Current Information:

Age-24

68, Cromford Road, Wandsworth

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.

2nd Division had reached the battlefield towards the end of July, 1916 and been thrown into the awfulness of the struggle for Delville Wood which had been turned into a hopeless tangle of undergrowth, fallen trees, remains of trenches and dead bodies. During the evening of 1st August, 1916, 22nd Royal Fusiliers of 99 Brigade, 2nd Division moved up into Delville Wood from the Montauban defences where they relieved battalions of the 5 and 6 Brigades. After the previous fighting here the strength of the battalion stood at 21 officers and 449 other ranks so the companies were thinly stretched. A great deal of German artillery was still targeting the wood and on 2nd August, 1916, 22nd Royal Fusiliers sustained further casualties, one of whom was John Cane.