Canadian CorpsĬanadian forces, stationed in Belgium near the city of Ypres, were spared the first few months of fighting on the Somme. The caribou statue atop the memorial commemorating the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, at the Beaumont-Hamel battlefield, France. At its highest point,Ī statue of a caribou, the official emblem of the Newfoundland Regiment, looks out over the field where so many died. The battlefield of Beaumont-Hamel is now a park. Of the regiment’s 801 members, only 68 could answer roll call by the end of the opening day.Įvery 1 July, while Canadians celebrate Canada Day, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador gather to also observe Memorial Day in honour of the men who fought at Beaumont-Hamel. More than 700 soldiers of the First Newfoundland Regiment were cut down at Beaumont-Hamel. Hundreds of injured men were left to fend for themselves on the battlefield through the night, where theyĭied of their wounds or were killed by German snipers.
Small groups of survivors attempted in vain to fight on. Less than 30 minutes after leaving their trench, it was all over for the Newfoundlanders. Others died upon reaching the base of the Danger Tree, a prominent tree halfway between the British and German lines, Some were hit before they even reached the front of the existing British lines. The Newfoundlanders pressed forward into this firestorm. To navigate a few narrow gaps in the barbed wire. Out in the open, they saw that the first waves of British attackers had failed - the troops lying dead, or trapped in no man’s land, cut down by machine guns and artillery fire while trying At 9:15 a.m., the Newfoundlanders began their assault, crossing no man’s land in rehearsed lines. They were part of a third wave of troops to attack German lines. Battle of Beaumont-HamelĪt the northern end of the Somme front, near the village of Beaumont-Hamel, about 800 troops of the First Newfoundland Regiment were gathered on 1 July in a
The British lost more than 57,000 men killed or wounded on only the first day of the battle, with little to show for their sacrifice. When British soldiers “went over the top” of their trenches in the wake of the barrage, the result was catastrophe: tens of thousands were mown down by machine-gun fire or caught up in barbed wire and then killed as they tried to reach the German lines. Image courtesy of Canadian Department of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-000917. Many British shells had also been poorly manufactured and turned out to be duds others lacked the fuses necessary to explode on contact with the barbed wire strung across no man’s land between the opposing sides.Ī Canadian heavy howitzer during the Battle of Somme, France. Unscathed to face the oncoming attackers. The Germans simply hid in their deep and reinforced dugouts until the barrage ended, emerging largely The Somme offensive opened with a massive artillery bombardment, which lasted five days and did little to knock out enemy troops and artillery guns. It was hoped the assault on a 25 km section of theįront would not only break the stalemate, but relieve pressure on beleaguered French forces defending against the long-running German assault further south, at Verdun. 1 July 1916Īfter two years of stalemate in the vast trench works held by the Allied and German armies on the Western Front, the British launched a massive offensive in the Somme River valley in northern France.
Canadian soldiers returning from the Battle of the Somme in France, November 1916.
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