The Somme         1916 

Home Page   Family History    Vaughan Family Start   28 March 2007

First phase: Battle of Albert. 

After 224,221 shells in 65 minutes and explosions of 10 mines, Allied attack begins at 0730. www.ku.edu/carrie/archives/wwi-l/2002/07/msg00015.html 

7.20 am The mine underneath the Hawthorn Redoubt in front of Beaumont Hamel was blown giving the waiting German troops the first confirmation of an imminent attack. 

Battlefield Scene Lochnagar crater near Arras, France.

This huge crater was the result of a mine explosion.  The term "mine" during World War One referred not to small devices planted in the ground (the use of the term today), but rather to a large stock of explosives buried by sappers underneath enemy lines. 

Note the size of the crater relative to the person (indicated by the circle and the arrow) at the crater's edge. 

Mine warfare had been carried on in this area well before July 1916 and there were many craters in No Man's Land. In June, along the Western Front as a whole, the British had blown 101 mines and the Germans 126. In this area some of the shafts dug, from which tunnels then reached out to the enemy line, were over 100 ft deep with tunnels at up to four levels. 

The mine was called Lochnagar, and it was started by 185th Tunnelling Company and packed with two charges of 24,000lb and 36,000lb of ammonal [a high explosive]. The mine along with sixteen other British mines was exploded on the Somme front, at 0728 on 1^st  July, and a circular crater was created measuring 300ft across and 90ft deep. Debris rose 4,000ft into the air... Tonie and Valmai Holt, Major & Mrs. Holt's Battlefield Guide to the Somme, p.53

 www.ga.k12.pa.us/academics/us/TECHsite/WWIsite/WWIpages/imagesBATTLEFIELD.html 

7.28 am   Three large and seven small mines were blown, the biggest were two either side of the road at La Boisselle, each containing 24 tons of explosive. One created the largest crater on the Western Front, Lochnagar. 

7.30 am Zero Hour  The British barrage which had pounded the German trenches for a week with one and a half million shells fell silent and over some parts of the line birdsong was heard. The men who had been waiting in No Man's Land rose up and those in the trenches clambered up ladders and over the parapet and began to walk at a steady pace, as they had been instructed, towards the German trenches. Capt. Nevill (later killed in action) and some of his platoon commanders of the 8th East Surreys kicked footballs into No Man's Land. 

7.30-8.30 am Far from being knocked out by the intense artillery barrage, the Germans were waiting and as the guns fell silent they came from their deep dug-outs to man the trenches and the machine guns, pouring a withering fire into the slowly advancing troops. The wire, which should have been cut by the long preliminary bombardment was in many places virtually intact and as the heavily burdened infantrymen - each carrying around 60lbs of equipment - struggled to find a way through they were mowed down by the German gunners. Second and third waves of infantry followed, while those fortunate enough to survive the machine guns and reach the German trenches fought savage hand-to-hand battles.