First World War - 36th Ulster Division
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- In this short video we see the ground over which the 36th Ulster Division advanced on the 1st July 1916. It includes views of Ulster tower and Connaught cemetery. Filmed in August 2016 with a Phantom 3 drone.
As an Ulsterman I have been here many times and would recommend a visit to anyone of any nation. If you do visit then stand on the roadside at Connaught cemetery, just at dusk and try to imagine what my forebears endured that day. It will send shivers down your spine! A great job big lad! Thank you.
Thank you for watching and sharing your story.
Ulster isnt in connaught ffs !
@@deanodog3667Why your ignorance is staggeringly.
My Great Grandad was in the 36th at the Somme, luckily he came back home unfortunately his younger brother did not. Thank you for explaining the landscape
Thank you for watching.
Steven these films are priceless...many thanks for making them..
Thank you for watching. More to come in 2018.
Thank you for watching. More to come this year.
Steven i cant understand why you havn't had more hits these are super...
Thank you for watching. I have plans for more films over the coming months.
I agree! If I was a history professor all of my students would be viewing these in class.
You also deserve a medal for all the good work You do to keep the memories alive.
Great job. Your videos are sensible and respectful, a credit to your English good sense. Thankyou.
Thank you for watching.
Sir, these are amazing videos. It is strange to see these fields looking so peaceful. All I have ever known was the war photos and films that show a very hellish world. My grandfather was in France with the A.E.F. 32nd infantry division 107th engineers. Thank you and greetings from Denver.
Thank you for watching. My GF was also there from March 1915 through to the very end. One of the lucky ones, he came back.
Thank you for making this video Steven, wonderful work.
Thank you for watching. More to come over the next few months.
Excellent work! You do it precisely, beautifully with good narrative. It's great that you commemorate these wonderful poor people led by big business to slaughter.
The First World War is unimaginable to me! It's some kind of insane collective suicide. When I saw the shrapnel filled with these murderous balls, I couldn't sleep. And I'm not hypersensitive ... A normal guy.
I cordially greet you from Poland. We have similar cemeteries from the First World War scattered somewhere in the fields. Robert.
Thank you for watching. Poland was the scene of much action between Germany and Russia at this time.
@@StevenUpton14-18 Lions led by Donkeys, rip ALL soldiers.
Thank you so much. I must admit, living in the US, I never heard of this battle. I only learned of it with a You Tube suggestion of a "Then and Now" video that compared footage of the battle to what it looks like today. The loss in lives is staggering! Thank you for the education!
Thank you for watching. The first day of the Somme, 1st July 1916 was the blackest day in British millinery history. In round figures: 60,000 casualties of which 19,000 were killed. Most within the first couple of hours. Compared to recent conflicts such as Afghanistan: in 19 years under 500 KIA.
Still too many!
Hi Steven. Thanks for these videos, great work and very informative. Really helpful to me as I am planning my first visit to these sites next year. I really hope that you can find the time to make some more as it is clear from comments that what you have done so far is very much appreciated. I would be really interested to see your take on the sites at Gommecourt and High Wood in particular. Thanks again.
Thanks for watching. No plans for the Somme for awhile. I want to get to messiness ridge and south from Armentières to Neuve-Chapelle when I can.
I wish someone would make a documentary about the clean up of the battle fields that would have started in 1919. I doubt there would be much in the way of photo an film footage as no one was probably that interested. Also how long did it take for the farmers to fill in the trenches, remove all the corrugated iron etc, and what did it look like in the 1920's.
In the late 1960's on a school trip to France, we lads spent some time playing on the beach at Dunkirk. There was quite a lot of pill boxes and these still had old bullet shells, the odd army boot and god knows what else. Nobody cared much then and wanted to put it behind them. It's only since the 80's or 90's that these things have become precious to us. Sorry to ramble.
Thank you for watching. A film was recently discovered that was taken from an airship a couple of years after the war. Looking down on the devastated land including flying over Ypres. I often think about how they ever recovered and rebuild these shattered towns.
The Commonwealth commission does a outstanding job of taking care of these cemeteries, beautiful and peaceful.
Thank you watching. In France and Flanders there are just short of 1,000 Commonwealth cemeteries and some 25,000 world wide. The CWGC does a fantastic job.
Steve just got finished watching a video on the TH-cam channel Dark Docs. It was about the largest planned explosion unitl the Atomic bomb. They talked about the English clay diggers at the battle of Messines.
Thank you for watching. I have made three films about the Messines craters.
So nice videos for us nerds :)
Thank you for watching
Another excellent video from you Steven! Thanks for posting your video(s) on The Somme!
Thank you for watching.
I love your films. I went to many places on the Somme about 20 years ago. As soon as we're allowed I want to do another trip, with the grown-up kids.
Thank you for watching. I hope to get back to the Somme in September.
There is a cafe at Ulster Tower and if you are there at the right time, you can join small tours into Thiepval Wood (which is normall off limits) and see some of the excavated trenches. Just passed the Ulster Tower at 2.27, you can see small dark thing, near the road, in the field. That is a concrete German machine gun post. We found lots of shrapnel balls in that field.
Thank you for sharing. I have not been in the wood yet.
Steve hope you dont mind but i have directed people to watch your film from mine..i have 222,000 hits in eight months i would like more people to watch these for all the effort you put into them
Thank you, much appreciated.
Great footage. Where did you get the maps?
Thank you for watching. I bought a CD some years ago containing over 500 British trench maps. I can copy them to my iPad and using a GPS know exactly where I am on the ground on a trench map.
If I ever make it from the US to France and Belgium I will primarily track the path of my father in the Battle of the Bulge. However I will make a point to visit Beaumont Hammel and Thiepval.
Thank you for watching.
thank you for your great vids, wish i found your channel earlier.
I find myself thinking how valuable this footage would have been in WW1.
I often wonder how it would have changed things if one side had drones in 1914-18.
My great grand father Sgt Henry Foster died July 1st 1916, RIR 36th division 9th batt West Belfast - thank you for sharing this ❤
Thank you for watching and sorry for your families loss. We will remember them.
I have noticed that on several of your videos that during cemetery visits that it appears several headstones seem to be missing on lines of graves. Is it because the families of the deceased soldiers have had them dissintered and moved to family plots or is there some other reason? Good videos by the way.
Thank you for watching. It is a British tradition to bury our war dead as close as possible to where they fell. We do not have a practice of repatriation. The exception has been in recent years with Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is a reason for groups: all of the aircrew from a bomber aircraft will be next to each other and closer spacing than the rest. Cant remember why it is with infantry, but think it may be that a group were killed in the same action.
They died together, so we buried them together concept. If you go to the British and Commonwealth War Graves Commission website is should tell you.
Good question! I was wondering as well. Especially in one graveyard, that I can't recall the name of, there are two stones, space, two stones, space, two stones, space and so on
It's simple. If there's symmetry in the cemetery then it will be a 'concentration' cemetery, planned and built after the war to accommodate bodies gathered from the battlefields and remains brought in from smaller cemeteries that were closed. The irregular graves are wartime burials. Larger cemeteries may have examples of both. Tyne Cot, for instance, has a small area of original wartime burials near the Cross of Sacrifice.
Well done Steven! Great videos you had made there. I went there in September 2016 (Verdun, Vauquois, Somme are, etc.)
Thank you for watching.
Well done
Thank you for watching. More films on about the Western Front will follow during 2017.
Very ironic
2 of History’s biggest battles both started on July 1st.
July 1st 1863 - Gettysburg
July 1st 1916!- The Somme
Thank you for watching. I have visited Gettysburg. I would love to film it with a drone.
Excellent yet again. Why I hadn’t discovered these aerial videos before now I do not know!
I have hand-held cameras, but the drone is by far the best for filming battlefields. Just hope they don’t ban them.
How did these battlefields memorials n cemeteries survive what came 20-25 years later, WW 2?!
Thank you for this video Steven.
Thank you for watching.
Great job, Steven. Have been to many of these sites. Thanks for your work
Jon Stewart thank you for watching.
A great insight. Many thanks
Thank you for watching.
Not the first time I have watched this. I have visited several times but the aerial view is so demonstrative of the bigger picture. Thanks.
Thank you for watching, again.
Good aerial series.
Thank you for watching.
Brilliant video LEST WE FORGET BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN
Thank you for watching. We will remember them.
@@StevenUpton14-18 thanks for the reply Steven, lm just going to subscribe to your channel now , outstanding work 💪👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🇬🇧👍
great vid,,,thanks
Thank you for watching.
I always wondered why, one side or the other, didn't disengage and flank around the trenches?
Thank you for watching. The answer to your question is quite simple: in 1914 they tried but at one end they came up to the North Sea and the other end the Swiss border.
I do greatly appalud your efforts on these videos Steven, even with the odd factual error that creeps in! Nevertheless, the videos give a good general overview of what took place. As a long-time WW1 enthusiast and amateur historian, I find it interesting, and sometimes enlightening, to read or listen to what others like yourself have to to say. On this occasion I make no criticism per se, but I can't help wondering why you completely excluded the Ulsters' left-hand flank. As you will know, The 36th Division was given probably amongst the worst sectors to attack, and for two reasons: Firstly, it was placed in a virtual 90-degree angle from it right-hand neighbour, the 32nd Division. Secondly, it was given the invidious situation of having to split its force, with the main force facing the Schwaben, and a small force half-a-mile away on the other side of the Ancre River and its marshy surrounds - a situation no commander would even contemplate due to its inability to give the support it might need.
Given the nature of a 21-mile front, every division was dependant on the support from the division on either side, therefore if either of the supporting divisions failed, the one in the middle was entirely on its own, and this is what happened with the 36th. In Thiepval, the Germans stopped the 32nd in their tracks, thereby gaining the ability to turn their fire to the Ulstermen from both front and rear, because of the sharp angle in the the British Front Line. On the Ulsters' left flank on the other side of the river, the failure of the 29th Division, left the pitifully small force of Ulstermen isolated and having to cope alone. Once again, the advantage was given to the Germans who could direct their fire towards the main force's left flank, and also in the rear, around St Pierre Divion and beyond.
In spite of all of these setbacks, the Division was one of the few that managed to achieve all their objectives but - as you say - could not hold. Contrary to what you said, they DID NOT retire the same day, but held on through the night - small groups that had run out of ammunition and supplies. It would have been unfair in this video to have played the ""Blame Game," but certainly no blame was ever placed on the men of the division, thankfully. I think it's fair to say that no division that day failed through any failure of the men, or indeed their local commanders. Certainly, at least as far as the 36th was concerned, their objectives were ill-considered and wholly unrealistic given the distances and terrain to be covered.
Most historians understand very well where the failures lay, and not the least being the underestimation of the enemy's strength and resilience.
Thank you for watching. Sorry for any errors.
@@StevenUpton14-18 Hey Steven, we all make errors, just hopefully nothing too disastrous. But you know, wartime facts and figures are always bandied about like sweets at Christmas, and I don't know of any historian that can claim to have the exact figures - and that's simply because they don't exist or are too deeply hidden! I was preparing a TH-cam vid the other day and wanted some info re trench mortars; you would not believe how many different versions there are on weights, sizes, ranges etc., and I think it's because everyone uses different means of measurements like e.g. the mortar with/without baseplate, with/without firing mechanism, loaded or unloaded, and because the spec's are unspecified, it's hard to find out the precise details, and different historians will say there were 2 x 3" mortars per btn, others will it was 2 x 2" mortars per platoon or company. There are ways and means of finding the real facts, but sifting through www.com doesn;t always supply the correct answers. Let's face it, I think we are all guilty of short-cutting at some point.
Anyway, I still like your videos which happen to be amongst the best for TH-camrs, so keep it up mon ami.
Hi Steven, just a little addendum to my previous (and nothing to do with your commentaries), which might give an indication of how we don't necessarily give the wrong information, but more how we can inadvertently confuse the viewer without doing justice to the subject. Take a look at the well-known historian Dan Snow as he gives a 3-minute podcast on TH-cam. He's talking about the 36th in their front line trenches, but then says "This is the German Front Line" - confusing, as he's in a British trench!! He then goes on to say that the leading troops had "...excellent covering fire from the French artillery," then later states that the troops were caught out from their own artillery! While I'm not entirely sure that the French artillery was evident in that sector, he wasn't wrong in his comments about the British artillery. OK, it was a three-minute condensed pot of information, but for someone new to the history, Snow created a scenario that was more confusing than helpful. I had to listen to it several times to make sure I had heard right - and I know this trench system well, which is the command post in Thiepval Wood. See [Dan Snow, 36th Ulster Division on the Somme]. I'm as guilty as anyone else regarding "iffy info," but as historians, we do need to be careful on what we produce for the public.
Regarding VC's earned that day, you correctly stated the number won by the 36th, but it is recorded in the histories, and memorialised at the Ulster Tower, that the Division won NINE VC's - not inaccurate, but misleading when you look in-depth.
@@charlieindigo You also find that books can be contradictory.
@@StevenUpton14-18 Absolutely spot-on Steven, which makes it all the harder for the rest of us to try and stay accurate. Having said that, I don't believe there's ever been a historian that didn't disagree with another on some point/s - and the truth is, when you look at the various war diaries, even they all disagree on things, and they're the ones we have to take our information from! Researching can be a minefield, and while I'm no longer giving talks and lectures, or taking groups out to the battlefields (old man now!), I still produce articles and have even started to try my hand at videos, but trying to get some little facts and figures I've long forgotten, is still a battle on its own, in spite of the mine of information that's available. So it's safe to say I'm an armchair general these days and apt to be somewhat over-critical, so slap my my wrist, but I'm glad you took the time to respond. Just do keep on with the vids, because in general they are excellent..
Very interesting video. Thanks
Thank you for watching.
Seeing the cemeteries and the rows upon rows of headstones is always the tear jerker for me
Thank you for watching.
Thank you
Thank you for watching.
Steve ..just watched all of this film....your drone and your use of it are amazing it holds like a fixed platform i would have given anything for film like this 20 years ago when you couldnt even get a photo...amazing and thankyou..
They are quite amazing for what they cost. It is astonishing how stable they are even in high winds and at 1,000+ feet high. Just like on a tripod. also, quite easy to fly.
When the Germans occupied France from 1940 through 1944 how well did they respect the cemeteries of their fallen enemies?
Thank you for watching. I do not know of any evidence to suggest that cemeteries were harmed in any way. However, some of the Demarcation Markers were destroyed during WW2. What I do not know is where they destroyed deliberately, or simply a casualty of war i.e. they just got in the way. Perhaps a tank hit one etc.
I remember hearing in a documentary somewhere that A.H. actually had a lot of respect for the Vimy Ridge memorial and even visited it personally. I thought it was interesting, if/when I recall which film I saw this in I will post it here.
Are there any remains still in the fields?
Thank you for watching. If you mean human remains, then yes. 50% of those killed in action have no know graves. There are about a dozen British soldiers found even year.
Fabulous. Thanks
Thank you for watching.
They are beautiful, those small cemeteries in the middle of the fields.. Atleast now it looks nice for the fallen.. Also glad to see there are visitors..
I wonder how and when these fields were recultivated.. How long it took and if they had to like remove top soil.. There must still be shell fragments underneath right? All over..
Thank you for watching. It is interesting to compare German, French and British cemeteries, they are very different.
@@StevenUpton14-18 Yeah, that is one thing i will make sure to look more at when I go back to the western Europe battlefields.
I mostly saw the US ones in Normandy.
Think I have only seen German ones in Germany and Austria.
I kinda grew up reading the various comics and stereotypical war movies as a kid.
Later on, I had a German WW2 veteran as a neighbour. Drafted as a 17 year old to be sent to the Eastern Front at the end. Only child too..
I am glad I did, he was one of the nicest guys I have ever met. Helped me understand that these were young men, quite similar. And in many cases not even "men"..
Another gem Stephen. Thank you.
Thank you for watching.