SOMME BRITISH Sector - Ulster Tower - Thiepval Wood Trenches - Ancre Cemetery 

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).

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..

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.

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.

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.

Source: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

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"