Thiepval Visitors Centre
Boutique, Thiepval Visitors Centre
An accurate 1:25 scale model of the Lutyens Memorial stands inside the entrance. It was constructed by Andrew Ingham and Assocs.
During the excavations, the Durand Group (qv) established that no significant vestiges of the war were disturbed other than a few shells and the remains of six Germans which were taken in charge by the German authorities.
In June 2006 the hard-working Charity Committee handed over all administration to the Historial at Péronne and the CWGC undertook the landscaping and maintenance of the surroundings.
Open: 1 May-31 Oct 1000-1800 and 1 Nov-30 April 0900-1700. Closed for two weeks over Christmas and the New Year. Free admission. Tel: +(0)3 22 74 60 47. Fax: +(0)3 22 74 65 44. Email: thiepval@historial.org Website: www.historial.org There is a series of Information Boards outside the entrance.
From the Centre walk along the short path to the entrance to the Memorial.
The house opposite the entrance was built in the 1980s by the then-Mayor, Madame Potié, on the site of the cottage of the old guardian for many years, Monsieur Poprawa, and serves as a staging and command post for ceremonies. It has now been acquired by the Somme. To the left of the entrance to the Memorial are the gardeners’ huts and garages for the CWGC section, for many years supervised by Arthur Leach. Arthur was the son of Serre Road No 2 gardener, Ben Leach, who during World War II hid, and then sent on their way to the Spanish border, several Allied airmen.
• Thiepval Memorial & Cemetery/9.1 miles/25 minutes/Map G46/45 OP/GPS: 50.05122 2.68792
NOTE. In December 2014 the CWGC announced that an 18-month project to restore the Thiepval Memorial, one of its most iconic structures, would begin in Spring 2015. Representing one of the most important pieces of restoration work to be undertaken by the organisation for some time, the facelift will ensure that both the monument and surrounding landscape are ready for the Battle of the Somme Centenary in July 2016. It includes making the Memorial watertight and replacing the drainage system. Work not completed before the Anniversary commemorations will cease and restart afterwards. As Thiepval will be the venue for a major 1 July 2016 Ceremony the project is also being supported by the UK Government.
Outside the entrance is a CGS/H Signboard. The structure is both a battle Memorial and a Memorial. As the former it commemorates the 1916 Anglo-French offensive on the Somme and as the latter it carries the names of over 73,000 British and South African men who have no known grave and who fell on the Somme between July 1916 and 20 March 1918. The Australian Missing are commemorated on the Villers Bretonneux Memorial, the Canadians on the Vimy Ridge Memorial, the Indians at Neuve Chapelle, the Newfoundlanders at Beaumont Hamel and the New Zealanders at Longueval. The Memorial, 150ft high, which dominates the surrounding area, was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and has sixteen piers on whose faces the names of the Missing are inscribed. It stands on a concrete raft 10ft thick, built 19ft below ground – the solution of surveyor Major Macfarlane to the problems of building over the warren of tunnels and dugouts that formed part of the German second line. It is the largest British war memorial in the world and was unveiled on 31 July 1932, by HRH the Prince of Wales in the presence of the President of the French Republic. The event was not without controversy. At the time exservicemen were suffering from the mass unemployment that was to lead to the general depression. Where was the land ‘fit for heroes to live in’, promised by Lloyd George? Bruce Bairnsfather, the creator of Old Bill, used his popular folk hero to express his views in an article in the Daily Herald. Would not the money used to create this splendid edifice not have been better spent in caring for the men without limbs, without minds, living a twilight existence in the Star and Garter Home? Yet posterity might feel that it is appropriate to have an enduring focal point for remembrance for those who gave their lives for their beliefs – to remind us that they were fighting for our peaceful future. ‘The Thiepval Arch will stand as firmly as the Empire whose sons it commemorates’, wrote H. A. Taylor hopefully in his enduringly interesting Good-bye to the Battlefields, in 1928. The war correspondent, Sir Philip Gibbs, wrote of Thiepval in a 1916 despatch, ‘It is historic ground. A hundred years hence men of our blood will come here with reverence as to sacred soil.’ How accurate this prophecy has proved to be.
The Thiepval Memorial
During the mid-1980s the Memorial underwent some drastic changes. It had to be refaced with sturdy Manchester red house brick stock, owing to the deterioration of the original attractive, but soft, rust-coloured bricks selected by Lutyens, and the handsome semi-circular hedge, which was such a striking feature around the lawns in front of the memorial, was killed in the winter frosts of 1984/5 and had to be removed. Another major refurbishment was carried out in January-February 2007 on the twenty-one flat roofs of the memorial.
Walk through the entrance into the 40-acre park.
|
The path heads directly towards the tip of the Leipzig Salient, marked by an isolated copse of tall trees, 1,000m away and from which one can walk to the Lonsdale CWGC Cemetery (see Extra Visit on page 99 and WALK NUMBER 1 page 319). The path points almost exactly at the Golden Madonna in Albert, 6.4km away. |
[N.B.] In the summer of 2014 a sensitive and imaginative public art work, ‘The Lost Men, France’, by South African artist Paul Emmanuel, was installed at the edge of the CWGC area just as this path starts. It was a reflection of ‘impermanence and forgetting’ and also a statement drawing attention to the fact that black South African names were excluded from the Thiepval Memorial. The artist used photos of parts of his own body upon which were superimposed random names, without rank, nationality or ethnicity, of soldiers lost on the Somme. These were mounted on fine material which hung on a line of poles and blew with the wind in a haunting manner. See www.the-lost-men.net]
‘The Lost Men, France’ [The Lost Men].
Walk to the War Stone.
Among the names commemorated on the Memorial – each important to those who mourn it – are the brilliant musician Lt George Butterworth MC, of the 13th Bn, DLI (qv), killed on 1 August 1916; Major Cedric Charles Dickens (qv), descendant of the great novelist, killed on 9 September 1916; Pte Watcyn Griffith, killed in Mametz Wood on 10 July 1916, while carrying a message from his famous brother, author Wyn Griffith; Lt William Ker of Hawke Bn, RND, mentioned in A. P. Herbert’s moving tribute to his fallen comrades, Beaucourt Revisited; Lt Thomas Kettle, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Irish poet and former MP; Lce Sgt Hector Hugh Munro (qv) of the 22nd Royal Fusiliers, the author Saki, killed by a sniper on 14 November 1916, at the age of 46, in the area of what is now Munich Trench Cemetery; Cpl Alexander Robertson of the 12th Yorks & Lancs, the same battalion as fellow poet, John William Streets (qv) and, like him, killed on 1 July 1916; some unfortunate men ‘shot at dawn’ – Pte Cairnie of the 1st Scots Fusiliers, Pte Farr of the 1st W Yorks, Pte Skilton of the 22nd Royal Fusiliers; Victoria Cross winners T/Capt Eric Frankland Bell of the 9th RIF, Pte William Buckingham of the 2nd Leicesters, T/Lt Geoffrey Cather of the 9th RIF, Pte ‘Billy’ McFadzean of the 14th RIR, Rifleman William Mariner of the 2nd KRRC, T/Lt Thomas Wilkinson of the 7th LNL and Sgt Maj Alexander Young of the Cape Police, SAF. Pte Reginald Giles, 1st Gloucesters once thought to be only 14 years old, but research by Jessica Wise proved that he was in fact 19.
Demonstrating the impact this battle made on one school, there are 17 Old Salopians named on the Memorial.
Behind the Memorial is a small Anglo-French cemetery, which symbolizes the joint nature of the war. Its construction was paid for equally by both Governments and 300 dead of each nation are buried there. On the base of the Cross of Sacrifice in the cemetery is the inscription ‘That the world may remember the common sacrifice of two and a half million dead there have been laid side by side soldiers of France and of the British Empire in eternal comradeship’.
Stand beside the War Stone with your back both to it and the cemetery. Look straight ahead over the far wall and between the avenue of trees. That is 12 o’clock.
Private Memorial to Lt Geoge Butterworth near his name on the Thiepval Memorial
At 9 o’clock through the arch is the obelisk of the 18th Division memorial and behind it on the crest is the area of the Schwaben Redoubt. At 12 o’clock in the middle ground is Mouquet (‘Mucky’) Farm and behind it, running right to left across your front, is the Albert-Bapaume road. On that road, but just concealed behind the right-hand avenue of trees, is the Pozières Wireless Mast, probably the most useful reference feature on the battlefield. The Pozières Ridge/Thiepval Plateau feature running towards you from beyond Mucky Farm and the area up to and including Thiepval were not finally cleared until September. On the 15th, Part 4 of the Somme battle had opened with the tank attack from right to left along the horizon at 12 o’clock, that area having been taken by the Australians in August. Mucky Farm fell on 26 September and Thiepval to the Essex, Middlesex and Suffolk county regiments of 18th Division on the 27th. Throughout the whole period of German occupation to 1916, the village was garrisoned by the 180th Württemberg Regiment. It fell again to the Germans on 25 March 1918 and was recaptured by the 17th and 38th (Welsh) Divisions on 24 August 1918.
How To Find An Individual Name On The Thiepval Memorial
Using the Register Books which are kept in the pillars of the Memorial, first look up the regiment of the name that you are searching for. These are listed in alphabetical order. Within each regiment, ranks are listed in order of seniority. Within each rank, names appear in alphabetical order. Regiments are not broken down by battalion, with the sole exception of the London Regiment. The number of the pier and the letter of the face on which the names of casualties from each regiment appear, are shown on pages 14-18 of the Cemetery Report Introduction.
The memorial has sixteen piers, or columns, on which all the names are inscribed. Each pier is numbered and each face is lettered. The number allocated to each pier and the letter allocated to each face of the piers are shown on the plan on page 13 of the Memorial Report Introduction. The reports are vital to this operation. Ideally, you should ascertain the pier number and face letter of the name you are looking for in advance of your visit by visiting the CWGC Debt of Honour website (qv).
Return to your car. As you drive out of the car park, a memorial obelisk is seen to the left at the D151 junction ahead.
18th Division Memorial with Thiepval Church behind
• 18th Division Memorial/9.3 miles/5 minutes/Map G44/GPS: 50.05264 2.68566
This obelisk to the victors of Thiepval is a replica of the one in Trônes Wood (Itinerary 2) and bears the same exhortation: ‘This is my command, that ye love one another’. It gives the order of battle of the brigades which made up the division and the division’s battle honours. When standing in front of the memorial there are open views behind it of Thiepval Wood, the Connaught Cemetery, Mill Road Cemetery and the Ulster Tower.
Extra Visit to the Salford Pals Memorial & 15th, 16th & 17th Battalions Highland Light Infantry Memorial, 16th Northumberland Fusiliers Plaque and Seat, Authuille (Map G42a,b,c, GPS: 50.04305 2.66907), SOA of Sgt Turnbull VC (Map G49, GPS: 50.04305 2.66907), Dorset Memorial/Lonsdale CWGC Cemetery (Map G43, GPS: 50.04127 2.68485) Round-trip: 3-6 miles. Approximate time: 30 minutes.
Turn left on the D151 and follow the road down into the village of Authuille and stop at the Plaque, next to the Poilu local memorial on the right.
The Salford Pals Memorial was unveiled on 1 July 1995, by members of the Lancashire Fusiliers Association, the Lancashire & Cheshire Branch of the WFA and the Mayor of Authuille in a simple and moving ceremony. The site was chosen as, of the four Pals Battalions raised in Salford during 1914 and 1915, three of them (the 15th, 16th and 19th Lancashire Fusiliers) fought in this area against fortress Thiepval in the opening days of the Battle of the Somme from 1 July 1916. Their initial attack was met by a determined defence from twentyfive machine guns and soon the lanes around Authuille were filled with the dead and dying men from the dockyards, coal mines, textile mills and engineering works of Salford. Many are buried in the nearby cemeteries of Aveluy Wood (Lancashire Dump) (Map G41) – where 2nd Lt Francis Kennard Bliss, brother of the composer Arthur Bliss, is also buried – and Authuille (Map G42). Others are commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial. Opposite is a Memorial Seat presented to the village by the City of Glasgow in March 2003.
Continue to the Church on the right.
Salford Pals Memorial, Authuille
1 July 1996, the 80th Anniversary of the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, saw the unveiling of a long overdue Memorial to three Battalions of the Highland Light Infantry – the 15th (Glasgow Tramways), 16th (Boys’ Brigade) and 17th (Glasgow Commercials – which included men from Strathclyde University and affiliated schools). At a memorial service to the 17th Bn held in Glasgow Cathedral on 8 July 1917, the Bn Padre, Rev A. H. Gray ended his address by asking for a special memorial for the fallen and with the words;
“From a hundred lonely graves in that foreign land – from the spots where they fell and which now are sacred spots for us – our dead are asking us when we mean to erect that monument. From trench and shell hole where death found them, their voices call – young, musical voices, the voices of boys still in their teens, the voices of martyrs on life’s threshold. Scarce a wind can blow that will not waft to you these voices. And they ask a better Britain as their monument. They ask it of you and me. Shall we not go from this place resolved to build it?”
On coming across this account three-quarters of a century later, Glaswegian Charles McDonald, of the Thistle and Poppy Society, was so moved that he resolved to take the appeal for a monument literally and started to raise funds. His original idea was to erect a female figure representing ‘Mother Glasgow’, with three children representing the three battalions. When it became clear that this would not be achieved in time for the eightieth anniversary, Charles decided on a simple black marble Plaque engraved with the regimental crest, a tribute to the three battalions and the poignant words of the Rev Gray. The Memorial is on the church at Authuille, from where the battalions made their assault on Thiepval Ridge on 1 July 1916. Below is a brass Plaque blessed in Glasgow Cathedral on 23 June 1996 and inaugurated on 30 June 1996, the 80th Anniversary, by the Deputy Mayor of Glasgow.
Memorial Plaque to 15th, 16th & 17th Glasgow Bns, HLI, with brass Plaque below inaugurated by the ‘Thistle and Poppy Association, Authuille Church
Unveiling of Plaque to 15th Bn Northumberland Fusiliers, Authuille Church, by (l) Ian Johnson and (r) CEO NE Chamber of Commerce, James Ramsbotham
On 27 June 2015 a Plaque in the Church and Memorial Bench nearby to the 16th Bn, Northumberland Fusiliers was inaugurated. The project was initiated by Ian Johnson, author of Newcastle Battalions of World War One, and the £20,000 required was also funded and supported by the Newcastle Branch of the Fusiliers’ Veterans’ Association, Newcastle City Council, the Somme Remembrance Association, and the Authuille Council. The Plaque commemorates the members of the Battalion ‘who manned the trenches in Authuille from early 1916 and who valiantly attacked the Thiepval Defences on 1 July’. The ceremony was attended by Gateshead MP, Ian Means, dignitaries from Newcastle and Authuille. ‘Jordie’ songs were played by the Samarobriva Pipe Band.
Turn round and return to a sharp right turn on the ‘C’ road, signed to Ovillers and the Londsale Cemetery.
This is the route the Salford Pals took in their attack on the Thiepval fortress. The road runs round the tip of the Leipzig Salient to the left and there are superb views on reaching the crest. This area was the SOA of Sgt James Youll Turnbull VC of the Highland Light Infantry. On 1 July 1916 his party captured an important enemy post which was then bombarded by the enemy throughout the day. Turnbull held on as several parties were wiped out and replaced around him, but was himself killed later in the day in a ‘bombing’ counter-attack.
Continue to a track (not driveable) to the left (GPS: 50.04297 2.68015).
This leads to the Leipzig Salient, and a short distance up the path on the right there is (perhaps no longer) a beautiful Private Tribute in the form of a wreath in the centre of which is an encapsulated account of Pte Henry Parfitt, 1st Wilts, kia 7 July 1916, and commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial and other family members killed in the Great War, placed by his great nephew.
Continue to the path to the cemetery to the right.
As you walk, the 1916 front lines were roughly 200 yards apart astride the path, the German to the left. At the corner of the path is a fine Obelisk Memorial to the men of the Dorset Regiment who have fallen on battlefields as far afield as France, India and present day Iraq. It was instigated by Maj Tim Saunders, ex Devon & Dorsets, now military historian, supported by the Dorset & South Wilts WFA, the local Cadets and many other contributors, who raised the required £23,000. The Somme Remembrance Association with the Mayor of Authuille arranged the purchase of the land for a token €1.00. The 8 ft high cream stone Monument was sculpted by Zoe Cull and Alex Evans. It carries the battle honours of the Regiment and their badge on the back. A quote from Thomas Hardy, “Victory Crowns the Just”, is carved beneath the County Crest. It was unveiled on 7 May 2011 in an impressive ceremony conducted by Rev Nick Wall in the presence of the Lord Lt of Devon, the Pres of the Devon & Dorset Regt Old Comrades’ Association, Bugle Major Cox, many contributors, local dignitaries and the family of L/Sgt John Dobson, buried in Lonsdale Cemetery (1 July 1916, age 36).
Private Memorial to Pte Henry Parfitt, Leipzig Salient
Before 1 July the 1st Bn of the Regiment was in reserve at Blackhorse Dugouts, adjoining Authuille Cemetery. They attacked in the second wave, and moved up through Authuille Wood where they came under heavy machine gun fire. They dashed from the wood as enemy fire redoubled and the Drum Major played the regimental March on his flute as some 150 men reached the front line. They attacked the trenches opposite and to the south of the Leipzig Salient. They were then driven back but were left holding the Salient. The Dorsets suffered between 450 and 490 OR casualties and 23 Officers, about half of them falling between the Wood and the site of this Memorial.
Continue up the grass path to the side of the Monument to
Memorial to the Devon & Dorset Regiment, Authuille, with Bugle Major Tony Cox
Lonsdale CWGC Cemetery. GPS: 50.04008 2.68241. It was named after the Earl of Lonsdale, who recruited a ‘Pals’ unit, the 11th Bn, the Border Regiment, which attacked the Leipzig Salient from this point on 1 July. It contains the grave of Sgt Turnbull VC (see above). The battalion’s CO, Lt Col Percy Machell (qv), was killed here on 1 July 1916. This interesting officer served in Egypt and the Sudan and had been Military Adviser to the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior during 1898-1908 (Simkins, Kitchener’s Army). Machell is buried in Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery Extension (qv, Map S1/4).
The Cemetery, designed by Sir Herbert Baker, makes an excellent vantage point from which to study the attack on the Leipzig Salient. It was started in the spring of 1917 after the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line when the battlefield was cleared of the sad bodies which still lay there from the 1 July battle. Several small cemeteries were created, including this one, originally Lonsdale Cemetery No 1 which contained the 96 bodies buried in the current Plot I, the majority of them being men of the 1st Dorsets and 11th Borderers. After the Armistice the burials from the other small cemeteries were concentrated here and there is now a total of 1,542 burials, 816 Unknown, with a Special Memorial to 22 casualties ‘known to be buried here’.
Return to the 18th Div Memorial and pick up the main itinerary.
Lonsdale CWGC Cemetery, Authuille
Turn right (towards the church).
Thiepval Château, once an imposing building with an elegant façade containing twenty-four windows, used to stand on the left of this road. Before the war it gave employment to the majority of the villagers living in its shadow, but it was never rebuilt.
In January 2013, the Abbott and Holder Gallery, London, put on an exhibition/sale of 62 watercolours by artist Albert Heim (1890-?), commissioned by Lieutenant General Theodor von Wundt (1858-1929). Wundt commanded the 6,500 Württemberger men of the 51 Reserve Infantry Brigade from 2nd August 1914 to 1st October 1916, during most of which time the Brigade was on the Somme battlefield between Ovillers and Beaumont Hamel and centred at Thiepval. The watercolours record the General’s life, mostly before the British offensive of July 1st 1916, while he was quartered first at Courcelette, then at Miraumont and at work on the Sector’s battlefields. It is remarkable that a busy Lieutenant General should have commissioned such a personal record and they may have been painted with publication in mind. He certainly had a great sense of humour as many of the images of him are less than flattering caricatures.
1. Ruins of Thiepval Chateau (briefly Lt-Gen Wundt’s HQ in Sept 1914)
2. L-Gen Wundt beside map of the Albert sector as the morning news arrives
3. The Artist, Albert Heim, above trench between Ovillers and Beaumont Hamel
4. Festivities in cave, Courcelette. Gen Wundt seated on right, his dog, Moritz, on the floor
5. German Staff Officer in a trench – same perception on both sides
For images of all 62 paintings (whose price range was mostly between £1,000-£2,000) and biographical details of Heim and Wundt, see www.abottandholder-thelist.co.uk/heim/
Continue. After 200m turn left at the crossroads onto the D73, signed to Beaumont Hamel Memorial Park. Continue.
On 1 July this road was mostly in No Man’s Land, running roughly parallel with the British front line about 150m to your left and the German line up to 300m to your right.
• Connaught & Mill Road CWGC Cemeteries/10 miles/20 minutes/Map G29/36/GPS: 50.05890 2.68089
Connaught Cemetery was begun in the autumn of 1916, and after the Armistice the burials from ten or so other cemeteries nearby were concentrated here. Of the more than 1,200 soldiers, sailors and Royal Naval Division Marines in the cemetery, the majority fell in the 1916 Somme offensive – many of them Ulstermen – and over half are unknown. A further measure of the chaos and destruction on the battlefield, in which men simply disappeared, is that for one-third of the 1,268 buried not even their units are known. The Cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.
Behind the Cemetery is Thiepval Wood, known today to the locals as Authuille Wood, and not to be confused with the wood of the same name just south-east of the village of Authuille. The Somme Association (qv) have acquired this area which is of such historic interest to the Irish as well as to the British Regiments which also occupied it. They have cleared paths and the area around the crater where Billie McFadzean’s act of gallantry won him the VC and there are recreated trench lines and Information Panels. In 2004 three small metal Crosses were erected here as Memorials to the 36th Ulster Div, followed in 2006 by a larger wooden Cross. They were inspired by Pte McFadzean’s heroic action and an annual ceremony is held here on 1 July. Apply to the Ulster Tower (next stop) for a visit.
Trench lines, Thiepval Wood
Opposite the Cemetery is a track leading to Mill Road Cemetery which was begun in Spring 1917 and enlarged after the Armistice with concentrations from nearby small cemeteries. It sits just forward of the main German position (1 July 1916) on the crest. The area is so riddled with tunnels that subsidence still occurs and many of the headstones in the cemetery are laid flat. There are some 1,300 burials (815 Unknown), including Ulstermen from 1 July and 18th and 39th Division men from later attacks. The notorious Schwaben Redoubt extended beyond the same ridge. Monsieur Poprawa (see above) recalled his team of horses falling into the great chasms of the underground chambers as he ploughed the area when the land was restored to agriculture between the wars. The Cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker.
Continue and park by the entrance to the memorial on the right.
The path to Mill Road CWGC Cemetery
School group at Connaught CWGC Cemetery, Thiepval behind
Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force at the dedication of the Wooden Cross, Thiepval Wood
• Ulster Tower Memorials & Visitors’ Centre/10.1 miles/30 minutes/RWC/Map G31/33/34/35/37/OP/GPS: 50.06067 2.6769
Outside the entrance gate is a CGS/H Signboard about the 36th Ulster Division. Stand with your back to the gates. Straight ahead at 12 o’clock is Thiepval Wood (now shown on modern French maps as Authuille Wood). At 7 o’clock is Mill Road Cemetery. At 9 o’clock is Connaught Cemetery and beyond it the Thiepval Memorial. At 2 o’clock on the horizon is Beaumont Hamel Memorial Park. At 3 o’clock is a small track leading down to St Pierre Divion village in the Ancre Valley. Two hundred yards down the track, on the right, are the remains of a German machine-gun post (Map G32) which was sited in the German second line trenches. At 1 o’clock on the far slope beyond the Ancre is Hamel Church and between 2 and 3 o’clock above the first horizon is the church at Beaumont Hamel. The Divisional boundary on the Ulster’s right ran along the line of the road from Authuille past Thiepval Church and on the left along the line, and inclusive of, the River Ancre. Within those boundaries the Division was to advance.
On 1 July the Ulsters walked, and then charged, from the forward edge of Thiepval Wood, across the road, up past where the tower stands and on via Mill Road to the crest and beyond. They were the only soldiers north of the Albert-Bapaume road to pierce the German lines. Some say that their achievement was due to a mixture of Irish individualism and religious fervour. Whatever the reason, it was a magnificent feat of arms. Within hours five lines of German trenches had been overwhelmed. Some small parties of 8th, 9th and 11th Royal Irish Rifles penetrated into and beyond the Schwaben Redoubt itself, some even into the village of Grandcourt, but unsupported by advances on their left or right, shelled by their own artillery, exposed to enemy machine guns on their flanks and subject to fierce counter-attacks, they were forced to withdraw at the end of the day. Fourteen hours after the assault began the lines finished virtually where they started but the Irish, unlike most, had won the race at 0730. If the rest of the Fourth Army had advanced at the same speed it is certain that the outcome on 1 July would have been totally different. An eye witness of the Irish action wrote:
“Then I saw them attack, beginning at a slow walk over No Man’s Land and then suddenly let loose as they charged over the two front lines of the enemy’s trenches shouting, ‘No Surrender, boys’ … perhaps the Ulstermen, who were commemorating the anniversary of the Boyne, would not be denied.”
1 July is the anniversary using the old calendar. This is an ideal viewpoint for several literary connections.
Edmund Blunden, serving with the 11th Royal Sussex Regiment, established an ammunition dump near Hamel, the village seen due west over the River Ancre and the railway line. Armed with a copy of his realistic and vivid account of his war experiences, Undertones of War, with its supplement of the best of Blunden’s war poems, one can identify Jacob’s Ladder (Map G28), Kentish Caves and Brock’s Benefit, described in ‘Trench Nomenclature’ –
Genius named them, as I live! What but genius could compress
In a title what man’s humour said to man’s supreme distress?
In The Ancre at Hamel: Afterwards he describes, on a subsequent visit to the area, the river and his searing memories of the comrades who fell around it,
The struggling Ancre had no part
In these new hours of mine,
And yet its stream ran through my heart;
I heard it grieve and pine,
As if its rainy tortured blood
Had swirled into my own,
When by its battered bank I stood
And shared its wounded moan.
The beautiful Cemetery seen on the upward slope of the valley is the Ancre Cemetery. It is on the site of the RND’s successful but costly attack of 13 November 1916, and in it lie some casualties of the operation. A.P. Herbert, of Hawke Battalion, lost some well-loved comrades. His grief for them is expressed in the haunting poem Beaucourt Revisited, written when the battalion returned to the Ancre in 1917 and very similar in feeling to Blunden’s poetic reminiscences,
And here the lads went over and there was Harmsworth shot,
And here was William lying – but the new men knew them not.
And I said, ‘There is still the river and still the stiff, stark trees;
To treasure here our story, but there are only these;’
But under the white wood crosses the dead men answered low,
‘The new men know not Beaucourt, but we are here, we know’.
Harmsworth is Lt the Hon Vere Harmsworth of Hawke Bn, son of the newspaper magnate, Lord Rothermere, who was killed on 13 November 1916, and is buried in Ancre CWGC Cemetery (qv). William is Lt W. Ker, also of Hawke Bn, and who died on the same day, but who is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial. To read the poem while overlooking the scene of its action is an extremely emotional experience.
Visit the memorial and Visitors’ Centre.
This is a replica of the tower known as Helen’s Tower on the estate of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava at Clandeboye in County Down, where the 36th (Ulster) Division trained before coming to France. The tower has had an interesting and checkered existence since it was built in 1921, the first official commemorative monument to be completed on the Western Front. It was inaugurated by Sir Henry Wilson. In the late 1920s and ‘30s when the cemeteries and the memorials (other than Thiepval) were completed, visitors averaged about 300-400 per day. A former Ulster Division Sgt-Major, William MacMaster, and his wife lived in the one-room-per-floor apartment in the tower and acted as guardians. At that stage, there were preserved trenches behind the tower, around which MacMaster guided his visitors. One is reminded of Philip Johnstone’s marvellously satirical 1918 poem High Wood, in which a guide conducts a group of tourists around the battlefield:
… this trench
For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;
(They soon fall in) used later as a grave.
… Madame, please,
You are requested kindly not to touch
Or take away the Company’s property
As souvenirs; you’ll find we have on sale
A large variety, all guaranteed.
Macmasters, it is said, however, guided his pilgrims with genuine feeling. After World War II a succession of guardians came from Ireland, but the loneliness of the job often seemed to induce a desire to over-party with the local community, resulting in subsequent recall. After many years with no resident in the tower, Ulster started to take an active interest in this focal point of their sacrifice in the Great War and in 1991, the 75th Anniversary of the 1 July battle, Princess Alice re-dedicated the tower. A Plaque commemorates the occasion, and a splendid cake representing the tower was made for the event by the women of Ulster. Another Memorial to the 36th (Ulster) Division Victoria Cross winners, Capt Bell (1 July 1916), 2nd Lt Emerson, Lce Cpl Seaman, Fusilier Harvey, 2nd Lt de Wind, Rifleman McFadzean (1 July 1916), Rifleman Quigg (1 July 1916), Lt Cather (1 July 1916) and 2nd Lt Knox was also erected. The flagpole was donated by the women of Ulster. A striking, but somewhat controversial, black marble Memorial obelisk with gold lettering was erected outside the tower grounds on 12 September 1993 (Map G30). Raised by voluntary donations, it is known as the ‘Orange Order Memorial’, and it is dedicated to the thousands of Orange Institution members who gave their lives during WW1. On 1 July 1999 it was moved to an enclosed area to the right rear of the Tower and re-dedicated. Beside it is a bench dedicated to the VCs of the Orange Order from the Orange Brethren. The Order is the oldest and largest Protestant Order and Members of the Order from the Dominions and the USA, as well as from the home country, responded to the call to arms, some 50,000 from Canada alone, encouraged by Bro Sir Samuel Hughes, Canadian Minister for War. The first Australian member to be killed in the war was Able Seaman Bro William George Vincent who was killed in Papua New Guinea in the first Australian action of the war.
The Ulster Tower
By 1994 the Somme Association (qv), based in Newtownards (Tel: 028 91823202, e-mail: sommeassociation@btconnect.com Website: www.irishsoldier.org) was established under Royal Patronage, and undertook to ‘co-ordinate research into Ireland’s part in the First World War and provide a basis for the two traditions in Northern Ireland to come together and learn of their common heritage’. It took over care of the tower, declaring it to be Northern Ireland’s National Memorial. It was beautifully restored in 2011.
On 1 July 1994 a smart new Visitors’ Centre was opened behind the tower, offering refreshments, books, maps and souvenirs for sale, some interesting displays charting Ireland’s part in the Somme Battle, and a 12-minute video. It has excellent, clean toilets and was enlarged in 2006. Its welcoming and dedicated Custodians were, for many years, Teddy and Phoebe Colligan whose daughter, Carol Walker, is the CEO if the Somme Association.
Open every day except Monday, 1 March-30 Nov 1000-1700 (May-Sept 1000-1800). Tel: +(0)3 22 74 87 14.
Guided tours of Thiepval Wood, preferably by prior appointment, Tues-Sun at 1100 and 1500. No fee but donations are appreciated. Add another 25 minutes if you take the tour.
Behind the centre is a small copse which has preserved its 1916-18 contours, with trench lines and shell holes.
In the tower itself, the Memorial Chapel is full of commemorative plaques, pictures of Irish actions, flags and standards, a Visitors’ Book and a Private Memorial to Lt W. J. Wright, 14th RIR, killed 2 July 1916, which was removed from Thiepval Wood the better to preserve it. The memorial details do not tie up with CWGC records which list Lt M. J. Wright, 14th RIR who was killed on 1 July 1916. He is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial. Of particular interest is a reproduction in oils by Carol Graham RVA of the painting which shows survivors of the Ulster Division’s attack on the Schwaben Redoubt on 1 July repulsing a counter-attack on a trench outside Grandcourt. Its title is the Royal Irish Rifles’ motto, Quis separabit? The painting was donated by the artist’s father, Mr A. N. Graham. On the wall are the lines,
Helen’s Tower Here I Stand
Dominant Over Sea and Land
Sons’ Love Built Me and I Hold
Ulster’s Love in Letter’d Gold.
The Orange Order Memorial
The Memorial Chapel of the Tower
In 2013, during the widening of the road, the remains of two bodies were found, one just outside the hedge of the Connaught Cemetery, the other just by the wall of the entrance to the Tower. One has been identified from his metal ID discs as Sgt David Harkness Blakey of the 11th Inniskilling Fusiliers with his kit, rifle and bayonet, but to this date the other has not. The two soldiers were reburied with full military honours in Connaught Cemetery on 8 October 2015.
Return to your car and continue downhill.
Teddy & Phoebe Colligan, who for many years welcomed visitors to the Centre
You are driving down Mill Road which descends into the Ancre Valley. Ahead on the skyline is the Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland Memorial Park, which at a distance looks like a wood. Cross the river. To the right is the site of the mill which gave the road its name.
Cross the railway.
Extra Visit to the Ancre British Cemetery (Map G21, GPS: 50.06768 2.66803), the RND Memorial & SOA Lt Col B. C. Freyburg VC at Beaucourt (Map G24, GPS: 50.07810 2.68391) Private Memorials to Pte Amos & Pte Farrell, Cpl Austin (Map G11, GPS: 50.08395 2.69498) Round-trip: 4 miles. Approximate time: 30 minutes
Turn right and continue to the cemetery on the left.
Ancre British Cemetery was constructed on the site of No Man’s Land at the time of the RND 13 November 1916 attack. It is a concentration cemetery and also has burials from the 1 July 1916 attack by the Ulster Division and the 3 September attack by 39th Division. There is a bronze laurel wreath Plaque on Lt Vere Sidney Tudor Harmsworth, RNVR’s grave (Map G22), presented by Hungarian Scouts in gratitude for the stand by the Daily Mail on the restitution of Hungarian territory after the war. Here, too, is buried Capt E. S. Ayre, one of four Newfoundland cousins killed on 1 July (qv).
A track to the right of the Cemetery gives an excellent overview of the cemetery and the area of the RND attack of 13 November. This attack was launched at 0545 in thick mist behind a creeping barrage on a 1,200yd-front running north from the Ancre. The final objective line lay just beyond Beaucourt village, the first German trench line being roughly along the high ground on the track to the right of the cemetery. The RND start line was approximately where the road from the Ulster Tower meets the railway line. The right-hand battalion, the Hood, commanded by Lt Col B. C. Freyburg, (who had single-handedly created a dummy diversionary attack on the Turkish lines at Bulair during the Gallipoli campaign) moved quickly forward and cleared the entrances along the Ancre to the enemy tunnels that ran to Beaumont Hamel. In the centre, casualties were heavy, the Hawke Battalion having almost 400 within 30 minutes and the fighting became confused both there and alongside the 51st Highland Division to the north. It was decided that the attack should be renewed the following day. At dawn on 14 November the final assault on Beaucourt was personally led by Freyburg. The garrison of 800 surrendered but Freyburg was wounded for the third time, and this time seriously. ‘For his conspicuous bravery and brilliant leadership as Battalion Commander’ he was awarded the VC. Although the attack was eventually successful, the price was high – the Naval Brigades had almost 3,000 casualties. Also taking part in what was known as ‘The Battle of the Ancre’, was the 22nd Bn, Royal Fusiliers. Serving with them was the 46-year-old Lce Sgt Hector Hugh Munro, better known as the author Saki. Despite his age and history of ill-health, Munro had enlisted in the ranks on 25 August 1914, refusing a commission. After a year’s service in France, he was hospitalized with malaria, but discharged himself on 11 November 1916, when he heard that a ‘show’ was soon to take place. Saki was hit by a sniper on 14 November, just after uttering the words, ‘Put that bloody cigarette out’ to a man who had just lit up.
Headstone & Plaque, Lt Vere Harmsworth, Ancre British CWGC Cemetery
In August 1928 the British Legion and the British Empire Service League organised a massive pilgrimage to Flanders and the Somme. Earl Haig was to have led the mourners, but died on 29 January, so Lady Haig was at their head. The Prince of Wales, Patron of the Legion, joined the throng in Béthune. After visiting Flanders, the party travelled to the Somme via Notre Dame de Lorette and Vimy Ridge, being billeted with local people (a logistic nightmare to arrange in itself) and travelling by train. They were lubricated by 31,500 bottles of beer and mineral water and by 26,000 quarts of tea, brewed by French Army Field Kitchens, and devoured 23,500 slices of both ham and cake. The women in the party upset the calculations – that they would drink three bottles of mineral water to one of beer, by consuming half and half! On 6-7 August 10,000 pilgrims arrived at Beaucourt Station by train-loads of 500 at intervals of 10-15 minutes and then wandered off in groups by foot, charabanc and ‘excellent Citroen cars’ to the Ancre Cemetery, the Ulster Tower and the Newfoundland Park. The cemetery already looked much as it does today, the Ulster Tower stood out bare and granite on the crest, but the Thiepval Memorial was not to be unveiled for another four years. Among the sadness was the unfailing humour of the Tommy. ‘I wonder if my blinkin’ leg is still up there?’ mused a one-legged veteran, looking up to Beaumont Hamel. ‘Well, I dunno; Somebody’s bin muckin’ abaht ‘ere since I was ‘ere larst’, commented another.
Continue along the road, passing the derelict station on the right.
Gare de Beaucourt was the station at which the pilgrims arrived, and some sheds from that period still remain. The travellers were lured back to catch their return trains by the promise of tea, which they took in a field adjoining the station. The Legion report on the Pilgrimage claimed that several times during the two days 1,500 pilgrims were entrained and despatched on three different trains in the space of 10 minutes! A supremely evocative picture of this area just before the war and during the Somme Battle of 1 July 1916 is given in the fictional account by Sebastian Faulks in Birdsong.
Continue into Beaucourt-sur-Ancre.
The RND Memorial may be seen on a bank to the left on entering the village. In this area is the SOA where Lt Col B. C. Freyburg (later Lt Gen Freyburg, GCMG, KCB, KBE, DSO, 3 bars, GOC New Zealand Forces 1939-45, Governor General of New Zealand 1946-52) won the Victoria Cross while commanding Hood Battalion on 13 November 1916.
Continue through the village on the D50.
Royal Naval Division Memorial, Beaucourt
Private Memorials to Cpl Burrows and to Pte Austin, with Pte Amos to the right, Bois d’Hollande
After about half a mile, a track to the left skirts a small wood (Bois d’Hollande). Approximately two-thirds of the way up the wood and some 10m inside is a small wooden cross on a large tree. It bears a brass Plaque to Pte D. Amos, 15258, 9th Bn N Staffs, who died on 21 November 1916 at this location. Beside it is a much more recent Plaque to Pte Henry Austin, N Staffs, 20/21 Nov 1916, aged 23. Nearby on another tree is an original Plaque to Cpl A.L. Burrows, 7th Bn S Staffs, 23 Nov 1916, aged 20. Be warned – they are not easy to find. They are all commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial and the CWGC give Austin’s death as 24 November 1916. All were killed in the final phase of the Somme offensive, the Battle of the Ancre, when V Corps drove a salient forward along the river into the German lines.
Turn round (there is turning area at the top of the wood) and return to the railway crossing and pick up the main itinerary.
Turn left and follow the signs to the Newfoundland Memorial Park up the D73 to the right. Continue uphill to the tiny church on the left. Park.
Plaque to the Essex Regt, Hamel Church/11.5 miles/5 minutes/Map G21a/GPS: 50.06517 2.65998
The Plaque commemorates the 1st Bn of the Regiment who suffered severely in the attack with the 29th Division over what is now the Newfoundland Memorial Park. It was instigated by Ted Bailey, whose remarkable grandfather took part in that attack. The full story can be found by contacting Ted on info@tedbailey.co.uk and the Regimental Association: http://www.chelmsford.gov.uk/essexregimentmuseum The Memorial, supported by the Regimental Association and local Councils, was unveiled in June 2014. It also commemorates the 2nd, 9th and 13th Bns who suffered losses on the Somme. The two original battalions of 1,000 men each were re-established twice after being virtually wiped out.
Continue to the Newfoundland Park entrance and stop in the large car park on the left.
Here there is a signboard of welcome and a reminder to respect the site.
In the distance in a field to the left (but approached from a track from Mesnil) is Knightsbridge Cemetery (Map G26, GPS: 50.06756 2.64373) in which is buried 2nd Lt W. D. Ayre, another of the family of four Newfoundlanders killed on 1 July 1916 (qv).
• Newfoundland Memorial Park/Visitor’s Centre/12 miles/50 minutes/ OP/Map G20/19/18/17/17a/16/15/14/13/12/GPS: 50.07214 2.64756
The park covers 84 acres and was purchased by the then Government of Newfoundland as a memorial to the soldiers and sailors of Newfoundland. It was officially opened by Earl Haig on 7 June 1925. There are a number of Memorials and Cemeteries in the park, as well as preserved trench lines which have been maintained in their original shape, the Visitor’s Centre and the Director’s house. In the late 1920s, the ‘warden’, Billy Brown, a Newfoundland veteran, lived in a log cabin. At that stage the preserved trenches in the park contained duckboards, and the wreckage of an aeroplane, boxes of hand grenades and many other relics littered the battlefield. The great Pilgrimage of August 1928 visited here too, and members were photographed holding rifles and shell cases and wearing tin hats. They were much impressed by the ‘defiant’ Caribou and the ‘indomitable’ Highlander Memorials (see below) that were already well-established in the Park.
Walk into the park.
Plaque to 1st Bn Essex Regt, Hamel Church
The regular visitor of many years will have noticed that since the opening of the Visitor’s Centre and the increase in visitors (230,000 in 2014), especially of students, the nature and atmosphere of the park has changed - from a true battlefield to a Memorial Park. This has been necessary to protect the precious and vulnerable trench lines and craters from the erosion caused by the sheer volume of feet walking on them. Therefore areas which were freely visitable are now protected by strong wire fences, some electric. Duckboards and wooden bridges have also been constructed in and over the trenches.
At each side of the entrance are Plaques erected in 1997 confirming that the Park, initiated in 1922, is now a Canadian Historic Site and Monument. Plaques describe how the idea was conceived by Padre Thomas Nagle and the construction was under the direction of R. H. K. Cochus, landscape artist, from funds raised by the Government and the women of Newfoundland. There is a dispenser to the left for self-guided tour leaflets. A path to the right leads to the Visitor’s Centre.
This typical Newfoundland wooden building was opened in July 2000. It contains a recreated living room, complete with working stove and contemporary artefacts. The exhibits are imaginatively and sensitively mounted (some on a large board in the shape of a ship), with many personal photographs, letters and other ephemera. A continuing story follows a dwindling band of 32 Newfoundland soldiers through the Great War on the Western Front and in Gallipoli. There are excellent toilet facilities. In the same way as at Vimy, the Centre is manned by knowledgeable Canadian students (often actual Newfoundlanders) who compete for the honour and who give guided tours of the Park. Coaches should book ahead. Tel: + (0)3 22 76 70 86. E-mail: beaumonthamel.memorial@vac-acc.gc.ca Website: www.veterans.gc.ca The Centre is open every day: 0900-1700. Closed Christmas and New Year’s Day. Guides are available from January to mid-December. The Park is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The Visitors’ Centre, Newfoundland Memorial Park
Preserved trenches
Hunters CWGC Cemetery, Newfoundland Memorial Park
Canadian student Guide
29th Division Memorial, Newfoundland Park
The Highlander, 5st Highland Div Memorial
The grieving Newfoundland Caribou
The attack on 1 July was in the direction in which you are walking. The assault division was the 29th, which had done so well in Gallipoli, and whose previous General, Hunter-Weston, was now its Corps (VIII) Commander. Some 1,350m ahead of you, beyond Y Ravine at the bottom of the park, on a curve in the German lines, a massive mine of 40,600lb of ammonal was placed by 252nd Tunnelling Company, 75ft under a German redoubt known as Hawthorn. Believing that it would be to his soldiers’ advantage, Hunter-Weston had the mine blown at 0720, ten minutes before the infantry went over the top. It was not to their advantage. On the contrary, it only served to give the Germans a warning of imminent attack. The first brigade that went in, the 87th, was cut down and the 88th was ordered up. One assault formation of the 88th was the 1st Battalion of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. They made their attack across the area of the park you are now entering. It lasted less than half an hour. The Newfoundlanders had done all they could, wrote the divisional commander later, ‘because dead men can advance no further.’ Every officer who went forward was either killed or wounded. Of the 801 men who went into action, some authorities say that only 68 members of the battalion were not wounded, one of the highest casualty counts for any regimental unit on 1 July. Among those killed here were three members of the Ayre family (qv). 2nd Lt Gerald W. Ayre is commemorated on the Newfoundland Memorial below the Caribou (qv).
The Durand Group (qv), under Lt Col Phillip Robinson, have undertaken much archaeological and historical research here at Beaumont Hamel Park and in unit records, which offers alternative figures for the wounded and missing. Confusion is simply one of the states of war and this is particularly true of casualty figures, e.g. Are the ‘attached personnel’ accounted for? Was the recent draft allowed for? Did more survivors turn up after the roll call? Did everyone actually take part in the fighting? Whatever the precise number of casualties, the Newfoundlanders suffered greatly on 1 July. The 29th Division had an overall casualty percentage on 1 July of about 26%. The Newfoundlanders had a rate of about 65% but Robinson believes that the 10th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment at Fricourt had an equivalent rate of about 70%. Nevertheless the achievements of the Newfoundlanders were recognised by King George V in December 1917 when he gave the regiment the title ‘Royal.’
The first Memorial to be seen is that to 29th Division, its distinctive red badge displayed on a stone cairn, which is on the left of the path a few metres from the entrance. Then almost immediately on the left is the bronze box containing the Visitors’ Book and registers and a plaque on the right carrying a verse by John Oxenham.
Continue on the path to the Caribou and climb to the top.
The Caribou was the emblem of the Newfoundland Regiment and there are three more identical bronzes in France commemorating other regimental actions – at Gueudecourt (Itinerary Three), Masnières (Cambrai 20 November 1917) and Monchy le Preux (Arras 14 April 1917). It is a most poignant Memorial – the animal appears to be baying for her lost young – as well as a striking piece of sculpture. On the parapet around the Caribou are orientation arrows which identify various parts of the battlefield, including the three British Cemeteries in the park. On the left is Hawthorn Ridge No 2 (containing 214 burials from 1 July 1916), and the attractive, circular Hunters (containing 46 men buried in what had been a large shell hole), on the right Y Ravine (containing 366 burials, including Newfoundlanders from 1 July and RND from November 1916). At the base of the mound on which the Caribou stands are three bronze Plaques on which are named 591 officers and men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (including 2nd Lt W. D. Ayre), 114 of the Newfoundland Naval Reserve and 115 of the Newfoundland Mercantile Marine who lost their lives during the war and have no known grave. To the right of this group is a separate bronze Plaque to the staff of the Imperial Tobacco Company of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment. To the left a Plaque to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was unveiled on 1 July 1995.
When we began our battlefield touring there was no Visitor Centre here and the only annual 1 July ceremony was one which we arranged with the local Souvenir Francais and the then Superintendant. We held it in front of the Caribou and had both British and French veterans in attendance. Today there is a regular official ceremony on 1 July usually around 1100 hours, and if you wish to attend it is wise to check the details of timings ahead of your visit.
Also visible are the ‘Danger Tree’, a twisted skeleton of an original trunk which marks the spot where casualties were heaviest on 1 July (about a third of the way to Y Ravine) and in the distance at the bottom of the slope, the handsome kilted Highlander of the 51st Highland Division, standing on a platform of Aberdeen granite. The bronze figure commemorates the action of the Division in taking Beaumont Hamel and the natural feature of Y Ravine on 13 November during Part 5 of the Somme Battle. Sculpted by G.H. Paulin of Glasgow, it was unveiled on 28 September 1924 by Marshal Foch and has a Gaelic inscription which translates ‘Friends are good on the day of battle’. Four hundred people travelled from Glasgow for the ceremony, including an impressive Guard of Honour of several Scottish Regiments. There was also a French Guard of Honour.
In his book The 51st Division War Sketches, published in 1920, divisional artist Fred Farrell shows a splendid drawing of ‘7th Gordons Clearing ‘Y’ Ravine’. The Germans took advantage of this natural shelter and riddled the banks of the ravine with tunnels and deep, comfortably furnished, well-provisioned dugouts. Booty from these and other strong German defensive positions taken during the attack, included ‘tinned beef from Monte Video, Norwegian sardines, cigarettes (including Wills’ Gold Flake), cigars and many thousand bottles of excellent soda and of beer’ (Regimental History). More mysterious were the ‘piano, some ladies’ dancing slippers, silk stockings, and petticoats’. The Jocks deserved their perks. Casualties sustained represented 45% of those who took part in the attack. In the days that followed, the remnants of the division were detailed to clear the battlefield, which still bore the skeletons (picked clean by the thousands of rats which swarmed over the area) of casualties from the 1 July 1916 attack. 152nd Brigade alone buried 669 bodies in the Cemeteries at Mailly Maillet and Auchonvillers. It was an un-nerving task even to these hardened soldiers.
Between the Highlander and the Ravine (about 20m deep) is a Celtic Memorial Cross commemorating the Division’s casualties at High Wood in July 1916.
Keeping to the authorised pathways, examine the trench lines (marked as ‘British Front Line’ and ‘German Front Line’) and craters, which still contain some battlefield debris. Walking briskly it takes 10 minutes to get to Y Ravine.
Return to your car and continue past a CWGC sign to the right.
[N.B.] This is to Hawthorn Ridge Cemetery No 1. (Map G2, GPS: 50.08151 2.6492), approached by a track driveable part-way by car, but do not attempt to drive if it is wet and muddy as you may get stuck. As one reaches a junction at the crest of the track which overlooks the Cemetery, in the distance on the upward slope two small Cemeteries may be seen. They are Waggon Road and Munich Trench British CWGC Cemetries (qv).
Hawthorne Ridge No 1 contains 152 UK burials (half of them Unknown) including many public schoolboys of the 16th Middlesex and a Newfoundland burial. It was made by V Corps in 1917 when they cleared the area of bodies from the 1916 Somme battles.
Hawthorne Ridge Cemetery No 1, Auchonvillers
Continue to the crossroads.
[N.B.] By turning left here signed to Mesnil-Martinsart on the C6, then on the D174, and continuing to the T junction in Mesnil-Martinsart, on the left on the wall of the Mairie is a Memorial to 23 men of 11 Platoon of C Coy 13th Bn RIR. They were killed or died later as a result of a shell on the evening of 28 June. The black marble Plaque, funded by the Somme Association, was inaugurated by the Rev Ian Paisley on 30 June 2007 (Map G28a, GPS: 50.05370 2.64728). The German advance of 1918 stopped just short of the village.
En route to Mesnil-Martinsart two bunkers may be seen to the right of the road (GPS: 50.07257 2.63249/50.07204 2.63207). These were probably part of a defensive position known as Fort Anley.
Memorial to 23 men of ‘C’ Coy, RIR, Mesnil-Martinsart
Bunker on road between Auchonvillers and Mesnil-Martinsart
At the crossroads take the D73 signed Mailly Maillet and enter Auchonvillers.
[N.B.] Auchonvillers Communal Cemetery is to the right at the crossroads. It contains fifteen CWGC burials with red sandstone headstones, mostly of 1st Borders from 6 April 1916 in a plot to the left. To the right is a white CWGC headstone to William Brown of Newfoundland, 1896-1954. Brown (qv) was the guardian at the Newfoundland Memorial Park (qv) where he worked with Padre Nagel (qv) in reburying Newfoundland’s dead. A Sgt-Maj in the British Army he escorted the catafalque of the Unknown Warrior to the UK (see Known Unto God. In Honour of the Missing during the Great War by Frank Gogos and Morgan Macdonald)
Red sandstone CWGC headstones in Auchonvillers Communal Cemetery
Auchonvillers (obviously ‘Ocean Villas’ to Tommy) was described by Blunden as ‘a good example of the miscellaneous, picturesque, pitiable, pleasing, appalling, intensely intimate village ruin close to the line …’ ‘The French’, he felt, had modelled it ‘comprehensively as a large redoubt, complete with a searchlight. There were many dugouts under houses and in the gardens, but of a flimsy, rotted and stagnant kind; the Somme battle had evidently swamped all old defence schemes.’ With just over 500 burials, it was started by the French in 1915.
Continue to the Guest House on the left.
• Ocean Villas Guest House/Tea Rooms /Museum/Conference Centre/12.9 miles/30 minutes/Map G1a/GPS: 50.08013 2.63119
Run by Avril Williams, who bought this attractive but originally derelict site and has been progressively improving the facilities over the years until it now offers four en-suite twin rooms and a self-catering apartment sleeping up to 6. Currently the tea room, with a glassed terrace extension, caters for groups (who must book in advance) and individuals and can serve breakfasts, lunches, teas, pre-booked packed lunches and dinners. Around the walls are many interesting items, including a tribute to Prof Richard Holmes (a frequent visitor, who died in April 2011), who also has a Memorial Seat in the attractive garden. A book stall offers books, maps and souvenirs.
Open daily: 0830-1800 (but flexible!). Tel: +(0)3 22 76 23 66. E-mail: avwilliams@orange.fr Website: www.avrilwilliams.eu An original trench line has been excavated at the rear and other work is in constant progress, including behind the Museum (see below) by members of the RAF Regiment, REME and many other willing volunteers,
Its well-preserved cellar was used as a dressing station. A dividing wall was built in 1914 by the French, and half was used as a ward, and still shows the marks where bunks were attached to the wall, the other half being used as a surgery/makeshift operating theatre. There are many scratched or carved names from 1916, mostly of members of the RIR, both patients and stretcher bearers. A tunnel, now bricked up, led into the cellar, the entrance to which was protected by a gas curtain. Avril has many interesting personal items and artefacts found in the cellar or in the garden and sells books and maps relating to the Somme battles.
Ocean Villas Tea Rooms
A major project was to create a Museum in the large complex of farm buildings across the road for the extensive WW1 and WW2 collection of uniforms, artefacts, ephemera etc which she bought from André Coilliot of Beaurains, built up over some 60 odd years and which has already been extended. André was a staunch supporter and organiser of Souvenir Français (qv). A later acquisition was the stunning collection of some 300 trench art shell cases. These are on permanent loan from owner, 9-year old Charlie, grandson of Steve and Sharon Clements who regularly come to Auchonvillers to clean them! Charlie gives talks to his local school about the collection. The Museum was extended in 2015, using fine display cabinets obtained when the Woolwich Museum closed.
Avril Williams and son, Mark in the Museum
On the exterior wall of the Museum is a Wall of Remembrance where members of the public can buy ‘bricks’ (or plaques) in remembrance of soldiers who fought in the Great War. Any profit will fund the Museum, which we had the honour to unveil on 1 July 2008 and which has developed into a fascinating and well-maintained museum. It will be run as an official charitable organisation. Open: daily 1000-1600. There is also a recently developed Learning/Conference Centre for students and an ‘Estaminet’ for events and entertainment, with kitchen, bar, shower facilities etc.) Battlefield guides, a programme of lectures by experts (such as Prof Peter Simkins and Andy Robertshaw), bicycle hire are all available.
Continue, passing on the right the female statue of the local War Memorial.
Continue to the crossroad and turn left on the D73 signed to Mailly-Maillet. Follow signs to the cemetery which is approached up a grassy path to the right through a farm yard.
Beautiful local War Memorial, Auchonvillers
• Auchonvillers Military CWGC Cemetery/13.5 miles/10 minutes/Map G1/GPS: 50.08004 2.62617
The Cemetery, entered through a graceful hedged, circular patio, was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield. It was begun by the French in June 1915, was used by field ambulances and fighting units, such as the 51st Highlanders, in November 1916 until burials ceased on the German withdrawal in 1917. Further burials were added after the Armistice and there are now 528 burials, 468 identified. The French graves were later removed.
The Cemetery Report rewards careful reading. It lists men of many Regiments, including RND, Newfoundlanders and New Zealanders, with ages ranging from 17 to 47. Clifford Vallance, Herts Regt, age 35, 26 September 1916, served as J. Brown; Sgt William Edward Lynn, 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, age 21, was one of four brothers who were killed in the war; Pte Richard Dale Lovett, Middx Regt, age 46, ‘left his coffee estate in India’ to come to Britain to enlist; William Henry Davies, Drake Bn, RND, 13 July 1918, had the MM + Bar. The Visitors’ book, in July 2013, went back to 2009 and contained many family members’ signatures.
Return to the crossroads and continue on the D174 signed to Beaumont Hamel. 350m later the road forks with the D174 left and the D163 straight on.
Auchonvillers Mil CWGC Cemetery
Extra Visit to Sucrerie Military Cemetery & Euston Road Cemetery/Bradford Pals Mem, Hébuterne/Map D7/6/5a. Round-trip: 3.0 miles. Approximate time: 40 minutes.
Take the left fork towards Hébuterne and continue to the crossroads with the D919. Turn left and 200m later right along a rough, tree-lined track (you are advised to leave your car and walk to the cemetery or risk getting stuck if it is at all damp) following CWGC signs.
Sucrerie Military Cemetery (GPS: 50.09581 2.6232) is situated on what was one of the routes from Colincamps to the front line on 1 July and later Somme battles and where mass graves were prepared for the casualties. In it, in a row of officers, is Lt Col the Hon L. C. W. Palk, DSO, CO of the 1st Hampshires, who lost all twenty-six of their officers and 559 of their men on 1 July. Lt Col Palk, obviously a fan of the cartoonist, Bruce Bairnsfather, exhorted his battalion that this was the greatest day the British army had ever had, dressed himself in his best uniform, donned white gloves and led his battalion HQ across No Man’s Land. Lying mortally wounded in a shell hole, he turned to another man lying near him and said, ‘If you know of a better ‘ole, go to it’. Ironically one of the trenches leading forward to the front line was named ‘Cheeroh Avenue’.
Return to the crossroads, and immediately turn left. At the next fork take the left hand road, the D129E, and stop at the cemetery on the left on the D4129.
Euston Road Cemetery (50.10186 2.61975), like Sucrerie Military Cemetery, was constructed on one of the main routes from the rear areas to the front line this one being Railway Avenue. Here the Bradford Pals added shovels and picks to their already heavy load on the evening prior to the attack. The area at the last fork was known as Euston.
Many of the burials are from 1 July 1916, many of them of ‘Pals’, notably that of the exceptional war poet, Sgt John William Streets of the 12th ‘Sheffield Pals’ Battalion of the York and Lancs.
Streets broke the mould of the perceived image of the ‘golden’ poet from a public school and of the officer class. He was born, the eldest of twelve children, to a Derbyshire miner, whose profession he followed from the age of 14. A sensitive boy, he loved the countryside, literature and art. Indeed his main dilemma, on deciding to quit the mine, was whether he should become a writer or an artist. With the encouragement of a perceptive teacher Streets taught himself Latin, Greek and French and from an early age wrote poems of exceptional literary ability. The outbreak of war solved his dilemma. He enlisted on 6 September 1914 at the age of 29. Throughout his training in the UK, Will continued to write poetry and send snippets home in the regular letters he wrote to his mother. The poetry and letters showed signs of the malaise common to many poets – intimations of mortality. In the case of the poets from World War I, however, the premonition was based on the growing casualty figures. In December 1915 the battalion moved to Egypt for training, but arrived too late to participate in the action at their ultimate destination – Gallipoli. In March 1916 the 12th Battalion arrived on the Somme and the poetry continued, still, despite worsening conditions, in an heroic and patriotic mode. Recognition was just beginning for this self-taught bard (he had been published in The Poetry Review and a compilation called Made in the Trenches) when the carnage of 1 July cut short his life. The battalion had moved into assembly trenches behind John Copse (see below) and Streets was wounded soon after their attack began. He was seen going to the assistance of another seriously wounded man and then disappeared. At first there was some hope that he was simply missing, as his body was not immediately found. It was later identified, and he is buried here in Euston Road Cemetery. Coincidentally, Streets’ twin brothers were serving with the RAMC at the dressing station in the Basilica at Albert. One of them sent home Will’s ‘worn, red-covered pocket-books’ with ‘jottings in it of stray ideas or phrases that occurred to him for stories or for verses’. Adcock included a chapter on Streets in his book of soldier poets, For Remembrance, and his slim collected works were published in May 1917 by Erskine Macdonald as The Undying Splendour. His posterity was assured. The inscription on his headstone, ‘I fell, but yielded not my English soul; that lives out here beneath the battle’s roll’, is a quotation from his own work. Another soldier poet of the 12th Battalion Yorks & Lancs, Corporal Alexander Robertson, was killed in the same attack as Will Streets. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.
Return to the fork and turn left direction Hébuterne. Continue to the church. Beside it, near the Poilu Memorial, is the
Bradford Pals Memorial (GPS: 50.12449 2.63728). The simple brick Memorial with its Plaque commemorating the Bradford Pals has a poignant story. In 1995 a Bradford couple, Eric and Joan Kenny, finding no Memorial to the Bradford Pals during a visit to the Somme, determined to raise one. Hébuterne was chosen for its site as it was midway between the villages of Gommecourt and Serre where so many of the Pals were lost on 1 July, and because of the support from the local Mayor. The Kennys worked hard at fund-raising despite Joan’s terminal cancer and eventually gained some support from Bradford Metropolitan Council, who insisted that the Memorial bore their coat of arms. Finally it was unveiled in June 2002 though only Eric was able to attend because sadly Joan died before the event. Eric died soon afterwards. Their story inspired David Whithorn of the GWS (qv) to continue their work of commemorating the Bradford Pals.
Return to the junction with the D163 (D176.)
Memorial to Bradford Pals, Hébuterne
Continue.
To the left of the road was the British position known as ‘The Bowery’.
After 800m stop at the memorial on the bank on the left.
• Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Memorial, Beaumont Hamel/14.8 miles/10 minutes/Map G4/GPS: 50.08572 2.64853
Unveiled in 1923 by the Duke of Argyll, this imposing Celtic cross commemorates and gives details of the war service of the 8th Argyllshire Bn, Princess Louise’s Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, the 51st Highland Division, the 61st Division, and the 15th Scottish Division: ‘Mobilised Service from 4 August 1914 to 12 November 1919. Service in the field from 1 May 1915 to 11 November 1918: 3 years and 195 days. Killed in Action: officers 51, NCOs and men 831. Wounded: officers 105, NCOs and men 2,527’. The Gaelic inscription translates as ‘The complete heroes of the Great War, the braves who went before us’. ‘Cruachan’ is the war cry of the Campbells. The Memorial stands at the entrance to the Sunken Road, where the ‘Official War Office Kine-Matographer’, Lt Geoffrey H. Malins, attached to Maj Gen H. de B. de Lisle’s 29th Division (part of Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps) from 28 June, to film The Battle, filmed men of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers on 1 July. This end the Road was known as Hunter Trench and some 500 yards to the north west near a chalk feature known as White City Malins filmed, ‘with shaking hand, as … for all the world like a gigantic sponge, the earth rose in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible, grinding roar the earth fell back upon itself, leaving in its place a mountain of smoke.
Turn round and return to the crossroads with the D919, turn left signed to Beaumont and follow the main itinerary.
Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Memorial and Sunken Road. Above: Malins filming just before the attack on 1 July 1916.
His historic, and much-shown, sequence of the great Hawthorn mine going up at 0720 hours on 1 July, was the high point of his film The Battle of the Somme, first shown to an invited audience in London on 10 August and seen by thousands when it was put on general release at the end of the month. Prior to The Battle of the Somme, front-line pictures were rarely published. In 1916, however, the Press Bureau asked for tenders for the exclusive right to reproduce, as postcards, pictures taken by official photographers at the front. The Daily Mail tender was accepted, half the profits to go to military charities, with a minimum payment of £5,000. On 6 September seven sets of six postcards were put on sale. Card No 13 in Series II shows the Hawthorn explosion. The complete set of cards is available on a DVD which can be obtained from Tony Allen, tonyallen43@hotmail.com
|
The filled-in entrances to underground tunnels and dugouts can be discerned by the eagle-eyed to the right of the bank in the Sunken Road. Other entrances have also been filled in in the steep chalk cliffs to the left of the road as one leaves the village towards Beaucourt. The short circular WALK Number 2 can be taken from here. Distance: 1.5 miles. Duration: 35 minutes. See page 320 |
Standing at the memorial and looking due south across the D163, a copse can be seen on the skyline. This is the Hawthorn Crater. To the left is a path leading to a cemetery.
• Beaumont-Hamel British CWGC Cemetery/5 minutes/Map G3/GPS: 50.08591 2.64981
There are two long lines of graves, many unknown, others from 1 July 1916 and early 1917. There is one German grave.
Continue on the D163. To the right is a sign leading to Hawthorn Crater up a steep path through the fields. Park and walk up the path between fields.
• Hawthorn Crater/14.1 miles/15 minutes/Map G6/GPS at path 50.08488 2.65088
The double crater, which appears as a figure-of-eight from the air, is now enclosed by wire, and filled with hawthorn and other thick undergrowth. A sergeant who had worked on the tunnel described the ‘exploding chamber’ as ‘as big as a picture palace, and the gallery was an awful length. It took seven months to build, and we were working under some of the crack Lancashire miners’. The tunnel leading to the mine prepared for 1 July was 75ft deep and 1,000ft long, with a charge of 40,600lb of ammonal. It had been prepared by 252nd Tunnelling Company. It was fired 10 minutes early and formed a crater 40ft deep and over 300ft wide at its largest diameter. Although the German redoubt here was totally destroyed, no advance was made and another attack was launched on 13 November when a 30,000lb charge was blown under the old crater which the Germans had fortified. The mine was successfully blown at 0545 (the figure-of-eight shape of the crater is due to the two explosions) and the 51st Division advanced steadily along its whole front in the general direction that you are travelling.
Continue into Beaumont Hamel.
At the crossroads in the village, on the left, is a flagpole. Stop.
• 51st Highland Division Flagstaff/15.2 miles/5 minutes/Map G8/GPS: 50.08421 2.65621
The original flagstaff bore a plaque recording its presentation on 28 September 1924 by the officers, NCO’s and men of the 51st Highland Division to the inhabitants of Beaumont Hamel to commemorate the recapture of the village by the division on 13 November 1916. It was an integral part of the Division’s remembrance with the Highlander statue at Y Ravine (qv) and unveiled just before the statue. The flagstaff fell into disrepair and Derek A. Bird, Chairman of the Scotland (North) Branch of the WFA, raised the money to erect a new flagpole and stone. On 13 November 2006 the new, 12 metre high flagpole and Morayshire stone with bronze plaque and three small granite plaques with the emblems of the WFA, Beaumont and Souvenir Français was inaugurated in the presence of local dignitaries and a contingent of the Khaki Chums. A new Tricolore and Scottish Standard were also presented to the village to be flown on each anniversary thereafter. Just 18 months earlier a new Highlander statue was unveiled at Château St Côme to commemorate the Division’s part in the Normandy campaign in the Second World War. The story is told in detail in our Normandy D-Day Guide book.
The renovated 51st Highland Div Flagpole with detail of the Plaque, Beaumont Hamel
In their regimental history it is reported that the village was ‘famous for its manufacture of powder-puffs’ before the war!
Continue. Turn right to the church and park.
• Beaumont-Hamel Church Stained Glass Fragment/15.3 miles/5 minutes /Map G7/GPS: 50.08379 2.65625
A small fragment of stained glass with the head of a sweet Virgin Mary is incorporated in the plain coloured glass window of the church to the left of the entrance. A plaque records that it was found in the ruins of the original church in 1914 and returned in 1962 by Lt Georg Muller of the German 99th Infantry Regiment and re-installed by villagers Monsieur and Madame Welferinger-Letesse, who worked with devotion for Souvenir Français and joined us in our 1 July ‘Caribou’ ceremonies for many years.
Return to the D163.
Returned WW1 stained glass fragment, Beaumont Hamel Church
Extra Visit to Waggon Road (Map D27)/OP & Munich Trench British/(Map D28) CWGC Cemeteries on Redan Ridge/OP Round-trip: 1.6 miles. Approximate time: 25 minutes
Drive straight over and continue uphill on the narrow road, following green CWGC signs to the cemeteries.
The vantage point from the crest of the ridge gives such a good overall view of the 1 July 1916 battle, that this diversion is highly recommended. Binoculars are essential. The extraordinary feeling of remoteness, of peace and of beauty experienced in these cemeteries also make the journey rewarding.
To the right on the crest is Waggon Road, V Corps Cemetery No 10 (GPS: 50.09218 2.66368), which contains 195 UK burials, 36 unidentified. Forty-nine of the burials are of men from 11th (Lonsdale) Battalion, the Border Regt, which attacked on the Ancre in July (qv) and also in November 1916. Waggon Road was the name given to the road running north towards the village of Serre from Beaumont Hamel Station. Go to the cross and stand facing the entrance gate. That is 12 o’clock. The skyline to the front, left to right, gives the axis of the British attack on 1 July. To the left at 11 o’clock is the church spire at Auchonvillers on the British start line. The shape of the battle can now be followed by finding these points: at 12 o’clock is the Cross of Sacrifice of Serre Road No 2 Cemetery. This is the site of the German front line defensive position known as The Quadrilateral. At 9 o’clock is the Newfoundland Memorial Park and both the Caribou and the Kilted Highlander Memorials can be seen. At 7 o’clock is the copse at the end of the Leipzig Salient and the Thiepval Memorial. At 2 o’clock is the Memorial to the Sheffield Pals on the Serre Road. The road up which you have driven runs due north just behind the German front line of 1 July, with the British line about 600m to the left.
Continue.
Waggon Road CWGC Cemetery
To the left is Munich Trench, V Corps Cemetery No 8 (GPS: 50.09444 2.66326), with the legend ‘Beaumont Hamel’ inscribed on the gatepost. The 126 burials, of which 28 are unknown, are arranged in three lines of graves, enclosed by a hedge. The grass path leading to this isolated cemetery is immaculate, witness to the dedication of the CWGC in that little-visited sites are as lovingly cared for as are those that are more accessible. Indeed, in October 1995 the visitors’ books for these two cemeteries dated back to 1975.
Turn round and return to the D163. Rejoin the main itinerary.
Turn left and return to the flagpole. Take the small road uphill to the right (Rue de la Montagne).
[N.B.] At the top Redan Ridge Cemetery No 2 (GPS: 50.08892 2.65262) is signed to the left (Map G5a). It is on the site of ‘Watling Street’, 100m west of the old German front line and has 279 burials of 2nd, 4th and 29th Divs.
Continue to the cemetery on the left.
• Redan Ridge CWGC Cemetery No 3/15.7 miles/5 minutes/Map D26/GPS: 50.09103 2.65386)
This lovely little cemetery contains only fifty-four graves, mostly of 2nd Div from 1 July and 13 November 1916 and thirteen special memorials. It is on the site of German front line trenches known as Frontier Lane.
Beyond, on the crest, is Redan Ridge No.1 CWGC Cemetery (GPS: 50.9298 2.65212).
Continue to the D919. Turn left and continue to the large British cemetery on the left.
Redan Ridge No 3 CWGC Cemetery
French Memorial Chapel & Serre Road No 1 CWGC Cemetery from Redan Ridge
• Serre Road CWGC Cemetery No 2/Val Braithwaite Memorial/16.7 miles/20 minutes/Map D24/23/GPS: 50.09664 2.65131
Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, this is one of three Serre Road Cemeteries. They were begun by V Corps in the spring of 1917, over-run by the Germans in March 1918 and re-taken in August. There are over 7,100 burials in this concentration cemetery, making it the largest British Cemetery on the Somme battlefield. It contains some German graves and that of Private A. E. Bull, 12th Yorks & Lancs, who has a Private Memorial in Sheffield Park (qv). It was in the gardener’s hut in this cemetery that CWGC worker Ben Leach hid two RAF pilots when visited by Germans inspecting German graves during World War II. At the roadside outside the cemetery wall is a private memorial to Lt V. A. Braithwaite, MC, a regular officer of the SLI, son of Gen Sir Walter Braithwaite, KCB, Chief of the General Staff in Gallipoli, where his son served as his ADC. Besides winning one of the first MC’s of the war at Mons, Braithwaite had twice been mentioned in Despatches. In his Gallipoli Memories Compton Mackenzie remembers with affection the unsophisticated, ‘tall, sunburnt young Wykehamist’. He was killed on the first day of the Somme battle, (though on the Thiepval memorial the date is given as 2 July) along with his commanding officer, adjutant and fourteen other officers in the battalion. Their attack had been made along the line of the road towards you, and to its left, against the German stronghold known as Quadrilateral Redoubt, which was on the site of the cemetery.
Turn round and continue back up the D919 towards the chapel on the right.
The imposing entrance to Serre Road No 2 CWGC Cemetery
• Memorial to 3 Soldiers Found Near Probable Site of Wilfred Owen’s 1917 Dugout/16.9 miles/5 minutes/Map D21a/GPS: 50.09786 2.653521
Beyond Braithwaite’s Cross, before the French Chapel, and to the right of the road, is the probable site (first located by researcher Philip Guest) of ‘the advanced post, that is a “dugout” in the middle of No Man’s Land’ described by the poet Lt Wilfred Edward Salter Owen of the 2nd Bn, the Manchester Regt, in a letter to his mother of 16 January 1917, where he suffered ‘seventh hell’. Here one of Owen’s most powerful poems, The Sentry, was inspired by an incident when a sentry was blown down the dugout steps by the force of a shell blast and blinded. The man’s terror and distress: ‘O sir, my eyes – I’m blind – I’m blind, I’m blind’, would haunt Owen. A few days later the battalion moved to billets in Courcelles (a village slightly further behind the lines than Colincamps) from where Owen wrote home on the 19th, describing his close encounter with a gas shell. This incident was probably the inspiration for the episode in one of his best-known poems, Dulce et Decorum Est:
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time …
V. A. L. Braithwaite private memorial, with Serre Road CWGC Cemetery No 2 in the background
Memorial to Three Soldiers from the Heidenkopf site with Serre Road No 2 in the background (with details of the Memorial)
But they were not in time for one poor lad who virtually drowned ‘under a green sea’. Like the blind sentry, Owen saw the gas victim ‘In all my dreams’. Owen was killed a week before the Armistice and is buried in Ors CWGC cemetery.
In October 2003 the group ‘No Man’s Land: the European Group for Great War Archaeology’ investigated the site at the Heidenkopf or Quadrilateral (filmed by the BBC for their Ancestors series) but had to close the dig before the dugout had been positively identified. They did, however, find the remains of 3 soldiers, one of the 1st King’s Own (Royal Lancaster) Regt and two Germans. After some brilliant research by Alastair Fraser and Volker Hartmann in Germany with Ralph Whitehead in America, one of the Germans, found with several artefacts and a corroded identity disc, was identified as Jakob Hones of the 121st Wurttemberg Res Inf Regt and an amazingly full personal and family history was discovered. Hones was reburied in the German Cemetery at Labry near Verdun. The full story is told on Alastair’s website, www.fylde.demon.co.uk/fraser.htm
In 2006 the Memorial was inaugurated to commemorate the three soldiers.
• French Memorial Chapel & German Memorial/17.1 miles/5 minutes/Map D21/22 /GPS: 50.09928 2.65609
In the porch of this sadly neglected chapel there are two interesting memorials. One is to a remarkable man, Maistre Joseph de la Rue, who founded the memorial. He seems to have been the French equivalent of ‘Woodbine Willie’ (the Padre, Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy). A professor of history before the war, he became Chaplain to the 243rd and 233rd RI during 1914-18, was Chaplain to the Army in 1939-45, and Chaplain to the Galliéni Group in 1940-3, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Médaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre. Below his imposing plaque is a small, modern Plaque, one of the few German memorials on the Somme, to the memory of comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 1 who were killed at Serre.
Walk over the road.
Bavarian Res Inf Regt No 1 memorial, Serre Chapel
French National Cemetery, Serre from Redan Ridge
• French National Cemetery Serre-Hébuterne/10 minutes/Map D17/20
Created in 1919 for the dead of the 243rd RI of the 10-13 June battles of 1915 it was enlarged in 1923 for other dead of the 243rd and 327th RI. It contains 834 burials, of which 240 are in the mass grave. Note the Muslim headstones among the creamy-white crosses. At the top of the Cemetery is an impressive memorial, with a bronze bas relief, to the men of 233rd, 243rd and 327th RI from Lille. A black Plaque lists the regiments engaged here at the Ferme de Toutvent from 7-13 June 1915. The farm which was about a kilometer behind the present cemetery, had been taken and fortified by the Germans in 1914 and in a set piece attack at 0500 hours the French set out to take it back from the Bavarians who were holding it. This they did in an action which won the 93rd Regiment the Military Cross.
Continue to the next cemetery on the same side of the road.
• Serre Road CWGC Cemetery No 1/17.2 miles/5 minutes/Map D18/GPS: 50.09981 2.65726
This was begun in May 1917 by V Corps but was enlarged after the Armistice by the concentration of over 2,000 graves from other parts of the Somme battlefield. There are some 2,100 burials, including 71 French soldiers. On 1 July it was the Leeds and Bradford Pals who attacked here, i.e. the 15th, 16th and 18th West Yorks. The Cemetery was seen in the 2006 film Mrs Henderson Presents.
Continue 100m. Park off the road by the beginning of the track, Chemin des Cimetières, leading to the left signed Luke Copse, Railway Hollow, Queen’s and Serre Road No 3 Cemeteries. Walk along it. If it is very dry you may consider driving up it as far as the first cemetery on the right, but be aware of farm vehicles.
• Serre Road No 3 CWGC Cemetery/5 minutes/Map D15/GPS: 50.10363 2.6565
This tiny Cemetery contains eighty-one burials (mostly of W Yorks from 1 July) and four Special Memorials.
Continue. As the path curves to the right, an enclosed wooded area is on the left. Walk in.
Serre Road No 3 CWGC Cemetery
• Sheffield Memorial Park & Memorials/Railway Hollow CWGC Cemetery/25 minutes/Map D12/31a/13b/13c/13d/13e/16/GPS: 50.10607 2.65546
Originally there were four small copses in this area, named after the Apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The remnants of them now merge into one wooded area based on Mark, in which is the park, where, as at Beaumont Hamel, craters and trench lines have remained undisturbed by agriculture and have been allowed to grass over naturally.
‘I am the grass; I cover all’, wrote the American poet Carl Sandburg and graphically described the potent work of that benign plant which covered bodies from Austerlitz, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Ypres and Verdun. Here it covers some of the trenches from which the Pals from the northern towns received their baptism of fire as part of Kitchener’s New Army. The Accrington Pals (Map D13b, a symbolic broken brick wall), the Chorley Pals Y Co (Map D13a, a plaque on a tree), the 13th/14th York & Lancaster, Barnsley Pals (Map D13e, a smart black marble monument with coloured badges and on the tree a small black plaque naming the sponsors, including Sir Nicholas Hewitt and the Barnsley Chronicle) and the Sheffield Pals (Map D3d, a brick Memorial gateway with commemorative plaques) have all placed memorials here to their sacrifice. On a tree to the left is a small Plaque to Alister Sturrock, I July 1994. A wooden cross bears a plaque in memory of Pte A. E. Bull of the 12th York & Lancs, killed here on 1 July 1916, whose body was found on 13 April 1928 and who is now buried in Serre Road No 2 CWGC Cemetery. At the foot of the slope at the rear of the park is Railway Hollow CWGC Cemetery (Map D12) containing 107 UK burials (mostly York & Lancs of 1 July, plus 2 French graves). It is situated on the line of the old military railway which ran through here. Leading here was a long communication trench called Northern Avenue which began just above Colincamps some 2 miles away to the west.
Emerge from the park and walk to the cemetery straight ahead.
Sheffield Memorial Park: Accrington Pals Memorial
Barnsley Pals Plaques
Memorial to 13th, 14th Bns York & Lancs, Sheffield Memorial Park
Railway Hollow CWGC Cemetery, Sheffield Park
Chorley Pals Plaques above and below
• Queen’s CWGC Cemetery/5 minutes/Map D14/GPS: 10568 2.65643
This Cemetery contains 311 burials, mostly from July and Nov 1916, with a large number of Accrington Pals who attacked from their trench, now within the park, on 1 July.
Return to the entrance to the park, turn right.
• Luke Copse CWGC Cemetery/5 minutes/Map D11/GPS: 50.10777 2.6592
This small Cemetery (seventy-two burials) contains men of the Sheffield City Battalion who attacked here on 1 July, including brothers L Cpl F. and Pte W. Gunstone, and has a memorial to men of the 2nd Suffolks who fell here on 13 November 1916.
The three cemeteries, Serre Road No 3, Queens and Luke Copse, all lie just on the No Man’s Land side of the British line of 1 July. At 0720 the assault troops of 31st Division climbed out of their trenches to file through the passages cut in their own wire, intending to lie in No Man’s Land before advancing together to capture the village of Serre. It was their first time in battle. They were immediately subjected to heavy machine-gun fire from Serre village and bombarded by both field and heavy artillery. At 0730 when the leading waves stood up in order to advance, the fire increased and hardly any troops reached the German front trench, barely 400m away. Those that did were either killed or taken prisoner. The 31st Division contained four Rifle Battalions from Hull, one from Leeds, two from Bradford, one from Accrington, one from Sheffield, two from Barnsley and one from Durham. These were ‘Pals’ battalions, made up of volunteer soldiers hailing from a single town or village, or even a single factory or football team. They worked together, lived together, joined up together and frequently died together, devastating whole communities back home at a stroke.
Return to the main D919 road. Continue towards Serre. Park by the memorial on the left
• 12th Bn York & Lancs Memorial/Serre Village/ 17.7 miles/5 minutes/Map D19/GPS: 50.10351 2.66892
This was raised by Sheffield to her Pals, known as the Sheffield City Battalion. Sheffield adopted Serre after the war. A glance at the 140m contour lines on the Holts’ map shows the predominating position held by the Germans in this village, which they had prepared as a fortress. At this northern end of the Fourth Army sector there were no significant gains at all during the Somme fighting. Following the July failures by the 4th and 31st Divisions, the 3rd and 31st tried again on 13 November to no avail. The Memorial is located here because during the unsuccessful assault on Serre on 13 November 1916, some British troops briefly entered the village and found bodies of men of the 12th Bn still lying where they had fallen in July. Eventually on 24 February 1917 the Germans withdrew from Serre and the 22nd Manchesters moved in the following morning.
Continue on the N919 signed to Arras, to Puisieux.
Like Serre, this was abandoned by the Germans on 24 February 1917 in their retreat to the Hindenburg Line.
Continue to the junction left in Puisieux with the D6.
12th Bn York & Lancs Memorial, Serre
Extra Visit to Owl Trench CWGC Cemetery, Rossignol Wood CWGC Cemetery & Rossignol Wood Bunker, SOA Rev Bayley Hardy, VC. Round trip: 7.6 miles. Approximate time: 45 minutes
Turn left up the D6 following green CWGC signs.
The British attack of 1 July had included a diversionary assault (from your left) by Sir Edward Allenby’s Third Army on a German salient at Gommecourt. Its object was to divert attention away from the main thrust astride the Albert-Bapaume Road. The task was given to 56th Division, a London and Middlesex territorial force under General Hull and 46th Division from the Midlands. Beginning early in May, great pioneer works were begun behind the British lines. Headquarters were built, roads, railways and pipe lines laid and even a new front line dug some 400m in front of the old one. These preparations so caught the Germans’ attention that on 1 July three divisions-worth of artillery hammered the British attack. Many Tommies believed that the enemy knew exactly when to expect them. 56th Division took the German front line (roughly the road you are driving along) and more, but lost it all by the end of the day. 46th Division to the north was unable to advance at all, and was thus incapable of supporting its neighbour. General Stuart-Wortley was relieved of command less than a week later. In this area the D6 runs roughly parallel with the German line, which from Rossignol Wood CWGC Cemetery onwards was about 400m to your left and was in 56th Division’s area. The line bent sharply to the right 400m beyond Gommecourt village, this northern part being in 46th Division’s area, with the assault being down the D6 from Foncquevillers directly towards the village.
Continue to Owl Trench (Map D10, GPS: 50.12866 2.66443), the first cemetery you reach on the left. This tiny cemetery contains only fifty-three burials, from 31st Division’s attack on the German rearguard in February 1917 during their retreat to the Hindenburg Line. The burials, many of W Yorks (many Bradford ‘Pals’), are mostly three to a grave, therefore the cemetery looks even smaller than it actually is.
Continue a few hundred yards further.
The isolated Owl Trench CWGC Cemetery
On the left is Rossignol Wood Cemetery (Map D9, GPS: 50.12962 2.66552). This was begun on 14 March 1917 by the N and S Staffs and used again in August 1918 by the New Zealanders. It has thirty-four UK, seven New Zealand and seventy German graves, i.e., considerably more German than British graves.
Continue to the next junction and turn right towards the wood. Stop at the first corner of the wood and walk south some 100m along the edge to an obvious indentation.
A few metres inside Rossignol Wood, with a clear line of old trenches leading to it, is a German bunker (Map D30, GPS: 50.13182 2.66987).
Rossignol Road CWGC Cemetery showing German Headstones
Near it one of the most exceptional Padres of World War I won the Victoria Cross. The Rev Theodore Bayley Hardy spent the day of 5 April 1918 there comforting a badly wounded man injured in the 8th Lincolnshires’ attack on the wood. At dusk he returned to ask for a volunteer to help him bring back the wounded man, and a sergeant, G. Radford, helped him to bring the man to safety. The Padre then continued to tend the wounded under fire and later in the month at Bucquoy, on 25, 26 and 27 April, again acted with such self-sacrificing heroism to save others’ lives that he was nominated three more times for the Victoria Cross. Radford was awarded the DCM, and Hardy went on to add the DSO, MC and DCM to his VC. That month he was also appointed Chaplain to King George V, who presented him with his VC in 1918 (an event immortalised by the artist Terence Cuneo). Despite pleas to accept a safe appointment at Base, Hardy – who had almost refused to accept his VC, but agreed when it was pointed out by Col Hardyman, CO of the Somersets, that if he did refuse it would only ‘be advertising yourself all the more’ – continued in the front line. On 11 October 1918 the 8th Lincolns and the 8th Somersets were crossing the River Selle at Briastres when the Padre was shot through the thigh. Evacuated to No 2 Red Cross Hospital at Rouen, he died on 18 October, less than a month before the end of the war. He was 55 years old and the most decorated non-combatant of the conflict.
Return to the main road and turn right.
German Bunker, Rossignal Wood, with discernible trench lines
On the right, opposite Gommecourt Park, was the fortified position known as Kern Redoubt, or the Maze.
Continue through the village to the final cemetery on the road.
Gommecourt Wood New Cemetery (Map D2, GPS: 50.14342 2.63956) contains 682 UK burials, 56 New Zealanders and 1 Australian. There are ten special memorials. On the right-hand wall inside the Cemetery is a Memorial Plaque to 46th N Midland Division (Map D1).
Immediately to the S of the Cemetery is the SOA of Capt John Leslie Green VC (Map D3). On 1 July 1916, Captain John Leslie Green of the RAMC, attd 1/5th Battalion the Sherwood Foresters, although himself wounded, rescued an officer who had been wounded and was caught up in the enemy wire, with grenades constantly being thrown at him. He dragged him to a shell hole where he dressed his wounds, and had almost succeeded in bringing the man to safety when he was killed. Capt Green is buried in Foncquevillers Military Cemetery (Map A4)
Memorial to 46th (North Midland) Div, Gommecourt Wood New CWGC Cemetery
Return to the N919 at Puisieux, turn left and pick up the main itinerary.
NOTE: that if further itineraries are to be followed, you may wish to finish Itinerary One here and return to your base on the Somme. If returning to one of the Channel Ports, the remainder of Itinerary One is directly en route.
Continue in the direction of Arras through Bucquoy, whose church is an interesting example of Art Deco architecture (qv), to the fork with the D7 at the edge of the village of Ayette. Take the fork to the right and immediately turn left up a small and very narrow track. Note that there is no turning area at the end, so this is an opportunity to practise your reversing skills.
• Ayette Indian & Chinese Cemetery/23.7 miles/10 minutes/Map B2/GPS: 50.17574 2.733209
This unusual Cemetery, which has a pagoda-shaped shelter but no Cross of Sacrifice, contains ten soldiers of the Indian Army, forty-two men of the Indian Labour Corps and twenty-seven of the Chinese Labour Corps (whose inscriptions bear a selection of the standard English inscriptions – see St Etienne au Mont on the Western Approach, page 51), one German prisoner and six Chinese Labour Corps (French). The Indian and Chinese headstones bear inscriptions in their own languages.
Continue on the D919 to Beaurains.
Ayette Indian & Chinese Cemetery
Extra Visit to the Commonwealth War Graves Headquarters at Beaurains/GPS: 50.25756 2.78123 /Round trip: 2 miles. Approximate time: 15 minutes
At the outskirts to the town turn right, following the green CWGC signs to the imposing low brick building on the right (Rue Angèle Richard, 62217 Beaurains).
This is the administrative headquarters for the Commission in France, and cemetery registers are held for all the cemeteries in the area. Behind are workshops from which carpentry, masonry, engraving, ironwork and gardening repairs and maintenance are organised.
The offices are open during normal working hours, Monday to Friday, with a break for lunch. Telephone ahead if you wish to consult a register or enquire about a burial. Tel: +(0)3 21 21 77 00, e-mail: france.area@cwgc.org or use the CWGC Debt of Honour website, www.cwgc.org (qv) in advance of your visit to find the information you are seeking. Copies of the Commission’s excellent themed information pamphlets on a variety of topics are available here, as are poppy wreaths and sprays.
Return to the main itinerary.
Continue to the centre of Arras on the N17, following signs to Gare SCNF and park as near as possible to the railway station.
• Arras Centre/Town Hall & Boves/33 miles approx miles/60 minutes/Map 14/23/GPS: 50.28747 2.78166
NOTE: From here your mileage and timings will vary depending upon exactly where you can park and if you walk or drive to the Town Hall.
Arras suffered considerable damage from long-range shells – the German front line was only some two miles east of the town. In 1916 the British took over from the French and in the days preceding the April 1917 offensive the war correspondent Philip Gibbs vividly described the scene in the damaged town: the Highlanders playing their pipe bands, the soldiers in their steel helmets and goatskin coats who resembled ‘medieval men-at-arms’, the dead horses lying thick on the Arras-Cambrai road, the long queues of wounded men waiting for treatment in the old Vauban Citadel – 3,000 of them on one day alone…Men and materiel poured through the town in huge numbers in the preparation for the offensive.
On the wall of the station are Plaques to Station Workers (SNCF) killed in the War 1 and WW2 and the Red Cross in 1940.
Opposite the railway station on the central area is the Arras War Memorial, with some fine bas reliefs of various aspects of the Great War, which shows scars from the Second World War. All around the square are numerous Cafés and Hotels (see Tourist Information, page 339). The town has been a centre of trade and population since ancient times. It was fortified by Vauban who built the citadel. It was briefly over-run by the Germans in September 1914 but then held by the French until March 1916 and then the British until the end of the war.
Arras War Memorial
The British 56th (1st London) Division’s part in the fighting is commemorated by a Plaque on the wall of the Chapel on rue du Saumon, some 200 yds due north from here. GPS: 50.28885 2.78063
The Town Hall/Boves. This is a five minute walk from the station area (follow signs to ‘Les Places’, or you may decide to drive and park under the Grand’ Place). The Squares have delightful Flemish baroque facades and many restaurants. Through the Town Hall (with its impressive belfry, started in 1463, rebuilt between 1924-1932) is access to the ‘Boves’ – the caves and tunnels dating from the fourteenth century that were enlarged and extended during the 1914-18 war. The soft, porous stone underlying Arras was tunnelled in deepest secrecy for 18 months before the April 1917 offensive when narrowgauge railways were constructed to carry away the spoil. The tunnels, christened after British towns – ‘Glasgow’, ‘Manchester’ etc, were reinforced with pine logs supporting the heavy cross timbers of the roof and led to cavernous chambers. Generating stations to produce electricity were installed and miles of wiring were used in the hundreds of yards of tunnels that linked the ancient cellars, crypts and quarries. Not only were the undergrounds used as hospitals and shelters, but also to transport vast bodies of troops and material safely to the start line trenches of the offensive in open country. The Tourist Office in the Town Hall is open 21 April-16 September Mon-Sat: 0900 - 1830; Sun: 1000-1300 and 1430-1830. 1 Jan-20 April and 17 Sept-31 Dec: Mon 1000-1200 and 1400-1800; Tues-Sat 0900-1200 and 1400-1800; Sun 1000-1230 and 1430-1830. A visit to the Boves and tours of the surrounding battlefields may be booked here. Tel: + (0)3 21 51 26 95. E-mail: arras.tourisme@wanadoo.fr Website: www.ot-arras.fr It will be useful to pick up a town plan here, lists of any commemorative events in the vicinity and more information about accommodation and restaurants.
Return to your car. Take the N17 on Ave du Maréchal Leclerc, direction Bapaume. After crossing over the railway bridge the road then leads into the Ave Ferdinand Lobbedez. Continue almost exactly half a mile after the bridge to the junction with rue Alexandre Ribot to the Memorial on the left.
Plaque to 56th (1st London) Div, Arras
Memorial to New Zealand Tunnellers and Wellington Quarry/34.0 miles/45 mins/Map 14/24/GPS: 50.28040 2.78285
The striking Monument which simulates a section of a tunnel, was designed by Arras artist, Luc Brévart. It is made of white stone and railway sleepers (reminiscent of those used by the NZ Tunnellers) with bronze components, such as a NZ tin hat, a pick and a map of New Zealand. It honours the 41 NZ Tunnellers who lost their lives here and the 151 who were wounded. They included Maori and Pacific Islanders of the ZN Pioneer Battalion.
Beside the Memorial is the old ‘Défence Passive’ building. This was the name for the quarry in which the local inhabitants sheltered during the bombings of May 1940 and the building was used as a power/water supply zone for the underground quarries, originally dug in the Middle Ages. These were the basis for the network of underground quarries linked up by the NZ Tunnellers in preparation for the April 1917 Battle of Arras and which eventually could house 24,000 soldiers as they waited for the surprise offensive to start on 9 April at 05.30. The section underground here was known as Wellington Quarry in WW1.
Its imposing entrance is in the adjacent Rue Delétoile which should be signed from here. There is a large car park. A Memorial Wall listing the Regiments of the 1st, 3rd and 5th British Armies involved in the battle leads the visitor to the entrance.
Open: every day from 1000-1230 and 1330-1800 except 25 Dec and the three following weeks. Contact: as Tourist Office above. This is a fascinating and atmospheric visit. Accompanied by a guide and an audioguide available in several languages, the visitor descends 20m in a glass lift to the living and administrative quarters. Most poignant are the many examples of signs and carved and painted graffiti (also from the period of WW2), examples of letters and photos. A film sets the scene.
Return to the Place Maréchal Foch and follow signs to the Citadelle/Motorway and on the town ring road, Boulevard Gen de Gaulle, just south of the junction with the N25 to Doullens, is
New Zealand Tunnellers Memorial, Arras
Wellington Quarry, Arras.
• Faubourg d’Amiens CWGC Cemetery/Arras & RFC Memorials to the Missing/Mur des Fusillés/approx 40 miles/45 minutes/Map 14/22/GPS: 50.28667 2.76048
Despite the name of the Cemetery, this is the Arras Memorial. It takes the form of a wall carrying almost 36,000 names of the Missing of the battles around Arras. On it are the names of the First World War poet Capt. T.P. Cameron Wilson of the Sherwood Foresters, Lt Geoffrey Thurlow of the same regiment – one of Vera Brittain’s coterie of friends, and Captain Charles McKay and Private David Sutherland of the Seaforths. David was the subject of Lt. E. A. Mackintosh’s searing poem, In Memoriam, which describes his death during a trench raid on 16 May 1916 in which McKay also took part.
Also commemorated here is 2nd Lt Walter Daniel John Tull, Middx Regt, 25 March 1918, age 29. Tull was one of Britain’s first black professional footballers and, despite his poor background, also its first black Army Officer. Tull was admitted to an orphanage in Bethnal Green when both his parents died and was signed up by Tottenham Hotspur in 1908. In 1909 he suffered appalling racial abuse during a match and was transferred to Northampton Town. On the outbreak of war he enlisted in the 17th (1st Football) Bn of the Middx Regt, was promoted to sergeant in 1916, was invalided home with trench fever at the end of the year and went to the officer cadet training school at Gailes in Scotland – despite the fact that ‘Negroes’ were specifically excluded from commanding as officers. In 1917 he went to the Italian Front as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 23rd (2nd Football) Bn of the Middx Regt and was MiD in the Battle of the Piave. In 1918 he returned to France and was killed in No Man’s Land near Favreuil. In the mid-1990s a campaign was started to use Tull’s inspiring story to help black recruitment in the British Army and to defuse racial discrimination in the world of football and on 11 July 1999 the Walter Tull Memorial and Garden of Rest was opened at Sixfields Stadium, Northampton. Tull will be featured during the 100th WW1 Anniversaries.
The Arras Memorial to the Missing
Mur des Fusillés Execution Post
Arras Flying Services Memorial
Three members of the Banks Brass Band, Pte Tom Ryding, MGC, 12 March 1918, Pte Robert Blundell, KLR, 3 May 1917 and L/Cpl Robert Brookfield, KSLI, 18 March 1918 are commemorated here. Members of the current Banks Band (accompanied by members of Blundell’s family) made a pilgrimage in 2012 and played in tribute at the Arras Memorial.
The wall encloses the Cemetery, begun in March 1916, and which contains 2,700 burials. At the back are separate small rows for Hindus, Mohammedans and Sikhs. Just within the entrance wall, in a space once occupied by the graves of French soldiers, is the Royal Flying Corps Memorial. It takes the form of a column surmounted by a globe. The flight of doves encircling the globe is following the path of the sun on 11 November 1918. It carries the names of over 1,000 personnel of the RNAS, RFC and RAF personnel missing on the Western Front, including VCs Major Lanoe Hawker and Major E. (‘Mick’) Mannock. Also commemorated here is Lt Donald MacGregor, the Red Baron’s 63rd victim, shot down on 30 November 1917 during the Cambrai battle and Capt J.V. Aspinall whose name was originally over the grave of Capt F.L. Mond in Doullens Cem Ext (see page 57).
Beyond the Memorial the ‘Mur des Fusillés’ is signed. This is a 1 mile round trip which leads to a poignant area where between July 1941 and July 1944 the Germans shot over 200 Frenchmen, including some liberated in the ‘Operation Jericho’ Amiens prison raid of 1944. A concrete marker indicates the Execution Post and Memorial Plaques commemorate those who were killed (many of them Miners, dating from 1942 and June 1944). Entry to the area is controlled by a gate which closes at dusk and you must park before the barrier and walk the last section around the old Citadel walls.
• End of Itinerary One OR
Extra Visit to Point-du-Jour Military Cemetery/9th Scottish Division Memorial. GPS: 50.31377 2.83578. Round trip: 10 miles. Approximate time: 20 minutes
Continue north on the ring road and follow signs to A26/Douai onto the D950 dual carriageway. Then take the D42e through Athies following green CWGC signs to the Cemetery finally along a rough track to both cemetery and memorial.
The Cemetery, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, is in the village of Athies, in the Valley of the Scarpe, which was captured by the 9th (Scottish) Division (including the S African Brigade) on 9 April 1917 and remained in Allied hands for the remainder of the war. The 9th Scottish Division Memorial was moved here some 5 years ago from its dominating position about half a mile away as it was deemed dangerous of access from the busy dual carriageway. In the form of a large Cairn, it is surrounded by stone boundary markers with the names of units in the Division and bears the legend, ‘Remember with Honour the 9th Scottish Division who fell on the Fields of France and Flanders, 1915-1918. Served Well’. The Cairn and surrounding stones echo those which commemorate the 1746 Battle of Culloden.
9th Scottish Div Mem with Point du Jour CWGC Cemetery
Point-du-Jour (‘Daybreak’) was the name of a house on the St Laurent-Blangy-Gavrelle road which had been strongly fortified by the Germans and which was captured by 34th Division on 9 April. Two cemeteries were made on the right of the road between St Laurent-Blangy and Point-du-Jour and one of them (No 1) developed into the present cemetery. Used from April to November 1917 and again in 1918 it contained 82 graves at the Armistice (now part of Plot I). It was then enlarged as remains were brought in from the surrounding battlefields. It now contains 786 WW1 burials, 52 UK Navy, 264 UK Army, 2 Airforce and 378 UK Unknown, 5 Canadian and 9 Unknown, 2 New Zealand, 66 S African and 8 Unknown and 3 UK 1940. There are 3 French plus 3 Unknown burials. There are 22 Special Memorials and 6 Memorials to casualties buried in other cemeteries but whose graves have been destroyed.
Here are buried Lt Colonel F.S.N. Savage, DSO and twice MiD, age 36, who commanded the 11th Battalion, the R Warwicks, had served in the S African Campaign as a boy, fought at Ypres in 1914, at Neuve-Chapelle, Fromelles and Festubert in 1915, Arras in 1917, was wounded at Festubert and killed on 23 April 1917 and Lt Colonel C.J. Burke, DSO, age 35, of the RIR, who went to France in 1914 as commander of No 2 Squadron RFC, and served with the 1st East Lancs, killed on 9 April 1917.
More recently the Cemetery has been used for the burials, for example in June 2002, of the 23 soldiers of the Lincolnshire Regiment (the Grimsby Chums) found in January 2001 in St Laurent-Blangy (through which you have just driven). They lie together in a row in front of which are the graves of the five soldiers of the 15th Royal Scots found in June 2001 and re-interred later in the month, including Pte Archie McMillan.
Boundary Marker to 63rd & 64th Fd Coys, RE