Current Information:

Enlisted-London

Combles Communal Cemetery, France

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.

In late July, 1916, 16th Division arrived on the Somme battlefield and in September played an important part in capturing the villages of Guillemont and Ginchy but suffering over 4,000 casualties in the process. On 6th September, 77 Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, attached to 16th Division, came into action at Maurepas station where A and B Batteries were heavily shelled and suffered over twenty casualties. One of these was Albert Holland and although most records show that he was killed on 7th September, the Brigade diary recorded it as being on 6th September.