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November/December 2000 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook The Inside Story Feature: Alert, Nunavut À la carte Curious by nature Reverberations

Newfoundland requiem
The First World War battle at Beaumont Hamel left an entire island in mourning
Map by Steven Fick with text by Mary Vincent

On July 1, 1916, two young Newfoundland brothers, Roy and Stewart Ferguson, were killed on a battlefield in France. They were among six neighbours from Southside Road in St. John’s to die at Beaumont Hamel that first day of the Battle of the Somme.

The action began in the early morning. As soon as the 770 soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment — most in their early twenties, but some as young as 17 — left their starting positions in the support trench known as St. John’s Road, they were open targets. As they advanced over the exposed ground of No Man’s Land, brutally overloaded with 30 kilograms of equipment, the young soldiers were cut down by German artillery and machine-gunners. The enemy’s shrapnel was particularly deadly at the "Danger Tree," whose knotted trunk still stands today. And, with triangular pieces of biscuit tin sewn on their uniforms to help allied aircraft identify them, wounded soldiers trying to return to their lines were again easy marks for enemy snipers.

In less than half an hour, it was all over. There were 57,500 British casualties that day, and no unit suffered heavier losses than the Newfoundlanders. Of the 770 islanders in the regiment who entered the battle, 233 were killed, 386 were wounded and 91 went missing. Dozens of communities across the island were scarred by the loss, as illustrated by this map. Every year, July 1 is a bittersweet day for Newfoundlanders: while they celebrate the birth of their country, they also attend services to mourn the loss of so many of their sons.

Further reading:
For a virtual tour of the battle site and other details, check out the Veterans Affairs Canada site. For more on Newfoundland’s war efforts, check out Newfoundland and the Great War or pick up a copy of The Fighting Newfoundlander by Col. G.W.L. Nicholson (Gov’t of Nfld.).

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