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Soldiers (not wearing packs)advancing at a slow run through
low barbed wire towards the German trenches
[Footage © the Imperial War Museum]

......I Prepared myself for Heaven, but I walked straight into Hell......

South of the Ancre 7.30 - 9.00am
The leading soldiers advanced towards the first German line, their walk turning to a charge as they neared the objective. There were cries of ‘NO SURRENDER BOYS’. As they reached the German trenches and the first men jumped into them, through the shattered wire, the German machine-guns began to open up from Thiepval and from across the river to the north. The enemy were out of their dugouts and shelters and manning their guns, not just on the Schwaben Redoubt but on the high ground on either side of the Ulster sector. The bombardment had not been as effective as promised and now the heavily burdened Infantrymen faced fierce and accurate gunfire.
A new source of destruction became apparent when the German artillery fire that had been concentrated on the British lines shifted to no-mans-land. Many men sheltered in shell holes; some were blown to pieces; others pushed on.
The south Antrim Volunteers, especially the later waves; were met by a hail of machine gun bullets and the Down Volunteers who were very vulnerable to fire from the north of the river were devastated.
The third line had to reached by 7.48, so the men who had got to the German trenches immediately began to bomb dug-outs and engage in hand-to-hand combat with those Germans they could find. But the bombing of the dugouts was not as effective as might have been. Often the stairways descended in a spiral, so that the explosion of a Mills bomb on the steps did not damage the entire dugout. Survivors were often left and the Ulstermen, because of the rigorous timetable for advance, could not investigate each bunker thoroughly. Germans could emerge and attack the Ulstermen from the rear.
Meanwhile the troops were heading off in the second great wave of the Ulster Divisions assault. At 7.30 the YCVs had moved into the positions vacated by the leading Inniskillings. It was a terrifying prospect to see and hear the onslaught that had greeted the Inniskillings. But at 7.40 the Young Citizens climbed over and into the hell of no-mans-land. THe Battalion war diarist recorded that at 7.45 his worst fears had been realised.....”No sooner were they clear of our own line than the slow tat-tat of the Hun machine-guns from Thiepval village and Beaumont-Hamel caught the advance under a deadly crossfire”.
The clearest memory by far that was recalled from that fateful morning was that of John Kennedy Hope. A memory that Hope would probably have forgotten:
“A 9th Inniskilling lying at the top has got a bullet through his steel hat. He rolls over into the trenches at my feet. He is an awful sight. HIs brain is oozing out of the side of his head and he is calling for his pal. An occasional cry of ‘Billy Gray, Billy Gray, will you not come to me?’ In a short time all is quiet, he is dead. He’s the servant to an officer who is lying in the trench with a fractured thigh and wont let anyone touch him, and he is bleeding badly. They die together.”
The battle for the Schwaben Redoubt was at its height and the Donegal and Fermanagh Volunteers were busy trying to take the Crucifix. These men had seen, at close quarter, some of the destruction that had greeted the first waves going in at 7.30. Many of them sat in trenches and joined together in the Lords Prayer. At 7.40 they got up and went over on the sound of the whistle. Some men were to recall vividly the beauty of the sunshine and the blue sky......”It was as fair a morning as ever graced God’s earth”.
Before long the shell-fire and the machine-gun bullets were pinning men down in shell-holes and it took a long time to get to German lines, but of course, other men never managed to get further than their own parapet and the stretcher-bearers prepared to gather them and take them back for treatment, or if need be, for burial.
By 8.15 am, the war diarist of the YCVs reordered, "Corpses were piling high on the Sunken Road”.
It was a matter of what one survivor was to call “Playing leapfrog with death”. There was bitter hand-to-hand fighting to capture the third line. Then, when the barrage lifted at 8.48, came an intense struggle for the fourth line - described by one man as “A Belfast riot on the top of Mount Vesuvius”.

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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