RELAXING BEFORE THE CARNAGE
Compared with what was to follow, the weeks leading up to the bloodiest battle in British history were a gentle calm before the storm, as these astonishing 100-yearold photographs show.
The rolling countryside north of the river Somme became home to more than a million British servicemen, mainly volunteers.
They look relaxed or sometimes bored in these haunting images, held in a private collection and specially coloured-up in astonishing detail for the daily mail to mark the centenary of the first day of the Somme tomorrow.
But the lush, green, springtime land would shortly be turned into a muddy moonscape by the horrific conflict that was to follow.
For on July 1, 1916, following a seven- day British bombardment, some 120,000 men clambered from their trenches and went ‘over the top’ — to be met by a hail of German machine-gun fire that mowed down half of them.
With 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded, it was the bloodiest single day in British military history.
and the men in these photographs were just a few of those who, after enlisting in response to Lord Kitchener’s call for volunteers to form a new army — ‘Your country needs you’ — were sent to the killing fields of the Somme. many would never return.
Some men in these images, having survived the initial onslaught, were slain later during the relentless trench warfare that continued until the winter.
among them was Lieutenant evelyn Southwell, pictured (right) with cigarette in his mouth among exhausted colleagues resting in a field. Shortly before his death in September 1916, he wrote to his mother to say how tired he and his comrades were after spending weeks in and out of the front-line trenches.
‘We are quite exhausted. After a terrible 48 hours’ ( on and off) bombardment, we came out and marched to bivouac in reserve. I went to sleep several times on the road and bumped into the man ahead! Comic, that, but it was one of the few times I’ve been so done that I had difficulty in keeping going.’
among those who survived but were seriously injured was Captain William purvis, pictured with fellow bathers, (bottom right).
He was 57 years old when seriously wounded in September 1916 — having demanded to be sent to France to lead the company that his own son, Captain John purvis, had commanded before being killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915.
among the most intriguing of these images, from among the collection of leading military historian richard van emden, is the photograph of three officers snacking beside their tents, below. Van emden could confirm the identity of only the man on the right, Captain William Batty, killed in october 1916.
But he knows that the other two also died because of the contemporary handwritten note on the back of the picture.
Van emden, author of The Somme (published by pen & Sword Books), says: ‘These are all pictures taken by the soldier themselves on their own hand-held cameras which they had brought to France.
‘possession of cameras had been banned but a few men, mostly officers, secretly kept them to shoot some of the most poignant images of the war.
‘ These pictures were taken to preserve the “adventure” for a time after the war when returning soldiers and their families might wish to look back on the campaign.
‘But instead the images captured a war in which adventure quickly turned to horror and snaps often included the last glimpses of friends and comrades who were to die.’