Current Information:

80, Warple Way, Wandsworth

Delville Wood Cemetery, Longueval, Somme

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, 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 Royal Army Service Corps worked at every level during the First World War and by the end of the conflict it was responsible for keeping an army of over 4 million men supplied with all their needs. It was a colossal task and the RASC expanded its own ranks rapidly in order to fulfil this demand. By the end of the war their numbers had expanded to over 300,000.  RASC personnel were to be found from the front line to the Channel ports and many of those in forward positions, delivering supplies of all kinds to the trenches, were liable to become casualties themselves. The tracks along which they had to travel to reach the front line were known to the German gunners and targeted accordingly, as were their depots and it is likely that it was shell fire that was the cause of the death of Richard Ryan who was killed in action on 7th October