Current Information:

11, St Paul's Road, Brentford

Puchevillers British Cemetery, France

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

By the beginning of November, 1916, the Battle of the Somme had been raging for four 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, nearly all in the southern part of the battlefield, had been captured from the enemy. With November came the winter weather and this, combined with the sheer exhaustion of all involved, brought the battle to a close by the end of the month. Since the 1st July, 1916, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African casualties numbered over 400,000, killed, wounded and missing. 

During November the focus of the fighting switched to the Ancre valley where the last major British offensive was launched on 13th of the month. By now German defence tactics had evolved. 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. Meanwhile their artillery bombarded the British front line and all the communication trenches added to which the weather was simply awful turning the battlefield into a morass of mud. A few gains were made such as the capture of the village of Beaumont-Hamel and some of the marshy land either side of the river, but very few of the British objectives were achieved. Once again the casualty rate soared.

On 13th November, the day the Ancre offensive began, 2nd Division attacked due east along the Redan Ridge. There were some minor gains made on the right but on the left 6 Brigade came up against the Quadrilateral, a formidable German strongpoint, and the attack failed. 99 Brigade were in reserve during this action and 22nd Royal Fusiliers left Bertrancourt at 1.30am and marched, via Mailly-Maillet, to the trenches. When the attack was launched they took up position in the old British support line where they remained  until 4.30pm at which time they crossed over no-man’s-land, company by company, to the trenches captured by 5th Brigade. Here they formed a defensive flank facing north and running towards the Quadrilateral, covering the exposed left flank of 5th Brigade. This task was completed by 4am on 14th November and by 6am, when an attack by two other battalions of 99 Brigade, 1st King’s Royal Rifle Corps and 1st Royal Berkshire was launched on the second objective, Munich Trench, the flank held by 22nd Royal Fusiliers ran from a strongpoint south-east of the Quadrilateral to Lager Alley and was linked to the British trenches by Cat Street tunnel. With B Company in reserve the rest of the battalion remained in these positions for the rest of the day under continual and heavy shell fire. On 15th November,  22nd Royal Fusiliers improved the position on the left defensive flank by bombing forward and establishing a strongpoint in the Quadrilateral near the crest of Redan Ridge. The following day they were relieved. James Grant died of wounds on 18th November and was probably one of those wounded during this operation.