Current Information:

Born-Spitalfields

Enlisted-Hounslow

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

By the beginning of October, 1916,  the Battle of the Somme had been raging for three months. Thousands of men had already been killed or wounded or were simply missing, never to be seen again and and just a few square miles of the French countryside, nearly all in the southern part of the battlefield, had been captured from the enemy. Mistakes had been made by the various commanders and would be continued to be made but there was no turning back as the British, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders and Canadians carried on battering away at the German defences in the hope of a breakthrough, 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 more 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.

On 1st October, 1916, a new offensive was begun by the British Army. The Battle of Transloy Ridge was the last major operation fought during the battle of the Somme and it continued throughout the first three weeks of the month until the terrible conditions of rain, mud and cold coupled with the sheer exhaustion of the troops, brought things to a standstill. The aim had been to push the enemy further back to the next ridge of higher ground running between Le Transloy and Warlencourt. It was a very hard fight, progress was painfully slow, the casualty figure was shockingly high and the final objective was not achieved despite the best efforts of the attacking divisions. Three factors worked against its success. The first was the weather. It was simply awful. The second was the miles of war torn terrain which soon became a quagmire over which troops, guns, ammunition and all the other supplies had to cross to reach the front and keep the momentum of the offensive going. For the Germans, falling back on their own supply lines across relatively unscathed ground, this was not such a problem. The third factor was the new methods of defence employed by the enemy. They defended in depth without a well defined front line but rather setting up machine-gun nests in shell holes and other strategically important sites where just a few men could hold up an entire battalion. And of course, the German artillery had the whole area covered.

At 3.15pm on 1st October, 1916, 141 Brigade of 47th (London) Division attacked towards Eaucourt l’Abbaye with 17th London, 19th London and 20th London plus two tanks. On the right the objectives were successfully captured. On the left of the brigade front however, 17th London did not fare so well. Here the wire was largely uncut and when they were only half way across they were met by a terrific hail of machine-gun fire and not many got any further forward. 23rd London of 142 Brigade but attached to 141 Brigade for this operation, moved forward to reinforce the attack and at 6.45am on 2nd October, 1916, they attacked over the same ground where 17th London had come to grief on the previous day and met the same fate. The 22nd London battalion also of 142 Brigade but attached to 141 Brigade were in support positions in the Switch Line north-east of High Wood  from where they provided carrying parties taking supplies forward through heavy shell fire. This caused the battalion some casualties, one of them being William Crane.