2017 Battlefield Tour Page 20

...contd

By the beginning of August, artillery from both sides had erased the trees. High Wood was 75 acres of stumps, craters and trenches.

On August 24, in preparation for yet another assault, a machine gun company, with the aid of two companies of soldiers to constantly fetch and carry belts of ammunition, set up ten machine guns and laid down indirect fire on the strongest German positions. All ten machine guns fired continuously for 12 hours, expending almost one million rounds of ammunition. Despite causing the Germans much grief and following up the murderous machine gun fire with another infantry assault, the Germans held on in High Wood.

Starting in early August, the 178th Tunnelling Company dug down 25 feet and constructed a gallery 310 feet long. They placed 3000 lbs of ammonal below a machine-gun nest, and on 3rd Sept 30 seconds before the infantry attack, the mine was blown. Troops of the 1st Black Watch rushed forwards and took possession of the crater, but were driven back by a German counter attack.

On September 9, another mine was exploded, expanding the crater to 140-feet wide and 35 feet deep. Again the Germans regained the crater as the attacking troops were caught in their own barrage which fell short.

In mid-September a plan was drawn up to use tanks. On 15 Sept four tanks advanced at 6:20 a.m, two reached the south of the wood but then turned east to find open ground. Of these, tank D-22 lost direction, ditched in the British front line and then fired on British troops by mistake. The second tank drove into a shell hole. Of the other two D-13 got into the wood and fired on Bavarian Infantry Regiment 18 in the German support line, until the tank was hit and set on fire. A German infantryman crept up on the tank and shot one of the crew in the leg through a loop-hole, the fourth tank broke down in no man's land.

The final infantry attack on the wood was started by the 18th Londons (London Irish), 17th Londons (Poplar & Stepney Rifles) and two Companys of the 15th Londons (Civil Service Rifles). They suffered from enemy machine-gun fire as, just before zero, they lay in No Mans Land ahead of their trenches.

By mid-morning, there were five battalions desperately fighting for possession of High Wood, and they called for an artillery barrage on the west and north-west part of the wood. The 140th Trench Mortar Battery fired 750 trench mortars in 15 minutes to bombard the eastern portion. Finally at 1300 hrs the British took the wood.

On the Front between High Wood and Delville Wood 1st Div had 3,078 casualties, 7th Div 3,413, 47th Div 4,500 and 51st Highland Div 2,120. The Germans 7th & 8th Divs lost 9,498 men.

Adjacent to the wood is the London Cemetery and Extension which has 4039 burials of which only 912 are identified.

The 75 acres and 1¼ miles perimeter of High Wood is privately owned and entry is forbidden, a private residence is located on the southern tip. The wood was never fully cleared after the war and still contains unexploded ordnance, it is estimated the remains of 8,000 to 10,000 bodies still lie in the wood today making it a huge anonymous cemetery. A British aircraft that was shot down and crashed and a disabled tank that ditched were later recovered from the wood.

HIGH WOOD

This is a long post, anyone interested in the battle then carry on.

This is the place you definitely didn’t want to be in 1916. The Infantry called it the ‘Hell of High Wood’. In the 63 day battle the British used infantry, cavalry, artillery, aircraft, tanks, trench mortars, mine warfare, and sustained fire machine guns in an effort to remove the Germans from its occupancy.

High Wood was the smallest but the last of the major woods in the Somme offensive of 1916 to be captured by the British. Mametz Wood, Bazentin Ridge Bernafay Wood, Trones Wood, and Delville Wood centred round Longeuval, Bazentin and Montauban eventually fell but despite a whole series of attacks spanning two months, High Wood held out until September the 15th Sept 1916.

On 14 July the Battle of Bazentin Ridge started the second phase of the Somme Offensive, a dawn attack on Longueval was successful and early in the day two officers walked to High Wood from crucifix Corner and found it unoccupied. Due to series of communication failures, no attack was really launched until late in the afternoon when 2nd Queens and 1st South Staffs reached the wood but found the Germans had returned via the Switch Trench and were in increasing strength on the northern edge of the wood.

The 20th Deccan Horse of the 2nd Indian Cavalry Division made the only cavalry charge of the Battle of the Somme, against III Battalion, Bavarian Infantry Regiment 26, concealed in crops east of the wood. At first, they were successful and took prisoners but soon started to take casualties from heavy machine gun fire. The crew of an aircraft of 3 Sqn RFC saw the infantry and cavalry advance and the pilot dived at the German troops, strafing them from a height of 300 feet. The observer dropped a message bag with a sketch of the German dispositions onto the cavalry, before the aircraft departed, having been riddled by ground fire.

Soon, however, the cavalrymen had to withdraw to the shelter of the sunken road in Wood Lane trench and eventually were withdrawn from the battle. This was the one and only time cavalry was used in the battle of the Somme and it would be a further two years before they would be used in battle again. Cont...

On the southern edge of High Wood near the London Cemetery is a memorial to men of the 1/9 Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Highlanders). As is the Highland tradition it comprises a cairn with 192 stones taken from another High Wood near Culloden in Scotland, commemorating the 192 Highland soldiers who were killed here. The height of the cairn, five feet and seven inches, also represents the minimum height accepted for recruits into the battalion.

Loll Ward The stench of rotting corpses in the wood was overwhelming in summer and inspired E.A. MacKintosh to write a parody of Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green.

High Wood to Warterlot Farm

Tune: "Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green"

There is a wood at the top of a hill,

If it's not shifted it's standing there still;

There is a farm a short distance away,

But I'd not advise you to go there by day,

For the snipers abound, and the shells are not rare,

And a man's only chance is to run like a hare,

So take my advice if you're chancing your arm

From High Wood to Waterlot Farm.

Chorus

High Wood to Waterlot Farm,

All on a summer's day,

Up you get to the top of the trench

Though you're sniped at all the way.

If you've got a smoke helmet there

You'd best put it on if you could,

For the wood down by Waterlot Farm

Is a bloody high wood.