page_title: Ovillers-la-Boisselle in World War I
section_title: Events 1 to 16 July
hierarchical_section_title: Ovillers-la-Boisselle in World War I / Ovillers-la-Boisselle in 1916 / Battle of the Somme / Events 1 to 16 July
caption_attribution_description: Map of the British 34th Division's attack on the Ovillers-La Boisselle sector of the Somme front, astride the Albert-Bapaume road, on 1 July 1916 - the First day on the Somme. The British front-line is shown in red, the German trenches are shown in blue. The German defences north of the road as far as Beaumont Hamel were held by the 26th Reserve Division (north to south, the 121st Reserve, 119th Reserve, 99th Reserve and 180th Regiments). South of the road, from La Boisselle to Mametz, the defences were held by the 28th Reserve Division (north to south, 110th Reserve, 111th Reserve and 109th Reserve Regiments). The three brigades of the British 34th Division are shown. The 102nd (Tyneside Scottish) and 101st Brigades attacked from the front-line. The 103rd (Tyneside Irish) Brigade attacked from the reserve position on the Tara-Usna Line and had to cross the exposed Avoca Valley before reaching the British front-line. The path of the small party from the 103rd Brigade towards Contalmaison is shown.
context_page_description: In World War I, the small commune of Ovillers-la-Boisselle, located some 22 miles north-east of Amiens in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France, was the site of intense and sustained fighting between German and Allied forces. Between 1914 and 1916, the Western Front ran through the commune, and the villages were completely destroyed. After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the former inhabitants returned and gradually rebuilt most of the infrastructure as it had been before the war.
  The commune extends to the north and south of the D 929 Albert–Bapaume road, a former Roman road. The constituent village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle lies on the north of the road. The constituent village of La Boisselle, which had 35 houses in 1914, lies to the south-west of Ovillers at the junction of the D 929 and the D 104 to Contalmaison. To avoid confusion, the British Expeditionary Force in its documents referred to Ovillers-la-Boisselle north of the D 929 as "Ovillers" and to the village south of the road as "La Boisselle".
context_section_description: The fight for the ruins of La Boisselle and Ovilliers was to begin in the morning of Saturday 1 July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. The British Fourth and Third armies, together with nine corps of the French Sixth Army, would attack the German 2nd Army in an area stretching from Foucaucourt south of the River Somme northwards beyond the River Ancre,  to Serre and Gommecourt,  3.2 kilometres (2 mi) beyond. The objective of the attack was to capture the German first and second positions from Serre south to the  D 929 Albert–Bapaume road and the first position from the road south to Foucaucourt.
  At 7:28 a.m. the Royal Engineers detonated their four mines at La Boisselle, and  15 other mines were fired along other sectors of the front line. The explosion of the Lochnagar mine obliterated 91–122 metres (300–400 ft) of German fortifications, including nine dug-outs and the men inside them. Most of the 5th Company of Reserve Infantry Regiment 110 and the trenches nearby were destroyed. The Lochnagar mine lay on the sector assaulted by the Grimsby Chums, a Pals battalion (10th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment). When the main attack began at Zero Hour, the Grimsby Chums occupied the crater and began to fortify the eastern lip, which dominated the vicinity and the advance continued to the Grüne Stellung (second position), where it was stopped by the German 4th Company, which then counter-attacked and forced the British back to the crater.
  The blowing of the Lochnagar and Y Sap mines was witnessed by pilots who were flying over the battlefield to report back on British troop movements. It had been arranged that continuous overlapping patrols would fly throughout the day. 2nd Lieutenant Cecil Lewis' patrol of 3 Squadron was warned against flying too close to La Boisselle, where two mines were due to go up, but would be able to watch from a safe distance. Flying up and down the line in a Morane Parasol, he watched from above Thiepval, almost two miles from La Boisselle, and later described the early morning scene in his book Sagittarius Rising (1936): 
  We were over Thiepval and turned south to watch the mines. As we sailed down above all, came the final moment. Zero! At Boisselle the earth heaved and flashed, a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the sky. There was an ear-splitting roar, drowning all the guns, flinging the machine sideways in the repercussing air. The earthly column rose, higher and higher to almost four thousand feet. There it hung, or seemed to hang, for a moment in the air, like a silhouette of some great cypress tree, then fell away in a widening cone of dust and debris. A moment later came the second mine. Again the roar, the upflung machine, the strange gaunt silhouette invading the sky. Then the dust cleared and we saw the two white eyes of the craters. The barrage had lifted to the second-line trenches, the infantry were over the top, the attack had begun.
  — Cecil Lewis, whose aircraft was hit by lumps of mud thrown up by the explosion.
  Despite their colossal size, the Lochnagar and Y Sap mines failed to help sufficiently neutralise the German defences in the village, and the German troops had deep shelters that withstood the British artillery fire. The preparatory seven-day artillery bombardment had cut much of the German trench wire but the field fortifications beyond were far less affected, particularly the deep dugouts succeeded in keeping the German garrisons comparatively safe. The German losses through the bombardment remained miraculously low, and the mood of the men in their underground shelters was "splendid".
  The British infantry attack on Ovillers and La Boisselle was launched at Zero Hour (7:30 a.m.) by the III Corps, its 34th Division attempting the capture of La Boisselle and its 8th Division attempting the capture of Ovillers. The British attack turned into a disaster: La Boisselle was meant to fall in 20 minutes, but by the end of the first day of the battle, neither La Boisselle nor Ovillers had been taken while the III Corps divisions had lost more than 11,
caption: The Ovillers (in upper half) and La Boisselle sectors (in lower half) with the 34th Division attack, 1 July 1916
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