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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. Along the southern front fighting still continued but this was largely a series of localised attacks mainly designed to straighten out pockets and small salients in order to provide a more advantageous position for defence or attack in the future.

On 3rd November, 1916, 20th Royal Fusiliers of 19 Brigade, 33rd Division, moved into the front line north-east of Lesboeufs, where they remained until 7th November. With the French Army on their right, 33rd Division were still hard at it, attempting to push the enemy further back towards Le Transloy and the artillery war was still going strong. Starting on 5th November, 20th Royal Fusiliers tried to advance up Sunken Road from Stormy and Summer Trenches in order to establish a bombing post midway between Lesboeufs and Le Transloy. On 6th November, after three attempts they finally achieved this. This was a small action in the scale of things on the Somme but nevertheless it cost the battalion 100 casualties. One of these was Percy Ellis who was killed on 5th November.