Behind the Somme: Grim reality for Hampshire regiments on frontline

THE torment suffered by British soldiers who advanced towards the Germans on July 1 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 100 years ago this month, was recorded by an officer serving with the 1st Battalion of the Winchester-based Rifle Brigade.

Second Lieutenant G.W. Glover’s account of what it was like to hold out after breaking through the German front line has been cited in a new book on the battle by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore.

Minutes after zero hour, 7.30am on July 1, men from the British 4th Division’s 11th Brigade found they were held up in No Man’s Land - until an officer from the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade seized the initiative.

‘Come on lads, let them have it!’, he shouted, whereupon the Rifle Brigade men charged forward, causing the German garrison in their front line to flee.

However only a small party from the Rifle Brigade made it into the German line south of the German strongpoint known as the Quadrilateral. It was to the north of the Somme village of Beaumont Hamel. ‘Most of us seemed to be knocked out,’ the Rifle Brigade’s 2nd Lt Glover reported afterwards.

But as Glover indicated, there was no time to count their losses. ‘There were some Germans in the trench and Sergeant Hall, Corporal Halls and myself started to bomb until the Germans cleared out to our right.’ They then proceeded to advance to the third German line, and for a time to the fourth.

Soon, men from the 4th Division’s supporting brigades had filled up the trench, until it was if anything too full of men. It was, as Glover put it, ‘a squash, everybody in the way of everybody else, making it extremely difficult to move or dig. I did try, but not very successfully to spread the 11th Brigade out to the right, and Captain Martin of the 1st/8th Royal Warwicks also tried to get the 10th and 12th Brigades to the left, but they were held back by the Germans, and we couldn’t get along the single trench to help them.’

Glover described how this inability to move rapidly up and down the trench may have contributed to the first of many crises that occurred during that long hot day.

‘Suddenly our right was rushed by German bombers, and the men in the area leading up to our Battalion bombing squad rushed back to the left. The bombing squad was apparently cut off.’

It was a difficult moment. ‘We were short of bombs’, Glover said. ‘And the Lewis guns were more or less out of action.’

However Glover cobbled together a defence. ‘All the bombs we had and could spare from the left were passed up, and with the help of a corporal, I managed to get together four throwers, splendid fellows, who helped us hang on to the trench.’

Even these ‘splendid fellows’ would not have been sufficient, however, if they had lacked support. ‘There was another even finer,’ Glover reported. It was a runner, who appears to have brought up supplies from the front German trench, where the various units supporting the vanguard were digging in.

‘This runner made the trip between that trench and our own at least 20 times, bringing bombs and ammunition. He did more than any single individual to keep things going.’ On one of these ‘trips’ he brought up a message from the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders’ commanding officer instructing them to hold on as long as possible.

Troops from the Seaforths were one of the support units whose men had made it into the German front line.

The 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade in 1914

‘The message from the Colonel of the Seaforths stated he would send on some more bombs,’ Glover explained. ‘But for the runner, even that would have come too late.

The throwers were dog tired, and the Germans full of energy. By persuasion, we managed to get a team of about half a dozen who carried on manfully.’

‘By way of precaution, we built a barricade,’ he reported, ‘leaving about 35 yards of straight trench, with a Lewis gun on top of a traverse, commanding it, while we held on to our original position.

'For a long time, the Germans threw into that stretch of trench, and onto both parapets, but never showed up.’ Only when Glover’s attention was distracted by the call of another officer sheltering in a dug out, were the Germans able to rush forward, without being spotted. They then, as Glover reported it, ‘drove our men out of the trench’, and back to the ‘base of the Quadrilateral’.

The retreat from the third German line was a disappointment. The only saving grace, as far as 2nd Lt Glover was concerned, was that there were more British troops inside the perimeter behind the German front line than he had ever dreamed possible.

When he and his men arrived in the first German trench that runs along the base of the Heidenkopf salient, he was surprised to see that without his realising it, a substantial British presence had built up, and the position was being consolidated. Even the 10th Brigade’s staff captain had put in an appearance. There were also between 100 and 200 other ranks.

However the hours they still had to spend in the German front line were now numbered. It had been decided that the British hold on the German trench network had become unsustainable, and should be terminated as soon as practicable. The evacuation of most of the survivors in the German front line back to the British line took place after it was dark, when crossing No Man’s Land was less dangerous than it would have been in daylight.

However by then the Rifle Brigade had sustained no less than 500 casualties, more than half of those in the battalion had attacked.

2nd Lt Glover felt that the British artillery was responsible for at least some of them: ‘Why couldn’t our artillery have put a barrage beyond our right flank?’ he asked. ‘We should have held out then. Why didn’t they go for the German guns? They were silent all day.’

He also explained how the Germans managed to repulse most of the battalion while they were still in No Man’s Land: ‘The Germans managed their machine gun fire by putting up mounds of earth between their third and fourth lines so as to shoot over their own parapets and sweep the whole surface of the ground. It was the cruellest slaughter.’ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Somme: Into The Breach is published by Viking Penguin, price £25.

For more on the Rifle Brigade, visit the The The Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Road, Winchester.