Current Information:

Born Islington

London Cemetery, Longueval, France

The Battle of the Somme (July-November, 1916)

he British Army launched a massive offensive along a section of the front line running north of the River Somme. The French attacked south of it. The first day was a disaster for the British army which suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, 19,000 of whom were killed, and made hardly any inroads into the enemy lines. But the battle had to go on, if for no other reason than to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun where they had been facing the full onslaught of the powerful German Army. So it continued all the way through to November with nearly every battalion and division then in France being drawn into it at some stage. In the end the German trenches had been pushed back a few miles along most of the line but the cost in lives had been staggering. By the end of the fighting in November, 1916, British Army casualties numbered over 400,000, killed, wounded and missing.

The days immediately following the carnage of July 1st on  the Somme, had two main priorities. They were to rescue the wounded and to consolidate what gains had been made. However, despite the slaughter of 1st July, there was no going back. This was the “Big Push” and the attacks had to continue and Haig decided that they would continue on the southern sector of the front where the few successes had occurred. The first two weeks of the battle saw Fourth Army pushing forward towards the German second line from Contalmaison, through Mametz Wood to Trones Wood. The problem was that these attacks were uncoordinated, with divisions and  corps operating independently and without direction from Army HQ. In a series of isolated operations the British Army struggled forward and took territory but the price in human life was far higher than it should have been.

The attempts to capture the village of Contalmaison were an example of this and it was not until 10th July that 23rd Division  managed to gain this objective. On this day 34th Division were in the line to the left of 23rd Division and depleted by heavy losses on 1st July they had 111 Brigade of 37th Division attached to them. At 4.30pm the attack on Contalmaison by 23rd Division was made and this time it was successful. At this stage, 13th Rifle Brigade of 111 Brigade were ordered to renew the offensive and at 8.45 pm they set off, just before orders arrived cancelling their attack. As they moved forward they were raked by machine gun fire from Ovillers but despite this they managed to penetrate three lines of enemy trenches and take two hundred prisoners. Then the orders cancelling the attack finally reached them and they pulled back to their starting positions. 13th Rifle Brigade sustained over three hundred casualties in this needless operation and two companies of 10th Royal Fusiliers of 111 Brigade moved up to take over the front line while the remnants of 13th Rifle Brigade fell back to the support trenches. Throughout 10th July and 11th July, whether in the support line or when they moved further forward, 10th Royal Fusiliers were subjected to continuous artillery fire and suffered a number of casualties one of whom was David Barnard who was killed on 10th July.