Circumstances Leading to Death          

8th Battalion Royal Fusiliers became engaged in the Battle of the Somme on July 7; together with 9th Battalion Royal Fusiliers and 7th Battalion Sussex Regiment they made a determined attempt to capture Ovillers, and few more costly actions were fought in the whole of the battle of the Somme. Just before 8.30 am two leading companies of 8th Battalion Royal Fusiliers crawled over the parapet and lay out in the open. The intention was to take Ovillers from the south west. The weather was bad and fumes of gas shells were held in the hollows of the ground forming a death trap for any who fell wounded.

Lieut.-Colonel Annesley, who was mortally wounded that day, waved the Fusiliers forward into the withering fire of the German machine guns. Despite heavy losses they advanced to Ovillers by noon that day and the 36th Brigade held about half of it on a north and south line.

Every officer engaged in the action was killed, wounded or missing. The 8th Battalion Royal Fusiliers which had started the day with 800 other ranks mustered a total of 160 that night.

Ovillers was finally taken on July 17th by which time the 12th Division had suffered over 2,300 casualties. There were accounts of soldiers wounded in the earlier attacks, who could not return to their lines, having crawled into shell holes, wrapped their waterproof sheets around them, taken out their bibles, and died like that.