End of the Battle of the Somme

[SMG65]

The Press are telling us that the Battle of the Somme ended 100 years ago today.

Tell that to the soldiers who were 'winding down' in the trenches on the 19th  November 1916.

 

Roll on 11th November 2018, then the Press will stop telling us what happened in the Great War and we can spend the next 20 years trying to educate people that what they saw on the TV may not be 100% truth.

 

Sean

[Retlaw]

Just now, SMG65 said:

The Press are telling us that the Battle of the Somme ended 100 years ago today.

Tell that to the soldiers who were 'winding down' in the trenches on the 19th  November 1916.

 

Roll on 11th November 2018, then the Press will stop telling us what happened in the Great War and we can spend the next 20 years trying to educate people that what they saw on the TV may not be 100% truth.

 

Sean

 

What more can you expect from fish an chip wrappers, they were dropping same clangers 100 years ago, nowt changed, only the size, and we don't tear em up an hang em on a nail for toilet paper any more. 

[kenf48]

2 hours ago, SMG65 said:

The Press are telling us that the Battle of the Somme ended 100 years ago today.

Tell that to the soldiers who were 'winding down' in the trenches on the 19th  November 1916.

 

Roll on 11th November 2018, then the Press will stop telling us what happened in the Great War and we can spend the next 20 years trying to educate people that what they saw on the TV may not be 100% truth.

 

Sean

 

"Operations on the Somme

1st July 1916 - 18th November 1916"

 

Arbitrary perhaps but dates set by Battles Nomenclature Committee in their report published May 1921, not by the 'Press' today/yesterday.  So 18th November it is.  

 

Just sayin' for reference if you're going to spend the next 20 years educating people.

 

Ken

[laughton]

From Nicholson's official history of the Canadians:

Quote

The heavy rain which fell on 19 November would have prevented further attacks even had either of General Gough’s corps been capable of renewing the struggle. It ended the fighting at the Ancre - the last of the Somme battles. ‘The ground, sodden with rain and broken up everywhere by innumerable shell-holes, can only be described as a morass”, Sir Douglas Haig informed the Chief of the Imperial General Staff on the 21st.¹²⁶ In such conditions, even when there was a lull in fighting, merely to maintain themselves made severe physical demands upon the men in the trenches. For the soldier in the front line existence was a continual struggle against cold and wet, as he crouched all day in the rain and the mud, gaining what protection he could from a rubber groundsheet wrapped around him. Hip boots were issued to help guard against “trench feet”, but often these had to be abandoned when their wearer became mired in the clay. For health’s sake frequent reliefs were necessary, even though effecting these was an exhausting process. Towards the end of the Canadians’ tour on the Somme infantry battalions had as much as eight miles to march to the trenches from their billets in Albert, and at least four miles from the nearest bivouacs at Tara Hill. “With the bad weather”, reported General Watson to Canadian Corps Headquarters, “the men’s clothing became so coated with mud, great coat, trousers, puttees and boots sometimes weighing 120 pounds, that many could not carry out relief.”¹²⁷

 

Nor did these exchanges bring escape from the continual round of working parties. The demand for nightly carrying parties had to be met alike by units in the line and units at rest. From the point on the Bapaume Road at which German shelling halted the forward movement of wheeled transport, all rations, ammunition and supplies for the front line trenches had to be borne on human backs, or by pack transport. A regimental historian depicts the grim nightly scene.

 

Men toil through the darkness under heavy loads, floundering, at times, waist deep in water; climbing wearily over slimy sandbags, stumbling across dismembered corpses - tired, dazed and shaken by the incessant bombardments; clothes soaked and equipment clogged with mud; faces grey from want of sleep.¹²⁸

 

The main tasks which now faced the Fourth and Fifth Armies were to replace tired and depleted divisions with fresh troops, improve their forward communications and strengthen the new front line for a winter defence. The Fourth Army took over from the French four miles of front line, moving the inter-allied boundary from Le Transloy to within four miles of Peronne. The adjustment freed three French corps as part of the preparation for the spring offensive which General Joffre was planning.¹²⁹ The 4th Canadian Division was not relieved immediately; that it was to complete nearly seven weeks continuously in the front line was recognition that it had satisfactorily won its spurs. Between 26 and 28 November it handed over to the 51st British Division and rejoined the Canadian Corps on the Lens-Arras front.

 

Canadian battle casualties at the Somme had totalled 24,029.¹³⁰

 

 

[Gareth Davies]

For the tanks it was the end of the Somme:

 

D Coy WD dated 18 Nov 16: "Preparations were commenced for the withdrawal of the unit to the winter training area and the first details of the reorganisation were made known."

 

 

[horrocks]

Reports in The Times (+100) yesterday and today talk of continuing fighting and consolidation along the Ancre and some 3/4 of a mile beyond Beaucourt in appalling conditions, with numerous parties of Germans who had been left behind in the advance in shellholes and dugouts being mopped up.

[kenf48]

As Peter Hart notes, 'the fighting could not be switched off' but the atrocious weather and ground meant the Somme offensive was at an end by the morning of the 19th November.  There were casualties on the Somme before the 1st July and no argument that many died after the 18th November.  

 

The point is 'official' commemoration on the first and last day was not determined by 'the press' but by GHQ at the time (as noted in post  4) and confirmed in 1921.

 

Ken

[CROONAERT]

43 minutes ago, kenf48 said:

... 'the fighting could not be switched off' but the atrocious weather and ground meant the Somme offensive was at an end by the morning of the 19th November...  

 

For the British , maybe, but, with the Somme battles being an Anglo-French affair (and not just a British battle as much of the media and English language publications on the battle would have us believe), the date that the battle ended should surely be the point at which all large scale offensive operations were ceased by all of the participants. Therefore (and the French Official History agrees with me here), the Battle of the Somme/the Somme Offensive actually ended on 17th December 1916 following on from the failure to flank and capture the town of Chaulnes and Nivelle's cancellation of all preparation for further offensive actions.

 

Dave.