Fifty-third and 54th Brigades reached their initial objectives in just 30 minutes, following a barrage of artillery and machine-gun fire. Two mine blasts preceded Zero by about three minutes. On the left, 54th’s 11th Royal Fusiliers* and 7th Bedfords† advanced broadly between the two craters. Both were smartly across the German front and support lines with, respectively, ‘few’ and ‘extremely small’ losses.137 Lance-Corporal Cousins found the advance hard work: ‘I am carrying a Lewis gun and a pannier of 2 drums of ammunition. I find it impossible to keep up with the fast-moving men with rifles only.’138 Further on, the Bedfords suffered heavily from a machine gun at The Triangle strongpoint, which was overpowered with rifle and grenade. Eleventh Royal Fusiliers made good time, bombers overcoming pockets of resistance. So rapid was the advance that the 11th had to pause just prior to Pommiers Trench, its first objective, and wait for the barrage to step back further.139 After it lifted, 11th Royal Fusiliers and 7th Bedfords seized their objective, which was 750–1000 yards from their jumping-off lines, at about 8 a.m.140
One of the dead was Lance-Corporal Richard Goebel, a 40-year-old in 7th Bedfords. The electric gas-stoking machine driver from Fulham, London, had served in the Royal Marines before the war. He is buried at Dantzig Alley British Cemetery near Mametz. Several years later his family — wife Edith, 42, and school-age daughters Edith and Alfreda — penned a simple epitaph for his headstone: ‘In loving memory of our dad.’ But, Goebel was just one among many casualties. Lance-Corporal Cousins, also 7th Bedfords, confessed to a ‘callous indifference to what happened to other people as long as it doesn’t touch you so why worry.’141
Unteroffizier Friedrich Thomas, a pre-war paralegal from Karlsruhe in RIR109, watched 54th Brigade storm forward in ‘great masses’ towards Pommiers Redoubt, which he knew as Jaminwerk: ‘Our defence position was not as good as at La Boisselle and Ovillers, we had no protection against the enemy’s fire and had to move towards the village [of] Mametz, leaving wounded and dead behind.’142
The advance on Pommiers Redoubt, the second objective and about 250 yards further on, began at about 8.30 a.m. Eleventh Royal Fusiliers, 7th Bedfords and a company of 10th Essex, from the neighbouring 54th Brigade, moved forward.143 They faltered under frontal rifle and machinegun fire while crossing the flat of the Mametz–Montauban ridge, with many soldiers shot down in the redoubt’s partially cut wire. Cousins thought the fusillade murderous: ‘Men were falling right & left of me screaming above the noise of shellfire and machine guns.’144 Captain Wilfred Bull, 7th Bedfords, reckoned the 30 minutes outside the redoubt ‘will be a nightmare for years to come.’145 The redoubt was soon outflanked and rushed. Its defenders were killed or taken prisoner by 9.30 a.m. after a bruising, hour-long hand-to-hand scrap through trench bays and in dugouts.146 Seventh Bedfords’ war diarist later wrote of the heavy losses: ‘Many of the dead lay round the front and flanks of the redoubt. It is unquestionable that the Germans who remained in the redoubt were either ordered or fully prepared to defend this last vital point in their line of defence to the last.’147 Not all of the defenders there were prepared to fight to the end, as Unteroffizier Gustav Luttgers, RIR109, explained:148
We realised it was the English who were behind us, so we jumped back into our trench. . . . We tied a handkerchief to a rifle and waved it and the English came and rounded us up. We were very depressed but we knew that once we had surrendered the English wouldn’t shoot us. We could see from their faces that they were as pleased as we were that it was all over, but they took all our watches from us.149
With Pommiers Redoubt captured, the now-mingled 11th Royal Fusiliers and 7th Bedfords, reinforced by 6th Northamptons,* pressed on to Beetle Alley, 100 yards on. They seized that trench at about 10.15 a.m. Attempts to bomb east along Montauban Alley towards the village 1000 yards away were thwarted by trench blocks of wire and wood, and devolved into fitful bomb-throwing contests that failed to produce results. This advanced line would be the high-tide mark of the 54th’s advance for some hours, the exhausted and thirsty soldiers preparing their new positions for defence. Cousins recalled the ‘frantic efforts to get organised, to find friends, the cessation of gun fire, an uncanny silence. Neither side knew where each other were [sic] for sure so artillery was out.’150 Lieutenant Derick Capper, 8th Royal Sussex,* led his platoon of pioneers forward in artillery formation behind 11th Royal Fusiliers and up to the new front line:
We were eventually able to get to work on making ‘strong points’ and I spent the rest of the day moving between them to supervise the work and see the sections had all the necessary equipment etc. By evening the fighting had died down and the Germans had been driven back across Caterpillar Valley well behind their original trench system. It was a fine night. . . . I was pretty soon moving around after dark. Corpses were lying around and could not easily be seen so one was constantly treading on them — a very unpleasant sensation.151
The 54th had advanced 1000–1500 yards and secured its portion of the Mametz–Montauban ridge, but the 18th’s other brigades were lagging.
Fifty-third Brigade attacked uphill, at first partially astride the Carnoy–Montauban road, to the right of the 54th. Initial progress on its right flank, where 8th Norfolks was attacking, was helped by bursts of liquid fire from two Livens Large Gallery Flame Projectors. These oilfuelled metal dragons, 56 feet long and weighing 2.5 tons, lay hidden in more Russian Saps, just west of the road and the Carnoy craters.152 They were about 60 yards from the German front line, but had a range of about 110 yards. Their nozzles had been pushed up overnight on 30 June. ‘With a roar,’ wrote Colonel Charles Foulkes, Special Brigade, RE, ‘the streams of oil became ignited [at 7.30 a.m.] and shot forward towards the enemy, being traversed slowly from side to side, while dense clouds of black smoke, flecked with flame, rose a hundred feet into the air.’153 Second-Lieutenant Tullock, who was just behind the British front line, watched the khaki-clad figures of 8th Norfolks move forward:
Spouts of liquid fire, accompanied by vast volumes of black smoke, shrouded the German trenches in a mantle of death. At the appointed hour crowds of small figures leaped into the battlefield. My heart stood still to see them. They seemed to move about in a confused manner — now appearing, now disappearing. How feeble and tiny they looked in that ghastly reek?! ‘None will survive,’ I said to myself. But the event gave me the lie, for gradually they passed and entered into the shell clouds, and as they passed others came. The smoke swallowed up the heroes in its folds.154
On the left, 6th Royal Berkshires* suffered some casualties from the 5000-pound Casino Point mine blast. As Captain Richard Rochfort of that battalion explained, ‘There was a blinding flash, the whole of the earth seemed to shake and the mine went up. The earth was filled with huge lumps of earth. . . . One man was killed by a sphere of earth five feet in diameter which fell on him.’155 Lance-Corporal Edward Fisher, 10th Essex,† reckoned the mine sent up a fountain of earth as tall as Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London: ‘I saw huge slabs of earth and chalk thudding down, some with flames attached, onto the troops as they advanced.’156 The blast obliterated a German machine-gun strongpoint, destroyed three dugouts and four sniper posts and resulted in shell-shocked enemy soldiers surrendering.157 It also left a crater 97 feet wide and 30 feet deep, surrounded by a doily of brilliant-white chalkstone spoil.158
With the wire cut the Berkshires and 8th Norfolks‡ were promptly into the German front line and beyond.159 Eighth Norfolks’ right was subsequently slowed by nests of resistance and enfilade from further east, but the advance of its left companies and 6th Royal Berkshires was unaffected, and it pressed on towards their first objective, Pommiers Trench.160 Three machine guns slowed the advance; one crew was surprised by a small bombing party and charged, and the other crews retreated. Pommiers Trench was taken at about 7.50 a.m., but machinegun strongpoint The Loop held out at its eastern end and caused many casualties. A company of 10th Essex was sent up as reinforcements. Bombing squads and L
ewis guns sent to silence the strongpoint were held up by blocked trenches and failed. The rump of the 53rd was at its first objective on time, but casualties were heavy and on the right it was still held up by pockets of determined resistance.
‘One fellow quite near me carrying a bag of bombs was hit & his bombs exploded giving him a terrible wound,’ said Private Norton, a Lewis gunner.161 ‘We occupied Jerry’s front line. One dug out enemy still firing up the shaft. One or two “mills” hand grenades after warning thrown down the shaft. No result. Then an officer of trench mortars threw down a football [of] 56lbs of high explosives, which blew in the entrance.’162 Norton and a friend hauled a British officer whose knees had been smashed by bullets to safety. ‘Heard later that he lived although crippled.’163 Thirty-six-year-old Landsturmann August Kind, RIR109, was killed somewhere around the Casino Point crater, just a few weeks after writing a last postcard home to his sister. ‘I’m still well, hope you are too. Hope to see you soon.’164 Kind has no known grave.
Progress was slower again for 55th Brigade, which attacked up the incline east of the Carnoy–Montauban road behind a barrage of artillery and machine-gun fire. More than two battalions — from left to right, two platoons of 7th Buffs* and the 7th Queen’s† and 8th East Surreys‡ battalions — began to cross the up-to-250-yards-wide no-man’s-land. Private Jarman later recalled: ‘We had been drilled to go over in Star Formation, the four sections of each platoon forming a star and then on approaching the German line to spread out in extended order.’165 One of the Livens projectors apparently suppressed the garrison at the western end of the 150-yard-long Carnoy craters,166 but not at its eastern extremity where the two 7th Buffs platoons made little impression. A machine-gun here tore into 7th Queen’s and 8th East Surreys in enfilade. Casualties were heavy, 7th Queen’s suffering ‘very severely’ in the welter of bullets.167 The ensuing confusion and delay gave German defenders time to man their support line, held as the front line, and other positions further back. When the British barrage lifted, 7th Queen’s was checked by small-arms fire and ‘all advantage was lost.’168 Eighth East Surreys had better luck and crossed the enemy front-line system, but was held up at a tangle of trenches known as The Warren until the neighbouring 30th Division’s progress forced German infantry to retire. By 10 a.m., 8th East Surreys, helped by elements of two 7th Buffs companies, had bombed their way forward to just shy of Train Alley, their first objective. Fifty-fifth Brigade’s progress, though, was alarmingly slow.
A bullet tore a chunk of Private Jarman’s right calf muscle away early in the 7th Queen’s attack: ‘In the few minutes in which I remained conscious I had a look round and the ground was just covered with lads in khaki, dead, wounded and dying. The ground was being spattered with shrapnel, high explosives and bullets — it was almost impossible not to get hit and the noise of it was deafening. It was like being in a daze — the last thing I remember is seeing a Woking lad, [Lance-Corporal] Tommy Lomax, blown to nothing.’169 Lomax is named on the Thiepval Memorial. Meantime, Lieutenant Heath watched 8th East Surreys go forward: ‘Here, a single soldier would fall; there, a whole group would be mowed down by a machine gun, or disintegrate when a shell burst among them: but the lines still moved steadily forward. To me it seemed that these brave men were marching straight to victory, and I was tremendously elated.’170 An hour later he was in the old German front line, whose ‘sole inhabitants at this point were three dead, extremely dead, Germans with two or three other corpses round the traverse on each side.’171 Perhaps these bodies were evidence of the vicious work done by Captain Claude Janion, 8th East Surreys. Janion reached the German front line and, as Heath recalled, had ‘gone completely berserk; armed with a rifle and bayonet he was seen to kill ten Germans, most of them with the latter weapon.’172 After the war, Janion, whose bravery on this day won him a Distinguished Service Order, became a school teacher in Johannesburg who taught his pupils of Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table and, somewhat ironically given his actions on 1 July, chivalry.
Captain Wilfred ‘Billie’ Nevill, 8th East Surreys, won fame of a different stripe. The 21-year-old Cambridge University student — keen on rugby, cricket, hockey and running — had bought a pair of footballs when on leave in London. The idea was to provide at least some mental distraction for men faced with hopping the parapet sandbags and moving forward to cross a bullet-swept no-man’s-land. One of the footballs he bought was inscribed:
The Great European Cup-Tie Final,
East Surreys v Bavarians,
Kick Off at Zero.
‘I saw an officer climb into No Man’s Land, a football under his left arm. He was beckoning the others to follow, as they came out he kicked off the football,’ wrote Private Leonard Price, 8th Royal Sussex, whose platoon was nearby.173 Nevill, who had heard the opening whistle, was not alive to see the contest end: he was shot dead within 20 yards of the British line. He is buried at Carnoy Military Cemetery.
By mid-morning, the 18th’s attack was far from uniform across its roughly 2000-yard-wide frontage. Only the 54th had attained its second objective of the Mametz–Montauban ridge. The adjoining flanks of the neighbouring 53rd and 55th, broadly centred on the Carnoy–Montauban road, had stalled near the German front line. The result was a large southpointing wedge of still-German-held trenches and strongpoints that jutted defiantly into the 18th’s path of advance, its apex at the Carnoy craters. Shortly after 8 a.m., Brigadier-General Thomas Jackson’s 55th Brigade headquarters knew all was not going to plan.174 As the 7th Royal West Kents’ war diarist explained, ‘The [55th] Brigade informed us by telephone that all appeared to be going well, but that the leading Battalions had met with more opposition than was anticipated, and had suffered considerable casualties.’175 It was about 9.30 a.m. before the craters fell to Captain Arthur Kenchington’s B Company, 7th Buffs, and about 200 Bavarians were taken prisoner, several of them badly scorched by the Livens flame projectors.176 Kenchington wrote: ‘In the end, a gallant dash by a Subaltern and a Sergeant into a wire-filled sap and thence round the flank of the [crater] M.G’s [machine guns] succeeded and allowed the survivors to clear the area. The crew of the M.G. were clubbed. Heaps of used [bullet] cases testified to the stout way they had served their gun.’177 Even so, the wedge of German resistance opposite the 53rd and 55th held out. Maxse’s attack had stalled, which meant the neighbouring 90th Brigade, of 30th Division, would advance on Montauban with its left flank open to enfilade and potentially a locally organised counterattack.
Resistance slowly unravelled as the German defenders realised they were outflanked. With Pommiers Redoubt lost to the west and Montauban having fallen to the east, German infantry was in danger of being cut off if the Mametz–Montauban road was rolled up behind them from east and west. One by one and then in knots they retreated overland and along communication trenches from Breslau Support Trench, which was impeding 7th Queen’s, and The Loop, which was holding up 6th Royal Berkshires. British patrols and bombing parties followed, kept contact and occupied the evacuated ground. German rear-guard positions were bombed and rushed, grenades were tossed down dugout steps and large groups of surrendering Badeners, Prussians and Bavarians were rounded up, disarmed and sent trotting into captivity. Seventh Queen’s nabbed 90 enemy soldiers, while 60 more surrendered to 6th Royal Berkshires.178 ‘They would not face the bayonet and took to their heels. But few escaped,’ said Sergeant William Lambourne, 6th Royal Berkshires.179 Resistance at Back Trench, opposite 8th Norfolks and elements of 7th Queen’s, lasted until 1 p.m., when about 160 Bavarians clambered atop their parapet with their hands held high.180 On the extreme right of Maxse’s sector, the leading elements of 8th East Surreys, 7th Royal West Kents and some 7th Buffs had reached Montauban Alley shortly after noon, German resistance before them fragmenting comparatively quickly. But it was 2 p.m. before 7th Queen’s, reinforced by more 7th Buffs, arrived at the Mametz–Montauban road and 5.15 p.m. when they took their portion of Montauban Alley. Sixth Royal Berkshires an
d 8th Norfolks arrived alongside 25 minutes later, after a gruelling fight north from The Loop. By 6 p.m., and after a hard-fought contest, the 18th (Eastern) Division finally held Montauban Alley in its entirety and had achieved almost all of its battle objectives.
Fifty-third and 54th Brigades now sent a few hundred men forward a further 400 yards to their third and final objective in the western depths of Caterpillar Valley. These soldiers — a total of three casualtythinned platoons from 7th Bedfords and 11th Royal Fusiliers, along with a company of 8th Norfolks — held their advanced line until relieved on 2 July. Before then, as dusk began settling in on 1 July, they sent patrols out to probe for enemy positions. One small band of 8th Norfolks actually reached the fringes of Caterpillar Valley Wood, meaning they had covered an impressive 2300 yards since setting out at 7.30 a.m. that morning.
‘I came across [Private] Roger Waghorn [of 7th Royal West Kents] . . . and he remarked that we should never forget the 1st of July, 1916, when we met in the enemy’s trenches and had a smoke,’ said Lance-Corporal Clarence Burnett, whose platoon of 7th Royal West Kents had gone forward as reinforcements late that morning.181 Meanwhile, 12th Middlesex* advanced in artillery formation at about midday to occupy and consolidate the old German front overrun by the 54th. The war diarist of the 12th explained: ‘The German trenches were very much damaged and in places obliterated. There were many German dead . . . and prisoners taken appeared very dazed and shaken, testifying to the intensity of our Bombardment.’182
First day of the Somme Page 37
