WORLD WAR I TOUR - Part 2 - Phil & Jill

At 7.28 am Saturday, 1st July,1916 Cecil Lewis, then an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, witnessed the explosion of a mine from his aircraft high above La Boiselle which caused the Lochnagar crater. It was a huge dip in the earth created by the detonation of a huge mine placed beneath the German line. The mine was packed with 60,000 lbs of ammonal. The Lochnagar mine was the largest of the 17 mines that exploded on the first day of the battle of the Somme. Debris from the explosion rose some 4,000 ft into the air. Cecil Lewis said, "The whole earth heaved and flared a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the sky. There was an ear splitting roar."

The explosion created a crater of 300 ft across and 70 ft deep. The sector was attached by the 34th Division consisting of Tynside Irish, Tyneside Scottish, Lincolnshire, Suffolk and Royal Scots battalions.

The Lochnagar Crater is a privately owned memorial by Richard Dunning MBE and is dedicated to Remembrance, Respect and Reconciliation. As a consquence it is maintained by volunteers 'Friends of Lochnagar'. There are illustrated signposts situated around the crater with stories of miners, battles and general information. They have built duckboards to represent the marshy, chalky clay conditions the soldiers would have experienced in their assaults.

Soon the land was pock marked with craters formed by the ferocious mining. Early attempts at mining by the British on the Western Front commenced in late 1914 in soft clay further north in Flanders. However the mining at La Boiselle was in hard chalk and required different techniques.

The area was a surprise in the power of thr explosion and what it did to the Germans who were caught on top of it and the way it changed the landscape.

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An empty chair statute to represent someone missing from home.

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A chair dedicated to the nursing unit and a dedication to the work of women.

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Souvenirs found in the area.

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