Current Information:

Born-Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire

Enlisted-Cricklewood

Military Road Cemetery, Thiepval, France

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

By the beginning of September, 1916,  the Battle of the Somme had been raging for two 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, 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.

At the end of September, 1916, 18th Division had been involved in some fierce fighting when the fortress village of Thiepval and the Schwaben Redoubt had been final captured, an operation in which the 8th East Surrey battalion of 55 Brigade had played a prominent part. On 29th September they were relieved and moved back to Blighty Valley. Over the next three days they provided carrying parties taking forward rations and other supplies to the battalions still holding the front line, an arduous task making their way forward through the mud, with no communication trenches for cover. The round trip took fourteen hours and the enemy artillery was always a constant threat. According to the battalion diary, 7th Queens were relieved from these duties on 3rd October and on the following moved, by train, to the village of Autheux, many miles behind the front line. This makes it difficult to explain the death of Roland Furlong, who, according to the records, was killed in action on 4th October and buried in a cemetery close to the Somme battlefield. It would seem to be either a case of the date being incorrectly recorded or that he had been temporarily attached to another unit.