Current Information:

Age-27

Born-Windsor

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.

16th Middlesex of 86 Brigade, 29th Division had been involved in the initial fighting of the Battle of the Somme in July, 1916 but at the end of that month the division was moved north to Ypres in Belgium not returning to the Somme until the middle of October, 1916. The focus of the fighting on the southern part of the battlefield during October had been the struggle to gain a foothold on the Transloy Ridge which had pushed the front a little further forward but this was practically over by the time that 16th Middlesex moved into the front line near Flers on 19th October. But this is not to say that things were quiet. The artillery war continued largely unabated and during the four days they remained here, in the cold and the wet, their casualties mounted daily. One of these was John Davis who was killed on 22nd October.