Somme

MAJOR & MRS HOLT’S

POCKET BATTLEFIELD GUIDE TO

THE SOMME

1916/1918

The Big Push’: 1 July – 17 November 1916

The Kaiser’s Offensive: 21 March – 25 April 1918

The American, Canadian & French Sector: March-August 1918

By the same authors:

Picture Postcards of the Golden Age: A Collector’s Guide

Till the Boys Come Home: the Picture Postcards of the First World War

The Best of Fragments from France by Capt Bruce Bairnsfather

In Search of the Better ‘Ole: The Life, Works and Collectables of Bruce Bairnsfather

Revised edition 2001

Picture Postcard Artists: Landscapes, Animals and Characters

Stanley Gibbons Postcard Catalogue: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987

Germany Awake! The Rise of National Socialism illustrated by Contemporary Postcards

I’ll be Seeing You: the Picture Postcards of World War II

Holts’ Battlefield Guidebooks: Normandy-Overlord/Market-Garden/Somme/Ypres

Visitor’s Guide to the Normandy Landing Beaches

Battlefields of the First World War: A Traveller’s Guide

Major & Mrs Holt’s Concise Guide to the Ypres Salient

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battle Maps: Normandy/Somme/Ypres/Gallipoli/MARKET-GARDEN

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Ypres Salient + Battle Map

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Normandy D-Day Landing Beaches + Battle Map

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to Gallipoli + Battle Map

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to MARKET-GARDEN (Arnhem) + Battle Map

Violets From Oversea: Reprinted 1999 as Poets of the Great War

My Boy Jack: The Search for Kipling’s Only Son: Revised limpback edition 2001, 2007, 2008

Major & Mrs Holt’s Concise, Illustrated Battlefield Guide to the Western Front – North

Major & Mrs Holt’s Concise, Illustrated Battlefield Guide to the Western Front – South

Major & Mrs Holt’s Pocket Battlefield Guide to Ypres & Passchendaele

First published in Great Britain in 2006, this revised edition 2009 by

Pen & Sword MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Limited

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Text copyright © Tonie and Valmai Holt, 2009

website: www.guide-books.co.uk

Except where otherwise credited, all illustrations remain the copyright of

Tonie and Valmai Holt. The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

ISBN: 978 1 84415 395 4

The rights of Tonie and Valmai Holt to be identified as Authors of this Work have been

asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Abbreviations

How to Use this Guide

‘The Big Push’: 1 July-17 November 1916

The Kaiser’s Offensive: 21 March-25 April 1918

The American, Canadian and French Sector:

March-August 1918

Allied and German Wargraves

and Commemorative Associations

Tourist Information/Where to Stay & Eat

Acknowledgements

Index

List of Maps

MAP 1The Big Push’: 1 July 1916

MAP 2The Kaiser’s Offensive: 21 March-25 April 1918

MAP 3The American, Canadian & French Sector 1918

Introduction

High Wood

Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,

Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,

The famous spot which in Nineteen- Sixteen,

July, August and September was the scene

Of long and bitterly contested strife,

By reason of its High commanding site.

Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees

Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench

For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;

(They soon fall in), used later as a grave.

It has been said on good authority

That in the fighting for this patch of wood

Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,

Of whom the greater part were buried here,

This mound on which you stand being …

Madam 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.

As I was saying, all is as it was,

This is an unknown British officer,

The tunic having lately rotted off.

Please follow me – this way … the path, sir, please,

The ground which was secured at great expense

The company keeps absolutely untouched,

And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide

Refreshments at a reasonable rate.

You are requested not to leave about

Paper, or ginger-beer bottles or orange-peel,

There are waste-paper-baskets at the gate.

Philip Johnstone*.

February 1918.

To this day the Somme continues to exert a fascination for the descendents of the British and Commonwealth soldiers who fought over it, in particular in the costly battles of 1916 and 1918. The name ‘Somme’ is usually assumed to apply to the great river that meanders through Amiens, Corbie and Bray to Péronne, sometimes broad, sometimes fragmented into pools and canals. In truth, as far as the British were concerned (other than on the right of their 1 July line which butted up to the French near Maricourt and Carnoy) the bitter 1916 struggles took place along the axis of the road from Albert to Bapaume (their objective) or in the Valley of the River Ancre from Albert to Miraumont. That valley was again the scene of the November 1916 fighting. Thus, to be pedantic, it was technically the Battle of the Department of the Somme, rather than the river. However it is traditional to name great battles after rivers, such as the Marne and the Aisne, and so the assumption gained popular acceptance.

The great German offensive of April 1918 did in part parallel the course of the River Somme along the axis of what is today the N29. In both sectors many reminders remain to this day of the horrors of the battles which destroyed towns, villages and the beautiful rolling, wooded landscape. That destruction was more gradual and limited than is generally realised and superb panoramic photographs taken over a period of several years and recently discovered in the archives of the Imperial War Museum by Peter Barton (The Battlefields of the First World War, published 2005) show that beyond the scarring lines of trenches and the pockmarks of shell craters, crops still flourished, trees stood upright and wild flowers bloomed in incongruous contrast to the ugly war-torn areas.

The vestiges of war in this land hallowed by the blood of the protagonists who were wounded or died on it are to be found in the preserved trenches and craters of Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland Memorial Park, in German fortifications like ‘Gibraltar’ near Pozières, in annihilated villages like Fay. The sobering reminder that the currency of war was soldiers’ lives punctuates the battlefield in the form of the many memorials and war cemeteries (there are some 140 WW1 CWGC cemeteries on the Somme that relate to this battlefield). The British and Commonwealth cemeteries are reassuring havens of peace and beauty, devotedly tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission: they evoke well planted country gardens. The French cemeteries proudly fly the Tricolore. The German cemeteries are sombre and often dark with black crosses, and far fewer in number because the land-loving Picard farmers were loath to yield any of their precious ground to the vanquished enemy.

Philip Johnstone’s satirical poem, High Wood, written just before the spring 1918 battles, uncannily anticipates the problems – and their solution – of the Somme battlefields today. Surveys taken by the Somme Tourist Department over the decade from 1994-2004 show that the number of visitors to, for example, the South African Memorial at Delville Wood, have doubled in that time to well over 60,000 per annum and nearly 74,000 visited the new Visitor Centre at Beaumont Hamel in 2004 (twice as many British as French).

The sheer weight of those thousands of feet is eroding the vulnerable original trenchlines and craters and strict measures have had to be taken at Beaumont Hamel to keep them to designated pathways. For (just as Johnstone predicted) the bulk of visitors come in guided tour groups, and museums and souvenir shops have mushroomed to serve their needs. The tourists, who now far outnumber the dedicated pilgrims of the recent past, are well served by those facilities. The atmospheric Somme 1916 subterranean Museum at Albert; the great Historial at Péronne; the beautifully designed Museum at Delville Wood; the small but fascinating Franco-Australian Museum at Villers Bretonneux; the relatively new Visitor/Information Centres at Beaumont Hamel and Thiepval – all give even the most casual visitor a feeling for what happened and who took part in these terrible battles. The inner man, woman and child (for the majority of groups are of students) is also well-catered for in cafés, hotels and bed and breakfast establishments throughout the area. These facilities, informative and convenient as they undoubtedly are, appear to be burgeoning at what some consider to be an alarming rate if the integrity of the battlefield is to remain.

Those of us who had the privilege some 20 or 30 years ago, of visiting ‘The Old Front Line’, so movingly described by John Masefield in his book of the same name, have treasured memories of quiet tracts of the battlefield where the voices, sounds and feelings echoed strongly for those attuned to hear them. Yet, even in 1917 when the book was published, Masefield acknowledged that ‘All wars end; even this war will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be forgotten. When the trenches are filled in and the plough has gone over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. One summer with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began, will be hard indeed to trace even with maps.’ Like Masefield we must accept necessary change and progress and move on.

But why do we continue in ever-increasing numbers to visit these sites of battles fought over 90 years ago? Maybe it is because of the sheer number of casualties of 1 July 1916: some 60,000 casualties (of whom about one-third were killed) which swelled to some 400,000 by the end of the November battles. Approximately 107,000 of the dead with no known grave are commemorated on the vast Thiepval Memorial. These bald figures are so incomprehensively appalling that perhaps we return to the Somme in the pathetic and unrealistic hope that when we see these lush fields and well-established woods, tidy villages and thriving towns, the horrors of 1916 and 1918 will all prove to have been a dreadful nightmare.

What is important is that we should visit, the better to understand the incredible feats of bravery, the moments of terrifying fear, the intervals of comradeship, brotherly love and humour that sustained those exceptional men of 1916 and 1918. There is the somewhat vain hope that by so doing we will (although experience shows us otherwise) wisely learn the lessons of history so as not to repeat the mistakes. It is, however, appropriate to recall the expected response to the famous lines of Laurence Binyon’s poem To the Fallen, which are known as The Exhortation: "We will remember them’.

Tonie and Valmai Holt,

Woodnesborough, Spring 2009.

* Note: During 2005 there was considerable debate on several websites and chat rooms as to the identity of Philip Johnstone, about whom it seems impossible to find any biographical details. One much favoured theory was that Philip Johnstone was the pseudonym of a certain Lt John Stanley Purvis who was wounded during the Somme battle. According to these debates, after the war Purvis returned to