Current Information:

Age-22

36, Regent's Park Road

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 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.

The village of Thiepval had been a first day objective when the Battle of the Somme began on 1st July, 1916, and two an a half months later it was still in German hands, That all changed on 26th September when an attack by the Reserve Army succeeded in wresting it  from the enemy. 18th Division were heavily involved with this successful, but  costly attack and 54 Brigade were given the difficult task of capturing the western part of Thiepval and the Schwaben Redoubt on top of the ridge, half a mile beyond the village. Zero hour was 12.35pm at which time 12th Middlesex attacked Thiepval with one company of 11th Royal Fusiliers  ‘mopping up’ behind them. A good start was made to the attack, the leading troops getting clear of the trenches before the enemy artillery barrage arrived and 12th Middlesex were unchecked until they reached the edge of the village where machine-gun fire fire from the chateau held them up. A tank then arrived and dealt with this machine-gun which enabled the right of the battalion to make further advances but on the left progress was slower after the tank was ditched. Many men had fallen by this stage  and the ‘mopping up’ company of 11th Royal Fusiliers was used to plug a gap on 12th Middlesex’s front. At 3.20pm a pigeon message was sent from Lt Col Maxwell, the Commanding officer of 12th Middlesex, stating that both forward battalions were ‘practically expended’ and in response to this 6th Northamptonshire began arriving around the chateau. At night, Maxwell organised a line of all three battalions along the front that they had captured but the enemy still held the north-west corner of Thiepval and the most commanding positions of the Thiepval Ridge. The success of capturing most of Thiepval was offset by the high number of casualties among 54 Brigade. 12th Middlesex had over 400 officers and men either killed, wounded or missing. One of those who did not make it back was Charles McDonnell.