The Ulstermen were to attack a 300 yards front and their target was known as the Schwaben Redoubt. It was a network of trenches, dugouts and machine gun posts which lay south of the Ancre River. There was a concrete bunker which went twenty to thirty feet into the ground. In this bunker there was a network of tunnels which had telephone connections and these lead out from the centre into machine gun posts. In these tunnels the Germans waited and survived the bombardment. The Germans knew the barrage would last a few days and at the end they would come out and face their enemies. It lasted five days and on the 30th June, the night before they were to go into the enemy trenches the Ulstermen were at Thiepval wood.
At 7:30 am on the 1st July 1916 the gunfire and bombardment stopped and some of the Ulster division battalions advanced, covered by the smoke, into no- mans land. The men were to walk, not run because this was seen as fear and their enemies would recognise this. A journalist said “When I saw the men emerge through the smoke and form up as if on parade, I could hardly believe my eyes.” They then walked into the German machine guns. What came next was absolute carnage. After two days the Ulster Division had 5, 500 soldiers, dead, wounded or missing. The casualties for the first day was 60, 695, of this there were 19, 240 dead. This was the largest loss of life the British soldiers had ever experienced.
For all the work and deaths that had happened the progress towards enemy land was very little and could “be seen on a map with help form a magnifying glass”. For the bravery shown by the Irish men four Victoria crosses were awarded to the men of the Ulster Division. They were awarded to Eric N.F. Bell of the 9th Royal Enniskillen Fusiliers, who was killed in action, Lieutenant Geoffrey Cather of the 9th Royal Irish Rifles who was also killed in action, William Frederick Mc Fadzean of the 14th Royal Irish Rifles who survived the Somme and the war and Robert Quigg, a Rifleman with the 14th Royal Irish Rifles, survived the Somme and indeed the remainder of the war. He died in 1953 and his medal is in the Regimental Museum of the Rifles in Belfast.
The 36th Ulster division was practically wiped out and on the 11th July 1916 they left Piccardy. They were very different men from those who arrived in France a couple of months before.
In the decades after the Somme the words Thiepval, Ancre and Somme were embroidered onto the banners of the Orangemen. Sadly in the years after the battle people thought of it as a Protestant and Unionist sacrifice and do not remember the sacrifice of other Irishmen during the battle and the memory of the soldiers from the south of Ireland and the Nationalists from the North who sacrificed their lives also would be forgotten because of the extremes of Nationalism and Unionism.
