Travelrat’s Travels

Until May 2008, Part 1 of the Ieper Salient Driving tour is available from Battlefield Podtours for £5.47 on this URL: http://payloadz.com/go/sip?id=411635 The Sample Walking tour of Ieper is available (for an unfortunately unavoidable token price of £0.01) at http://payloadz.com/go/sip?id=411667Should you not want to use Paypal to obtain the sample, please email Jon at the email address below, and he will email you a copy back.Please also feel free to email him with any questions you may have about planning a tour to the Western Front whether Ieper, The Somme, Vimy or elsewhere.He would also be interested in your views regarding developing the audiotours into GPS tours (with pictures, music, text etc.) to run on GPS devices/PDA’s etc.

Jon Halperin, Battlefield Podtours : jon@jhalperin.net.

The Somme Offensive

On the morning of 1^st July 1916, the British and Empire Army suffered their greatest military disaster ever when, reputedly as an attempt to take the strain off the French Army at Verdun, the German lines were attacked in the relatively quiet sector of the Somme in Picardy. The catalogue of errors made in advance of the offensive is extensive but in essence, due to ineffective planning and intelligence, the German forces they met that morning were much stronger than expected, resulting in British casualties that day of 60,000 (probably 10,000 dead) – most of them in the first hour.

After a week long artillery barrage which had been expected to destroy the German lines – but didn’t – but the cessation of which warned them something was up, and one of the 13 mines dug under German positions being exploded some minutes before the rest, equally giving more warning, the relatively raw recruits had been ordered to WALK across no-mans land to the German trenches which by now were expected to be undefended.

The results were, in hindsight, predictable.

There are many sites where one can get a feel for the reality of this period of seemingly inevitable tragedy. One which always takes the breath away is just a few minutes drive from the town of Albert, then the British fortress town in the Somme.

Leave Albert by following signs for D929 A1/Lille/Bapaume.As you head out of Albert along the ancient Roman road to Bapaume, you are following the centre line of the British attack on the first day of the offensive. Fork right in La Boisselle following the sign for la Grande Mine along the D20 and right again at another similar sign, a little further on, into farmland. After a left fork and a few hundred yards more you reach a small car park and can see a 12ft high cross on the brow of the hill to the right.Walk towards the cross and just past it will be a sight that never fails to astonish.What you are looking into is the 300ft wide and 90ft deep Lochnagar Crater, the result of 60,000lbs of Ammonal explosive (the most powerful available at the time).

This is the largest mine crater remaining from that morning of 1^st July 1916 when 13 were exploded under German Front Line positions to mark the beginning of the attack.

The crater and small parcel of land in which it sits was purchased by a Brit. to halt the encroachment of farmland by locals who understandably wish to maximise their land use, and to create what is a unique memorial to those, of both sides, who died in the Somme.

It sits on the line overlooking what is referred to in the trench maps as Sausage Valley, so named because of the German observation balloon that was sited here. If you look across the Albert/Bapaume road you can see another valley which it won’t surprise you to find out was called, with a typical Tommy bent, Mash Valley.

Look back toward Albert and on most days you will be able to see the Golden Madonna and Child on top of the Basilica glinting in the sun. The British Fortress town was actually less than 2 miles from this sector of the German front.

As in most other sectors of the Somme on that day, the attack here was not a great success. The debris from the blast flew 1000’s of feet into the air and, as was usual, fell to form a parapet around the edge of the crater. The British plan was to reach the lip on the enemy side in order to hail fire down onto the enemy, who had been decimated and stunned into submission by the preceding week of unprecedented artillery barrage. However, as we know, the Germans, albeit badly mauled and dazed by the barrage had been protected by their use of deep, fortified dugouts and bunkers. Pre-warned by first, the cessation of the barrage and second, The Hawthorn Ridge mine near Beaumont Hamel being exploded some minutes before the other 12 – some maintain due to British war photographers wishing to get good shots and film of the event – the Germans managed to get to the lip of the crater first, which enabled them to man their machine gun positions and fire down upon the attacking British.

Walking around the crater you will find a number of memorials. Amongst them is a cross in memory of Pte. George Nugent, whose body was found here in 1998 and reburied in Ovillers cemetery in Mash valley across the D929, and a memorial seat to the “Grimsby Chums”. This was one of the Pals Brigades, volunteers who in 1915 took up the promise made that if you joined together you would fight together and who made up a good proportion of the fresh forces used that first day. Towns such as Grimsby, Accrington, Barnsley, Sheffield etc., formed these brigades, often with several family members together. The aftermath of this, the worst disaster ever in British Military history, on these towns can only be imagined.