Lance Corporal Fairbrother of the 10^th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment and Private Herbert Barnes of the 13^th Essex Regiment were wounded in the last major Somme offensive of 1916, The Battle of The Ancre.

 

The main attack was to be delivered by V Corps against the original German defences north of the Ancre which had been assaulted at such heavy cost on 1^st July.  Whilst gains had been made elsewhere on the Somme front during the preceding nineteen weeks, the villages of Serre, Beaumont Hamel, Beaucourt and St Pierre Divon had held out and now projected as a troublesome salient into British held territory.   True, some minor gains had been made and with an average No Man’s Land depth of 250 yards, and German powers of resistance believed to be wilting, it was deemed to be an opportune moment to reduce the head of the salient and again launch an assault at the German strongholds.

 

In order to combine surprise with the force of an assault, each morning, about half an hour before Dawn, the Allied heavy artillery on the British Front had lain an hour-long barrage on the German trenches.  When the day for the assault came, it was hoped that the Germans, having become accustomed to the routine, would not anticipate an infantry assault behind a creeping barrage.

 

Herbert Barnes and the 13^th Essex had as their objective a German stronghold south west of Serre known as The Quadrilateral.  Barnes had enlisted in the 8^th (Cyclist) battalion of the Essex Regiment in August 1915 aged 21 years and three months.  In September 1916 he had transferred to the 13^th Battalion and been sent to France shortly after.  Now, shivering in a waterlogged trench he not only faced the daunting prospect of a German stronghold but the small matter of four lines of German trenches in front of it.  The battalion though, was well prepared for the coming battle and each man knew the role he had to fulfil.  Fore-armed against previous disappointments when men had been stranded in front of uncut wire, in addition to the usual carrying detachments, two parties, each of five men, were to hold themselves in readiness to carry Bangalore torpedoes behind the second wave.  The torpedoes, long tubes filled with explosives, would be detonated under barbed wire entanglements in the event of the preceding artillery having failed to clear them. 

 

“All ranks,” reported John Burrows in his study of the ,9th, 10th, 11th, 13th and 15th Essex Regiment battalions published in 1930, “were warned that it was most important for waves to follow up our barrage as closely as possible.  They were also instructed that, in the event of the enemy putting up a barrage, they were to rush it and not to hesitate, as the least hesitation would cause a large number of casualties.  They were instructed to keep the old proverb in mind, ‘He who hesitates is lost.’”

 

By 4.15am on the morning of 13th November, a warm mug of cocoa inside them, the men who would form the assaulting parties of the V Corps attack had been moved into the open and were waiting for the signal to advance.  At 5.45am the barrage opened and simultaneously the waves moved forward. 

 

With the benefit of hindsight we can now only marvel at the doggedness and stoicism of the men as they trudged towards objectives which had held out against the British for over four and a half months.  Not only were the troops aware of that but they also had to contend with a No-Man’s land and a German trench system which had severely deteriorated as a result of continual shelling and heavy rain.  The thick mist which lasted until the afternoon of the next day only compounded the situation.  In places the trenches were waist deep in mud and water and in all of them the mud was knee deep. 

 

As soon as the Germans became aware that they were being attacked they had lain down a heavy barrage of rifle and machine gun fire, pinning down the advanced party of around fifty 13^th Essex men behind a small bank about one hundred yards in front of the German wire.  Hopes of rushing The Quadrilateral were dashed due to the conditions of the ground and the best the men could do was to consolidate the wretched positions they held, even though in some instances they were in danger of being outflanked and overrun by German defenders still holding on to their own trenches.

 

At 2.30am on the morning of 16^th November, the 13^th Essex were relieved by the 1^st Dorsets.  Over the preceding three days, battalion losses had been heavy with ten officers killed and two wounded.  Six other ranks had been killed and 137 men had been wounded, six of these men later succumbing to their injuries.  In addition, 165 men were missing and time would reveal that only seven of these would be reported as prisoners of war.

 

Private Barnes was numbered amongst the 137 wounded men.  Shot through the right thigh he would spend a couple of weeks in French hospitals before being shipped back to England on 28^th November.  Sixteen months later and still in his hospital blues he would write in Nurse Oliver’s book.

 

Lance Corporal Fairbrother, previously wounded at Givenchy in May 1915, was wounded two days after Private Barnes on November 15^th in an action further south against Munich Trench.  Arriving in position just 40 minutes before the attack was due to start, the troops had lost their direction in the mist and sustained heavy casualties.  Like Barnes, Fairbrother would wind up at Beechlands although it is unknown whether he would spend as much time there as his Essex Regiment companion.

 

At home in Eastbourne, other matters were troubling Edward Burnage.  Wounded at Loos in September 1915, sent back and wounded again in December 1915 and then involved in the car smash at Chailey, his discharge from the army in June 1916 had not come a moment too soon.  Even now though, he could not prevent the war from intruding as he tried to settle back to life as a civilian.  The problem was that, as Charles Chambers would shortly be finding out, the absence of a Silver War Badge on his lapel was laying him open to accusations of being a shirker, of sitting idly at home while other able-bodied men were fighting for their country. With the war on the Western Front raging, the casualties streaming back and conscription already in force, the need for fit and able-bodied men was acute and any fit-looking man not wearing khaki or a badge to prove his exemption from war service, was a target for busy-bodies.  On November 13^th, five months after his discharge, Edward Burnage was writing to the Colonel in charge of infantry records at Hounslow.  It was the second time he had written and now it had become urgent.

 

“Dear Sir” he wrote, “I trust you will forgive me for writing twice on the subject of War Badge.  I shall be glad if you could let me have one quickly.  I am awkwardly placed, being a Casual Porter on the Railway here.  I am subject to a deal of annoyance, people thinking I ought to join up, not knowing I have done my Bit.  On Saturday last the Guards played a football match and on their way back, the annoyance from them was so great I was compelled to defend myself which was greatly to my detriment.  If I had the Badge to wear, the Public could see for themselves.  Apologising for troubling you.  Yours Respectfully, 4780 Pte E J Burnage, Royal Sussex Regt.”

 

Two months later, Burnage received his badge and certificate.

 

With so much bad news coming back from the Front, the streams of wounded seemingly never ending and the casualty lists by now a regular and depressing feature in every local paper, good news – what precious little there was of it - was seized on at every opportunity.

 

In November just such an opportunity arose at Beechlands when it became known that Corporal Fred Denton, wounded on 3^rd July, and resident at the House, was to be presented with the Military Medal for gallant conduct in an attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt the previous year.  The sergeant of the bombing team having been wounded, Denton had taken charge of the men, organized them and carried out their general instruction.  For these services he had been commended by his commanding officer for having carried out the work of a senior NCO.  He had thought nothing more of it until he had received an official card signed by Major General Scott, Commanding 12^th Division. “Your Commanding Officer and Brigade Commander have informed me,” he wrote, “that you have distinguished yourself by conduct in the field.  I have read their report with much pleasure and have brought it to the notice of the higher authority.”

 

Now, that higher authority had seen fit to recognise his heroism with the award of the Military Medal.  Having been awarded in September, it was to be presented to him by the King’s representative, Major General Sir Gerald Kitson, KCVC, CB, CMG.  The local newspapers covered the event in depth.

 

“Three hearty cheers were given for the recipient, who in a few words of acknowledgement, said the other men present had all done as well as he had, for they had all been out and all had done their bit, (Applause).  Subsequently Major-General Kitson said that he had lately been in France (not on active service) and he could tell them from what he saw there was no difference between the old Army and the new.  They were all one Army and they were all alike doing their duty.”

Margaret Cotesworth’s brother, Captain Charles Hext Cotesworth attended the presentation as did Corporal Denton’s wife and young daughter who had travelled down from Essex to be with him and were staying nearby in Newick.  The festivities were added to with another ‘very enjoyable entertainment, provided by friends from Brighton, assisted by some of the patients at Beechlands’ and the wounded soldiers who attended the celebrations even forgave Major General Kitson when he said that he hoped they would all be fit again to go out once more and fight for their King.

 

After the ceremony, Nurse Oliver passed her album to Corporal Denton so that he could add his entry.  He had done so with relish.

 

Over in France, the Battle of The Somme had finally petered out, brought to a close by a combination of the appalling weather and the constant shelling which had turned the battlefield into a quagmire.  Sir Douglas Haig, the architect of the offensive which had begun under clear skies on a warm morning nearly five months earlier, surveyed the scene on 21^st November.  “The ground, sodden with rain and broken up everywhere  by innumerable shell holes,” he wrote, “can only be described as a morass, almost bottomless in places: between the lines and for many thousands of yards behind them it is almost – and in some localities, quite – impassable.  The supply of food and ammunition is carried out with the greatest difficulty and immense labour, and the men are so much worn out by this and by the maintenance and construction of trenches that frequent reliefs – carried under exhausting conditions – are unavoidable.”

 

The valley of the Ancre and the entire front line and reserve positions on the reverse slopes of the Bazentin Ridge was little more than a sea of mud.  Under such conditions the only way to traverse the area was by duckboard track; winding, exposed slatted corduroy paths laid above ground which were easy to spot and were soon being ruthlessly shelled in turn by German gunners.  Over such terrain, wheeled transport simply stuck fast, all movement of supplies and material transferring instead to men and mules.

 

In the four and a half months since the battle had begun, Allied losses numbered around 630,000 with their opposite numbers in the German trenches sustaining slightly heavier casualties at between 660,000 and 680,000 men.