1st Battalion
WW1
The Battle of the Somme

Background music is by Rochdale singer Fat Moll (Myspace Link)

8 YouTube Clips of the true story of The Somme
We are trying to get hold of a Full version


The attack on Beaumont Hamel from the Sunken Road
1st Bn The XXth The Lancashire Fusiliers-1st July-1916.

To the north of the river Ancre lay an important objective,the Grandcourt -Serre ridge.
This ridge was the goal of the V111 Corp in which the 1st and 2nd LFs were serving.
The Germans had protected the ridge with a formidable series of defences,amongst these was the heavily fortified village of Beaumont -Hamel.
On the 29th June the Divisional Commander Major General H.de.B.de Lisle addressed the main body of 1LF,this is what he said,
"To you has been set the most difficult task-that of breaking the hardest part of the enemies shell"
The Battalions objective was the village of Beaumont Hamel.
Between the Bn and their objective lay a sunken road which was chosen as the forming up point,the Bn would attack from here following a huge artillery barrage and a massive mine being detonated at the Hawthorn redoubt.
The setting off of the mine had the unfortunate side effect of alerting the Germans to the LFs formed up in the sunken road and they were subjected to a tremendous cross fire from the front and both sides.
Snipers were killing the wounded and those who tried to help them,the road became blocked with dead and dying.
An official war photographer named Mr Malins took many pics at this time and I have no doubt that the pic Mick Rae talks about was taken at this time.
The attack cost the Bn dearly,7 officers killed and 14 wounded, 156 Other ranks killed and 298 wounded with 11 missing presumed dead.
We won 4 military Crosses and 8 Military medals in that one day.


Beaumont -Hamel Church

The Grave Stones mostly LF's

The Sunken Road

Steven Fitt Laying a Wreath



J.R.R. Tolkien
(writer of the "The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy")
in the Twentieth Century:
at the Somme, 1916

Scrape your fingers along your greasy scalp,
pick out scabs, bits of lice with your nails.
You are a signal officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers
and your wife of 4 months, Edith,
sings and dances across the Channel
from the blood and death and mud
which is the Somme.

A shell-broken man bleeds on a stretcher,
gestures, gargles: you understand
and take his locket from around his neck.
The weight of words press full on you,
even when they are not words, just wet sounds.

It's difficult to sleep; when you do,
you dream of a mariner
blown so far into the endless ocean
he's accepted death. But he does not die:
he's pulled off the deck of his ship,
taught, by beautiful natives of an alien isle,
language.

A week after your battalion gets shredded on the wire
you interrogate a captured German officer,
map out enemy locations.
He accepts your offered water,
corrects your pronunciation,
suggests red ink for the man-traps.

In twenty years you will argue Beowulf
is not a pagan fragment or a poor allegory
but is a poem of lights opposing outer-darkness
where a man struggles against the beast
again and again and again
and is overwhelmed.

 

"These are the documents of a remarkable man named

Sergeant John Bernard Millett.

The father of 6 children , he was 41 years and 2 months old when he volunteered to fight in WW1.

He had already seen 14 years service with the 2nd BN Lancashire Fusiliers and 9 years service with the Connaught Rangers.

He is listed on our nominal roll of those who fought at Spion Kop and his service records show that he had 2 bullet wound scars on each thigh when enlisting in 1916.

He was discharged again in 1919.

They do not make them like this any more. "

This is a copy of the census of 31st March1901, these people were then recorded as being in residence at Kitchener Barracks Chatham Kent.

Note John Bernard Millett, his wife Barbara and their son Bernard Millett.

There are other LF names on the list, but also names seemingly having no connection to the LFs, could they have been miltary families in transit?

"Army Deaths and Baptisms Archives"