IT is impossible to walk these fields in the valley of the River Ancre without finding, at almost every pace, the relics of war. Eighty-five years after the Battle of the Somme, the ground continues to produce its grim bounty.
The French farmers call it the harvest of iron. And here it is for all to see, the overnight downpour revealing the bits of rusted metal which once tore flesh, smashed bone and ripped limbs from living men.
There are shell shards, fuses, gun limber chains and lead shrapnel balls peeping up from the mud, blue-grey, like fish eyes. Hidden behind every piece of flint in this field are pieces of barbed wire, the bits that were actually cut by opening bombardments.
I start to collect them until I realise that such is their profusion, they are no more remarkable than cockle shells on a beach.
And then there are the bullets. Lots of them. I pick up a British Lee-Enfield .303 cartridge after spotting it pointing skywards like a miniature rocket. Before long, there is a little collection in my pocket, including a few German Mauser rounds with their telltale grooves at the base.
No one who fought on the Ancre during October, November and December 1916 ever forgot the experience. It was the last gasp of the ill-fated campaign that had started with such hope in July of that year. The story is well known enough - the first 24 hours was the blackest day of the British Army, with 57,000 casualties, nearly 20,000 of them fatalities.
As summer turned to autumn, the baked, chalk fields of the Somme turned into quagmires. Roads disappeared beneath a surface of oozing mud, trenches became waterlogged and a pitiless rain descended. It was in this moonscape that the men of the Worcestershire Regiment found themselves as the Battle of Ancre Heights started to unfold.
The British top brass now believed that if outright victory in a decisive battle was beyond their reach, then the Germans would have to be slowly worn down.
Constant pressure was applied and as the winter beckoned, a new type of operation was employed. It was called raid and away and, one day, the Worcestershires were selected for a major operation of this type.
The soldiers were taken behind the lines to rehearse but on the first day they had a shock. It had snowed overnight and the ground was carpeted in white.
As the commanding officer saw the men standing in the snow, he realised that the element of surprise upon which the mission depended could not possibly be achieved. The men were sticking out like sore thumbs.
The black silhouettes crawling across the snow would be instantly spotted by a watchful enemy. The raid would be doomed almost as soon as it had started. But then the CO Lt Col Graham Seton Hutchinson had an idea.
If the attacking troops could be clothed in white, like Bedouins in the desert, then the assault would stand a chance of success. He went in search of the Regimental Quartermaster.
Have you any white sheets in the shop? asked the CO. The Quartermaster, momentarily forgetting that he was in the presence of a senior officer, made a joke about tucking the men up in bed". But it was soon made clear that there had been a deadly seriousness to the request.
The next port of call was a room nearby where the CO sought out a brigadier in order to obtain his blessing for his unorthodox scheme. Hutchinson walked up to him and asked for permission to pick up 200 white sheets. The Brigadier was not amused until it was explained to him what the Worcestershires had in mind.
But then, a Col O'Brien said he could improve in the idea. He had heard a story that hundreds of white nightdresses were stored at base, the result of an administrative blunder. He turned and said to Hutchinson: If the nightdresses still exist, I'll bring a load back with me in the ambulance!
It was all settled and agreed. Col O'Brien was to go immediately to the Base, armed with full authority to bring back dresses, night, linen, white, nurses, for the use of, or failing this, a sufficient supply of white sheeting to camouflage two companies of infantry.
But O'Brien did not fail and was soon modelling the latest night attire to the incredulous assembled companies, all battle-hardened veterans of the Somme.
Soon, the men were ordered to put on their nightdresses. And worse was to come they had no sooner done up the buttons than they were told they must have their faces and legs whitewashed, too.
After a few more rehearsals, the Worcestershires were ready to attack the German front line. The faces of 200 men rose from the whiteness of the snow and moved against the enemy. The first company steadily crept towards the first trench line, through the wire entanglements, and without a sound, were rapidly upon the startled defenders.
The Germans, men of the 3rd Guard Grenadier Regiment, were completely surprised and overwhelmed at once. Only one rifle shot rang out, and within three minutes, prisoners began to come back with their escorts. Two machine guns were carried off and the bombing parties neutralised several dugouts.
That night, the Worcestershires celebrated their success. One soldier joked that he had heard about the devils in skirts" but the Worcesters in nighties was definitely something else.
This incident provided some light relief for these Worcestershires who found themselves on the Ancre in 1916.
But the majority of men who fought here that autumn suffered greatly as they attacked a stubborn enemy in heavily-fortified positions.
The mud and rain added to their ordeal and many soldiers' bodies were never found, swallowed by the mud.
Evening News readers may recall that a Worcestershire soldier's body was found in November, 1995 by electricity workers laying pipes in the Beaumont-Hamel area.
Early in 1996, we sent two reporters and a photographer to investigate. Comprehensive though their reports were, they only served to deepen the mystery. The man was never identified.
But it was a story that refused to go away - which is why, earlier this autumn, Evening News deputy editor Mark Higgitt and I travelled to the Somme. Mark has vowed to solve the riddle of the identity of the man who lies buried in Ancre British Cemetery and maybe, just maybe - could be tantalisingly close to a solution.
In the next week or so, during this season of Remembrance, this paper will publish a series of articles about our Unknown Worcestershire.
For some time now, Mark has worked tirelessly, contacting people from as far afield as Italy in a bid to tie up loose ends that stretch from the past to the present.
However, this search for the truth has also revealed a dark underside to human nature.
Many will be shocked at what has been uncovered in the fields of the Somme... of how greed and callousness stains the memory of those brave men who died for king and country in a war that is almost beyond living memory.
You cannot afford to miss these articles. Place a regular order for the Evening News now and be sure of a copy. For the truth is out there. Somewhere.
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