Road to Home 2023 Day 14: Thiepval

This name Thiepval began to have as familiar and ugly a ring to it as any place ever mentioned by man

- Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War

I left off telling my story yesterday at my great-grandfather's tomb in Connaught Cemetery, just outside the village of Thiepval. After stopping at the cemetery,  I continued  on my way, unbeknownst to me at the time, across the very field where my great-grandfather most likely died in battle. I say most likely because the details of the actions and the deaths of individual ordinary soldiers were not recorded, so we cannot be certain. But I have enlisted the help of a qualified battlefields tour guide and cartographer to reconstruct the final days and hours of my great-grandfather's life. Bart Metselaar not only offers battlefield tours but runs a bed and breakfast with his wife Karen, only an hour's walk from Thiepval, on the other side of the Ancre River in Beaucourt-sur-l'Ancre. This is where I ended the day, at 14-18 Somme chambres d'hotes.

Karen welcomed me and served me a delicious three-course dinner (available as an optional extra in addition to bed and breakfast), and then I met Bart and agreed on a plan for the following day.

Bart presented me with a printout of all the research he had done on my behalf. Through the website of the national archives in Kew, he had obtained the appropriate brigade diaries and battalion diaries for the first seven days of July 1916: from the first day of the Battle of the Somme to the day of my great-grandfather's death. I had simply provided him with my great-grandfather's name, number, battalion and date of death, and he had reconstructed the battalion's movements during that week, painstakingly deciphering and typing out the handwritten reports in the brigade diaries written on the scene in the trenches, and highlighting the actions in which my great-grandfather would have been involved.

In the morning Bart took me for a tour of the relevant locations. On his tablet we could view maps of the trenches and essential features of the Thiepval Wood area at the time of the Battle of the Somme, superimposed over a satellite view of the same terrain today and with a dot showing our own position.

A printout of the map of Thiepval Wood 

We drove to the spot where my great-grandfather's battalion rested up in preparation for going to the front lines. Then we parked and walked through the forest, following in their footsteps on the path they would have taken toward the trenches, through the valley, along the Ancre River,  where they would have been relatively safe, sheltered from the shelling going on over the top of the ridge. Being there and seeing the terrain made it all so real; the soil in the forest is still uneven, pitted with holes where dugouts had been built into the hillside.

As we came out of the forest and climbed to the top of Thiepval Spur, Bart explained to me how events unfolded on the morning of July 7, 1916, in the action that took my great-grandfather's life.

A furious bomb fight took place between midnight and 6:30 am, with numerous casualties among both officers and other ranks. Ammunition was running out and could not be delivered as the communication trench had been dug too shallow and was blocked up with bomb boxes and dead bodies; only a small portion of the bombs and small arms ammunition available could be passed along the trench from hand to hand, as heavy shrapnel made it too dangerous to leave the trenches in order to deliver more. The field is still riddled with shrapnel 107 years later; Bart and I found several lead shrapnel balls in the ploughed soil.

At 7:25 am, two parties of the 5th Yorkshire and Lancaster Battalion were sent out to counter-attack, under cover of smoke and an artillery barrage. The party to the right could make no progress and had to man the trenches; while the party on the left side of the field was forced to return across the open, and several were shot down. 

A total of 7 officers and 80 other ranks had gone out; no officers returned (one was killed, two were wounded, one was missing and wounded, and three were missing), while only 22 of the 80 soldiers of other ranks returned. 

Because the records in my possession showed that my great-grandfather had initially been buried in the Divion Road cemetery, prior to exhumation and reburial in the post-war  concentration of the cemeteries, and this was on the left side of the field, we deduced that he was, most likely, among the party fighting on the left hand side of the field.

The Divion Road cemetery would have been somewhere around here

The battlefield seen from the top of Thiepval Spur

An unexploded shell

This is what that shell would look like inside

Bart explaining the battle, by the ruins of a German observation point at Schwaben Redoubt

Context

Now for some more general information on my great-grandfather's battalion, and rare 1915 video footage of a review of the troops prior to their departure for France, in which my great-grandfather presumably appears! Again it was Bart who found the video footage for me.

 

5th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment

The 5th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment, was a unit of Britain's Territorial Force formed in 1908 from Volunteer units originally raised in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1860. It served in some of the bitterest fighting on the Western Front during World War I, including the Somme, Ypres and the German spring offensive. Most of the men were recruited from coal mining and related industries.

Towards the end of July 1914, the units of the West Riding Division left their headquarters for their annual training camps, but on 3 and 4 August they were ordered to return; on 4 August immediate mobilisation was ordered. The 5th York & Lancasters mobilised at Rotherham under the command of Lt-Col C. Fox, TD, who had been CO since 1 April 1914.

Shortly afterwards, Territorial Force units were invited to volunteer for Overseas Service, and the majority of the battalion did so. On 15 August 1914, the War Office issued instructions to separate those men who had signed up for Home Service only, and form these into reserve units.

 

1/5th Battalion

After mobilisation, the 1st West Riding Division concentrated in the South Yorkshire area, and began training for war. On 31 March 1915 it was informed that it had been selected to proceed to France to join the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), and the battalion landed at Boulogne on 14 April. On 18–19 April platoons from the III West Riding Bde were attached to 8th Division for training in the routine of trench duties. 

On 12 May the division was designated 49th (West Riding) Division and the brigade became 148th (3rd West Riding).

For the next nine months the 49th Division took part in no major operations but was almost continuously engaged in day-to-day trench warfare, much of it in the Ypres Salient, with the considerable casualties that this entailed. On 19 December the division received a sudden attack with the new German phosgene gas, followed by heavy shelling, but no serious infantry attack followed. In January 1916 the division was withdrawn for its first period of complete rest since it first entered the line.

1/5th Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment at the Somme

At the beginning of February 1916 the division moved to the Somme sector, 1/5th York & Lancasters under Lt-Col Shuttleworth Rendell proceeding to Oissy. Here the division spent the next few months alternating trench duties with working parties and training for the forthcoming Somme Offensive. For this the 49th Division formed the reserve for X Corps, which was tasked with seizing the Thiepval Spur, after which the 49th was to pass through and continue the pursuit. The 1/5th York & Lancasters moved up to assembly trenches in Aveluy Wood before dawn on the day of the attack (1 July), and at 13.30 moved up to the British front trenches alongside the River Ancre, Lt-Col Rendell taking C and D Companies to the south while Major Shaw took A and B Companies to the north. The battalion attempted to assist 108 Bde of the 36th (Ulster) Division, which had made good progress but had become cut off. 

After the failure of the first day, the York & Lancasters spent the next week in confused fighting along the Ancre River. On 6 July (actually 7 July - mistaken date in the battalion war diary) the battalion sent forward two bombing parties totalling seven officers and 80 other ranks to capture a trench: of these only 22 other ranks returned, the CO, Lt-Col Rendell, being left behind wounded in a German dugout, and Major Shaw killed. 

By the time the battalion was relieved at 20.30 on 8 July it had suffered a total of 307 casualties.

(Source of this information: Wikipedia)

Friday, July 7, 1916

Temperature 20°, overcast and showery (13 mm rain)

The 49th Division suffered a heavy bombardment from 12:30 to 2:30 am which centred on the Ancre River and eventually focused on the position north of Thiepval. The Germans launched a furious assault using the new light "egg" grenades, which could be thrown 50 yards, on two companies of the KOYLI (King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry - 148th Brigade) who were later reinforced by two companies of the 1/5th KOYLI. Bombers of the 1/5th Yorkshire & Lancashire were sent forward, but soon after 6 am the survivors were forced to withdraw to their old front line.

- Chris McCarthy, The Somme: The day-by-day account

My great-grandfather was one of a party of snipers accompanying those bombers, but he was not one of the survivors.

Mexborough and Swinton Times, July 1916

Soldier – Limer – Killed

Corporal John Limer (York & Lancs)

Cpl John Limer (York and Lancs Territorials), of Midland Terrace, Wath on Dearne, has been killed in action.

Lt R Jennison, writing to the widow says:

He was killed in July 7 by a sniper, and died instantly. He was one of the party of snipers accompanying a bombing party, and for the men with him I gather that he put up a good fight against numerous odds, and was hit while he was firing at one of the Boches.

He came to me as a Lance Corporal, and I promoted him to Cpl owing to his splendid manly character and good work. He was a tower of strength to me while I had the platoon, and was always very bright.

He was well liked by all ranks, in fact, we were all chums together, with one object in view. He is badly missed here, though not as much as you were missing, for I know he could not help but be a good and faithful husband.

I returned to Connaught Cemetery with a new appreciation of what my great-grandfather's final days and hours had been like. He was only twenty-eight years old - the average of my two children's current ages - and he left behind a widow and three children, the youngest of whom was my grandfather. 

I don't know if any of my other great-grandparents fought in the war, or what their stories of those years might have been. But it has been a real voyage tracing the life of my great-grandfather John Limer from his birthplace in Wath-on-Dearne, Yorkshire to his grave in Thiepval, both figuratively and literally, as I have walked all the way. 

Bart Metselaar of 14-18 Somme Battlefield Tours has gone beyond the call of duty to do all the research and provide me with a personalised tour, and I am very grateful to him for that. 

I am grateful also to my Aunt Pauline and my late Uncle John "Brian" Limer, named after his grandfather, for getting the ball rolling by initially investigating John Limer's life and death some years ago, and providing me with all the information and documents they found. It was also in memory of my uncle, who passed away in February, that I placed a white rose on Private John Limer's grave, to match the white roses we buried with his grandson. 

Ils ne sont pas insouciants de leur vie comme des bandits, aveuglés de colère comme des sauvages. Malgré la propagande dont on les travaille, ils ne sont pas excités… C’est en pleine conscience, comme en pleine force et en pleine santé, qu’ils se massent là, pour se jeter une fois de plus dans cette espèce de rôle de fou imposé à tout homme par la folie du genre humain…Ce ne sont pas le genre de héros qu’on croit, mais leur sacrifice a plus de valeur que ceux qui ne les ont pas vus ne seront jamais capables de le comprendre.

- Henri Barbusse, Sou feu

 

They are not careless of their own lives, like bandits, or blind with fury, like savages. Despite all the propaganda, they are not inflamed… Fully conscious of what they are doing, fully fit and in good health, they have massed there to throw themselves once more into that madman’s role that is imposed on each of them by the folly of the human race…

They are not the sort of heroes that people think they are, but their sacrifice has greater value than those who have not seen them will ever be able to understand.

- Henri Barbusse, Under fire