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Born-Sheerness

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.

The bombardment of the German trenches on the Somme had been going on for a week when the 12th Middlesex battalion of 54 Brigade, 18th Division, carried out a raid on the trenches opposite Carnoy during the night  of 29th/30th June 1916. The ‘big push’ was to take place the next day, 1st July and the object of the raid was to find out how much damage had been done to the enemy trenches. The raiding part was made up of two platoons of “D” company plus the battalion bombers. They went through the German front and support lines without encountering any opposition after which they hastily erected trench blocks and then moved on to the enemy third line, where they met only four Germans. Back at the blocks they had to fight off a party of twenty of the enemy who approached along a communication trench. Having assessed the destruction that the artillery had wrought on the German trenches the raiding party returned home, running the gauntlet of a German machine gun that opened up on them as they crossed back over no man’s land. During the course of 29th June and 30th June, 1916, 12th Middlesex had fifty casualties, either from this raid or some very heavy German shelling of their trenches. Among those killed was Albert Blois.