The original plan had been for a combined Franco-British attack along a sixty mile front astride the River Somme.  The sector had been quiet for many months, reasoned the French Commander-in-Chief, General Joffre, explaining that the ground was, “in many places favourable to the development of a powerful offensive.”  With a growing number of New Army divisions in France and further divisions now released for action on the Western Front after the close of the ill-fated Dardanelles expedition, the proposal suited Sir Douglas Haig who had replaced Sir John French as the BEF’s new Commander in Chief in December 1915.  At the same time Haig was also keen to press home an attack against the Messines-Wytschaete Ridge in Flanders and instructed General Plumer, GOC Second Army, to prepare for an offensive there.  This plan, which would involve the preparation of 20 mines to be exploded on the opening day of the offensive would result in the battle of Messines in June 1917.

 

Joffre’s plans for a combined Franco-British offensive, were thrown into turmoil however when the Germans launched their own offensive on a front of six divisions against the French at Verdun in February 1916.  By the third day, the Germans had gained complete possession of the French first position and consolidated this with further gains over the next twenty four hours.  Then the French reserves had arrived and the battle had degenerated into a bloody war of attrition which would cost the French Army over 300,000 casualties and the Germans almost as many.  British assistance was now needed to divert German attentions away from the area and without it, Joffre signalled, they may not be able to hold on to their positions.

 

In March, with the attack on Verdun increasing in intensity, Joffre requested that Haig take over the twenty mile front being occupied by the French Tenth Army.  Haig duly complied, and by mid March, the entire front line between Boesinghe in Belgium and Curlu on the River Somme was held by men of the British First, Second and Third Armies.  The Fourth Army, formed on March 1^st, would join them shortly.    

 

Haig started preparing for an attack to be launched on 25^th June.  Now that the French would only be able to assist along an eight mile front instead of the originally planned twenty five miles, Haig informed his commanders that it was unlikely that a decisive victory in 1916 could be expected.  The coming offensive would have three main objectives: to relieve pressure on the French in Verdun, to inflict heavy casualties on the Germans and so doing, to pave the way for a decisive strike in 1917.  In short, as The Official History states, “The Somme offensive had no strategic object except attrition.”

 

Sir Henry Rawlinson, commanding the newly formed Fourth Army would mount an infantry offensive across a ten mile front from Montauban in the South to the River Ancre with the objective of seizing the high ground around Pozieres.  If the attack were successful, three cavalry divisions formed into a Reserve Army under Lieutenant General Sir Hubert Gough would follow up behind, exploiting the new gap in the line and pressing northward into open country towards Arras.  North of The Ancre, two Territorial divisions of General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Third Army would mount a full scale diversionary attack (unsupported by reinforcements), on the heavily defended German salient at Gommecourt.  Other diversionary attacks would take place further north still.

 

On Rawlinson’s shoulders lay the main responsibility and as a former infantryman himself he could sympathise with the task now facing the five corps under his command.  Lack of Allied artillery had been a significant factor in the outcome at Loos and the Germans had further demonstrated how effective concerted and well-directed shellfire could be when they had launched their attack on the French at Verdun.  Their guns had smashed the French front line trenches to pieces, leaving the infantry following through to finish off the few remaining survivors and occupy their new positions.  Rawlinson now planned to use the same tactics.  He had the guns and he had the shells.  Every available artillery piece would be brought into action and for five days and nights they would be used continuously against the positions now facing them.  When these lines had been pulverised and secured, the artillery would turn its attention to the second line of defences.  Thus, in piecemeal fashion, the German lines would fall before relentless bombardment and the British troops now massing along eighteen miles of front line trenches.

 

In the week preceding 1st July 1916, 1400 British guns fired more than one and a half million shells at the German positions but whilst the quantity of ammunition supplied for the battle was more or less on target, the quality in many instances, left much to be desired.  Two 9.2 inch howitzers burst as a result of defective shells and, as the Official History states, “the fuze of the 8-inch howitzer so frequently failed to ignite the bursting charge that the Somme battlefield in parts was littered with ‘duds’.”

 

Rawlinson’s Fourth Army comprised over half a million men but although there were a number of regular divisions lining up alongside Kitchener battalions for the opening day of the offensive, the Army as a whole lacked battle experience.  Sixty per cent of the battalions were comprised of New Army men and even the regular divisions no longer comprised purely career soldiers.  The steady drain caused by casualties sustained over the previous 22 months and the exchange of battalions with New Army Divisions had changed the character of the regular divisions.  Four of these now took up their positions with the Kitchener battalions.

 

The original date chosen for the attack could not be met.  The new date, 29^th June was preceded by heavy storms on 26^th and 27^th June and when dawn broke on the 28^th it was still raining.  The decision was taken to postpone the attack again, this time until 1^st July when the troops would go over the top not in the half light of dawn, but at 7:30 to allow for better artillery observation.  There would be no need for the advancing troops to rush.  The preceding intense artillery bombardment would already have destroyed everything in its path.  The advancing troops would quite simply be able to walk over as if taking a stroll in their favourite parks back home.  Thus on 1^st July 1916, sixty thousand men manning the front line trenches, carrying heavy packs and with bayonets fixed, waited anxiously for their officers’ whistles which would signal their measured advance across No-Man’s Land towards the German lines.

 

What happened during the course of that day has been well documented.  One hundred and forty three battalions took part in the attack and except in the southernmost area where the fortified villages of Montauban, Mametz and Fricourt were reclaimed, gains overall were negligible.  German-held territory three and a half miles wide and averaging a mile in depth was taken but at a terrible cost. The British Army’s casualties on 1^st July were the equivalent, author Martin Middlebrook calculated in ‘The First Day on the Somme’, “of seventy five battalions or of more than six full divisions of fighting infantry.”  Over 19,000 officers and men were killed or died of wounds and more than 38,000 further casualties registered as a result of wounds, men missing in action and those taken prisoner.  The final toll for that first day, as recorded in The Official History, was 57,470.

 

Private Cowley of the 1st Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment was a New Army man in a Regular battalion of a Regular Division.  He was also one of the 34,156 other ranks wounded on July 1^st.  On 1^st July, his Division, the 4^th, had pushed forward north of Beaumont Hamel, taking the German held Munich Trench and pushing on to Pendant Copse beyond it.  Cowley’s part in the action would not last long.  Lying in support of the 6^th and 8^th Battalions of The Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the 1^st Kings had left their trenches at 8:45am and succeeded in reinforcing the furthest troops only to be assailed by machine gun fire and bombing counter attacks launched from a German strongpoint at Serre.  By 11 am they had been forced back.  Twenty fours later they would abandon their position altogether and Cowley would be on his way back to England and a date with Nurse Oliver’s album at Beechlands.

 

All along the line, the path of the attack would follow a similar pattern: attacking troops halted after minimal or zero gains followed by reinforcements pushing through the remnants of shattered battalions to try and succeed where their predecessors had failed.

 

Fred Denton of the 9^th Essex Regiment had been waiting in reserve at Henencourt Wood on 1^st July and at 6.30pm the battalion moved through the village to relieve the 8^th Division which had suffered heavily in front of Ovillers.

 

Denton, the son of a former Grenadier Guards Regimental Sergeant Major, was one of three brothers serving in infantry battalions.  Another brother was serving in the Mercantile Marine and a sister, Amy, would drive ambulances in France.  Born in January 1894 in the Essex village of Chadwell St Mary, Fred had been working as a sail maker for the Orient Steam Navigation Company at Tilbury when war was declared and less than a month later had enlisted with the Essex Regiment. 

After a brief medical examination at the Drill Hall, Grays, he had been passed fit and two weeks later was posted to B Company of the 9^th Essex Regiment.  His brother Victor, three years his junior, had enlisted with him and just eleven digits separated their army numbers.  Victor was very young, a little over seventeen years old, but with two older brothers already serving and everybody panicking that the war would be over by Christmas, he had followed Fred’s example and taken the King’s shilling. As he worked as a painter for the same company as Fred, he would join the same regiment as Fred too and the two of them would stick by each other.  He would have to lie about his age but there were plenty of boys doing the same and in any event, it didn’t take much to convince the authorities in the clamorous days of 1914.  The two of them had set sail for France on 29^th May 1915 and had journeyed through France and Belgium together since. 

 

By July 1916, Fred Denton had already made something of a name for himself.  In September 1915 he had been Mentioned in Dispatches and the following month had been commended by the Divisional Commander for his part in fighting at the Hohenzollern Redoubt.  In April he had been promoted to Corporal and only the previous month he had been mentioned in Dispatches for a second time.  Now, marching up towards Ovillers with his brother Victor, the boys wondered what this latest action would hold in store for them.

 

The 9^th Essex formed part of the 35^th Brigade, 12^th Division, its objective the capture of Ovillers.  The Division would attack on a two brigade front with the 35^th Brigade on the right and the 37^th on the left.  The 9^th Essex would be in support of the attacking battalions of the 5^th Royal Berkshire and 7^th Suffolk Regiments and all men would take up positions by the 2^nd July in readiness for an attack the following day. 

 

For some however, their war would end before the attack had even commenced.  Lance-Corporal Ernest Malins, serving in the 37^th Brigade with the 6^th Queens Own Royal West Kent Regiment, was one of four fatal casualties in the battalion on the 2^nd July.  The men had spent the morning clearing trenches of dead and wounded and in the afternoon had been ordered to take over the support trenches.   The casualties had occurred during the relief, 2^nd Lieutenant Hoyland and 28 other ranks being wounded in addition to the men killed.  At nine o’clock in the evening the men were ordered back to their former position south of Ovillers. 

 

Ernest Malins was possibly the first Hickwells’ patient to be patched up, passed fit and sent abroad again only to be killed in action.  He had spent time at the hospital in July 1915 in the days before he had even been abroad.  At that time he had been with the regiment’s 3^rd Battalion, stationed at Chatham.  Sickness and his subsequent recuperation at Chailey had been a not altogether unpleasant diversion from the rigours of camp life but like all the men, he was still anxious to ‘do his bit’ and even though new to Army life, a sense of regimental pride was already instilled in him.  Taking up a pencil he had drawn his cap badge in Nurse Oliver’s book.  Now he had been killed before he had had a chance to play any active role in the unfolding drama.

 

At around 3:00 am on Monday July 3^rd, the attacking troops of the 12^th Division left their trenches and moved under cover of artillery fire to assembly trenches dug in no man’s land.  Fifteen minutes later, the barrage ceased and the men rushed the German trenches under cover of a smoke screen to their left.  At first, all went well.  The 5^th Royal Berkshires suffered few casualties whilst crossing and used the cover of a sunken road to lead them straight into Ovillers.  The German wire had been virtually obliterated by artillery fire and the men passed with relative ease through the first and second lines until they reached the ruins of houses on the Western edge of Ovillers.  Here though, they were engaged in heavy bombing attacks and due to a lack of further supplies of bombs, the leading companies suffered heavy casualties.  The 7^th Suffolk Regiment’s advance followed a similar pattern.  They too passed through the German first line, encountered strong opposition in the second line but pushed forward to the third.  This position was strongly held and made even more uncomfortable for the attacking troops by German fire coming in from the left flank.

 

Fred and Victor Denton and their comrades in the 9^th Essex fared even worse.  “The march of the Battalion,” wrote one of its soldiers later, “… will forever be remembered by those engaged.  Innumerable gun flashes lit the darkness of the night; they seemed endless and as one approached the line, the noise was deafening.  After what appeared to be endless marching we reached the trenches in front of Ovillers.  They were of hard chalk and with the bad weather not at all easy to negotiate without trench boards.  In moving to positions for attack the congestion in the trenches was awful and mortally wounded men could not be moved.”  To make matters worse, the German defenders, by now fully awake and repelling the attacking battalions in front of them, were sweeping no man’s land with machine gun fire.  Here, states the Divisional  History, “considerable casualties were sustained, and the waves of the attack becoming a series of small parties not strong enough to give any material assistance to the forward formations, the 35^th Brigade attack broke down and the remnants of the battalions were driven out of the German lines.” C Company, supported by a platoon from B Company managed to reach La Boiselle and capture 200 Germans but it was an isolated success on a morning of strong initial advances, punished by vigorous counter attacks and German machine guns brought up from deep dug-outs which had been unaffected by the intense one hour bombardment which preceded the assault.

 

By nine o’clock, the Division was reporting that the attack had failed.  A combination of flanking machine gun fire, lack of cohesion by troops advancing in the dark and the pock-marked terrain, made impassable in places due to the recent heavy rains, had put paid to the Division’s efforts.

 

Ernest Malins’ battalion, the 6^th Royal West Kent Regiment, lost 19 officers and 375 other ranks out of an attacking force of 617.  Other battalions suffered similarly.  The casualties for the 12^th Division’s two attacking brigades amounted to 97 officers and 2277 other ranks and Victor and Fred Denton were numbered amongst them.   At around 4am, the 9^th Essex attack had come to a standstill and the survivors withdrew to the front line to be relieved by the 7^th Norfolks.  In little under one hour the battalion had suffered 12 officer and 386 other rank casualties.  Corporal Fred Denton had survived the bombardment on the way to the trenches but had taken a bullet in his left forearm which would finish his service as an infantryman.  Of Victor however there was no sign and no news and he was posted as missing.  Much later, Fred would learn that his brother’s body had been found and laid to rest in France by an old school friend from East Tilbury.  The grave though, would never be found and in time Victor’s name would be added to the memorial to the missing at Thiepval.

 

Company Sergeant Major John William Beeby Gale of the 2^nd Bedfords was also about to take part in the Battle of The Somme.  When war was declared, the Bedfords had been stationed in Pretoria but by September 19^th the battalion was docking at Southampton after a three week sea voyage and preparing to move off to camp at Lyndhurst.  Assigned to the 21^st Brigade, 7^th Division, the men had barely had time to catch their breath before they were shipping out again, this time to France.  Gale had been a lance-sergeant then and had served with A Company until wounded the same year.  Now though he was back, still with the same company and battalion but assigned to a new brigade in a very different division.  Gone were the regulars of the 7^th Division and in their place, a new 30^th Division formed of ‘Pals Battalions’ from Manchester and Liverpool. 

 

The battalions had been formed in 1914 after Liverpool nobleman, Lord Derby had asked Kitchener if local authorities could also be responsible for recruiting local battalions of men.  They would provide them with everything except weapons and would bear the burden of all costs until the army was ready to take over responsibility.  The precedent of a privately organised body of soldiers had already been set with the formation of a battalion of City of London workers into the 10^th (Stockbrokers) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers in August 1914 and now Kitchener agreed to Lord Derby’s wish to extend this further.  Within a few days, pals battalions had been raised first in Liverpool, then Manchester and Oldham.  Lord Derby’s family crest was adopted as the Divisional symbol and also worn as a cap badge by the Liverpool Pals.  As a further incentive, Lord Derby gave each man who joined before 16^th October 1914 a silver badge.

 

What the battalions gained in enthusiasm, morale and ‘esprit de corps’ however, they lacked in experience.  Like earlier Kitchener battalions before them, the new K4 divisions that formed in the spring of 1915 had a diminishing pool of capable officers and senior NCOs to draw upon.  The consequences of poor leadership and inexperience had been felt at Loos when the 21^st and 24^th Divisions had been held too far back before being rushed unprepared into an attack which they had failed to press home.  With that bitter lesson in mind, the army had decided that radical changes needed to be made to the composition of the newly forming divisions.  Wherever possible, brigades of inexperienced troops would be swapped with brigades of regular troops already serving in France.  The latter would provide the new divisions with support, encouragement and above all, solid experience of soldiering.  As part of this exchange process, in December 1915 the 7^th Division’s 21^st Brigade was assigned to the 30^th Division, its four battalions of regular soldiers like William Gale being mixed in with the Pal battalions.  The Bedfords’ new brigade was the 89^th and they shared it with Kitchener volunteers from the 17^th, 19^th and 20^th King’s Liverpool Regiment.  Later, within the tranquil surroundings of Beechlands, William Gale would recall fond memories of earlier days in the army.

The 2^nd Bedfords had played a supporting role on 1^st July, following the 17^th and 20^th King’s as they moved through cut barbed wire to take their objectives as planned.  The other brigades had also enjoyed similar successes and by the end of the day the division had taken all of its objectives and could claim the distinction of having captured the first three field guns of the battle as well as Montauban, the first village to fall.  The following morning, the Germans had launched two attacks from Bernafay Wood to the east of the division’s new positions.  Both attacks were repulsed by the divisional artillery although an attempt by it to set the wood alight with a Thermite barrage failed.  The Bedfords, old hands at trench warfare, took the opportunity to dig and wire a new trench which they named Bedford Trench.  The following day Bernafay Wood fell to the 9^th (Scottish) Division which attacked after a brief 20 minute bombardment, securing the wood at a cost of only six casualties.  Patrols sent out towards the next wood in the path of the planned advance – Trones Wood – found it defended by machine-gun posts.

 

On July 4^th, The Bedfords had been relieved by South African troops and withdrew to Bois de Tailles for a rest, remaining there for four days.  Since July 1^st they had suffered just eight other rank fatalities and 70 other casualties across all ranks.  One officer had been wounded and another was suffering from shell shock but compared to some other battalions that had taken part in the opening day’s advance, their casualties had been remarkably slight.   Thirty-two battalions had suffered more than 500 casualties each on 1^st July 1916, the 10^th West Yorks holding the unenviable distinction of having the highest number with over 700 officers and men killed, wounded or missing. 

 

On 10^th July, orders were received that the 2^nd Bedfords would attack Trones Wood at on 11^th July.  Having taken Bernafay Wood almost without a struggle, Trones Wood was proving a much tougher nut to crack.  Initial attacks on 8^th July by battalions from the 21^st Brigade had successfully established a foothold on the South Eastern edge of the wood, but subsequent attacks had either failed or been met by stubborn resistance in a see-saw series of engagements which saw portions of Trones Wood switch from German to English control and then back to German. By the time CSM Gale and The Bedfords moved up to play their part in the action, the wood was still largely in German hands.

 

Despite the intensity of artillery and machine gun fire concentrated in the area over the previous three days, Trones Wood was still thick with undergrowth that made it difficult to see more than four yards in front.  Into this tangle, the Bedfords had advanced at 3.10am, getting to within 400 yards of the south eastern edge of the wood before being spotted by German machine gunners.  Thirty five minutes later they had managed to reach the southern end but not without sustaining many casualties on the way in. 

 

“The first thing that greeted me was a pair of legs, but no body, cut off as clean as with a knife” remembered A Company’s Private E G Robinson in ‘The Great War, I Was There’, many years later.  “Farther in, the dead lay in heaps, you couldn’t move without stepping on them… The wood was very dense so we could not see far ahead.  We struck off towards the edge of the wood and we came to a clearing where we could see a trench and it was lousy with Germans.  At this point we lost touch with the officer and never found what happened to him so we returned to the main body and reported… The branches of trees were flying about as bad as shells and bullets.  We were troubled quite a lot by snipers who were up in the trees at the far end of the wood.  Capt Tyler said we had better try to drive them out, so he took our platoon forward with that idea.  But Jerry had other ideas, and promptly let loose hell: we dived from one tree to another, and the bullets were cutting the leaves and bark round our ears… Eventually we got back to our funk holes with the remainder of the Company.  There was no rest of any sort, what with bombing, sniping, machine guns, shells, wounded and dying screaming, the stink of dead bodies, it was Bedlam.”

 

The remainder of the day followed the now familiar pattern of attack and counter attack, the Bedfords, supported by two companies of the 17^th King’s managing to hold on to the southern portion of Trones Wood until relieved on the morning of the 13^th by a battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment.  The operation had cost the Bedfords 244 casualties including William Gale who had been hit before even getting as far as the wood.  Captain Tyler had also been severely wounded, and the last time his men saw him he was ordering them back to their trenches.  So precarious was his position and so ferocious the gunfire coming from the German positions that Captain Tyler could not be brought in and he would succumb to his wounds later in the day.

 

William Gale though was on his way back to England for his rendezvous with a nurse and her album in a sleepy Sussex village. “Wounded 1914 and again 11^th July 1916 right of the British lines Thrones Wood” was how Gale would describe the action that had cost the Bedfords so dear.  By then the Wood had finally fallen, the honours going to the 18^th Division which had captured it at great cost on 14^th July.