Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt

Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt
Part of The Battle of the Somme, in the First World War
Trench Map showing Hawthorn ridge and crater at top left
Date 1 July, 13 November 1916 Location Picardy, France 50°05′0.2″N 2°39′0.54″E / 50.083389°N 2.6501500°E / 50.083389; 2.6501500 Result 1 July 1916: German victory, 13 November: British victory
Belligerents
British Empire  United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland	German Empire
Commanders and leaders
Douglas Haig	Erich von Falkenhayn
Hawthorn Ridge class=notpageimage| Beaumont-Hamel is a commune in the Somme department, Picardy, northern France

Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt was a German field fortification, west of the village of Beaumont Hamel on the Somme. The redoubt was built after the end of the Battle of Albert (25–29 September 1914) and as French and later British attacks on the Western Front became more formidable, the Germans added fortifications and trench positions near the original lines around Hawthorn Ridge. At 7:20 a.m. on 1 July 1916, the British fired a huge mine beneath the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt. Sprung ten minutes before zero hour, the mine was one of 19 mines detonated on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Geoffrey Malins, one of two official war cameramen, filmed the detonation of the mine. The attack on the redoubt by part of the 29th Division of VIII Corps (Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston) was a costly failure.

Hunter-Weston had ordered the mine to be fired early to protect the advancing infantry from falling debris but this also gave the Germans time to occupy the rear lip of the mine crater. When British parties advanced across no man's land to occupy the crater, they were engaged by German small-arms fire. A few British soldiers reached the objective but at noon they were ejected by a German counter-attack. The success of the German defence of the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt crater contributed to the failure of the British attack on the rest of the VIII Corps front.

The British reopened the tunnel beneath the Hawthorn Ridge crater three days later and reloaded the mine with explosives for the Battle of the Ancre (13–18 November). The new mine was fired on 13 November in support of an attack on Beaumont-Hamel by the 51st (Highland) Division of V Corps. The Scottish infantry advanced from a trench 250 yd (230 m) from the German lines, half the distance of 1 July, with the support of tanks, an accurate creeping barrage and an overhead machine-gun barrage. Beaumont-Hamel was captured and 2,000 German prisoners taken.