Bloody Meadows: Investigating Landscapes of Battle
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Available to ship in days. Sign in with Facebook Sign in options. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Refresh and try again. Miles 's review Aug 26, Following his investigations in The Holy Thief, which implicated those at the very top of authority in Soviet Russia, Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself decorated and hailed as an example to all Soviet workers. But Korolev lives in an uneasy peace — his new-found knowledge is dangerous, and if it is discovered what his real actions were during the case, he will face deportation to the frozen camps of the far north.
But when the knock on the door comes, in the dead of night, it is not Siberia Korolev is destined for. Instead, Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks the detective to look into the suspected suicide of a young woman: Maria Alexandovna Lenskaya, a model citizen.
A big fellow called Andy Robb pulled me back I'd have liked to get in among them Germans with my bayonet because they'd mowed us down like pieces of wood Failure to take Thiepval is bleeding them all. The village continues to rake the Ulsters with machine gun fire. Artillery observers believe, wrongly, that it has been taken, and so British artillery stops firing on it. A t his headquarters in Querrieu, Rawlinson considers the reports he is receiving. The villages of Serre, B. The French on our right are also going strong and have taken the Bois Favier.
A rthur Hadow of the Newfoundlanders climbs out of his trench, carrying his thick ash walking stick. He makes the signal and the Newfies rush out, assembling quickly into their pre-arranged formation. Their spirits are high.
But their attack route, ordered by a commander who has over-estimated the success of the early attacks, is in full view of the German defences. They start to walk, and within seconds they are dying. In theory the 1 st Essex should be beside them, but they are held back by congestion in the trenches. So the Germans have no other targets but the Newfoundlanders. They are loaded with equipment and ordered to walk, not run. British forces are moving into Serre, he is told, and have also entered Thiepval.
Neither of these things is true. This is not his fault.
The Germans are trained to operate their guns like industrial equipment. I had another twenty minutes in which to live in comparative safety. O f the 21, tonnes of explosives delivered by the British, only have been high explosive shells fit for penetrating deep dugouts. Yet now his brigade commander orders another attack. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
The information coming back to him is wildly optimistic. Observers see the artillery lift as planned and assume the objectives are taken. Streams of German prisoners from the ones which are give the impression of victory. German signal flares calling down artillery are mistaken for British signal flares indicating success. Grenades punctuate the melee. All the time they are taking machine gun fire from the flanks, from the villages which have not yet been taken.
The reply from brigade HQ is short: T he Newfoundlanders all made wills the previous night. They knew this would be violent. German shells are exploding all around them as the enemy puts down devastating fire into No Man's Land. They can see for themselves that the rest of the brigade has failed in its attack. But the communication trenches leading to the front line are all blocked by wounded men from that particular disaster, and the Newfies cannot get through.
That means they will have to climb out of their rear trenches and move to the front above ground — an extra yards. I t is one hour into the Somme offensive. Roughly 30, British soldiers are already dead or wounded. I n many places the British have managed to take parts of the German trench system.
The machine guns are waiting. Between the forest and the front line they lose around men. In all they lose 25 out of 28 officers and ordinary soldiers out of E dward Liveing lies by the German wire, listening to the chaotic noise. A familiar sergeant appears from the smoke. Their conversation is typically genteel. Together they start to crawl back to the British line. Their attempt is being mirrored on enormous scale across the field.
Men whose attacks have faltered are sheltering in shell holes, occasionally sniping back at the Germans, but mostly trying to get back to their own lines. I n Thiepval Wood the next wave of Irish troops prepare themselves. Many intone the Lord's Prayer under their breath. Shells are falling into the forest and trees are burningall around them like absurd candles. Nearby the 2nd Salford Pals have been watching the carnage; they know they are next. Now he has to watch them die. In the kill zones his hundred-strong company is reduced to A former shop assistant is sent back to call for reinforcements, but shot down as soon as he breaks cover.
Tweed tries to write a second message but the notebook is shot out of his hands. The Salfords will be pinned down here for the next two hours. N ear the village of La Boiselle the British are advancing up two fortified valleys, "Sausage" and "Mash". Within ten minutes of attacking 80 per cent of the first wave troops are dead or wounded. The first soldiers to reach the parapet disappear in the plume of a German flame thrower.
In Sausage the Germans wait until the Brits are very close and then let loose. They are so eager, and the slaughter so complete, that many of them stand up in the open on the lip of their trench to shoot down into the valley. A t his chateau headquarters, Haig reviews his messages.
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A s the first wave of Ulstermen force their way further in, Germans they have missed pop up behind them and start shooting. Machine guns strafe them from the villages on either side. O ne attack is working: Some are wearing orange sashes, while many sing traditional songs. It is, by popular agreement, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.
And by creeping up as close to the barrage as possible they have beaten the Germans to the parapet. They sweep into the trenches, moving quickly, throwing bombs down every dugout they can find.
I bought this book to add to my library of battlefield Investigation materials. This book is not what the title leads you to believe. You would expect "landscapes" to . Editorial Reviews. About the Author. John Carman is a lecturer in the Archaeology Department of the University of Cambridge and co-editor (with Anthony.
They need to be quick: A t Gommecourt Edward Liveing has made it to the German wire. His sergeant is nowhere to be seen. Behind him, the fourth line has disintegrated. Men are kneeling and firing up at the German trenches and Liveing tries to order them forward, but cannot be heard. Giving up, he turns and moves up towards the German trench when he feels a sharp warmth in his hip and drops to the ground.
He assumes that a shell has gone off in a sodden crater and scalded him with boiling water. In fact, he has been shot. A t his observation platform Rawlinson can see nothing. A few flashes are visible through the thick mist. There is very little he can do now to affect events. A ll along the front the British are advancing into the kill zones. Those who reach the enemy trench line often find the barbed wire has not been cut.
Thousands of soldiers are tangled up in it as they try to get through and hang there, jerking wildly as the Germans riddle them with bullets. Two Edinburgh Pals battalions take fire from the side and lose several hundred men in a few minutes. The Pals regiments are one of the most poignant features of the Somme. Heavy casualties mean small communities lose hundreds of people at once. The town of Accrington is sons down in the space of 20 minutes. O ne mine at Kasino Point has failed to go off. He now has a terrible choice: He pushes the plunger.
A giant fountain, rising from our line of men, about yards from me. Still on the move I stared at this, not realising what it was. The British take casualties, but the late detonation means Germans who have already re-occupied their trenches now go up in smoke. This is actually one of the more successful attacks. His machine gun makes short work of them. Another crew nearby suffer a jam before a shell hit detonates their ammunition box. The Germans are trained to operate their guns like industrial equipment.
Instead of aiming at individual targets they lay down constant fire over a wide area in overlapping kill zones. A t the Hawthorn Ridge redoubt the Germans are in crisis. Though some have beaten the Brits to the parapet, the Brits are now moving into the crater and the surrounding trench system. Unteroffizier Aicheler and his machine gun team have been blown backwards into the bottom of their firing pit by the mine explosion. By the time they disentangle themselves and get their gun set up the British are inside a German trench just twenty meters away.
Aicheler opens fire, but after ten rounds the gun stops. The British follow — and are cut down at point black range. Now Aicheler turns his attention to a second British group. Within seconds he kills six men and the rest immediately surrender. You can still see some segments of what he filmed today: N ear Mametz, Captain Martin of the 9 th Devonshires leads his men from a rear trench.
A keen artist, he spent some time before the battle building a plasticine model of his sector, and became increasingly worried that the Germans would site a machine gun at the base of a crucifix just outside the town. As his men leave the shelter of a small hill they are mown down by a single machine gun exactly where Martin predicted. He dies with them. A t Gommecourt Edward Liveing c limbs out of his trench and waves his rifle to advance. The landscape in front of him is an endless moonscape pitted with shell holes and bodies. It is the passing of German bullets. Ahead of him the second line is disappearing into the smoke, one man after another falling down.
A terrified hare jumps up in front of him and runs into some yellowing grass. T he Brits begin taking heavy casualties. This is not what they were expecting. One private of the Bradford Pals is smacked on his helmet by a bullet as he climbs out of the trench and falls back, alive but dazed. In some sections the British have to bunch together as they pass through gaps in their own barbed wire. The Germans target those gaps. Dead bodies start to pile up in the narrow openings, each new soldier more vulnerable as he tries to climb over his comrades.
T he German machine guns sputter into life. Private Slater of the Bradford Pals recalls:. We strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways as the were hit — quite unlike the way actors do it in films. Those in their trenches take to their ladders.
Across fifteen miles of front thousands of men step onto ground on which nobody has stood in daylight for nearly two years. Attacking the crucial village of Montauban, Captain Nevill of the East Surreys has equipped each of his platoons with a football and offered a reward to whoever can get theirs into the German lines first. One ball is lettered:. T he British guns stop. An uncanny silence falls across the battlefield. The sound of birdsong is quite audible.
Some of the British now assume the barrage really has worked. Asquith of the Barnsley Pals. There was an ear-splitting roar drowning all the guns, flinging the machine sideways in the repercussing air. The earth column rose, higher and higher to almost 4, feet. There it hung, or seemed to hang, for a moment in the air, like the silhouette of some great cypress tree, then fell away in a widening cone of dust and debris.
- Bloody Meadow – Burials – The Towton Battlefield Archaeology Project.
- Bloody Meadows: Investigating Landscape of Battle - John Carman, Patricia Carman - Google Книги.
- Buds and Blossoms, Opus 107: Twelve Melodious Studies for Intermediate to Advanced Piano (Kalmus Edition).
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- Bloody Meadows: Investigating landscapes of battle.
Again the roar, the upflung machine, the strange gaunt silhouette invading the sky. The Boisselle redoubt was intact. Now your reception is going to match your turbulent longing to enter! The advance is failing before it has started. T he German trenches near the mine are a mess.
Men stumble around with punctured eardrums; others are buried in their dugouts, fighting to dig themselves out before they run out of oxygen. But many of the defences are intact. Outside there is so much chalk in the air it resembles a snowstorm. In ordering the mine to be blown ten minutes early, the local British commander, Lt Gen Hunter-Weston, has made a fatal mistake.
His staff believe the time is necessary for the debris to settle. It also gives the Germans ample space to recover. N earby Albert McMillan , a young soldier of the Public Schools Battalion, peeps up over the lip of the trench to watch the mine. The sight is impressive but sobering. Then the shock wave hits him and he is thrown down to the floor of the trench, winded. T he Hawthorn Ridge mine goes off.
Bloody Meadow – Burials
Its force rushes upwards at nine miles per second. Entire German platoons vanish. Geoffrey Malins watches in awe:. It rocked and swayed. I gripped hold of my tripod to steady myself. Then, for all the world like a gigantic sponge, the earth rose in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible, grinding roar the earth fell back upon itself, leaving in its place a mountain of smoke.
I looked upon all that followed from the purely pictorial point of view, and even felt annoyed if a shell burst outside the range of my camera. As he turns his handle, men and pieces of planking blown high into the air begin to fall towards the ground. G eoffrey Malins grasps the handle of his camera and begins to turn. His eyes are fixed on the Hawthorn Redoubt. The seconds creep past.
Dear god, has it misfired? Sweat beads on his forehead. A ll officers in the Newfoundland regiments are instructed to synchronise their watches. In these times Newfoundland is not yet part of Canada. Its troops have come a long way to fight for the Empire. Many units have been instructed to walk calmly over the top towards the German lines so as to maintain their formation.
But other units are doing things their own way, depending on the methods of the local commander. If I forget you, do not forget me.
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I had another twenty minutes in which to live in comparative safety. What was the difference between twenty minutes and twenty years? Really and truly what was the difference? I was living in the present, and that was enough. I am afraid that this working of mind will appear unintelligible. I cannot explain it further. G eoff Malins has reached his filming position and set up his camera. The Hawthorn mine is set to go off ten minutes before the main attack, at Behind him, three soldiers are making bets on who will get there first.
An officer mops his brow, nervously clutching his swagger stick in alternating hands. O ver the past seven weeks the British have fired 1. That should be enough. But the problem is quality. Britain's war industry simply is not producing the right shells in the right numbers. One million of them are shrapnel, barely fit even to cut barbed wire without great skill.
And the British artillery corps does not have great skill: O f the 21, tonnes of explosives delivered by the British, only have been high explosive shells fit for penetrating deep dugouts. In short, the British commanders are dangerously wrong about how good their artillery is. As a consequence, many of their soldiers have no idea what is about to happen. A t a fortified German position near Thiepval known as the Schwaben Redoubt, Unteroffizier Friedrich Hinkel is coordinating a dangerous defence — above ground. He cannot allow his men to miss that moment — which means someone always has to be checking above ground.
Sentries dash outside into the shellfire every few minutes. Everyone knows where they have to be when the moment comes, and how many steps it will take to get there. British trenches on the Somme were built in the assumption that they would be temporary.
German trenches were much more serious affairs. Their dugouts were often thirty feet below ground; some had door bells, water tanks with taps, wooden stair cases, electric light, steel doors, real kitchens, even wallpaper. Along the German line in dugouts just like these, the Germans are waiting tensely. They have endured seven days of this horrible bombardment — seven days without daylight, fresh water, sometimes without being able to bury their dead.