Martin Middlebrook - The First Day on the Somme

First published in Great Britain in 1971 by Allen Lane.

Reprinted in 2003 by Leo Cooper.

Republished in this format in 2016 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Martin Middlebrook, 1971, 2003, 2006, 2016

ISBN: 978 1 47387 716 0
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47387 719 1
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47387 718 4
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47387 717 7

The right of Martin Middlebrook to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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 the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd. Croydon, CRO 4YY

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This book is dedicated to
the front-line soldiers of all
nations, 1914-1918

Contents

List of Maps

Maps drawn by Leo Vernon

List of Plates

Following page 110

Following page 238

Abbreviations

The Men

Company Sergeant Major Percy Chappell
1st Somerset Light Infantry
4th Division

Lieutenant-Colonel Reginald Bastard, DSO
2nd Lincolns
8th Division

Private Paddy Kennedy
18th Manchesters (3rd Manchester Pals)
30th Division

Private Billy McFadzean
14th Royal Irish Rifles (Belfast Young Citizens)
36th (Ulster) Division

Private Dick King
10th Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry
21st Division

Lieutenant Philip Howe
10th West Yorks
17th (Northern) Division

Bugler Bill Soar
1/7th Sherwood Foresters (Robin Hood Rifles)
46th (North Midland) Division

Lance Corporal Charles Matthews
6th Northamptons
18th (Eastern) Division

Private Albert McMillan
16th Middlesex (Public Schools Battalion)
29th Division

Lieutenant Henry Webber
7th South Lancs
19th (Western) Division

These ten soldiers have been chosen as the principal representatives in the story of the Army of 1916. They are listed in their order of appearance in the book and with the ranks they held and their units on the day of the battle.

Preface to Centenary Edition

Forty-five years have passed since The First Day on the Somme was first published in July 1971 by Allen Lane, part of the Penguin Group. During those intervening years, the book has never been out of print in some form or another. Pen & Sword Books Limited of Barnsley are the current hardcover publishers and are reprinting this edition for the Somme Centenary in 2016. Penguin, shrewdly, retained the paperback rights.

There has been no updating of any part of the original publication but I am taking the opportunity of carrying out a very limited update.

Only two minor errors have been detected in the main text and these have been corrected. It will take a keen reader, with an earlier copy, to be able to spot where they are.

The main point of the update is to change the manner in which the original text was set by the copyeditor. There were numerous example of acronyms being set in lower case capitals which, in subsequent readings, I found irritating. I was a novice author; this was my first book. The terms lower case and upper case were not known to me and I assumed that the copyeditor knew what was the correct form, and I made no protest. If you have an old copy, just look at how the several examples of the plural of the ugly acronym for Casualty Clearing Stations on page 231 c.c.s.s, have now changed to CCSs.

My failure to protest when proofreading that original decision was an error I never made again and I had many a tussle with copyeditors in my subsequent books. I thank Pen & Sword for allowing me to deal with that original situation.

There is one last comment I should make about the main text.

I recently had lunch with a friend whose habit was to ask me to autograph an old paperback whenever we met, usually on a meeting on the Somme on 1 July. He claimed that there was a mistake in his copy. Where?, I asked. On page 314, he replied.

I had written: There are few visitors to the Somme now. with the anticipation that the decline in the number of visitors would continue.

There is not space on page 314 to correct that clearly incorrect assumption.

There is no the space either to make amendments to two other parts of the original book.

I think I was the first person to be allowed to make prints from the Battle of the Somme film made for public showing in Britain in 1916. This was before it was realised that parts of the filming were not done in real time but were re-enactments at other times and, sometimes, at distant places. It was eventually realised that several of the photos in the photo pages came into this category.

The Lancashire Fusiliers fixing bayonets ready for the attack were filmed at least one day before the attack, although they were in the correct trench and they did take part in the attack on 1 July.