The Mametz Wood Memorial commemorates an engagement of the 38th (Welsh) Division of the British Army during the First Battle of the Somme in France in 1916.
The Mametz Wood Memorial commemorates an engagement of the 38th (Welsh) Division of the British Army during the First Battle of the Somme in France in 1916.
The memorial, erected in 1987 by Welsh sculptor David Petersen, is a Welsh red dragon on top of a three-metre stone plinth, facing the wood and tearing at barbed wire. It was commissioned by the South Wales Branch of the Western Front Association following a public fund-raising appeal. [1] [2]
The memorial is located near the site of the engagement in northern France. It can be reached from the village of Mametz on the D64 road.
On 12 July 2013, the Welsh Government announced that it was helping to fund refurbishment of the memorial in time for the 100th anniversary of the Battle in 2016. [3]
Mametz Wood was the objective of the 38th (Welsh) Division during the First Battle of the Somme. The attack was made in a northerly direction over a ridge, focusing on the German positions in the wood, between 7 July and 12 July 1916. On 7 July the men formed the first wave intending to take the wood in a matter of hours. However, strong fortification, machineguns and shelling killed and injured over 400 soldiers before they reached the wood. Further attacks by the 17th Division on 8 July failed to improve the position. [4]
Infuriated by what he saw as a distinct lack of "push" Sir Douglas Haig with Lt-General Henry Rawlinson visited the HQ of the Welsh Division to make their displeasure known. Major General Ivor Philipps, officer commanding the Welsh Division, was relieved of his command.
Haig passed control of the Division to Major General Herbert Watts, commander of the 7th Division and told him to use it "as he saw fit". Watts planned a full-scale attack for 9 July but organising the attacking formations took some time and the attack was postponed until 10 July 1916. The operational order was blunt, stating that the Division would attack the wood with the aim of "capturing the whole of it".
The 10 July attack was on a larger scale than had been attempted earlier. Despite heavy casualties the fringe of the wood was soon reached and some bayonet fighting took place before the wood was entered and a number of German machine guns silenced. Fighting in the wood was fierce with the Germans giving ground stubbornly.
The 14th (Swansea) (Service) Battalion, the Welsh Regiment, went into the attack with 676 men and after a day of hard fighting had lost almost 400 men killed or wounded before being relieved. Other battalions suffered similar losses. However, by 12 July the wood was effectively cleared of the enemy. The Welsh Division had lost about 4,000 men killed or wounded in the engagement. It would not be used in a massed attack again until 31 July 1917.
The wood still stands today, surrounded by farmland. Overgrown shell craters and trenches can still be made out.
The war poet Siegfried Sassoon, of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, recorded in his memoirs that he had made a single handed attack on the enemy trenches in Mametz on 4 July 1916.
The Welsh artist Christopher Williams painted The Welsh at Mametz Wood at the request of David Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War. Williams visited the scene in November 1916 and later made studies from a soldier supplied for the purpose. The painting is in the collection of National Museum Wales. [5]
The poet Robert Graves fought in the battle and described the wood immediately after the battle: [6]
It was full of dead Prussian Guards, big men, and dead Royal Welch Fusiliers and South Wales Borderers, little men. Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken.
The poet and visual artist David Jones, who took part in the battle, wrote a vivid description of the fighting in Mametz Wood in his long poem In Parenthesis (1937), including [7]
And here and there and huddled over, death-halsed to these, a Picton-five-feet-four paragon of the Line, from Newcastle Emlyn or Talgarth in Brycheiniog, lying disordered like discarded garments or crumpled chin to shin-bone like a Lambourne find.
The Welsh poet Owen Sheers commemorated the battle with his poem Mametz Wood (2000), including the words: [8]
This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
In 2014, National Theatre Wales performed Mametz, a recreation of the battle in a wood in rural Monmouthshire, scripted by Owen Sheers. [9] [10]
In 2016, In Parenthesis, an opera by Iain Bell based on the David Jones poem, was produced by Welsh National Opera. [11]
Walter David Jones CH, CBE was a Welsh painter and modernist poet. As a painter he worked mainly in watercolour on portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and inscription painter. In 1965, Kenneth Clark took him to be the best living British painter, while both T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden put his poetry among the best written in their century. Jones's work gains form from his Christian faith and Welsh heritage.
The Royal Welch Fusiliers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, and part of the Prince of Wales' Division, that was founded in 1689; shortly after the Glorious Revolution. In 1702, it was designated a fusilier regiment and became the Welch Regiment of Fusiliers; the prefix "Royal" was added in 1713, then confirmed in 1714 when George I named it the Prince of Wales's Own Royal Regiment of Welsh Fusiliers. In 1751, after reforms that standardised the naming and numbering of regiments, it became the 23rd Regiment of Foot . In 1881, the final title of the regiment was adopted.
The 36th (Ulster) Division was an infantry division of the British Army, part of Lord Kitchener's New Army, formed in September 1914. Originally called the Ulster Division, it was made up of mainly members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, who formed thirteen additional battalions for three existing regiments: the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. However, regular Officers and Soldiers and men from all around the United Kingdom made up the strength of the Division. The division served from October 1915 on Western Front as a formation of the British Army during the Great War.
The 16th (Irish) Division was an infantry division of the British Army, raised for service during World War I. The division was a voluntary 'Service' formation of Lord Kitchener's New Armies, created in Ireland from the 'National Volunteers', initially in September 1914, after the outbreak of the Great War. In December 1915, the division moved to France, joining the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), under the command of Irish Major General William Hickie, and spent the duration of the war in action on the Western Front. Following enormous losses at the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres, the 16th (Irish) Division required a substantial refit in England between June and August 1918, which involved the introduction of many non-Irish battalions.
The first day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, was the beginning of the Battle of Albert (1–13 July), the name given by the British to the first two weeks of the 141 days of the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. Nine corps of the French Sixth Army and the British Fourth and Third armies attacked the German 2nd Army from Foucaucourt to the south of the Somme, northwards across the Somme and the Ancre to Serre and at Gommecourt, 2 mi (3 km) beyond, in the Third Army area. The objective of the attack was to capture the German first and second defensive positions from Serre south to the Albert–Bapaume road and the first position from the road south to Foucaucourt.
The 38th (Welsh) Division of the British Army was active during both the First and Second World Wars. In 1914, the division was raised as the 43rd Division of Herbert Kitchener's New Army, and was originally intended to form part of a 50,000-strong Welsh Army Corps that had been championed by David Lloyd George; the assignment of Welsh recruits to other formations meant that this concept was never realised. The 43rd was renamed the 38th (Welsh) Division on 29 April 1915, and shipped to France later that year. It arrived in France with a poor reputation, seen as a political formation that was ill-trained and poorly led. The division's baptism by fire came in the first days of the Battle of the Somme, where it captured Mametz Wood at the loss of nearly 4,000 men. This strongly held German position needed to be secured in order to facilitate the next phase of the Somme offensive, the Battle of Bazentin Ridge. Despite securing its objective, the division's reputation was adversely affected by miscommunication among senior officers.
The Battle of Albert is the British name for the first two weeks of British–French offensive operations of the Battle of the Somme. The Allied preparatory artillery bombardment commenced on 24 June and the British–French infantry attacked on 1 July, on the south bank from Foucaucourt to the Somme and from the Somme north to Gommecourt, 2 mi (3.2 km) beyond Serre. The French Sixth Army and the right wing of the British Fourth Army inflicted a considerable defeat on the German 2nd Army but from near the Albert–Bapaume road to Gommecourt, the British attack was a disaster, where most of the c. 57,000 British casualties of the day were incurred. Against the wishes of General Joseph Joffre, General Sir Douglas Haig abandoned the offensive north of the road to reinforce the success in the south, where the British–French forces pressed forward through several intermediate lines closer to the German second position.
General Henry Sinclair Horne, 1st Baron Horne, was a military officer in the British Army, most notable for his generalship during the First World War. He was the only British artillery officer to command an army in the war.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1916 to Wales and its people.
Mametz is a former commune in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune Carnoy-Mametz.
The Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial is a memorial site in France dedicated to the commemoration of Dominion of Newfoundland forces members who were killed during World War I. The 74-acre (300,000 m2) preserved battlefield park encompasses the grounds over which the Newfoundland Regiment made their unsuccessful attack on 1 July 1916 during the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
The 119th Brigade, originally the Welsh Bantam Brigade, was an infantry brigade formation of the British Army during World War I. Part of Lord Kitchener's 'New Armies', it served in the 40th Division on the Western Front. The brigade number was reactivated for deception purposes during World War II.
The Capture of Mametz took place on 1 July 1916, when the British Fourth Army attacked the German 2nd Army on the Western Front, during the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Mametz is a village on the D 64 road, about 20 mi (32 km) north-east of Amiens and 4 mi (6.4 km) east of Albert. Fricourt lies to the west, Contalmaison is to the north, Montauban to the north-east and Carnoy and Maricourt are to the south-east. Mametz Wood is 1,000 yd (910 m) to the north-west and before 1914, the village was the fifth largest in the area, with about 120 houses and had a station on the line from Albert to Péronne. During the Battle of Albert (25 to 29 September) 1914 the II Bavarian Corps attacked westwards north of the Somme but was fought to a standstill east of Mametz. Reinforced by the XIV Reserve Corps the Germans on the north side of the Somme attacked again and took Mametz on 29 September. After a mutually costly battle for Fricourt, where the French were eventually forced out, the front line stabilised and both sides began to dig improvised defences. In mid-December the French conducted a local attack in the Mametz area but were repulsed with many casualties.
The Welsh National Memorial Park is a war memorial in Langemark near Ypres (Belgium) for soldiers of World War I, located near the Pilkem Ridge in the former Ypres Salient. It commemorates the services of men and women from Welsh origin(Wales), wherever they served during the Great War as part of the Allied Powers, as well as the non-Welsh soldiers serving in Welsh formations.
The Capture of Contalmaison was a tactical incident of the Battle of Albert. Contalmaison is a commune in the Somme department in Picardy in northern France. The village is 4 mi (6.4 km) north-east of Albert on the D 104, north-west of Mametz Wood and south of Pozières, at the junction of several roads, atop a spur with a good view in all directions. In 1914, there was a church and a château just to the north, a chalk pit nearby and 72 houses, making it the seventh-largest village on the Somme. Military operations in the area began when the German XIV Reserve Corps advanced down the Bapaume–Albert road and Contalmaison was captured at noon on 28 September, by Reserve Infantry Regiment 40 and RIR 110 of the 28th Reserve Division which took 20 prisoners for a loss of three men killed and 21 wounded.
Dantzig Alley British Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground for the dead of the First World War. It is located near the village of Mametz, eight kilometres from Albert in the Somme department of France.
The Welsh at Mametz Wood by Christopher Williams portrays the 11 July 1916 Charge of the Welsh Division at Mametz Wood, part of the Somme offensive. Painted at the request of the Secretary of State for War, David Lloyd George. Williams visited the scene in November 1916 and later made studies from a soldier supplied for the purpose. The painting is in the collection of the National Museum of Wales, to whom it was presented by Sir Archibald Mitchelson in 1920.
The military history of Wales refers to military activity that has occurred in Wales or activity of historic Welsh military or Welsh armed forces.
During World War I (1914–1918), Wales was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which entered the war in August 1914 as one of the Entente Powers, along with France and Russia. In part as an effect of chain ganging, the UK decided due to geopolitical power issues to declare war on the Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.