Somme

Non-football but ....

100 years ago this morning at 7:30 the 10th battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment went over the top in the first wave of attacks near the village of La Boiselle..

On that one day the battalion suffered 502 casualties (killed, wounded, missing or prisoners). About 100 returned unharmed.

The battalion's nickname: the Grimsby Chums.

Brave men, never forgotten RIP

My father's father, my grandfather was one of them, he was one of the lucky ones who made it home. He would talk about his time in the army but never much about the Somme.  He wrote a lot of poetry in the trenches and in reading them you could understand why he was so quiet on the subject.
The man went to the second world war but was kicked out for being too old, so he joined the home guard because he wanted to be involved . How times have changed. He live to a ripe old age of 96.R.I.P. Grandad and all the other brave men who served us so well over the years.

I was pleased to see some TV coverage of the Lochnagar Crater at La Boiselle today.

The Chums were directly in line with the crater and their objective was to take the crater and then the village of Contalmaison just behind it.As they were told to wait until the debris and tremors from the mine had passed they went over two minutes after the explosion and the Germans had by then set up their machine guns on the far lip of the crater as the mine had been short of their front line.

Sadly the Grimsby Chums and the 11th Suffolks who together with the Royal Scots were the first over the top in that section of the front get little mention and the Tyneside Scottish and Irish who were the second wave are the ones who always get remembered in connection with La Boiselle

There is a memorial bench at the crater dedicated to the Chums
Please visit if you are ever in the area of Albert. I hope Grimsby Borough sent a representative today

Visited the Somme battlefield last year. At the Lochnagar crater is a wooden bench affixed with brass plaques commemorating the valour of the Grimsby chums. If that place doesn't bring a lump to your throat and a tear to your eye, you are not human. Thiepval memorial is breathtaking and when you look from the German frontline out towards the flat expanse of no mans land you can see exactly why so many thousands where mown down by the German guns.Also a war grave that was discovered contained the remains of some of the Grimsby chums. Whoever buried them laid them in a line some with arms linked . This is thought to be because they where of the same unit or the fact that family members had met their fate together.

The England footballers were offered to go & see the graves & the battlefield whilst in France & were told that the players were to tired to visit, my God what have these pampered overpaid young men got to be to tired over to pay respects to our young men who gave their lives so these players could have the lifestyle they have, shame on them & shame on the English FA for missing out on a great opportunity to show that our English players do have pride, well clearly they have none.

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Very brave men fighting in unbelievable conditions,

The war to end all wars they said,

Sadly that did not happen,

We spent many a happy holiday in France,

BUT

Always found time to pay our respects at various cemeteries,

RIP all you brave men.

My great grandfather was injured a hundred years ago today - he was knocked unconscious and had to have several pieces of shrapnel removed from his head and neck. He was out of action for 3 months before they sent him back. He was wounded again in 1917 this time he had a bullet lodged in his shoulder that knackered the nerves in his arm. That ended his war.  He went onto live until his late 80s.

He wrote about his experiences and they were fascinating and terrifying. He saw one his best friends drown in a shell crater that had filled with rain water and he couldn't get out. He also recalls seeing the white cliffs of Dover when he was evacuated and swore that he would never leave the country again, and he didn't.

I'm so grateful that I haven't had to experience this it was clearly absolutely horrendous.

The startling thing is 1/7/1916 wasn't even the Chums' worst day in terms of casualties. That came a year later, though by then the Army had adopted the policy of mixing up draftees from different locations so one town wouldn't suffer so much if the unit had a bad day.