The Somme Situation

I was recently speaking with a man who visited France last year, as part of research into his grandfather who served in the Durham Light Infantry. During his foray behind history’s lines he was looking over a particular battlefield, and met some other English people. They said, 'Have you found any souvenirs?' He wasn't sure what they were talking about, until they showed him an old rusty piece of steel with a wider bit at one end, which they'd dug up.

'We think it's something that was used for cleaning gun barrels', they said. In fact, it was later revealed to be an unexploded mortar bomb. The man who told me this said he decided not to look for any ‘souvenirs’.

In this final year of anniversary commemorations of World War One there continues to be intense focus on France and its battlefields, and at this time in particular on the anniversary of the First Battle of the Somme. Here in London, twenty-one years ago, I stumbled across a different sort of WW1 souvenir. Not ordnance, just paper, but still with great impact.

It was 1997 and I was directing a short feature for a New Zealand TV travel programme. The theme was genealogy – researching your family history and connections – and looking at what resources were available to do that in and around London. We visited Births, Deaths and Marriages (also known as Hatches, Matches and Dispatches), the HQ of the Genealogical Society, and the National Archives at Kew.

It was at the Archives, while waiting for our liaison person to organise part of our visit, that I was idly leaning against some cabinets of large wide drawers. Being nosey I opened one, and there inside was a theatre of war. A whole battlefield. In fact it was the Western Front, and what I was looking at was an original First World War situation map.

Original Somme Situation Map, 27.3.1918

However, the liaison person returned, I shut the drawer and we carried on filming, though having tantalisingly glimpsed the drawer's contents they stayed in the back of my mind, and I wondered if one day I might get an opportunity to have a closer and longer look at them.

That day arrived last week. Having arranged a 'reader's ticket' at the National Archives, I put in a request to view the old First World War Somme situation maps, originally made for the War Office. A friend with a passion for all things WW1 was visiting, and I knew he would be gobsmacked by the documents, though what I hadn't reckoned on was my own reaction.

Poignantly, as we visited, the maps were just a few days away from their own centenary, representing the Western Front around the area of St. Quentin during what became known as the Spring Offensive, or the German military's Operation Michael. This period of the war, March and April 1918, apparently saw more territory gained and lost (depending whose side you were on) in a short period than in the whole of the conflict to that point.

We arrived at the Large Documents and Maps room on the top floor, and there waiting for us was an enormous card folder which we carried gingerly to one of the reading tables. Opening it revealed a selection of situation maps bound in individual portfolios of brown or grey. One was labelled ‘Battle of the Somme, 1918, Maps showing German situation 27^th March to 5^th April’. Another was ‘Situation Map 2, German Order of Battle, 2.I.1918 – 6.XI.1918’. There were others, all 100 years old, all representing one of the bloodiest conflicts the world has seen.

My friend Shaun had had no idea what we were coming to see. 'You're joking?' he said, but as we started to examine the documents he lapsed into silence. We both did.

NZ and Australian positions 27.3.1918 (note OneTree Hill at top)

Poring over the maps we found that each represented a single day, updated to show the position of the allied armies, battalions, regiments and so on, as well as some German positions. Different coloured inks were used accordingly, with the annotated lines varying between thick black (the actual front line), long dashes (the front line the previous day), collections of close dots (support positions), and increasingly finer variations on dots and dashes showing army boundaries, and the numbers and boundaries of Corps, Divisions, Brigades, Battalions, Pioneers and Field Companies.

None of the maps detailed the actual numbers of soldiers or casualties. None of course captured the fear, the horror, or the desperation and exhaustion of men who had been shelled, gassed, and machine-gunned - until we saw the names of the companies. Here, the 1st Coy 2/Leinster (47^th), there the 9^th Cavalry, and troops from the West Yorkshire regiment.  Further north the 9^th Australian and the 3^rd NZ and NZ Rifle Brigade were identified. A large ‘N.Z.’ had been stencilled next to the French town of Bertrancourt, where New Zealand troops were marshalled (see image below courtesy of the NZ  government WW1 website). West of Bertrancourt in what appears to be a gap in the front line itself is ‘One Tree Hill’, named presumably by the Auckland troops fighting there after the famous landmark of their home city.

Kiwi troops at Bertrancourt, France, 1 April 1918 

South of Bertrancourt , on that same day – 27^th March – soldiers of the Wellington (1^st NZ), Otago (2^nd NZ), NZRB – Rifle Brigade (3^rd NZ), 2 & 3 NZ Engineers and troops of the Maori Battalion Pioneers can be seen listed at the tiny village of Hédauville, along with British troops who (further research shows) were firing a Mk VII 6-inch gun against the first phase of Germany’s Operation Michael.

These regimental idents are the closest we get to the men in the battlefield. The maps were the ‘big picture’, annotated and redrawn daily for the military to demonstrate ground gained or lost, and the positions of divisions and battalions. The individual stories are elsewhere, in the diaries, letters, books, poems and art of those who fought.

And yet, although these maps appear to be a clinically precise view from above, history shows that the front at this time was so confused that information on the status was often inaccurate, that orders were misunderstood, and that the positions of troops were sometimes so chaotic due to fog, mist, smoke and gas that some were in fact unknowingly behind enemy lines.

Somme Situation Map, reference

The various inked lines – drawn according to the key in the corners of the maps – and the village names, the hill positions, the woods… each of these can help locate our great grandfathers; where they fought, perhaps where they fell. But they are removed and distant, out of range if you like. Shaun and I were silent for a long time looking at them, thinking about what they represented.

I knew I had to write about the maps, but afterwards I had trouble starting. Each time I drafted a first line it seemed wrong; each time I seemed to choose words that weren’t appropriate. And then I got to thinking about the people whose job it was to annotate and redraw these situation maps on a daily basis. Did they have any anxiety or distress recording the advances and retreats, the shifting lines, and naming the infantry and field companies?  Did they ever stop to think what their pen-strokes truly represented?

The only thing that came to me were emotions, and snatches of words and phrases. And so I wrote a poem, which is where this blog ends…

Drawer of Death

I opened the drawer

Looked on death

The lines, the numbers, dots and dashes

A map of war

Dashes towards the enemy

Lines of young men reduced

To annotations, abbreviations

Abbreviated lives

The front line, thick and black

Changing from day to day

The map silent

No shots, explosions, no screams

Here the engineers, there the rifle brigade

Mounted cyclists

The Maori Battalion

A small town called Misery

Whose hand drew these?

Daily recording the yards gained

Not the youths lost

Whose eyes looked at this map?

Who saw no death in the cold flick of a pen?

The drawer, the drawer of death.

__________________________________________________________

To find out how to get a reader’s ticket for the National Archives click here.