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today-in-wwi:
A plate from Joe Sacco’s epic illustrated panorama The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme.
July 1 1916, Albert–After a weeks’ bombardment, the great Allied offensive on the Somme was set to begin on the morning of July 1st. Mines were detonated in many places under the German lines at 7:28 AM (and in one notable case, 7:20), and the infantry advanced at 7:30. The majority had crept out into no-man’s land before zero hour, but still needed to make it across a substantial portion of it and through the German wire.
The artillery bombardment had, on most of the line, been entirely ineffective at its goals. The German wire was still intact in most places, German dugouts remained intact and machine guns were able to resume firing even before 7:30. Except in the south, where the French had prioritized it, German artillery was scarcely interfered with and was able to keep up a steady barrage of shrapnel into no-man’s land by 7:25. An account of the ‘Sheffield Pals’ Battalion describes:
They had to pass through a terrible curtain of shell fire, and German machine guns were rattling death from two sides. But the lines growing even thinner, went on unwavering. Here and there a shell would burst right among the attackers….Whole sections were destroyed; one section of 14 platoon was killed by concussion, all the men falling to the ground without a murmur. The left half of ‘C’ Company was wiped out before getting near the German wire….The third and fourth waves suffered so heavily that by the time they reached No-Man’s-Land they had lost at least half their strength….The few survivors took shelter in shell-hols in front of the German line and remained there until they could get back under cover of darkness. What torture the troops endured in the shell holes they alone knew.
Confusion reigned in the first hours of the attack. Officers and NCOs, leading their men, were often the first killed. Commanders behind the line, with little reliable telephone communication with the front and extremely limited visibility, tried to make sense of the situation. Trained after the failures at Loos (and Gallipoli) to try to exploit success where it came, they sent additional troops where they believed they were making gains. The 29th Division HQ believed they were making substantial gains, when, in fact, only a few had made it through a gap in the German wire, briefly capturing the first line of trenches before being forced back into no-man’s land. The Newfoundland Regiment was sent forward to reinforce the supposed gains; they were not ordered out alone, but were the only ones to even make it to the British wire. At that point:
Machine gun fire from our right front was at once opened on us and then artillery fire also. The distance to our objective varied from 650 to 900 yards. The enemy’s fire was effective from the outset but the heaviest casualties occurred on passing through the gaps in our front wire where the men were mown down in heaps….In spite of losses the survivors steadily advanced until close to the enemies’ wire by which time very few remained. A few men are believed to have actually succeeded in throwing bombs into the enemy’s trench.
None made it there; the Newfoundland Regiment suffered 90% casualties, 38% of them dead. None of the attacks on the northern two-thirds of the British line made any gains of note that lasted the day. Up to a third of British casualties were suffered behind the British front lines, where German artillery and machine gun fire could still easily reach
Further south, the Allies had some successes. The German line had a 90-degree turn around Fricourt, allowing the British artillery to attack from two sides. They also had help further south from the French, who although they could only conduct a relatively limited infantry assault due to the fighting at Verdun, had artillery to spare for the British effort. The creeping barrage, where the infantry advanced behind a steadily advancing line of shellfire, seemed to work in many places, with some battalions in the 7th Division reaching the German trenches without suffering a single casualty. (Elsewhere, the creeping barrage had advanced too quickly, leaving the advancing soldiers without cover.) The furthest advances were made on the extreme right of the British lines, where they seized the village of Montauban at around 10:40, having advanced just over a mile.
Attacks died down in the afternoon, except a few attacks on the fortified town of Fricourt; the attacks had either largely achieved their objectives or (more commonly) completely fallen apart well before then. The British lost 57,000 men on the day, just under 20,000 of them killed, for a gain of three square miles around Fricourt. The Germans lost only around 10,00, though they suffered greatly where British did make gains, even after surrendering. The official War Diary of the Manchesters described:
Considerable enjoyment was given to our troops by Lt. Robertson who made the prisoners run across the open through their own Artillery barrage, upon reaching our line these men were kept out of our dugouts by the sharp end of a bayonet.
Today in 1915: SS Armenian and Her Cargo of Mules Sunk by U24 Today in 1914: Hungarian Prime Minister Tisza Formally Protests Austrian Plans For War
Sources include: John Keegan, The First World War; Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme; Lyn MacDonald, Somme; Arthur Banks, Atlas of the First World War; Joe Sacco, The Great War.
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