#5604 Private George Wain
1ST NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT
BORN IN STOKE-ON-TRENT, GEORGE WAIN was a regular who had been serving his country since before the turn of the century. Having initially worked as a miner before joining the army at 18, George had been stationed in India at the outbreak of the Boer War. In 1899 he was one of those mobilised with the 2nd Battalion and sent to South Africa. He took part in a scorched earth campaign and occupation in Transvaal in 1901, as well as seeing action at Cape Colony and during De Wet’s invasion of the Orange Free State as a lance corporal.
As a reservist, George rejoined the colours on the declaration of war in 1914 and embarked for France in September. Quite remarkably he had not been wounded nor taken seriously ill at all during the war. Thus far he had served uninterrupted all the way through to the Somme, coming unscathed through actions on the Aisne, at Hooge, particularly nasty German gas attacks and the ongoing slaughter at Delville Wood.
Peronne Road Cemetery. (Andrew Holmes)
Following the failed attempts on Guillemont, George’s battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment moved up to take over trenches in front of the village while planning went on for a renewed attack. The 11th August was a fine, hazy day and blissfully void of all but a few shells falling on the support trenches. That evening though, most of the battalion was ordered out in working parties to go out in front of its trench and dig a new one closer to the enemy. After George and the rest of the parties had left, word came through to cancel their work order as the troops on their right were about to attack. It was too late to warn the likes of George Wain and bring them back. Now under fire, he and his fellow troops took cover in a trench and waited it out, while being heavily bombarded by the German artillery. The flurry of activity over, digging resumed as planned at midnight, but having survived everything else that the enemy could throw at him for two years, George had been killed by a tragic lack of communication. Thirty-six years old, he was originally buried with a number of other casualties in the Briqueterie, to the south-west of Bernafay Wood. In October 1918 the men were exhumed and finally laid to rest at Peronne Road Cemetery, plot II.B.35.