Current Information:

Born-Walworth

Aveluy Communal Cemetery, France

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 34th Royal Fusiliers battalion was a Labour battalion that arrived in France in 1916. By October of that year they were on the Somme where , between the 4th and 6th of that month, nine men from the battalion were either killed or wounded. So far it has not been possible to unearth any records concerning these deaths, but it is most likely that they were killed by shell fire which was a constant factor of the Somme at this time. One of those who lost their lives was Jack Spicer who was killed on 4th October.