Rudolph
12-04-2007, 03:47 PM
This story pops up a lot in reading about South Africa's involvement during World War One, and stands out as an example of our fighting men's determination and loyalty.
It came up again with the release of Springboks on the (http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=26755&cause_id=1270)Somme: South Africa (http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=26755&cause_id=1270) in the Great War 1914–1918 (http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=26755&cause_id=1270) (2007), by Bill Nasson, University of Cape Town. In this new book the author includes an interview with the last surviving WW1 soldier from SA who served at Delville Wood, including his personal account of these events.
It was part of the Somme offensive, and this incident took place from 14 July till 20 July. A brigade of just over three thousand SA soldiers held their position for five days without having any men captured, and the dead to wounded ratio was 4:1 (according to Wikipedia the average for trench warfare was 1:3).
Peter Liddle: “The South African Brigade had fought steadfastly under such appalling and prolonged circumstances that in the grim litany of the Somme's savagery of sustained attack and counter-attack, Delville Wood stands unenviably pre-eminent.”
Some extracts and a summary of events from Kruipende Vuur (Creeping Fire), by C.J. Scheepers Strydom, below.
By 1915 four regiments of SA soldiers had applied for voluntary service in Europe, amounting to 5,600 men, including those from former Rhodesia. The rest had served with British forces up until now. H.T. Lukin stood at the head of the brigade; he had served since the 1877 Zulu Wars. As Afrikaners viewed this as a British war they first joined the effort rather reluctantly, but the amount of Afrikaners soon increased. Shortly the number rose to close to 2,000 Afrikaners joining the regiments. (Afrikaners were still bitter at losing the Boer War, and because of the concentration camps relations were still strained between the English and Afrikaans-speaking citizens. It even lead to a small armed-rebellion by Afrikaners trying to stop the support to Britain.)
Their first mission is a short detour to Egypt, where they fight at the same locations as they would in World War Two: Sollum, Sidi, Barrani, Mersa Matruh, etc. Having completed the mission successfully they travel to Longueval, France.
The SA forces under Lukin are placed between British- and French-lines, and tasked to maintain this strategic link. If overrun by the Germans, both the former forces would be exposed on the respective open flank. Their first engagement was supported by the Scottish, and they successfully took the town of Longueval after a day of heavy fighting, and then the SA brigade was ordered to take to Delville Wood the following day.
WW 1 historian John Buchan wrote: “The place was terribly at the mercy of the enemy guns, and on the north and south-east sides the Germans had a strong trench line, some seventy yards from the trees, bristling with machine guns … Their (the South Africans) assault had been splendid but their defence was a greater exploit. They hung on without food or water while their ranks were terribly thinned, and at the end, when one battalion had lost all its officers, they repulsed an attack by the German Fifth Division, the corps d’ elite of Brandenburg. In this farflung battle all parts of the Empire won fame, and not least was the glory of the South African contingent.”
At daybreak the Natal and Freestate regiment, under command of W.E.C. Tanner, and the Transvaal and Rhodesian regiment, commanded by E.F. Thackeray, started the offensive to take the forest. Under heavy fire, they took the first trench at 6 o’clock. By late afternoon all but one corner had been under their control.
The forest is triangular, with the longest side being one kilometre in length. At the shortest line the Germans had begun fighting back with artillery, to devastating effect. The brigade dug themselves in and expected the worst, unable to move, but luckily the heavy shelling also cancelled any chance of an attack by Germans infantry. At its heaviest four hundred bombs fell per minute in this tiny stretch of land.
Immediately after the shelling stopped, the South Africans, renowned for their marksmanship-ability, ready and take aim. The advancing Germans are gunned down until they decide to find cover. At night the dead and wounded are removed; SA had brought its own field-medic unit from Potchefstroom.
Soon artillery starts firing again and German sharpshooters use the light from the explosions to take out a couple of exposed soldiers. Lukin receives orders to hold his position; and without sleep they soon continue with their offensive, as Lukin orders his men to take the final section of the woods.
The attack is soon cancelled as they suffer losses under machines gun- and mortar fire. The two regiments that launched the first attack had fought for forty-eight hours. The brigade would fight for a total of six days and five nights. Every time they moved forward they were repelled; then the same for the Germans. The latter sent their famous Fifth Brigade, a fresh unit each time, against the weakened South Africans. The Brandenburg men were repelled, but the dead were stacking up on the SA side. Most of the stretch-bearers had died, and during these horrible times three soldiers rescued their injured luitenant, for which W.F. Faulds would receive a Victoria Cross.
When the British forces finally relieved the SA brigade on 20 July, Thackeray walked out with only one hundred and forty-three men still able to walk. Later a total of seven-hundred and fifty men went on parade – the last surviving members. Six days earlier they numbered three-thousand one-hundred and fifty.
Much was written regarding the order to hold the position. Captain A.E. Liefeldt, from Cape Town, years later responded: “A person holds a position until you are relieved or ordered to fall back. The South African Brigade was only relieved on the sixth day, therefore there could not have been any misunderstanding.”
It took a much stronger British force one month to take the final part of the forest – a clear indication of the error in assigning the job to a single brigade!
The remaining men were reassembled and joined by new South African recruits which had come to join the Western Front. They rejoined the fighting in August, after a visit by King George V. Another thousand units perished before the battle for Somme had finished.
[Taken from Bill Nasson’s book] ‘He cites a colourful and memorable phrase of P Griffith, a WWI historian, which presents the image of the South Africans fighting in France:
“Portrayed in stylized "Botha's boys" imagery as bronzed and big-boned infantrymen bred on the veld and burnished by Inter-Colonial Shield cadet shooting competitions, these were Africa's European elect, its archetypal ‘colonial supermen’.”’
The estimated casualties for the entire Somme-campaign, four-and-a-half months long, were as follows:
Germans: 650,000*
British: 420,000
French: 195,000
A memorial and cemetery (http://delvillewood.com), later a museum too, was erected by the South African government at the site in 1926, but later the French government took control of the area for political reasons. It is a famous tourist attraction in the area till today. Of the forest, only a single tree remains - in memory of the battle. A primary school at Longueval annually visits the cemetery to place flowers at the South African graves.
My apologies to any Germans forum members! I’m sure the available accounts, and my reporting, is a biased toward the allies and South Africa, but a great story nonetheless.
For further reading:
The South Africans at Delville Wood (http://rapidttp.com/milhist/vol072iu.html)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delville_Wood
*Please see posts below.
It came up again with the release of Springboks on the (http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=26755&cause_id=1270)Somme: South Africa (http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=26755&cause_id=1270) in the Great War 1914–1918 (http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=26755&cause_id=1270) (2007), by Bill Nasson, University of Cape Town. In this new book the author includes an interview with the last surviving WW1 soldier from SA who served at Delville Wood, including his personal account of these events.
It was part of the Somme offensive, and this incident took place from 14 July till 20 July. A brigade of just over three thousand SA soldiers held their position for five days without having any men captured, and the dead to wounded ratio was 4:1 (according to Wikipedia the average for trench warfare was 1:3).
Peter Liddle: “The South African Brigade had fought steadfastly under such appalling and prolonged circumstances that in the grim litany of the Somme's savagery of sustained attack and counter-attack, Delville Wood stands unenviably pre-eminent.”
Some extracts and a summary of events from Kruipende Vuur (Creeping Fire), by C.J. Scheepers Strydom, below.
By 1915 four regiments of SA soldiers had applied for voluntary service in Europe, amounting to 5,600 men, including those from former Rhodesia. The rest had served with British forces up until now. H.T. Lukin stood at the head of the brigade; he had served since the 1877 Zulu Wars. As Afrikaners viewed this as a British war they first joined the effort rather reluctantly, but the amount of Afrikaners soon increased. Shortly the number rose to close to 2,000 Afrikaners joining the regiments. (Afrikaners were still bitter at losing the Boer War, and because of the concentration camps relations were still strained between the English and Afrikaans-speaking citizens. It even lead to a small armed-rebellion by Afrikaners trying to stop the support to Britain.)
Their first mission is a short detour to Egypt, where they fight at the same locations as they would in World War Two: Sollum, Sidi, Barrani, Mersa Matruh, etc. Having completed the mission successfully they travel to Longueval, France.
The SA forces under Lukin are placed between British- and French-lines, and tasked to maintain this strategic link. If overrun by the Germans, both the former forces would be exposed on the respective open flank. Their first engagement was supported by the Scottish, and they successfully took the town of Longueval after a day of heavy fighting, and then the SA brigade was ordered to take to Delville Wood the following day.
WW 1 historian John Buchan wrote: “The place was terribly at the mercy of the enemy guns, and on the north and south-east sides the Germans had a strong trench line, some seventy yards from the trees, bristling with machine guns … Their (the South Africans) assault had been splendid but their defence was a greater exploit. They hung on without food or water while their ranks were terribly thinned, and at the end, when one battalion had lost all its officers, they repulsed an attack by the German Fifth Division, the corps d’ elite of Brandenburg. In this farflung battle all parts of the Empire won fame, and not least was the glory of the South African contingent.”
At daybreak the Natal and Freestate regiment, under command of W.E.C. Tanner, and the Transvaal and Rhodesian regiment, commanded by E.F. Thackeray, started the offensive to take the forest. Under heavy fire, they took the first trench at 6 o’clock. By late afternoon all but one corner had been under their control.
The forest is triangular, with the longest side being one kilometre in length. At the shortest line the Germans had begun fighting back with artillery, to devastating effect. The brigade dug themselves in and expected the worst, unable to move, but luckily the heavy shelling also cancelled any chance of an attack by Germans infantry. At its heaviest four hundred bombs fell per minute in this tiny stretch of land.
Immediately after the shelling stopped, the South Africans, renowned for their marksmanship-ability, ready and take aim. The advancing Germans are gunned down until they decide to find cover. At night the dead and wounded are removed; SA had brought its own field-medic unit from Potchefstroom.
Soon artillery starts firing again and German sharpshooters use the light from the explosions to take out a couple of exposed soldiers. Lukin receives orders to hold his position; and without sleep they soon continue with their offensive, as Lukin orders his men to take the final section of the woods.
The attack is soon cancelled as they suffer losses under machines gun- and mortar fire. The two regiments that launched the first attack had fought for forty-eight hours. The brigade would fight for a total of six days and five nights. Every time they moved forward they were repelled; then the same for the Germans. The latter sent their famous Fifth Brigade, a fresh unit each time, against the weakened South Africans. The Brandenburg men were repelled, but the dead were stacking up on the SA side. Most of the stretch-bearers had died, and during these horrible times three soldiers rescued their injured luitenant, for which W.F. Faulds would receive a Victoria Cross.
When the British forces finally relieved the SA brigade on 20 July, Thackeray walked out with only one hundred and forty-three men still able to walk. Later a total of seven-hundred and fifty men went on parade – the last surviving members. Six days earlier they numbered three-thousand one-hundred and fifty.
Much was written regarding the order to hold the position. Captain A.E. Liefeldt, from Cape Town, years later responded: “A person holds a position until you are relieved or ordered to fall back. The South African Brigade was only relieved on the sixth day, therefore there could not have been any misunderstanding.”
It took a much stronger British force one month to take the final part of the forest – a clear indication of the error in assigning the job to a single brigade!
The remaining men were reassembled and joined by new South African recruits which had come to join the Western Front. They rejoined the fighting in August, after a visit by King George V. Another thousand units perished before the battle for Somme had finished.
[Taken from Bill Nasson’s book] ‘He cites a colourful and memorable phrase of P Griffith, a WWI historian, which presents the image of the South Africans fighting in France:
“Portrayed in stylized "Botha's boys" imagery as bronzed and big-boned infantrymen bred on the veld and burnished by Inter-Colonial Shield cadet shooting competitions, these were Africa's European elect, its archetypal ‘colonial supermen’.”’
The estimated casualties for the entire Somme-campaign, four-and-a-half months long, were as follows:
Germans: 650,000*
British: 420,000
French: 195,000
A memorial and cemetery (http://delvillewood.com), later a museum too, was erected by the South African government at the site in 1926, but later the French government took control of the area for political reasons. It is a famous tourist attraction in the area till today. Of the forest, only a single tree remains - in memory of the battle. A primary school at Longueval annually visits the cemetery to place flowers at the South African graves.
My apologies to any Germans forum members! I’m sure the available accounts, and my reporting, is a biased toward the allies and South Africa, but a great story nonetheless.
For further reading:
The South Africans at Delville Wood (http://rapidttp.com/milhist/vol072iu.html)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delville_Wood
*Please see posts below.