Two lads outside The Cafe du Tommy in Pozieres.

On the weekend of 15th to 17th October 1999 three members of The Great War team - Diggin' Robat (aka Robert), Emmanuel and myself (Tim) plus Caroline - a friend of Roberts, met up on the Somme battlefield. The idea being to meet in 'real' life rather than just in cyber space and also to see one of the great battlefield sites of World War1.

Basing ourselves at Amiens we all arrived on Friday - although Robert and Caroline were five hours late which is unusual for Germans!

First place to visit on Saturday morning was the museum in Peronne
This superb museum based in the old castle at Peronne has won a number of awards. It has full uniforms of the major nations, a large number of weapons and hours of film. The set up is excellent with quite a few small screens, showing the films, dotted about. Uniforms and weapons are laid out inset into the floor making them easy to inspect. After lunch we set off to visit La Bosielle and the Lochnagar crater. This hugh crater was made by the explosion of one of the mines at 7.30am on 1st July 1916 to signal the start of the attack. There is a picture of it on my other visit page. After La Bosielle we moved a few hundred yards on to the next village of Pozieres. A move that cost the British army thousands of men in 1916.

The Australian 1st Division memorial at Pozieres with Thiepval in the background.

Robert and Caroline inspect a 13pdr in Pozieres.

 Driving north along the line of the battle we passed Mouquet Farm and Thiepval stopping at Beaumont Hamel. At Beaumont Hamel we visited Newfoundland Park. Here the Newfoundland regiment lost 90% of its men in the first few hours. The trench lines and shell holes are well preserved and you get a very good impression of a section of the battlefield. No mans land takes an age to cross, heaven knows what it would be like under fire, carrying 60lbs of equipment. The German positions are still visible including the deep Y ravine which held a battlion of men relatively safely. It looked impregnable. All around are the Commonwealth War grave cemeteries. Strangely we did not come across any German cemetries in our time there. Robert thought they are probably more to the East.
The final stop of the day was at Serre were The Burnley and Accrington Pals battalions went over the top on the first day. The attack was a complete failure with massive loss of life. The open rolling countryside gave the German MGs great fields of fire and most had survived the week long bomdardment. Here we came across shells which are still being ploughed up over eighty years later!

Don't get too close!

The Accrington Pals memorial in Sheffield park at Serre. It is made from red Accrington brick. Pals battalions were formed by men of the same community who joined up together. Many worked together in civilian life or were members of the same sports or social club. The idea was they would have a better morale and unit chesion - it also had the side effect of communities losing large slabs of their menfolk in one go. After a long day we headed back to Amiens.
Saturday night was spent in the normal way - eating drinking and talking. It was great to finally meet people who I had known only via e mails. Close Combat brings people together!! Robert also noted afterwards that it was strange how members of different nations that had been at war only a generation ago could meet and get on so well.

Next day we got up far too early after going to bed far too late! First site to visit was Villers Bretonneaux - site of the first tank versus tank battle. The land is very flat around the village and we traced the field across which the German A7V tanks attacked.

Emmanuel and Robert in the cemetery at Villers Bretonneaux. The site contains graves of British, Australian, French and Algerian soldiers. The woods in the background roughly mark the spot from which the British tanks advanced.
Emmanuel now had to leave us and return too Paris. After bidding au revoir to Emmanuel we set off for Mametz wood. The wood was the scene of terrible fighting between the Welsh division and the Prussians. These actions are memorably described by the poets Robert Graves in 'Goodbye to all That' and Siegfried Sassoon in 'The Memoirs of George Sherston' who served together in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. The picture on the left shows Mametz wood from Flat Iron Copse cemetery. Flat Iron Copse was a German strongpoint which cost many Welch lives to take.
Finally we stumbled across the Cafe du Tommy in Pozieres. This amazing cafe has a 'museum' in its back garden which is a trench containing hundreds of items the the cafe owner has collected over his lifetime from the battlefield. The collection was very impressive with many rifles, helmets, machine guns, hundreds of rum jars and even the body armour shown in the picture opposite.A true treasure trove which is free to enter.

With a ferry to catch it was time to head back to Blighty.
On the way back I stopped a Vimy ridge to see the battlefield and Canadian Memorial. Unfortunatley I did not have time to go down the mines but the site is worthy of a visit if you are passing. The memorial is immmense and the trench lines are preserved in concrete. What amazed me was how close they were together. Huge mine craters dominate the site and shell holes surround the whole area.

The German lines at Vimy - the Canadian ones were about thirty yards in front - possibly within hand grenade range!

 One thing I noticed about the Somme was how peaceful and quiet the whole area is. Its hard to imagine the vast armies fighting here. Although there is not too much to see in the way of trenches etc there is enough to get an impression. The area seems not to have changed much in eighty years, having been rebuilt almost exactly the same after the war. It was amasing to see these places whose names I had read over and over again. Meeting Emmanuel, Robert and Caroline was great and it was interesting to get different views of the battle. Visiting the Somme it would be easy to think only British and Commomwealth troops took part. Overall estimated looses for both sides were Germans 420,000, British 480,000 and French about 200,000. The French contribution is often overlooked.