Irish Times article, 1 July 1976
Transcription
Transcription history
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
“There was a spot and we watched the fighting like as if we were on high ground just watching an old- fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval..” He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunneling: up to and beyond German lines.
“I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you’d know whether they were to the left, to the right or straight ahead.”
Both men remember their con-ditions at the time. Joseph Ken-drick, complete with his bicycle, toiled in the heat: “The weather was melting, like now it was. And they couldn’t get food to us, only our emergency rations. Ter-rible stuff: a tin of bully beef and a few hard biscuits.” Henry Blee reckons his conditions were a bit better than other soldiers.
“We did so much work under-ground, you see that you’d be away from the extreme condi-tions up above. But there’d be a danger from gas after the ex-plosiotions and you’d send down a finch or something to see what it was like. If gas was there you’d just have to crawl free and that was that. We used to sink shafts down to the water level and then tunnel under German lines. Often if we were tunnel-ling in the same place as they were we’d almost meet and you could try planting mines to ex-plode and block them off.”
Blee’s war work stood the people of Devon in good stead during the second World War.
“After the Somme I was sent home – with dysentery which isn’t very heroic is it? – and we began to try out a new tunneling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Centerbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. Its still there to-day.”
Cease fire …
Joseph Kendrick, private, was gassed in 1917 but remembers that he survived and was in France the day the war ended: “All I remember is hearing the command to cease fire … and then the cafes and the pubs opened and we got some free beer.”
Henry Blee was in Britain in a country pub with an officer friend who got so excited at the news that he threw a glass of neat, free whiskey into a roar-ing fire and got his hand burned, “Served him well right for wasting whiskey,” Blee thinks.
If either of these two men were decorated during the first World War they don’t make a play of it. Henry Blee can only remember one brush with offi-cialdom, a sort of honour in reverse; “I was fined £25 at a court-martial for losing a motor-bike.”
Henry Blee was born on May 1st, 1889; Joseph Kendrick on July 7th, 1883.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
“There was a spot and we watched the fighting like as if we were on high ground just watching an old- fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval..” He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunneling: up to and beyond German lines.
“I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you’d know whether they were to the left, to the right or straight ahead.”
Both men remember their con-ditions at the time. Joseph Ken-drick, complete with his bicycle, toiled in the heat: “The weather was melting, like now it was. And they couldn’t get food to us, only our emergency rations. Ter-rible stuff: a tin of bully beef and a few hard biscuits.” Henry Blee reckons his conditions were a bit better than other soldiers.
“We did so much work under-ground, you see that you’d be away from the extreme condi-tions up above. But there’d be a danger from gas after the ex-plosiotions and you’d send down a finch or something to see what it was like. If gas was there you’d just have to crawl free and that was that. We used to sink shafts down to the water level and then tunnel under German lines. Often if we were tunnel-ling in the same place as they were we’d almost meet and you could try planting mines to ex-plode and block them off.”
Blee’s war work stood the people of Devon in good stead during the second World War.
“After the Somme I was sent home – with dysentery which isn’t very heroic is it? – and we began to try out a new tunneling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Centerbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. Its still there to-day.”
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
“There was a spot and we watched the fighting like as if we were on high ground just watching an old- fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval..” He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunneling: up to and beyond German lines.
“I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you’d know whether they were to the left, to the right or straight ahead.”
Both men remember their con-ditions at the time. Joseph Ken-drick, complete with his bicycle, toiled in the heat: “The weather was melting, like now it was. And they couldn’t get food to us, only our emergency rations. Ter-rible stuff: a tin of bully beef and a few hard biscuits.” Henry Blee reckons his conditions were a bit better than other soldiers.
“we did so much work under-ground, you see that you’d be away from the extreme condi-tions up above.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
“There was a spot and we watched the fighting like as if we were on high ground just watching an old- fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval..” He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunneling: up to and beyond German lines.
“I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you’d know whether they were to the left, to the right or straight ahead.”
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
“There was a spot and we watched the fighting like as if we were on high ground just watching an old- fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval..” He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunneling: up to and beyond German lines.
“I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you’d know whether they were
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
“There was a spot and we watched the fighting like as if we were on high ground just watching an old- fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval..” He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunneling: up to and beyond German lines.
“I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equip-ment. One was like a glorified stethoscope, made of a big
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
“There was a spot and we watched the fighting like as if we were on high ground just watching an old- fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval..” He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunneling: up to and beyond German lines.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the Right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that’s all.
My number mustn’t have been up.”
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn’t arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting at Thiepval.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
Sucky one
“But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn’t be worried about fear or any-thing. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs and terrible noise. Ex-plossions going off all the time, know we went over the top in a three-way move, one on the
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s."
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column..
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But time wasn’t much cavalry at the Same, I think I can’t remem-ber that much, I was only in my 20s.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
.second column.. “I don’t know whether I was afraid. You couldn’t have time then to think or to have nerves. Out nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you’d see in the street, you know. Our jobs we different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Ger-mans’ movements and sometimes going behind the lines or then
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his -they live in a Dublin men’s home – did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th Corps Cyclist Battalion, He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and in
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
“Of course, we realized a the time a little about the respon-sibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunneling operating’s”.
He himself was a listening officer with the 1st/175th. Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River
Began around the River Somne 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, wit-nessed and, at times, took part in.
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
"It was a complete wash out disaster. Sure it was only starting off point for the next operationanyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old sur-vivor of the terrible events in began around the River
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out letter' of 60 years ago
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...down column
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
...left columnJACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onward they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
-
Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
JACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Letter from front line
The months of July and August, 1916, were dominated, atleast in the columns of The Irish Times, by news of the Great War and of the fighting in and around the Somme in particular.
One story from The Irish Times quoted in full a letter received by The Times of London from a senior officer of the British Army serving in France. His letter was about the Ulster Division.
It reads: The 1st July should for all time have a double meaning for all Ulstermen.
“The attack carried out by the Ulster Division was the finest thing the new armies have done in this war. Observers from outside the Division who saw it say it was a superb example of discipline and courage.
“We had to come through a wood which was being literally blown to pieces, form up in successive lines outside it under a deadly fire, and then advance across the open for 400 yards to the first line of German trenches. It was done as if it was a parade movement on the barrack square. The losses were formidable before we ever reached the first line, but the men never faltered, and finally rushed the first line, cheering and shouting ‘Boyne’ and ‘No surrender’.
“From then onwards they never checked nor wavered until they reached the fifth line of the German trenches, which was the limit of the objective laid down for us. They captured and brought in nearly 550 prisoners, and actually captured many more who were either killed by the German fire before they reached our lines or were able to get away in the maze of the trenches owing to the escort being knocked over. I can hardly bring myself to think or write of it. It was magnificent beyond description. Officers led their men with a gallantry to which I cannot do justice, and the men followed them with equal gallantry, and when the officers went down they went on alone. The division was raked by machine gun and shell fire from in front and from both flanks, and our losses have been very severe. Ulster should be very proud of her sons.”
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Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
JACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast battalion, limped back to safety at last with 70 men, out of a force of 700.
To a whole generation Thiepval was a name that conjured up the glory and the sacrifice of war. "In those great and terrible days," wrote The Irish Times, five years later, "there was no 'partition' between the soldiers of the Six Counties and those of the Twenty-Six. Ulstermen, Leinstermen and Munsterman fought and died together. . . Many good Irishmen, among them John Redmond and his braave brother, hoped and prayed that the common sacrifice, the common heroism would heal the discord of centuries, and that the via dolorosa of Messines and Thiepval would lead us to the gateway of a United Ireland."
A human folly
To a later generation, which sees no glory in war, and finds it hard to give credit for heroism, the Somme stands for a huge and brutal act of human folly. Certainly it was visionary ever to hope that wartime comradeship would open the way peace and harmony in Ireland. Redmond had committed the Irish volunteers to the war in a spirit of emotional patriotism: "It is these soldiers of ours, with their astonishing courage and their beautiful faith, with their natural military genius, with their tenderness as well as strength . . . it is these soldiers of ours to whose keeping the Cause of Ireland has passed today. It was never in worthier, holier keeping than that of these boys, offering up their supreme sacrifice of life with a smile on their lips because it was given for Ireland. May God bless them ! "
What Redmond expected was that the Brithish Empire, in gratitude for Ireland's aid, would hand her her freedom. But Redmond spoke for the men of the Munsters and the Leinsters, the Connaught Rangers and the Dublin Fusiliers. The men who made up the Inniskillings and the Co. Down Volunteers and signed the Covenant of 1912. Indeed, there was a canard that they had been placed deliberatley in the hottest section of the line, where they would sustain heavy casualties, because they were political embarrassment. Four years of war had not changed their political opinions. The men who went over the top following an Orange Sash were never, in Redmond's terms. fighting for the Cause of Ireland.
What nobody was likely to understand, on that day 6- years ago, was that the world was changing under their eyes. It was being changed not by the movement of the armies, not by the capture of this point and the loss of that, but by the slaughter itself. The Ulster Division lost 6,000 in that oneday. The southern regiments were not committed so heavily--- they lost about a thousand --- but they had already suffered terrible losses at Gallipoli the year before. The total number of Irishmen who served in the war, by Lord Dunraven's estimate, was about half a million: and of these, he recknoed, not less than 32,000 men and 2,000 officers died. The men who were cut out were the young, the rising generation. The fearsome blood-letting of the war weakened their country for years to come----perhaps for ever.
End of the road
For the Protestants of the South, above all, the war was the end of the road. The leaders of the community were the men who went to make up the officer class, North and South, and it was the officers who suffered most heavily: at the Somme, the casualties ran as high as 75%. Right through the country, the sons of the Big Houses and the sons of the rectories went to the war. When the war was over, the men had died and women were left - widowed wives and spinster sisters, living on in decaying grandeur, in a country to which they would never again belong. For many of them, real life had stopped at a moment in time from, as it were, into a marble tablet on the church wall: "Sacred to the memory of lieutenant Richard Harrison, Royal Irish rifles. Born August 16, 1895. Killed in action July 1, 1916. Remembered for ever."
It is impossible to say, in statistical terms, how much the Great war contributed to the decline of the Protestant population in the South: there was no census between 1911 and 1926. What is certain is that, in those 15 years, the total dropped by almost one-third - from 330,000 to 208,000. In places the decline was much greater in Cork city it was almost 50%. And those who remained felt the pain of a double bereavement: they had not only lost their menfolk, they had lost a country. Ireland, they felt, had let them down a little Free State was no substitute for a great Empire. what they still did not grasp, at that stage, was that the Empire too had sustained its death-wound on the field of the Somme.
TODAY A PARTY of survivors from the Battle of the Somme id travelling back to that bloody site from Northern Ireland. In dublin at least two men still remember the engagement that began 60 years ago, and here they give some of their memories to HENRY KELLY.
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Battle of the Somme:
How 6,000 families heard of Thiepval
JACK WHITE, formerly Features Editor of "The Irish Times" and now Controller of Programmes with RTE, wrote about the Battle of the Somme and its effects on Southern Protestants as a community in his recent book, "Minority Report." Here he analyses why he believes that, for the Protestants of the South above all the first World War was the end of the road, with the Battle of the Somme and a sad milestone along the trail.
JULY 1st, 1916, was a fine sunny morning. There was meadow flowers in bloom in the long grass by the roadsides, and birds were singing overhead. At 7.30 a.m. the men of the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were lined up, waiting, on the edge of a little wood near an obscure French village that nobody in Ireland had ever heard of. Before nightfall, the name of Thiepval had been written into history by the blood of 6,000 of them.
Thiepval was just one point on the long front on the river Somme where Haig had chosen to mount the great summer offensive of 1916 against the German lines. The day began with a colossal bombardment by Allied artillery, designed to destroy the German entrenchments and smash down their barbed wire, to lay the way open for the infantry assault and capture their positions. It ended with 20,000 of Haig's men dead and ___ as many wounded: first terrible _________ of the million or more who were ______ die ---- on both sides --- before the _____begun in the glory of that July ____ trailed off, inconclusively, in the _____ and mud of November.
_________________ pieces
Everything went wrong. The bombardment was a failure, the wire not ___ tied, the men who went forward _____ against the German lines were ____ pieces by machine-guns, wave after_____. The men of the Ulster Division among the few whose attack was ___ssful. With amazing dash and courage they burst through the German lines of Thiepval and stormed on to seize their major objective, the Schwaben redoubt. But they ended up so far ahead of the flanking forces that they were exposed to withering fire from German guns and machine-guns. Some of them, going on to throw themselves against the second line of German defences, caught up with their own artillery barrage, and were killed by Allied shells. More than half of them never returned. Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, commanding the Belfast
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- 15946 / 169581
- Contributor
- Peter Kendrick
July 1, 1976
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