SOMME BRITISH Sector - A Concise Introduction to the Battle of the Somme
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 10 Apr, 2019
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Years of visit: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012
The Somme in 1916 marked the junction of the French and British armies on the Western Front.
The German 2nd Army under General Von Below digged itself in with 16 divisions, in 3 lines of defense, and in heavily fortified and under tunneled villages and farms.
Together they make agreements about a series of offensives for the spring and summer of 1916. As we shall see later, all those agreements about those other summer offensive elsewhere will later influence the course of the battle during the Battle of Verdun. The supreme commanders of the French and British armies, the Generals Joffre and Haig, made the decision to launch a joint Franco-British offensive in the summer of 1916 on the river Somme.
In June the General Haig assembled a massive force of troops in the villages around the destroyed town of Albert.
General Rawlinson assembled his 4th Army near villages like Mailly Maillet, ...
After the mine explosions at 7.30 a.m. the British infantry went "over the top".
The Germans had enough time to crawl out of their shelters and dug-outs. They immediately manned their machine gun posts and started their enfilading fire on the British soldiers.
Most British units had severe numbers of casualties, and they had to withdraw to their original jump-off lines.
At the end of the first day the British had some successes, but not much. They had captured some of their objectives and made 4,000 prisoners. Mametz and Montauban were captured. But in Fricourt, La Boisselle, Thiepval, Beaumont Hamel, and Serre only the occasional impact had been made. As night fell, after 14 hours of fighting, these positions were firmly reduced by fierce German counter-attacks.
British casualties after the first day of Battle:
Killed 19.240
Wounded 35.493
Missing
2.152
P.O.W. 505
1 July 1916, is still considered as the Bloodiest Day in the history of the British Army.
In the southern, French Front Sector, General Fayolle's 6th Army reached almost all it's objectives for the first day of the Battle.
The Battle would continue until 17 November 1916.
Continue to the next chapter: "Auchonvillers - Communication Trench "Ocean Villas"
Inleiding: Franz Von Papen & Werner Horn; schaker en pion
Onlangs stuitte ik in een oud boek (1) van 1919 op een opmerkelijk verhaal over een Duitse Luitenant, die in begin februari 1915 een half geslaagde bomaanslag pleegt op een spoorbrug over een grensrivier tussen de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Ook al staat de bekentenis van de dader, Werner Horn, deels in het boek te lezen, de naam van zijn opdrachtgever zal Horn blijven verzwijgen. Na wat verder zoeken vond ik ook de naam van Horn’s opdrachtgever, Franz von Papen, een van de aangeklaagden van het latere Neurenberg Proces in 1946.
In een Grote Oorlog als de Eerste Wereldoorlog is Horn’s aanslag op de brug uiteraard slechts een bescheiden wapenfeit. Toch vermoed ik dat dit relatief onbekende verhaal, dat de geschiedenis is ingegaan als de “ Vanceboro International Bridge Bombing ”, nog interessante kanten kent. Het is onder andere een spionageverhaal over hoe in een groter plan een sluwe schaker zijn naïeve pion offert.
Beknopte situatieschets Canada en de Verenigde Staten in 1915
This trip we start at the Léomont near Vitrimont and we will with some exceptions concentrate on the Battle of Lorraine of August-September 1914 in the area, called, the “Trouée de Charmes”, the Gap of Charmes.
After the Léomont battlefield we continue our explorations to Friscati hill and its Nécropole Nationale. Next we pay a visit to the battlefield of la Tombe to go on to the Château de Lunéville. There we cross the Vezouze to move on southward to the Bayon Nécropole Nationale. At Bayon we cross the Moselle to pass Charmes for the panorama over the battlefield from the Haut du Mont. North-west of Charmes we will visit the British Military Cemetery containing 1918 war victims. From Charmes we go northward to the battlefield of the First French Victory of the Great War, the Battle of Rozelieures of 25 August 1914. North of Rozelieures we will visit the village of Gerbéviller. From there we make a jump northward to visit the ruins of Fort de Manonviller to finish with an interesting French Dressing Station bunker, west of Domjevin.
During this visit, we try to focus on the day that the momentum of the battle switched from the French side to the advantage of the Bavarian side: the day of 20 August 1914, when the Bavarians rapidly re-conquered the territory around Morhange , being also the day of the start of their rather successful “Schlacht in Lothringen”.
We will visit beautiful landscapes of the "Parc Naturel Régional de Lorraine", memorials, ossuaries, and cemeteries. Sometimes we will divert to other periods of the Great War, honouring Russian and Romanian soldiers, who died in this sector. We start our route at the border village of Manhoué, and via Frémery, Oron, Chicourt, Morhange, Riche, Conthil, Lidrezing, Dieuze, Vergaville, Bidestroff, Cutting, Bisping we will finish in Nomeny and Mailly-sur-Seille, where the Germans halted their advance on 20 August 1914, and where they constructed from 1915 some interesting bunkers.
