Walking the Somme: Gommecourt

In our first episode of Season 9, we walk the northern part of the Somme battlefield from Foncquevillers out to the ground before Gommecourt, and examine the attack here by the 46th (North Midland) Division on 1st July 1916. We examine the Court of Enquiry, the roles of the commanders Major-General Edward James Montagu-Stuart-Wortley and Lieutenant General Sir Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow, and hear the voices of the ordinary soldiers who fought and fell at Gommecourt on the First Day of the Battle of the Somme.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
With the start of a new season, in this case Season
9 of the Old Front Line, andapproaching our sixth year of
podcasting, incredibly, we beginthe season, as we often do, on
the Somme battlefields innorthern France.
The Somme is part of thelandscape of the Western Front.

(00:31):
We've covered it many times onthis podcast, and while we have
spent many podcast hours walkingits lanes, crossing its muddy
fields and peeling back thecanopy of its woods there's
still much to discuss anddiscover I think and it's a
battlefield I'm sure we willreturn to again and again there

(00:55):
is something about the Somme andwhen I say that I think many of
you will know what I mean it's alandscape past and present often
where past and present crossover it's history the stories of
those Somehow, it almost definesthe way we see the Great War.

(01:17):
And for this episode,technically, we find ourselves
outside what is today thedepartment of the Somme in the
neighbouring Pas-de-Calais.
And our journey will take usacross the ground between two
villages in that area,Foncavilliers and Goncourt.
We visited the Goncourtbattlefield before, examining

(01:38):
the story of the fightingbetween the Somme and the Somme.
nearby Hebutern and Gomercorewith the 56th London Division
from the perspective of twoveterans who were there Malcolm
Vivian and Harry Coates andlooked at the fighting that took
place there on the first day ofthe Battle of the Somme and
we'll retain our interest inthat day for this podcast but

(01:58):
instead we're going to focus onthe neighbouring attack by the
46th North Midland Division inthat sector just to the north.
So where do we begin?
Well we're just to the west ofFonkeville village at the
Fonkeville military cemeteryit's down a wood tree-lined lane

(02:19):
very much in a rural locationsurrounded by trees for the
nature lovers who return to thelandscape of the Western Front
it is a place which is full ofbird life at different times of
the year a kind of secludedplace where we find those
crisscross paths of the GreatWar and we can find peace and

(02:42):
tranquility and reach out andtouch that past through the
stories that are in cemeterieslike this.
This particular cemetery wasstarted by the French.
This was part of the Frenchsector in the early years of the
Great War where French troopsclashed in the open fields
beyond all of these villageswith Germans in that late summer

(03:05):
of 1914 and then the trenchsystems were established There
were some minor operations inthis area in 1915 to the south,
the Battle of Serre-Hébuterne,and most of the French soldiers
that were once buried in here,something like over 300 of them
in this particular cemetery,were French poilus, French

(03:26):
bonhommes, who were killed inthe day-to-day activities of
trench warfare rather than bigattacks.
And those graves were movedafter the war, as was very
common in this region, wherethere were quite a few British
cemeteries that containedsubstantial plots of French
soldiers.
Those graves were removed andeither repatriated back home to

(03:46):
family graves within Franceitself or taken to a nearby
military cemetery.
This sector was then taken overby the British in the summer of
1915.
British troops moved from thenorthern part of France as the
size of the BEF grew and grew.
The French, who were the majorpartners on the Western Front,

(04:08):
wanted the British to take agreater responsibility
responsibility on that westernfront and gradually the British
began to extend their line indifferent parts of that front
and in the summer of 1915 whilethe French were still occupying
the area around Arras to thenorth British troops were sent
down to this area to begin totake over this Somme front if

(04:31):
you like.
Many of them had come fromFlanders, quite a lot of them
were territorials and thengradually new army divisions
moved down here as well and thefirst burial in this cemetery
was from a new army battalionthe kitcheners army battalion
the 10th battalion raw fusiliersthe stockbrokers battalion

(04:51):
formed from stockbrokers andthose who worked in the
financial sector of london andbanks and all kinds of jobs
associated with stockbrokingthat battalion had been formed
in 1914 come across to thewestern front and although this
wasn't their first casualtythey've been in the line
elsewhere they made the firstburial here when Private William

(05:13):
Bradley was buried here who haddied on the 6th of September
1915 aged 30 Bradley was avicar's son from Dulwich his
number was STK 40 so they had aprefix STK for all the original
stockbrokers who joined thebattalion and he was the 40th
man to enlist and he'd actuallyenlisted at the London Stock

(05:36):
Exchange and is listed on theirmemorial and been in France
since July of 1915 so his warwas sadly a very short one.
After this once the Britishestablished their kind of
infrastructure at the village ofFoncavilliers or funky villas as
they called it the fieldambulances of the Royal Army
Medical Corps so the divisionallevel medical arrangements they

(05:59):
moved in and took over buildingswithin the village and they then
managed the burials within thecemetery itself with men who
died in their field ambulancesor were killed up in the front
line and brought back here forburial and that use of the
cemetery by field ambulancescontinued until March of 1917
when the Germans withdrew to theHindenburg line and the cemetery

(06:23):
was used again by fighting unitsin 1918 in the final battles in
this area after the Great War 74burials were brought in from the
wider area into what is now plot2 and plot 3 but largely it is
an original cemetery withoriginal burials.

(06:44):
So it gives us quite a good kindof cross-section of the men that
were in this sector of the linefrom 1915 through to the Battle
of the Somme and indeed beyond.
In terms of the burials, there's625 British burials, 12 New
Zealand, 6 Australian, 2 menfrom the Chinese Labour Corps, 4

(07:04):
Germans who died of wounds asprisoners, 1 French burial
remains and that brings it to atotal of 647.
Of these, 53 are unidentified,so they're unknown soldiers, and
there are special memorials totwo casualties who are known to
be buried amongst them.
The vast majority of the burialsin this cemetery link us to the

(07:27):
46th North Midland Division andtheir attack at Gomakaw, which
we're going to look at on the1st of July 1916, and that's the
walk across this part of theSomme battlefields.
Plot one, Rowell in particularin this cemetery has many of
those recovered from thefrontline trenches and the

(07:50):
jumping off positions just infront of the British lines which
that division used on the firstday of the Somme.
So those men who were killedliterally in the act of going
over the top, their bodies couldbe recovered and they were
brought back here for burial.
Most of the dead from thatdivision's attack were out in no
man There was no truce here onthe 2nd of July as there were in

(08:12):
some other locations so therewas no possibility of burying
the dead.
These men killed on the 1st ofJuly buried in here could be
recovered.
The vast majority of theircomrades who fell lay out in no
man's land until March 1917 whenthe Germans withdrew.
But one of the burials that isin here that connects us very

(08:34):
strongly to that first day ofthe Battle of the Somme is
Captain John Leslie Green of theRoyal Army Medical Corps.
He was the regimental medicalofficer of the 1st 5th Sherwood
Foresters, the Knots and DerbyRegiment.
Born at Huntingdon, he was theson of a JP.
He was privately educated andstudied at Cambridge, where he

(08:55):
was a keen oarsman and rode forhis college.
He then studied medicine at StBartholomew's Hospital in London
and moved back to Huntingdonafter qualifying as a doctor in
1911 and worked as a localdoctor.
He was commissioned into theRoyal Army Medical Corps in 1914
when a call for qualifieddoctors went out to join the

(09:17):
REMC.
He served with the SouthStaffordshire Regiment initially
and then in a field ambulance ofthe Royal Army Medical Corps and
became the RMO, the medicalofficer of the 1st 5th
Sherwoods, possibly because hisbrother Edward was an officer
serving with the unit.
Sadly Edward was killed at theBattle of Luz in October 1915.

(09:38):
Greens Victoria Cross wasposthumously awarded for bravery
on the first day of the Battleof the Somme, the 1st of July
1916, and his citation reads,For most conspicuous devotion to
duty, although himself wounded,he went to the assistance of an
officer who had been wounded andwas hung up on the enemy's wire
entanglements, and succeeded indragging him to a shell hole

(10:01):
where he dressed his wounds,notwithstanding that bombs and
rifle grenades were thrown athim the whole time.
Captain Green then endeavouredto to bring the wounded officer
into safe cover and had nearlysucceeded in doing so when he
was killed himself.
The officer he went to rescue inthat episode was a brigade
machine gun officer, CaptainFrank Bradbury Robinson, who was

(10:24):
wounded and hanging on theGerman wire.
Captain Green went forward andmanaged to remove Robinson from
the wire, dressed his wounds andevacuated him back towards the
British trenches.
They both came under heavy fire,as the citation says, explains
it being broad daylight by then,but got back to the British
front line where Robinson waswounded again and Green mortally

(10:48):
wounded as he brought him in.
Sadly, Captain Robinson died twodays later at the 20th Casualty
Clearing Station and he's buriedat Wildencore Holt Cemetery
where there are many 46thDivision men from Gomercore who
died of wounds received in thatattack at Gomercore on the 1st
of July.
There's a statement in one ofthe records from the ADMS to the

(11:09):
46th North Midland Division.
That's the assistant director ofmedical services, the chief
medic, if you like, of thedivision.
He later stated, I have torecord a sad lesson to us all.
Captain Green, the medicalofficer to the 5th Sherwood
Foresters, had stopped to dressa friend's wounds in the abdomen
close to the German first-linewire.

(11:30):
Captain Green was also hit, buthe was struggling back to our
lines with his wounded comradewhen a bullet killed him
instantly, piercing his brain.
Now I repeat that in a charge noone should stop to assist the
wounded.
Captain Green was a valiant andcapable officer.
It's an interesting kind of notereally.
What he's saying is, is it theduty of a medical officer to go

(11:55):
out and pick up individual menor is it his duty to remain at
the regimental aid post, receivethe wounded and then triage them
back to the next line of medicaltreatment, the field ambulance,
back in the nearest village orwherever it is located but I
think it underestimates howinvolved medical officers were
within their own battalions,they were part of that culture

(12:18):
of the battalion that was almostthe same kind of view as a padre
this was their parish and theyweren't just going to turn a
blind eye to people they knewwho were lying wounded on a
battlefield so I guess sittingin a headquarter somewhere it's
possibly easy to come up with aphrase like that but on the
battlefield when you can seethat a An attack is falling

(12:40):
apart and there's woundedeverywhere.
You're going to try and do yourbest to treat as many as you can
find.
And Green, of course, could giveno more than his own life.
And he gave his life in thatBattle of Gomercourt on the 1st
of July 1916.
Green had married Edith MaryNesbitt Moss, MBBS, of

(13:00):
Stanifield Hall, Lincolnshire,on the 1st of January 1916.
But sadly, they had no children.
She too was a qualified...
doctor and later became a doctorin a military hospital and
remarried after the Great War.
Following Captain Green's deathon the battlefield at Gommacore,
a memorial was erected in thehigh street in Buckden by his

(13:22):
father near to the family homeand it was also in memory of his
brother who had died and all thelocal lads who'd fallen in the
Great War.
Mourning is always a strongsubject in cemeteries like these
when we consider how the deathsof these men affected families
on so many different levels andwe can see that with the

(13:44):
memorialisation of Green and hisbrother by his father and not
far from his burial in thiscemetery we find the headstone
of Private George Thomas PalmerPalmer was from Leicester an
original member of the 1st 4thBattalion of the Leicestershire
Regiment Territorials and he'dserved from 1915 on the Western

(14:05):
Front at Luz and then later onthe Somme was killed on the 28th
of February 1917, aged 21, justbefore the Germans began their
major withdrawal from this areato the Hindenburg line.
His mother had the followinginscription placed on his
headstone.
Will some kind hand in a foreignland place a flower on my son's

(14:29):
grave?
Many who come here, and I'veseen pictures of this headstone
posted many, many times onsocial media, many believe it's
a unique inscription, but it isin fact one of at least half a
dozen headstones with thisinscription or a similar
inscription it might have kindof tapped into something of the

(14:49):
popular consciousness of the daythat in the early 20s perhaps
many families felt they wouldnever get a chance to visit
these graves and that's what itkind of calls out to I may never
as his mother be able to comehere and see my boy's grave but
will you if you've come therewill you place a flower on my
son's grave for me I hope thatperhaps on one of those interwar

(15:13):
pilgrimages she finally got tosee his grave finally got to
place her own flowers here butit's a powerful very powerful
inscription and its symbolismreally never fails to move I
don't think plot one Rose C&M ofthis cemetery have quite a lot
of 56 London division graves I'mnot really looking at their

(15:35):
attack in this podcast but theymoved into this section after
the 1st of July taking over thetrenches as the 46th Division
pulled out they had taken a lotof casualties in the fighting at
Gomercourt and then they made uptheir numbers from men from the
base and lots of differentLondon battalions that had

(15:56):
identities like the Post OfficeRifles and the Queen Victoria
Rifles and the WestminsterRifles found themselves being
sent to whichever battalionneeded replacement so it kind of
broke down the cohesion of quitea lot of these units and the
burials in this part of thecemetery very much reflect that
in what was essentially a quietand inverted commas period

(16:19):
following the big attack here onthe 1st of July.
Leaving the cemetery behindwe'll walk out through the main
gate into that tree-lined avenuethat takes us down past quite a
large farm into the village ofFoncavilliers itself, Funky
Villas.
This, when it was taken over bythe British, was a village in
fairly good condition in thesummer of 1915.

(16:41):
There'd been no big battle here.
There'd been bombardments by theGermans.
The church tower had been prettymuch knocked off.
But the village itself waspretty well preserved.
There were no villagers livingin it at that stage.
They'd been evacuated furtherback because it was too near to
the front line.
And although the buildings wereoften quite large and

(17:04):
substantial, it wasn't reallysafe to stay within them at
ground level.
level so beneath this villagewas a whole complex of cellars
very common with French housesand the French had connected up
a lot of them the British thendid the same and essentially
when units were in the line hereduring the daylight hours nobody
was seen in the streets of thisvillage they were all beneath

(17:26):
the village in the cellars andthe tunnels and the dugouts that
had been prepared and added toonce the British built up their
infrastructure here and then atnight the village would come
alive men would come up out ofthe dugouts come up out of the
cellars move up to the frontline take up food take up
material to the trenches thenrelieve a unit in the front line

(17:48):
others will then come back intothe village itself and make use
of those nighttime hours thedarkness to shield their
activities until dawn when thewhole village would go quiet
again and when you read theaccounts of some of the men who
were here there's quite a fewterritorial battalions passed
through here in that summer andthrough to the beginning of the

(18:10):
Battle of the Somme of 1916 thenwe see that they describe it
almost as like a ghost town thatduring the daylight hours there
was no one in these streetsbecause it wasn't safe to move
about.
It wasn't that the Germans werenecessarily in direct
observation of the village butthey knew of course that the
British were there and theFrench before them and bombarded

(18:32):
it on a regular basis.
We've got this description ofFoncavilliers from the first
fifth Battalion of theLeicestershire Regiment who
wrote a very good battalionhistory and they describe having
moved down here in June 1916from the Vimy sector.
Foncavilliers was a nice quietpart of the line.

(18:53):
The German trenches were about300 yards away which was a
gentlemanly distance and notlike living and dying indecently
close to the enemy as at Kemmeland Ypres where some trenches
were only 20 and 30 yards apart.
Life was quiet but work washard.
Saps were being made.
A disused front line was beingcleared and rebuilt.

(19:14):
Bomb and ammunition stores andRoyal Engineer dumps were being
constructed.
June days were spent inperspiration in the trenches.
June nights were spent inexploration in no man's land.
The communication trenches hadfamiliar names such as Lincoln
Lane, Stafford Avenue andStoneygate Road.
Once upon a time, Foncavilliershad a church, but this was now

(19:38):
in ruins the crucifix howeverremained intact like many others
on the western front and as theypassed by the more academic
officers would say to oneanother strange isn't it and the
less erudite privates wouldgrunt damn funny if it never
gets hit but some there who asthey gazed suddenly remembered
the words of a certain companycommander 1900 years before

(20:01):
surely this was the son of godit rained and it rained mud was
everywhere the communicationtree So who were the 46th North

(20:27):
Midland Division?
Well they were a North MidlandTerritorial Division.
Before the POWs ever existed,Territorials were locally
recruited units and when youlook at all the different
battalions of this division fromthe Leicestershire Regiment from
the Lincolns from the North andthe South Staffordshire Regiment
and from the Sherwood Forestersyou can see each one has an

(20:49):
attachment to a geographicalarea where it recruited and
before the Great War all ofthese territorial battalions
would have had 8 infantrycompanies each with their own
drill hall again recruiting in aspecific area so when they went
into battle units like this andthey suffered heavy losses it
could often have a catastrophiceffect on these local

(21:11):
communities.
Like many territorial formationsat the beginning of the First
World War, not all of itsbattalions were at full
strength.
They were made up with newrecruits who enlisted into these
battalions in 1914, and theneventually the division was sent
overseas in 1915, took part inthe Battle of Loos, in the
attack on the HohenzollernRedoubt right at the end of the

(21:34):
Loos Battle on the 13th ofOctober 1915, where it suffered
suffered thousands of casualtiesin the assault there.
After Loos, its battalions weremade up of reinforcements from
some of the second-lineterritorial battalions of these
regiments, so reserve battalionsthat were back in Britain, not
necessarily always having thesame kind of attachment to a

(21:55):
specific area or a community.
And then suddenly it had ordersto proceed to Marseille to head
off to the Suez Canal because itlooks as if the Ottoman Turks,
the Turkish Empire, about tocome across the border and try
and seize control of the suezcanal and quite a few units were
sent there to deal with this andthe division was packed off to

(22:18):
head off to suez some of theunits made it there but almost
as soon as they had arrived anew order came to send the
division back to the westernfront so some units were still
at marseille about to boardships some were on ships they
were pulled off sent back to theshore put on trains sent back
towards the Western Front andthen the units that were in

(22:41):
Egypt were then brought back byship and then returned to the
trenches in France.
It was a kind of strangedecision really.
They then took over the VimyRidge sector following their
kind of regrouping as a divisionand then in June 1916 moved down
to take part in the Battle ofthe Somme.

(23:02):
They were here at that stagecommanded by Major General
Edward James Montague StuartWortley.
He was a veteran of the Zulu Warand his core commander was
Lieutenant General Sir ThomasDoyley Snow who is historian Dan
Snow's great grandfather andback in 2008 I was very much on

(23:22):
this battlefield with Dan Snowmaking an episode of My Family
at War, a special series thatthe BBC did for the 90th
anniversary of the Great War inwhich they took well known
people like Dan to thesebattlefields to discover their
personal connection to it.
Now most of these celebrities,inverted commas, had kind of

(23:43):
ordinary soldiers, perhaps a fewofficers.
Dan was the only one who had ageneral as an ancestor and we
looked at some of theuncomfortable history really of
his ancestors' role in thisbattle here on the first day of
the Battle of the Somme and wewill return to that.
But what this was here, thisattack by this division, was not

(24:03):
really part of the main Sommeadvance.
This was part of a diversionaryattack on this northern flank of
the Somme battlefields, twodivisions with attack in what
was called the Gommerkorpssalient, because if you look at
the maps, Gommerkorps sits at akind of lynchpin there, and the
trenches come round it, forminga kind of a salient around the

(24:24):
village, and the purpose of theattack, I guess, would be
twofold, to draw Germanattention away from other,
particularly northern areas ofthe Somme advance, to confuse
the Germans as to where the trueintention of the attack lay, And
then it would also bite off thissalient, making an easier part
of the line to hold.
And this was outside of the main4th Army sector of the Somme.

(24:47):
Rawlinson's 4th Army would makethe main assault.
This was in Allenby's 3rd Armysector.
And the two divisions, bothterritorial divisions, the 46th
North Midland Division on thenorthern part of the battlefield
and the 56th London Division onthe southern part, were chosen
to make this diversionaryattack.
And essentially, as MajorGeneral Hull, who was the

(25:07):
commander the London Divisionsaid their job, their purpose
was to attract as much Germanattention as possible and to
present themselves as targetsessentially to the enemy.
So it was really not an attackthat necessarily was destined to
succeed.

(25:28):
Obviously they were hoping forsome success.
The idea was that the 46thDivision would attack in the
north, come down throughGommacore Wood into the village
and the 56 division would attackin the south come round the
southern flank of what wascalled Gomakaw Park where the
chateau was and come up intothat bit of the village and the
two divisions would meet therehaving bit off if you like that

(25:50):
Gomakaw salient and drawn inGerman reserves to try and throw
them back so there was some hopeof a success but the purpose was
to attract the attention of theenemy the Germans and bring in
their troops so it was adifferent kind of battle really
whether all the men who were totake part in it really truly

(26:12):
understood this I don't knowwhen you kind of read the
memoirs of some of those whowere there who were ordinary
soldiers I interviewed quite afew men who were in the 56th
London division they weren'treally 100% sure of this I think
at the time some of them came toknow about this through their
later reading of the divisionalhistory or their regimental
history for example but I thinkat the time they just saw this

(26:36):
as an attack it was their jobthey were going over the top the
Battle of the Somme wasbeginning and this was their
part in it so that's the kind ofbackground to it and the
division that was here thatessentially I guess in the minds
of some people had failed at LuzI mean when you look at that
attack that they made on theHohenzollern Redoubt it really

(26:56):
stood no chance of success openground no cover not a proper
bombardment to protect them oreven neutralise the German
defenders of the Redoubt whenthey went over and wave after
wave of infantry went forwardand wave after wave of north
midland infantry were just cutdown by german machine gun
trench mortars and shell fire sowhile there may have been those

(27:20):
who doubted the ability of aterritorial division like this
and even before the first worldwar territorials were known as
saturday night soldiers theywere not seen as proper soldiers
there was a lot of kind ofprejudice against them and i
think sometimes senior officerswho'd spent their life in the
and perhaps not necessarilypaying attention to how this new

(27:41):
war was developing, didn'tentirely understood that some
attacks were always, in somerespects, doomed to failure if
you didn't properly plan them.
Nevertheless, there was a kindof shroud over the history of
this division.
And I guess the hope of thosewho'd been at Luz, survived Luz,
was that the division would makethat right in this forthcoming

(28:03):
attack.
So from here, we're going towalk out through the village.
onto that ground east of FunkeVillas and get out onto the
battlefield where the divisionmade its attack on that fateful
day of the 1st of July 1916.

(28:26):
Walking out of the village wefollow the road and it bends at
one point and we're very closethere to the British front line.
We can see the next villageGormachor in the distance and to
the left of the road beyond thevillage Gormachor Wood not to be
confused with Gormachor Parkwhich was the larger wooded area

(28:47):
just beyond the chateau inGormachor itself and just up
ahead of us on the right isquite a large military cemetery
with a high wall and some steps.
And before we get to looking atthe cemetery itself, let's first
walk up those steps at theentrance to the cemetery and
stand on the raised terrace andlook at what we can see from

(29:11):
here.
It's a very good vantage point.
I've stood here many, many timeswith friends, with groups over
the years to explain this partof the battlefield.
The where the 46th North MidlandDivision made their attack on
the first day of the Battle ofthe Somme.

(29:31):
To our left is Foncavilliersvillage, where the British front
line was just located.
We're looking straight down themiddle of no man's land here.
To our right is Gomercourtvillage.
We can see a track headingacross the fields to our right.
That's very close to where theGerman front line was.
So you can visibly see reallywhere the two front lines were

(29:55):
located.
We've got a bit of technologylike linesman with the trench
maps on it.
You can match that up exactly.
Just beyond the track, justbeyond the village itself is
Gomakaw Wood, which you can seevery clearly.
And then in the far distance asthe track goes across those big
open fields, and we can see howthis ground is pretty much

(30:16):
devoid of cover where the mainattack went in.
We can see another little clumpof trees down there next to a
position that's marked on thetrench maps the Z and little Z
and that's the kind of northernend far end of the battlefield
in terms of the 46th NorthMidland Division attack so this

(30:38):
is the ground where they wentover on the first day of the
Battle of the Somme and becauseas we can see of this open
nature of the ground that's herethat's one of the great things
about coming to battlefields andwalking the ground like this as
you can see what there is todayoffered the same kind of

(30:58):
challenges to that generationmore than 100 years ago when
they were going to fight here.
So open ground with no covermeant that if your men advanced
in daylight, which was what theplan was all about, attacking at
that time of the morning, thenthis meant you needed to have
some degree of created cover,which was smoke.
So smoke was used to try andscreen an attack that was going

(31:21):
to take place in broad daylight.
And the special brigade of theRoyal Engineers were those who
were detailed to supply this.
The smoke that was released wasincredibly dense.
It lost direction in the windwhen it was released.
So this was a huge kind of smokecloud essentially.
And in the end, it caused moreconfusion than help.

(31:45):
And widening gaps in it as itbegan to disperse created kill
zones for the Germans who'dsurvived the bombardment.
Suddenly the smoke began todisperse and lines of men could
be seen in these gaps and theGermans concentrated their fire
on that and wiped them out.
And what they found, the men whosurvived these attacks, when

(32:08):
they saw the fire coming atthem, a lot of it was coming
from Gommachor Wood in theGerman second line positions.
The front line had been knockedabout, there'd obviously been
some casualties there and theGermans, as they often did, kept
the bulk of their forces not inthe front line but in the next
line of defence and that linewas bristling with defences and
was probably also the locationof most of their machine guns

(32:31):
firing indirectly onto no man'sland.
In terms of the British attackhere, there were two infantry
brigades in the front line.
So with four infantry battalionsper brigade, that was eight
battalions, but not all of thosewould be committed to the
initial assault.
So in fact, five were part ofthe first wave and the others

(32:55):
were a reserve that was wereordered to follow on behind.
And then you had a third brigadewith another four battalions in
reserve behind them to hopefullyexploit any success.
From beneath where we'restanding now on this cemetery
wall, looking down onto thebattlefield, the first six South
Staffordshire's, the first sixNorth Staffordshire's, they went

(33:17):
over side by side on this groundjust before us.
And then beyond them, the firstfifth, the first seventh and the
first eighth Sherwood Foresters,Knots and Derby Regiment, they
went over the top in that partof the battlefield.
So they were the five battalionsleading the assault.
The men in the very first wavesreached the German wire, but

(33:40):
they found it mostly uncut, insome cases undamaged, and in
many places, which surprisedthem, it had been repaired.
Considering that there had beena seven-day bombardment here,
how had the Germans had anopportunity to repair Only the
odd gap existed, and these werenow being swept with German

(34:02):
machine gun fire, making themkill zones.
Officer casualties in all of thebattalions that went over were
very high indeed, with a lot ofbattalions being led into action
by their commanding officer, thelieutenant colonel commanding
the battalion, getting hit oftenin the very first moments of the
battle, along with companycommanders, second in command,

(34:26):
and that meant very quickly thewhole command and control of
these battalions broke downvery, very quickly indeed.
In the exposed ground, withabsolutely no cover and the
smoke having failed, soldierstook cover in folds of ground or
shell holes.
Some did make it into the Germantrenches, but after a brief

(34:48):
fight were overwhelmed by thenumbers that were there and were
captured, and the Germans thenused rifle fire and grenades at
close range against the men thatthey could visibly see in cover
just beyond their wire in noman's land further attempts to
push the attack forward failedwhen more battlefield commanders
became casualties the trencheswere full of mud you remember

(35:11):
that description from theLeicester lads as to how the
trenches were like rivers andwaist high in water and that had
drained away a little bit butthe trenches were now literally
kind of liquid mud and movementwithin them was very very very
difficult indeed and thatprevented the movement of troops

(35:31):
to come up to assist in theattack and also the movement of
ammunition and bombs andeverything else to continue with
the fight one battalioncommander cancelled his attack
as he looked across thebattlefield and saw what was
unfolding it was clear to himthat the assault was a complete
failure and he couldn't see anypurpose in trying to advance

(35:53):
under those kind of conditionsand while aircraft flying above
the battlefield did see some redflares from small parties in the
German lines and these flareswere to be let off to indicate
as to how far forward theattacking troops had got.
These were seen near to GomakawWood.
Those men were in very smallnumbers indeed and most were

(36:17):
never heard of again, eitherbeing overwhelmed, killed or
taken prisoner.
The attacking units had sufferedas much as 80% casualties in
some cases not all of thebattalion had gone over when we
look at the figures they don'tlook that high they're in the
kind of four or five hundredswhich is still high but if you
think a battalion paper is 1100officers and men it looks to be

(36:41):
quite small casualties but onlya proportion of each battalion
had gone over in the initialassault and when we look at that
we see that the percentage ofmen that actually went over and
became casualties in all of theattacking units here on the 1st
of July were very very highindeed and for the 46th North

(37:01):
Midland Division the attack hadclearly failed this was their
second time in action and theirsecond failure just like Lou's
in October of 1915 failure interms of their inability to
having captured the objectivethat lay before them some men
had gone into the German linesnone of them had made it to the

(37:24):
point where they should havewith the 56th London Division
men.
Some of those men had actuallygot to that point where they
were meant to meet theMidlanders and had not seen them
there.
And I think this kind of led toa bit of a complaint
subsequently from Major GeneralHull, who commanded the 56th
London Division, that his menhad done their job, they'd
offered themselves as targets,they'd made their work pretty

(37:47):
obvious to the enemy.
The men who dug the assemblytrenches in no man's land had
been heavily bombarded.
You can find their graves inHebutern Cemetery.
But despite all that, they gotthrough the German lines, got
through and into Gomercourtvillage, and some of their men
had got to that rendezvouspoint, but had then been thrown
back and there was no sign ofthe neighbouring division.

(38:08):
But of course, when we look atthis, what does failure mean?
These men had gone over the top,they'd advanced through that
smoke cloud, expecting to findthe German wire uncut.
It wasn't uncut, the smoke hadcaused more problems than it was
trying to solve.
The German Germans had survivedthe bombardment and their
machine guns and their rifleteams and their rifle grenades

(38:31):
and everything else played merryhell with the attacking troops
that were caught in broaddaylight in open ground with no
cover and it's not surprisingthat the division suffered
something like two and a halfthousand casualties in this
ground that we're looking atnow.
So that's an overview of whathappens on this ground from
where we're standing now andwhen we take the track and walk

(38:54):
parallel to the German frontline we'll look at it again a
little bit further into thisjourney but what of the cemetery
what of Gomakaw Ward newcemetery where we're standing
now there are 748 burials hereof which 464 are unidentified so
it's very different from thecemetery where we started where

(39:17):
most of the men are knownsoldiers in here we can quickly
see by scanning our eyes acrossthe rows of headstones that the
vast majority are unknown.
A rank may be known, a regiment,and a date of death perhaps, but
not their identity.
The vast majority are unknown.
And amongst the burials here,there are 222 British, 56 New

(39:41):
Zealand, and one Australian.
The burials are from smallercemeteries in this area, and
also from the post-war clearanceof this ground.
When the Germans withdrew inMarch 1917, the trenches and the
battlefield and the shell holeswere cleared of dead many of the

(40:01):
bodies from the 1st of July werestill hanging on the German wire
buried close to the German wirein very shallow graves they
weren't even proper gravesthey'd really been buried by the
circumstance of battle by shellfire and so that clearance
resulted in the recovery ofhuman remains but the chances of

(40:21):
identification after so long inthe open were very very slim
indeed which is why so many inthis cemetery are not
identified.
You can see the cap badges of 46division units amongst the
unknowns so that gives you a bitof indication these are men who
almost certainly fell in thisground attacking these positions

(40:43):
on the first day of the Battleof the Somme but there was not
enough left with them to givethem an identity.
There are a few exceptions tothat including one of the
battalion commanders LieutenantColonel Charles Edmund Boot who
commanded the 1st 6th BattalionNorth Staffordshire Regiment and
was killed on the first day ofthe Somme aged 41.
Educated at Shrewsbury School hewas a veteran of the Boer War

(41:07):
and he ran the family firm oftile makers at Burslem before
the war and originally servedwith the 1st 5th North
Staffordshire Regiment until hewas promoted to take over the
1st 6th.
Boot led some 400 of his meninto no man's land on the 1st of
July 1916 of whom whom perhapsonly 20 ever returned to the

(41:29):
British trenches, and his bodywas found and identified very
close to the German wire whenthis ground was cleared in March
of 1917.
One account said he was a goodofficer and a very gallant
gentleman.
Boot is the only senior officerkilled at Gommacore with a known

(41:49):
grave.
The others are all on theChapval Memorial to the missing,
and Lieutenant Colonel D.D.
Wilson who was an Indian Armyofficer attached to the 1st 5th
Sherwood Foresters he's on theIndian Memorial at Neuve
Chapelle I first came across hisname in Martin Middlebrook's
book he lists the senior officercasualties in one of his

(42:10):
appendices at the back of thefirst day of the Somme and he
notes that he couldn't find outwhat the fate of Lieutenant
Colonel D.D.
Wilson was now Middlebrook didthat research in the late 60s
and early 70s long before theaccess to the kind of records
cause that we have in front ofus online today so it's
interesting that he couldn'tfind him and I guess that he

(42:32):
didn't think to look at NouveChapelle at the Indian Memorial
because he hadn't joined thedots in terms of an Indian Army
officer being posted to aterritorial British Army
territorial battalion but that'swhere you'll find D.D.
Wilson's name he's perhapscommemorated the furthest from
his place of death than anyother Somme casualty in many

(42:55):
respects.
But that high level of lossamongst senior officers here at
Gomel Corps on the 1st of Julywas definitely a major
contribution to the failure, thebreakdown of the attack.
When the commanding officer getskilled or wounded and the
company commanders get killed orwounded, the whole direction of

(43:16):
any assault is going to breakdown no matter how well trained
these men were at that point inthe war.
It wasn't that they lackedinitiative or ability that was
the kind of structure of theseunits and how they operated and
how their training for thisattack had taken place all of
that of course would eventuallychange as the war moved on but

(43:39):
the scenes had not happened andthe battlefields and the battles
of 1918 were not yet reached sothe Somme was all part of that
journey I guess to that point.
One other feature in thiscemetery that's very very easy
to miss when you're come here isthat the 46th North Midland
Division have one of theirdivisional memorials here.

(44:01):
Now when we talk aboutdivisional memorials we tend to
think of an obelisk or a statueor whatever it is and the 46th
Division have three divisionalmemorials.
They have a basic kind ofconcrete cross that stands on
the edge of the road nearVermeule looking towards the
Hohenzollern Redoubtbattlefield.
There is a more recent one muchcloser to the Hohenzollern

(44:23):
Redoubt itself that was placedthere I think just before the
centenary but of the originalmemorials there's the cross at
Hohenzollern and then there's alater one for the battles in
1918 which we'll mention lateron in this walk and there's one
here and it's not a big obeliskand it's not a statue it's a
tiny little plaque in the wallof the cemetery and I'll put a

(44:45):
picture of that and some otheraspects of the battlefield here
at Gommacore onto the podcastwebsite it's incredibly small
for a divisional memorial just alittle plaque but I think it
reflects perhaps the feeling atthe time about this battle.
This was the second strikeagainst their name the second

(45:06):
failure and a catastrophicbattle in terms of losses.
There was no room for a statuehere there was no room for an
obelisk or any grand memorialthat would have been
inappropriate to those who'dsurvived this battle but
something had to be placed hereto mark that loss and it's this

(45:26):
simple little plaque and it justshows how these memorials really
speak volumes beyond their shapeor size or design and tell us so
much about loss and how soldiersviewed perhaps a particular
battle so from the cemeterywe're going to go back down the

(45:47):
steps onto the road walk towardsthe edge of Gomakaw village
we're not going to go into thevillage on this walk the The
village was rebuilt in the1920s.
There is still a chateau theretoday in the heart of the
village, kind of a 1920sbuilding, very different to the
one that had been there before.

(46:07):
The woods grew up in the samekind of shape, Gomacaw Wood and
Gomacaw Park.
And it's very easy to kind ofoverlay the maps of the Great
War onto the modern maps of thisarea.
Very little has changed.
But there have been a few minorchanges.
When I first used to come hereon this edge of Gomakaw village
just on the right as you comeinto the village there's a

(46:30):
little bit of grass there nowbut there was part of a concrete
German bunker entrance therethat was very very prominent
raised up above ground in a kindof an angled shape with the
entrance covered over with a bitof wobbly tin and it went down
apparently I never went into itunfortunately but it went down
into the German dugouts andpositions that were beneath this

(46:52):
side of Gomakaw village thatdisappeared sometime I think in
the 1990s about the time that Ifirst moved to the Somme I
remember coming up there havingworked on my route for walking
the Somme which was about to gointo print and discovered that
it was gone and that was anotherpart of the landscape of the

(47:15):
First World War that had sadlydisappeared but before the main
entrance to the village itselfthere's a track that goes off to
the left and again as usual I'llput a map onto the podcast
website so you can follow thisroute and that track takes us
running roughly parallel to theGerman front line and as we walk

(47:37):
along it we can get to a pointwhere we can stop look back to
our left towards where thecemetery is sitting in the
middle of no man's land we cansee the church spire the
foncavilliers in the distanceahead of us and then to our
right the big stretch of openground where those five
battalions of the 46th NorthMidland Division made their

(47:58):
attack at zero hour on the firstday of the Battle of the Somme.
And looking at it like this fromthe German perspective, we can
see the incredible fields offire.
It's not quite a billiard tablehere.
There are a few folds in theground, but there is essentially
no cover.
Any attacking force that's goingto come over that open ground

(48:20):
needs either a dominance ofartillery and firepower to
neutralize the defenders whowere dug in where we're standing
or it needs smoke perhaps aswell it needs smoke to protect
it as it moves forward none ofthose attacking here on the
first day of the Somme had thatthey were thrown out into the
open the smoke had failed andthey didn't have superior

(48:43):
firepower and the bombardmenthad not cut the German wire and
it had not destroyed the Germanpositions and more importantly
it had not neutralized theGerman defenders and we can see
what ability they had to commandthis ground with their weapon
systems, with their machineguns, trench mortars, rifle

(49:03):
grenades, small arms and evengrenades thrown at short
distance.
What ability they had to throwan attack back and it's not
surprising that is exactly whathappened here.
One of the things you can see asyou walk down this track just to
the left of it is a series ofmounds and they've been here for

(49:23):
certainly as long as I've beenwalking and I've inquired with a
couple of the local farmers whoare in the belief that this bit
of ground has never been touchedis because beneath those mounds
are concrete structures that maywell have been entrances to the
German dugouts here or couldhave been machine gun positions
or trench mortar positions inthis part of the German line.

(49:47):
It's one of those places that islong overdue for some kind of
investigation, I believe.
And one of the things as youwalk further down this track and
you come into the area wherethey cultivate the ground on a
regular basis, you certainlyfind the detritus of war.
Shell cases, bullets, shrapnel,shrapnel balls, and all the

(50:07):
other things you'd expect tofind in a typical Somme field.
And then, increasingly, as youpull away from the edge of the
village, further out into thevast expanse of open fields, you
get a clear view of GommacoreWood on your right, where that
German second line was located,where the of their troops were
where probably their machineguns were placed to fire

(50:29):
enfilade and angle across thebattlefield down onto no man's
land and where their trenchmortars would have been as well
and probably where theirobservation posts for their
artillery was located as wellbecause a lot of shell fire was
dropped into no man's land bythe germans as this attack began
as well and as we walk furthernot quite to the end of this

(50:50):
track but certainly towards itsend there's a bit at the far end
where it drops off to the leftand and you can go around into
another part of Foncavilliersand do this as a kind of
circular walk.
As we get to that far end, nearto where today the vast, vast
electrical pylons are located,there's a little kind of wooded,
copsy area there, where if yougo into that, it's very close to

(51:13):
the site of the Z and the littleZ, those positions marked on the
British trench maps.
This was where the 1st, 7thSherwood Foresters went over on
the first day of the Battle ofthe Somme when you go into that
little wooded area you will findthe remains of some of the
German trenches there they'renot particularly deep although

(51:33):
some are deeper than others itis a private area sometimes they
shoot in it and there are trapsfor the birds in there so the
best thing if you want toexplore it properly go and see
the mayor of Gormecourt getpermission to go in there but
you can stand on the edge of itand visibly see the remains of
the archaeology if you like ofthe German trenches that were

(51:55):
there more than 100 years ago in1916 and I think what you get
and not many walk down thistrack I think but what you get
is you get in so many places onthis landscape of the Great War
across the Western Front is thatthe landscape really tells you
so much as to why the outcome ofthe battle played out in the way

(52:18):
that it did once you get to thefar end of this track and look
back towards the cemetery andagain kind see that open
landscape with the Germanpositions on the left and the
British positions would havebeen on the right then you can
see that this was a classic killzone that the attackers really
stood no chance whatsoever ofcrossing that ground unless they

(52:42):
dominated this ground alreadyand they had something to
protect them to get into thoseGerman those enemy positions and
indeed beyond and while everyonethat survived this battle came
back from it understanding whyit had failed because men can't
advance in broad daylight whenthe enemy positions have not

(53:02):
been taken and they're bristlingwith firepower.
Not everyone saw it the sameway.
Gomakor was a bloody failure ona day of bloody failures but one
unusual aspect of the battlehere was that the failure
resulted in a court of inquiry.
This was the second time the46th North Midland Division had

(53:25):
seemingly failed in battle, inan attack.
Previously they'd been thrownback, as we've mentioned, at the
Hovenzollern Redoubt at Loos onthe 13th of October 1915.
This time they again had beendestroyed in no man's land and
seemingly few of them got intothe German trenches and none had
made it to that area beyondGomercourt where they were due

(53:47):
to meet up with the men from the56th London Division.
The inquiry called togethersurviving senior officers,
several of the brigade majorsthese were officers that were
attached to brigade staff whowere to be the eyes and the ears
and the visible presence of thebrigade commander on the
battlefield itself and also theyinterviewed some junior officers

(54:09):
who had survived the attack aswell but there were so few
officers that had survived thatin the end they had to interview
many ordinary soldiers as welland that made this inquiry a bit
unusual as the But normally,perhaps they would just speak to
officers because officers weregentlemen and their word was

(54:30):
their bond and all that kind ofstuff.
The other ranks weren't normallycalled upon for their opinion.
But because most of the officershad become casualties and that
the survivors were largelyordinary soldiers, this inquiry
tapped into their voices and itmakes it an interesting document
to look at.
It survives in the archives ofthe National Archives and it's

(54:54):
there for all to consult afriend of mine transcribed it
and typed it up on his Amstradcomputer that kind of dates me
now all those years ago and gaveme a copy of it and I re-read it
for the preparation for thispodcast it is a fascinating
document and I saw quite a fewnames in it of people that I
recognised from differentelements of research Captain

(55:15):
Bill Brown of the 96 siegebatteries in there he was
Malcolm Vivian's friend he'dbeen spotting for their one half
of their siege battery that hadbeen covering the foot division
attack and Malcolm had beendoing the same for their guns
covering the 56th divisionattack just to the south and
Bill Brown went forward toexplain what his work was and

(55:36):
what the role of the heavy gunswere and he's quoted in this
report but I think that thevoice that they gave to ordinary
soldiers and they justtranscribed what they said is
one of those rare examples inwhich we hear ordinary working
class lads in the contemporarycontext of the war itself giving
their view of what happened andI think that's what makes it

(55:59):
such an important document.
Anyway I could go on for anotherhour reciting bits of these
different reports and thestatements of the ordinary
soldiers but I thought I'd justgive you one example and that is
a statement made by Sergeant HFitzgerald of the 1st 6th North
Staffordshire Regiment who saidI advanced in the front wave and

(56:21):
got as far as the German wirewhich was very thick and not
cut.
We couldn't get through.
The enemy opened machine gunfire so I got in a shell hole
and remained there till dark.
The gun was on top of theparapet, not an emplacement.
Just at dusk, the enemy sentsmall parties out on each side
of us and started cutting theirwire towards us.

(56:42):
We withdrew.
The enemy started calling usback saying, come back you
English bastards, come back youbuggers.
A good number of them shouted inEnglish.
Now I guess that the staffofficers and those who'd
convened this court of inquirywere perhaps not really ready or
prepared for ordinary soldiersto be talking in that kind of

(57:05):
language.
So that's why I think this courtof inquiry and the pages within
it and the accounts that arethere are so important.
The report is long, it'sfascinating and perhaps does
deserve a podcast in its ownright but essentially you sense
when you read it they're lookingfor someone or groups of people

(57:27):
to blame for this failurethere's a lot about the lack of
communications and the directionof the battle on the 1st of July
and the officers who were leftwho came to the court explained
this by the fact that all of thesignalers which had gone over
had been killed or wounded sothere was no one left on the

(57:48):
battlefield to run thecommunications the signalers had
all gone into action and andthey'd all become casualties.
The failure of the bombardmentis also noted, and many of the
witnesses spoke about how theGerman wire had been repaired.
They got to the German wire, andas I mentioned earlier, they'd
been very surprised to see thatthe Germans had had an

(58:10):
opportunity to repair it.
How was that possible if there'dbeen a continuous seven-day
bombardment?
And what came out is that thebombardment in this area had
been stopped numerous times sothat patrols could go out and
assess the damage to the wire,assess how effective that

(58:32):
bombardment had been.
And that gave the Germans ampletime and opportunity to effect
repairs.
So in reporting on how thebombardment was going and
stopping it to enable that tohappen had given the Germans a
vital window of opportunity torepair the damage.

(58:54):
that had been done.
There was also mention of howthe assault battalions had had
to bring up all the kit and thiswas another facet of this attack
rather than have carryingparties to carry up all of the
equipment that would be neededfor the assault the men actually
making the assault were beingasked to do that themselves and

(59:15):
in the conditions within thosetrenches which we've already
spoken about of mud and of waterit made that very very
challenging indeed and exhaustedmany of the attacking troops
even before they got ready toget into their assembly
positions and the whole issue ofthe weather and how the trenches
had been flooded and the mudthat was highlighted as one of

(59:38):
the key factors in the inabilityto move men around and it also
hampered communication andsupply on the battlefield itself
so all of these elements cameout during this inquiry but
Generally reading it, you feellike someone's head is on the
chopping block here.
And in the end, that rested withthe divisional commander, Major

(01:00:03):
General Edward James MontagueStuart Wortley.
And while the plan rested in thelap of the core commander,
Lieutenant General Snow, heaccused the men of Wortley's
division, the men of the 46thNorth Midland Division, of a
lack of offensive spirit.
This was not Snow's finest hour.
He was not a well man.

(01:00:23):
At this point in the war, he'dbeen a good divisional commander
in 1914-15 at the Battle of LeCateau and the Second Battle of
Ypres.
He'd then been promoted to corpslevel.
And sometimes men, when theypromoted beyond their original
position, they weren't as goodat the next one.
And that was definitely truewith Snow.
He was a good defensive generalat Le Cateau.

(01:00:45):
He'd been on the defensive atthe Second Battle of Ypres.
He'd been on the defensivethere.
And his last major battle on theWestern Front when he defended
the ground south of Cambraiduring the German counter-attack
there that was also a successfulbattle.
After that his healthdeteriorated even further and he
was then eventually sent home.

(01:01:05):
But in a war that required anoffensive spirit which he
accused these men of having alack of he himself perhaps was
guilty of that charge.
He was good defending ground butnot good in attacking it.
His day was perhaps done longbefore the battle at Gommacore

(01:01:27):
so it cast a shadow really overhis war his performance and it's
not a good epitaph to give yourmen who had proudly gone into
battle without any complaintaccusing them of a lack of
offensive spirit when thebattlefield is littered with

(01:01:47):
their dead perhaps is notsomething that will endear you
to the men that you command soStuart Wortley became the fall
guy here and he was dismissedand sent home and the 46th North
Midland Division who in the eyesof those who commanded on the
Western Front had now failedtwice they were sidelined they

(01:02:07):
were sent off to quiet sectorsthey were up at Lens for a very
long while and they held theline when other divisions needed
to be relieved to go off andtake part in the fighting at
Arras or at Messines or at ThirdEap or at Combray but they
weren't involved in any of thoseoperations they were just

(01:02:27):
holding the line and when youthink that the men within that
division knew what the army therest of the army thought of them
and the way they'd been soobviously sidelined in this
manner morale in that divisionmust have been pretty low indeed
but there is a better outcome totheir eventual history in the
battles on the western front inthe late summer of 1918 they

(01:02:52):
were given a new Commander,Major General Jerry Boyd.
Boyd was an old soldier, andamongst his decorations was a
Distinguished Service Order, butalso he wore the ribbon of the
DCM, the Distinguished ConductMedal, an Ordinary Soldier's
Award, not an Officer's Medal.

(01:03:13):
So here was a man who hadstarted in the ranks, and this
perhaps made the men within thedivision who had been sidelined
for so long perhaps think againabout their position on this
battlefield in this war becausehere was a man who had once
shared their privations in facthe had joined as an ordinary

(01:03:34):
soldier in the British Army in1895 and was awarded the DCM in
the Boer War then commissionedand by 1914 he was a brigade
major and by 1918 a divisionalcommander so in 18 years he'd
gone from an ordinary soldier tocommanding a division of 20,000
men and one of the accounts saidthat it was clear from the

(01:03:57):
initial training as theyprepared for their next their
perhaps final battle on thewestern front that this was a
very different mentality that hebrought with him to this
division one of them said thathe wielded the north midland
division like a sword and withthat sword he struck the
hindenburg line in september1918 that classic battle where

(01:04:20):
they advanced on the st quentincanal the german and defences
around the St Quentin Canal andpart of their task in that
attack was to capture one of thebridges over the cutting of that
canal to enable the advance tocontinue which they did and that
famous photograph of men fromthe 137th Staffordshire Brigade

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on the banks of the canalcutting with their brigades
commander the Tally Ho VCBrigadier General Campbell
addressing the men, thankingthem for their great success.
It was a turning point in thewar, the battles on the
Hindenburg Line, and a finalturning of the page of the

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history of the 46th NorthMidland Division.
A moment of victory, a moment ofglory.
But behind that victory, behindevery victory, was a price.
Not just the dead who'd made itpossible, but those who'd fought
and fallen in those earlierbattles which the Division had

(01:05:27):
taken part in at Loos and atGommacore.
I'm fairly blamed for failure.
They'd all been volunteers,those early men, and no man can
give more than his own life, andthese men had laid that on the
line, no matter what theoutcome.
So for the veterans of the NorthMidland Division, whose final

(01:05:48):
triumphant memorial stood highas a column above the St Quentin
Canal and at noon its pinnaclecast long shadows across that
ground, shadows back to Gomakorand all those earlier pathways
which had defined its time alongthe old front line.

(01:06:16):
you've been listening to anepisode of the old front line
with me military historian paulreed you can follow me on
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(01:06:37):
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