Current Information:

Age-18

Born-Putney

Philosophe British Cemetery, Mazingarbe, France

On 19th September, 1916, the 21st Middlesex battalion of 121 Brigade, 40th Division were relieved from the front line in the No. 2 subsector at Loos and moved back into reserve at North Maroc from where, for the next week, they provided nightly working parties. The Battalion Diary did not record the nature of these working parties but in general they involved either providing carrying parties to take supplies of all kinds to the front line or working at trench digging, road making, railway laying and host of other tasks, sometimes under command of the Royal Engineers. These activities usually took place at night and were often very dangerous. Harassing artillery and machine-gun fire from the enemy would be kept up intermittently throughout the night designed to disrupt the work as much as possible. Tracks along which carrying parties had to travel to reach the front line were known to the German gunners and targeted accordingly. Many a soldier met his death while in reserve as did Roland Burry on 25th September.