The Somme in the First World War

The Somme is a river of Picardy in northern France, 245 km long, flowing from near Saint-Quentin to the English Channel. During the war its valley cut across the Western Front for almost four years, and the hills north of it became one of the bloodiest battlefields in history. For the British the word “Somme” means above all the battle of 1916; for the French it means a river and a département. In 1918 the war swept through its valley twice more.

A front on the river (1914–1915)

The war reached the Somme as early as August 1914. On 26 August the Germans surprised and routed a French reserve corps at Moislains, and a few days later the French blew the bridges over the river at Amiens and gave up the city without a fight. After the Battle of the Marne the front returned here during the race to the sea. In September the First Battle of Picardy was fought south of the river and the First Battle of Albert north of it. By the end of the month the line had set on the hills from Maricourt on the Somme through Fricourt to Thiepval.

North of the Somme the front crossed the valley of the Ancre, a small tributary that rises near Miraumont, flows through Albert and joins the Somme at Corbie. For almost two years the sector between the two rivers was considered quiet, and the Germans cut deep dugouts into the chalk. In the summer of 1915 the British took over the front north of the Somme from the French. The river itself, winding and lined with marshes, was a serious obstacle to any army.

The battle of 1916

The Allies planned the Somme offensive where their armies met. Originally the French were to force the river south of Péronne with three armies, supported by the British further north. But when the Germans attacked at Verdun, the French share shrank and the main role fell to the British. On 1 July 1916 the British 4th Army and the French 6th Army under General Émile Fayolle attacked on both sides of the river.

The first day cost the British Army 57 thousand killed, wounded and missing, while the French won a clear success. They took the Flaucourt plateau south of the river, from which their artillery could fire into the flank of the German positions on the other bank. Then began a battle of attrition for villages, woods and ridges, which lasted until 18 November and ended in the Ancre valley, in the Battle of the Ancre. The Allies advanced 10 km at most and did not even take Bapaume. According to William Philpott the British lost 420,000 men, the French 202,000 and the Germans probably more than 500,000, though these figures are still disputed. The French also gained more ground for little more than half the British losses.

The withdrawal and two passages of the front (1917–1918)

From 22 February 1917 the Germans fell back from the Ancre and the Somme to the Hindenburg Line, destroying roads, bridges and villages behind them. On 17 March the Australians entered Bapaume, the objective of July 1916, which Philpott regards as the real end of the Battle of the Somme. On 18 March the British entered ruined Péronne, having crossed the valley with its canal, river and marshes in between.

On 21 March 1918 the Germans launched Operation Michael. The British 5th Army fell back behind the Somme and on 23 March abandoned Péronne, and the Germans crossed the wasteland of 1916, which had grown over but still slowed their march. South of the river they were stopped on the heights at Villers-Bretonneux, short of the railway junction at Amiens, and north of it on 5 April on the Ancre.

The German retreat began in the Somme valley. On 8 August the Allies attacked at Amiens and cleared the Santerre plateau south of the river, and from 21 August, in the Second Battle of the Somme, the British 3rd and 4th Armies drove the Germans off the old battlefield. The Somme line at Péronne, where the river flows north through a wide, marshy valley, looked strong. But on 30 August General John Monash’s Australians seized a bridgehead at Cléry, on 31 August they attacked the hill of Mont Saint-Quentin, and on 1 September they retook it for good and broke into Péronne.

Memory

After the war the hills above the Ancre became a place of pilgrimage from the whole British Empire. On the Thiepval ridge a memorial was raised to more than 72 thousand British and South African soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave. In British memory the Somme is above all the first day of the offensive, while the large part and the successes of the French have been all but forgotten. In France and Germany the symbol of the war of attrition became Verdun.