Carruthers - Visions of War - Spirits of the Somme

This edition published in 2014 by
Pen & Sword Military
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Bob Carruthers
Published under licence by Pen & Sword Books Ltd.

ISBN: 9781473822757
EPUB ISBN: 9781473851115
PRC ISBN: 9781473851276

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in England
By CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Family
History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Pen & Sword Discovery, Pen & Sword
Politics, Pen & Sword Atlas, Pen & Sword Archaeology, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe
True Crime, Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo
Cooper, The Praetorian Press, Claymore Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and
Frontline Publishing

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail:
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

CONTENTS

by Bob Carruthers

by Bob Carruthers

by Sir Philip Gibbs

by Geoffrey Malins

by Henry Gilbert Nobbs

by Robert Derby Holmes

by C. A. Rose

by Isaac Alexander Mack

INTRODUCTION

by Bob Carruthers

T HE REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE Battle of the Somme, and those scenes which were shot for the official film of the Battle of the Somme by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell have gone on to become iconic images which capture the essence of the Great War. Those images were filmed and photographed in late June and early July 1916 and it is those surviving images of the Great War, more so than any others, which have come to define our perceptions of the war in the trenches. They provide a gritty and compelling primary source record of those terrible events as they unfolded.

Today many of the men who look back at us from almost a century ago are still there, they lie in the dozens of military cemeteries which grace the landscape of the Picardy region in Northern France. The triumphs and disasters which befell the men of the British Fourth army were also observed and brilliantly recorded by Official War Correspondent Sir Philip Gibbs. Gibbs laboured under the burden of censorship during the Great War itself, but shortly after the war, once he was freed from the shackles of officialdom, he published a hard hitting and candid account of the war entitled Now It Can be Told. This excellent but often overlooked account provides a vivid primary source from the perspective of a man who was a trained writer and observer. Gibbs was an eyewitness to many of the key events of the Battle of the Somme and he also had access to those in command as well as those fighting in the trenches.

Over one million men from both sides were killed or wounded in the fields and towns of Picardy and the work of Gibbs and Malins stands as an enduring testament to their experience. However Gibbs and Malins can only ever tell part of the story, to complete the picture we need to hear the testimony of those who actually fought on the Somme. We are fortunate therefore to have a large number of accounts left to us by the participants in the battle to draw upon.

When I was invited to make my own film of the events of 1st July 1916 I wanted to contrast the experience of the men who served in 1916 with the work which is being done on the battlefield today to honour the memory of the one million who fought and died there. Once work began in earnest on the film I was spurred to revisit the work of both Malins and Gibbs.

As a result of reviewing the Battle of the Somme film and once more and also reading Gibbs wonderfully evocative account of the battle in Now It Can Be Told, I decided that I would take up the offer to make the film, and as a result I would once more return to those fields and villages which occupy such a unique place in British military history. I am pleased to say that the resulting film which finally emerged (also entitled Spirits of the Somme) was well enough received to encourage my publishers at Pen and Sword to ask me to put together the book you now hold.

Approaching the book I felt it was important to let the voices of those who fought on the Somme or who witnessed those tragic events at first hand speak for themselves. Faced with the powerful authority of the eyewitness there is little that the modern historian can add other than to set the sources in context. I was keen to show the battle from as many perspectives as possible without reducing those invaluable accounts to mere snippets. I have therefore chosen six primary source accounts in an attempt to show the battle from the perspective of, not just the front line soldier, but also the artillerymen who played such a major role in the battle. There are surprisingly few books in print which describe the battle from the point of view if the artillery. For that reason I have included an extract from C. A. Roses account of a field battery in action on the Somme.

I still feel that the work of Sir Philip Gibbs is among the finest observations of the men who fought on the Somme and in my opinion it is an invaluable source as he met everyone from the top down to the privates in the trenches. Unlike the participants Gibbs had nothing else to distract him from the job of observing and recording. He was a masterful writer and the results speak for themselves.

The film reporters of the day were represented at the battle by Geoffrey Malins and his wonderful published account How I Filmed the War provides a vivid record of the key events which Malins and McDowell captured in the official film of the Battle of the Somme.

The 60,000 men of the British and Commonwealth armies who were maimed or wounded are represented by the tragic account of the battle which was written from the perspective of Sir Gilbert Nobbs who lost his sight on 1st July 1916.

I have also included an account by Robert Derby Holmes which provides an highly unusual perspective on the Battle of the Somme. Robert Derby Holmes was an American who volunteered to fight in the ranks of the British Army and saw a great deal of action during the Great War. Like Gilbert Nobbs he later had the misfortune to be wounded but he was able to make a full recovery and produced a highly readable account of his war which was published under the title A Yankee In the Trenches.

Finally I have chosen the poignant last letters of Isaac Alexander Mack to represent the 20,000 souls who lost their lives.

I hope this collection brings a new insight into the battle and will spur you on to make your own journey to the battlefield. If you do, I would recommend visiting on 1st July, the day when the Spirits of the Somme can be felt almost palpably.

- CHAPTER 1 -

THE BATTLE THEN AND NOW

by Bob Carruthers

S TRATEGICALLY THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME was fought as part of a simultaneous series of offensives in 1916 by the British, French, Italian and Russian armies which designed to place intolerable pressure on the Central Powers and bring the war to a swift end.

On the German side the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn also intended to end the war in 1916. He sought to do so by destroying the French army. He planned to do this by luring the French into a battle of attrition over ground of his own choosing.