Someone else for whom the pipes were drowned out by the ordnance was Pte. J. Elliot of the 20th Battalion, who said: ‘I never heard the pipes but did see poor “Aggy” Fyfe.*8 He was riddled with bullets, writhing and screaming. Another lad was just kneeling, his head thrown right back. Bullets were just slapping into him knocking great bloody chunks off his body.’49 Piper Alexander Boyd of the 22nd Battalion wrote to his mother from a hospital in Cambridge after having a finger shot off: ‘The only thing disabled is the pipes, I got them blown away when I was playing the charge… I was playing “Tipperary” and all the boys were singing and shouting. I could see them falling all about me. It was a lucky day for me that I was not blown away. I shall never forget it as long as I live.’50

Although only 120 seconds had passed between the blowing of the mines at 7.28 a.m. and the launch of the attack, the Bavarian machine-gunners were already in place as the Tyneside Scottish advanced towards them at walking pace. They allowed the Tynesiders to get to a midpoint across no man’s land before unleashing their retribution. ‘You know Fritzie had let us come on just enough so that we were exposed coming down that slope,’ recalled Pte. Elliot. ‘That way we would cop it if we came forward and cop it just as bad if we tried to go back. We were just scythed down.’51 The German machine-gunners were ordered to fire at the thighs, so that there would be a good chance of a second bullet hitting as their victims fell. ‘It was hell on earth,’ recalled Pte. William Bloomfield of the same battalion, ‘that is the only name I can give it. We were the first over the trenches after the sign to advance and never a man faltered. It was like going to a picnic, the way the men marched on, but it was only for a few yards, until the Hun got sight of us.’52

The 20th and 23rd Battalions Northumberland Fusiliers (Tyneside Scottish) were caught in devastatingly accurate cross-fire from Hptm. von Rohr’s 55th Bavarian Landwehr Regiment from the directions of Ovillers and La Boisselle. ‘We swarmed over the parapets at a given time and we went over the ground as if on parade, but it was a tough job’, Pte. Thomas Grant of the 23rd Battalion wrote to his wife. ‘Numerous German machine guns thinned the Scottish ranks, but still the men went forward. It was glorious!’

A few of the men reached the German second line of trenches, but all too few, and those who did were all but wiped out. The 4th Tyneside Scottish lost the third highest number of men of any battalion that day. Because the men were given strict orders not to stop to look after the wounded in order to maintain their forward momentum, there were heart-rending scenes on the battlefield. ‘That was awful, hearing men who were your mates pleading with you and pulling at your ankles for help but not being able to do anything’, recalled a soldier of the 20th Battalion. ‘One lad alongside me was chanting “Mother of God No! Mother of God No!” just like that. Others were effing and blinding. I don’t know how I got through it. I could see men dropping all around then [his sergeant] Billy [Grant] yelled “Down on your bellies!”’53

Although they threw themselves down, they were now effectively pinned down in no man’s land somewhere between the Tara–Usna Ridge and La Boisselle, and as another survivor later wrote:

Pzzing, pzzing, those machine gun bullets came buzzing through the grass all around us. Through the din we could hears screams behind us but no one dared look round. It would have been suicide just to raise yourself up to look. At one moment there was silence—maybe Fritzie boy was changing his ammunition belts. At any rate for a few moments above it all we could hear was larks. A bomber near me shouted ‘Hey, I’ve been shot in the arse!’ Billy Grant shouted back, ‘Haven’t we all!’54

There were plenty of examples of extraordinary bravery that day. As an unknown Tyneside Scottish corporal reported to the Evening Chronicle: ‘One of our chaps did an amazingly plucky thing. He was a bit of a sprinter and easily outdistanced the rest of us, so he dashed right up to a machine gun that was worrying us and put it out of action on his own.’55 It was all too rare an occurrence, however, especially with the heavy packs that so many of the men were carrying. Capt. Herries reached the second line of German trenches, but ‘Beyond that they were very strong and several of us who got over the parapet had a hot time of it’. Pte. Tommy Easton of the 21st Battalion found that the wire ‘was reasonably destroyed and we tumbled into the first German trench we came to’. But as an unnamed corporal also recalled, ‘The Huns fought desperately and we had a tough job of clearing them out. They simply crushed us with machine gun fire. It was real red blistering hell hot and make no mistake.’56

Because 101st Brigade was slightly slower to move off at Zero Hour, the 21st Battalion of the Tyneside Scottish suffered heavier casualties. ‘I don’t know how I got through it,’ recalled Pte. J. Barron. ‘I could see men dropping all around, and then someone yelled “Get down! Get down!” and I was on my belly for the next eleven hours. I crawled, if you stood up the machine gun would get you for sure.’57 The brigade bombing company assaulting La Boisselle beckoned the 21st up to support them, but the machine guns prevented it. ‘The lads up in front must have put up a good fight’, recalled Pte. Elliot, ‘because we could hear bombs and shouting and Lewis guns well into the afternoon. So if the lads in front went down, they went down fighting.’58 The Germans, well dug in at La Boisselle and largely unaffected by the barrage, were able to man their positions before the British bombers of the 21st and 22nd Battalions Tyneside Scottish could arrive, a story that was repeated up and down the entire northern and central sectors of the line.

Capts. W. Herries and J. M. Charlton managed to get a Lewis gun up into a hollow in the ground outside La Boisselle and, in Herries’ words,‘Then we gave it to them hot’, but ‘Further along Forster, McIntosh and Lamb got over with a party of men, but the whole lot were mown down by a machine gun’. Back in their hollow, as Herries wrote, ‘For a while we did great execution but the gun jammed at a critical moment. Poor Charlton was shot down while attempting to charge a German strongpoint and the initiative passed to the enemy.’59 Herries defended the lines that had been captured as best he could, but reported how exhausted his men were, and how he ‘had to pull myself together with a mouthful of brandy once or twice’. In all, the 34th Division suffered 6,380 casualties for next to nothing achieved.60

In Ovillers British Cemetery lies Lt.-Col. F.C. Heneker, aged forty-three, who commanded the 21st Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers (Tyneside Scottish) and whose gravestone reads: ‘He died the noblest death a man may die.’

To the south of the 34th was the 21st Division, which needed to break through north of Fricourt. It took 4,256 casualties in the unsuccessful attempt, some of which were entirely unnecessary, as when A Company of the 7th Green Howards attacked a German machine gun team at 7.45 p.m. on its own and without orders, in what has accurately been described as ‘one of the most bizarre episodes of the whole battle’.61 The company was under orders to hold the front-line trench until 2.30 p.m. when they were to join an attack with other troops, but the very experienced Maj. Kent saw the damage being done by a machine gun and presumably thought he could take it out with a determined rush. Personal initiative always carries a risk and he was among the one hundred fallen. The machine gun was still in action in the afternoon when it cut down another battalion.

Pte. Daniel Sweeney of the Lincolnshire Regiment was a Regular soldier who had joined the army in 1907. He was discharged in March 1919, by which time he had married when on leave. He had four sons, all of whom were to serve in the Second World War. In a letter home simply dated July, he wrote, ‘I must tell you what I know and saw of this murder; I think I am allowed to tell you and it will be a truer story than what you have read in the papers, at least I think so.’62 In their support role, the 1st Lincolns had to ‘get across the German trench with our loads as quickly as possible… but as soon as were all on top the Germans started sending big shrapnel shells—terrible things—I heard when we got into the German first line of trenches… we lost twenty-four men killed by one shell.’ That night they had to relieve the men in front of them: