Lochnagar Crater

(Two photos below from Wikipedia) 

At 7:28am on July 1, 1916 a titanic explosion occurred near La Boisselle, a village in the Department of the Somme, throwing debris thousands of feet into the air.  Its cause was sixty tons of explosives placed in a mine dug by British engineers, extending 1200 feet, to the German trenches.  It was, to that date, the largest military mine explosion in history.  The resulting crater, now known as the Lochnagar, was 70 feet deep and 330 feet wide.

The power of visiting the site, which we did on our recent trip, was that it brought down to a comprehensible scale, the otherwise overwhelming scale of the Battle of the Somme, which lasted from July 1 to mid-November of 1916.  The site, privately owned and maintained, was purchased and preserved by a Briton in the 1970s, is set up as a memorial, a "hallowed place dedicated to Peace, Remembrance, and Reconciliation".  As you walk around the crater, you read exhibits telling the stories of the British soldiers who died that day, those who survived, and those of comrades who returned frequently over the years to honor their fallen friends.  A cross marks the spot where the body of a British soldier, subsequently identified, was found as recently as 1998.

The British-French offensive on the Somme was designed to end the Western Front stalemate, breaking the German lines.  It was also intended to take pressure off the French Army, desperately defending Verdun against a German attack that began in February and was to continue until December.  The attack was to take place on a 25 mile front, with 19 mines, Lochnagar being the largest, detonated that morning.

The first day proved a fiasco for the British.  The troops, many seeing their first combat, had been told the week long preliminary bombardment would destroy the first and second German trench lines and were instructed, once they went "over the top", to walk slowly following the rolling artillery barrage.  However, much of the German first line and most of its second line survived the bombardment.  On that first day, the British army suffered almost 60,000 casualties, of which 20,000 were killed; the worst toll of any day in British history, and achieved very little.  The division attacking in and around the Lochnagar Crater incurred 6,000 dead, wounded, and missing, the most of any attacking division.  By the time the battle wound down in November more than a million British, French, and German soldiers were dead, wounded or missing.

What happened that morning at Lochnagar? The German first line trenches were completely destroyed.  The British soldiers followed instructions marching towards the crater.  Most of the British were part of the Pals Battalions.  With the destruction of the relatively small professional British Army in the battles of 1914, and the realization that the war would last longer than anticipated, Britain, which did not have conscription until January 1916, embarked on an ambitious recruitment program to build a large army. 

One of the recruitment tools used was the creation of Pals Battalions, for volunteers who enlisted with their friends, neighbors, or co-workers and were promised they could serve together.  For these volunteers, July 1 was to be their first day of combat.

As the British approached the crater and front trenches they found themselves under intense machine gun fire.  While the German first line was destroyed, the second line, on a ridge several hundred yards beyond, was relatively unscathed.  The Germans had an unobstructed view of the British advance and were well equipped with machine guns and ammunition. 

You can see on the photo below, behind the plaque showing the story of a British soldier who perished that day, the ridgeline where the German gunners were located.  Please read the inscription.

The surviving British never made it past the crater and trenches, with many seeking cover within the crater.  One plaque at the Crater told the story of two brothers.  One made it into the crater, but the other lifting his head for a moment at the crater lip, was hit by a machine gun and killed.  His brother, with the help of a fellow soldier, pulled the body into the crater and buried him at the bottom.

On another part of the field, a Pals regiment of 700 men suffered 235 dead and 350 wounded in the first 20 minutes of the battle.  As news of the dead and wounded came back to Britain, the enormous impact of the loss to Pal communities became evident, and the recruiting of Pals units was halted.

Butte de Vauquois and Lochnagar Crater were the most moving and evocative battlefield sites of our trip.  The Crater was saved from being filled in by the purchase of Richard Dunning MBE and the creation of the Locknagar Crater Foundation.

The Pals were not the only units to suffer heavily.  After Lochnagar, we visited the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Regiment Memorial, located a few miles away.  We observed the remains of the trenches from which the Newfoundland Regiment of the Canadian Army went "over the top" on the morning of July 1, and the remnants of their own barbed wire protective barrier through which they were funneled through breaches, our guide pointing out why the sloping terrain left them so vulnerable to enemy fire.  Of 790 in the regiment, 272 were killed and 438 wounded in a short time that morning.  Only 80 remained alive and uninjured.