The men of Chailey had also been in action in the main Somme battle and in diversionary attacks further north.  As the villagers left behind scanned the local papers for news of the advance, the casualty lists also started to appear, and there were Chailey names amongst them.

 

It hadn’t taken long for the notion of a ‘Pals’ type formation to sweep through the country.  Although the heaviest concentrations were to be found in the industrial north where Pals battalions were able to form into entire Pals’ divisions (as in the case of the 30^th Division), the southern counties also contributed men drawn from similar walks of life and now soldiering together as they had worked together in peacetime.

 

The 39^th Division had been formed in August 1915 from Pals type battalions which originated for the most part from London and Southern England.  In its senior brigade, the 116^th, were the 11^th, 12^th and 13^th battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment comprised of men raised locally from the towns and villages of Sussex by Lt-Col Claude Lowther MP and known affectionately as Lowther’s Lambs.  Before being given their official designations, the volunteers were known as the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd South Downs Battalions and their regimental numbers, prefixed with the initials, SD, reflected this proud association. 

The men had sailed to France in March 1916 with the rest of the division and had served in the Fleurbaix and Festubert sectors before taking over the trenches at Richebourg L’Avoue near Neuve Chapelle.  By the time they had arrived in France, preparations for the forthcoming Somme offensive were already well advanced, but the build up to it was worrying the authorities.  Despite the huge concentrations of men and munitions moving into the region, the element of surprise would still be an important card for the Allies to play and in order to confuse the Germans, a number of diversionary operations like the one at Gommecourt were also planned.  The regular 1^st Division would attack the Double Crassier at Loos whilst in Flanders, the 41^st Division, the last – at that point in time - of Kitchener’s New Army Divisions and in France for less than two months, would carry out local operations at Ploegsteert.  The 39^th Division would carry out its attack at Richebourg on a German salient known as the Boar’s Head.

The salient had been formed after the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915 and was so named because it was shaped like the head of a boar. German troops occupying it had a clear field of view across no-man’s land and for the past year, had perpetually harassed and impeded the Allied troops facing them, shelling their trenches and enfilading patrols into no man’s land.  Now, with the order to launch a diversionary attack to assist the main thrust further south, came the opportunity for the men entrusted with the duty to get their own back.

Two battalions would launch the attack, with a third in reserve. The leading units would break through the salient, and enter the German lines as far as the support trenches. Here they would establish a new front line. The 39^th Division was chosen to carry out the attack and its senior brigade would be used. The 11^th Royal Sussex would lead, with the 12^th on its right, and the 13^th in reserve.  The poet Edmund Blunden was serving with the 11^th battalion at this time having joined them in France the previous month.  He would not however, go over with them as the leading battalion.  Lieutenant Colonel Harman Grisewood, commanding the battalion was unconvinced by the plan of attack and expressed as much to his commanding officer.  He was promptly dismissed and the 11^th relegated to playing a supporting role.  The 13^th would now lead. 

The attack on The Boar’s Head took place at 3:05am on 30^th June and was preceded by a heavy barrage laid down on the German trenches.  In a scenario which was to be played out many times over the following days however, the German machine gunners had simply sheltered in deep dug-outs while the shells rained down, re-surfacing once the shooting had stopped.  By the time the lead battalions of the 12^th and 13^th Sussex were clambering out of their trenches, the Germans were ready for them and already raking their lines with bullets.

It was here that CSM Nelson Carter of A Company, 12^th Royal Sussex, won the Victoria Cross.  An old soldier, Carter had re-enlisted with the 11^th battalion in September 1914, transferring to the 12^th when that was raised the following month.  Now, taking over from his fallen company commander and armed with a revolver, Carter led his men towards the Boar’s Head, succeeding in reaching the German second line and inflicting heavy casualties there with bombs.  Forced by a counter-attack to retire to the enemy’s first line he had captured a German machine gun and had been carrying wounded men to safety when he was himself shot and killed.

The situation was no better on the 13^th Battalion front.  Here the smoke bombardment had drifted into the attackers causing many of the men to lose direction and advance at an angle into no man’s land.  Their flanks exposed to the Germans they were scythed down like corn.  Those few who actually managed to reach the German front line found the wire virtually intact and impenetrable.  Those that could do so took what cover they could find and began the struggle to get back to their own trenches. 

The 11^th Royal Sussex, relegated to reserve for the battle had not been committed as a complete unit although D Company had gone in as a carrying party and was almost entirely wiped out.  Edmund Blunden, sheltering 200 yards to the rear of the British lines in a strong point on the La Bassee Road and half expecting to be called upon to reinforce the 12^th and 13^th battalions, encountered a party returning from the fighting who, as he later wrote in his Great War autobiography, Undertones of War, had ‘blundered dazedly round the trench corner’ to where he was waiting.  There, they had recounted the tale of attack, retreat and failure at heavy cost.

That morning, the three volunteer Sussex battalions sustained over eleven hundred casualties.  Roll calls revealed that 15 officers and 364 other ranks had been killed, and nearly 750 officers and men wounded.  A curiously named action at a remote village in France would affect the lives not only of the men who played a direct part in the action but of their relatives back home in scores of Sussex towns and villages.

Chailey did not escape unscathed.  Esther Plummer of South Common received news that her husband, Lance-Corporal Albert Plummer of the 13^th Royal Sussex had succumbed to wounds on 2^nd July, he was 36 years old.  Elsewhere, 22 year old Gunner Thomas Homewood of the 41^st Division’s Y trench mortar battery had been killed in action in the division’s actions around Ploegesteert whilst 25 year old Fred Cottingham of South Chailey was killed on 1^st July whilst serving with the 8^th Royal Sussex.

At Beechlands, Margaret Cotesworth and Sussex/54 prepared for the new arrivals that the battle on the continent would surely bring them.  They had settled in to their generous new surroundings and so had the few convalescent soldiers who had transferred with them and still remained.  Signaller Chris Barclay of the 2/10^th King’s (Liverpool Scottish) was one of them.

Barclay, a Scotsman living in Liverpool, had enlisted in his home town on 6^th November 1914.  His division, the 57^th (West Lancashire), would not go to France until February 1917 but Barclay had fallen ill and had wound up at Hickwells just as the Detachment was planning its move up the road to Beechlands.  He had gone with them and at the same time, developed a crush on the tall nurse who had tended to him.  When it came to his turn he had drawn a village and a stream within the outline of a maple leaf but had been too shy to write anything other than the barest details – name, rank, regiment and his temporary address.  Then he had added the words, “Wishing you prosperity and happiness”.  Barclay was barely 22 years old.  It was a very formal message for someone so young.  Only later, away from Chailey would he get close to conveying his true feelings.

“Dear Nurse,” he from camp at Aldershot in August 1916, “I must thank you very much for your kindness to me whilst at Chailey and Newick.  One does not realize at the time what it means to devote one’s time to the sick, it is only when you are blessed with health and strength once more that you begin to realize the sacrifice made by you nurses.  I will always remember my days at Chailey and Newick; the fun we had and the patient way in which you stood all our noise.  I think you must have had a splitting headache, especially when my melodious voice was singing?  Fellows generally have their favourite nurse, and so I especially thank you Nurse Oliver, but you would greatly oblige me if you conveyed my sincerest thanks to all the other nurses who were so kind to me whilst at Convalescent Hospital.  I hear you have a number of new faces up at Beechlands (lucky fellows).  It will be a ‘grand old war’ for them.” 

It might be a ‘grand old war’ for some but for others the war had already ended.  It had ended on the barbed wire in front of the German trenches, in the slow march towards the enemy across no-man’s land, or in myriad random incidences of shell fire, mortaring, sniping, bombing, machine-gunning or gassing.  While reinforcements and survivors from earlier waves waited in the trenches for their orders; thousands of nurses in hospitals the length and breadth of Britain waited no less anxiously for what the coming battles would bring to them.  They wouldn’t have to wait long.

August 1916, recorded the Official Historian over two decades after the events he was describing had passed, “was a period of bitter fighting when hardly any ground was gained and the struggle became, more than ever, a grim test of endurance.  There was little to encourage or inspire the troops of all arms who fought on the Somme in August: subjected to heavy losses, great hardships and physical and moral strain, they had only their own dogged spirit to maintain them.”

 

Despite the heavy casualties sustained on the opening day of the Battle, July had seen some Allied gains, most notably in the south, and the troops holding that part of the line had made good the gains made on the first day and edged their way forward. Strong points such as Serre and Thiepval to the north remained immovable, impregnable obstacles that would continue to frustrate allied attempts to wrest them from German control for weeks to come.  La Boiselle, Bernafay Wood, Mametz Wood and Contalmaison though, had all fallen, followed by Trones Wood.  On July 14^th a three day battle later known as The Battle of Bazentin Ridge had secured a further 6,000 yards of blasted earth and the troops had moved on towards the next shattered wood or the next ruined village.  It was a painfully slow and wearing business fighting an enemy who was both deeply entrenched in well defended positions and absolutely resolute in his determination not to surrender those positions to the troops now attacking him. 

 

While the Generals plotted the latest Allied progress and setbacks on their campaign maps, back home in Chailey, the villagers from North and South Common scanned the local papers for news of men from the village or waited anxiously for the knock on the door that would bring the telegram they all dreaded.  In a three week spell in August, Chailey lost four more of its men in the fighting on the Somme.

 

2^nd Lieutenant Thomas Wood of the 7^th Royal Sussex Regiment was the first Chailey man to be killed that month.  On the 4^th August, two years to the day since Britain had declared war on Germany, the 7^th Royal Sussex and the 9^th Royal Fusiliers had attacked the German held Ration Trench, north west of Pozieres and south of Mouquet Farm.  They had attacked it frontally on the right while the 8^th Royal Fusiliers had bombed up from the left.  Their objective was to secure both Ration Trench and its junction with Western Trench to the north.  At 9:15pm the infantry had advanced under a field barrage and by morning, after a series of attacks and counter attacks, Ration Trench was in British hands.  The junction with Western Trench had not been reached however and the unfortunate platoons from the 7^th Royal Sussex which had advanced northwards towards it had faltered in the face of rifle and machine gun fire.  The action had cost the battalion 224 casualties, including 2^nd Lieutenant Wood.

 

Less than a fortnight later, Sergeant George Saunders, another Chailey man serving with the 2^nd Royal Sussex, was killed.  A career soldier, Saunders had been among the first to serve abroad when the battalion had embarked for France in August 1914.  He had fought right the way through that first year, been wounded at Ypres in January 1915, returned to England to recuperate and then, once fit enough, had rejoined his unit.  On 17^th August 1916 after the Germans had counter-attacked the battalion’s positions with flame-throwers, Saunders had failed to answer his name at roll-call and was posted as missing.  In late September, The East Sussex News would duly report the fact but by then Sergeant Saunders had been dead for nearly six weeks.

 

A week later, nineteen year old Private Albert Padgham, another 2^nd Sussex Chailey man, died of wounds.  It is possible that he had been fatally wounded in the same action in which Sergeant Saunders had been killed, although The Chailey Parish Magazine had noted as early as May 1916 that he had been wounded. 

 

Sergeant Saunders and Private Padgham were just two of 480 casualties sustained by the 2^nd Royal Sussex since 14^th August but to John and Mary Padgham of Fletching, such statistics were meaningless.  As far as they were concerned, they had lost their eldest son.  Louisa, Florence, Alice and William Padgham had lost their brother.  The fact that he had been killed scrapping for a piece of blasted earth in a foreign country was neither her nor there.  He would never return to his native Sussex and they would never see him again.

 

Private George Turner of the 9^th Royal Sussex, was Chailey’s fourth fatal casualty in August.  He too died of wounds, the day before Albert Padgham, on the 23^rd August. 

 

Private George Lucas of the 8^th Royal West Kent Regiment, the motor driver from Tonbridge who had found himself thrown into the attack at Loos nearly a year earlier and somehow come through unscathed, received his Blighty wound in front of Trones Wood.  For the previous ten days the battalion had been training, practising new methods of attack and getting ready for an assault.  Lucas though, would never get the opportunity to put the newly-learned techniques into practice.  He received his wound not whilst rushing forward to storm a German trench but while his battalion was relieving the 1/5^th South Lancashire Regiment in front line trenches on August 11th. 

In the seven days that the 8^th Royal West Kents would spend in the forward area, they would suffer six officer casualties and 146 amongst the other ranks.   Like his pal Horace Wood before him, Private Lucas would follow the familiar path from battlefield to Blighty, arriving first at the 2^nd Eastern General Hospital in Brighton and then being transferred to Beechlands where he would be cared for by the same nurses who had attended Corporal Wood.  In time, he too would also leave his mark in Nurse Oliver’s album.  Searching out the page on which Wood had recorded details of his Loos wound, Lucas would add his own brief record, “Wounded in the knee 11^th August 1916”.

 

August 1916 also saw the death of another man with Chailey connections; Rifleman Stan Collins of the 12^th Kings Royal Rifle Corps who had hobbled in to Hickwells after being wounded at Loos in 1915.

 

Patched up and returned to his old battalion after he had recovered sufficiently, he had kept in touch with Nurse Oliver even though Hickwells already seemed another world away.  His battalion hadn’t arrived on the Somme until late July and then it had almost immediately been placed in Divisional Reserve at Courcelles.  On 6^th August they had relieved the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry in trenches in front of Serre where they had remained for just over a week.  Although the enemy had been active with rifle grenades and trench mortars, and particularly heavy artillery fire on the 10^th, their spell in front of Serre had been tolerable and they had not even been called upon to make an assault.  Stan Collins had been killed not in the trenches and not in an attack on an enemy position, but on a route march back to billets.  The battalion war diary entry for August 18^th, the day he was killed simply reads, “Proceeded by march route to billets at CANDAS.”  Four other riflemen from the same battalion were also killed that day and three more died of wounds.  A month later, under its ‘Roll of Honour – Killed’ section, Collins’ local paper, The West Surrey Times and County Express, accustomed now to the stream of casualty reports coming through was equally brief.  The entry simply read, ‘COLLINS, Rflm. S. (Ripley), KRR’. Stan Collins was 22 year old.  At some point later, when news of his death reached Nurse Oliver, she simply added a line of her own under his entry in her album, “Killed August 18^th 1916”.

Like George Lucas and Stan Collins, Albert Leggett had also been in the thick of the fighting at Loos a year earlier.  A Kitchener volunteer, he had been sent with a draft to the Regular 1^st Northamptonshire Regiment, arriving in France at the end of July 1915.  On the opening day of the Battle of Loos, while Edward Burnage of the 2^nd Royal Sussex had been desperately trying to stay alive in front of the uncut German wire south of Lone Tree, the men of the 1^st Northants had also been subjected to a hail of enemy fire.  Although Leggett had survived unscathed, the battalion had suffered nearly three hundred casualties including its VC officer, Captain Read who had been mortally wounded by a sniper.  The other three battalions in the 2^nd Brigade, 1^st Division, had also suffered heavily losing over four hundred casualties each.

Ten months on, although the 1^st Northants had not taken part in the opening day of the Somme offensive, actions to the end of the had resulted in 268 casualties.  Leggett’s luck had held so far but now, in August, the relentless push forward – met with no less relentlessness on the part of the stubborn German defenders facing them – was increasing in intensity.

The month began calmly enough.  With the battalion stationed at Henencourt Wood, practice attacks and deployment against hostile enemy trenches on Tuesday 1^st gave way the following day to preliminary heats to select brigade representatives for divisional sports on Friday.  As it turned out, 2^nd Brigade would win the quarter mile and relay race and take second and third place respectively in ‘Officers’ Jumping’ and ‘G S Limber’, not that there would be much time to celebrate.  Even as the brigades were battling it out between themselves on the sports’ ground, fresh drafts of men were arriving.  Between the 4^th and 12^th August, four separate drafts of men; a total of 199 Other Ranks and four officers, had joined or rejoined the battalion.  The divisional sports’ day over, the men of the 1^st Northants now turned their attention to their next tour of duty and spent the ensuing days practising for a night attack and sharpening up on their musketry and bayonet skills.

On the 13^th, the battalion left Henencourt, taking over support trenches from the 16^th Royal Scots the following day and spending the night there digging and generally trying to improve the system of trenches.  The following day, the battalion moved up the line, taking over the front line from the 2^nd Royal Sussex and immediately sending out two patrols.  Both had returned and, flushed by the reports coming back and emboldened by their recent practice exercises behind the lines, an attempt was made to take the German trench opposite by complete surprise and without any preparation.  Although the attempt had failed, when Lieutenant Nye finally managed to struggle back into the Northants’  lines at 9.25am the following morning, he brought with him invaluable information about the state of the German defences and was absolutely confident of success should the Regiment attack again.  Undeterred by his night spent hiding in a shell hole, he even volunteered to lead the attack himself.

At 10.05pm on August 16th, C and D Companies of the 1^st Northants, supported on their right by the 2^nd Royal Sussex, attacked the German line and succeeded in securing it, only for the latter to subsequently evacuate their position after a German counter attack.  Rushed up to stop the Germans from bombing down the portion of trench they held, Lieutenant Nye, hero of the previous day was killed along with two fellow officers.  Four other officers were wounded and there were 42 Other Rank casualties including 10 killed.

Typical of the Somme offensive attacks and counter attacks, the battalion’s hard won gains were now subjected to furious attention by the Germans facing them.  On the 17^th, the day on which A Company had taken over the line and spent the time largely consolidating the position, two officers and over 100 other ranks became casualties.  On the 18^th, with the aid of two Stokes mortars and hand grenades, the battalion retaliated, bombing down the trench relinquished by the Sussex and retaking it.  Simultaneously, the 1^st Loyal North Lancashires launched a frontal attack and succeeded in capturing a further portion of trench to the East.  Making good their gains, A Company was pushed out as outpost company and sent patrols forward, establishing a line of posts on the Ridge albeit not without loss and not without determined opposition from the German lines.

On 20th August, a heavy German counter attack  forced the outpost company to retreat from its position on the ridge.  This was then immediately followed up by a counter-attack by B and A Companies in a fight which lasted all morning but did not succeed in winning back the lost ground.  At 2.30pm, supported by two companies of The 2^nd Royal Sussex, the Northants went over again and after a severe fight, established a post about three hundred yards in front of the newly taken trench.  Consolidating their newly won position, the battalion handed over to the 2^nd Welsh Regiment and headed off, not without some relief, to Becourt Wood.

“The thanks and congratulations of the Higher Commands were duly passed on to the Regiment for a particularly brilliant and glorious period in the attack”, recorded the battalion diarist later.  “All its objectives were gained and in spite of very heavy losses, the spirit and tenacity of the Regiment was maintained throughout.”

The losses were indeed heavy; three officers and 138 Other Ranks on the 20^th alone, bringing the total casualties up to 374 between the 15th and 21st August.

On the 21^st, at Becourt Wood, the diarist recorded, “Everybody slept until midday” and at 6pm, all those present, paraded for inspection by Lieutenant Colonel Bethell.  Of the original battalion there were just 312 men.  After coming through Loos and the early Somme battles, Leggett’s luck had finally run out.

At around the same time that Albert Leggett was becoming the latest addition to Nurse Oliver’s album, Private William Fryer Washbourne of the 1/5^th Gloucestershire Regiment was propped up in bed at The Second Eastern General Hospital in Dyke Road, Brighton.  Just five days previously, he had been wounded in a local skirmish when his battalion had been ordered to take part in an attack on a German held trench system near Pozieres.  Now, here he was back in Blighty having arrived on a hospital train that had off-loaded 80 stretcher cases, 20 sitting cases and 16 officers. 

A pre-war territorial, William Washbourne had volunteered for overseas service almost immediately war had been declared and by 29^th March 1915 he and the rest of the men who comprised the 1/5^th Gloucestershire Regiment were standing on French soil.  At that stage they still formed part of the South Midland Brigade of the South Midland Division but within a couple of months they would be re-designated the 145^th (South Midland) Brigade of the newly formed 48^th (South Midland) Division. 

The division was comprised entirely of territorial soldiers from county regiments and far from being thrown straight into battle as soon as it arrived in France, it had been given an early glimpse of the then relatively quiet sector of the Somme. Taking over part of the northern sector front from the French in July 1915, had they but known it, they were the first British troops to take up positions on the Somme and they were also the first to sustain a fatal British casualty there.  On 22^nd July, just two days after taking over from the French, Private Whitlock of the 1/4^th Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry had been killed by a shell.  It was a grim foretaste of things to come.

The division’s quiet spell came to an abrupt end on 1^st July 1916.  Two battalions from its 143^rd Brigade – the 6^th and 8^th Royal Warwickshires – had been attached to the 4^th Division which was to play a leading role on the opening day of the Offensive.  The Warwickshires’ objective was Pendant Copse to the South East of the village of Serre, and at first the advance had gone well.  By 7.50am, half an hour after their own heavy artillery had lifted and the men had begun their advance, the 8^th Royal Warwickshires had taken the first four lines of trenches.  To their left and right however, the 31^st and 29^th Divisions respectively, had not made such good ground and, finding their position untenable without the desired support on each side, the men had retired in the face of strong counter attacks.  By the end of the day, the 8^th Royal Warwickshires had suffered 573 casualties out of 600 men and its sister battalion, the 1/6^th had fared little better.  Its orders had been to take the fifth and sixth line trenches but the men had been mown down before they reached the higher ground in front of Serre.  By the end of the day, the cost to the 48^th (South Midland) Division was reckoned at 1,060 casualties, and all of those from just two battalions.

More casualties were to follow.  Pozieres, a fortified German-held village situated on the high ground overlooking the attacking Allies to the south west stood in the path of the advance, protecting the German Thiepval flank to the north.  In July, four attacks had been directed at Pozieres until finally, the 1^st Australian Division had secured a foothold to the south west of the village on 23^rd July; two Australian infantrymen winning Victoria Crosses in the process.  The 48^th Division, to the Australians’ left, had attacked at the same time and suffered heavy casualties.  Those attacking troops who had managed to survive the hail of shellfire which fell on them while they were in their trenches waiting to go over the top, were mown down by German machine guns when they finally managed to clamber out. Three Gloucestershire territorial battalions had played a role in the assault and sustained heavy casualties. 

Private Washbourne though had come through unscathed and although he would later write in Nurse Oliver’s book that he had been wounded at Pozieres on 27^th August, it was in a local action attacking trenches towards Mouquet Farm, north west of the village, that he had received his Blighty wound.

Running down south west from Mouquet Farm was the German held Constance Trench, ending in a T junction where it was crossed by Pole Trench.  This, the 1/4^th Royal Berkshire Regiment and the 1/5^th Gloucestershire Regiment, had attacked on the evening of 27^th August, both battalions advancing over the top with bombers.  Private Washbourne was part of the assaulting wave of C Company.

 “C Company attacked on right and B Company on left, both in two lines across the open” wrote the battalion war diarist later, “intense barrage for three minutes.  Right company entered trench in their own barrage and left company at the moment of lift both with few casualties.  The bombing platoons met with considerable opposition in the communicator [communication trench] and a large party of Germans held out but were ultimately forced to retire across the open when our Lewis guns accounted for all but three.  Several dug-outs were bombed and the trench was consolidated and held.  About 50 prisoners were taken and the enemy’s other losses were estimated at about 200 killed and wounded.  One machine gun was captured.”

The Official War History reports that the prisoners belonged to the 5^th Guard Grenadiers, whose own history states that the British attacked “in dense masses”.  German troops occupying part of the trench system the following day reported a terrible scene of destruction caused by the British bombardment.

The battle though, had also taken its toll on the attacking troops.  For the gain of a loop of trenches south west of Pole Trench, the 1/5^th Gloucesters had lost six officers and 108 other ranks killed, wounded or missing.  Amongst the dead officers was Lieutenant Cyril W Winterbotham, a poet, lawyer and one time Liberal Party prospective candidate for East Gloucestershire.  He was 29 years old. Amongst the 84 wounded other ranks was Private William Fryer Washbourne.  The following day the 48^th Division was relieved by the 25^th Division and transferred to V Corps north of the Ancre.

For Private Washbourne, the action against Pole Trench was to mark the end of his career as an infantryman.  Shortly after his arrival at Brighton he was transferred the few short miles to Newick for recuperation at Beechlands.  He would end the war in the Labour Corps, finally being discharged in February 1919.