SOMME BRITISH Sector - Ulster Tower - Thiepval Wood Trenches - Ancre Cemetery
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
- •
- 06 Apr, 2019
- •
Years of visit: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012
We continue in the area around Thiepval with visits to the Ulster Tower, Mill Road Cemetery, and the Thiepval Wood trenches, to end this photo report at the Ancre British Cemetery.
The Ulster Tower has been build in 1921 on the location of the German “Schwaben Redoubt”, a redoubt surrounded by a maze of trenches and machine gun posts.
From the park at the foot of the Ulster Tower: a south-east to north-west panorama, in the opposite direction of the army panorma, which gives an indication of the overview, the German 26th Reserve Division possessed from the Schwaben Redoubt.
The ploughed land in the foreground marks the location of the first line trenches of the redoubt. The wood on the horizon is the New Foundland Memorial Park of Beaumont-Hamel.
The trees in the valley belong to the Ancre valley. View in the direction of Hawthorn Ridge and Hawthorn Crater.
The only relic, left of the Schwaben Redoubt, is this German Observation Post.
On the other side, on top of the hill, behind the Tower, lies the Mill Road Cemetery.
Before we continue later on this page with our visit to the Ulster Tower and it's Visitors Centre, I show you a photo impression of my visit to the Mill Road Cemetery, made in May 2010.
View south-west from the track upward the former location of the Schwaben Redoubt: Thiepval village (left) and the wood around the Thiepval Memorial (right). The asphalt road (centre) used to be called in wartimes "Mill Road".
From the same track upward to the cemetery; a view westward over the Ancre Valley in the direction of Hawthorn Ridge (centre).
Source : Commonwealth War Graves Commission
A view south-eastward.
Rather exceptional: many headstones in front of the Cross of Sacrifice are laying flat.
The Battle for the Schwaben Redoubt
At 1 July, 1916, at 7.30 AM the Ulster soldiers attacked fom their first line in Thiepval Wood, the Schwaben Redoubt, or Hansa Stellung, on the other side of Mill Road, on that time occupied by units of R.I.R. 99 and R.I.R. 119.
Order of Gen. von Soden of the 26th Reserve Division to Major Roesch (B.R.I.R.8) and commander of the 3rd group to counterattack the Ulster troops, occupying the Schwaben Redoubt, d.d. 1 July 1916, 9.55 AM:
“Enemy
has forced
his way into
the
Schwaben
Redoubt. 2nd
Battalion Bavarian
Reserve Infantry
Regiment 8, with
1st Machine Gun Company and
one
platoon
of the
Musketen
Company
is subordinated
to
52
Reserve Infantry
Brigade. The Battalion is to
move immediately, dealing
with
any
enemy
encountered, to
the
Ancre
Valley and
is to
advance to
the
second position
via Stallmulde
(between
Grandcourt and
Miraumont). Sector South I to
South III is to
be
occupied
and
held, with
main
effort on the
right
flank. 52 Reserve Infantry
Brigade will
be
kept
informed
from
here.
Freiherr
von
Soden.”
The German counter-attack was planned to be deployed by 3 groups: Group 1 under command of Major Präger, Group 2 under command Major Beyerköhler, and Group 3 under Major Roesch. These attack groups, consisting of units of B.R.I.R. 8, I.R. 180, and R.I.R. 119, attacked the Schwaben Redoubt from the north and the east at 16.00 hrs..
Alas at the end of the day, after 14 hours of fighting, the 8th and 9th Royal Irish Rifles, who penetrated into the Schwaben Redoubt and beyond, were forced to withdraw by their own artillery, by German machine gunfire, and fierce German counter attacks, back into Thiepval Wood. The progress of the Ulster Division on 1 July was
the most advanced of all the other British army units!
A view from just outside the hamlet of Thiepval, from the marker on the period picture, “Crucifix”.
The Ulster Tower is an Ulster Memorial to commemorate the heroic actions of the 36th Ulster Division.
In it’s well kept garden around it, you will find a remembrance stone for Ulster Winners of a Victoria Cross during the Great War.
... would guide us through Thiepval Wood, telling us the story of the Ulster 36th Division. Mr. Teddy restored himself this toffee apple trench mortar.
(Anno 2019 Mrs. and Mr. Colligan have retired. The Visitor's Centre is still open!)
Mr. Teddy's open air lecture involves two students of a visiting high school class, wearing exact copies of the 1916 equipment. It gives us a fine opportunity, to observe their outfits in full colour instead of in black and white, as we are used to see on period photographs.
Mr. Teddy tells a class of Ulster schoolkids about the history of the 36th Ulster Division and their bloody contribution to the Battle of the Somme in his own vivid way.
Mr. Teddy explains how shrapnel shells explode in the air and drop off at high speed their murderous shrapnel balls.
This young guy is wearing the same uniform of a private as his great-grandfather of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers did in 1916.
The girls is of course wearing the uniform of a British nurse.
Mr. Teddy let this young
man experience the suffocating choke of the gas mask, used in 1916. The filter
of those days contained the dangerous asbestos, which caused after the war many soldiers suffering from severe lung problems.
These young adolescents were all eyes and ears, and they very impressed by Mr. Teddy’s presentation. I must admit: I was even impressed too !
On 1 July 1916 the Mill Road, left in front of the wood, from Thiepval to Hamel and St. Pierre Divion, was No Man’s Land.
Behind Connaught Cemetery, along the D73, the Mill Road, where many Ulster men are buried, is the entrance to the Private Property of Thiepval Wood.
Connaught Cemetery was begun during the early autumn of 1916. At the Armistice it contained 228 burials. It was then increased, when graves were brought in from battlefields in the immediate area and the following small cemeteries: Thiepval Village Cemetery, Thiepval Valley Cemetery, Quarry Place Cemetery, St. Pierre-Divion Cmty. No.1 ., Divion Road Cmty. No. 2, Small Connaught Cmty., Battery Valley Cmty., Grandcourt, Paisley Hillside Cmty., Authuile, Gordon Castle Cmty., Authuile, and Bluff Cmty., Authuile. The vast majority of the burials are those of officers and men who died in the summer and autumn of 1916. There are now 1.268 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the cemetery. Half of the burials are unidentified, but special memorials commemorate two casualties believed to be buried among them and five buried in Divion Wood Cemetery No.2, whose graves could not be found. The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield. |
The Ulster Division had dug their jump off trenches in the edge of Thiepval Wood.
A carefully restored 1st line trench in the year 2007, but not yet completely finished.
In May 2012 we accompanied Mr. Teddy again into Thiepval Wood to observe 5 years later with also a different camera the great progress of the restoration works. The same restored trench as above, but now 5 years later. The progress is obvious!
...the Ulster soldiers attacked from this trench and from saps like this one the Schwaben Redoubt, ...
Mr. Teddy is explaining the difficulties of the archeologists, when the rain floods the Somme soil.
Remember: the progress of the Ulster Division on 1 July was the most advanced of all the other British army units!
On the edge of Thiepval Wood; a view to the hamlet of Thiepval, and ...
When we leave Thiepval Wood, I spot this view over Connaught Cemetery to the Ulster Tower.
On a rainy day in May 2010 we paid a visit to the Ancre British Cemetery at Beaumont-Hamel.
Ancre British Cemetery. Following the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in the spring of 1917, V Corps cleared this battlefield and created a number of cemeteries, of which Ancre British Cemetery (then called Ancre River No.1 British Cemetery, V Corps Cemetery No.26) was one.
There
were
originally 517
burials
almost
all of
the 63rd (Naval)
and 36th
Divisions, but
after
the
Armistice
the
cemetery was
greatly
enlarged
with
many more graves
from
the
same
battlefields
and
from
the
following smaller
burial
grounds:
Ancre River British
Cemetery No.2, Beaucourt Station
Cmty., Green Dump
Cmty., R.N.D.
Cmty.,
Sherwood
Cmty., Station Road
Cmty.,
and "Y"
Ravine
Cmty. No. 2.
There are
now 2.540
Commonwealth
casualties of
the First World War
buried or
commemorated in
the
cemetery. 1.335 Of
the graves
are
unidentified, but special
memorials
commemorate 43
casualties
known or
believed
to
be
buried
among
them.
There are
also special
memorials
to 16
casualties
know
to have been
buried in
other
cemeteries,
whose graves
were
destroyed
by shell
fire. The
cemetery was
designed
by Sir Reginald
Blomfield.
43 "Casualties", or rather men are known or "BELIEVED TO BE BURIED IN THIS CEMETERY".
A grave of a private of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, and a grave of an able seaman of the Hawke Battalion of the Royal Naval Division. (a Naval Infantry Battalion).
... at the Thiepval Plateau. In May 2010 the Ulster Tower was in scaffolding due to renovation works.
In May 2011 we returned from the Ancre Valley Cemetery to the restored Ulster Tower via the hamlet of St. Pierre Divion, ...
... where a local inhabitant found his own way to remind us of the German presence here.
I close these impressions of Thiepval and Thiepval Wood with a last view from the 18th Division Obelisque at the western edge of the Thiepval Memorial Park in the direction of Thiepval Wood and the Ulster Tower.
Continue to the next chapter: "Ovillers - La Boiselle"
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.
