South Africa on the Somme. The Glorious Defence of Delville Wood [1916]

This auction coincides with the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme (in which a million soldiers on both sides were estimated to have died in the single month of July) and the part played in this battle by the 1st South African Infantry Battalion - particularly the defence of the "ride", known, because of the mature oaks lining the grass [horse] rides, as the Bois Delville (Delville Wood). No more than about a tenth of the more than two thousand officers and men who had defended the wood over several days marched out alive. For this reason, the South African Monuments Council chose Delville Wood, although in France, as South Africa's national war memorial.

Fifty years ago this writer attended the fiftieth anniversary of the battle in his capacity as editor of Report from South Africa, a monthly publication of the South African Embassy in London. This was the first occasion that South African survivors were sent as a unit to the memorial, in full uniform and with their medals, ribbons and, sometimes, walking sticks and crutches. Because of its simple beauty, this may at that time have been the finest of the various Allied participants' memorials of the First World War (though some opinions favoured Canada). The mowed rides and oaks had grown again. At each intersection was a granite plinth engraved with the Edinburgh street names given to them by the soldiers (as the South African battalion was part of a Scottish brigade). The focal point of the memorial was Sir Herbert Baker's statue, Peace, of which there is a replica in the grounds of the South African Museum of Military History in Johannesburg.

Suddenly, as we watched, more than a hundred South African veterans and bereted French civilian survivors who had given them sanctuary ran towards one another - individuals embracing as they recognised one another after 50 years.

This lot is a well-framed but unglazed enlarged reproduction of the illustration of the battle by Frank Dadd which was published in a 1916 issue of the Illustrated London News and later included in the embassy publication referred to.

For the events marking the centenary of the Somme battles, there were, alas, unlikely to have been any survivors.