Their story began two years earlier when they queued at the recruiting offices in Exeter answering Kitchener's call for a new army. The British Expeditionary Force, comprising of regular and territorial soldiers, was already on its way to France and more were needed. Most of Devon's able bodied men volunteered including the Londoners and Lancastrians who had come south looking for work.
So many outsiders joined at one time the 8th and 9th Devons (as the two regiments were to be called) were nicknamed 'the London and Lancs' .

In theory the battle of the Somme should have been a simple affair

After a short period of training the new army's first deployment was on the Western Front, where they saw much action. Though there were brief skirmishes at first, the new Devons soon took part in the major battles at Mons, Ypres and Loos, receiving comparatively light casualties compared to other regiments - but that was before the Battle of the Somme.
In theory the battle of the Somme should have been a simple affair. The French army at Verdun was in serious danger of crumbling under the German onslaught, so a major offensive was to be launched by the allies at the Somme as a diversion. Over 100,000 troops were to be deployed, in an attack by 18 divisions which included the two battalions of the 8th and 9th Devons.
Already serving in the army at this time were two soldiers, later to become well known for their part in the Devon's big battle for Mametz - Captain D L Martin, and Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson, a literary Cambridge colleague of poet Rupert Brooke.
Their task was to lie in readiness with their troops in a trench behind Mansell Copse and wait for the order to blow their whistles at precisely 7.30 am on the 1st July. That would signify the call to 'go over the top', and advance across the field and take Mametz, a German stronghold.
Like their brothers in arms they had nothing to fear - 5 days of artillery bombardment by 1,573 guns would surely decimate the German army and it would be a simple matter for the troops to mount the trench parapet and walk to the enemy lines - or so that was the theory, but Captain Martin had his doubts.
From his observation post in the trench, he could see across the field, where over a slight ridge stood a steeple on top of a shrine, still intact after all the shelling. He knew there was a German machine gun post there, not 400 yards away making him and his men an easy target for the regular army gunners.

He looked at it, each moment getting a deeper sense of dread that he and the rest of the Devons would come under fatal fire

The place filled him with such a sense of foreboding that when he had some time away from the front line before zero hour he was able to make a plasticine model of the shrine from memory. He looked at it, each moment getting a deeper sense of dread that he and the rest of the Devons would come under fatal fire. On his return he showed it to his fellow officers, but it was to no avail. They believed the weapons and its gunners would be wiped out by hurricanes of shrapnel.
The attack was still to go ahead. Yards away from Martin in the trenches the poet Hodgson was busy composing one of his last poems. He appeared not to be worried, for he had already excelled in the field, having been mentioned in despatches and winning the military cross in 1915, but as he wrote those words two days before zero hour, he foresaw what was to come in his poem:

Before Action
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword, Must say good-bye to all of this; By all delights that I shall miss, Help me to die, O Lord.

As the hour approaches the men of the Devons checked each other's back packs and sweated in the heat of the early blazing sun. They fixed bayonets with trembling fingers and looked out to the level field in front of them which had over the past week been blasted into uneven mounds of clay. Each man J
said a prayer and braced themselves as Captain Martin put his whistle to his dry lips, smiling nervously when the adjutant was seen to be going into battle sword in hand. Martin took a deep breath and blew. His signal was shrill and loud in the silence, for the artillery had finished in readiness for the infantry.
As they came out of their trench Martin looked towards the shrine which was obscured by Mansell Copse. Only the steeple showed over the ridge. He wondered if he had been wrong, then as he and his troops walked into full view the machine gun opened up, killing Martin and Hodgson instantly, the force hurled them back into the trench, many others landing on top of them.

The anguished soldiers buried their dead comrades in the trench where they had fallen,

The Devons kept on going as more and more fell, but as part of the 7th division they stood their ground, though it took two more pushes preceded by artillery to strike through and finally take Mametz.
It was three 0' clock in the afternoon when they won through and made the village theirs - only the second village of the day to fall to the British, but there would be much more fierce hand to hand fighting before the Germans realised they were beaten. It would take a further 11 days before the area was

finally secured and the army could safely advance leaving over 4,000 dead, including 7 battalion commanders.
The first day of the Battle of the Somme was over and Imperial losses were 60,000 casualties, 20,000 of them dead - 160 in that small trench belonging to the 8th and 9th Devons. The anguished soldiers said a short mass for their dead comrades and buried them in the trench where they had fallen, placing the sign, 'The Devonshires held this trench, the Devonshires hold it still' on a hastily made cross.

After the war a permanent white stone bearing those words was erected, along with a proper burial place for the soldiers.
Today, the memorial is reached from the main road, through a path twisting through the copse to the right, where, shaded by trees standing like guardians is a small gate opening into the dazzling white rows of headstones which wait like soldiers in open order. The cemetery is tended by the War Graves Commission, its armies of gardeners looking after what Kipling described as 'the silent Cities'. The visitors’ book contains names of the relatives who have travelled across the globe to lay wreaths or just to pay their respects.

'The Devonshires held
this trench,
the Devonshires
hold it still'

'Peace' and 'tranquility' are the words most written in the book, but the last resting place of Hodgson, Martin and their men is not sombre or morbid. Birds sing in the trees and butterflies flutter carelessly by.
In the distance there is the hum of tractor, the smell of the newly turned earth and the freshness of the newly
mown grass wafting on the breeze. A home from home - an apt memorial to the brave Devons of 1916.

Paul Cotton