High Wood

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High Wood is a small forest near Bazentin le Petit in the Somme département of northern France which was the scene of intense fighting for two months from 14 July to 15 September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. The French name for the wood was Bois des Foureaux (now called Bois des Fourcaux) but to the British infantry who fought there, it was known as High Wood and, like neighbouring Delville Wood, it earned an evil reputation. The stench of rotting corpses in the wood was overwhelming in summer and it inspired E.A. MacKintosh* to pen a parody of "Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green":

High Wood to Waterlot Farm,
All on a summer's day,
Up you get to the top of the trench
Though you're sniped at all the way.
If you've got a smoke helmet there
You'd best put it on if you could,
For the wood down by Waterlot Farm
Is a bloody high wood.

The British Fourth Army of Lieutenant General Henry Rawlinson first attempted to capture High Wood on 14 July 1916 during the Battle of Bazentin Ridge. Though the wood was initially abandoned by the Germans, delays, confusion and hesitation meant that the British did not attempt to occupy it until the evening when two regiments of cavalry, the 7th Dragoon Guards and the 2nd Deccan Horse, made the only cavalry charge of the battle. Though the cavalry gained a foothold and held out until the morning of 15 July, they were unsupported and forced to withdraw.

The next attempt on the wood was made by a single company of the 16th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps, 33rd Division on 15 July but by this time there Germans had reoccupied the wood in numbers. High Wood became an anchor for the new German defensive trench line, known as the Switch Line, that connected their second defensive line near Pozières with their incomplete third defensive line east of Flers. The Switch Line ran through the northern tip of High Wood and both proved impregnable to the piecemeal attacks mounted by the Fourth Army.

The 33rd Division attacked again on 20 July and managed to capture part of High Wood while the 5th Division and 7th Division attacked the Switch Line to the east. (It was during the 7th Division's attack that Private Theodore Veale won the Victoria Cross.) The next major Fourth Army assault came on the night of 22-23 July and on this occasion the 51st (Highland) Division attacked High Wood but here, as everywhere else on the Fourth Army front, they were repulsed with heavy casualties. Sergeant Bill Hay of the 1/9th Battalion, Royal Scots, described the attack thus:

"That was a stupid action, because we had to make a frontal attack on bristling German guns and there was no shelter at all. ... There were dead bodies all over the place where previous battalions and regiments had taken part in previous attacks. What a bashing we got. There were heaps of men everywhere — not one or two men, but heaps of men, all dead. Even before we went over, we knew this was death. We just couldn't take High Wood against machine-guns. It was ridiculous. There was no need for it. It was just absolute slaughter."

The British field guns had difficulty supporting attacks on High Wood because they had to fire over Bazentin Ridge. The low elevation of the guns meant the shells were just skimming over the British trenches and the margin for error was small with numerous casualties from friendly fire.

On 18 August the 33rd Division was called on to attack High Wood once again and once again failed. The division tried again on 24 August between High Wood and Delville Wood and as preparation for this assault, a machine gun barrage was laid down by the 100th Machine Gun Company (100th Brigade) which, in twelve hours, fired over 1 million shells from ten machine guns.

Another failed attack was made on 3 September as part of the fighting for Guillemont. By 14 September it was estimated that the British had suffered 6,000 casualties in the struggle for High Wood.

High Wood was finally captured, along with the Switch Line, in the next major British offensive, the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on 15 September 1916. Success was not achieved without further blunder and sacrifice. Due to the close proximity of the two front-lines, the III Corps commander, Lieutenant General Sir William Pulteney, decided to use the newly introduced tank instead of artillery. After two months of constant fighting High Wood was not ideal terrain for tank operations, especially these first, under-developed tanks. Four tanks were allocated to High Wood but only one, D-13, penetrated any distance and its presence was not decisive.

The task of capturing High Wood had fallen to the 47th (1/2nd London) Division. Their first attempt with tank support had failed but the attack resumed and, after a hurricane bombardment of German positions by Stokes mortars, in which 750 shells were fired in 15 minutes, High Wood was finally in British hands. Ironically, the 47th Division's performance was considered a failure — High Wood was only one of their objectives for the day — and after four days of fighting in which the division suffered over 4,500 casualties, the commander Major General Charles Barter was relieved of command for "wanton waste of men" (though prevailing opinion lays the blame with Pulteney).

On the edge of High Wood is the London Cemetery and Extension. This Commonwealth cemetery was opened with the interment of 47 soldiers of the 47th Division in the days following the 15th September 1916. The men were buried in a large shell hole. The cemetery now contains the remains of some 4000 men, the vast majority being First World War casualties.

• Footnote: all the best poems of Lieutenant E Alan Mackintosh can be found in the biography Can't Shoot a Man With a Cold Lieutenant E Alan Mackintosh MC 1893-1917 Poet of the Highland Division Campbell and Green Argyll Publishing 2004 ISBN 1-902831-76-4 £12.99