Current Information:

Age-25

13 Rhyme Road, Lewisham

La Neuville British Cemetery, Corbie, France

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

On 1st July 1916 The British Army launched a massive offensive along a section of the front line running north of the River Somme. The French attacked south of it. The first day was a disaster for the British army which suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, 19,000 of whom were killed, and made hardly any inroads into the enemy lines. But the battle had to go on, if for no other reason than to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun where they had been facing the full onslaught of the powerful German Army. 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 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.

Trench Mortar Batteries played an important part in the Battle of the Somme. A new weapon that developed rapidly as the war progressed, it was fired by a specialised team from the front line they were able to deal with individual targets such as machine gun nests or sniper posts and thereby assisting the infantry going into the attack. But they were not always welcome. Many an infantryman would complain bitterly about trench mortar sections that would join them in the front line trenches, fire a salvo of mortars and then disappear back, leaving the occupants to face the inevitable enemy retaliation. Many different models were tried until in mid 1915 the 3 inch Stokes mortar became standard issue and each division had three Medium Batteries attached, which had the same number as the division. There were also Light Mortars attached to Brigades and bearing the Brigade’s number.. When an attack went in it was the job of the men of the Trench Mortar Batteries to accompany the infantry forward and resume their fire from captured positions. It was dangerous work.

18th Trench Mortar Battery was part of 18th Division and, on 1st July,  were involved in one of the few successful attacks of the day when they attacked at the southern end of the British front and captured the village of Montauban. Ernest Brereton died of wounds on 3rd July.