Anniversary of the 'living hell' at the Battle of the Somme

More than any other of the terrible battles that took place during the Great War, it is The Somme that sums up the sheer horror and desperate futility of that conflict.

Launched as the battle to end the stalemate on the Western Front, the campaign, it was hoped, would bring a swift end to a war that had already dragged on for two terrible years and had cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men.

Instead of a swift victory the British Army was to suffer the worst day in its history either before or since. By the end of July 1 1916 almost 60,000 British men had been killed or wounded, of which a third were dead on the battlefield.

For the Hampshire Regiment, the day was to see valour beyond understanding in today’s modern terms. Against insurmountable odds wave after wave of soldiers pushed on into a hailstorm of machine gun bullets. By dusk the regiment had lost 500 men, over 300 of them killed.

Among the dead was their commanding officer, popular Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Lawrence Palk who had led his men out of the trenches towards the enemy fire carrying only a stick.

Indeed, so confident had the British commanders been that the battle would be a walk-over they had ordered their men to march slowly towards the German lines a half a mile away to save energy. As the men walked at a steady pace, rifles at their shoulders to enable them to touch arms and keep contact in the smoke of battle, some even kicked footballs. But the generals’ confidence was misplaced and the enemy was neither cowed nor defeated. The result was a massacre.

The Somme region had been chosen for a major offensive due to the fact it was dryer than the fields of Flanders where the terrible battles of Ypres were to take place. The British and French high commands agreed on a joint offensive that would penetrate the German lines.

The British were to advance along a 19 mile stretch north of the town of Albert, the French to their east.

The British Commander in Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig wished to delay the start of the battle until later in the summer to enable his raw recruits to be better trained and combat ready. The small regular British Army had been badly mauled in the first two years of the war but a large new army of recruits had been raised and arrived in France. These new regiments were formed often of friends and workmates – the Manchester Pals, Grimbsy Chums – and included men recruitsed from Hampshire.

The German assault on the French city of Verdun in February however had not only drawn away large numbers of the French soldiers needed for the Somme offensive, it made the need for a British attack in the west to draw off enemy reserves a desperate necessity. Haig was persuaded to attack at the end of June.

A massive five-day artillery bombardment was planned, which it was confidently believed would destroy the barbed wire defences and shatter the German lines of trenches. The British forces would be able to simply walk into the former enemy positions it was calculated.

However, the British were unaware of just how deep the Germans had dug their bunkers, far below the effect of even the heaviest shells, and the use of shrapnel shells instead of heavy artillery meant most of the barbed wire remained intact.

The extension of the bombardment for a further two days because the weather was deemed too poor for the assault, meant the Germans had longer to bring up vital reserves to counter the now signalled attack.

July 1 dawned bright and warm and the British and French began their assault beneath blue skies. But the Germans, alerted by the end of the barrage had ample time to emerge from their bunkers and prepare to cut down the slowly advancing men.

The Hampshire Regiment were placed in reserve for the assaults in the area around Beaumont Hamel. After the first attack by frontline troops had failed, the 1st Hampshire Battalion were ordered into the fight. As they emerged from the British trenches the slaughter began. Through the carnage It was reported that a handful of men had reached the German lines, but the majority fell soon after entering the battle.

The 2nd Hampshire were set to be sent in but the orders were mercifully delayed and by the time received the decision was had been taken to avoid any more losses that day and they men were kept back.

It was the worst day in the history of the 1st Hampshire. By nightfall eleven officers and 310 men had been killed or were missing, 15 officers and 250 men were wounded. It was to take another four months before that day’s objective of Beaumont Hamel was to be taken at the very end of the battle in which the British were to suffer 419,654 casualties for a final advance of six miles. In all, The Hampshire Regiment lost 1,300 men in the Battle of the Somme. The French were to lose 202,567 and the Germans 465,181 men – more than a million soldiers killed, wounded or missing in what was to be the worst single battle of the First World War.

The fallen of the Hampshire Regiment, as with the majority of the British dead, rest in graveyards near to where they fell. Those of the 1st Battalion Hampshire Regiment rest in Redan Ridge No 2 Cemetery.

Today the peaceful fields just to the west of Albert and around Beaumont Hamel are dotted with the small cemeteries of the fallen. The landscape remains very much the same as it did before the battles of the Somme. Only the tidy plots of greenery tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and containing the neat rows of uniform pure white Portland stone headstones are testimony to the dreadful scenes of slaughter that took place in that summer 100 years ago.