Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

 

Covering around 30 hectares, this is the terrain where the the Newfoundland Regiment made their unsuccessful attack on 1st July 1916 – the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Lasting about 30 minutes, the assault virtually wiped out the regiment – of 780 men who went forward, only about 110 survived uninjured.

 

The Government of Newfoundland – then a predominantly rural Dominion of the British Empire – had formed a battalion for service with the British Army at the outbreak of World War I.  The regiment went into the line at Beaumont-Hamel, close to the northern end of the 30-mile front being assaulted by French and British forces, in April 1916. 

 

Of the various memorials here, the most dramatic is the Newfoundland Regiment Memorial with its bronze caribou – the regiment’s emblem – in a defiant pose on a 15-metre cairn of Newfoundland granite, surrounded by native Newfoundland plants.  At its base, you can read the names of the 820 members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve, and the Mercantile Marines who gave their lives in the First World War and have no known grave, inscribed on three bronze tables.

 

Purchased in 1921 by the people of Newfoundland, making it one of only two National Historic Sites of Canada outside Canada itself, the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial is also the largest battalion memorial on the Western Front and the largest preserved area of Somme battlefield. Its  Visitor Centre has displays on Newfoundland at the beginning of the 20th century as well as the history of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.