* second line from the phrase beginning Dulce Et Decorum Est -Wilfred Owen’s gas poem.
September 15 2016 marks the 100 year anniversary of the Somme Offensive. This post details the involvement of just one of Dinah’s grandsons and grand nephews who served in the Great War. What must it have been like as a grandmother and mother to see these young men go off to war, to feel the grief and worry of your daughters as they farewelled their boys? This is the story of one who never returned.
Private Benjamin Webster Lawn
2418, 5ft 4½, 8st (64 kg), with ‘clear complexion, light blue eyes’ and ‘black hair’ signed up at Reefton on the fifth of February 1916; passed fit on the sixth February, sailed from Greymouth on the ninth and two days later he was in Trentham where he attested on 11 February 1916.
Ben Lawn was the second youngest son of James and Rachel. He had grown up in Black’s Point, with the sound of the great stamper battery ringing in his ears, a tease of his older sister Dinah and playmate of younger brother Jim. The three youngest children of James and Rachel played together, and went to school together. With dark curly hair Ben had the look of his mother Rachel, and he had grown tall as he reached his teens. Leaving school he headed to the inevitable job at the stamper as battery hand, working for the Consolidated Gold Mining Company. He kept fit like his brothers playing rugby and even joined his friends one Easter weekend cycling the Buller Gorge to Westport on his brother Charles’ bike.
Ben’s army record suggests he had high spirits in training, with two misdemeanours recorded, over staying leave: forfeit three days’ pay and bringing liquor into camp. The last meant he forfeited any leave and remained confined to camp before embarkation on Troopship No.35 Willochra which left Wellington on 21 May 1916.
Two months and six days later they arrived in Devonport, on 26 of July 1916, and two days after that he marched into Sling camp where he was attached to the British Expeditionary Force – France, 1st Infantry Battalion 2nd Company of the Canterbury Regiment. After a short, sharp, shock of drills and exercises, the young men who had arrived in high spirits had been transformed to a disciplined and focused unit, ready to face the enemy. One month after arriving in England on 28 August they were hardened up enough to be on their way to the front in France. The following day they arrived at the NZEF Depot at Etaples, near Calais where Ben joined the 1st Battalion Canterbury Regiment and was posted to the new 13th Company on 8 September.
The company went into the Somme, where the offensive had begun on 1 July. The British and Allies were trying to retake an area that the Germans had occupied for some time. What was once rolling farmland, woods, quarries and cellars in farms and villages disguised machine gun posts, and the ground was heavily entrenched. The Germans were in strong fortified bunkers, some double storied underground and trenches protected by vast beds of barbed wire some 40 yards (metres) deep. Bare ground was frequently mined, prolonged gun and artillery fire had blasted trees and shredded vegetation, pockmarked the fields and buildings had become an alien landscape. Air reconnaissance was used to see the enemy trench systems and to plan attacks, with various trenches and posts named as ‘alleys’, ‘lanes’ and also local roads, buildings and rivers in a confusing tangle of battleground that is hard to comprehend from the official written account: even the maps appear confusing to the novice. At points in the melee men frequently lost track of their battalion and with reinforcements and regrouping it was not until much later that they would find men were ‘missing’.
On the first day of battle in July over 60,000 British troops were killed or wounded. The offensive continued over the next two months, with little ground taken. The third ‘big push’ began on 15 September, in which the British used tanks for the first time. The rain began on the second day. On 25 and 27 September the third phase was begun with the New Zealand Division involved in attacks at Morval and Thiepval Ridge.The official account of the Canterbury Battalion details how Ben’s regiment prepared for the attack near Longueval. At about 8 pm three companies of the 2nd Canterbury Battalion who had been detailed to be sent into battle emerged from their trenches and lined up on the road. Half an hour later they began to advance, silently creeping up until they were finally seen, 50 yards from the enemy line. Under rifle and machine-gun fire the troops rushed the German trench Goose Alley and captured it.
The mission was reasonably successful and they captured prisoners and machine guns, yet a few hours later the enemy made a ‘determined counter attack’ and the Allies were pushed back, only to then surge forward again. Such was the nature of battle in the Somme—forward and back, rush forward with bayonets, lose a trench, scramble and snare in acres of barbed wire, gain another trench. Exhausted, the company was relieved from the front line, but they were not given much rest, instead they were detailed to try and repairthe roads around Thistle Dump.
The ‘weather was wet’ was an understatement. The rain poured and the chalk ground was rotten: churned, muddy and waterlogged. Trenches were deep in water, uniforms and boots were wet through. After several days at this difficult task, on the night of 24-25 September the Brigade relieved the 3rd (Rifle) Brigade in the front line, with orders to take part in the Fourth Army’s attack the following day. This took place just after midday, and met slight opposition, and a few casualties. The line was moving forward, and the next forward push was about to be made.
For once, the rain had stopped, and as one account described, the weather was glorious, and was excellent for aviation work. First the artillery bombarded the enemy, and then a creeping barrage, with artillery fire moving forward in increments and the troops followed behind—although sometimes the troops were too enthusiastic, got too far ahead or the creeping barrage was off range and men were killed by ‘friendly fire’. The men were ordered over the top at 2.15 pm on 27 September. It was overcast and rainy: the fine weather had not lasted. The 1st Canterbury Battalion advanced behind the barrage, with the 12th and 13th (Ben’s Company) in that first wave. The official account concludes the description of this offensive:
The attacking company was held up for a short while by bombers and machine-guns; but the latter were silenced by our Lewis gunners, and all the objectives of the battalion were captured by 2.38 pm, with slight casualties.Ben was killed in action on 27 September 1916, probably going ‘over the top’. He was aged 20 years, one of the ‘slight’ casualties. The Allies had advanced one mile on their last position. Behind them lay 50 square miles (130km2) of devastated land. By the end of the offensive the line had only advanced 5 miles (8km) into enemy held territory. Country roads ceased to exist as chalky waterlogged soil crumbled under heavy machinery; replacement artillery, troops, supplies all had to traverse the mess that had once been productive farmland. Ahead lay miles of equally soulless land. One hundred years on, the words: ‘The Somme’ still conjures unimaginable horror and loss.
When this battle ended the 2nd Canterbury Battalion counted 33 officers and 713 men killed, wounded and missing. Ben’s burial was recorded by the OCDGR E (Officer Commanding of the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries), as Reference number 21836 B as having been performed by A.H. Cullen, attached to South African [Infantry?].
Those who died in No Man’s Land were often never identified: as they fell into the mud their bodies became obliterated by the on-going battle. Dog tags were perishable and in the wet, uniforms rotted. Nevertheless there are still human remains being discovered and identified in the twenty-first century. However, soldiers who, like Ben, were seen to be killed were probably buried by their comrades close to where they fell, perhaps in part of a trench, in a shell hole or a hurriedly dug grave, perhaps with one or two others, their dog tags removed and passed to an officer in command.
A telegram was prepared, addressed to Mrs R. Lawn, Black’s Point: she was noted as next of kin (mother) in his military file. Nearly two and a half weeks later Rachel and James received the dreaded black bordered telegram from the Ministry of Defence advising them of Ben’s death. The news spread quickly to his sisters and brothers, aunt and grandmother, as well as friends and neighbours—everyone in the community knew the boys who were away serving. The family reeled with disbelief that their Ben was not going to be coming home. He was just a lad.
The date of his death was what everyone turned to: what were they doing that fateful day? It was a Wednesday. Carrying on their work-day lives far away, while Ben heard the crack of rifle fire, the sudden thud as the bullet hit, the oblivion as he fell lifeless into the mud, the sounds of mortar and gunfire thundering on.
Although a grave reference is recorded on the Defence Force file, it was not until the following year that the bodies of soldiers in their temporary graves could be re-interred in appropriate cemeteries, the difficult task carried out by the British V Corps. The battle that had raged over the ground where Ben had been buried was to totally destroy the landscape and identifying features—his grave was never found. This was perhaps the hardest thing for his family to imagine: the boy from Black’s Point alone in the cold dark ground on the other side of the world. No funeral, with comforting rituals to help the grieving, no headstone for family to visit. A few lines in the newspaper under ‘Casualties’ and then: gone.
1500 New Zealanders were killed on the Somme. Most of them, 1272, remained unidentified and are buried in unmarked graves or remembered on memorial walls. Benjamin Webster Lawn is remembered on the Commonwealth War Grave Memorial at Caterpillar Valley, Longueval. White headstones lined up with military precision, enclosed in rectangular grounds, surrounding by rolling fenceless farm fields and a few trees creates a peaceful oasis in contrast to what it was like when Ben the boy from Reefton was there.
Ben is also memorialised on his mother’s headstone in Lyttelton cemetery. Rachel Lawn nee Hart died just over a year later, the family believed, of a broken heart.
(excerpts 327-29 Chapter 15 The Great War To Live a Long & Prosperous Life)
Written in Ink and Stone 