Somme 2010

There are many ridges, fields and woods in the Somme battlefield which summon up sad memories of young men dying by the thousand – ‘sacrifice’ they called it then, and meant it – but in my personal 1916 gazetteer there are two which stand out.

On the southern edge of the British sector is a cemetery occupied by members of the Devonshire Regiment. A sign tells us that ‘the Devonshires held this trench and they hold it still’. All the graves belong to men who came from the same part of England, who knew each other well and whose families formed a community. It is hard to imagine the shock which the annihilation of the Devonshires must have caused when the news reached home.
Like so many 1st July massacres this one was predictable. But unlike most it was also predicted. The regiment’s officer had received his orders in good time and had spotted the fact that a German machine-gun post, concealed in the base of a shrine on the slope facing the Devonshires’ line of advance, would be able to mow them down as they trudged, heavily-laden, towards their objective. He raised this point at Division level but was ignored.

He was right. They were shot to pieces, and so was he. The shrine is still there, and if you crouch down you can see what a perfect field of fire the German machine-gun crew enjoyed (if that is the right word, and it may be).

Soldiers from Britain and what we now call the Commonwealth understood that winning the war was necessary, beyond question, and that it would mean death or mutilation for countless thousands. They hoped they would be lucky but they had no doubt that, if not, their lives would have been lost in a worthwhile cause. Historians have given ‘attrition’ a bad name since it became fashionable to treat the WW1 generals with contempt, but in view of the implacable nature of the enemy there was no other way. The soldiers knew this.

What discouraged them was folly on the part of their commanding officers, and there was plenty of that. There were also many who were thoughtful, thorough, ingenious, receptive to new ideas and brave (scores of generals died in the front line alongside their men). But it’s the numbskulls who have been immortalised in poetry, drama and literature.

At the other end of the Somme battlefield is a bleak slope rising from a valley to a village called Serre. The Germans had spent two years making it impregnable. The village itself had been turned into a warren of underground shelters and strong-points while a string of concealed machine-gun posts, sited 20 metres in front of the buildings, protected it from the expected attack uphill.

For some reason the British general staff believed that their week-long artillery barrage would destroy everything in its path, giving the infantry nothing to do except amble towards the German positions and take possession. This was a mistake, and the main reason – possibly the only reason – why the 1st July turned out to be an unprecedented tragedy for the British army. It is worth noting that the British never made the same mistake again; a lesson learnt, but at an unimaginable cost.

Serre became the mass graveyard of the Pals Battalions – neighbourhood formations of volunteers from the North of England who had answered Kitchener’s call: ‘Your Country Needs You’. Waves of hastily-trained young infantrymen clambered out of their trenches in the valley and walked, leaning forward as if into heavy rain, up the slope towards Serre. They didn’t get far. The machine-gun nests mowed them down, line after line. It is believed that half a dozen managed to reach the village.

The rest can be found today in a phalanx of cemeteries, some small and some gigantic, and are commemorated on a group of memorials erected, by their towns and cities, in the valley where they had assembled for the attack. The shock and distress in those towns and cities when the casualty lists were published has become legendary; whole streets lost their fathers, sons and brothers.

It is perhaps the contrast between what they all expected and what actually happened which lends the story of the Pals its pathos. We see them in photographs, full of life: grinning, cheering, waving at the camera; then we see other photographs of crumpled bodies, hundreds of them, mere yards from their start-line. These young men were scythed down before they had a chance to do anything at all. And for nothing. Serre was never captured.