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Gallipoli AWM

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The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. Fought between July 1 and November 1, 1916, near the Somme River in France, it was also one of the bloodiest military battles in history. On the first day alone, the British suffered more than 57,000 casualties, and by the end of the campaign the Allies and Central Powers would lose more than 1.5 million men.

The Somme campaign in 1916 was the first great offensive of World War I for the British, and it produced a more critical British attitude toward the war. During and after the Somme, the British army started a real improvement in tactics. Also, the French attacked at the Somme and achieved greater advances on July 1 than the British did, with far fewer casualties.

Did you know? On August 31, 1916, Harry Butters, a young U.S. citizen serving with British forces, was killed, becoming the first American casualty of World War I.

But it is the losses that are most remembered. The first day of the Somme offensive, July 1, 1916, resulted in 57,470 British casualties, greater than the total combined British casualties in the Crimean, Boer, and Korean wars. In contrast, the French, with fewer divisions, suffered only around 2,000 casualties.

By the time the offensive ended in November, the British had suffered around 420,000 casualties, and the French about 200,000. German casualty numbers are controversial, but may be about 465,000.

Douglas Haig and the Somme Campaign

How did this happen? In early 1916, the French proposed a joint Franco-British offensive astride the river Somme. Because of Verdun, the British army assumed the major role of the Somme offensive. Hence, on July 1, 1916, the British army attacked north of the Somme with fourteen infantry divisions, while the French attacked astride and south of the Somme with five divisions.

In defense, the German army deployed seven divisions. The British attack was planned by Douglas Haig and Henry Rawlinson, GOC Fourth Army. The two differed about the depth of the offensive and the length of the bombardment, so the adopted plan was an awkward mixture.

Trench Warfare: A Battle of Attrition

The artillery was the key to the offensive, but it did not have the ability to cut all the wire, destroy deep German trenches, knock out all enemy guns, or provide a useful barrage for the infantry attack. And at zero hour on July 1, the artillery shifted away from the German front trenches too quickly and left the infantry exposed. But the French, with Verdun experience, had much more heavy artillery and attacked in rushes, capturing more ground and suffering less.

After July 1, a long stalemate settled in, with the German army digging defenses faster than Allied attacks could take place. Despite small advances, the Somme became a bloody battle of attrition, and Haig has been criticized for prolonging the campaign into winter, especially for the last six weeks. The Somme was an expensive lesson in how not to mount effective attacks, but the German army was also weakened and in February retreated to new, and shorter, defensive lines.

The Reader's Companion to Military History. Edited by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. Fought between July 1 and November 1, 1916, near the Somme River in France, it was also one of the bloodiest military battles in history.

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The first major gas attack in war occurred 100 years ago this weekend, in what is now Poland. Gas soon became a routine feature of trench warfare, horrifying soldiers more than any conventional weapon. But was it actually as deadly as its terrible reputation suggests?

As he climbed to the top of the church belfry in Bolimow, west of Warsaw, General Max Hoffman of Germany's Ninth Army was expecting a bird's-eye view of a military breakthrough - and a new chapter in warfare.

The date was 31 January 1915, and he was about to witness the first major gas attack in history.

Gen Hoffman watched as 18,000 gas shells rained down on the Russian lines, each one filled with the chemical xylyl bromide, an early form of tear gas. But the results left him disappointed.

Gas had an image problem from the start
Jeremy Paxman

"I had expected much greater results from the employment of this ammunition in - as we then imagined - such large quantities. That the chief effect of the gas was destroyed by great cold was not known at that time."

But the failure at Bolimow proved to be only a temporary setback.

By April, German chemists had tested a method of releasing chlorine gas from pressurised cylinders and thousands of French Algerian troops were smothered in a ghostly green cloud of chlorine at the second Battle of Ypres. With no protection, many died from the agonies of suffocation.

Within a few days, the Daily Mail published an editorial lambasting "the cold-blooded deployment of every device of modern science" by the Germans.

The commander of British Expeditionary Force, Sir John French, called the use of gas "a cynical and barbarous disregard of the well-known usages of civilised war".

But four months later Britain itself attacked the German trenches with gas, at the Battle of Loos.

"Owing to the repeated use by the enemy of asphyxiating gases in their attacks on our positions, I have been compelled to resort to similar methods," Sir John explained.

There were commanders on both sides who felt uncomfortable about this new weapon.

How did so many soldiers survive the trenches?

Has poetry distorted our view of World War One?

How do you find out what your family did in WW1?

Find out more about WW1

"I fear it will produce a tremendous scandal in the world... war has nothing to do with chivalry any more. The higher civilisation rises, the viler man becomes," wrote Gen Karl von Einem, commander of the German Third Army in France.

On the British side, Lt Gen Charles Ferguson noted that Britain had not been the first to use gas, but still dismissed it as "a cowardly form of warfare".

And even while Germany and Britain and France strove to develop new and more effective gases, it continued to be thought of as a "dirty weapon" says the broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, author of Britain's Great War.

"There was something much more soldierly about a sword or a gun. Gas had an image problem from the start."

It also had a profound psychological impact on soldiers - it terrified them.

"When the 'gas alert' gongs were first sounded I suddenly remembered amongst other things which [flash] through one's mind at such a time, that Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt knelt down and prayed...this is exactly what I did," wrote Captain E E Simeons in December 1915.

Prof Edgar Jones of the King's Centre for Military Health Research in London has found numerous examples where the fear of gas spread like a virus.

In September 1915, Lieutenant G L Grant, a medical officer of the London Scottish, had to deal with large numbers of officers and men who thought they had been gassed, but displayed no physical symptoms. He "cured" each of them with a placebo.

In February 1918 one soldier of the 1/22nd London Regiment developed a sore throat and reported that he had been gassed. Although there had been no reports of a gas attack, panic spread - and within hours, 67 of the 105 men in the unit had been evacuated as gas casualties.

"I think its scary science, the thought that it gets into your system and you can't really see it, unlike a piece of shrapnel or a bayonet wound," says Jones.

Ian Kikuchi, a historian at the Imperial War Museum in London also sees something insidious about gas.

"Gas, which moves like a vapour, brings to mind ghosts, phantoms and other things associated with death," he says.

"I also think it has something to do with gas masks themselves - to protect yourself from the gas you have to make yourself look and sound frightening."

It is this particular horror of gas that is captured in Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est, arguably the most widely read description of the horrors of war in the English language.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
The poem is written in the style of a first-hand account, but there's no evidence in Owen's letters from the front, or in his regiment's war diary, that he experienced such an attack before writing the poem.

"He could have seen an attack, we don't know, or he could have heard an account second-hand from soldiers, or it could just be imagination," says Oxford University's Dr Stuart Lee.

Owen describes a chlorine attack, referring twice to the gas's characteristic green colour - and victims of a chlorine attack would indeed choke. The gas reacts quickly with water in the airways to form hydrochloric acid, swelling and blocking lung tissue, and causing suffocation.

But by 1917, when Owen went to the front, chlorine was no longer being used alone. Another, more dangerous "irritant", phosgene, was the main killer. But phosgene is slow to act - victims may not develop any symptoms for hours or even days - so Owen's description may not quite fit with the reality of gas attacks at that moment in time.

The standard-issue gas mask in 1917 - the "small box respirator" - provided good protection against chlorine and phosgene.

But soon all sides had turned to gases which maimed even soldiers wearing a mask - blistering agents, or "vesicants".

The most widely used, mustard gas, could kill by blistering the lungs and throat if inhaled in large quantities. Its effect on masked soldiers, however, was to produce terrible blisters all over the body as it soaked into their woollen uniforms. Contaminated uniforms had to be stripped off as fast as possible and washed - not exactly easy for men under attack on the front line.

A horror of the use of poisonous substances in war goes back far beyond WW1.

The first bilateral treaty banning the use of chemical weapons - poisoned bullets in this case - was signed in 1675 between France and the Holy Rome Empire, says Dr Joanna Kidd of Kings College London.

"There's an argument that humans have always had revulsion to using poison in warfare," she says. "I suppose there are ways we are just accustomed to being killed."

The Hague Convention of 1899 outlawed shells for the "diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases" even before they had been used on the battlefield. (The very first use of gas, in the form of grenades rather than shells, is thought to have been carried out by the French in 1914 - the attack was so ineffectual that few even knew it had taken place until the war was over.)

But even in World War One there were those who argued gas was no worse than other weapons.

"I cannot see the difference between killing a man with a chemical substance and rending him to pieces with high explosives. The first-named form of death, as a matter of fact, is the most merciful," wrote one Dr J F Elliott to his local paper in 1915.

Other terrible weapons were developed at the same time. The flamethrower appear on the Western Front in 1915, two months before gas. Others weapons, like the machine gun, were honed to new levels of murderous perfection. The biggest killer of all was artillery. Yet it was only the use of all gas that was outlawed by the Geneva Protocol of 1925.

Exactly why gas was singled out is disputed. The Protocol itself makes the lofty statement that gas "has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilised world".

But the only reason countries were prepared to ban it, some argue, is that it was ineffective.

Gassed

John Singer Sargent's painting of a line of blinded soldiers came to be known by a one word title: "Gassed."

It appears today to be a visual condemnation of the horrors of gas warfare. However, Richard Slocombe, Senior Curator of Art at the Imperial War Museum, which holds the painting, explains Sargent had a different intention.

"The painting was meant to convey a message that the war had been worth it and had led to a better tomorrow, a greater cause, that it had not been a terrible waste of life," he says.

"It is a painting imbued with symbolism. The temporary blindness was a metaphor, a semi-religious purgatory for British youth on the way to resurrection. You can see the guy-ropes of a field hospital tent depicted, and the men are being led towards it."

Casualty figures do seem on the face of it, to back up the idea that gas was less deadly than the soldiers' fear of it might suggest.

The total number of British and Empire war deaths caused by gas, according to the Imperial War Museum, was about 6,000 - less than a third of the fatalities suffered by the British on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Of the 90,000 soldiers killed by gas on all sides, more than half were Russian, many of whom may not even have been equipped with masks.

In a war of attrition morale is critical and this was an attempt to undermine morale
Prof Edgar Jones, King's Centre for Military Health Research

Far more soldiers were injured. Some 185,000 British and Empire service personnel were classed as gas casualties - 175,000 of those in the last two years of the war as mustard gas came into use. The overwhelming majority though went on to make good recoveries.

According to the Imperial War Museum, of the roughly 600,000 disability pensions still being paid to British servicemen by 1929, only 1% were being given to those classed as victims of gas.

"There's also an element of gas not showing itself to be decisive, so it's easier to... not have to worry about the expense of training and protection against it - it's just easier if people agree to ban it," says Ian Kikuchi.

But Edgar Jones disagrees. By the summer of 1917 gas was inflicting a significant number of casualties, he argues, removing men from the battlefield for six to eight weeks, tying-up beds and nurses, and using up valuable resources. And it was effective as a psychological weapon too, he says.

"In a war of attrition morale is critical and this was an attempt to undermine morale."

In the final analysis, Jones says, it was banned because it was "not quite cricket".

Jeremy Paxman sees both factors in play - primarily it was revulsion, he suggests, but also it was accepted that gas had not lived up to expectations.

"The reason it was banned is because it had been a particularly grotesque weapon. Geneva was an attempt to civilise war," he says.

"Gas had not worked - and it was considered unsoldierly."

Is Dulce et Decorum Est autobiographical?

Wilfred Owen was at the front as a lieutenant with the Second Battalion, the Manchester Regiment, from January to May 1917, when he was knocked out by an explosion and diagnosed with shell shock. He wrote frequently and graphically to his mother, Susan, about what he witnessed.

"Owen generally didn't hold back in describing what was happening to him at the front. In one letter to his mother he tells her he isn't just at the front, but `in front of the front` in no man's land," says Dr Stuart Lee.

So did Owen write to anyone about the kind of attack depicted in Dulce?

"No is the answer, and it's one of the great mysteries. In one letter to his mother he mentions being slightly affected by a tear gas shell, but that's the only reference and the only mention of a gas attack of any kind," says Lee.

The official war diary of the 2nd Battalion, The Manchesters has no reference to any gas attack in the period Owen was at the front line in 1917. The basis for his most famous poem remains a mystery.

Owen returned to the front in August 1918, and does mention gas attacks at least three times in letters written in October 1918 - but that was a year after he wrote Dulce et Decorum Est.
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The first major gas attack in war occurred 100 years ago this weekend, in what is now Poland. Gas soon became a routine feature of trench warfare, horrifying soldiers more than any conventional weapon. But was it actually as deadly as its terrible reputation suggests?

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During World War I, a new style of fighting known as trench warfare pitted two armies close enough to each other that they could yell across the lines. But soldiers rarely ventured into the area between the two trenches commonly referred to as no man's land for fear of being gunned down, and battles would often settle into a stalemate. Chemical agents such as mustard gas became a way to break that uneasy deadlock.

Germany's first attempt at chemical weapons came in 1915 at the battle of Ypres in Belgium, in the form of chlorine gas. The gas cleared large sections of soldiers from the front lines, who fled once exposed, and ultimately killed 5,000 opposing troops [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica]. Chlorine gas burns the throats of its victims and causes death by asphyxiation, much like smoke kills people during a house fire.

The Germans used mustard gas for the first time during war in 1917. They outfitted artillery shells and grenades with mustard gas that they fired in the vicinity of the troop target. After encountering several attacks, the Allies referred to mustard gas as Hot Stuff or H.S., eventually dropping the S and just referring to it as H. By the end of the war, more than two dozen chemical agents had injured 1 million soldiers and civilians, killed 100,000 people and earned the well-deserved title of weapons of mass destruction [source: Encyclopeadia Britannica].

When you first encounter mustard gas, you may not even know anything is about to affect you. The best way to detect mustard gas is through smell. Like your experience in the opening section of this article, soldiers exposed to mustard gas had a hard time detecting a gas attack but noticed a funny smell. Even under heavy doses, however, their noses adapted to the smell quickly, giving them the impression that the gas had dissipated. Have you ever noticed you can't smell something, be it good or bad, after you've been sniffing it for a few minutes? The same principle applies during a mustard gas attack.

So one of the most dangerous aspects of mustard gas doubles as one of its most desirable attributes as a weapon. We know mustard gas is difficult to detect unless you're under a direct attack. It's even harder to notice in contaminated areas where the gas has settled. That posed a problem for soldiers walking through an exposed area that underwent an attack say two days earlier. The chemical agent would stay in the ground for weeks, depending on the temperature. The colder the ground, the longer the mustard gas would linger.

At the time the Germans began using the chemical, gas masks proved useless because mustard gas could penetrate the filters and mask housing. Not only that, but chemical suits hadn't been used yet, so mustard gas had the whole body to attack. And a little went a long way. One drop of the chemical weapon could cause skin burns on people within 10 cubic meters [source: Ward].

Mustard gas harmed and killed soldiers by the thousands and affected battle lines. Because of this versatility, mustard gas served as the most desirable chemical agent during World War I for both sides.

So what happens when you're exposed to mustard gas? You'll find out next.

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During World War I, a new style of fighting known as trench warfare pitted two armies close enough to each other that they could yell across the lines. But soldiers rarely ventured into the area between the two trenches commonly referred to as no man's land for fear of being gunned down, and battles would often settle into a stalemate.

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Page Not Found | The Western Front Association

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The Western Front Association (WFA) was formed with the aim of furthering interest in The Great War of 1914-1918. We also aim to perpetuate the memory, courage and comradeship of all those on all sides who served their countries in France and Flanders, and their own countries, during The Great War.

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Why Barbed Wire? - WW1 Uncut: Dan Snow - BBC

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Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime.

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in.

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

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Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod.

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Trenches on the Western Front were usually about seven feet deep and six feet wide. These trenches were protected by thick barbed-wire entanglements. Being a member of a wiring party was one of the most unpopular duties experienced by soldiers. This involved carrying out 6 ft. steel pickets and rolls of wire. The pickets were knocked into place by muffled mallets. When fastened to the pickets, the wire was pulled out to make what was known as a apron.

Barbed-wire was usually placed far enough from the trenches to prevent the enemy from the trenches to prevent the enemy from approaching close enough to lob grenades in. Sometimes barbed-wire entanglements were set up in order to channel attacking infantry into machine-gun fire.

Drawings made by a allied spy of German barbed-wire

Barbed-wire entanglements were virtually impassable. Before a major offensive soldiers were sent out to cut a path with wire-cutters. Another tactic was to place a Bangalore Torpedo (a long pipe filled with explosive) and detonate it under the wire.

Heavy bombardment was necessary to destroy the barbed-wire. However, this always removed the crucial element of surprise. Many soldiers disputed the fact that shelling was capable of creating a gap in the wire. Arthur Coppard, who observed attempts to destroy barbed-wire entanglements at the Somme remarked: "Who told them that artillery fire would pound such wire to pieces, making it possible to get through? Any Tommy could have told them that shell fire lifts wire up and drops it down, often in a worse tangle than before."

As Ernst Toller pointed out, being caught on the wire was a terrible experience:"One night we heard a cry, the cry of one in excruciating pain; then all was quiet again. Someone in his death agony, we thought. But an hour later the cry came again. It never ceased the whole night... Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves. We prayed desperately for his death. He took so long about it, and if he went on much longer we should go mad. But on the third day his cries were stopped by death."

Sometimes death came later.Brigadier-General Frank Percy Crozier pointed out in his book, A Brass Hat in No Man's Land (1930): "Colonel Pope, the commanding officer of the Borderers, becomes a casualty. Tripping over some rusty wire he falls and punctures his face. Two years later a military funeral leaves AIillbank Hospital, and on the gun-carriage are the mortal remains of Pope. The dirty wire killed him."

One night we heard a cry, the cry of one in excruciating pain; then all was quiet again. Someone in his death agony, we thought. But an hour later the cry came again. It never ceased the whole night. Nor the following night. Naked and inarticulate the cry persisted. We could not tell whether it came from the throat of German or Frenchman. It existed in its own right, an agonized indictment of heaven and earth. We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries.

Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves. We prayed desperately for his death. He took so long about it, and if he went on much longer we should go mad. But on the third day his cries were stopped by death.

The next morning we gunners surveyed the dreadful scene in front of our trench. There was a pair of binoculars in the kit, and, under the brazen light of a hot mid-summer's day, everything revealed itself stark and clear. The terrain was rather like the Sussex downland, with gentle swelling hills, folds and valleys, making it difficult at first to pinpoint all the enemy trenches as they curled and twisted on the slopes.

It eventually became clear that the German line followed points of eminence, always giving a commanding view of No Man's Land. Immediately in front, and spreading left and right until hidden from view, was clear evidence that the attack had been brutally repulsed. Hundreds of dead, many of the 37th Brigade, were strung out like wreckage washed up to a high-water mark. Quite as many died on the enemy wire as on the ground, like fish caught in the net. They hung there in grotesque postures. Some looked as though they were praying; they had died on their knees and the wire had prevented their fall. From the way the dead were equally spread out, whether on the wire or lying in front of it, it was clear that there were no gaps in the wire at the time of the attack.

Concentrated machine gun fire from sufficient guns to command every inch of the wire, had done its terrible work. The Germans must have been reinforcing the wire for months. It was so dense that daylight could barely be seen through it. Through the glasses it looked a black mass. The German faith in massed wire had paid off.

How did our planners imagine that Tommies, having survived all other hazards - and there were plenty in crossing No Man's Land - would get through the German wire? Had they studied the black density of it through their powerful binoculars? Who told them that artillery fire would pound such wire to pieces, making it possible to get through? Any Tommy could have told them that shell fire lifts wire up and drops it down, often in a worse tangle than before.

(3) Captain Geoffrey Donaldson, letter (23rd June, 1916)

The night before last I took out a patrol of four men about half way across No Man's Land. There is comparatively little risk attached to this work but it is of course a considerable strain on the nerves. Last night, I went out with Wakefield and a wiring party, that is to say with about six men improving our wire entanglements. I consider on the the whole this is a nerve-racking a job as any, more so than patrol work.

(8) Charles Hudson, journal entry, quoted in Soldier, Poet, Rebel (2007)

On the evening before the attack, company commanders were called to HO for a final briefing. After the colonel had outlined the plan, the senior company commander, an ex-regular, a horsy type, tall, slim, good-looking and stupid, rose to speak. He pointed out that in accordance with previous orders he had sent out patrols to see if the bombardment had succeeded in cutting the enemy wire. The wire, he said, had not been cut and the other company commanders, including myself, confirmed this. The colonel pointed out that as we would not be asked to advance unless the enemy withdrew, too much importance need not be placed on this. This remark was the occasion for an hysterical outburst from the senior company commander. We were being asked, he said, to sacrifice ourselves against uncut wire. The order amounted to murder, he for one would absolutely refuse to let his men advance against uncut wire. The colonel repeated that our orders were dependent on the success of the main attack and the withdrawal of the enemy, but the Major had completely lost control of himself. In a wild welter of words, he inveighed against our commanders and staffs and their whole attitude towards the fighting troops. How were the staff to know whether or not the enemy opposite our sector had withdrawn? We would be ordered to advance just the same whether they had or not. At this, the colonel broke up the meeting and the Major, I am glad to say, was ordered to hand over his company.

(4) Henri Gaudier-Brezeska, letter to his father (10th November, 1914)

My lieutenant sent me out to repair some barbed wire between our trenches and the enemy's. I went through the mist with two chaps. I was lying on my back under the obstacle when pop, out came the moon, then the Boches saw me and well! Then they broke the entanglement over my head, which fell on me and trapped me. I took my butcher's knife and hacked at it a dozen times. My companions had got back to the trench and said I was dead, so the lieutenant, in order to avenge me, ordered a volley of fire, the Boches did the same and the artillery joined in, with me bang in the middle. I got back to the trench, crawling on my stomach, with my roll of barbed wire and my rifle.

"Care to see the wire?" said my guide. I followed him gingerly over the edge of the wall, and slid clumsily down a ramp of greasy sandbags. A small party was working swiftly over a tangle of some dark stuff. Two of my own soldiers were being inducted into the ceremony of wiring. "Hold it tight, chum," growled one figure. He proceeded to smite a heavy bulk of timber with a gigantic maul, the head of which had been cunningly muffled in sandbags.

(6) Private Jack Sweeney, letter to girlfriend (May, 1916)

It is simply murder at this part of the line. There is one of our officers hanging on the German barbed wire and a lot of attempts have been made to get him and a lot of brave men have lost their lives in the attempt. The Germans know that we are sure to try and get him in so all they have to do is to put two or three fixed rifles on to him and fire every few seconds - he must be riddled with bullets by now: he was leading a bombing party one night and got fixed in the wire - the raid was a failure.

Colonel Pope, the commanding officer of the Borderers, becomes a casualty. Tripping over some rusty wire he falls and punctures his face. Two years later a military funeral leaves AIillbank Hospital, and on the gun-carriage are the mortal remains of Pope. The dirty wire killed him.

(8) Charles Hudson, letter to his sister (undated, 1915)

We are now 150yd from Fritz and the moon is bright, so we bend and walk quietly onto the road running diagonally across the front into the Bosche line. There is a stream the far side of this - boards have been put across it at intervals but must have fallen in - about 20yd down we can cross. We stop and listen - swish - and down we plop (for a flare lights everything up) it goes out with a hiss and over the board we trundle on hands and knees. Still.

Apparently no one has seen so we proceed to crawl through a line of "French" wire. Now for 100yd dead flat weed-land with here and there a shell hole or old webbing equipment lying in little heaps! These we avoid. This means a slow, slow crawl head down, propelling ourselves by toes and forearm, body and legs flat on the ground, like it snake.

A working party of Huns are in their lair. We can just see dark shadows and hear the Sergeant, who is sitting down. He's got a bad cold! We must wait a bit, the moon's getting low but it's too bright now 5 a.m. They will stop soon and if we go on we may meet a covering party lying low. 5.10. 5.15. 5.25. 5.30. And the moon's gone.

"Cot the bombs, Sergeant?"

"'No. Sir, I forgot them!"

"Huns" and the last crawl starts.

The Bosch is moving and we crawl quickly on to the wire - past two huge shell holes to the first row. A potent row of standards are the first with a nut at the top and strand upon strand of barbed wire. The nut holds the two iron pieces at the top and the ends are driven into the ground 3ft apart. Evidently this line is made behind the parapet and brought out, the legs of the standard falling together. All the joins where the strands cross are neatly done with a separate piece of plain wire. Out comes the wire cutter. I hold the strands to prevent them jumping apart when cut and Stafford cuts. Twenty-five strands are cut and the standard pulled out. Two or three tins are cut off as we go. (These tins are hung on to give warning and one must beware of them.) Next a space 4ft then low wire entanglements as we cut on through to a line of iron spikes and thick, heavy barbed wire.

The standard has three furls to hold the wire up and strive as we can, it won't come out. "By love, it's a corkscrew, twist it round" and then, wonder of wonders, up it goes and out it comes! It is getting light, a long streak has already appeared and so we just make a line of "knife rests" (wire on wooden X-X) against the German parapet and proceed to return. I take the corkscrew and Stafford the iron double standard. My corkscrew keeps on catching and Stafford has to extract me twice from the wire, his standard is smooth and only 3ft so he travels lighter. He leads back down a bit of ditch. Suddenly a sentry fires 2 shots which spit on the ground a few yards in front. We lie absolutely flat, scarcely daring to breathe - has he seen? Then we go on with our trophies, the ditch gets a little deeper, giving cover! My heart is beating nineteen to the dozen - will it mean a machine gun, Stafford is gaining and leads by 10yd. "My God," I think, "it is a listening post ahead and this the ditch to it. I must stop him." I whisper, "Stafford, Stafford" and feel I am shouting. He stops, thinking I have got it. "Do you think it's a listening post?" There! By the mound - listen."

"Perhaps we had better cut across to the left Sir."

"Are you all right Sir," from Stafford.

I laugh, "Forgot that damned wire." (Our own wire outside our listening post). The LP occupants have gone in. Soon we are behind the friendly parapet and it is day. We are ourselves again, but there's a subtle cord between us, stronger than barbed wire, that will take a lot of cutting. Twenty to seven, 2 hrs 10 minutes of life - war at its best. But shelling, no, that's death at its worst. And I can't go again, it's a vice. Immediately after I swear I'll never do it again, the next night I find myself aching after "No Man's Land".

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Trenches on the Western Front were usually about seven feet deep and six feet wide. These trenches were protected by thick barbed-wire entanglements. Being a member of a wiring party was one of the most unpopular duties experienced by soldiers. This involved carrying out 6 ft. steel pickets and rolls of wire.

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Please look at this resource