Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Today In History: Somme.

At 7:30 AM on this morning in 1916, the fire of over fifteen hundred British artillery pieces shifted from the targets they had been pounding for eight days straight. Eleven entire British divisions clambered out of their trenches and, following orders not to run or become disorganized, started walking forward across No Man's Land. Huddled in their bunkers where they had been pounded with almost two million artillery shells for over a week, the German troops knew exactly what that silence meant. They dragged their heavy machine guns up stairways and ladders to firing embrasures, and for the next several hours a thirteen-mile stretch of French countryside became a scene more grotesque than anything Heironymus Bosch had ever painted.

"We were surprised to see them walking, we had never seen that before. The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started to fire, we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. We didn't have to aim, we just fired into them." -A German machine gunner





In minutes Haig's planned "Big Push" blew apart in a torrent of Maxim bullets. Barbed wire entanglements had not been cut by the bombardment as expected. A British mine that had been dug under the German trenches detonated late, killing British troops that had already advanced that far. The methodical pace and four rank attack, deemed necessary by Haig and his staff due to their professional skepticism regarding the soldiering qualities of the new "Kitchener's Army", turned the mud in front of the German positions into an abattoir. The British 8th Division, attacking near Ovillers, started with 300 officers and 8,500 other ranks. After two hours, it had been reduced to 82 officers and only 3,226 enlisted. The slaughter was similar all up and down the front. The only gains were made in sectors where subordinates had ignored the plan, either by having their units lie belly-down in No Man's Land before the attack, or ordering them to charge at a run rather than stroll at trenches that were supposedly devoid of life due to the bombardment.

When the sun set on that first day of what history remembers as the Battle of The Somme, the British army had suffered almost sixty thousand casualties, 21,392 of which were dead or missing. A French artillery observer, watching the attack, turned and commented to his British liaison, echoing the same words spoken in the Crimea half a century earlier: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of the 780 men in the Newfoundland Regiment who went forward...only sixty eight were available for roll call the following day."

http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-canada-day-we-mourn.html#links

Don M said...

Mr. JRR Tolkien was a young officer who made it.

After the war, the German side of the war became visible. The Germans lost roughly the same number of casualties as the Allies. Further the Somme began the long death spiral of the German Army, as the long service German soldier was attritted by quickly trained British, French, and later American soldiers.

It was not a great victory by the British. It was a good approach to a draw, showing that the British had achieved near parity to the Germans.

Concerned American said...

I have walked the ground in France where the Newfoundlanders were chopped to pieces.

The trenches are mere depressions in the soil now, but still recognizable. The field is well-markered as well.

Less than 100 yards between the Boche lines and the last Newfie trench.

100 yards walking through muck into Maxim-thrown 8mm Mauser automatic fire.

Absolute bloody murder.

Haig is keeping a place ready for Bob McNamara in Hell's "poaching for Eternity in dysenteric fecal matter up to one's lips" special hot tub for the willfully ignorant of military reality.

Thanks for remembering 1 July.

Anonymous said...

One of my SMLE's is marked 1916...I have often wondered if it was there that day.
Despite the casualties, I am not aware of any of the British units breaking and falling back. One story tells of a senior officer viewing one unit through a telescope and wondering why the battalion wasn't advancing...it was because the battalion had been shot down while advancing in formation.
You can't tell from Tam's pic, but the SMLE w/ attached bayonet is damn near as tall as I am (5'9")

staghounds said...

The Thiepval Memorial is one of the most terrifying things on earth.

I was there last winter, it was cold and raining.

There's an Australian Cemetery on the field, and as I passed it I couldn't stop crying. All those poor men, so far from the sunshine of their homes.

There can't be a worse place in Hell than the one for the Kaiser and Franz Joseph.

staghounds said...

And Joseph, you'd have been pretty tall in that army. Standard minimum height was 5'3, and the wartime Bantam Battalions took them down to five feet.

Anonymous said...

"It's magnificient, but it's not war"?

At least, that's what my somewhat rusty high school French seems to want to translate it as. I think.

Hunsdon said...

For the Kaiser and Franz Joseph? Because the British and French were virtuous, noble enlightened non-colonial powers, and when they farted the sun shone forth?

Yes, the blame for the destruction of the Western order is all conveniently that of the Germans and Austrians---always at your feet or at your throat, doncha know!

Plenty of idiocy, malice and blame on all sides---as is frequently the case.

Yes, the quote is "It is magnificent, but it is not war."

I'll raise a sad dram in memory.

perlhaqr said...

Staghounds quoth: There can't be a worse place in Hell than the one for the Kaiser and Franz Joseph.

The British didn't have to get involved.

Shit, the French didn't have to get involved.

Even the fucking Russians didn't have to get involved.

And we Americans sure as fuck shouldn't have gotten involved.

Blaming the Kaiser and stopping there leaves a lot of guilty free of oppobrium. You want to throw tongues on WWI? Wilson could take a few.

Anonymous said...

But German diplomacy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries sure as hell created the environment for such a war to begin. They managed to get on the bad side of the French, Russians, and the British (despite attempting to form alliances with all three).

Anonymous said...

Strangely enough, I am actually the grandson of one of those soldiers...though he was on the German side. He claims to have sat out the war with TB in a sanitarium in Switzerland. However, he emigrated to the US in 1920, so I don't know if it is true or not. (I don't believe that the US would have admitted someone with history of TB)