As we ambled through the gates of the Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont-Hamel on that fine summer day, the lush green fields, bright sunshine and cheerful birdsong suggested that we could be anywhere at all in the peaceful French countryside. Only the dedication stone at the entrance – exhorting us to “tread softly … go reverently and slow” – gave any clue to the place’s grisly and stomach-turning history.
This was where, on 1 July 1916, on the orders of Field-Marshall Douglas Haig, tens of thousands of British and Canadian troops scrambled out of their trenches and straight into a barrage of enemy fire. That date was, and still is, the bloodiest single day in British military history. This small area of front-line battleground, consisting of Allied and German trenches and a stretch of No Man’s Land which lies between them, is now carefully preserved as a memorial to all those who lost their lives in the ill-fated Somme Offensive.
Pausing by the entrance to pick up an explanatory leaflet, we began the self-guided walk through the maze of trenches, past the reconstructed dugouts and zig-zagging through the butchered landscape towards the imposing Caribou memorial. Perched on its rock high above the torn fields of France, the majestic creature stares out across No Man’s Land braying its eternal and silent anthem for doomed youth.
Just beyond the Caribou is the British front line. As directed by our leaflet, we took a deep breath and clambered out of the trench. Once over the top, we found ourselves walking down a gentle slope into a vast open space – exactly as those Allied soldiers would have done on 1 July 1916. Fragments of rusting iron posts still mark the places where coils of barbed wire once formed a lethal barrier. In the centre of the open space, the mortal remains of a scrubby tree – the so-called “Danger Tree” – indicates the mid-point between the enemy lines.
But few, if any, of those terrified young Tommies would have made it even half as far as this. It was only a matter of minutes before we found out why.
We carried on walking forwards, and eventually found ourselves at the start of another network of trenches – the German front line. The instructions in our leaflet told us to turn round and look back.
What now met our eyes what the German snipers could see as the Allied soldiers went over the top on that dreadful morning: an unimpeded view of acres of unsheltered grassland. Beyond, plainly silhouetted against the skyline, is the low ridge which formed the top of the Allied trench. My teenage son and I stared at each other, speechless, as the words “sitting targets” hung in the air like the stench of cordite.
We’d both learned about the First World War in school history lessons, and had studied the War Poets for English Literature, but nothing that either of us had read in any book could have prepared us for the full horrors of what we were seeing now.
We finished the walk in stunned silence. My son told me afterwards that he could think only of those poor young men, many of whom were not much older than him, being used as indiscriminate cannon-fodder. I could think only of the black-hearted Butcher of the Somme who had ordered them to their deaths – and I suddenly found myself thinking of the black centres of the standard Remembrance Day poppies. At the time, they bore just two words: Haig Fund.
At that moment I was suddenly reminded of the words of my former history teacher, way back in the 1970s: Never again will I ever wear a poppy which bears the name of Haig.
Fortunately, we now no longer have to face that dilemma. In 1994 the wording changed from Haig Fund to Poppy Appeal. And not a moment too soon.
You can take the tour of Beaumont-Hamel online here.
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