First Day On The Somme - Ovillers & La Boisselle

Ovillers & La Boisselle

The villages of Ovillers and La Boisselle flanked the Albert-Bapaume road and marked the centre of the Fourth Army's front. It was here that the Reserve Army cavalry would advance if a breakthrough was achieved.

The 8th Division, attacking Ovillers, had to cross the 750 yards (690 m) of no man's land and advance up Mash Valley which was a veritable killing ground. Despite the almost impossible task, the brigades did temporarily penetrate as far as the third trench of the German front-line system, and a small group did manage to capture a section of the German front-line trench and hold out until after 9am, but by midday the attack had failed.

Attacking along the axis of the Albert-Bapaume road was the 34th Division which was aided by the blowing of the two largest mines on either side of La Boisselle. South of the village, some infantry from the Grimsby Chums got into the Lochnager mine crater where they were pinned down. The Tyneside Scottish Brigade attacked up Mash Valley and against La Boisselle itself, on a sector known as the Glory Hole.

The Tyneside Irish Brigade was the reserve brigade whose task was to follow through and capture the secondary objectives of Contalmaison and Pozières. At zero hour the brigade started its advance from the reserve position known as the Tara-Usna Line and had to advance one mile (1.6 km) over open ground before they even reached the British front-line. They were machine-gunned all the way but amazingly a small group, 50 men or so, made it all the way up Sausage Valley, south of La Boisselle and almost to the edge of Contalmaison. The survivors were captured but they had the distinction of making the furthest advance of the day, about 4,000 yards (3,700 m).

The 34th Division, by committing all three of its brigades to the attack on one of the toughest objectives, suffered the worst casualties of any division on the day; 6,380 men killed, wounded or captured. This figure exceeded the next worst loss, that of the 29th Division, by over 1,000 men. So badly devastated were the Tyneside brigades that they were withdrawn from the division until late August, replaced by brigades of the 37th Division.