Current Information:

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

By the beginning of August the Battle of the Somme had been raging for a full month. 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 the evening of 9th August, 1916, 6th Bedfordshire of 112 Brigade, 37th Division sent out five fighting patrols from their position in front of Bazentin-le-Petit to reconnoitre no-man’s-land in front of them. Things did not start well. Fifteen minutes before they went over, they were subjected to an enfilade barrage by the enemy artillery, firing from High Wood which disrupted their progress and caused casualties. When they did get going they were met by machine-gun and rifle fire and were unable to get close enough to the German positions to use their bombs (grenades). The Germans had fortified shell holes in front of their line. They also had to contend with artillery fire again from High Wood and in the end the operation was abandoned and those who could made it back to their own lines. Among those who did not survive was Wallace Hamilton.