Given on Saturday 2 July at Westminster Cathedral at Mass offered for the Fallen of the Somme.
Exactly 100 years ago, politicians, generals and countless families were coming to terms with the casualties of that fateful first day of battle. Some 20,000 had been killed and another 40,000 were wounded or reported missing. Walking along the rows of tombstones in the immaculately-kept cemeteries or reading the names on the Memorial to the Missing at Thiepval, it is shocking to think that each one was someone’s son or sweetheart, an absent presence among relatives and friends, in so many cases still spoken of today. The campaign has left an indelible mark on our national memory. The Picard place-names caught up in the conflict have become almost as familiar as some of those in our own neighbourhood: Beaumont-Hamel, Delville Wood, Guillemont, Serre.
We think immediately of the trenches and shell holes, the barbed wire and gas. We wonder at what went through the soldiers’ minds in those minutes before Zero Hour. According to one, ‘No one on earth but one who has experienced it knows what it is to wait for time, at a time like this …Visions of home and dear ones will present themselves and all are wishing the time up, so that the strain is taken off by the excitement of the attack.'
‘Siegfried Sasson, who might so easily have been one of them, (rightly) described that first day as “a sunlit picture of hell”.’ (Allen Mallinson, Too Important for the Generals: Losing and Winning the First World War)
I find deeply stirring the account of one Tynesider, that he saw Pipe-Major John Wilson playing furiously as he marched into enemy fire. Harrowing is the testimony of another Tynesider of what he saw: poor Aggy Fyfe ‘riddled with bullets and screaming. Another lad … just kneeling, his head thrown back, bullets slapping into him, knocking great … chunks off his body.’ (Allen Mallinson in The Spectator)
Though we naturally think today of 1 July 1916, let’s not forget that the battle lasted four and a half months along a 25-mile front. All in all there were around 420,000 British, 195,000 French and 650,000 German casualties. During this period 51 Victoria Crosses were won, many of them posthumously.
Of course, questions arise about the futility of this ‘war of attrition’ and historians will go on debating the strategy of the generals. But this is not our concern today. Our concern today is to give thanks for the courageous sacrifice of so many and pray that they are now at peace.
It’s no accident that we offer this Mass in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. One of the interesting effects of the First World War was that many troops, with little knowledge of the Catholic Church, lived for a time in a Catholic culture. They saw the ruined churches and convents and witnessed the work of the local curé as well as the army padre. Often statues and wayside crucifixes became vital landmarks. One image in the Somme became particularly important: Notre Dame de Brebières in the town of Albert.
This was a medieval shrine, especially popular with local shepherds. But in the decades leading up to the war it had acquired a new basilica, with a golden statue of the Blessed Virgin on top of the tower. Pope Leo XIII even called the shrine ‘the Lourdes of the North.’ Eighteen months before the start of the Battle of the Somme, a German shell caused the gilded statue to lean forward, almost at a right angle. Many saw this as miraculous and it was said that when the Virgin fell, the war would end. When the Germans took Albert in March 1918, British artillery finally caused the statue indeed to fall; and the Armistice followed six months later.
Our Lady of Albert was a constant presence, even to those who had little or no faith. Perched high above the town, the statue witnessed so much devastation, suffering and death. Now the basilica is restored - though the surrounding landscape is still marked by shell-holes and the annual harvest of unexploded shells. On this day, let us ask Mary for her maternal intercession, that all those brave, brave men of the Somme may now be at peace; and that we, who stand so much in their debt, never forget to honour their memory and learn from their legacy.
The last word I wish to leave with the historian Lynn MacDonald. She describes the end of that first day of what was to be known ever after as the Battle of the Somme. She recounts how the West Yorkshires had been held from advancing till later that day:
‘As they neared the wood, between the roar of explosions, behind the sickening gas-soaked mist … (they) became aware of another sound. It was like nothing they had ever heard before. Later – and for the rest of his life – Lieutenant Hornshaw was to remember it as a sound that chilled the blood; a nerve-scraping noise like “enormous wet fingers screeching across an enormous pane of glass”.
‘It was coming from the wounded lying out in No Man’s Land. Some screaming, some muttering, some weeping with fear, some calling for help, shouting in delirium, groaning with pain, the sounds of their distress had synthesised into one unearthly wail. As midnight passed and the night of the first day of July turned towards the dawn of the second, as the gunfire died down, it seemed to fill the air. All along the front, from the orchards of Gommecourt to the heights of Beaumont Hamel, from the shoulders of Thiepval to the valley beyond La Boiselle, it rose from the battlefield into the night like the keening of a thousand banshees. Holding grimly to the remnants of their battered trenches, the battered remnants of the Army shivered as they listened.’ Lynn Macdonald, Somme)
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. We do remember them. We shall always remember them.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace, rest in eternal peace.
Bishop Nicholas wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the assistance provided by Fr Nicholas Schofield, Diocesan Archivist, with the production of this homily.