Current Information:

19V, Peabody Avenue, Pimlico

Couin British Cemetery, France

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

By the beginning of August the Battle of the Somme had been raging for a full month. 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.

After spending the first half of 1916 in the Ypres salient, 20th Division moved south to the Somme at the end of July where they took over the Hebuterne sector. After the disaster of 1st July no further attacks had been launched on this section of the Somme front but there was still a lot of shelling taking place as well as patrol activity plus the ever constant threat from snipers. Arthur Dimond of the 11th Rifle Brigade, 59 Brigade died from wounds here on 6th August but it is not known when or in what circumstances he was wounded.