page_title: Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt
section_title: 1 July
hierarchical_section_title: Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt / Battle / 1 July
caption_attribution_description: Español: Voladura de la primera galería subterránea bajo el campo de batalla del Somme. 7:20 de la mañana, 1 de julio de 1916. The explosion of the mine beneath Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt on July 1, 1916. See Image:Hawthorn Ridge mine 1 July 1916 2.jpg for a later photograph in this sequence.
context_page_description: Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt was a German front-line fortification, west of the village of Beaumont Hamel on the Somme. The redoubt was built after the end of the Battle of Albert, and as French and later British attacks on the Western Front became more formidable, the Germans added fortifications and trench positions near the original lines around Hawthorn Ridge. At 7:20 a.m. on 1 July 1916, the British fired a huge mine beneath the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt. Sprung ten minutes before zero hour, it was one of 19 mines detonated on the first day of the Battle of the Somme; the detonation of this mine was filmed by Geoffrey Malins. The attack on the redoubt by part of the 29th Division of VIII Corps was a costly failure.
  Hunter-Weston had ordered the mine to be fired early to protect the advancing infantry from falling debris but this also gave the Germans time to occupy the rear lip of the mine crater. When British parties advanced across no man's land to occupy the crater, they were engaged by German small-arms fire. A few British soldiers reached the objective but at noon they were ejected by a German counter-attack.
context_section_description: A witness to the detonation of the Hawthorn Ridge mine was British cinematographer Geoffrey Malins, who filmed the 29th Division attack. Malins set up on the side of the White City trenches, about 0.5 mi (0.80 km) from Hawthorn Ridge, ready for the explosion at 7:20 a.m.,
  The ground where I stood gave a mighty convulsion. 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 high in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible grinding roar the earth settles back upon itself, leaving in its place a mountain of smoke.
  — Geoffrey Malins
  As soon as the mine blew, the bombardment on the German front line by heavy artillery lifted and Stokes mortars, which had been placed in advanced sites, along with four more in the sunken lane in no man's land, began a hurricane bombardment on the front trench. The regimental history of RIR 119 recorded that
  ... there was a terrific explosion which for the moment completely drowned out the thunder of the artillery. A great cloud of smoke rose up from the trenches of No 9 Company, followed by a tremendous shower of stones.... The ground all round was white with the debris of chalk, as if it had been snowing and a gigantic crater, over fifty yards in diameter and some sixty feet deep gaped like an open wound in the side of the hill.
  — RIR 119 historian
  and that the detonation was the signal for the German infantry to stand to at the shelter entrances. Two platoons of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (86th Brigade, 29th Division) with four machine-guns and four Stokes mortars, rushed the crater. As the British troops reached the near lip, they were engaged by small arms fire from the far lip and the flanks. At least three Gruppen of the 1st Platoon (Leutnant Renz) and the members of the 2nd Platoon (Leutnant Böhm) on the left side of the platoon area had been killed in the mine explosion. The entrances to the 3rd Platoon (Leutnant Breitmeyer) and some of the 2nd Platoon Unterstände (underground shelters) caved in and only two Gruppen escaped. The rest of the 9th Company in a Stollen (deep-mined dug-outs) survived but the entrances were blocked and the troops inside were not rescued until after the British attack.
  The detonation was swiftly followed by a German counter-barrage and in the next few minutes, German machine-guns opened fire all along the front. The British divisions forming up in no man's land to reach the jumping-off position 100 yd (91 m) short of the German front line, were caught in the machine-gun fire and suffered many casualties. German troops occupied the far lip of the crater at the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, turned machine-guns and trench mortars to the right and left flanks and fired into the British troops as they tried to advance. The attack on the redoubt and the rest of the VIII Corps front collapsed and was a costly failure. By 8:30 a.m., the only ground held by the 29th Division was the western lip of the crater. Two German platoons bombed from shell-hole to shell-hole towards the crater, forcing the survivors to retire to the British front line. RIR 119 suffered 292 casualties, most in the mine explosion beneath the redoubt. Casualties in the 86th Brigade were 1,969, of whom 613 were killed and 81 were reported missing.
caption: The explosion of the mine under Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, 1 July 1916 (Photo 1 by Ernest Brooks)
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