The Somme

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The Desert Rats
R.E.M.E.
The Somme
The Boer War
Battles of Ypres
Second World War
Winston Churchill

Somme Battlefield

Tours Ltd.
We specialise in conducted and self-drive tours to the
SOMME & YPRES
battlefields of the Great War

1914 - 1918

We have dedicated this page to

Thomas Forrest 19/10/1871 – 1/7/1916.

Also to ALL those who fought in these Battles.

There is a lovely poem at the end of this page entitled - In Flanders Fields

Thomas was in the 5th & 6th Battalion K. Coy. Army Militia Unit No 596, and

served in The Boer War from February 1900, until he returned home to

St. Helens, Lancashire, UK. In 1902.

From being on Garrison duty, in South Africa.

Thomas then entered the Army yet again, on the 27th April 1915, he served

with The Lancashire Fusiliers, and gained the rank of Lance Corporal

in "C" Coy. 2nd Battalion.

Thomas was sadly Killed in Action at the Battle of The Somme,

on the 1st of July 1916

Thomas was awarded the following three medals

The British War Medal

Instituted on 29 July 1919, was awarded to men who had provided service during and immediately after the First World War.

Initially intended to cover the period 1914-18 it was extended to those who had given additional service during 1919-20, typically in mine clearance and participation in operations in Russia, the Baltic, Siberia and the Black and Caspian Seas.

The medal was circular and made of silver, and the dates 1914 and 1918 were on the back of the medal.

Around 5,670,170 British War Medals were awarded.

The Victory medal

Also known as ‘The Inter – Allied Victory medal’, and was instituted in March 1919. The medal was made from yellow bronze and was 36mm in diameter. The ribbon was officially described as "two rainbows with red in the centre".

On the back of the medal was the inscription – ‘The Great War For Civilization 1914 – 1919’, and this was surrounded by a wreath.

The medal was awarded to all those who had served in the armed forces, as well as to civilians contracted to the armed services, and to those who served in military hospitals on the various battlefronts during wartime

In Britain the Victory Medal was always awarded with another medal, usually the 1914 Star or 1914-15 Star or British war Medal.

The 1914-15 Star

(not to be confused with the 1914 Star) comprised a medal awarded by British authorities to those who had given service in the fight against the Central Powers between the outbreak of war in August 1914 and the end of 1915, either on land or at sea.

Those who had already received the 1914 Star were not eligible for the 1914-15 Star.

The medal was bronze, and the recipient’s name, Number and Rank was engraved on the back of the medal.

Around 2,366,000 1914-15 Stars were awarded. The medal was always awarded in conjunction with the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

The following picture is of the 'Scroll Of Honour' for Thomas Forrest

Click on Thumbnail to see full size picture

Mary Forrest 1873 -1955 & Thomas Forrest 1871 -1^st July 1916

Here is a brief account about The Battle of The Somme

For six days, thousands of massed British and French heavy guns, fed round the clock by munitions trains, had poured just over one and a half million shells onto the deeply echeloned German trench lines on the Somme. British generals promised their men that nothing could survive this, the heaviest artillery bombardment in history.

Just before 7.30am on Saturday 1st July 1916 British sappers fired two enormous mines, containing 200,000 lbs of high explosives, under German lines. The explosions tore gaping holes in the German trenches, and were heard as far away as London.

At about 7.30am the ‘flower of Britain’s youth’ rose from the trenches along an eighteen-mile stretch of the Western Front in the final ‘push’ of the ‘war to end all wars’. They had flocked to the recruiting offices in there thousands. For so many it would be their lives that would be over, and well before the end of the war in 1918.

The British commander, Sir Henry Rawlinson, was so certain there would be no German resistance he ordered his troops to march forward inparade formation. Running over ground torn up by shellfire, Rawlinsonfeared, would disrupt formations and tire the men. Once German lines had been seized, massed Imperial cavalry divisions, that included even the fabled Bengal Lancers and the Frontier Scouts from the Khyber Pass, waited to pour through the breach and pursue the fleeing Germans back to the Rhine.

But the Germans were neither all dead, nor demoralized. Most survived the avalanche of shells in deep concrete shelters. Soldiers of a lesser nation might have run for their lives, or gone into shell shock after the hellish ordeal. Not the valiant Germans. They surfaced, set up their machine guns on prepared platforms, and fired into the packed ranks of the British, who were advancing ponderously in tight formation across no man's land.

Somehow, much German barbed wire had also survived the bombardment. As the British became entangled in the thick belts of rusted wire, sheets of bullets from German Maxim machine guns massacred their battalions and companies. Though falling by the thousands, the gallant British continued their hopeless advance. Gen. Rawlinson, horrified by the German riposte, thought of calling off the attack. His superior, Haig, demanded the assault continue.

This sunny morning on the Somme was the worst moment in British history. Brigade after brigade was ground to a bloody pulp. Whole units of 'Pals' died, together in the end. German machine guns grew red hot. British shells fell short among advancing Imperial troops. The slaughter continued into the evening.

A few heroic British units managed to reach the enemy's trenches and storm the concrete blockhouses and fortified villages defending German lines. But the redoubtable Germans launched fierce, counter-attacks that drove the British back.

By the close of that fateful July day in 1916 nearly 60,000 British soldiers, each a son, a father, a loved one, lay dead and wounded, near a small unassuming river whose name would live in infamy - the River Somme. The experienced French, attacking on the left, ran forward in open

skirmishing formation, suffered lighter casualties, and took the lightly-manned German trenches. But they were forced to fall back when the British attack failed.

The Somme Battle raged on until late November 1916. During those terrible 142 days more than one million two hundred thousand soldiers from all sides were killed or wounded in actions to take woods, ridges and villages which, by the end of the battle, were nothing but tree stumps,

moonscapes and rubble.

The ravaged landscapes of the Somme and Ypres Battlefields have now been returned to agriculture, where crops once again grow. But things are different. Crops now grow alongside seemingly countless cemeteries that stand as silent testament to those who never returned. There are, however, many places where the battle-scarred land has been left just as it was at the end of this terrible carnage.

The battle finally ended on 18 November with an area approximately 25 miles long by six miles wide won by the allies. After four months of fighting each side had sustained more than half a million casualties.