Current Information:

Born-Hornsey

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

By the beginning of September, 1916,  the   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 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.

On the night of 16th September, 59 Brigade of 20th Division relieved the 3rd Guards Brigade in front of the village of Lesboeufs with orders to attack it the next day. They had moved into a nightmarish scenario. It was very wet and dark and the ground was littered with dead and wounded. Their guides were uncertain of the way and those in the trenches over which they passed did not know where the front line was. The relief was chaotic with the outgoing troops wanting away as soon as possible before the shelling began again and it took some time before they reached their designated positions in Gap Trench. Throughout the next day, 17th September,  the enemy shelled these positions and it was not until 6.30pm that the 10th Rifle Brigade, 11th Rifle Brigade and 11th King’s Royal Rifle Corps battalions of 59 Brigade launched their attack, designed to punch out the enemy pocket in front of them. It was a miserable failure. There was an insufficient artillery bombardment of the German positions and the wire had not been adequately cut. No-man’s-land was very wide here and as they crossed it they were met by overwhelming machine-gun fire from the front and the flanks. Very soon they had lost over a half of their number and the survivors had no option but to crawl back to their own line where they stayed for the next two days preparing a jumping off line for the next attack. Most of the casualties, including Bertie Applegate of 10th Rifle Brigade, were recorded as the 18th September when the battalion had time to count the cost.