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As the morning mists cleared away on the 1st
July, the assault waves of 130,000 British Infantry called
their rolls and checked their arms and ammunition.
Each man was in "fighting order" and
with the extra burden of shovels, grenades, a Stoke's mortar
bomb, wire cutters a gas mask, a prepared charge of explosives
for cutting gaps in wire, and other obstacles, many of them
were carrying 90lbs.
At 7.30am, the artillery barrage lifted off the first German
line and moved onto the second. This was the first employment
of the so-called rolling barrage. Steel-helmeted and with
bayonets fixed, the infantry left their trenches and advanced.
As a senior officer wrote to the Times Newspaper of the Ulster
Division: "It was done as if it was a parade movement
on the barrack square"
They were closely packed in rigid lines, the military doctrine
of the day being that they should swarm onto the enemy trenches
as soon as their own artillery had lifted. But this stiff
formation prevented the use of cover and inhibited initiative.
At first, south of the Ancre, everything went well and 108
and 109 Brigades moved over the German trenches with few casualties.
Scarcely were they across, however, when the German batteries
opened a barrage on "No Mans Land".
Simultaneously the skilful and resolute German machine-gunners,
who had remained safe from the bombardment, now sprang up
from their shelters, pulling up their guns and heavy ammunition
boxes, and raked our men from the flanks and the rear, thinning
the khaki waves. Many officers fell and the men went on alone.
The Ulster Divisions position was now a vulnerable salient
in the German line. A few hundred yards wide and raked by
German fire. At dusk a powerful counter-attack by fresh German
troops drove our men, almost weaponless, back to the second
German line, which they held all the next day until relieved
at night by the troops of the 49th Division.
They
withdrew with their prisoners tattered and exhausted. They
had suffered horrendous casualties.
The Innsikillings lost more men than any British regiment
had ever lost in a single day. Of the 15th Royal Irish Rifles,
only seventy men answered roll call that night of the 1st
of July. The total British casualties on that first day were
60,000.
Through no fault of their own, the blinding success that
the Ulstermen had achieved had not been exploited. But the
Battle of the Somme had inflicted on the Germans, a wound
from which they never fully recovered.
An historic eyewitness account of the battle stated "I
am not an Ulsterman, but yesterday, the 1st July, as I followed
their amazing attack I felt I would rather be an Ulsterman
than anything else in the world."
Truly we may say of those who fell as said Pericles over
the warrior dead in Athens, "So they gave their bodies
to the Commonwealth and received, each with his own memory,
praise that will never die, and with it the greatest of all
sepulchres, not that in which their mortal bones are laid,
but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains
fresh to stir to speech or to actions as the occasion comes
by."
Casualties
In two days of fighting, the Ulster Division had lost 5500
officers and men - killed, wounded and missing. The first
day of the battle had been the original anniversary of the
Battle of the Boyne and as they went over the parapet, many
shouted the old battle cries "NO SURRENDER" and
"REMEMBER 1690". Many wore orange ribbons and one
sergeant of the Inniskilling had on his orange sash.
The Belfast newspapers, as elsewhere on 3rd July, reported
the Somme offensive, and spoke of brilliant successes. It
was several days before the true horror of the casualties
was known, and as day by day the lists in the newspapers grew
longer, the whole Province went into mourning.
No division was more closely-knit because its core had been
the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F) and besides, the Ulster
community was small and compact.
In the streets of Belfast, as in other towns and villages
throughout Ulster, mothers looked out in dread for the red
bicycles of the telegram boys. House after house, the blinds
were drawn until it seemed that every family in the city had
been bereaved. The casualty lists were full of familiar names,
and always after them in brackets appeared the U.V.F units
to which the casualty belonged.
That year the Lord Mayor requested the suspension of business
for five minutes at noon. In a downpour of rain, traffic stopped,
and passers by stood silent in the streets - the Ulster Volunteers
had sealed their covenant in blood.
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