Current Information:

Age-21

20, Westcott Street, Borough

Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps, France

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, 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 3rd October, 1916 the 23rd Royal Fusiliers battalion of 99 Brigade, 2nd Division moved into the front line in the Redan-Serre sector in the northern part of the Somme battlefield where the fighting was of a lesser intensity than further south. They remained here until relieved on 6th October when they went back to billets in Mailly-Maillet. The Battalion Diary has little to say about these three days spent in the front line and makes no mention of any casualties. However, other records show that two men were killed on 5th October, most likely as a result of shell fire. One of these two was Alfred Moore.