Boy Soldiers of the Great War by Richard van Emden

Author:Richard van Emden [Emden, Richard van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-11-07T11:00:00+00:00

9

The Big Push

A BOY IN YEARS

A MAN IN DEEDS

18/596 Private Willie Whitaker

18th West Yorkshire Regiment

Killed in Action 1 July 1916, aged 18

In June 1916, the British Army was in the final stages of preparation for a major offensive. Nicknamed the ‘Big Push’, the assault was designed to smash the enemy’s defences and allow the British to decisively break through the stalemate of the Western Front and relieve the French Army under pressure from the German offensive at Verdun. The attack would begin a general advance by the Allied armies that would send the Germans reeling all the way back, it was hoped, to Berlin.

Until July 1915, the Somme region had been held by the French but, as part of the BEF’s expanding commitment to the war, it was agreed that British troops would take over and occupy the area to the north of the river Somme, while the French would remain on the ground to the south. Both armies would serve side by side and, largely because of this, the region was chosen for a symbolic joint attack: Allies together, shoulder to shoulder.

One of the first battalions to arrive on the Somme in 1915 had been the 7th Royal West Kents, and among their number were teenage friends Vic Cole and George Pulley. Vic had been sent to the Signals Section of the battalion and the two had been parted, but their paths still crossed, giving them a chance to catch up on news from home. The signals station was housed in a ruined flour mill near the village of Suzanne. Vic recalled:

This sector, being on the extreme right of the British line at that time, was full of interest. Across the narrow millstream our right-hand company made contact with the left-hand company of the French Army, which stretched from here to the Swiss Alps.

The planned assault on the Somme was to be delivered in the main by troops of Kitchener’s New Volunteer Army, including Vic’s battalion. Throughout May and June, huge columns of these keen but largely untested men had made their way to the region, while hundreds of guns of all calibres were brought up and concealed from enemy eyes. Huge stockpiles of ammunition were prepared so that on 24 June these guns could launch the heaviest bombardment of the war to date. For five days, twenty-four hours a day, the guns would blaze away at the enemy trenches that stood before eight fortified villages. As a finale, five enormous mines, laboriously dug beneath strong points in the German front line, would be blown. These mines had been constructed by the Royal Engineers, and prepared with great care and precision. Once detonated, they would send a huge column of earth into the air and, if all went according to plan, hundreds of yards of enemy trench and everyone who sheltered there, too.

Shortly before the offensive began, Vic was granted home leave. He was about to depart when, at the bottom of a hill, he spotted George Pulley on a fatigue party.

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