1 July 1916, Battle of Albert, tracing my great uncle's last footsteps.

[IdleLayabout]

I have been researching my great uncle Reginald Cameron Lewis and I thought that some of the methods I used might be of use to others.

• National Archives to search for war diaries - free.
• Fold3 and Ancestry to search for medal cards - fee, although black and white versions sometimes available through the Archives.
• National Archives to search for personal records - fee (quite a lot actually)
• TrenchMapper - free, although high res images are available to members.

 

Reginald, or Rex, joined the King Edward Horse and was then transferred to the 2nd Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment as a Lieutenant in B Company. His four other brothers all served, one, a ship's surgeon, died at the battle of Jutland and another was wounded at Ypres serving as a battery forward observer.

He was wounded at Bois Grenier in 1915, awarded the MC in June 1916 and made acting captain.

We knew that he was killed in the opening Battle of the Somme, technically the Battle of Albert, on the 1st of July 1916.  I ordered his military file from the National Archives, and as his body was not recovered for some time and a death certificate was required for the family to obtain his belongings affidavits had to be obtained from his companions who had witnessed his fall, some of these being transcribed from hospital beds. There are twelve affidavits in all and they make for very grim reading.  It was clear that he had been caught on the wire and mortally wounded most likely by MG fire in the opening of the attack and died later in the day, shortly after being found by two men who had gone out to look for survivors.

It always bothered me that we never knew exactly where this had happened.  Some time back I downloaded the 2nd Berkshires regimental diary. The plans for the attack are very detailed, the rallying trenches are named as well as the objective points, however there was no way I could correlate these until Howard pointed me to TrenchMapper.  The British 1:10000 map for La Boisselles shows the points very clearly and the German map outlines the location of the British front line trenches. Below is a combination of these two maps:

 

Some of the trench names are even searchable in TrenchMapper. Combining these two maps together gives the attached map which tallies exactly with the regimental diary plans:

The plan was for the initial advance to be to the first heavy red line, 88-85-82-02, wait for support and then the final objective between 44 and 78. Reginald was in B company and the diary clearly states that the wire was not sufficiently cut by the initial bombardments:

 

The first assaulting companies were met with intense rifle and MG fire and never reached the enemy lines. Based on this, the maps and the eye witness statements he made it about half way to the proposed attack corridor and fell several meters north of where the Ovillers Military Cemetery is located today.

There are aerial photos of the area which show the German lines but it's possible that this was taken prior to the British establishing lines there.

 

[mebu]

You obviously have not been an idlelayabout in researching this, very interesting, well done. The 8th Div certainly took a bit of a battering that day.

You may have worked out that the points mentioned are reduced ways of giving the much longer map co-ordinates, each of the squares is divided into 10, so for eg point 61 is  6 along the bottom and then 1 up, point 72 is 7 along then 2 up, and so on. The points will normally be at a trench junction or other similar locations.

Peter

[Howard]

In TrenchMapper you can go to the main menu, choose, Annotate Map->Draw Line. Change colour, line style etc. to suit then click the numbered points above. Stop line draw then repeat.

When finished, you can fade the trench map out to see where it is on a modern map.

Then main menu, Utilities->Export Data and choose the format, e.g. .KML for Google Earth. It is saved as lines.kml in your normal Downloads folder.

Once you have a file (e.g. lines.kml), you can drag that onto TrenchMapper from your hard drive.

Alternatively, to make a composite as above, draw the lines on a trench map and grab the screen. Change the trench map (e.g. German) and grab the screen again. Merge the two screen grabs in Photoshop or any other graphics software that works with layers and masks.

As Mebu pointed out, the numbers are short-handed map references. As you move the cursor, keep an eye on the continuous map reference lower left of TM.

Howard

 

Edited 17 July by Howard

[Matlock1418]

On 17/07/2024 at 16:12, IdleLayabout said:

Ancestry to search for medal cards - fee,

Just for your general info: Ancestry offer a basic membership, without subscription, whereby it is is possible to get free access to both sides of colour MIC from them

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1262

M

[IdleLayabout]

Thanks Matlock.  I have a subscription, but this is useful for those who don't. Afaik the MICs on the National Archives are low quality B&W.

 

And to respond to Peter above, thanks, that makes a lot of sense, I spotted numerous repeats of numbers and was wondering how confusion was avoided.

 

[Matlock1418]

7 minutes ago, IdleLayabout said:

Afaik the MICs on the National Archives are low quality B&W.

Yes at TNA they are pretty low quality BW, typically six MIC to a single image - and they do not show the rear with a potential address(es)

However, a point worth noting, is that TNA can sometimes help especially when Ancestry/Fold3 have been up to their rather dodgy spelling/mis-indexing tricks [Not that TNA is always perfect with its spelling or indexing!]  So worth have a look in various places if at first you do not succeed.

M

Edited 23 July by Matlock1418

[Howard]

MICs are available to WFA members (from Fold3) via the Pension Records page.

Howard

[IdleLayabout]

Would anyone know where one could look up MC citations other than the LG?  I've searched the LG and found his promotions:

 

 

as well as the LG for the MC 3 Jun 1916:

 

This was after the Bois Grenier attack, however there doesn't seem to be any other major actions between Sep 15 and Jul 16, nor are any awards mentioned.  I've found the MC citations for his other 2 brothers, Percy and Vernon but I'm drawing a blank here.

 

 

 

 

 

[Matlock1418]

1 hour ago, IdleLayabout said:

Would anyone know where one could look up MC citations other than the LG?

There are registers/ledgers of hand-annotated LG citations for DSO & MC [together - from TNA WO 389]  typically with with added date and place - now I just have to remember where and how to access easily, I always find it almost impossibly hard to navigate the TNA offerings as they are done by LG date and then name [and I have a lack of alternative/subscription resources]

M

Edited 29 July by Matlock1418
add

[IdleLayabout]

10 hours ago, Matlock1418 said:

There are registers/ledgers of hand-annotated LG citations for DSO & MC [together - from TNA WO 389]  typically with with added date and place - now I just have to remember where and how to access easily, I always find it almost impossibly hard to navigate the TNA offerings as they are done by LG date and then name [and I have a lack of alternative/subscription resources]

M

Fantastic, I had no idea that even existed.  I've found his medal card for the MC, as well as his 2 brothers and his cousin Victor Greville Lewis.  They're all in WO-389-17-1_3

Anyone want to take a guess as to what  is meant by the Remarks?

 

I then needed to trawl through all the other collections under WO-389, there are many, and it's a bit confusing.  I eventually found the correct index WO-389-2-3 and it says refer to page 8.

 

 

It took a while but I worked out that this meant Book 2 Gazette, pages 1-103.  Page 8 however has no other additional info than the original LG:

 

I'm guessing that there is no recorded written citation for the MC? From what I can see there were just too many awards to do an individual writeup for each man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Matlock1418]

23 hours ago, IdleLayabout said:

I'm guessing that there is no recorded written citation for the MC? From what I can see there were just too many awards to do an individual writeup for each man.

There will have originally been a written citation, otherwise there could not have been an award of a MC [They didn't give them out like sweeties, without a chit].  The question now is: Does one still exist somewhere?

The absence of a LG entry [if one exists] is a puzzle but it may be a case that we just can't find it [yet?]

I see you have searched Reginald Cameron LEWIS' Officers' Papers https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1132320 - you mention the grim content and the fee !

There may be someting in a WD [I don't know which WD you have searched] - I think typically, but not exclusively, higher than Bn - also try Bde at least

This is not really my field ...

Good luck

M

[Swinesheadvillage]

Hi Idlelayabout

Reginald's MC was gazetted, as you say, on the 3rd June 1916. This was the King's Birthday Honours. As such, I believe, there will be no MC citation, other than as an award for 'Distinguished Service in the Field'.

Kind Regards

Derek

[IdleLayabout]

45 minutes ago, Matlock1418 said:

The absence of a LG entry [if one exists] is a puzzle but it may be a case that we just can't find it [yet?]

I see you have searched Reginald Cameron LEWIS' Officers' Papers https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1132320 - you mention the grim content and the fee !

 

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the LG gave up publishing the actual MC citations as there were too many of them.  I found the citations for Percy and Vernon, but not for Rex or Greville.

There's nothing in Rex's file that refers to the MC. Here is one of the affidavits that I was referring to...

 

I was however incorrect in something I stated previously.  The 2nd Berkshires were involved in another attack between Bois Grenier and Ovillers, the disastrous attack at Neuve Chapelle:

https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/aubers-ridge-9-may-1915-the-unpleasant-truth/

This was on the 9th of May, so possibly a recommendation was put forward then.  There's a brief reference to Rex in the Regimental Diary.  However unlike other regimental diaries there are very few records of awards.

 

 

 

 

Edited 31 July by IdleLayabout

[IdleLayabout]

5 minutes ago, Swinesheadvillage said:

Hi Idlelayabout

Reginald's MC was gazetted, as you say, on the 3rd June 1916. This was the King's Birthday Honours. As such, I believe, there will be no MC citation, other than as an award for 'Distinguished Service in the Field'.

Kind Regards

Derek

Thanks for this Derek, there did seem to be an awful lot of awards at this time, and there is no way that a citation could be included for each of them, it would have doubled the size of the gazette.  According to the Wiki article there were 708 awards for the MC alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Birthday_Honours

I see Reginald is mentioned in the list.

 

 

 

 

[IdleLayabout]

I think I'd like to draw this thread to a close, and in doing so thank all those who've contributed.  At some point I may do some more research and write ups of his other battles from the point of view of the Royal Berkshires. But now I'll finish with this photograph, the only image that remains of Rex, taken while he was with the King Edwards Horse shortly before being transferred to the Royal Berkshires.

 

And it's only fitting, that as this story was about him, I'll leave the last words for Rex.