Somme 100th Anniversary

Tonie Holt, Valmai Holt

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781473866720
• eBook ISBN: 9781473866744
• Edition: 7
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: History

The 100th Anniversary of the most publically aware battle of WW1 - the battle of the Somme, will be on 1 July 2016 and every media form will be covering it from January onwards. The book has taken 20 years to mature from its first edition to this new 'Definitive' edition, the Seventh, each time being updated and expanded. It is a legacy that should be on every bookshelf.The book is based upon over 30 years of traveling and writing about battlefields by two people - Major and Mrs Holt - who are credited with having started the modern era of battlefield tours - and were awarded the Somme Centenary Medal for their work in 'opening the doors to the battlefields' with their books.This Guide Book is MORE than a guide book - Sir Martin Gilbert said, ' the Holts have raised the Guide Book to a new high level,' and ' the golden thread that runs through it (the previous Somme Guide) - is the focus that the Holts give to the stories of individuals'. It will therefore appeal both to General and to Specialist readers whether they travel to the battlefields or not.This is not merely a guide book, nor a history book, but it is brimming with human interest stories of veterans' experiences, tales of bravery, comradeship, natural terror, literary illusions to poets who experienced the battles (such a Owen & Sassoon, Seeger and Sorley) ...If you buy just one book about the Battle of the Somme, this is the one that you should have, written by those who know the area and the battlefield better even than the French themselves, and who tell its story from both humanistic and military standpoints

ITINERARY ONE

• Itinerary One starts at the Town Hall Square in Albert, heads directly towards the German front line along the main axis of the 1916 British attack and then swings north to follow the front line across the River Ancre and ends in Arras.

• The Route: Albert – Machine Gun Corps & other Plaques, Town Hall, Golden Madonna, Musée Somme 1916, Bapaume Post CWGC Cemetery; Tara-Usna Line; Tyneside Memorial Seat; La Boisselle – site of Glory Hole Tunnels, Lochnagar Crater and Memorials, 34th Div Memorial, 19th (Western) Div Memorial; Ovillers – CWGC Cemetery; Pozières – British CWGC Cemetery, Fourth, Fifth Armies Memorial, KRRC Memorial, Australian 1st Div Memorial, RB Plaque, Gibraltar Blockhouse; Mouquet Farm RB Plaque; Thiepval – Carton de Wiart VC, Plaque, Visitor Centre and Museum, Memorial and Cemetery, 18th Div Memorial; Connaught and Mill Road CWGC Cemeteries; Ulster Tower, Memorials and Visitors’ Centre; Hamel – Essex Regt Plaque on Church; Beaumont-Hamel - Newfoundland Memorial Park, Visitor’s Centre, Trenches and Memorials; Mesnil-Martinsart - RIR Memorial; Auchonvillers - Ocean Villas Guest House, Museum, Tea Rooms, Cellar, Trenches, Conference Centre & Estaminet, Auchonvillers Mil CWGC Cemetery; Beaumont-Hamel - Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Memorial, Beaumont-Hamel Brit CWGC Cemetery, Hawthorn Crater, 51st Highland Div Flagpole, Beaumont-Hamel Church; Redan Ridge No 3 CWGC Cemetery; Serre Road No 2 CWGC Cemetery; Braithwaite Cross; Memorial near site of Wilfred Owen’s Dugout; French Memorial Chapel; French National Cemetery; Serre Road No 1 CWGC & Serre Road No 3 CWGC Cemeteries; Sheffield Memorial Park and Memorials; Queen’s CWGC Cemetery; Luke Copse CWGC Cemetery; 12th Bn York & Lancs Memorial, Serre; Ayette Indian & Chinese Cemetery; Arras Centre & Memorials, Boves, NZ Tunnellers’ Memorial, Wellington Quarry, Faubourg d’Amiens CWGC Cemetery & Arras Memorial, Mur des Fusillés.

• Extra Visits are suggested to Authuille - Ancre CWGC Cemetery, Salford Pals 15th, 16th, 17th Bns/HLI,/Northumberland Fus Plaques, SOA Sgt Turnbull; Dorset Memorial, Lonsdale CWGC Cemetery, Leipzig Salient; Beaucourt - RND Memorial, SOA Lt Col Freyburg, VC; Bois d’Hollande, Cpl A. Burrows & other Plaques; Sucrerie Military and Euston Road CWGC Cemeteries; Hébuterne Bradford Pals Mem; the Gommecourt Salient – Owl Trench, Rossignol Wood CWGC Cemeteries; Rossignol Wood bunker; SOA Rev T. Bayley Hardy VC; Redan Ridge - Waggon Road & Munich Trench Brit Cemeteries; Gommecourt Wood New CWGC Cemetery; SOA Capt L. Green VC; CWGC HQ, Beaurains; Point du Jour CWGC Cemetery; 9th Scottish Div Memorial.

• [N.B.] The following sites are indicated:

Albert - Demarcation Stone and Station, 1944 Resistance Plaque; Ovillers – Breton Calvary, Site of Ulverston Street Trench; Pozières – ‘Dead Man’s Road’ & Chalk Pit; Hawthorne Ridge No 1 CWGC Cemetery; Auchonvillers – Mem to 13th Bn, RIR, Auchonvillers Comm Cemetery; Redan Ridge No 2 CWGC Cemetery.

• Planned duration, without stops for refreshment or Extra Visits: 12 hours.

• Total distance: 40 miles.

• Albert Town Hall Square/0 miles/10 minutes/RWC/Map J14/15/GPS: 50.00109 2.65145

The town takes its name from Albert, Duke of Lynes, whose property it became some time after 1619. Noble links remain to this day and the current pretender to the French throne, the Comte de Paris, can still count ‘Marquis d’Albert’ among his titles. The town’s motto is Vis Mea Ferrum (my strength is in iron), reflecting the iron works that once gave it its prosperity. Previously it had been called Ancre (even Encre before 1610) after the river which flowed through it (right below the Basilique). The original station was built in 1846 and Albert became an important rail link, vital to the growing metallurgy industry and the burgeoning pilgrim tourist business (20,000 pilgrims arrived on 27 April 1862 alone). In 1914 Albert had 7,343 inhabitants. By 1919 it had 120.

Fierce fighting around Albert began in the early months of the war, the first enemy shelling being on 29 September 1914. Albert was a major administration and control centre for the Somme offensive in 1916, and it was from there that the first press message was sent announcing the start of the ‘Big Push’. By October 1916, when the Somme offensive had pushed the German guns out of range, the town was a pile of red rubble. Yet it still offered some attractions to the troops fresh from the front line as a place of rest and rough entertainment. The YMCA Club charged 15 francs a day (for four meals and a bed), which John Masefield said was ‘just 5 francs a day less than the mess at Amiens’. He was dismayed when the club was forced to close on 31 March 1917 to make way either for a hospital or another HQ. The ‘Bonza’ Theatre operated near the old station. Some civilians drifted back in 1917 and attempted to salvage their homes and businesses. General Byng made the town his HQ while planning the November 1917 attack on Cambrai. Then, in a rude awakening on 26 March 1918, during their final offensive, Albert was taken by the Germans. It was re-taken by the British on 22 August, the East Surreys entering the town at bayonet point.

After the Armistice, the Imperial War Graves Commission established its Somme headquarters in a collection of huts joined by duck-boards along the Bapaume road. There were architects, stone masons and carpenters, landscapers, gardeners and wardens or ‘caretakers’ as the cemetery guardians were originally called. They were recruited from the willing ranks of ex-servicemen who undertook the often dangerous, always harrowing work of re-interring their ‘pals’ from isolated graves and reburying them in the beautiful garden cemeteries that were being created with help of experts from Kew and the services of the country’s best architects. Mobile teams of workers, with a cook and the inevitable dog, would be driven out each Monday with basic camping equipment to the isolated, ravaged areas of the old front line. Affectionately known as ‘travelling circuses’, they completed their work with extraordinary despatch and cheerfulness.

The plan to declare the area a Zone Rouge (too dangerous to rebuild, like some of the battlefields around Verdun) was strongly resisted by the inhabitants of Albert. Its reconstruction was helped by the city of Birmingham (hence the street name, rue de Birmingham) which funded a ward in the new hospital, and Bordeaux, and it also became a centre for pilgrims – it was claimed that over 160 small cafés existed to serve them. The conducting of battlefield tours by motor vehicle became a thriving industry.

As early as 1917, John Masefield in his classic description, The Old Front Line, prophesied,

“To most of the British soldiers who took part in the Battle of the Somme, the town of Albert must be a central point in a reckoning of distances. It lies, roughly speaking, behind the middle of the line of that battle. It is on the main road, and on the direct railway line from Amiens. It is by much the most important town within an easy march of the battlefield. It will be, quite certainly, the centre from which, in time to come, travellers will start to see the battlefield where such deeds were done by men of our race.”

That still holds today, and the town has two traditional hotels – the 3-star Hôtel de la Paix (qv), 43 rue Victor Hugo, run by Jean Luc Richard, redecorated in 2013, 9 bedrooms with en-suite facilities, popular restaurant and the base for the Friends of Lochnagar, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 01 64, e-mail: [email protected] The Logis de France Hôtel de la Basilique, run by M et Mme Petit, 10 rooms, restaurant closed Sun night & Mon, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 04 71, e-mail: [email protected] opposite the Basilique as its name implies, also has its faithful regulars. They are joined by the modern, 23-bedroom 3-star Best Western Royal Picardie on the D929 Amiens Road, room service, fitness centre, restaurant, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 37 00, e-mail: [email protected] and the handily sited 3-star Ibis, with 57 air-conditioned rooms, ‘business corner’, restaurant, on the roundabout with the D929/D938, Tel: +(0)3 22 75 52 52, e-mail: [email protected] - so that more tourists can stay in this, the heart of the British sector.

At a superficial glance the rebuilt red-brick town may appear unlovely, but a quiet, observant stroll around its streets is rewarding in its glimpses of a certain Art Deco charm, revealing delightful tiled pictures and patterned brickworks in its varied façades.

Park in the Square. Walk to the town hall steps and face the building.

The town hall, in splendid Flemish Renaissance style, with an Art Deco interior and stained glass windows that show the town’s economic activities, was opened by President Lebrun in 1932. Inside is a plaque commemorating the reconstruction of the devastated war area. To the left of the steps, on the external wall, is a Plaque to Resistance fighters, the Armies of Liberation and Gen de Gaulle. At the bottom of the ste...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• How to Use this Guide
• Historical Summaries 1916/1917/1918
• The Approach Routes
• Itinerary One: North of Albert-Bapaume Road 1916
• Itinerary Two: South of the Albert-Bapaume Road 1916
• Itinerary Three: Defending Amiens 1918
• Itinerary Four: Péronne-Bapaume 1914/16/17/18
• Itinerary Five: The American/Canadian/French 1918 Sector
• Itinerary Six: The Kaiser’s Offensive, 21.03-25.04 1918
• Walks: Four Circular Routes on the Somme
• Allied and German Wargraves & Commemorative Associations
• Tourist Information: Where to stay and eat
• Acknowledgements