New Zealand artillery on the Somme - the Battle of the Somme

New Zealand's artillery war on the Somme

The Great War was halfway through when the big guns roared into life along the New Zealand Division's sector around the Somme in support of a major attack on 15 September 1916.

In the preceding days, field gunners tried to blow gaps in the barbed-wire entanglements in No Man's Land and between trench lines, while howitzers pulverised trenches, lines of communication, machine-gun nests, observation posts and other strong points. New Zealand gunners also fired poison-gas shells for the first time on 12 September.

Targets were identified from balloons or aircraft, or by Forward Observation Officers – artillery officers stationed in the front line. These observers called down concentrated fire from groups of batteries, called crashes, on anything that moved around the German lines, while British heavy guns sought out enemy batteries. At 6 p.m. on the 14th a continuous heavy bombardment began.

At 6.20 next morning, all the hundred-odd field guns attached to the New Zealand Division opened fire along the 1000 yards of trench line, which was the infantry's first target. Enemy troops who had been kept awake all night by the preliminary shelling, and who were now terrified at the prospect of imminent attack, took cover from a rain of steel that lasted for minutes but felt like hours. Then the creeping barrage began, starting in No Man's Land and lifting (advancing) at 50 yards a minute until it reached the second trench line, which was pounded for some time. In large-scale attacks like this one, a combination of stationary and creeping barrages was repeated several times.

The Allied infantry advanced at a theoretically safe distance behind the creeping barrage. (Some rounds always fell short, due to defects in the shells, mistakes in calibrating the guns or imprecise knowledge of where soldiers were.) German attempts to move up men from the rear trenches would falter against this curtain of fire. Other guns continued shelling the front trenches, and these pinned the defenders down while the infantry moved towards them.

On this morning, as was usual, enough Germans – especially machine-gunners and artillerymen – survived to obstruct the advance once the barrage lifted. Many sheltered in the lanes that were left unshelled so British tanks – being used in battle for the first time – could advance unimpeded. The New Zealand infantry, advancing in waves, took all their targets for the day, including the village of Flers. One-third of those who fought in the battle had become casualties; it was a typical toll on the Somme.

Because of setbacks elsewhere along the front, the anticipated breakthrough was not achieved on 15 September, or on any of the other days that the New Zealand gunners remained on the Somme.

New Zealand's artillery war on the Somme lasted three further weeks after the New Zealand infantry left the front line. It was a miserable time for the artillery. There was rain, shellfire, little cover and, sometimes, insufficient food.

By the time New Zealand's artillery was withdrawn from the line in the last week of October 1916, it had suffered about 500 casualties. The gunners had fired half a million shells at the Germans.