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Age-18

124, Fifth Avenue, Queen's Park

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

By the beginning of September, 1916,  the Battle of the Somme had been raging for two 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. When the battle drew to a close in November, 1916, British Army casualties numbered over 400,000, killed, wounded and missing.

On 4th September, 1916, the 13th London battalion of 168 Brigade, 56th Division moved forward to the Citadel on the Bray-Fricourt road and on the next day moved into the front line trenches there as 56th Division relieved 5th Division in preparation for the forthcoming attack against Combles. On 6th September a patrol was sent out to inspect the German wire in front of them and when they returned, minus one man who had been killed, they reported that it was extremely thick. Despite this they were ordered to occupy the trench in front as an aircraft had reported it to be empty of the enemy. Two companies were assigned to this task but when they moved forward in the afternoon they came under heavy shell fire and were forced back to a nearby wood. A second attempt in the evening met the same fate. 13th London were relieved in the evening of the following day, 7th September, but not before they had been heavily shelled for two hours around midday, adding further to their casualty list. One of these was James Stote.