Heroes of the Somme

Every boy should beg. borrow or buy a copy of Dr. Conan Doyle's history of ' The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1916."  For it gives in graphic de tail what most of us have only known in general -the wonderful story of British valour in the Battle of the Somme.

 In one sense it is too big for us to grasp, too magnificent to realise. For it was not like Waterloo a compact combat on a limited scale, begun and ended in a single day, but a series of fights continuing day after day -" a battle which opened," as one reviewer has said, " with an attack by 230,000 British troops on a twenty-mile front, a battle in which, from first to last, nearly three million men were engaged, and in which the total casualties were at least three- quarters of a million. "

 As a sample of Dr. Conan Doyle's clear, direct style- we should like to quote his account of how Montauban was taken by the Thirteenth Corps under General Congreve on the first day of the battle:

 The hardest fighting of any fell to the lot of the 55th Brigade upon the right. The advance was made with the 8th East Surrey and 8th Queen's Surrey in front, the latter to the left. The 7th Buffs were in support and the 7th West Kents in reserve. No sooner had the troops come out from cover than they were met by a staggering fire which held them up in the Breslau Trench. The supports had soon to be pushed up to thicken the ranks of the East Surrey - a battalion which, with the ineradicable sporting instinct and light-heartedness of the Londoner, had dribbled footballs, one for each platoon, across No Man's Land and shot their goal in the front-line trench.

A crater had been formed by a mine explosion, forming a gap in the German front, and round this crater a fierce fight raged for some time, the Germans rush ing down a side sap which brought them up to the fray. Into this side sap sprang an officer and a sergeant of the Buffs, and killed twelve of the Germans, cutting oh their flow of reinforcements, while half a company of the same battalion cleared up the crater and captured a machine-gun which had fought to the last cartridge.

It is worth recording that in the case of one of these machineguns the gunner was actually found with a four-foot chain attaching him to the tripod. Being  badly wounded and unable to disengage himself, the wretched man had dragged himself, his wound, and his tripod for some distance before being captured by the British. The fact was duly established by a sworn inquiry. 

 The brigade was winning its way forward but the hard resistance of the Germans had delayed it to such a point that there was a danger that it would not be in its place so as to cover the left flank of the 90th Brigade, who were due to attack Montauban at 10 a.m. Such a failure might make the difference between victory and defeat. At this critical moment the officer commanding the East Surreys dashed to the front, reformed his own men with all whom he could collect and led them onwards. Captain Neville was killed in gallantly leading the rush, but the wave went forward.

There was check after check,  but the point had to be won and the Suffolks of the 53rd Brigade were brought round to strengthen the attack, while the West Kents were pushed forward to the fighting line. By midday two platoons of West Kents were into Montauban Alley, and had seized two houses at the western end of Montauban, which were rapidly fortfied by a section of the 92nd Field Company. The flank of the 90th was assured. A South African officer led the first group of Surrey men who seized Montauban.  He is said during the action to have slain seventeen of the enemy."