Battle of the Somme: Centenary

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for introducing this debate and for his knowledgeable introduction of it. It is no more than we would have expected from such an eminent historian. I do not intend to follow him in that sense but I would like to invoke some of the events of that dreadful battle and how they have affected me two generations later.

I do not wish to steal the Minister’s thunder either and so I will congratulate the Government now on marking the battle appropriately. It is also appropriate that organisations such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Imperial War Museum and the BBC are doing a fine job, with a wide range of events that will mark and commemorate the centenary.

I shall be on the Somme on 1 July this year, as I have been every 10 years since 1976. Initially, I was not sure why I did so. I happened to be studying at school on the 50th anniversary of the battle of the Somme and I had a grandfather who fought in the war with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He was not on the Somme on that day but he was on the Western Front. He would never say a word about the war—he was too traumatised. That made an impression on me and I decided to go to the commemoration of the first day of the Somme in 1976.

What struck me that day as I stood on the Somme—as I will be this year on the Albert-Bapaume road—was the massive Lochnagar crater which, 100 years later, is still a huge testament to the horror and brutality of the war. It was exploded seconds before 7.30 am on 1 July 1916. It ought to have presaged greater advances on that day than it did. I am not going to enter into the culpability aspect of the battle but it ought to have been foreseen that the German defences were much stronger than the British Army had anticipated. I invite noble Lords to consider what a seven-day barrage, day and night, must be like. It went on 24 hours a day for seven days, so the men who went over from the trenches could not have had any sleep for seven days before they entered into the awful field of machine-gun fire that mowed down so many of them.

It is important, when we pay tribute to the men who gave their lives, to remember that many were Commonwealth soldiers. They were not only from Newfoundland, which was separate from Canada at the time, New Zealand and Australia but there was also the Second Indian Cavalry and the British West Indies Regiment. Sadly, when we studied the subject at school—certainly in my time—they were not mentioned. However, I am glad to see that in the commemoration of the war 100 years on, their sacrifices are being recognised.

There will be many opportunities for us to mark the occasion in a sombre way. We should remember the dead of all sides and all countries—something like 300,000 in that battle. On the first day, 19,240 British soldiers died, the worst date in the history of the British Army. That gives pause for thought. Much more could be said but, as time is limited, I shall leave it there and we will all pay our own respects on 1 July.