BATTLE OF THE SOMME

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 10

BATTLE OF THE SOMME

HISTORIC ANNIVERSARY

Yesterday, the twentieth anniverversary of the entry of the New Zealand Division into the Battle of the Somme, was commemorated in Wellington by a recital on the National War Memorial Carillon at Buckle Street, which commenced at 4 p.m. The division, in this its first battle on the Western Front, spent twentythree days in the most severe fighting. Gains made in that attack were greater than in any single operation since the offensive was launched, on July 1, and they were not bettered in 1916.

The advance was ' all .' the more notable in view of the importance with which the Germans regarded the position, instructions having been issued that no sap-head or shell-crater was to be abandoned without the express order of the Supreme Command of the First Germany Army. It was impossible to fulfil such orders, however much they might have been respected, in face of the British offensive. The operations had an incalculable effect on the morale of the division, for although shaken physically by reason of the heavy casualties, it was strengthened by the knowledge that it had won the first battle as a division.

New Zealand won its first Victoria Cross in France during the battle, the award being made to Sergeant D. F. Brown, of the 2nd Battalion, Otago Regiment. With a comrade, on September 15, Sergeant Brown twice wiped out machine-gun posts which were holding up the attack, and he repeated the performance singlehanded a few days later. The award was posthumous, Sergeant Brown being killed while sniping the retreating enemy. The day also was notable in that it was the first occasion on which tanks were brought into use during the war. Two tanks. "Cordon Rouge" and "Creme de Menthe," that accompanied the New Zealanders were slow in getting away, but eventually caught up with the men and led them, laughing and cheering, through Flers, which the division captured after a short resistance, '