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Age-23

32, Lillian Road,  Barnes

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

By the beginning of September, 1916,  the Battle of the Somme had been raging for two months. Thousands of men had already been killed or wounded or were simply missing, never to be seen again and just a few square miles of the French countryside, 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.

The German second line ran through the village of Guillemont in the southern part of the battlefield and all attempts to capture it through July and August, 1916 had failed. The ferocity of the battle there had transformed the area into something aptly described in the History of The Rifle Brigade 1914-1918, by Reginald Berkeley, as  “..a horror that can hardly be imagined. Not merely was the front line impossible to be held: it could only be approached by men of the most iron fortitude. The position was dangerously exposed to fire from the village; but that was nothing. What horrified the senses and shocked the imagination was not what might come from outside the trenches, but what was in them. From end to end they were choked with British dead, on their backs, on their faces, hideously doubled up, distorted with pain, blackened and bloated by the sun, the prey of myriad upon myriad of carrion flies, odiously green with corruption…like a descent to the anterooms of Hell”.

5th Division, which included 1st East Surrey of 95 Brigade had spent the first three weeks of August, 1916 out of the line, resting and training near Amiens, only returning to the Somme battlefield on 23rd August to prepare for the major assault on Guillemont, planned for 3rd September. On 30th August they moved, in the pouring rain, to the front line in Lonely Trench, 1,000 yards south of Guillemont. They were still in these positions on 1st September when, at 8.30pm, they attempted to capture an enemy machine-gun post which was deemed would be a major obstacle to the attack two days later. This attempt failed. The Germans, anticipating such a move, were very vigilant and the enterprise was abandoned. James Webb, who was killed on this day, may have lost his life during this raid or he may have been a victim of the enemy artillery was active all along this part of the front.