TOM MORGAN'S SOMME DIARY
- PART 5
TOM MORGAN'S SOMME DIARY
- PART 5
Having left Morchies I returned to Bapaume and drove to Albert. The Albert-Bapaume Road featured strongly in the plans for the Somme attack of 1st July, because it was to become the main supply artery which would have enabled the various support arms and units to keep up with the advance. This was not to be, of course, and the straight road from Albert to Bapaume was to become a symbol not of a floodgate thrown open towards Victory, but of a shutting-down, a closing-in, a vicious bottleneck.
The road runs through countryside all the way, and it takes very little time to reach Albert. On the short journey, however, one sees signposts marking the routes to many villages, almost all of which achieved monumental proportions in the memory of a whole generation and whose mere names on road-signs still have the power to subdue even the happiest sunny-day thoughts, on this sunny day just as much as on that other one, eighty years before. Warlencourt, Flers, Pozieres, Mametz, Fricourt, Montauban, Thiepval, La Boiselle. And apart from these, there are signs to so many cemeteries. For this is the central part of the 1st July, 1916 area, the area where success was most hoped for, and where commanders were prepared to pay the highest prices to achieve it. The attack was not closed down after the initial failure here, as it was further North. Here, the Germans were pushed back little by little, until by the onset of winter success, of a kind, had been achieved.
The 1st July attacks in this central part, astride the Albert-Bapaume Road, failed miserable, just as they did further North. To the South, however, around Montauban, the day went well, with almost all the original objectives being taken in good time. In order to exploit these southern successes in the following weeks, the Albert-Bapaume Road area, once the centre of the attack, now became the left boundary of the new attack zone. References to the battle of 1st July "dragging on for four months" are usually aimed at this part of the line.
I didn't visit all the historic places in this part of the Somme. My five day visit didn't give me time for this, but I did take in many of the "must see" Great War sites in the area:
ALBERT
The town of Albert is quite close to the most southerly part of the 1st July, 1916 battle front. In fact, the attack which began on 1st July, and which we all call "The Battle of the Somme" is officially known as "The Battle of Albert." At least, this is the name given by the Battle Nomenclature Committee, set up to devise individual names for the the many important parts of this and other periods of offensive action.
Albert
is a small town, centred upon two small squares. One square is in front of
the Town Hall and the other is in front of the Basilica of Notre Dame de
Brebieres. The image of this church, in ruins, has become another great visual
icon of the war, for this is the church on whose tower stands the "Golden
Virgin," offering up the figure of the Infant Christ for the approval of
His father in Heaven. The statue now stands firmly above the rebuilt Basilica,
but during the 1916, it leaned precariously over the square and many accounts
written at the time mention it. I suppose that the idea of the Leaning Virgin
can symbolise whatever you want it to, which is why it became such a powerful
image.
During the middle ages, a shepherd claimed to have found a statue of the Virgin and child in a field outside the town. The legendary site of this find can still be located, just behind the front-line on the Albert-Bapaume Road. The statue had been found in a miraculous way and, sure enough, a good crop of miracle-stories concerning it began to circulate. Albert soon became a centre for pilgrims and by the end of the nineteenth century, they say, it was considered a strong rival to Lourdes. The town fathers decided to build an impressive basilica, which was finished in 1897. The Golden Virgin, visible from a great distance, faced the quiet countryside around Albert for just a few years before the peace and reverence were abruptly shattered.
In 1915, the first German shells struck the basilica, damaging the base of the statue and causing it to lean slightly forward. Subsequent hits caused the lean to increase until, by the time the battalions of the Somme marched under its shadow, the statue had leaned lower and lower, to the horizontal and below.
Legends grew up about the Golden Virgin. The British and French soldiers said that the war would end if the Virgin fell. There seems to be an unstated second part to this legend - that it would be the allies who would lose. Superstition or not, British and/or French engineers are said to have secured the statue firmly into place with thick, wire cable.
From their fortified positions on the high ground to the North, the Germans could see the Leaning Virgin and they, too, had considered the possibility of it falling. They had created their own legend - not that the war would end when the Virgin fell, but that the side which shot it down would lose. Perhaps their gunners avoided shooting at the tower, but certainly, when the Germans took Albert in their advance of March, 1918, the Virgin and Child were still looming over the Square. The German gunners, if they had been deliberately leaving the tower alone, must have been glad that they had done so, because they soon found it to be an excellent observation post. The British artillery promptly shelled it to bits and the Virgin and Child crashed down onto the cobbles of the square below.
It is a shame that this statue, an image of a willing sacrifice so slightingly refused, was never found a few months later when the British advance brought them back to Albert. The Golden Virgin of today is not the original one, but a copy.
The rebuilt basilica is also a faithful copy of the original, instantly recognisable. But very gloomy inside. During the Second World War, long tunnels were built - air-raid shelters. There is one main tunnel with lots of little bays leading off from it and the whole complex is now the home of the Musee des Abris - a very good museum depicting the Great War history of the area. There is a video presentation on the Battles of the Somme and a wealth of full-size scenic reconstructions, relics, posters and pictures. If you visit, allow plenty of time.
LA BOISSELLE
Today, the village of La Boiselle (the nearest part of the Somme Battle Front to Albert itself, is larger than it was in 1916. Then, it was a little settlement slightly to the South of the Albert-Bapaume road. Today, the village has spread towards the road. The fortified village was near the site of the largest mine-crater on the Western Front - the Lochnagar Crater.
Leaving the main road, one passes through an area which was on the outskirts of the village in 1916. Here, the opposing trenches were very close together and there was lots of small-scale mining. The area was called "The Glory Hole" and the broken ground is still clearly visible on either side of the minor road to the crater.
The village was so strongly fortified that the 1st July, 1916 plan didn't include a frontal attack. Instead, there was a two-pronged attack designed to encircle and cut off the defences, the strongest point of which were to be obliterated by the explosion of the Great Mine, a minute or two before the main attack began. The plan failed and it was some days before events caught up with the original timetable.
The
crater itself is vast. Some of the mines exploded in Belgium during the Messines
battle of 1917 were charged with more explosive material, but their craters
are smaller. There were other large mines exploded in the La Boiselle area
but these have been filled in. The land on which this crater stands was bought
by an Englishman, Richard Dunning, to save it for future generations. Unlike
the Hawthorn Ridge Crater, this one is not much overgrown. There is some
scrub-like vegetation inside, but the sides still show how the crater was
blasted up through the chalk which underlies the area. I think I remember
reading an account by an airman describing his observations at the time,
when he described it as a huge, white eye in the middle of the battlefield.
I imagine it would still look like that from the air today. The chalk-white
gashes running up the sides are still visible and at the bottom is a raised
area - a little crater within a crater. I imagine that from above, the whole
visual effect would indeed be very reminiscent of a gigantic eye.
This was the only Great War site on the Somme where I saw signs of vandalism. The owner of the crater has had to leave a notice on the little steel safe which contained the visitors' book, informing visitors that the book has had to be removed because of damage. The crater seems to be a late-night gathering-place for the local aimless. Presumably Albert is large enough to have a sizeable number of disaffected youngsters who have nothing better to do in the evenings. Benches have been written on, empty beer-bottles thrown around - that kind of thing. (The only other disrespect I saw was at one of the Pals' Cemeteries by Serre, when some bored pupils from a High School in the North of England had obviously formed some basic, earthy opinions about the wisdom of sending long lines of men marching towards machine-guns, and had decided that the most foolish people in the whole expedition were those who actually did the climbing out of the trenches, and who now rest in the cemetery. They expressed their opinions in the visitors' book, briefly and in very basic language - but only, presumably, after their teachers had signed, mentioning the name and address of the school. They came from the same town as the men who had died there. I am the Head Teacher of a school myself, and thought I might write to the pupils who had so offended me and other subsequent visitors, judging by their later comments. But I decided against it. Young people are often outspoken. I also had a nagging doubt. At the moment when the machine-gun bullets knocked the breath from out of them, I wondered whether the lads buried in the cemetery might have had the same thoughts as their young visitors.)
MAMETZ
To the South of the Battle area, this village was one of the success stories of 1st July, 1916. It was captured in the afternoon. I wanted to visit the Devonshire Cemetery, to see the grave of Captain D. L. Martin, whose story is told in Martin Middlebrook's "The first Day on the Somme." Capt. Martin had gone home on leave shortly before the battle and had passed the time referring to maps and building himself a clay model of the area over which he and his men were to attack on the morning of 1st July. He formed the opinion that when they left their trench and scrambled down a slope soon afterwards, they would come under fire from a machine-gun known to be situated in the civilian cemetery of Mametz, just a few hundred yards away to the right of their line of attack, if the gun and its crew had survived the bombardment. On the day, this is exactly what happened. Because the attack as a whole did succeed, the survivors were able to recover and bury their fallen comrades and the bodies of 162 members of the regiment were taken back and buried in the very trench from which they had assembled in the first place. Among them was Capt. Martin. Another brother-officer buried with him was the poet, Lieutenant W. N. Hodgson, son of the Bishop of St. Edmundbury. Lieut. Hodgson had enlisted in 1914, and had been mentioned in despatches and awarded the Military Cross in 1915. He must have shared some of the misgivings of his brother-officer, Capt. Martin. His best known poem, published two days before his death, shows sad resignation:
"I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
a hundred of Thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say goodbye to all of this;-
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord."
| After the burials, the survivors placed a wooden sign by the filled-in trench in a small area of trees called Mansell Copse. It read. "The Devonshires held this trench. The Devonshires hold it still." A special stone tablet bearing this inscription replaces the wooden sign now. The cemetery is long and narrow, and it is easy to imagine the trench which ran here. In fact, entering by the gate, walking to the far end of the cemetery and looking over the low wall, it's amazing to see that the trench is still there, shallow now, and only a couple of feet deep, but clearly a trench, continuing in a zig-zagging course among the trees of the copse. I climbed over the wall and walked along it. It follows the direction indicated by the headstones in the cemetery for about fifty yards and then swings to the left to face the line of attack of Capt. Martin, Lieut. Hodgson and the others. This must be the point where they climbed out. There, in front, is the downward slope, on the very fringe of the trees of the copse. And there, just off to the right, is the village cemetery in Mametz, where the machine-gun was waiting. |
|
Copyright © Tom Morgan, July,
1996
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