12 things to know about Delville Wood

08 July 2016 - 02:00 By ANDREW UNSWORTH
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
The South African National Memorial at Delville Wood, built in honour of South Africans who perished in World War I.
The South African National Memorial at Delville Wood, built in honour of South Africans who perished in World War I.
Image: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

July 15 marks the centenary of the Battle of Delville Wood, a moment of both terror and glory for South African troops in WW1. As President Zuma goes to France this week to unveil a new memorial, Andrew Unsworth lists 12 facts about the battle and the monuments to it.

1)  The Battle of the Somme took place between  July 1 and November 18 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. The battle was the largest battle of World War 1 on the Western Front, and it was the British Empire’s greatest military disaster. Over a million men were killed or wounded.

story_article_left1

2) The Battle of Delville Wood ( the D’elville woods),  near the village of Longueval, was one of the battles fought during that campaign, from July 14 to September 15. It was the first battle of the  South African 1st Infantry Brigade, including a Southern Rhodesian contingent, fighting for the British against Germany. They held the wood from July 15–20. At the end of the battle the brigade had lost 2,536 men, or 80%. At 6pm on July 20, only three officers and 140 men, many of them wounded, marched out.

3) During the night of July 15 when the South Africans were dug in at Delville Wood, German fire into the wood from four  Feldartillerie brigades reached a rate of 400 shells per minute.

4) The South Africans carried spades for digging, but the roots and tree trunks in the woods made it impossible to dig proper trenches so they were only able to dig shallow shelters before the German soldiers counter-attacked their positions.

5) After the war, three wooden crosses were cut from the remaining stumps in the wood and presented to Durban, Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg as memorials. The Pietermaritzburg cross, which is  part of the city’s war memorial, is called the “Weeping Cross of Delville Wood”, because it is claimed that it “weeps” resin and linseed oil  around the July anniversary of the battle, with no scientific explanation.

6) After World War 1, Delville Wood was bought by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (politician and author of  Jock of The Bushveld) and presented to South Africa. The land was bought back by the French government for  one franc and granted to  South Africa in perpetuity for the memorial.

full_story_image_hleft1

7) The memorial at Delville Wood was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, while Alfred Turner was the sculptor of the bronze statue of two men clasping one hand over the back of  a war horse, which represents physical energy. The men symbolise Castor and Pollux from Greek and Roman mythology: they were twins who had one mother and two different fathers, one mortal and one immortal.

On the monument they represent  the English and Afrikaans South Africans who died there. The monument was unveiled in 1926 and paid for by public subscription.

8) After the battle, a German officer commented that “Delville Wood had disintegrated into a shattered wasteland of shattered trees, charred and burning stumps, craters thick with mud and blood, and corpses, corpses everywhere. In places they were piled four deep. Worst of all was the lowing of the wounded. It sounded like a cattle ring at the spring fair.”

After the battle only one tree remained standing in the wood, and it is still there. The South African government later paid for the wood to be replanted.

story_article_right2

9) There are monuments to the SA soldiers who died in World War 1 in towns and villages across South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape and KZN, where many volunteered.

The two main memorials to Delville Wood itself are right in front of the Union Buildings in Pretoria, with a copy of Turner’s sculpture, and another in the Company Gardens in Cape Town.

10) The South African memorial at Delville Wood had no names inscribed on it.

But now the names of all the SA soldiers who died in World War 1 have been etched into a new wall at the monument, and was unveiled by President Zuma this week.

It includes the names of solders of all races, including more than over 1,100 Native Labour Corps members who died in Europe, including 260 who are  buried in Arque-la-Bataille cemetery near the Delville Wood memorial, and the hundreds of members of the same corps who died in the sinking of the SAS Mendi in the English Channel on the way to France in 1917. 

 Nearly 90,000 black and coloured South Africans were enlisted into the corps.

The words over the entrance arch of the monument  are inscribed both in English and Afrikaans.

“Their ideal is our legacy. Their Sacrifice our Inspiration”

“Vir ons is hul ideaal ’n erfenis, hul offer ’n besieling”

full_story_image_hleft2

11) Some survivors of the battle went on to perish in later campaigns of World War 1, while others died of the Spanish Flu after the war.

12) The National Museum of Military History in Saxonwold, Johannesburg, has artefacts from the battle on display, including a lantern that was recovered from the battlefield. It still has the stub of the original candle inside it.

The museum used to own the first ever Victoria Cross (VC) awarded to a South African, Private Frederick Faulds.

On two occasions during the Battle of Delville Wood, Faulds  risked his life under heavy fire and in daylight, when he carried trapped and wounded comrades to safety. He died in 1950 and was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Harare, but his VC was stolen from the museum in 1994.

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now