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North of the Ancre 7.30-midday>> |
Midday to nightfall: gradual retreat>>
Saturday
1 July
It was now the early hours of Saturday morning - 1st July at last.
1.10am
From Brigade HQ in ‘Paisley Avenue’, zero hour was finalised.
Watches were synchronised and tear-gas shells and goggles were used. Zero
hour was passed on to all the officers in the assembly trenches.
3.00am
The Armagh Volunteers had by now reached their positions north of the
Ancre and awaited the dawn. The Belfast Brigade was further back in Auelvy
Wood.
4.00am
Dawn started to break through. Birds could be heard singing and the company
cooks started to get ready. The Ulster men were to be well prepared for
the day ahead - strong sweet tea, rashers, fried bread and jam. Cold tea
and lemon was put in their water bottles.
5.00am
Some men tried to keep themselves calm by an almost ostentatious show
of everyday rituals.......
‘There was a fellow Hobbs from Lurgan, and would you believe
it, he was shaving. When he was finished, he took out a clean pair of
socks and put them on, just as if he was back in barracks’.
By now the command posts were occupied. One post in Hamel Village
was in a stone-walled cottage with sandbagged windows and the only ventilation
through the fire place. On one wall was a large map of the entire British
front and another of the 36ths area of attack.
6.00am
The Germans were now shelling the Ulster lines in a concentrated way and
the Armagh Volunteers were to suffer fifty casualties from shell-fire
before zero hour.
6.25am
The final British barrage opened up, soon to be joined by the trench mortars
in short bursts of intense fire. This was the ‘hurricane’
bombardment.
Usually an intense bombardment had gone each morning from 6.25 to 7.45.
It would lift at 7.30 this morning. Hopefully the Germans would be caught
all the more unawares when the Infantry poured across at them.
6.45am
The mist of the early morning was beginning to clear. It was warm and
the sun shone down on the fury of the bombardment. Some men in the ulster
trenches knelt and prayed; some made out their wills in paybooks. Others
starred at photographs of family, or thought of what might be happening
at home just at this hour of the morning.
7.00am
By now the traditional issue of rum had been distributed. Many men in
the 36th, being tee-totallers, did not drink their share and others got
double or even triple the amount. As it was very strong rum, some men
awaited zero hour in a considerable degree of intoxication. Some men had
acquired Orange Lilies, the symbolic flower of the Battle of the Boyne
celebration and placed them in their tunics. A few men had managed to
stow away their Orange Sashes and now placed them around their shoulders.
Orange Lodge meetings were held in the last minutes.
By now lane ways had been cut through the 36ths own barbed wire by special
groups of wire cutters. Gaps had also been cut in the parapet within the
last hour, to give platoons easy access to no-mans-land.
7.10am
General Nugents plan, unlike that of most other Divisional Commanders,
was to send his men out into no-mans-land just before zero-hour; there
they would wait, protected by the curtain of shell-fire on the German
lines, and that much closer to their objective when the whistle blew.
So at 7.10am the first Ulstermen of the day crossed the parapet north
of the Ancre - a first wave of Armagh Volunteers who would lie down in
long lines and await the cessation of the bombardment. The second wave
would follow five minutes later, the third at 7.20 and the final wave
at 7.30am. Hidden by smoke and by the earth thrown up in the explosions
and especially by smoke shells and tear-gas shells fired into the Ancre
Valley, they nervously anticipated the crucial moment.
7.15am
Then the first troops south of the river began to move out into no-mans-land,
the Derry, Tyrone, Down and South Antrim. Five minutes later the second
line of Battalions began to move into the front trenches which the first
wave of troops had vacated.
7.25am
In the last moments the bombardment seemed to reach its horific crescendo.
All along the Somme front a whole generation of young men awaited battle,
tensing themselves for the silence that would herald the start, at long
last, of the big push.
7.30am
The gunfire ceased......There was a few moments of stillness before
the officers whistles were blown and the men rose to their feet to commence
the walk to the German parapet. There was no fuss, no shouting, no running;
everything orderly, solid and through, just like the men themselves. This
was the last few seconds in which communities, villages and families would
remain intact. The Ulster Volunteers waved farewell to the world, strode
towards the ‘Devils Dwelling place’ and into the steel muzzles
of machine-guns..................
Zero Hour - 'Over the top'
The men clamber out of their trenches to attack the German lines.
Many men do not even make it out of the trenches.
[Footage
© the Imperial War Museum]
Zero
Hour | South of the Ancre 7.30-9.00am>>
| South of the Ancre 9.00am-midday>>
North of the Ancre 7.30-midday>> |
Midday to nightfall: gradual retreat>>
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