THE AREA OF THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE SOMME The key map in the lower corner shows the Allied line before the battle, and the relation of the battle area to the rest of the Western Front. The British forces involved extended from Gommecourt to Maricourt, rounding the Fricourt salient. The attack on the section reaching from Gommecourt nearly to Thiepval, in the hands of the right wing of General Allenby's Third Army, was subsidiary and failed. The five corps of the Fourth Army under General Rawlinson made the chief attack, on the front between Thiepval and Maricourt. The French Sixth Army, with General Fayolle in command, lay next on the right, from Maricourt to Fay. This attacking force was flanked on the right by General Micheler's Tenth Army. Broadly, the British objective was Bapaume; the French, Péronne. The west face of the salient whose angle was at Fricourt lay across the Ancre and was crossed by the AlbertBapaume road. The French line stretched north and south across the Somme itself. Fortified woodlands were traps in the path of advance. The first change in the line was made between la Boisselle and Montauban, while the forbidding barriers surrounding Thiepval and Combles resisted for many weeks. The French made steady progress toward their goal, and co-operation between the allies was close and effective. "A German prisoner who had taken part in the Verdun fighting subsequently remarked, 'The shell-fire on the Somme was much worse than that in the region of the Lorraine fortress.' ΑΝ OBSERVER TELLS OF THE FIERCE Of this phase of the battle, Mr. Robinson says: "Never since the war had entered on its stationary phase in the existing positions had there been anything approaching in scope and intensity the shelling and miscellaneous fighting which raged along a hundred miles of front. It was only the overture; but it was stupendous and terrifying, even though what one saw and heard was only a small section of the dreadful whole." The effect of the raking fire he describes in part as follows:-"All the foreground was a mere brown wilderness embroidered with a of trenches. The woods within the dreadful zone were being deliberately stripped leafless, and château and farm and village alike converted into jagged piles of ruins. Most terrible of all was the constant cloud of smoke which overlay the landscape." And at midnight of the thirtieth of June, as he watched from the Albert ridge, "As far as the eye could see it was one amazing display of fireworks. It was more constant than the flickering of summer lightning, resembling rather the fixed but quivering glow of Aurora Borealis. One could distinguish the bursts of the great shells from the rhythmical pounding of the trench mortars, and the quick, ruddier flashing of the shrapnel bursting in the smoke bank which hung overhead. Punctuating it, intensely white against the other flames, rose almost like a continuous fountain the star shells and with them red flares, like the balls of huge Roman candles, which rose and hung awhile and slowly sank and died away." The enemy divisions holding the area of the proposed attack were the Sixth Army, under the Crown Prince of Bavaria, and the right wing of Otto von Below's Second Army. Anticipating that the assault would be made In the early morning of the first of July, a morning bright and fair, with mists still hanging over the valleys,the artillery action grew to a height that dwarfed even its extraordinary preparation of the preceding week. French and British guns spoke their loudest, and smoke screens were projected in the face of the enemy. The experiences of listeners varied strangely. To some at close range, there came almost no sound from the explosions they were watching; while others, miles away, were overwhelmed by the furor of deafening noise. It was a curious phenomenon. Philip Gibbs was on the hills, witnessing the storm of conflict. "For a time," he says, "I could see nothing through the low-lying mist and the heavy smoke clouds which mingled with the mist, and I stood like a blind man, only listening. It was a wonderful thing which came to my ears. Shells were rushing through the air as though all the trains in the world were driving at express speed through endless tunnels in which they met each other with frightful collisions." HE SIGNAL FOR THE ADVANCE IS GIVEN. THE At 7:30 an instant's break in the thunder sound marked the lengthening of the range and the dropping of a barrage. Then came the added rattle and crack of machine gun and rifle fire. The men were starting forward. On they moved through the hail of shrapnel and shot coming from the German guns behind the smoke and barrage screens. At Gommecourt there were three shrapnel curtains falling between the British and their goal-a distance of five hundred yards. As high explosives from the German lines had shat GERMAN SOLDIERS BESIDE A CANAL OF THE SOMME A canal accompanies the course of the Somme River, avoiding the marshes and cutting across at the bases of the deep loops formed by the stream. These Germans are on the look-out in a concealed position on the bank of the canal. Their attention seems fixed upon something in the distance down the canal. A REVIEW BY RUPPRECHT, CROWN PRINCE OF BAVARIA Prince Rupprecht, Commander-in-Chief of the Bavarian Army, the only member of German royal families to gain distinction during the war, was, at the opening of the Battle of the Somme, in command of the German army lying in the northern area, where the offensive was repulsed. Later, he was given supreme command of the German forces engaged in the battle. Pictures, Henry Ruschin tered the assembly trenches, the British ranks had to be formed chiefly on the open ground; but in regular formation. as if for parade the companies marched forward into a shattering shower of explosives. Thousands were destined to pay the price at once. Others broke through in safety to the goal beyond. At Beaumont Hamel, where for seven months British fatigue parties, under the direction of Lancashire miners, had been at work upon a mine of cavernous proportions, the largest in the campaign thus far, the explosion on that July morning, immediately before the infantry advance, carried upward and scattered "half the village," according to one of the sergeants present. HIEPVAL AND THE SCHWABEN REDOUBT From Thiepval northward, where the German preparations were most careful, and machine-guns, safe and sound, could be lifted out of deep shelters to be carried far to the front through tunnels leading to protected pits, there to be used to isolate parties that had already passed, the enfilading fire from thickly clustered guns of all sorts and sizes cut down numbers of the assaulting divisions, leaving only scattered groups to seize points that they could not hold. Thiepval village was entered by the members of a Scottish battalion; while the Ulster Division reached and for a time held the Schwaben Redoubt, on the ridge north of the village. They took about 600 prisoners and gallantly fought against all odds, making the day for them a day of glory. Yet, before night fell, the line from Thiepval to Gommecourt had been forced to return to its original positions. The main attack, from the Ancre at St. Pierre Divion to Maricourt, included, as we have noticed, the Fricourt salient. Running back of Fricourt was a stiffly fortified chalk ridge ("the highest in the whole region between Albert and Péronne"), reaching from La Boisselle to the brickworks directly. east of Montauban. Mametz was a hamlet situated on the southern slope of the ridge and very near Fricourt. Instead of attacking Fricourt directly, the Allies used again the pincers method that had been applied at St. Mihiel and on other salients. From the west, by way of Ovillers and La Boisselle toward Contalmaison, and from the south by way of Mametz and Montauban, incisions were to be made in the sides of the angle. VETE VETERANS OVERWHELMED BY SOLDIERS OF THE NEW ARMY. Mametz was early taken by a division already famous for achievements at Ypres and elsewhere; and within a few hours of the opening of the attack Montauban too had fallen. The victors there, unlike the garrison of experienced Bavarian soldiers, were, among others, the Manchesters-chiefly young clerks and warehousemen, who had been but a few months in training, and who fought, nevertheless, with a spirit worthy of veterans. The 6th Bavarian Regiment opposing them was reduced almost to annihilation by a loss of 3000 out of 3500. The brickworks, where the British had anticipated vigorous resistance, were captured without difficulty, for they were found to have been shattered by artillery fire. THE HE FRENCH ALSO MAKE CONSIDERABLE Where the French left joined the British right wing, the two armies kept pace together in a steady advance. Among the French troops in action was the 20th Corps, which had fought gloriously at the Marne and at Verdun. North of the Somme, on the first day of the battle, the French arrived at the edges of Curlu and Hardecourt. South of the Somme, where their attack was not at all expected by the enemy (who supposed the French resources strained to the utmost by the battle of Verdun), they swept on into Dompierre, Becquincourt, Bussu and Fay before nightfall. Their casualties were comparatively few, but the Germans had suffered great losses in killed and wounded. On July 2, the French progress kept up the same rate. Curlu, Frise, the Wood of Méreaucourt and the village of Herbecourt were added to their conquests. General Fayolle's right Copyright THE SCENE OF FRENCH SUCCESSES ON THE SOMME, 1916 The progress of the French on their part of the front was accomplished without enormous losses owing largely to exact co-ordination between artillery and infantry. Hardecourt fell into the hands of General Fayolle's Sixth Army at once. By gradual steps they moved toward Combles, taking Maurepas in August. In September Combles was surrounded by British and French, the latter crossing the Péronne-Bapaume Road and seizing Bouchavesnes, Le Priez Farm, Rancourt and Frégicourt. On September 26, Combles was entered by troops of both nations. Further progress north of the Somme was toward Le Transloy. The French in October attacked Sailly-Saillisel and took Sailly. Farther south, along the river and beyond it, an immediate approach to Péronne had been gained early in July by the capture of Curlu, Dompierre, Becquincourt, Fay, Herbecourt, Assevillers, Flaucourt, Feuillères, Estrées, Belloy-en-Santerre, Assevillers, Hem, Biaches, and la Maisonnette. In September General Micheler's Tenth Army came into action and took the German first position on a front of almost three miles. During September and October they continued to go forward, taking Vermandovillers, Deniécourt and other places. |