Friends to the End the Last Stand of the Boys' Brigade Pals Which Marked the End of the Battle of the Somme
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Summary
STANDING on the old British front line that criss-crosses the landscape of the Somme between Gommecourt in the north and Maricourt in the south, you get a fair idea of what some 150,000 British and Dominion troops were looking at 90 years ago next weekend. The chalk downlands look much the same; hidden copses dot the rolling French countryside, the Rivers Somme and Ancre are eternal features in a landscape laced with quiet country lanes.
But while I am walking the battlefield as a disinterested military historian, piecing together the assault phases of the first day of the attack, the prospect confronting those men was far more daunting. On July 1, 1916, as the seconds counted down towards zero- hour, they would have felt a tightening of the gut and a sudden drying of the throat as they waited for the moment that was waiting for them.See the full content of this document
Extract
Friends to the End the Last Stand of the Boys' Brigade Pals Which Marked the End of the Battle of the Somme
At 7.30am, whistles blew along the British front-line trenches as the first wave of infantry began what was then the largest assault on German positions on the Somme. Following an enormous weeklong bombardment involving the firing of a million shells along a 25- mile front, the Germans were expected to be in no condition to resist the British attack. As the noise of the explosions died away, men clambered up scaling ladders and began their advance in the eerie silence of what promised to be a fine summer's morning. Among those going ove...
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