'I have a rendezvous with Death': The first day of the Battle of the Somme
Today marks 100 years since the start of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916. The Battle of the Somme, fought between the British & French armies and the Germany Army, was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front and lasted over four months. With an estimated 1 million men wounded or killed it remains one of the bloodiest battles in history.
On 1st July 1916 the united French and British Armies launched an attack on the German Army near the river Somme in France, in an attempt to break the deadlock of trench warfare. Although the day saw some territorial losses for the German Army, it was the worst day in the history of the British Army with nearly 60,000 casualties in one day; of these nearly 20,000 were killed. Thousands of Irish soldiers were involved on the first day, most notably the 36th (Ulster) Division which sustained 5,500 casualties, of whom nearly 2,000 were killed.
One of the thousands of Ulster-men who died on the first day of the Somme was Arthur Carson Hollywood, of Bangor County Down.
Arthur was born in 1892, the son of a property and insurance agent James Hollywood and his wife Elizabeth. Arthur had been a medical student at Queen’s University Belfast when in 1914 he joined the British Army. Not having qualified in medicine Arthur joined the Ulster Division, not the Royal Army Medical Corps.
By July 1916 he was a Lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers. Arthur was killed just after 1pm on the 1st July, comrades recalling he was “hit by a machine gun bullet during the advance”.
Although reports suggest that Arthur was buried in the graveyard of the nearby village of Le Hamel, he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the missing of the Somme.
On the same day Arthur’s younger brother James Hollywood was also killed, he too is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial. Their parents received the telegrams announces the deaths of their sons on consecutive days.
The title of this post comes from a poem by another casualty of the Somme, Alan Seeger, an American fighting with the French Foreign Legion who was killed on 4th July 1916. His poem I have a rendezvous with Death was published posthumously.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
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| Theipval Memorial to the Missing |
Notes
Details of Arthur Carson Hollywood and his brother James are taken from Casey, Cullen and Duignan's Irish Doctors in the First World War (Irish Academic Press, 2015) and the website INST in the First World War. The fallen of RBAI - http://www.instgreatwar.com/page13.htm