![]() ![]() The 'things', who had once been men, were rotting after being left out too long in the hot sun. ![]() The corpses stank, and he along with the other members of the party could only bear to be near them if they smoked while they worked. "It was a nauseating job, Whiteman recalled. Rupert Whiteman was a 25-year-old lance corporal with the 10th Royal Fusiliers and was tasked with disposing of bodies: ![]() My only wish was to escape."Īs bad as 1 July had been for the British, cleaning up after the battle was no easy detail either. There was a lot of crying out and screaming, as many of my dear comrades suffocated or were burned to death. I stood between the English and the burning dugout where the stocked-up ammunition had exploded. “When the English approached our dugout, I yelled : 'Get out! Face the enemy.' It was standing by the entrance when I was wounded by hand grenades. Some unlucky British attackers who made it to the German line in this sector were set alight by flamethrowers, but once the English broke through, German officer Aspirant Brachat remembered how much his side had suffered: In less than a minute, the battlefield seemed to be deserted." The attack on La Boisselle, approximately 7:35am (image from 'Somme 1 July 1916 Tragedy and Triumph' by Andrew Robertshaw © Osprey Publishing, part of Bloomsbury Publishing) Some of our men climbed up onto our parapets and threw hand grenades at those attackers who were lying on the ground. "…the bullets fired by our machine-gunners and riflemen smashed like a hurricane into bunched-up ranks. Bullets were just slapping into him, knocking great bloody chunks off his body."įrom across the small battlefield, the German machine-gun company commander remembered how: Another lad was just kneeling, his head thrown right back. ![]() “He was riddled with bullets, writhing and screaming. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's 'Somme: Into the Breach' relates how Private J Elliot, fighting with the 20th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers (1st Tyneside Scottish), saw the uncle of the unit's piper and another soldier brutally shot down: In the south it was a different story, though at La Boiselle fighting was still fierce. Despite the mines, the British were slaughtered by German survivors in the north of their attack front. ![]()
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