Page 48 - QARANC Vol 14 No 10 2015

46 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Welsh Branch
Memetz Wood
David Caddick, of Arena Travel, is organising a bespoke tour to Mametz Wood on behalf of The Royal British Legion for the QARANC Association, Welsh Branch.
The anniversary of the Battle is July 7-12 2016 and the tour has been arranged for July 7 -11 2016.
Accommodation will be on a Half Board basis (breakfast and dinner) at the Ibis Centre, St Omer. The coach will originate in Swansea with other pick up points can be arranged en route to Folkestone. The price is £585 per person (twin share). The single supplement is £125 per person. The company will accept provisional reservations for a £75 per person refundable deposit.
The outline itinerary, which includes the last resting place of Nellie Spindler, is as follows, but can be adjusted nearer the time to tie in with any official ceremonies.
There will be up to 42 places available, filled on a first come basis. Further information and applications by email to: Rosy Hubbard: Email: rosyandphil434@btinternet.com Mob: 07788 265465
ITINERARY
Day 1: Coach from Swansea to Folkestone. Euro tunnel crossing to Calais. Continue to St Omer and the Ibis hotel.
Day 2: Visit to MAMETZ Wood for wreath laying at the Welsh Memorial.
Day 3: Morning visit to Hazebrouk CWGC Cemetery. From October 1914 to September 1917, casualty-clearing stations were posted at Hazebrouck. The Germans shelled and bombed the town between September 1917 and September 1918, making it unsafe for hospitals, but in September and October 1918 No.9 British Red Cross Hospital was stationed there. Continue to Lijssenthoek Cemetery. Wreath laying at the grave of Nellie Spindler.
Amongst the men buried here is one woman - Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. Nellie, originally from Wakefield, was with the 44th Casualty Clearing Station, then based near Brandhoek. On the 21st of August 1917 the Germans shelled the area around the 44th CCS at around 10 a.m., critically wounding Nellie, who was in bed at the time and who died within a few minutes. She was just 26 years old.
The CCS moved that same day to Lijssenthoek, and Nellie was buried there with full Military Honours, and with the Last Post played over her grave. The War Office officially described her as ‘Killed in Action’. She had only been on the Western Front since May 1917. According to the CWGC records she is one of only two female Great War casualties who are buried in Belgium.
Day 4: Guided tour of related sites in Picardy.
Day 5: Drive to Calais for Eurotunnel to Folkestone. Return to Swansea.
INFORMATION ON THE BATTLE OF MAMETZ WOOD
Taken from wikipedia.org
Mametz Wood was the objective of the 38th (Welsh) Division during the First Battle of the Somme. The attack occurred in a northerly direction over a ridge, focusing on the German positions in the wood, between 7 July and 12 July 1916. On the 7 July, the men were halted by machine gun fire before they reached the wood. Further attacks by the 17th Division on 8 July failed to improve the position. Infuriated by what he saw as a distinct lack of “push” Sir Douglas Haig and Lt-General Henry Rawlinson visited the HQ of the Welsh Division to make their displeasure known. Major General Ivor Philipps, officer commanding the Welsh Division, was subsequently relieved of his command.
Haig passed control of the Division to Major General Herbert Watts, commander of the 7th Division and told him to use it “as he saw fit”. Watts planned a full-scale attack for the July but organising the attacking formations took some time and the attack was subsequently postponed until 10 July 1916. The operational order was blunt, stating that the Division would attack the wood with the aim of “capturing the whole of it”.
The 10 July attack was on a larger scale than had been attempted earlier. Despite heavy casualties the fringe of the wood was soon reached and some bayonet fighting took place before the wood was entered and a number of German machine guns silenced. Fighting in the wood was
fierce with the Germans giving ground stubbornly.
The 14th (Swansea) (Service) Battalion, the Welsh Regiment, went into the attack with 676 men and after a day of hard fighting had lost almost 400 men, killed or wounded before being relieved. Other battalions suffered similar losses. However, by 12 July the wood was effectively cleared of the enemy. The Welsh Division had lost about 4,000 men, killed or wounded in this searing engagement. It would not be used in a massed attack again until 31 July
1917.
It was at Mametz that the war poet Siegfried Sassoon,
of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, made a single-handed attack on the enemy trenches on 4 July 1916, as recorded in his memoirs.
The Welsh poet Owen Sheers wrote a poem in 2005 to commemorate the battle in his Skirrid Hill collection:
The wood still stands today, surrounded by farmland. Overgrown shell craters and trenches can still be made out. There is a memorial to the 38th Division nearby on a rough single lane road. This can be reached from the village of Mametz on the D64 road. The memorial takes the form of a red Welsh Dragon, facing the Wood and tearing at barbed wire, on top of a three-metre plinth. The South Wales Branch of the Western Front Association following a public fund-raising appeal constructed the memorial. The dragon, which tops the memorial, was made by Welsh sculptor/blacksmith David Petersen.