War of Words: Soldier-Poets of the Somme

0:00:05 > 0:00:07In 1917,

0:00:07 > 0:00:10at this hospital for shellshocked soldiers,

0:00:10 > 0:00:14the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen met.

0:00:16 > 0:00:19Amid the traumatised of the First World War

0:00:19 > 0:00:22they established a famous literary friendship.

0:00:24 > 0:00:26But their time together in Dottyville wasn't long.

0:00:28 > 0:00:31After two months, the army medical authorities

0:00:31 > 0:00:34decided to send Owen back to the Western Front.

0:00:34 > 0:00:37Sassoon was very distressed about this,

0:00:37 > 0:00:39and gives him a present.

0:00:39 > 0:00:41And this is the present.

0:00:41 > 0:00:44And it's beautifully judged.

0:00:44 > 0:00:46The book is called "Nothing Of Importance".

0:00:46 > 0:00:48And you can imagine Sassoon saying to Owen,

0:00:48 > 0:00:50"I'm giving you Nothing Of Importance."

0:00:50 > 0:00:55The book itself was of very great importance.

0:00:55 > 0:00:58It is the memoir of an officer who had served with Sassoon

0:00:58 > 0:01:02in the so-called poets battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers,

0:01:02 > 0:01:05during the build-up to the Battle of the Somme.

0:01:07 > 0:01:09In his own hand, Sassoon listed the officers

0:01:09 > 0:01:11at the moment they arrived on the Somme.

0:01:15 > 0:01:20And he showed how a year on, all but four were either dead or wounded.

0:01:21 > 0:01:27So this book obviously meant a great deal to Sassoon.

0:01:27 > 0:01:31One has to see it as a very special and generous gift.

0:01:34 > 0:01:36The Battle of the Somme had taken Sassoon

0:01:36 > 0:01:38to the edge of human experience.

0:01:40 > 0:01:41And he wasn't alone.

0:01:45 > 0:01:48More poets and writers were present at this battle

0:01:48 > 0:01:50than any other in history.

0:01:50 > 0:01:54As officers and private soldiers,

0:01:54 > 0:01:58they fought alongside each other on the same 14-mile battlefront.

0:01:58 > 0:02:02Here, they were soldiers first and poets second.

0:02:02 > 0:02:06These men did not come here to die for their country,

0:02:06 > 0:02:08they came here to kill for their country.

0:02:08 > 0:02:10That was their sole purpose of being here.

0:02:11 > 0:02:14Nothing prepared them for the sights they saw.

0:02:19 > 0:02:23What they witnessed at the Somme was a new form of industrial warfare.

0:02:25 > 0:02:29It reshaped them as individuals and inspired poetry and prose

0:02:29 > 0:02:32that still relays what this particular battle felt like.

0:02:33 > 0:02:36To prepare for action on the Somme's first day.

0:02:37 > 0:02:40To attack a wood filled with enemy troops.

0:02:41 > 0:02:42To get by in the muddy,

0:02:42 > 0:02:45louse-infested trenches at the battle's end.

0:02:46 > 0:02:49Wanting to alert the world to what had happened to them

0:02:49 > 0:02:51they waged their own war.

0:02:51 > 0:02:53A war of words.

0:02:55 > 0:02:58But this literature can only be fully understood

0:02:58 > 0:03:01when it is reconnected to THIS landscape.

0:03:02 > 0:03:06There had never been a battle like the Battle of the Somme.

0:03:07 > 0:03:09And each soldier-poet who fought here

0:03:09 > 0:03:12would have to invent a new language to describe it.

0:03:14 > 0:03:17Together, they changed how the First World War as a whole

0:03:17 > 0:03:19would be remembered.

0:03:32 > 0:03:34MILITARY DRUMBEAT

0:03:34 > 0:03:36VEHICLE APPROACHING

0:03:40 > 0:03:44In early 1916, the British had a name for the troops lucky enough

0:03:44 > 0:03:49to find themselves stationed near the River Somme in northern Picardy.

0:03:49 > 0:03:52They were known as "the Deathless Army".

0:03:53 > 0:03:57This area of northern France was mostly a quiet sector.

0:03:57 > 0:04:01The trenches engraved ribbons of chalk on a rolling landscape.

0:04:04 > 0:04:07But one stretch of line was known for being particularly hot.

0:04:09 > 0:04:10Bois Francais.

0:04:14 > 0:04:17These trenches were the backdrop to Siegfried Sassoon's other great

0:04:17 > 0:04:20literary friendship of the war, with Robert Graves.

0:04:22 > 0:04:25In the build-up to the battle, they both served here

0:04:25 > 0:04:28as part of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

0:04:36 > 0:04:39This is a British panoramic photograph taken

0:04:39 > 0:04:40almost from this very spot,

0:04:40 > 0:04:43at the time that Siegfried Sassoon

0:04:43 > 0:04:46and Robert Graves were serving in this sector.

0:04:46 > 0:04:47This was their trench.

0:04:47 > 0:04:50These images are especially important

0:04:50 > 0:04:54because they show you just how close together in places the lines were.

0:04:54 > 0:04:55Here for example,

0:04:55 > 0:04:58Sassoon would have been able to smell German sausages cooking -

0:04:58 > 0:05:00if the wind was in the right direction.

0:05:00 > 0:05:02They would be able to hear them talking.

0:05:02 > 0:05:05Bois Francais sat on top of a slight ridge.

0:05:07 > 0:05:09Here the front lines converged.

0:05:09 > 0:05:13In places, British and German trenches were only 50yds apart.

0:05:13 > 0:05:15From their front line,

0:05:15 > 0:05:19Sassoon and Graves looked over a seemingly empty landscape.

0:05:20 > 0:05:23In fact, it was filled with German soldiers.

0:05:23 > 0:05:27Some so close they could hear them cough.

0:05:27 > 0:05:29This was the focus of their service life.

0:05:29 > 0:05:31This is why they joined up.

0:05:31 > 0:05:33They came to be in THIS front line

0:05:33 > 0:05:35to kill the Germans in THAT front line.

0:05:37 > 0:05:41Sassoon and Graves had both joined up at the very start of the war,

0:05:41 > 0:05:44when hundreds of thousands of volunteers had been recruited

0:05:44 > 0:05:48to create an army big enough to meet the demands of the Western Front.

0:05:50 > 0:05:53There was a place for all walks of life.

0:05:53 > 0:05:54Even poets.

0:05:57 > 0:06:00Prominent among them was Rupert Brooke,

0:06:00 > 0:06:03the first of a new breed, the soldier-poet.

0:06:05 > 0:06:09"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,"

0:06:09 > 0:06:11he would write,

0:06:11 > 0:06:14capturing the patriotic sentiments of 1914.

0:06:17 > 0:06:19Brooke seemed to relish the sacrifices that

0:06:19 > 0:06:21the nation would have to make,

0:06:21 > 0:06:24famously imagining himself as a soldier

0:06:24 > 0:06:26buried in "some corner of a foreign field".

0:06:28 > 0:06:31But the Army did not exactly welcome literary types,

0:06:31 > 0:06:34as Sassoon and Graves soon discovered.

0:06:34 > 0:06:37Graves and Sassoon were young second lieutenants,

0:06:37 > 0:06:39in a very old army regiment,

0:06:39 > 0:06:41in the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

0:06:41 > 0:06:43And the idea that young warts,

0:06:43 > 0:06:45young officers would stand around

0:06:45 > 0:06:47talking about poetry in the mess

0:06:47 > 0:06:51was something that would be really frowned on by their fellow officers.

0:06:51 > 0:06:53So they had to develop this code of how they spoke to each other.

0:06:53 > 0:06:57So if they wanted to show one another some poetry,

0:06:57 > 0:07:00they would say, "Can I show you my recipes for rum punch?"

0:07:02 > 0:07:06Despite being fellow poets, they didn't see eye to eye.

0:07:06 > 0:07:09Even before he had arrived in France, Robert Graves had deployed

0:07:09 > 0:07:13visceral images of modern warfare in his poems.

0:07:15 > 0:07:18"It's hard to know if you're alive or dead

0:07:18 > 0:07:21"When steel and fire go roaring through your head."

0:07:22 > 0:07:25Sassoon was older, but less worldly,

0:07:25 > 0:07:28and his early war poetry aped Rupert Brooke's style.

0:07:30 > 0:07:33"The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes

0:07:33 > 0:07:36"Till beauty shines in all that we can see.

0:07:37 > 0:07:41"War is our scourge, yet war has made us wise,

0:07:41 > 0:07:45"And, fighting for our freedom, we are free."

0:07:47 > 0:07:51Sassoon wanted to make something beautiful out of his experience

0:07:51 > 0:07:53and turn it into poetry.

0:07:53 > 0:07:55"There was an hour when we were loth to part

0:07:55 > 0:07:58"From life we longed to share no less than others.

0:08:00 > 0:08:05"Now, having claimed this heritage of heart,

0:08:05 > 0:08:08"What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?"

0:08:10 > 0:08:11As far as Graves is concerned,

0:08:11 > 0:08:15Sassoon's poetry was too sentimental,

0:08:15 > 0:08:16too romantic, too heroic.

0:08:16 > 0:08:18Graves said to him,

0:08:18 > 0:08:21"You'll soon change your tune once you've seen a bit of action."

0:08:21 > 0:08:24And of course, that's exactly what happened.

0:08:25 > 0:08:28In both Sassoon and Graves' post-war memoirs,

0:08:28 > 0:08:32Bois Francais is the place where the war becomes personal.

0:08:33 > 0:08:37A single tragedy overshadowed both men's time here.

0:08:37 > 0:08:40It arose from the mundane business of keeping

0:08:40 > 0:08:41the front line in good repair.

0:08:45 > 0:08:47In February 1916,

0:08:47 > 0:08:50there was a new commanding officer for the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

0:08:50 > 0:08:53He arrived and he said that the barbed wire was rubbish,

0:08:53 > 0:08:55"You could drive a wheelbarrow through it."

0:08:55 > 0:08:58He said the parapets, "You could fire a bullet through them.

0:08:58 > 0:09:00"Get it fixed."

0:09:00 > 0:09:03So from that moment on, there were working parties out every night

0:09:03 > 0:09:05doing these repairs.

0:09:06 > 0:09:09They're putting a spider web of barbed wire up.

0:09:10 > 0:09:13And they're using these things - barbed wire pickers.

0:09:13 > 0:09:15It's effectively an oversized corkscrew.

0:09:15 > 0:09:16And in its application,

0:09:16 > 0:09:18you just made a hole in the ground,

0:09:18 > 0:09:20put the point in it,

0:09:20 > 0:09:22got your entrenching tool handle,

0:09:22 > 0:09:24put it through one of these loops

0:09:24 > 0:09:28and literally turned it silently into the ground.

0:09:28 > 0:09:31And that was the secret - you could deploy these silently.

0:09:35 > 0:09:38On the night of Saturday, March 18th, 1916,

0:09:38 > 0:09:40all four of the battalion's companies

0:09:40 > 0:09:43were in the line repairing the trench front.

0:09:45 > 0:09:47At half past ten,

0:09:47 > 0:09:51Robert Graves, leading A Company's working party, heard rifle fire.

0:09:51 > 0:09:53An officer was hit.

0:09:54 > 0:09:58The casualty was 20-year-old, Second Lieutenant David Thomas.

0:09:58 > 0:10:01Shot through the neck while out with the wiring party.

0:10:03 > 0:10:08Tommy was the archetypal young Englishman.

0:10:08 > 0:10:13And Sassoon loves his innocence, his sweetness, his naivety, if you like.

0:10:13 > 0:10:16He wanted to die for Thomas.

0:10:16 > 0:10:20And the awful thing is he realises that Thomas is heterosexual.

0:10:22 > 0:10:24David Thomas and Siegfried Sassoon had met

0:10:24 > 0:10:28while both were in training back in England.

0:10:28 > 0:10:29In the summer of 1915,

0:10:29 > 0:10:32they had attended an army course in Cambridge,

0:10:32 > 0:10:35sharing rooms at Pembroke College.

0:10:35 > 0:10:38It was here that the two became close friends.

0:10:38 > 0:10:42When Sassoon came to Pembroke College with Tommy,

0:10:42 > 0:10:46he was thrilled to discover that the name on the door of the rooms

0:10:46 > 0:10:48that they were sharing was Paradise.

0:10:48 > 0:10:54To be with Tommy in rooms for several weeks was paradise indeed.

0:10:54 > 0:10:57In fact, he even brings it into one of his poems.

0:10:57 > 0:11:01"Your lips that kissed me once in Paradise."

0:11:03 > 0:11:05It implies that something might have gone on,

0:11:05 > 0:11:08but of course it doesn't prove it.

0:11:08 > 0:11:12It may have been a chaste peck on the cheek.

0:11:12 > 0:11:15It certainly wasn't, as far as I can work out,

0:11:15 > 0:11:19anything more seriously physical than that.

0:11:23 > 0:11:27David Thomas was buried at Point 110 New Military Cemetery,

0:11:27 > 0:11:30a few hundred yards behind the Bois Francais lines.

0:11:35 > 0:11:38He was laid to rest with two other officers,

0:11:38 > 0:11:41all had died in the preceding 24 hours.

0:11:43 > 0:11:47The funeral is recorded in Siegfried Sassoon's diary,

0:11:47 > 0:11:50source material for the autobiographical novel

0:11:50 > 0:11:52Memoirs Of A Fox-Hunting Man.

0:11:54 > 0:11:59"I saw his shrouded form laid in the earth with his two companions.

0:12:00 > 0:12:04"In the half-clouded moonlight the parson stood above the graves

0:12:04 > 0:12:08"and everything was dim but the striped flag laid across them.

0:12:08 > 0:12:09"Robert Graves beside me,

0:12:09 > 0:12:12"his white, whimsical face twisted and grieving.

0:12:14 > 0:12:18"And when all was finished a canister fell a few hundred yards away

0:12:18 > 0:12:19"to burst with a crash.

0:12:22 > 0:12:25"So Tommy left us. A gentle soldier.

0:12:25 > 0:12:31"And so he will always remain in my heart fresh and happy and brave."

0:12:36 > 0:12:39Fox-Hunting Man is picture of an idyllic life.

0:12:39 > 0:12:42And right at the end, you get a kind of turning point

0:12:42 > 0:12:46when he realises that actually it isn't what he thought it was, war.

0:12:46 > 0:12:50It's a very good place on which to end the book I think.

0:12:53 > 0:12:56The men buried that evening were the first officers of

0:12:56 > 0:12:59the Royal Welch to die in the Bois Francais lines.

0:13:02 > 0:13:06The shock of their deaths is also recorded by Lieutenant Bernard Adams

0:13:06 > 0:13:09in his memoir Nothing Of Importance,

0:13:09 > 0:13:13the book Sassoon would later give to Wilfred Owen.

0:13:14 > 0:13:18On hearing of Thomas's death, Adams was overwhelmed

0:13:18 > 0:13:23and ordered the German trenches opposite to be bombarded.

0:13:23 > 0:13:26The following day, he questioned his response.

0:13:26 > 0:13:28"Had I called down death?

0:13:28 > 0:13:31"Had I stricken families?" he asked himself.

0:13:31 > 0:13:36"Probably. Nay, more than probably. Certainly."

0:13:36 > 0:13:40One of the most important books, in my opinion, of the First World War

0:13:40 > 0:13:42is Nothing Of Importance.

0:13:42 > 0:13:47The title says a great deal because this phrase appeared regularly

0:13:47 > 0:13:53when HQ considered that very little of note had happened on that front.

0:13:53 > 0:13:56But of course what was happening was the daily loss

0:13:56 > 0:13:59and wounding of many a man.

0:14:01 > 0:14:06Adams himself would be wounded while laying barbed wire at Bois Francais.

0:14:06 > 0:14:09And it was during his recuperation that he wrote his book.

0:14:11 > 0:14:14His readership was a public desperate to know about

0:14:14 > 0:14:16the mechanics of trench warfare,

0:14:16 > 0:14:19and Adams uses Bois Francais as a case study.

0:14:22 > 0:14:26This is exactly the kind of trench that Adams would have walked up

0:14:26 > 0:14:30and down every day, cut in chalk, leading to the tunnel entrances,

0:14:30 > 0:14:32leading to the front line.

0:14:33 > 0:14:37Adams draws his own diagrams to explain trench design,

0:14:37 > 0:14:40how to snipe and the different applications of barbed wire.

0:14:44 > 0:14:46Then there are the daily routines

0:14:46 > 0:14:49and the comforting names the Army gave the trenches here.

0:14:49 > 0:14:53Shaftesbury Avenue. Old Kent Road.

0:14:53 > 0:14:55And he had a keen ear for the language

0:14:55 > 0:14:56of this part of the front line.

0:14:58 > 0:15:01He describes coming into the line as,

0:15:01 > 0:15:04"approaching the place where the dragons are dozing".

0:15:04 > 0:15:05Wonderful term.

0:15:05 > 0:15:08He describes the song of the shells in the air, he talks about

0:15:08 > 0:15:12the birds singing, but also every shell made a different noise.

0:15:12 > 0:15:15He talks about a wonderful word,

0:15:15 > 0:15:18the "griding" of a big German shell coming over.

0:15:18 > 0:15:22Griding - a tremendously effective word.

0:15:24 > 0:15:29From late spring, 1916, it would have been obvious to the men here

0:15:29 > 0:15:31that a major offensive was being prepared.

0:15:34 > 0:15:37The Somme was the point on the Western Front where the British

0:15:37 > 0:15:38and French Armies met.

0:15:38 > 0:15:42An ideal launchpad for a joint attack that it was hoped

0:15:42 > 0:15:44would smash through the German lines

0:15:44 > 0:15:47and help break the deadlock of trench warfare.

0:15:49 > 0:15:53But the land here was a lightly populated backwater.

0:15:53 > 0:15:56An infrastructure to support an army of hundreds of thousands

0:15:56 > 0:15:58had to built from scratch.

0:16:00 > 0:16:02The signs would have been everywhere.

0:16:02 > 0:16:05Units would have been taken out of the line to be trained.

0:16:05 > 0:16:08Then there would have been the unmistakable signs of

0:16:08 > 0:16:12artillery batteries being moved, of ammunition being stockpiled,

0:16:12 > 0:16:13of supplies being brought up,

0:16:13 > 0:16:16of field hospitals being set up,

0:16:16 > 0:16:18and then brigades' divisions

0:16:18 > 0:16:21being moved and concentrated in different areas.

0:16:21 > 0:16:24All of that would have begun to build to a sense of

0:16:24 > 0:16:27the inevitable closeness of something big.

0:16:27 > 0:16:30And we know from Sassoon's diary, for example,

0:16:30 > 0:16:33that he spent several weeks after joining the battalion

0:16:33 > 0:16:35engaged in training for open warfare

0:16:35 > 0:16:37which, after all, was what was going to follow the Somme.

0:16:40 > 0:16:44In April, Sassoon was taken out of the line for officer training.

0:16:44 > 0:16:47It was of the utmost importance that an aggressive spirit

0:16:47 > 0:16:50be drilled into men grown complacent by trench life.

0:16:52 > 0:16:54April the 25th.

0:16:54 > 0:16:57"There was a great brawny Highland major here today

0:16:57 > 0:16:59"talking of the bayonet.

0:16:59 > 0:17:00"For close on an hour he talked,

0:17:00 > 0:17:03"and all who listened caught fire from his enthusiasm

0:17:03 > 0:17:07"for he was prophesying. He had his message to deliver."

0:17:07 > 0:17:09This is Siegfried Sassoon's diary,

0:17:09 > 0:17:13and the bayonet training in particular impressed him.

0:17:13 > 0:17:17Partly because it was the bayonet which created the soldier.

0:17:17 > 0:17:20If the Army could produce a man who could without compunction

0:17:20 > 0:17:25or hesitation plunge cold steel into another man's chest,

0:17:25 > 0:17:27you had produced a soldier.

0:17:27 > 0:17:28This is what the instructor told them.

0:17:28 > 0:17:31"The bullet and the bayonet are brother and sister.

0:17:31 > 0:17:33"If you don't kill him, he'll kill you.

0:17:33 > 0:17:36"Stick him between the eyes, in the throat, in the chest,

0:17:36 > 0:17:37"or around the thighs.

0:17:37 > 0:17:40"If he's on the run, there's only one place.

0:17:40 > 0:17:44"Get your bayonet into his kidneys, it'll go in as easy as butter.

0:17:44 > 0:17:49"Kill them. There's only one good Bosche, and that's a dead one."

0:17:49 > 0:17:53That same day, Sassoon translated the major's bloodthirsty rhetoric

0:17:53 > 0:17:56into The Kiss, one of his first published war poems.

0:17:58 > 0:18:02"To these I turn, in these I trust,

0:18:02 > 0:18:05"Brother Lead and Sister Steel.

0:18:05 > 0:18:08"To his blind power I make appeal,

0:18:08 > 0:18:12"I guard her beauty clean from rust.

0:18:12 > 0:18:15"He spins and burns and loves the air,

0:18:15 > 0:18:18"And splits a skull to win my praise,

0:18:18 > 0:18:20"But up the nobly marching days

0:18:20 > 0:18:23"She glitters naked, cold and fair.

0:18:25 > 0:18:29"Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this,

0:18:29 > 0:18:32"That in good fury he may feel

0:18:32 > 0:18:34"The body where he sets his heel

0:18:34 > 0:18:37"Quail from your downward darting kiss."

0:18:42 > 0:18:46And I think Sassoon got very caught up in this.

0:18:46 > 0:18:48The major got them all fizzing and going.

0:18:48 > 0:18:52In the poem, I think he's giving it to us pretty straight.

0:18:52 > 0:18:54And afterwards of course, he felt embarrassed by this

0:18:54 > 0:18:58because he then had seen rather more of what

0:18:58 > 0:19:01lead and steel can do to people,

0:19:01 > 0:19:04and he tried to say it was satirical and things.

0:19:04 > 0:19:07It can be read that way, but I don't think for my money

0:19:07 > 0:19:10that's not what he meant when he wrote it.

0:19:15 > 0:19:18It was during the build-up to the Battle of the Somme

0:19:18 > 0:19:21that Sassoon discovered he was a born soldier.

0:19:23 > 0:19:26Before joining the Army he had drifted,

0:19:26 > 0:19:28failing to excel at anything other than

0:19:28 > 0:19:30the gentlemanly pursuit of fox-hunting.

0:19:33 > 0:19:36But at Bois Francais he found purpose

0:19:36 > 0:19:39leading suicidal sorties into no-man's-land,

0:19:39 > 0:19:42which earned him the nickname Mad Jack.

0:19:46 > 0:19:50This is the pistol that Siegfried Sassoon used as a young officer

0:19:50 > 0:19:53during his time at the front in the First World War.

0:19:53 > 0:19:58And he would have used it during the raid at the end of May,

0:19:58 > 0:20:02which was such an important part of his experience in the front line.

0:20:05 > 0:20:09At the end of May, 1916, the 1st Battalion of the Royal Welch

0:20:09 > 0:20:12were ordered to raid the enemy front lines opposite,

0:20:12 > 0:20:15a position the British called Kiel Trench.

0:20:16 > 0:20:20Their orders - to examine portions of the trench,

0:20:20 > 0:20:24capture prisoners, bomb dugouts and kill Germans.

0:20:32 > 0:20:35I'm standing here directly on the British front-line trench.

0:20:35 > 0:20:38It runs across this field, close to this embankment

0:20:38 > 0:20:41and curves around and goes around the edge of Bois Francais -

0:20:41 > 0:20:44the wood over there on the left.

0:20:44 > 0:20:47This green area, with the big depression, is no-man's-land.

0:20:47 > 0:20:50Running along the edge of the wood on the far side of no-man's-land

0:20:50 > 0:20:53is the German front line.

0:20:53 > 0:20:55At the end of it is Kiel Trench.

0:21:00 > 0:21:03It was at 11:50pm on the night of May 25th,

0:21:03 > 0:21:07it was a dark night, that with blackened faces,

0:21:07 > 0:21:1025 men and one officer crept out of the British line,

0:21:10 > 0:21:13managed to cross no-man's-land quietly...

0:21:13 > 0:21:17and came up against the German wire on the far side.

0:21:17 > 0:21:22It was so dense and so heavy, they found that they couldn't get through.

0:21:22 > 0:21:24There were no gaps to get through.

0:21:24 > 0:21:27And whilst they were deciding what to do, the Germans spotted them.

0:21:29 > 0:21:32They came under enemy fire of course.

0:21:32 > 0:21:36And someone who was particularly close to Sassoon,

0:21:36 > 0:21:41Corporal O'Brien, was hit and fell into a big crater.

0:21:43 > 0:21:47O'Brien, a dock worker from Cardiff's Irish town,

0:21:47 > 0:21:49had bonded with Sassoon on previous patrols

0:21:49 > 0:21:51despite their opposite backgrounds.

0:21:53 > 0:21:56Sassoon had been tasked with counting the raiders back to

0:21:56 > 0:22:00the British lines, but aware his corporal might be in trouble

0:22:00 > 0:22:02he crawled out into the darkness.

0:22:02 > 0:22:06Sassoon slipped down into the crater, very similar to this one,

0:22:06 > 0:22:08very steep, wet at the bottom,

0:22:08 > 0:22:12and found O'Brien lying there with a head wound and several other wounds.

0:22:12 > 0:22:15They were being sniped from the crater rim,

0:22:15 > 0:22:17five or six Germans Sassoon thought -

0:22:17 > 0:22:20he could hear the rifle bolts being clicked into place,

0:22:20 > 0:22:22and they were being bombed.

0:22:22 > 0:22:24He knew he couldn't get O'Brien out on his own.

0:22:24 > 0:22:26He was a big Irishman.

0:22:26 > 0:22:29So he crawled back out of the crater, went back to his own line,

0:22:29 > 0:22:31got two men and a rope,

0:22:31 > 0:22:34came back into the crater and tried to drag O'Brien up.

0:22:34 > 0:22:37Three men could only get him halfway.

0:22:37 > 0:22:40So Sassoon left the crater again, went back to his own line again,

0:22:40 > 0:22:44found another man, and this time they managed to drag him all the way out.

0:22:46 > 0:22:48And gradually dawn came.

0:22:48 > 0:22:51And Sassoon thought the Germans would've probably seen

0:22:51 > 0:22:55what was happening, but they didn't fire on him.

0:22:55 > 0:22:59Unfortunately O'Brien died on the way back to the British lines.

0:22:59 > 0:23:04But this was the episode that won Sassoon the MC.

0:23:06 > 0:23:11And he was very proud of the fact that he won the MC

0:23:11 > 0:23:15for saving a man's life rather than for taking a man's life.

0:23:17 > 0:23:19This attempt to save his friend was possibly

0:23:19 > 0:23:23the most meaningful action in Sassoon's life to date.

0:23:24 > 0:23:27He'd always been something of an outsider,

0:23:27 > 0:23:29but now Sassoon found himself lionised.

0:23:31 > 0:23:33He was a war hero.

0:23:33 > 0:23:35Something that would make his future criticisms

0:23:35 > 0:23:37of the conflict more telling.

0:23:41 > 0:23:44The upcoming Somme offensive would mark a step change

0:23:44 > 0:23:46in the First World War.

0:23:46 > 0:23:50The soldier-poets who had joined in 1914,

0:23:50 > 0:23:53were about to be flung into a battle larger than anything

0:23:53 > 0:23:56previously seen on the Western Front.

0:23:56 > 0:24:00To be able to write about it, first they would have to survive it.

0:24:01 > 0:24:05You had these young men all being shipped across the English Channel

0:24:05 > 0:24:07to a very small part of the world,

0:24:07 > 0:24:10where they were all together sharing very similar experiences

0:24:10 > 0:24:13and seeing very similar things.

0:24:13 > 0:24:16And there was this great virus, this outbreak of poetry

0:24:16 > 0:24:19that went through the armies on the Western Front.

0:24:19 > 0:24:23We've seen short, emotionally intensive, highly descriptive poems

0:24:23 > 0:24:26of what it's like to be there in that particular moment.

0:24:26 > 0:24:28What I'm feeling. What I'm seeing.

0:24:33 > 0:24:37A few hundred yards to the east of the Royal Welch,

0:24:37 > 0:24:39in a stretch of line running behind Mansel Copse,

0:24:39 > 0:24:41was William Noel Hodgson,

0:24:41 > 0:24:43a widely read soldier-poet,

0:24:43 > 0:24:46then serving with the 9th Devonshire Regiment.

0:24:47 > 0:24:50His first published work is 1913,

0:24:50 > 0:24:56so even before the war he's intent on writing.

0:24:56 > 0:25:01He uses a pen name. So when he gets to the Army,

0:25:01 > 0:25:05his fellow soldiers don't know that he writes for publication.

0:25:05 > 0:25:07They know that he's good with words

0:25:07 > 0:25:09and they know he can write

0:25:09 > 0:25:10funny poems,

0:25:10 > 0:25:12but that was a part of his life

0:25:12 > 0:25:13that he kept separate.

0:25:16 > 0:25:18During the build-up to the battle,

0:25:18 > 0:25:22Hodgson and his unit had been studying their position closely

0:25:22 > 0:25:24in preparation for the big attack.

0:25:25 > 0:25:27But they had come to a grim realisation.

0:25:29 > 0:25:34They were almost going into a sort of cup of enemy positions.

0:25:34 > 0:25:35They had positions...

0:25:35 > 0:25:39It sounds awfully like the Charge of the Light Brigade,

0:25:39 > 0:25:41but they were Germans on the right...

0:25:43 > 0:25:45..in front...

0:25:45 > 0:25:47and higher up the hill looking down on them.

0:25:47 > 0:25:50They knew from what they'd seen

0:25:50 > 0:25:53that they were in a peculiarly dangerous spot.

0:25:53 > 0:25:55And...

0:25:56 > 0:25:59basically it will take a miracle to get them across.

0:26:01 > 0:26:05It was probably early June when Hodgson wrote the poem

0:26:05 > 0:26:09Before Action, in which he prepared himself for the forthcoming battle.

0:26:15 > 0:26:17"By all the glories of the day

0:26:17 > 0:26:20"And the cool evening's benison

0:26:20 > 0:26:23"By that last sunset touch that lay

0:26:23 > 0:26:26"Upon the hills when day was done,

0:26:26 > 0:26:28"By beauty lavishly outpoured

0:26:28 > 0:26:31"And blessings carelessly received,

0:26:31 > 0:26:33"By all the days that I have lived

0:26:33 > 0:26:35"Make me a soldier, Lord."

0:26:37 > 0:26:41Before Action is a prayer before death, put very simply.

0:26:41 > 0:26:43It's three verses.

0:26:43 > 0:26:46The first one ends, "Make me a soldier".

0:26:46 > 0:26:49The second one ends, "Make me a man".

0:26:49 > 0:26:51And the third one, "Help me to die".

0:26:53 > 0:26:55"I, that on my familiar hill

0:26:55 > 0:26:57"Saw with uncomprehending eyes

0:26:57 > 0:27:00"A hundred of thy sunsets spill

0:27:00 > 0:27:03"Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,

0:27:03 > 0:27:06"Ere the sun swings his noonday sword

0:27:06 > 0:27:10"Must say goodbye to all of this, -

0:27:10 > 0:27:14"By all delights that I shall miss,

0:27:14 > 0:27:17"Help me to die, O Lord."

0:27:20 > 0:27:23And it's summing up the whole of his experience.

0:27:23 > 0:27:25The things he loves.

0:27:26 > 0:27:27Everything.

0:27:27 > 0:27:30The things he might have looked forward to

0:27:30 > 0:27:33if he hadn't found himself in this situation.

0:27:33 > 0:27:35And he's saying,

0:27:35 > 0:27:38"This is it and I'm going to have to give those things up."

0:27:41 > 0:27:45Hodgson's Before Action is powerful because you can place it.

0:27:45 > 0:27:48This is his familiar hill, we're on his familiar hill.

0:27:48 > 0:27:51Those hundred sunsets spilled over there.

0:27:51 > 0:27:55There's something very special about that poem because what he seems to

0:27:55 > 0:27:59have done to me is used his poetry as a bolster to his own courage.

0:28:00 > 0:28:04Particularly because all of them knew what had happened to every

0:28:04 > 0:28:08single other British attack that had taken place up to that date.

0:28:08 > 0:28:11They had all been disasters.

0:28:17 > 0:28:19Under his pen name Edward Melbourne,

0:28:19 > 0:28:23Hodgson's work ran alongside that of George Bernard Shaw

0:28:23 > 0:28:27and GK Chesterton in weekly paper The New Witness

0:28:27 > 0:28:32before being syndicated nationwide in the regional press.

0:28:32 > 0:28:37The New Witness printed Before Action on the 29th of June, 1916,

0:28:37 > 0:28:40two days before the start of the Battle of the Somme.

0:28:42 > 0:28:45The public at home was reading about the Somme in poetry

0:28:45 > 0:28:47before the fighting had begun.

0:28:56 > 0:28:58The 1st of July, 1916.

0:28:58 > 0:29:00It was a beautiful sunny morning.

0:29:02 > 0:29:04In a massive joint offensive,

0:29:04 > 0:29:07the British advanced from a 14-mile front,

0:29:07 > 0:29:10while the French Army extended the attack to the south

0:29:10 > 0:29:12by a further ten miles.

0:29:14 > 0:29:18The Germans had been subjected to a week-long bombardment

0:29:18 > 0:29:21by the largest concentration of artillery ever assembled.

0:29:23 > 0:29:26But too much hope had been placed in these guns.

0:29:28 > 0:29:31Once they stopped, the Germans emerged from

0:29:31 > 0:29:33deep, prepared dugouts with machineguns

0:29:33 > 0:29:36ready to fire into the advancing waves.

0:29:37 > 0:29:40At Mansel Copse, the Devon's front line

0:29:40 > 0:29:43was being subjected to its own bombardment by the Germans.

0:29:43 > 0:29:49They've started from a position around about here, 250yds back.

0:29:49 > 0:29:50And they gave themselves

0:29:50 > 0:29:53an extra three minutes to reach the front lines.

0:29:53 > 0:29:55So instead of attacking at half past seven,

0:29:55 > 0:29:57they attacked at 27 minutes past.

0:29:57 > 0:29:59Came up out of the trenches,

0:29:59 > 0:30:02crossed all these other intermediate trenches,

0:30:02 > 0:30:04down into Mansel Copse and then into no-man's-land.

0:30:04 > 0:30:07For three long minutes Hodgson and the Devons

0:30:07 > 0:30:10would be the only figures in their sector

0:30:10 > 0:30:12to be moving in the landscape.

0:30:12 > 0:30:13If you're the only people

0:30:13 > 0:30:16moving on the battlefield for three minutes...

0:30:16 > 0:30:20anybody who's got his machinegun ready...

0:30:21 > 0:30:24..you're going to be the only target.

0:30:26 > 0:30:29For those that did get through the Copse,

0:30:29 > 0:30:32there was still no-man's-land to cross.

0:30:35 > 0:30:37But once they got to this point out of the woods,

0:30:37 > 0:30:39they were hit by machinegun fire from guns

0:30:39 > 0:30:43not in the German front line, but in their support line.

0:30:43 > 0:30:45And it was a line running through the cemetery,

0:30:45 > 0:30:49past the shrine over there, in a trench called Shrine Alley.

0:30:49 > 0:30:53The 9th Devons had gone into the attack in four waves

0:30:53 > 0:30:57with 775 men and 18 officers.

0:30:57 > 0:31:02During the attack, they lost 17 out of those 18 officers, eight dead,

0:31:02 > 0:31:04and 463 men.

0:31:11 > 0:31:14After the battle, the Devons' front line behind Mansel Copse

0:31:14 > 0:31:16became the graveyard of many.

0:31:20 > 0:31:23Among them was William Noel Hodgson.

0:31:24 > 0:31:28His death leant Before Action an extra poignancy

0:31:28 > 0:31:32that made it one of the most well-known war poems of its time.

0:31:34 > 0:31:37The poem has power in its own day

0:31:37 > 0:31:40because it fills the gap that

0:31:40 > 0:31:45so many families must have wanted to know from a son, or a husband,

0:31:45 > 0:31:48or a lover who'd gone into battle and died.

0:31:48 > 0:31:50Were you all right? What did it feel like?

0:31:50 > 0:31:53It's like a message in a bottle from the front

0:31:53 > 0:31:57to the families at home who can't ask those questions.

0:31:59 > 0:32:02The 1st of July, 1916,

0:32:02 > 0:32:06was the most disastrous day in the history of the British Army,

0:32:06 > 0:32:09a fifth of the attacking force were killed -

0:32:09 > 0:32:1219,240 men.

0:32:13 > 0:32:19Another 38,230 soldiers were wounded, missing or captured.

0:32:22 > 0:32:24On the northern part of the battlefield,

0:32:24 > 0:32:26the British attack had largely been repelled.

0:32:31 > 0:32:35But in the southern sector, there was success.

0:32:35 > 0:32:40The French caught the Germans by surprise south of the River Somme.

0:32:40 > 0:32:44And by the following day, Montauban, Fricourt and Mametz,

0:32:44 > 0:32:48the villages overlooked by Bois Francais, were in British hands.

0:32:50 > 0:32:54These small villages were nestled in pockets of dense woodland.

0:32:56 > 0:33:01The next objective would be this land that lay beyond.

0:33:12 > 0:33:13The new phase of the battle

0:33:13 > 0:33:17would bring challenges high command had again not anticipated.

0:33:19 > 0:33:21Nobody knew how many Germans were in the woods

0:33:21 > 0:33:23that peppered this part of the battlefield.

0:33:27 > 0:33:30And woodland was one terrain that the British Army

0:33:30 > 0:33:33had no training or experience of fighting in.

0:33:37 > 0:33:40The push into the woods was immortalised by a man who was

0:33:40 > 0:33:43several ranks below Sassoon and Graves

0:33:43 > 0:33:44in the Royal Welch Fusiliers,

0:33:44 > 0:33:47but very much their equal as a poet.

0:33:48 > 0:33:50Private David Jones.

0:33:52 > 0:33:54David Jones's writing about the war

0:33:54 > 0:33:56is coming from a different direction

0:33:56 > 0:33:59from, for example, Sassoon, from Graves,

0:33:59 > 0:34:02in that he's not an officer.

0:34:02 > 0:34:04Essentially what he was interested in

0:34:04 > 0:34:05was the experience of the private soldier,

0:34:05 > 0:34:08the ordinary man in the ranks.

0:34:08 > 0:34:11Not just as a record of his own experience as one,

0:34:11 > 0:34:15but the mythic significance of the ordinary soldier,

0:34:15 > 0:34:19who doesn't actually have any say in the way the battle is conducted,

0:34:19 > 0:34:21who doesn't have any responsibilities for other men,

0:34:21 > 0:34:24except as friends and comrades,

0:34:24 > 0:34:27who is effectively cannon fodder.

0:34:29 > 0:34:31Jones had been desperate to enlist.

0:34:31 > 0:34:35And in its huge need for soldiers, the Army had scooped up this

0:34:35 > 0:34:37gifted ex-arts student

0:34:37 > 0:34:42and turned him into a private in the 15th Battalion of the Royal Welch,

0:34:42 > 0:34:43known as the London Welsh.

0:34:46 > 0:34:51As part of a Welsh division, the London Welsh were ordered to clear

0:34:51 > 0:34:54Mametz Wood, called Mametz Wood by the British.

0:34:55 > 0:34:57Twice he and his comrades

0:34:57 > 0:34:59were marched into trenches facing the wood...

0:35:00 > 0:35:02..before an attack was called off.

0:35:05 > 0:35:07It seems to them absolutely futile

0:35:07 > 0:35:10because they haven't got a clue about what the bigger picture is,

0:35:10 > 0:35:14which I think is often part of the genesis of this myth

0:35:14 > 0:35:17of the First World War about lions led by donkeys.

0:35:17 > 0:35:20Well, our generals didn't know what on earth they were on about

0:35:20 > 0:35:21because they didn't tell us anything.

0:35:21 > 0:35:23Well, of course they didn't tell us anything

0:35:23 > 0:35:25because we didn't need to know.

0:35:25 > 0:35:28But it doesn't make it any easier when you're a private soldier,

0:35:28 > 0:35:31and particularly if you're somebody like David Jones,

0:35:31 > 0:35:33who is an educated and very intelligent man.

0:35:35 > 0:35:37Early on the 10th of July,

0:35:37 > 0:35:39the London Welsh arrived at Queen's Nullah.

0:35:41 > 0:35:43Nullah is an old Indian Army term for valley or ravine.

0:35:45 > 0:35:48This was their jumping off point for the attack.

0:35:49 > 0:35:53They're hugging this bank because they know the closer to it they get

0:35:53 > 0:35:54the safer they are.

0:35:54 > 0:35:57Jones said he can hear singing by the, "genuine Welsh"

0:35:57 > 0:36:00he calls them, because he's in the London Welsh.

0:36:00 > 0:36:04They're singing Welsh songs, which gives him some courage as well.

0:36:04 > 0:36:07And whilst they're hugging that bank, they look up

0:36:07 > 0:36:11and they can see puffs of chalk dust along the top of it.

0:36:11 > 0:36:14That's from German machineguns 2km away

0:36:14 > 0:36:17waiting for them to go over the top.

0:36:18 > 0:36:22No photographs or film exists of the attack on the 10th of July.

0:36:22 > 0:36:26But we do have Jones' epic poem In Parenthesis.

0:36:26 > 0:36:29A fusion of modernist poetry

0:36:29 > 0:36:33and Welsh mythology which culminates in the attack on Mametz Wood.

0:36:36 > 0:36:41Jones and his compatriots scrambled the chalky face of Queen's Nullah

0:36:41 > 0:36:46to advance 500yds across a plateau filled with wheat and wild flowers.

0:36:50 > 0:36:52This is Jones's view as he's going to the attack.

0:36:52 > 0:36:54There's Mametz Wood in the distance.

0:36:54 > 0:36:55This is the plateau.

0:36:55 > 0:36:57And what Jones does here,

0:36:57 > 0:37:00he tells us something which no historian ever does,

0:37:00 > 0:37:01he dismantles the moment.

0:37:01 > 0:37:04There's a shell burst, the sun's low in the sky,

0:37:04 > 0:37:06it's early in the morning.

0:37:06 > 0:37:09It goes dark with the dust and the smoke.

0:37:09 > 0:37:12And then he describes particles of chalk dust sparkling in the air.

0:37:12 > 0:37:14He's walking through this into the attack.

0:37:19 > 0:37:21"You drop apprehensively.

0:37:21 > 0:37:23"The sun gone out.

0:37:23 > 0:37:25"Strange airs smite your body

0:37:25 > 0:37:26"and muck rains straight from heaven.

0:37:28 > 0:37:31"And everlasting doors lift up for up for '02 Weavel.

0:37:31 > 0:37:34"You can't see anything but sheen on drifting particles.

0:37:35 > 0:37:38"And you move forward in your private bright cloud

0:37:38 > 0:37:41"like one assumed who is borne up by an exterior volition."

0:37:43 > 0:37:45He's got an eye for detail,

0:37:45 > 0:37:48for the tiny telling details that a film-maker or an artist would have.

0:37:48 > 0:37:53His work feels like it's been broken by those events

0:37:53 > 0:37:55at the start of the 20th century.

0:37:55 > 0:37:58This is the kind of poetry that Eliot might have written

0:37:58 > 0:38:00had he been in the wood here.

0:38:00 > 0:38:01Ezra Pound.

0:38:01 > 0:38:04It's a fragmented...

0:38:04 > 0:38:07more, I suppose,

0:38:07 > 0:38:12contemporary sounding poetic voice, and that's shocking.

0:38:15 > 0:38:19After descending from the plateau, Jones and his surviving comrades

0:38:19 > 0:38:22were confronted with Mametz Wood itself.

0:38:24 > 0:38:28A mile deep, this old hunting ground was now a dense,

0:38:28 > 0:38:33overgrown forest filled with experienced German troops.

0:38:37 > 0:38:40The line of attack was through the wood's southern edge,

0:38:40 > 0:38:45following a German defensive known to the British as Strip Trench.

0:38:45 > 0:38:48All the while avoiding machinegun fire from the wood's flanks...

0:38:50 > 0:38:52..by the time they entered the trees,

0:38:52 > 0:38:54a third of Jones's unit had fallen.

0:38:58 > 0:39:00This is a strange place.

0:39:02 > 0:39:04Partly because it's off the beaten track

0:39:04 > 0:39:07and quite difficult to get into, partly because

0:39:07 > 0:39:09there are still the remnants of trenches and shell holes here.

0:39:09 > 0:39:14But mainly, I think, because David Jones described it so vividly

0:39:14 > 0:39:17and so much of it still feels intact

0:39:17 > 0:39:19the way he describes the undergrowth.

0:39:23 > 0:39:27I feel odd in this wood.

0:39:27 > 0:39:29There's a beauty to it,

0:39:29 > 0:39:33and you feel guilty about responding to the beauty of it

0:39:33 > 0:39:36because under our feet are still countless bodies.

0:39:43 > 0:39:47As the Royal Welch slowly progressed up Strip Trench, they discovered

0:39:47 > 0:39:51that fighting in woodland brought its own deadly challenges.

0:39:52 > 0:39:56The trees are falling, there's shelling coming down upon them.

0:39:56 > 0:39:59Worse than that, the shells are actually hitting the tree trunks

0:39:59 > 0:40:02and a little bit like in an ancient galleon,

0:40:02 > 0:40:06say, in Nelson's time, it is blowing those tree trunks apart.

0:40:06 > 0:40:10So you have trees falling, splinters flying about, shrapnel, bullets.

0:40:10 > 0:40:13Machine-gun fire is coming in from both sides of the wood, because

0:40:13 > 0:40:17the Germans know at which point in the wood the British are advancing.

0:40:17 > 0:40:19So, they're walking through streams of bullets.

0:40:23 > 0:40:25"And the storm rises higher

0:40:25 > 0:40:29"and all who do their business in the valley do it quickly

0:40:29 > 0:40:30"And up in the night-shades

0:40:30 > 0:40:33"where death is closer packed in the tangled avenues

0:40:33 > 0:40:36"fair Balder falleth everywhere

0:40:36 > 0:40:39"and thunder-besom breakings bright the wood

0:40:39 > 0:40:41"and a Golden Bough for Johnny and Jack,

0:40:41 > 0:40:44"and blasted oaks for Jerry

0:40:44 > 0:40:47"and shrapnel the swift Jupiter for each expectant tree

0:40:48 > 0:40:51"After what hypostases uniting:

0:40:51 > 0:40:54"withered limbs for the chosen, for the fore-chosen.

0:40:56 > 0:40:59"Take care of the black brush-fall in the night rides

0:40:59 > 0:41:01"where they deploy for the final objective."

0:41:05 > 0:41:07He describes, at one point,

0:41:07 > 0:41:10the severed head of a fellow soldier,

0:41:10 > 0:41:14with a kind of Cheshire Cat rictus grin on it.

0:41:14 > 0:41:18He describes other soldiers half-naked with their clothes

0:41:18 > 0:41:22torn apart by the bramble and the wire, as they are stuck

0:41:22 > 0:41:24and exposed to enemy fire,

0:41:24 > 0:41:27trying to just get through the woods to the next stage.

0:41:27 > 0:41:31That sense of...chaos and camaraderie,

0:41:31 > 0:41:34but, ultimately, horror and unpredictability,

0:41:34 > 0:41:37I imagine must imprint itself on your memory

0:41:37 > 0:41:38so vividly you never lose it.

0:41:40 > 0:41:43Jones was fighting for around 20 hours.

0:41:43 > 0:41:47He helped push the Germans to the wood's northern edge,

0:41:47 > 0:41:50but he and his comrades were beaten back.

0:41:50 > 0:41:54Eventually, Jones felt something slam into his left leg.

0:41:54 > 0:41:56He'd been shot.

0:41:56 > 0:42:00It's not some huge, sudden climactic moment.

0:42:00 > 0:42:05It's a slow realisation of what's happened. His left boot fills up.

0:42:05 > 0:42:08He describes the fluid percolating his boot

0:42:08 > 0:42:12and suddenly, he finds out his foot's wet and it's with his own blood.

0:42:12 > 0:42:14Then, he has to pick up his gun

0:42:14 > 0:42:17and everything takes on a weight and a difficulty,

0:42:17 > 0:42:18because he's struggling to walk.

0:42:18 > 0:42:21And what's just happened to him is sinking in.

0:42:21 > 0:42:24So this gun, which has become part of his identity as a soldier,

0:42:24 > 0:42:27the gun he could pick out of a row of guns as his,

0:42:27 > 0:42:31has its own idiosyncrasies, becomes a burden for him

0:42:31 > 0:42:34as he drags it through the wood, doesn't know what to do with himself.

0:42:36 > 0:42:40The injured protagonist of In Parenthesis, like Jones himself,

0:42:40 > 0:42:44crawls away and awaits stretcher-bearers.

0:42:46 > 0:42:51Then, the action cuts back to the Spirit Queen of the woods

0:42:51 > 0:42:53presenting flowers to the fallen.

0:42:58 > 0:43:00Emil has a curious crown

0:43:00 > 0:43:02It's made of golden saxifrage

0:43:02 > 0:43:04Fatty wears sweet-briar

0:43:04 > 0:43:07He will reign with her for a thousand years

0:43:07 > 0:43:10For Balder she reaches high to fetch his

0:43:10 > 0:43:13Ulrich smiles for his myrtle wand

0:43:13 > 0:43:16That swine Lillywhite has daisies to his chain

0:43:16 > 0:43:18You'd hardly credit it

0:43:18 > 0:43:21She plaits torques of equal splendour

0:43:21 > 0:43:23for Mr Jenkins and Billy Crower

0:43:23 > 0:43:26Hansel with Gronwy share dog-violets for a palm

0:43:26 > 0:43:31Where they lie-in serious embrace beneath the twisted tripod

0:43:31 > 0:43:35Sion gets St John's Wort - that's fair enough.

0:43:35 > 0:43:38Dai Great-coat, she can't find him anywhere -

0:43:38 > 0:43:43she calls both high and low, she had a very special one for him.

0:43:45 > 0:43:47It's multilayered,

0:43:47 > 0:43:51and I think he felt that the...uniqueness

0:43:51 > 0:43:55and the horror of the experience warranted that.

0:43:55 > 0:43:59You don't write on one level, you don't just report what you've seen.

0:43:59 > 0:44:03He called on every kind of resource, mythic and vernacular,

0:44:03 > 0:44:05to try to come to terms, literally,

0:44:05 > 0:44:07with what he had seen and experienced here.

0:44:10 > 0:44:15In Parenthesis was published over 20 years after Jones's ordeal.

0:44:15 > 0:44:20Included in the dedication were the German infantry,

0:44:20 > 0:44:23some of who were still lying in Mametz Wood.

0:44:23 > 0:44:27"The enemy front-fighters who shared our pains against whom

0:44:27 > 0:44:31"we found ourselves by misadventure," wrote Jones.

0:44:39 > 0:44:44Here is some unexpected evidence of the fighting

0:44:44 > 0:44:47in Strip Trench we've just been exploring.

0:44:49 > 0:44:51German boots.

0:44:52 > 0:44:54At least a pair, probably two pairs.

0:44:57 > 0:45:00And there is the heelpiece.

0:45:00 > 0:45:03There are two things which a soldier never discards -

0:45:03 > 0:45:05one is his rifle

0:45:05 > 0:45:08and the second thing is his boots.

0:45:08 > 0:45:11So these are very likely to be dead men's shoes.

0:45:16 > 0:45:20Before the battle, the Germans had been an invisible enemy.

0:45:21 > 0:45:27Now, as the British slowly advanced, they were seeing real Germans,

0:45:27 > 0:45:28both as prisoners...

0:45:30 > 0:45:32..and among the dead.

0:45:34 > 0:45:38In the early waves of attacks on Mametz Wood, Siegfried Sassoon

0:45:38 > 0:45:40had seen his own bit of action -

0:45:40 > 0:45:44an impulsive, but futile, solo raid, in which he stormed

0:45:44 > 0:45:49and briefly occupied a German-held trench on the wood's western edge.

0:45:50 > 0:45:54Sassoon would be haunted by one particular sight he witnessed.

0:45:54 > 0:45:59He's seen a young German who is lying dead.

0:46:00 > 0:46:03So he props him up very gently against the wall,

0:46:03 > 0:46:05and carries on.

0:46:05 > 0:46:09When he comes back, he finds his face,

0:46:09 > 0:46:11as he says in his poem on the event,

0:46:11 > 0:46:14is trodden deeper in the mud.

0:46:16 > 0:46:20It's a terrible realisation that it's not just the English,

0:46:20 > 0:46:22and this time, I think he's beginning to realise

0:46:22 > 0:46:25that they're all suffering. And it's the German mother

0:46:25 > 0:46:29knitting by the fire who's going to be suffering this time.

0:46:32 > 0:46:35Mametz Wood finally fell on 12th July.

0:46:36 > 0:46:39It was now filled with the dead -

0:46:39 > 0:46:41British and German.

0:46:42 > 0:46:46Robert Graves found himself bivouacked nearby.

0:46:47 > 0:46:50Now serving in a different battalion of the Royal Welch,

0:46:50 > 0:46:54Graves' new comrades were deeply suspicious of him

0:46:54 > 0:46:56and his German heritage.

0:46:57 > 0:47:00He was, at the time. called Robert von Ranke Graves,

0:47:00 > 0:47:03his mother was German, very proud of his German ancestry,

0:47:03 > 0:47:07loved his German mother and cousins, proud of being a German,

0:47:07 > 0:47:11carried around the poems of Nietzsche in his knapsack,

0:47:11 > 0:47:13which didn't help things.

0:47:13 > 0:47:15And an old rumour that he was a German spy

0:47:15 > 0:47:19is resurrected by another officer.

0:47:19 > 0:47:23And he was worried that somebody was perhaps going to shoot him,

0:47:23 > 0:47:26a member of his own battalion was going to shoot him.

0:47:29 > 0:47:30Already at a low ebb,

0:47:30 > 0:47:34Graves ventured into Mametz Wood to look for German overcoats

0:47:34 > 0:47:36that his men could use as blankets.

0:47:38 > 0:47:42As Graves is picking his way through, he comes upon certain sights

0:47:42 > 0:47:46which very clearly stick with him for the rest of his life.

0:47:46 > 0:47:49He finds a Welshman and a Prussian who have both bayoneted each other

0:47:49 > 0:47:54at exactly the same time, and they are both mutually impaled.

0:47:55 > 0:47:59A little further on, he mentions a large Prussian guard

0:47:59 > 0:48:01lying with his back against the trench,

0:48:01 > 0:48:05black blood having poured out of his nose and his mouth.

0:48:09 > 0:48:13In Robert Graves's war poetry, this dead soldier would achieve

0:48:13 > 0:48:16a kind of immortality, as the Dead Boche.

0:48:19 > 0:48:21To you who'd read my songs of War

0:48:21 > 0:48:24And only hear of blood and fame,

0:48:24 > 0:48:28I'll say (you've heard it said before)

0:48:28 > 0:48:32"War's Hell!" and if you doubt the same,

0:48:32 > 0:48:34Today I found in Mametz Wood,

0:48:34 > 0:48:37A certain cure for lust of blood:

0:48:37 > 0:48:40Where, propped against a shattered trunk,

0:48:40 > 0:48:45In a great mess of things unclean, Sat a dead Boche,

0:48:46 > 0:48:48He scowled and stunk

0:48:48 > 0:48:51With clothes and face a sodden green,

0:48:51 > 0:48:56Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,

0:48:56 > 0:48:59Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

0:49:05 > 0:49:08He thought that there was a way of writing about the war

0:49:08 > 0:49:11that could be really dramatically different to anything else,

0:49:11 > 0:49:14and that was to write with great realism,

0:49:14 > 0:49:18and in Graves's case, perhaps an exaggerated realism.

0:49:18 > 0:49:23He wanted to focus on the detail of the horrors that he saw.

0:49:24 > 0:49:27Now, for his family, his friends reading that back at home,

0:49:27 > 0:49:29it was quite shocking, and that was his intention.

0:49:29 > 0:49:33He wanted to shout really quite loudly through his poetry

0:49:33 > 0:49:37about what he was seeing and feeling and experiencing.

0:49:39 > 0:49:41In strategic terms,

0:49:41 > 0:49:44the victory at Mametz Wood was of great importance.

0:49:44 > 0:49:49With Trones Wood also taken, the British launched a surprise attack

0:49:49 > 0:49:52on the German second line of defence,

0:49:52 > 0:49:55large parts of which were captured early on 14th July.

0:49:57 > 0:49:59Here was open, flatter terrain,

0:49:59 > 0:50:03but also the next British military objective.

0:50:03 > 0:50:04High Wood.

0:50:06 > 0:50:10High Wood was filled with thousands of crack German troops.

0:50:12 > 0:50:16To reach it, the British first had to cross a gently rising 1,000 yards

0:50:16 > 0:50:20of open ground that offered no cover at all.

0:50:21 > 0:50:23After earlier failed attempts,

0:50:23 > 0:50:28on 20th July a concerted British attack on the wood was launched.

0:50:29 > 0:50:33Prominently marked on the brigade's map for that day is a windmill -

0:50:33 > 0:50:37the location of yet another writer from the Royal Welch,

0:50:37 > 0:50:40Frank Richards.

0:50:40 > 0:50:43This is the remains of Bazentin Windmill.

0:50:43 > 0:50:46It was a feature that Adams, Sassoon and Graves would have known well

0:50:46 > 0:50:50cos you could see it from the Bois Francais trenches, miles back.

0:50:50 > 0:50:52Now it was part of the front line.

0:50:52 > 0:50:56Frank Richards was put here as a signaller.

0:50:56 > 0:51:00And his job was to take messages from High Wood,

0:51:00 > 0:51:03receive them here and relay them to HQ.

0:51:06 > 0:51:09Frank Richards had a remarkable war.

0:51:09 > 0:51:14As a private soldier, he served on the Western Front from 1914

0:51:14 > 0:51:17until the Armistice, hardly missing a battle.

0:51:19 > 0:51:22At Bazentin Windmill, he would need all his luck.

0:51:22 > 0:51:27He had one of the most dangerous jobs on the entire battlefield.

0:51:27 > 0:51:31He's receiving, by flag signals, messages from the wood.

0:51:31 > 0:51:34He has to signal back with his flags

0:51:34 > 0:51:36to say he has received those messages.

0:51:36 > 0:51:38He's standing on top of a windmill,

0:51:38 > 0:51:41with 15,000 hostile eyes looking at him,

0:51:41 > 0:51:43with only one thought -

0:51:43 > 0:51:47"Blow that man off that windmill", because the Germans know,

0:51:47 > 0:51:51if they can break the communication, it will benefit their cause.

0:51:51 > 0:51:56Richards, here, says shells are falling north, south, east and west

0:51:56 > 0:51:59and the entire mill is shaking under this bombardment.

0:52:02 > 0:52:05The barrage that we were under the day before

0:52:05 > 0:52:08was a popcorn barrage compared with this one.

0:52:08 > 0:52:15Everything from a 12-inch shell to a 13-pounder were exploding.

0:52:16 > 0:52:19And it kept on without a break.

0:52:19 > 0:52:24It kept on from about seven o'clock in the morning to ten or 11 at night.

0:52:24 > 0:52:26There wasn't a break in it.

0:52:26 > 0:52:29Well, how we didn't get blowed to pieces, I don't know.

0:52:31 > 0:52:35Ten of the brigade's 18 signallers were lost in the attack.

0:52:35 > 0:52:39But Richards survived the day and the war without injury.

0:52:40 > 0:52:44His appropriately-titled memoir, Old Soldiers Never Die,

0:52:44 > 0:52:47was edited by Robert Graves.

0:52:47 > 0:52:50Graves helps him to structure the book, to write the book, to address

0:52:50 > 0:52:53certain questions, and then finds him a publisher, Faber & Faber.

0:52:53 > 0:52:55He said about Richards,

0:52:55 > 0:53:00he was the only tommy who was as good with a pen as he was with a musket.

0:53:02 > 0:53:07That morning, Robert Graves was only 50 yards away from Richards.

0:53:08 > 0:53:12The attack on High Wood features in Graves's own memoir,

0:53:12 > 0:53:14Goodbye To All That.

0:53:14 > 0:53:17This book is often accused of preferring a good story

0:53:17 > 0:53:19over historical accuracy.

0:53:20 > 0:53:23But what was about to happen to Graves

0:53:23 > 0:53:25was as bizarre as anything in his later fiction.

0:53:27 > 0:53:31At 10am, Graves was in command of B Company,

0:53:31 > 0:53:34awaiting orders to go forward into High Wood.

0:53:35 > 0:53:39Graves and his 100 men, meanwhile, are lying here in the grass.

0:53:39 > 0:53:42They can hear and see the battle raging,

0:53:42 > 0:53:44the horizon is on fire, almost.

0:53:44 > 0:53:47There is a slight lull for a couple of hours and then, at 10am,

0:53:47 > 0:53:50a very heavy German bombardment falls directly

0:53:50 > 0:53:53upon their positions in these fields here.

0:53:53 > 0:53:58What Graves says then is that they fall back at a rush

0:53:58 > 0:54:01and they run down this valley looking for cover.

0:54:01 > 0:54:02DISTANT YELLING

0:54:04 > 0:54:08And as he's running back, a shell bursts a few yards behind him

0:54:08 > 0:54:09and blows him off his feet.

0:54:09 > 0:54:12A piece of shell splinter goes through his groin here, another

0:54:12 > 0:54:16one goes underneath his shoulder blade and comes out of his chest,

0:54:16 > 0:54:20so he is pierced by a piece of shell that passes straight through him.

0:54:20 > 0:54:24He's knocked off his feet, and that is the end of his battle.

0:54:24 > 0:54:28"I heard the explosion and felt as though I'd been punched

0:54:28 > 0:54:31"rather hard between the shoulder blades,

0:54:31 > 0:54:35"but had no sensation of pain. I thought that the punch was

0:54:35 > 0:54:37"merely the shock of the explosion.

0:54:37 > 0:54:41"Then, blood started trickling into my eye and I felt faint

0:54:41 > 0:54:44"and I called to Moodie, 'I've been hit.'

0:54:44 > 0:54:46"Then I fell down."

0:54:47 > 0:54:51Somehow, this high explosive, this shell,

0:54:51 > 0:54:55hit one of the gravestones near this graveyard,

0:54:55 > 0:54:59and marble or granite hit him in the head,

0:54:59 > 0:55:01and as a child, I remember he said,

0:55:01 > 0:55:07"Feel this, feel this," and you could feel the lump on his brow.

0:55:10 > 0:55:14Graves was taken to an advanced dressing station close by -

0:55:14 > 0:55:18the first link in a sophisticated chain of medical treatment

0:55:18 > 0:55:21the British now had in place.

0:55:21 > 0:55:24Here, he was judged too badly injured to survive.

0:55:24 > 0:55:28He was laid in a corner and left to die.

0:55:28 > 0:55:31Obviously, they have to pick out the ones who are most likely to survive.

0:55:31 > 0:55:34And they just walk on. They don't even bother him.

0:55:34 > 0:55:39And then, the next morning, they come by and he's still alive.

0:55:39 > 0:55:43Graves was put on an ambulance for the nearest field hospital,

0:55:43 > 0:55:46where, miraculously, he began a slow recovery.

0:55:46 > 0:55:50But Graves's commanding officer still believed him dead.

0:55:50 > 0:55:53He set the wheels of Army bureaucracy in motion,

0:55:53 > 0:55:57writing to Graves's parents with the tragic news.

0:55:57 > 0:56:00They received this letter saying that he has died.

0:56:00 > 0:56:05They receive a telegram from the War Office saying that he's dead,

0:56:05 > 0:56:07which caused a lot of problems

0:56:07 > 0:56:11cos he then couldn't get into any of his pay because he was dead!

0:56:11 > 0:56:14He didn't like that part.

0:56:15 > 0:56:19Graves initially treated his death as a bit of a joke.

0:56:19 > 0:56:21But in the years after the war,

0:56:21 > 0:56:25this moment became more and more important to him.

0:56:25 > 0:56:29Graves found it very difficult to adjust to civilian life,

0:56:29 > 0:56:31to family life.

0:56:34 > 0:56:39Part of that adjustment to the peace was how to rebuild his life,

0:56:39 > 0:56:43and one of the ways he did that was by saying,

0:56:43 > 0:56:44"There on the Somme, when I lay dead,

0:56:44 > 0:56:47"when everybody thought I was dead for two or three days,

0:56:47 > 0:56:49"maybe I DID die."

0:56:54 > 0:56:57This idea reaches its peak in Goodbye To All That.

0:56:57 > 0:56:59Goodbye To All That is a, sort of, suicide note

0:56:59 > 0:57:02to the death that happened.

0:57:02 > 0:57:04In that moment, he says,

0:57:04 > 0:57:09age of 33, "In telling this story about what happened to me

0:57:09 > 0:57:14"at the Western Front, I am saying goodbye to myself for ever."

0:57:20 > 0:57:24And it enables him to become not just a different person,

0:57:24 > 0:57:27which he does, but also a very different writer.

0:57:33 > 0:57:36By the time Graves was coming round, back on the Somme,

0:57:36 > 0:57:40news that he had died of wounds had already reached Siegfried Sassoon.

0:57:44 > 0:57:46Sketches in Sassoon's diary show

0:57:46 > 0:57:48the impact of the Somme on his psyche.

0:57:51 > 0:57:55Now he, too, was in hospital, with trench fever.

0:57:56 > 0:58:00As he lies in hospital in France, he sees a young man opposite him

0:58:00 > 0:58:04who has lost his friend at High Wood and been wounded,

0:58:04 > 0:58:07and the poem is beautifully done

0:58:07 > 0:58:10because there is compassion for the young man.

0:58:14 > 0:58:17"His wet white face and miserable eyes

0:58:17 > 0:58:21"Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:

0:58:21 > 0:58:24"But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell

0:58:24 > 0:58:27"His troubled voice: he did the business well.

0:58:27 > 0:58:31"The ward grew dark, but he was still complaining

0:58:31 > 0:58:34"And calling out for "Dickie". "Curse the Wood!

0:58:34 > 0:58:37"It's time to go. O Christ, and what's the good?

0:58:37 > 0:58:41"We'll never take it, it's always raining."

0:58:41 > 0:58:45"I wondered where he'd been, then heard him shout,

0:58:45 > 0:58:47"They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don't go out..."

0:58:49 > 0:58:50"I fell asleep...

0:58:50 > 0:58:52"Next morning he was dead,

0:58:52 > 0:58:57"And some Slight Wound lay smiling on the bed."

0:59:00 > 0:59:06A recuperating Sassoon was shipped back to England on 1st August 1916,

0:59:06 > 0:59:10still believing that Robert Graves had died of wounds.

0:59:15 > 0:59:19From the high summer, the advance in the south halted

0:59:19 > 0:59:22and the Somme became a battle of grisly attrition.

0:59:27 > 0:59:31The Germans in High Wood held out through the rest of July

0:59:31 > 0:59:33and into August,

0:59:33 > 0:59:37despite waves of attacks and the full fury of the British guns.

0:59:41 > 0:59:45In mid-August, frustrated at the feeble British advance,

0:59:45 > 0:59:48General Haig ordered a string of linked attacks

0:59:48 > 0:59:51to break through the rear of High Wood, out of Delville Wood,

0:59:51 > 0:59:55and to capture the bastion village of Guillemont.

0:59:55 > 1:00:00By now, the British way of war was to reduce the landscape

1:00:00 > 1:00:03and everything in it to ruination.

1:00:03 > 1:00:06Guillemont itself was erased from the Earth.

1:00:07 > 1:00:10But still, the Germans held on.

1:00:14 > 1:00:17They were supremely self-critical.

1:00:17 > 1:00:20If anything went wrong that allowed the British to break in

1:00:20 > 1:00:24to their lines, they wanted to know why and to rectify that straightaway,

1:00:24 > 1:00:27in order to defend the bastion they had created

1:00:27 > 1:00:29here on the Western Front.

1:00:31 > 1:00:35The horrors the German Army endured at Guillemont were captured

1:00:35 > 1:00:39by Lieutenant Ernst Junger in his memoir, Storm Of Steel.

1:00:43 > 1:00:46The ground all around, as far as the eye could see,

1:00:46 > 1:00:47was ploughed by shells.

1:00:49 > 1:00:52You could search in vain for one wretched blade of grass.

1:00:52 > 1:00:56This churned-up battlefield was ghastly.

1:00:56 > 1:00:58Among the living lay the dead.

1:00:58 > 1:01:01As we dug ourselves in, we found them in layers,

1:01:01 > 1:01:03stacked one upon the top of another.

1:01:07 > 1:01:10You know, he was a young man who wanted to fight.

1:01:10 > 1:01:14He wanted to go into battle, he wanted to experience battle -

1:01:14 > 1:01:15his nerves, his entire body.

1:01:15 > 1:01:19He wanted to get a sense of the experience of the trenches

1:01:19 > 1:01:22and the excitement of the camaraderie.

1:01:22 > 1:01:26But it's a battle of large forces and large armies

1:01:26 > 1:01:30and masses of people that never encounter each other,

1:01:30 > 1:01:33and he feels cheated, he feels that this isn't the war

1:01:33 > 1:01:35he was going to fight, he wanted to fight.

1:01:38 > 1:01:41The journey to Guillemont was a terrifying trudge

1:01:41 > 1:01:43through a featureless landscape.

1:01:43 > 1:01:45Junger and his men had to follow a white tape,

1:01:45 > 1:01:48as all distinguishing landmarks,

1:01:48 > 1:01:50even the road itself, had been obliterated.

1:01:50 > 1:01:54The only shelter was a few sunken lanes.

1:01:54 > 1:01:58This one would be their ultimate destination.

1:01:58 > 1:02:01Here, Junger and the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers

1:02:01 > 1:02:04found their own corner of hell.

1:02:04 > 1:02:08They entered one sunken lane like this. It was full of corpses.

1:02:08 > 1:02:10They moved on further.

1:02:10 > 1:02:14They entered another sunken lane. That, too, was full of corpses.

1:02:14 > 1:02:18They left that. And every shell hole was full of German dead.

1:02:18 > 1:02:21And then they dropped into this lane here.

1:02:21 > 1:02:25And Junger says that upon his arrival with the 73rd Hanoverians,

1:02:25 > 1:02:27the men who were here, their voices tremble with joy

1:02:27 > 1:02:30when they hear that they were going to be relieved.

1:02:32 > 1:02:34As the first streaks of dawn appeared in the sky,

1:02:34 > 1:02:37he plucked up enough courage to have a look over the top.

1:02:37 > 1:02:41To the rear, he saw a carpet of German dead. To the front, here,

1:02:41 > 1:02:44towards Trones Wood, it was a carpet of British dead.

1:02:44 > 1:02:48He knows that this is going to be a battle of epic dimensions.

1:02:48 > 1:02:54He knows that this is a battle of a magnitude never seen before.

1:02:54 > 1:02:57He thinks, he's convinced, that he's going to die.

1:03:01 > 1:03:03The Germans had been occupying

1:03:03 > 1:03:05Guillemont and its farms for two years,

1:03:05 > 1:03:10and preparations long in place allowed them to hold on here.

1:03:14 > 1:03:18This is how the Germans in Guillemont

1:03:18 > 1:03:20manage to escape Junger's,

1:03:20 > 1:03:23what he called the "storm of steel" - the high explosive,

1:03:23 > 1:03:27the avalanche of high explosive which totally destroyed the village above.

1:03:28 > 1:03:31These steps lead down probably another two or three metres

1:03:31 > 1:03:33below my feet here,

1:03:33 > 1:03:36into, possibly, a labyrinth, to house

1:03:36 > 1:03:39hundreds of men, possibly even thousands of men,

1:03:39 > 1:03:43connected to other cellars of houses in the village.

1:03:43 > 1:03:45The deep dugouts of Guillemont

1:03:45 > 1:03:48had originally been miles behind the front line,

1:03:48 > 1:03:52and with defences such as these, the Germans slowed the British advance

1:03:52 > 1:03:54on the Somme to a crawl.

1:03:59 > 1:04:03The British had no alternative but to keep up the storm of steel,

1:04:03 > 1:04:06pulverising ground already destroyed.

1:04:08 > 1:04:11This is the result of just, what, a few metres' walk, ten metres' walk,

1:04:11 > 1:04:13through this field into no-man's-land.

1:04:13 > 1:04:15This is shell splinters here,

1:04:15 > 1:04:19fragments of bullet, a bit of copper from driving bands of shells.

1:04:19 > 1:04:24A large shell splinter. Imagine that flying through the air, red hot.

1:04:24 > 1:04:28Junger describes something like that hitting him on the belt.

1:04:28 > 1:04:30But it had lost all its velocity by the time it did it.

1:04:30 > 1:04:34It would have torn him in half, if it had been travelling at full speed.

1:04:37 > 1:04:38Really, what it was here

1:04:38 > 1:04:42was industrial, mutual annihilation.

1:04:42 > 1:04:44That's what we are looking at at Guillemont.

1:04:47 > 1:04:51And it's strange looking around the landscape now - it is so benign,

1:04:51 > 1:04:53and so productive and so beautiful.

1:04:53 > 1:04:56It has a wonderful light, the Somme area,

1:04:56 > 1:05:00and yet, at the same time, you KNOW what has taken place here.

1:05:05 > 1:05:09In Storm Of Steel, Guillemont stands as the harbinger of a new kind

1:05:09 > 1:05:13of warfare, in which the individual disappeared...

1:05:15 > 1:05:21..replaced by huge faceless armies fighting in a man-made wilderness.

1:05:22 > 1:05:24It's a situation in which

1:05:24 > 1:05:28ideologies disappear and nations disappear. Everything is just

1:05:28 > 1:05:31coming together in this huge amount of energy.

1:05:31 > 1:05:34It's not a class war, it's not a war of nations for him,

1:05:34 > 1:05:39it's a war in which energy is mobilised, and everyone becomes

1:05:39 > 1:05:42part of it, regardless of where they stand. The war, for him,

1:05:42 > 1:05:47is the same, he says, as it is for people on the other side.

1:05:47 > 1:05:50It's one war, it's one huge mobilisation,

1:05:50 > 1:05:52that takes hold of everyone.

1:05:55 > 1:05:59For a period after the war, this idea of marshalling citizens,

1:05:59 > 1:06:04industry and economy to a single purpose would obsess Junger.

1:06:06 > 1:06:10He would rewrite Storm Of Steel a number of times, until it became

1:06:10 > 1:06:12an acknowledged classic.

1:06:12 > 1:06:17But in the 1920s, it was taken up by German veterans

1:06:17 > 1:06:20and by the fledgling Nazi Party.

1:06:21 > 1:06:24"Chivalry here took a final farewell.

1:06:24 > 1:06:26"It had to yield to the heightened intensity of war,

1:06:26 > 1:06:30"just as all fine and personal feeling has to yield when machinery

1:06:30 > 1:06:32"gets the upper hand.

1:06:33 > 1:06:37"The Europe of today appeared here for the first time in battle."

1:06:40 > 1:06:44Junger was injured and in hospital when Guillemont finally fell

1:06:44 > 1:06:46on September the 3rd.

1:06:46 > 1:06:49Almost to a man, his comrades disappeared,

1:06:49 > 1:06:52"vanishing", as he writes, "without trace,

1:06:52 > 1:06:55"in the fiery labyrinths of the battle".

1:07:01 > 1:07:04The Somme, autumn of 1916,

1:07:04 > 1:07:07would be remembered for its mud,

1:07:07 > 1:07:12as rain slowly turned the battlefield into a quagmire.

1:07:13 > 1:07:15A few miles away,

1:07:15 > 1:07:17on the upper part of the original battle front,

1:07:17 > 1:07:20close to where the Somme's tributary, the Ancre, flowed,

1:07:20 > 1:07:22the British were pushing forward into ground

1:07:22 > 1:07:25they had failed to capture on the 1st of July.

1:07:28 > 1:07:31Here, at the end of September, a young signals officer

1:07:31 > 1:07:34was beginning his fourth month in the battle.

1:07:34 > 1:07:38His name was JRR Tolkien.

1:07:40 > 1:07:43Tolkien arrives on the Somme in late June, 1916.

1:07:43 > 1:07:47He had, at the outbreak of war, acquired a sense

1:07:47 > 1:07:51that he wanted to be a writer, he wanted to be a poet,

1:07:51 > 1:07:55but exactly the way that was going to turn out wasn't clear to him,

1:07:55 > 1:07:57he was not the writer he became.

1:07:59 > 1:08:02In the fellowship of the Lancashire Fusiliers,

1:08:02 > 1:08:04Tolkien had seen much.

1:08:05 > 1:08:09In July, he had taken part in a bloody British assault on Ovillers.

1:08:09 > 1:08:11In August, at the Leipzig Salient,

1:08:11 > 1:08:14he'd worked out of newly-captured trenches

1:08:14 > 1:08:15strewn with German dead.

1:08:16 > 1:08:19Now, he was in Thiepval Wood,

1:08:19 > 1:08:22as the Battle of Thiepval Ridge raged nearby.

1:08:23 > 1:08:26There were the constant stream of casualties.

1:08:26 > 1:08:29There's a column of men walking through Thiepval Wood,

1:08:29 > 1:08:33and at the head of it is a subaltern called Stanley Rowson

1:08:33 > 1:08:37and, next to him, is a guy who bore witness to what happened

1:08:37 > 1:08:39when a shell burst and he said,

1:08:39 > 1:08:44"I was knocked flying, but entirely uninjured. And I got up and Rowson

1:08:44 > 1:08:48"was simply gone. He had been obliterated."

1:08:48 > 1:08:52So there was a kind of sense of a sort of sinister force

1:08:52 > 1:08:54in the atmosphere almost,

1:08:54 > 1:08:58that people could simply vanish out of existence instantaneously.

1:09:00 > 1:09:04Sights witnessed on the Somme deeply affected Tolkien,

1:09:04 > 1:09:07altering this young officer's world view.

1:09:09 > 1:09:12Tolkien had started inventing a mythology,

1:09:12 > 1:09:16which had elves, these immortal creatures,

1:09:16 > 1:09:19and the idea was that the elves would bring

1:09:19 > 1:09:21an enlightenment message.

1:09:23 > 1:09:26After the Battle of the Somme,

1:09:26 > 1:09:29mythology became a mythology of perpetual war.

1:09:32 > 1:09:37The adjacent village of Thiepval, a long-standing British objective,

1:09:37 > 1:09:41had largely been captured the day before Tolkien arrived.

1:09:42 > 1:09:45This is the view looking to Thiepval from the wood

1:09:45 > 1:09:47at the time Tolkien was there.

1:09:48 > 1:09:50Just visible,

1:09:50 > 1:09:53the latest British secret weapon used in the attack.

1:10:02 > 1:10:04Tolkien was in the wood.

1:10:04 > 1:10:06He saw the remnants of this village,

1:10:06 > 1:10:09this smoking, pulverised ruin on the hillside.

1:10:09 > 1:10:13And it's quite possible that he also caught his first glimpse of a new

1:10:13 > 1:10:16British wonder-weapon - the tanks.

1:10:16 > 1:10:18Because one tank, with the marvellous

1:10:18 > 1:10:20name of Creme de Menthe, came to a standstill

1:10:20 > 1:10:25with broken steering gear, just on the other side of this road here.

1:10:25 > 1:10:29He couldn't get out and go and have a look at it, if he HAD seen it,

1:10:29 > 1:10:31because, although this village had been taken,

1:10:31 > 1:10:35the Germans still held the trenches 100 metres from here.

1:10:37 > 1:10:41There was a great deal of hope invested in these monstrous, sort of,

1:10:41 > 1:10:46primeval-looking machines, and their purpose was to break

1:10:46 > 1:10:50into the German lines, to help the infantry break into the German lines,

1:10:50 > 1:10:53because without breaking in, you cannot break through.

1:10:54 > 1:10:58Nothing like a tank had been witnessed before,

1:10:58 > 1:11:01and it was a struggle to articulate exactly what they were.

1:11:02 > 1:11:05German soldiers reporting back their encounters

1:11:05 > 1:11:08drew fantastical machines.

1:11:09 > 1:11:12The Times described them as "an array of...

1:11:18 > 1:11:21Immediately after his time on the Somme,

1:11:21 > 1:11:24Tolkien began work on his first story set in Middle Earth,

1:11:24 > 1:11:26The Fall Of Gondolin.

1:11:28 > 1:11:31In The Fall Of Gondolin, the first Dark Lord of Middle Earth

1:11:31 > 1:11:34unleashes an army of metal dragons,

1:11:34 > 1:11:37that move on "iron so cunningly linked

1:11:37 > 1:11:41"that they might flow...around and above all obstacles before them."

1:11:42 > 1:11:44They are made of metal,

1:11:44 > 1:11:47can smash things down in their path,

1:11:47 > 1:11:51they give out fire and they have troops inside them.

1:11:51 > 1:11:57So they are very much like the tanks or maybe like the rumours of tanks.

1:12:02 > 1:12:05The Battle of Thiepval Ridge had seen the British take land

1:12:05 > 1:12:08on the muddy uplands overlooking the Ancre.

1:12:10 > 1:12:13That autumn, Tolkien would be stationed in a succession of

1:12:13 > 1:12:16recently-captured German strongpoints here.

1:12:18 > 1:12:22By October 20th, he was in Hessian Trench.

1:12:24 > 1:12:28A few hundred yards opposite was Regina Trench.

1:12:28 > 1:12:30This would be the object of a massive linked attack

1:12:30 > 1:12:32along three miles of line.

1:12:35 > 1:12:38As battalion signals officer,

1:12:38 > 1:12:40Tolkien was in charge of communications

1:12:40 > 1:12:44with the attacking force, relaying events back to HQ.

1:12:56 > 1:13:00This is a map showing JRR Tolkien's final action on the Western Front.

1:13:00 > 1:13:0421st of October, 1916,

1:13:04 > 1:13:06at the trench upon which we are standing now.

1:13:06 > 1:13:10Hessian Trench was being prepared for action the following day.

1:13:10 > 1:13:15The objective was Regina Trench, a German-held trench which ran across

1:13:15 > 1:13:17the front of this cemetery behind me

1:13:17 > 1:13:20and then diagonally across the landscape.

1:13:22 > 1:13:26The attack would use a brand-new technique perfected that autumn -

1:13:26 > 1:13:28the creeping barrage.

1:13:28 > 1:13:31This was a curtain of shells that exploded in front of

1:13:31 > 1:13:36the attacking troops, moving with them as they advanced.

1:13:36 > 1:13:39Its progression was precisely plotted out on a map

1:13:39 > 1:13:41for artillery and infantry to follow.

1:13:43 > 1:13:47We are right here on Hessian Trench. There it is marked.

1:13:47 > 1:13:50And the green line, they're meant to reach that in one and a half minutes.

1:13:50 > 1:13:53The blue line, in three minutes. That's halfway across no-man's-land.

1:13:53 > 1:13:56And there, the red line, with all the wire in front of it,

1:13:56 > 1:13:59that's Regina Trench. Six minutes.

1:13:59 > 1:14:01They've got six minutes to get across the battlefield,

1:14:01 > 1:14:04and ahead of them is this curtain

1:14:04 > 1:14:09of exploding shells, which will lift and they will follow it.

1:14:09 > 1:14:13And that will keep the German heads down below the parapet of the trench

1:14:13 > 1:14:16until there's no more time to react. The British will be upon them,

1:14:16 > 1:14:19they'll be in the trench, bombing and bayoneting.

1:14:29 > 1:14:31It works.

1:14:31 > 1:14:35Six minutes later, Tolkien, from this trench, will be able to see

1:14:35 > 1:14:40red flags and possibly even a helmet or two, waving in Regina Trench.

1:14:40 > 1:14:42He's sending forward his pigeoneers now,

1:14:42 > 1:14:45so that officers over there can write down their needs

1:14:45 > 1:14:47on a little piece of paper.

1:14:47 > 1:14:51That goes back by bird to divisional headquarters, and they will know

1:14:51 > 1:14:53how big the garrison is there.

1:14:53 > 1:14:56Do they need support? How many reserves do they need to send up?

1:14:58 > 1:15:02He's been a part of a great success.

1:15:02 > 1:15:05They've only captured 400 metres of ground,

1:15:05 > 1:15:08but nevertheless, at this point in the Battle of the Somme,

1:15:08 > 1:15:09that is success itself.

1:15:13 > 1:15:17It is argued that the Somme was part of a learning curve,

1:15:17 > 1:15:21as the British Army grasped how to fight, and ultimately win,

1:15:21 > 1:15:24a new form of industrial warfare.

1:15:26 > 1:15:28But there was also a profound cost.

1:15:28 > 1:15:31Two of Tolkien's closest friends

1:15:31 > 1:15:32died at the Somme,

1:15:32 > 1:15:34and 30 years later,

1:15:34 > 1:15:38memories of the ghostly October landscape lingered,

1:15:38 > 1:15:41to reappear while he was writing The Lord Of The Rings.

1:15:42 > 1:15:45The passage of the Dead Marshes, where Frodo and Sam, the hobbits,

1:15:45 > 1:15:47led by Gollum,

1:15:47 > 1:15:53have to travel through this haunted marshland,

1:15:53 > 1:15:58and they are horrified to look down into the water and see dead faces

1:15:58 > 1:15:59looking up at them.

1:15:59 > 1:16:03Now, this - it's not fancy, this is the reality

1:16:03 > 1:16:05of the battlefield of the Somme.

1:16:05 > 1:16:07Especially as the autumn rains came in,

1:16:07 > 1:16:09and the valley of the Ancre

1:16:09 > 1:16:14was flooded, you would get dead soldiers, unrecoverable,

1:16:14 > 1:16:15just rotting in the open.

1:16:15 > 1:16:18And it was a horrifying, searing experience

1:16:18 > 1:16:20for anyone to witness.

1:16:23 > 1:16:26He did not believe, and he said expressly, "I never believed

1:16:26 > 1:16:28"in the idea of the war to end wars."

1:16:28 > 1:16:31So, in Middle Earth, there is

1:16:31 > 1:16:35perpetual conflict between good and evil. It will never end.

1:16:36 > 1:16:40Less than a week after the victory at Regina Trench,

1:16:40 > 1:16:43Tolkien would fall victim to a very different kind of enemy.

1:16:43 > 1:16:48On the 27th of October, 1916, he would report sick,

1:16:48 > 1:16:51stricken with trench fever.

1:16:57 > 1:16:59The most common form of illness in the trenches -

1:16:59 > 1:17:03and 25% of those who reported sick had this disease -

1:17:03 > 1:17:04was trench fever.

1:17:04 > 1:17:09It was passed on by the infected bites of body lice.

1:17:09 > 1:17:12Everybody was infested with body lice -

1:17:12 > 1:17:14private or officer alike.

1:17:14 > 1:17:17It could take you out of the Army permanently,

1:17:17 > 1:17:20because it was relapsing.

1:17:20 > 1:17:23Heavy fevers, sweating, aching bones,

1:17:23 > 1:17:26tired limbs, sore eyeballs, even.

1:17:26 > 1:17:30The only recourse the men in the trenches had would be to strip off...

1:17:32 > 1:17:35..find the eggs, which lived in the seams of your clothes,

1:17:35 > 1:17:37and run a candle down.

1:17:37 > 1:17:41And they would hear the eggs popping as the flame got to them.

1:17:42 > 1:17:44Pop, pop, pop.

1:17:45 > 1:17:51This bizarre ritual was turned into poetry by Private Isaac Rosenberg.

1:17:51 > 1:17:55Rosenberg had been a pacifist from the outset of the war,

1:17:55 > 1:17:58but had enlisted because he needed money.

1:17:58 > 1:18:02On the week the battle officially ended, he was in the Somme trenches,

1:18:02 > 1:18:05where louse-hunting was a nightly ritual.

1:18:08 > 1:18:12"Nudes - stark, a-glisten, yelling in lurid glee.

1:18:12 > 1:18:18"Grinning faces of fiends and raging limbs whirl over the floor one fire.

1:18:18 > 1:18:22"For a shirt verminously busy, yon soldier tore from his throat,

1:18:22 > 1:18:27"with oaths Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice.

1:18:28 > 1:18:32"And soon the shirt was aflare over the candle he'd lit while we lay.

1:18:32 > 1:18:37"Then we all sprung up and stripped to hunt the vermin brood.

1:18:37 > 1:18:40"Soon, like a devils' pantomime, the place was raging."

1:18:41 > 1:18:44So you can really feel, throughout all of the lines of this,

1:18:44 > 1:18:46that sense of power and energy.

1:18:46 > 1:18:48They rip their clothes off and they push through the seams

1:18:48 > 1:18:51with their fingers, to try and get rid of these beasts

1:18:51 > 1:18:54which are tormenting them. And that's not just in the language,

1:18:54 > 1:18:56but also in the structure of the poem,

1:18:56 > 1:19:00so the line lengths are different. He uses rhythm and metre

1:19:00 > 1:19:02very, very subtly and carefully.

1:19:03 > 1:19:06"See the silhouettes agape.

1:19:06 > 1:19:07"See the gibbering shadows

1:19:07 > 1:19:10"mixed with the battled arms on the wall.

1:19:10 > 1:19:14"See gargantuan hooked fingers dug in supreme flesh

1:19:14 > 1:19:17"to smutch the supreme littleness.

1:19:17 > 1:19:20"See the merry limbs in hot Highland fling

1:19:20 > 1:19:24"because some wizard vermin charmed from the quiet this revel

1:19:24 > 1:19:27"when our ears were half lulled by the dark music

1:19:27 > 1:19:29"blown from Sleep's trumpet."

1:19:30 > 1:19:34Rosenberg's manuscripts are fairly chaotic.

1:19:34 > 1:19:36He was a very organic poet.

1:19:36 > 1:19:39There's lots of corrections and changes, so you can feel the energy

1:19:39 > 1:19:41of the pencils moving over the paper.

1:19:41 > 1:19:45And this more complete manuscript is very much of that mould.

1:19:45 > 1:19:49The challenge of combating lice within your uniform

1:19:49 > 1:19:53is one that all private soldiers would have met.

1:19:54 > 1:19:57You get this sense of this mass communal experience

1:19:57 > 1:20:00as they hunt out this real pest,

1:20:00 > 1:20:02knowing they're never going to beat it.

1:20:02 > 1:20:07And in a way, that sense of fighting a futile battle

1:20:07 > 1:20:09becomes a metaphor for the war itself.

1:20:18 > 1:20:21Rosenberg's antipathy towards the war

1:20:21 > 1:20:26was now shared by Siegfried Sassoon, recuperating back in Britain.

1:20:26 > 1:20:30Like many soldiers home from the battle, Sassoon was shocked

1:20:30 > 1:20:34at how little the public knew about the reality of the front.

1:20:34 > 1:20:38He came to believe that the British Establishment's complacency

1:20:38 > 1:20:40was needlessly prolonging the war.

1:20:40 > 1:20:43Some, like the Bishop of London,

1:20:43 > 1:20:45preached that soldiers were returning

1:20:45 > 1:20:47purified by their experience.

1:20:48 > 1:20:53It was on people like him that Sassoon turned his fire.

1:20:53 > 1:20:58"Look how little they care at home - the Church, the press,

1:20:58 > 1:21:02"all these politicians. Look how they

1:21:02 > 1:21:06"urge us on to greater and greater efforts."

1:21:06 > 1:21:11I think it's also a vent for his feelings of frustration and rage,

1:21:11 > 1:21:14because he's very angry indeed by this point.

1:21:14 > 1:21:17And I think he also realises that he has a gift for satire.

1:21:20 > 1:21:23"The Bishop tells us:

1:21:23 > 1:21:27"'When the boys come back They will not be the same,

1:21:27 > 1:21:30"for they'll have fought in a just cause:

1:21:30 > 1:21:33"they lead the last attack on Anti-Christ,

1:21:33 > 1:21:39"Their comrades' blood has bought New right to breed an honourable race

1:21:39 > 1:21:43"They have challenged Death and dared him face-to-face.'

1:21:44 > 1:21:49"'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.

1:21:49 > 1:21:55"'For George lost both his legs, and Bill's stone blind,

1:21:55 > 1:21:58"Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die,

1:21:58 > 1:22:01"And Bert's gone syphilitic:

1:22:01 > 1:22:05"You'll not find a chap who's served that hasn't found some change.'"

1:22:05 > 1:22:07"And the Bishop said:

1:22:09 > 1:22:13"'The ways of God are strange!'"

1:22:16 > 1:22:20They, written in October, marked a new style -

1:22:20 > 1:22:24the angry, pointed satire for which Sassoon is remembered.

1:22:24 > 1:22:26I think to the government and the Church,

1:22:26 > 1:22:29they would have been outraged by that poem.

1:22:29 > 1:22:31And they would have been...

1:22:31 > 1:22:35The word "syphilitic" actually would have really lit the touchpaper.

1:22:35 > 1:22:37But he has this chap say, "Bert's gone syphilitic",

1:22:37 > 1:22:41which makes it much more graphic.

1:22:41 > 1:22:46The direct speech confers an extra...oomph.

1:22:48 > 1:22:51The powers-that-be would have their revenge.

1:22:51 > 1:22:54When he denounced the war the following year,

1:22:54 > 1:22:57Sassoon was quietly packed off to Craiglockhart,

1:22:57 > 1:23:00a hospital for shellshocked servicemen.

1:23:04 > 1:23:08During the close of the battle, Sassoon was still communicating

1:23:08 > 1:23:10with his comrades on the Somme.

1:23:10 > 1:23:14The news here would have done nothing to quell his anger.

1:23:16 > 1:23:20The battlefield was now a moonscape of shell holes, mud-filled trenches

1:23:20 > 1:23:22and graves.

1:23:22 > 1:23:26As the battle staggered towards its official end,

1:23:26 > 1:23:30the front line had only moved six miles since the 1st of July.

1:23:34 > 1:23:36After 142 days of fighting,

1:23:36 > 1:23:39and a million casualties on both sides,

1:23:39 > 1:23:43the battle finally came to an end on November the 19th,

1:23:43 > 1:23:44in this valley here.

1:23:46 > 1:23:50While the Battle of the Somme may have officially finished,

1:23:50 > 1:23:52small but deadly skirmishes carried on.

1:23:53 > 1:23:55The troops weren't informed.

1:23:55 > 1:23:59Now, of course, they were faced with fighting the elements, as well.

1:23:59 > 1:24:00Staying alive.

1:24:01 > 1:24:06In January, shattered ground north of the Ancre, around Beaumont Hamel,

1:24:06 > 1:24:11provided Wilfred Owen with his first experience of the Western Front.

1:24:16 > 1:24:20The following month, the German Army began a strategic withdrawal

1:24:20 > 1:24:25to the heavily fortified Hindenburg Line, 30km away.

1:24:27 > 1:24:29A victory? Possibly.

1:24:29 > 1:24:33But in giving up the Somme, the Germans had a new front line

1:24:33 > 1:24:35on ground of their choosing,

1:24:35 > 1:24:37that needed less troops to defend.

1:24:40 > 1:24:45And the Somme, that had cost a staggering million casualties,

1:24:45 > 1:24:47was now strategically useless.

1:24:48 > 1:24:50What had the Somme done?

1:24:50 > 1:24:54It had eroded the spirits and the hopes

1:24:54 > 1:24:55of millions.

1:25:11 > 1:25:13The 1916 Battle of the Somme

1:25:13 > 1:25:17is probably the most profound cultural moment

1:25:17 > 1:25:19of the First World War.

1:25:19 > 1:25:22The way in which people thought about the war was different

1:25:22 > 1:25:23before the 1st of July,

1:25:23 > 1:25:27and continued to evolve in a different direction

1:25:27 > 1:25:29from the middle of November, 1916 onwards.

1:25:29 > 1:25:33The Somme changed the way the British people understood

1:25:33 > 1:25:35the First World War.

1:25:38 > 1:25:41And the fact that it's recorded in so many works of literature

1:25:41 > 1:25:46means that we can go back to it and understand it, in the round.

1:25:47 > 1:25:49The literature of the battle - the war of words -

1:25:49 > 1:25:52is one of its greatest legacies.

1:25:52 > 1:25:55Its intensity and power has ensured

1:25:55 > 1:25:57that these specific experiences of the Somme

1:25:57 > 1:26:00have survived in our culture,

1:26:00 > 1:26:03while other periods of the war fade from memory.

1:26:04 > 1:26:08I think we would have a very different view of the Somme

1:26:08 > 1:26:11but for those writers. And this,

1:26:11 > 1:26:17to some extent, does unbalance the picture of the war as a whole.

1:26:17 > 1:26:22That is something which has caused a good deal of argument and debate

1:26:22 > 1:26:26and grief among historians, who say, "But the war wasn't like that."

1:26:26 > 1:26:29Well, the Battle of the Somme WAS like that,

1:26:29 > 1:26:32and the writers give it to us more clearly than the historians,

1:26:32 > 1:26:34arguably, give it to us.

1:26:34 > 1:26:37So this fairly short, intense,

1:26:37 > 1:26:42horrendous experience has come in the national memory

1:26:42 > 1:26:44to stand for the whole war.

1:26:46 > 1:26:50# Do you want to find your sweetheart? I know where he is

1:26:50 > 1:26:52# I know where he is I know where he is

1:26:53 > 1:26:55# Do you want to find your sweetheart?

1:26:55 > 1:26:57# I know where he is

1:26:57 > 1:27:00# Hanging on the front line wire

1:27:01 > 1:27:04# We saw him, we saw him

1:27:04 > 1:27:08# Hanging on the front line wire we saw him

1:27:08 > 1:27:10# Hanging on the front line wire. #