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BATTLEFIELD VISITS PART THREE

Article by Eddie Morton

THE SOMME, EASTERN AREA.

Following on from the guide for the western part of the Somme battlefield we will now deal with the eastern part, the area east of the Bapaume road.

Once again we will use Albert as our starting point, leave the town on the D938 which is the Peronne road. However if you are camping down near Bray you can access the D938 by using the Albert ring road (D929) as you runs up from Bray.

On leaving Albert you will pass the Albert Communal Cemetery Extension, this is a large cemetery with burials from all parts of the war. In the top section there are graves of men from the7th Royal West Kent’s. It was a tragic coincidence that it was the same battalion that tried to stop the German tanks in Albert in 1940, those who died were buried alongside their comrades from the earlier war.

Continue along the D938, after passing over the roundabout look out for a right turn into the village of Becordel Becour, on entering the village take the first left which will bring you to the Dartmoor Cemetery, a small comrade’s cemetery. It gets its name from the many men of the Devonshire Regiment who are buried here.

There are some interesting graves in this cemetery, in the front row, row F is the grave of Lt Colonel Allerdice who died on the 1^st July commanding the 13^th Northumberland Fusilier but who’s headstone bears the badge of an Indian Cavalry Regiment, the 36^th Jacobs Horse.

In the second row, Row E is the grave of the oldest soldier to die on the western front, that of 68 year old Lieutenant Henry Webber, he was hit by shell fire in Mametz Wood in 1916 while serving as a transport Office with the 7^th South Lancs.

In row C is Pr. J Miller who won the VC in September 1916 for carrying important massages although severely wounded.

On the back row is the father and son Sergeant G and Corporal R F Lee killed on the same day in September 1916 while serving in the same London artillery unit.

 There are 768 graves in this cemetery, all but six are identified.

Retrace your route back down the road to get back on the main road, you can access it by a slip road just after passing underneath it, go east on the D938 and after a short distance you will come to a left turn to take you into the village of Fricourt. In the centre of the village is a bar if any refreshment is required.

You will come immediately to the Fricourt British cemetery (Bray Road), on the 1^st July this spot was right in the middle of no mans land. A Company of the 7^th Green Howards were facing the village with orders not to move, but for reasons that have never been explained they attacked and 108 of the 140 men became casualties. Eighty nine men of the Green Howards died in this and later actions that day and were buried in a large shell hole which is now the centre of the cemetery.

Drive to the top of the village and a small road leading off to the left will take you to Fricourt New Cemetery.

On the 1^st July the men of the 10^th West Yorkshires who were attached to the 21^st Division and had the task of attacking across this area. Mines and artillery should have destroyed the German front line but was ineffectual, although the West Yorkshire’s had some initial success the German machine guns took a heavy toll they were exposed on the bare open landscape that you see in front of you now and were pinned down for most of the day.

The battalion casualties for that day were 396 killed and 314 wounded, the proportion of dead nearly 56% was extraordinarily high the usual proportion was one third killed two thirds wounded.

The casualties of the West Yorkshire were the highest of the 1^st July, only one Officer, himself wounded, and twenty men remained at the end of the day, shortly afterwards they created the Fricourt New Cemetery, the neat rows of headstones conceal the fact that the cemetery is a number of mass graves. It contains 159 men of the 10^th West Yorkshires and 38 men of the 7th East Yorkshires.

The 21^st Division suffered 4,256 casualties in the fields around Fricourt on the 1^st July.

Return to the village and turn left up the road, continue in the direction of Contalmaison and just as you leave the top of the village you will come to Fricourt German Cemetery on your right. This is the only German cemetery in the Somme area. There are 17,026 German soldiers buried here, 5,056 in the main cemetery and a further 11,970 in a mass grave at the rear.

At the end of the war the French were reluctant to let the Germans back in to deal with their dead hence most German cemeteries consist of mass graves rather than individual ones.

Retrace your route back down through the village and take a left hand turn onto the D64 to Mametz, in the centre of Mametz village you will see a sign for the 38^th (Welsh) Division Memorial and Flatiron Copse Cemetery leading off on a track on your left. There is no road up this valley but the track is suitable for cars and vans.

Mametz wood is forever linked with the Welsh regiments they all fought together here in what was a Welsh “Pals” Division, the taking of Mametz wood was one of the hardest fought battles of the Somme campaign.

You will come to the Welsh Memorial first; it is a dragon clutching barbed wire. It was erected in 1986; the inscription in Welsh translates “Let us respect their endeavours. Let our memories live on”

There is a good view of the wood from here and also up the valley. This was the way troops came up to the front line and of course out of the line and became known as Happy Valley. The tracks forked here one going up into Caterpillar Valley but the one going north to the front became known as Death Valley.

Continue up the valley on the right hand fork to Flatiron Copse Cemetery, named after a small piece of woodland on the other side of the track. The headstones are not of the normal Portland stone but of a soft type of granite, however they seem to weather better.

The line of the northern boundary wall is almost the line from which the 8^th Devon’s and the 2^nd Borders launched their successful attack on Bazentin on the 14 July. Shortly after that attack a dressing station was set up here and 373 graves were set in straight rows which now form plot 1. The rest are concentrations from after the war, there are now 1,522 graves.

There is one VC here, that of Cpl. E Dwyer, 1^st East Surreys, one of four men who won VC’s at Hill 60 near Ypers in 1915. He was killed near Guillemont in September 1916.

There are three sets of brother buried together, plot 1 row D is Private Earnest and Herbert Philby of the Middlesex Regiment, plot 6 row G is Lieutenants Arthur and Leonard Tregaskis of the 26^th Welsh (Cardiff City Battalion) and plot 6 row G is Corporal T and Lance Corporal H Hardwidge 15^th Welsh (Carmarthenshire Battalion).

Return the way you came back to Mametz village and back onto the D938 and head for Carnoy, after about 3 Km  you will come to a sign for the Devonshire Trench Cemetery on the right hand side of the road, the cemetery is a few yards up in the trees.

This is the spot from where the 9^th Devons started their attach on Fricourt, if you look across the field to the corner of the Mametz village cemetery in the bottom corner is a shrine this was the position of the German machine gun post which massacred them from the right flank. Prior to the battle one of the Devon’s Officer’s Captain DL Martin made a plastercine model indicating that if the machine gun post was not destroyed in the bombardment they would be annialated, it wasn’t and they were.

After the battle the survivors returned to this trench and buried their dead in it, they erected the now famous plaque at the end of the trench inscribed

“The Devonshire’s held this trench; the Devonshire’s hold it still”

The old wooded plaque as long since gone but the CWGC recreated it in stone and it now stands at the entrance to the cemetery. Among the dead was Captain Martin and Lieutenant Noel Hodgson the war poet.

Just a little further along the road is the Gordon Cemetery, the 2^nd Gordon Highlanders attacked along with the Devons although on the other side of the road, after the battle they collected 93 of their men and buried them in the old support trench and then buried six Second Lieutenants nearby. The headstones are arranged in a semi circle which is unusual.

Continuing along the road to Carnoy you will come to you will come to Carnoy Military Cemetery just off the main road in the village, buried here is Captain Neville who famously provided footballs for his men to kick across no mans land in the first wave of the attack.

Continue along this road to arrive at the Peronne Road Cemetery it was started by British hospital units in 1916 and contained 175 graves by the end of the war. It was then used as a concentration cemetery and now contains 1,324 graves, 366 unidentified.

There is one VC in here that of Lieutenant Colonel W H Anderson who was killed leading a counter attack in 1918.

Drive forward to the cross roads turn left and take the road to Longueval, a distance of about 6Km. On the way you will pass the Bernafay Wood Cemetery. In this area there were a number of woods their names indelibly inscribed on the story of the Somme battle, Bazentin Wood, Trones Wood, Bernafay Wood, Mametz Wood, High Wood and Delville Wood.

As you drive into the centre of Longueval you will see two bars, Calypso 1 and Calypso 2, both owned by the same man, John, who also happens to be the Mayor. You will be able to get a drink and a snack here, or alternatively you can get a drink at the shop at Delville Wood our next stop.

Take the D20 Guillemont road out of Longueval and after about 300m take the left hand fork and almost immediately you arrive at the Delville Wood Cemetery and the South African Memorial.

The South African Memorial is an impressive building and tells the story of the South African forces role in the Great War and other conflicts. It was built here because of their major involvement in taking Delville Wood. You can spend quiet some time here and walk through the wood itself which is marked out in terraces with the original trench names. If you are short of time at least go and see the Hornbeam tree which is just behind the museum, this was the only tree in the entire wood left alive after the war.

Retrace your route back into the centre of Longueval turn right at the Calypso onto the D197 and after about 300m keep straight ahead when the road bears to the right it will be signposted the New Zealand Memorial, you can either drive down this lane or if the weather is favourable it makes a nice stroll of about 1km.

At the end of the track is the New Zealand Memorial that commemorates the part played by the New Zealand Division in the 1916 battle, they achieved their first objective and from it launched a successful attack on Flers.

The inscription on the monolith simply states;

 “From The Uttermost Ends of the Earth”

This reflects the fact that New Zealand is just about as far away as you can get from this part of Europe.

Return to the centre of Longueval and take the D20 to Contalmaison after about half a Km you will come to Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, it stands on the crest of Longueval Ridge and its rear wall stands on what was the main German trench which was captures by the 12^th Royal Scots and the 9^th Scottish Rifles on the 14 July.

A  fine view from the back of the cemetery show from left to right Trones and Benafay woods, Montauban village and the ridge to the right of the village which was captured on July 1^st and then Mametz wood. From the front of the cemetery you look across to High wood.

The cemetery has 5,539 graves and is the second largest on the Somme, more that two thirds of the graves are unidentified.

The New Zealand memorial to the missing is on the side wall. New Zealand decided that it wanted its missing to be commemorated where they fell rather than on a large memorial elsewhere. In this area NZ lost 1,560 men and it bears witness to the intensity of the battle that 1,205 of those dead have no known grave and are named on this memorial.

Carry on the road to Contalmaison, in the centre of the village turn right and half way up the street you will see the sign for Contanmaison Chateau Cemetery, the path to it is up the side of a small farm. A chateau once stood here and prior to 1916 was a German HQ, after its capture it’s cellars were used as a first aid post by the British. Forty seven graves were added after the war to make a total of 289 but it still retains its “Battlefield cemetery” status. It as a great variety of regimental badges indicating the many different regiments that pasted and fought in this area. There is one VC, that of Pr W H Short of the 8^th Green Howard’s.

From the top of the street you can either take the right fork for Pozieres and another drink in the Tommy Bar, or the left hand fork for La Boisselle, either road will bring you back onto the Albert road and back to your campsite.

This as just been an acquaint with the Somme battlefield, these two tours have only shown you a fraction of what is available to see.

 But I hope it has aroused your interest to return and look deeper into what was in one respect a dark time in British history but we must also look to the great acts of heroism and bravery that came from every quarter and the human endeavour that overcame adversity and terrible conditions that they fought in.

WE MUST NOT ALLOW THEIR SACRIFICE TO BE FORGOTTEN.

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