Y Ravine Cemetery, Beaumont-Hamel, France. © 2013 John M. Shea
"Recollection paints these autumn weeks in the Beaumont Hamel sector as a tranquil time. Naturally, there at the edge of the Thiepval inferno, there were ungentle interludes. One night in particular the front line was stubbornly pounded with minenwerfers (it was a 'minnywafer' sector, and one often turned cold in the firetrench as one heard the approaching swish of these monsters). As we had little or no wire in front, and as the line now lay exposed and helpless, Harrison anticipated a German raid, and Cassells and I lay most of the night waiting for it in the new shell-holes, with a set of the trustiest soldiers, fingering bombs in a contemplative fashion. . . ."
Excerpt from Edmund Blunden, English writer, recipient of the Military Cross, second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, writing of autumn, 1916, while in the Battle of the Somme. Hamel had seen the ruin of the Newfoundland Regiment on July 1, the first day of the Battle. Thiepval Ridge is the site of the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, engraved with 60,000 names, and was taken by the British in September and October, 1916. The Minenwerfer was an accurate, high-trajectory mortar with a range of about 1,000 yards.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, pp. 107–108, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
1916-10-13, 1916, October, mortar, Minenwerfer, Thiepval, Battle of the Somme, Somme
