Current Information:

Born-Finsbury

New Munich Trench British Cemetery, Beaumont-Hamel, Somme

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

By the beginning of November, 1916, the Battle of the Somme had been raging for four months. Thousands of men had already been killed or wounded or were simply missing, never to be seen again 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. With November came the winter weather and this, combined with the sheer exhaustion of all involved, brought the battle to a close by the end of the month. Since the 1st July, 1916, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African casualties numbered over 400,000, killed, wounded and missing. 

During November the focus of the fighting switched to the Ancre valley where the last major British offensive was launched on 13th of the month. By now German defence tactics had evolved. 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. Meanwhile their artillery bombarded the British front line and all the communication trenches added to which the weather was simply awful turning the battlefield into a morass of mud. A few gains were made such as the capture of the village of Beaumont-Hamel and some of the marshy land either side of the river, but very few of the British objectives were achieved. Once again the casualty rate soared.

On 13th November, the day the Ancre offensive began, 2nd Division attacked due east along the Redan Ridge. There were some minor gains made on the right but on the left 6 Brigade came up against the Quadrilateral, a formidable German strongpoint, and the attack failed. 99 Brigade were in reserve during this action but the next day, two of its battalions, 1st King’s Royal Rifle Corps and 1st Royal Berkshire, were ordered to launch an attack and capture Munich Trench which had been the objective the day before. This attack which was launched at 6am, was hindered by mud and poor visibility as well as a less than satisfactory creeping artillery barrage and as a consequence direction was lost. The left half of 1st Royal Berkshire formed a defensive flank whilst those on the right attacked Munich Trench. They were met by concentrated machine-gun fire when in no-man’s-land and very few made it across. Those that did were too weak in numbers to deal with the German garrison there but they did capture over 50 prisoners which they brought back to Serre Trench where they were under shell fire for the rest of the day. 1st Royal Berkshire suffered 150 casualties during this operation on 14th November, one of whom was Joseph Ballard.