‘The attack is to go in tomorrow morning at 7.30,’ Gen. Sir Douglas Haig had written to his wife on 30 June 1916, ‘I feel that everything possible for us to do to achieve success has been done. But whether or not we are successful lies in the Power above. But I do feel that in my plans I have been helped by a Power that is not my own. So I am easy in my mind and ready to do my best whatever happens tomorrow.’2 Yet everything possible had certainly not been done to achieve success, and from the north to the south of the battlefield, the fortunes of the Allied divisions on 1 July 1916 varied greatly as they attacked the nine fortified towns, thirteen redoubts and their connecting trench lines. Generally speaking, their fortunes improved the further south they launched their assault. In the most northerly sector, at Gommecourt, the 46th and 56th Divisions’ sacrificial diversion was an unmitigated disaster. The 31st, 4th and 29th Divisions suffered badly at Serre and Beaumont Hamel. To their south, the 32nd and 36th Divisions were thrown back at Thiepval, although some short-term gains were made. At the central axis of the attack, the 8th and 34th Divisions also made little or no progress against Ovillers and La Boisselle. Further south still, the 21st and 7th Divisions had some partial success around Fricourt and captured Mametz, though at a very high price in blood, while the 18th and 30th Divisions took their objectives around and including Montauban. Below Montauban, on both banks of the Somme itself, the French army was very successful, taking all its objectives.

In the northern sector, two divisions of VII Corps of the 3rd Army, commanded by Lt.-Gen. Sir Thomas D’Oyly ‘Snowball’ Snow, attacked Gommecourt, hoping to eliminate a German bulge (or ‘salient’) in the line but also to create a diversion that would draw German reserves away from the real place at which Haig intended to break through, which was further south between Thiepval and Pozières. The wood and village of Gommecourt were part of the Kern Redoubt, an immensely strong defensive position with 360-degree views of the land around it, so it should probably not have been attacked at all, and certainly not in such huge numbers considering it was only ever intended as a diversion.

The north of Gommecourt was assaulted by the 18,000-strong 46th (North Midland) Division, which had been created out of the part-time soldiers of the Territorial forces from Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire and had landed in France in March 1915 under the command of Maj.-Gen. the Hon. E. J. Stuart-Wortley, who had previously served in South Africa. In the Battle of Loos it had lost 3,500 men attempting unsuccessfully to capture the Hohenzollern Redoubt, partly due to bad cooperation between the divisional artillery and infantry.

They trained for the attack on Gommecourt with trenches dug to resemble the German lines, but in the ten days before 1 July the division was fully occupied holding the front-line trenches, and was shelled regularly. For the fortnight prior to the attack, recalled Cpl. E.J. Lawson of the 1/7th Sherwood Foresters, ‘we rarely had a stitch of dry clothing’. On being told the attack was about to take place, he wrote, ‘We felt a great sense of relief although in anything but a fit state to undertake so mammoth a task.’3

Haig directed that the German trench in front of the 46th Division should not be shelled, but only the support and reserve trenches, as he wanted the front trench to be kept intact for use by the division once it was captured.4 To make matters worse, when they went over the top the men found the barbed wire largely intact, and the smoke barrage that had been laid down to confuse the Germans had hidden the few places where there were gaps in the wire. The first German trench was just in front of the wood, 300 yards (274 m) from the British lines. A few dozen men got through the small gaps in the wire but were killed in the attempt, while the vast majority were cut down in the field between Gommecourt Wood and what is today the Gommecourt Wood New Cemetery.

German artillery as well as machine guns destroyed the 5th and 6th Battalions of the North Staffordshires and the 5th and 6th Battalions of the South Staffordshires, which is why a large number of the North and South Staffordshire graves in the cemetery are not identified by name. Once the 46th Division’s advance collapsed, the Germans concentrated on repelling the 56th Division to the south of Gommecourt, and by 9.30 a.m. it was back in its own trenches having taken a mammoth 4,300 casualties, against 2,455 for the 46th. Although Stuart-Wortley had suffered the fewest losses of any of the British generals, he was relieved of his command two days later. (Haig had long rubbed up badly against him, and was quick to agree to Lt.-Gen. Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow’s request that he be sacked immediately.)

Haig managed to add grave insult to the injury already caused by then blackening the name of the 46th in his war diary, writing: ‘The Gommecourt attack was also progressing well. 46th Division had [the] northern corner of Gommecourt Wood… But eventually [the] right brigade of 46th Division did not press on.’5 This is totally unfair, as the large numbers of dead from the 137th Brigade in the Gommecourt Wood New Cemetery silently attest. They had pressed on as far as their losses could possibly allow. Cpl. Lawson was hit even before getting out of the trench. ‘Just as we were signalled’, he recalled, ‘a shrapnel shell burst a few feet over the top of the trench, and I received a shrapnel bullet in the back.’ It probably saved his life. Although the divisional artillery commander later claimed to have cut the wire ‘along the whole front for a distance of 1,500 yards (1,372 m)’, he was wrong. ‘I advanced with the first wave and got as far as the wire,’ recalled Sgt. H. Fitzgerald of the 1/6th North Staffordshires, ‘which was very thick and not cut. We couldn’t get through.’ Whereupon the enemy had opened up with machine gun fire.6