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Age-20

21, Johnson Street,  Euston

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 Battle of Transloy Ridge

On 1st October, 1916, a new offensive was begun by the British Army. The Battle of Transloy Ridge was the last major operation fought during the battle of the Somme and it continued throughout the first three weeks of the month until the terrible conditions of rain, mud and cold coupled with the sheer exhaustion of the troops, brought things to a standstill. The aim had been to push the enemy further back to the next ridge of higher ground running between Le Transloy and Warlencourt. It was a very hard fight, progress was painfully slow, the casualty figure was shockingly high and the final objective was not achieved despite the best efforts of the attacking divisions. Three factors worked against its success. The first was the weather. It was simply awful. The second was the miles of war torn terrain which soon became a quagmire over which troops, guns, ammunition and all the other supplies had to cross to reach the front and keep the momentum of the offensive going. For the Germans, falling back on their own supply lines across relatively unscathed ground, this was not such a problem. The third factor was the new methods of defence employed by the enemy. They defended in depth without a well defined front line but instead setting up machine-gun nests in shell holes and other strategically important sites where just a few men could hold up an entire battalion. And of course, the German artillery had the whole area covered.

On 7th October, 1916, the British Army attacked on a wide front stretching from Leboeufs, where the British line met the French, to Le Sars on the Albert to Bapaume road. It was not a great success. Very little ground was gained and the cost in casualties was extremely high. 41st Division attacked towards Ligny-Thilloy with 124 Brigade on the right of their front and 122 Brigade on the left. After advancing some 200 yards the attack stopped by machine-gun fire and the men went to ground seeking whatever cover they could find and no further advances were possible. Overnight the leading troops consolidated as best they could, the small amount of ground that had been gained at a heavy cost. 123 Brigade was in reserve for this attack and on 9th October the 23rd Middlesex battalion moved into the new front line north-east of Eaucourt l’Abbaye where they remained, under shell fire, until relieved on 11th October at which time they moved back to Mametz Wood. Patrick Harold was killed in action on 10th October.