Battle of the Yser
Mametz, Devonshire Cemetery
Today I found in Mametz Wood
The ruins of Mametz, France, July 1916. [AWM H08372]
Road sign for the ‘Memorial Gallois’ - Welsh Memorial - north of Mametz on the road to Contalmaison. [DVA]
Later in 1916, Australian soldiers knew this area well as they made their way up to the front line towards Flers during the last weeks of the Somme battle through villages like Fricourt, Mametz and Montauban. Many Australian units also spent part of the terrible Somme Winter of 1916–17 in places like Mametz Wood to the north–east of the village. To reach Mametz Wood take the minor road north out of Mametz village heading for Contalmaison. Less than half a kilometre out of the village there is a fork in the road with a green sign pointing right to the ‘Memorial Gallois’. Take this road which runs down into the valley until you come to a car park with Mametz Wood opposite across the fields.
Opposite the wood, at the top of a path up from the car park, is one of the most unusual monuments on the Western Front and one not to be missed. It is the 38th Welsh Division Memorial. Here, between 7 and 12 July 1916, the Welshmen fought hard, with heavy casualties, to clear Mametz Wood of the enemy. So awful was the fighting here that a Welsh soldier, Wyn Griffith, described it as the horror of our way of life and death and of our crucifixion of youth.
It is hard to imagine at this peaceful scene today the horror experienced by the Welshmen in Mametz Wood. Attacks on German positions in the wood were made on 10–11 July after the initial failure on 7 July 1916 to take the wood. Men – friend and foe – fought amid screaming shells, breaking timber and uprooted trees. For the majority this was their first experience of battle and during this period the division lost more than 4,000 men of whom 1,200 were killed. Shortly after the battle, poet Robert Graves, serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, walked in Mametz Wood among the dead of both sides. From the experience he produced his poem, ‘A Dead Boche’ (Boche was British slang for a German soldier):
The 38th (Welsh) Division Memorial, Mametz Wood. [DVA]
To you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I'll say (you’ve heard it said before)
"War's Hell!" and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big–bellied, spectacled, crop–haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
The 38th (Welsh) Division Memorial, Mametz Wood. [DVA]
Poppy in a field on the Somme. [DVA]
These little country roads around Fricourt, Mametz and Mountauban were the main arteries of the British Expeditionary Force up to the Somme front line. At the crossroads of the Albert–Peronne Road with the road leading to Fricourt, on 21–22 July 1916, the following traffic was recorded: 26,536 troops, 63 guns, 2,746 mechanical vehicles, and 1,043 soldiers on push bikes.
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© 2008 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - November 2008