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Born-Clerkenwell

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

By the beginning of October, 1916,  the Battle of the Somme had been raging for three 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, nearly 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.

On 1st October, 1916, a new offensive was begun by the British Army. The Battle of Transloy Ridge was the last major operation fought during the battle of the Somme and it continued throughout the first three weeks of the month until the terrible conditions of rain, mud and cold coupled with the sheer exhaustion of the troops, brought things to a standstill. The aim had been to push the enemy further back to the next ridge of higher ground running between Le Transloy and Warlencourt. It was a very hard fight, progress was painfully slow, the casualty figure was shockingly high and the final objective was not achieved despite the best efforts of the attacking divisions. Three factors worked against its success. The first was the weather. It was simply awful. The second was the miles of war torn terrain which soon became a quagmire over which troops, guns, ammunition and all the other supplies had to cross to reach the front and keep the momentum of the offensive going. For the Germans, falling back on their own supply lines across relatively unscathed ground, this was not such a problem. The third factor was the new methods of defence employed by the enemy. They defended in depth without a well defined front line but rather setting up machine-gun nests in shell holes and other strategically important sites where just a few men could hold up an entire battalion. And of course, the German artillery had the whole area covered.

29th Division had been heavily involved in the early fighting of the Battle of the Somme in July, 1916, and at the end of that month had left the Somme and moved north to Ypres. They returned on 7th-8th October, 1916 and 88 Brigade were straight away attached to 12th Division who were heavily involved in the fighting for Transloy Ridge. On 9th October, 1st Essex moved into the front line at Gueudecourt and on 12th October, along with the Newfoundland battalion, also of 88 Brigade, they attacked the enemy front line in Hilt Trench. Advancing at 2.05pm behind a god artillery barrage, W and X Companies took the first line of trenches while the rest of the battalion swung left to assist 35 Brigade in their attack on Bayonet Trench. As they did so they encountered heavy artillery and machine-gun fire and took whatever cover in shell holes. Meanwhile W and X Companies consolidated their position and then moved on to the German second line, Grease Trench. Here, they too met heavy fire and only a few men gained access to the trench. Outnumbered and outflanked they were eventually withdrawn to their starting line, leaving the Newfoundland battalion holding the first objective. There were of course many casualties for 1st Essex and included among them was George Cox.