Gas! Gas! Gas!
To commemorate the 94th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne has opened a new exhibition on gas and chemical warfare. John Grehan reports.
The Battle of the Somme, the first day of which, on 1 July 1916, was the most destructive day’s fighting in British history, has come to exemplify the futility and horror of the First World War on the Western Front and one of the most horrifying aspects of that conflict was the use of gas. This new exhibition, Gas! Gas! Gas!, which runs from 29 June to 28 November 2010, is set in the museum at Péronne which itself is housed in the town’s impressive castle. The display has its own exhibition space which, unlike the rest of this light and spacious museum, is dark and atmospheric. Included amongst the exhibits are a wide variety of gas masks used by all sides in the war. The resulting display is a most informative depiction of the development of the gas mask by the belligerent nations as the war progressed. To see so many types, from a number of nations, arranged in chronological order is an unusual opportunity. Other items on display include a surviving relic-condition gas bomb – illustrating the danger that still lurks under the countryside of France and Flanders – and even an example of a Livens Projector delivery system. The Livens Projector was simply a metal pipe about a metre or so long that was buried in the soil at a 45-degree angle. Each projector was loaded with a drum containing about 30lbs of gas, and the bank of projectors was fired by an electrical charge, sending the drums tumbling through the air up to a range of over a mile. Devised by Captain F.H. Livens Royal Engineers, the projector was used during the battle of the Somme to launch gas cylinders on the German lines. The importance of Captain Livens in terms of the British development of gas and chemical warfare is illustrated by the fact that one of his tunics is also on display. The story of the use of gas on the Western Front is told with the use of contemporary books, artefacts and film. Though all the informative captions for the items on display are in French, a booklet detailing these in English is provided. The Somme has been a place of pilgrimage for British and Commonwealth visitors and veterans ever since the end of the First World War and the museum is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to tour the battlefields. The exhibition is free but there is a small fee to see the rest of the museum. Family and friends of those who perished on the Somme have travelled to this area of Picardy for decades to visit the sites where their loved ones fought and died and to remember and commemorate their sacrifice at the many, magnificent, cemeteries. Now the Comité du Tourisme de la Somme has linked the key battlefields and memorials together to help visitors by the Circuit of Remembrance Tour. The tour runs for forty miles from the town of Albert to Péronne. Important points along the route are marked with information boards. Though there are twelve designated points along the well sign-posted circuit, each marked with a highly-visible symbol of a poppy, there are memorials, cemeteries and sites of Victoria Cross actions at almost every turn. The area resounds with names of places that are forever cast as some of the scenes upon which the greatest courage and shocking slaughter were played out. High Wood, Delville Wood, Longeuval, Beaumont Hamel and Locknagar Crater are just some of the sites compressed so tightly together that it scarcely seems possible that so much fighting could have taken place in so small an area. The close proximity of the opposing British and German lines is also surprising. In many of the areas the front lines are just yards apart. This can be best appreciated at the remarkable Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial – destination number 10 on the Circuit. Officially opened by Field Marshal Earl Haig in 1925, the site is one of only two Canadian National Historic Sites located outside of Canada. Here, some of the extensive trench systems that once riddled this small part of the Western Front have been preserved for ours, and future, generations. The cemeteries and memorials that the visitor will discover are beautifully maintained and some, such as the Ulster Tower and the memorial at Thiepval, are truly magnificent monuments. Carved upon Thiepval’s towering pillars are the names of more than 72,000 British and South African men who fell on the Somme between July 1915 and March 1918 and who have no known grave. At La Boisselle is the awe-inspiring Locknagar Crater. On that first, deadly, day of the Somme, the start of the British and Commonwealth offensive was marked by a series of seventeen massive explosions from mines dug under the German lines. The largest of these were to the north east of La Boisselle where two charges of ammonal, weighing 30,000lbs and 24,000lbs were detonated at 07.28 hours. Two minutes later the whistles blew and the Allied troops went over the top. The Lochnagar Crater measured 300 feet across and 90 feet deep after the explosion. Debris from the explosion rose some 4,000 feet into the air and it is said that the explosions could be heard as far away as London. Though now the crater is only one-third as deep and wide it is still an astonishing sight. The crater is privately owned by Richard Dunning, having been bought in 1978 to save at least one of the original Somme craters from being filled in and built upon by local farmers. Richard has generously opened Lochnagar Crater to the general public. It is, without doubt, a must visit destination for any tour of the Somme. Across the Somme there are an astonishing thirteen German, twenty-one French and 410 British cemeteries. It is impossible to visit this area and not be moved by the extent of the casualties inflicted on both sides. The Circuit of Remembrance tour is presented as an audio tour which can be downloaded from the tourism website for free or picked up on a pre-loaded MP3 player. This method of presenting the information enables individuals the flexibility to plan their own itineraries at their own pace. The complete tour will easily fill one day. It is an excellent way of discovering the events in this part of France in the summer of 1916. * For more information on Gas! Gas! Gas! or the Historial de la Grande Guerre, visit: www.historial.org * For more information on the Circuit of Remembrance or to download the audio guides, visit: www.visit-somme.com
