#OTD 4 July 1916, in an indication of how things were to become, & in part, due to the situation to the north, the struggle started to become tougher for the French to the south of the River #Somme. One major (legendary?) action of the day took place at Belloy ...

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Following the fall of Dompierre, Fay and Assevillers, Belloy became the focal point of the German defence in this area & was the first main target for the Division Marocaine, which had just replaced the 3e Division d’infanterie coloniale in the line

...Having relieved the 7e Régiment d’infanterie coloniale at Assevillers during the early hours of 4 July, the Régiment de marche de la Légion étrangère (RMLE) waited in their front line trench opposite Belloy which was, at that time, under heavy bombardment...

...The orders were to attack at 4am & to advance across the open wheat fields in two waves, with the objective of taking Belloy some 800 to 1,100 metres away. The first wave went into the attack in open order but, upon nearing the village, machine guns and rifles opened up from…

…the remains of the buildings of the village, proving the ineffectiveness of the artillery preparation (or, alternatively, the effectiveness of over a year’s worth of fortification)...

...Two especially well sited positions, in the village cemetery & in a building just west of the town, created a devastating crossfire in the area about 200 metres west of the village.

The first wave was cut down in swathes....

The second wave, upon witnessing the fate of the first, advanced more cautiously &, by the time they closed with the village, many were crawling through the wheat past the fallen bodies of their dead & wounded comrades.

This wave, after hurling a hail of grenades onto the outer defences, managed to break through into the village and launched a furious assault on the defences.

..At this point, RMLE prisoners from the 1st wave who had been taken into the village saw their chance and attacked their guards, breaking free and assisting the attack from within the village...

Clearing the ruins by grenade & at bayonet point, house to house and hand to hand fighting continued for two hours until the village was finally cleared & the RMLE was established on the eastern edge of the village.

Throughout the night, the Germans launched ten counter-attacks in an attempt to retake the village. All were successfully beaten back & the line held until the regiment was relieved on 6 July.

During the fight for Belloy, the RMLE took over 750 German prisoners.

However, they suffered the loss of 25 officers & 844 other ranks (killed, wounded and missing).

One of the more celebrated of these casualties was the American poet and writer Alan Seeger. who was born in New York on 22 June 1888.

A Harvard graduate & resident of Paris by 1914, he was in London at the time of the declaration of war & returned to Paris soon afterwards, enlisting into the Légion étrangère (as a Sdt. 2. Cl. & numbered LM 5157) on 24 Aug 1914.

With the 2e Régiment de marche du 2er Régiment étrangère, he served in the Aisne, Vosges and Champagne sectors through 1915.

After transferring to the 3e bataillon, RMLE following the amalgamations after the Second Battle of Champagne, Seeger only saw limited frontline service before being sent to the Somme as he was hospitalised with bronchitis between February and April 1916.

Part of the ill-fated first wave on 4 July 1916, Seeger was seen to fall after being hit in the stomach by machine gun fire outside the village.

He managed to crawl into a shell hole and remove his equipment and greatcoat which he wrapped around himself in an attempt to use as a large dressing; but he was not found by the brancardiers until several hours later. By this time, however, Seeger had died.

Along with the majority of the dead from this battle, Seeger’s body was interred in the burial pits located at Cotes 76 and 80 just outside Belloy.

The remains from these pits were re-interred in the ossuaries of the Nécropole nationale de Lihons after the war and where now a small memorial to Seeger can be found.

There are also memorials to Seeger in Belloy village itself (including mention on the village war memorial), and the church bells were bought for the village by his parents in hs memory

There is also now a memorial to the RMLE and their action at the village ...

Note also the memorial to another poet who died that day ... the Catalan poet Camil Campanya

Sadly less famous than Alan Seeger, but it should be remembered that several other Americans also kept their 'Rendezvous with Death' on that Independence Day, 1916 - including Seeger's close friend Siegfried Narwitz who is, most likely buried along with him at Lihons...

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