SOMME BRITISH Sector - Mametz Wood
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 31 Mar, 2019
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Years of visit: 2005, 2007, 2011
Flatiron Copse was the name given by the army to a small plantation a little to the east of Mametz Wood. The ground was taken by the 3rd and 7th Divisions on 14 July 1916 and an advanced dressing station was established at the copse. The cemetery was begun later that month and it remained in use until April 1917. Two further burials were made in August 1918 and after the Armistice, more than 1,100 graves were brought in from the neighbouring battlefields and from smaller cemeteries, including:- CATERPILLAR CEMETERY, MONTAUBAN, in "Caterpillar Wood". It contained the graves of 21 soldiers from the United Kingdom who fell in July 1916, and of whom 12 belonged to the 6th and 7th Gordons. CROSS ROADS CEMETERY, BAZENTIN, near the cross-roads at the North end of Bazentin-le-Grand. Here were buried 15 soldiers from the United Kingdom and four from New Zealand, who fell in 1916-1917. MAMETZ WOOD CEMETERY, outside the Western edge of Mametz Wood, in which 18 soldiers from the United Kingdom were buried in 1916. QUADRANGLE CEMETERY, BAZENTIN, between Bottom Wood and Mametz Wood, named from a small rectangular copse. Here were buried, in 1916, 32 soldiers from the United Kingdom and three from Australia, of whom 22 were artillerymen. VALLEY CEMETERY, MONTAUBAN, between the Briqueterie and Maltzhorn Farm, in which 72 soldiers from the United Kingdom were buried in August and September, 1916. VILLA WOOD CEMETERIES No.1 and No.2, CONTALMAISON, near a small copse North of Mametz Wood. They contained the graves of 62 soldiers from the United Kingdom who fell in 1916. Almost all the concentrated graves are those of men who died in the summer and autumn of 1916. There are now 1,572 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 420 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 36 casualties known or believed to be buried among them, and nine buried in Mametz Wood Cemetery whose graves were destroyed by shell fire. The cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker.
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.
