#G/2387 Private Arthur Randall
7TH QUEEN’S OWN (ROYAL WEST KENT REGIMENT)
ON 8TH JULY GENERAL RAWLINSON had begun giving orders to prepare for the much-anticipated big offensive on the original German second-line position running along the Bazentin Ridge. Minor attacks leading up to it were ill thought out and costly in both men and materials, but time spent getting ready for 14th July had been well used. One of the most significant successes would be the preliminary bombardment laid down on the enemy. It was targeted effectively on barbed wire, German trenches, strong points, enemy batteries, and on a much smaller front than had been demanded of the artillery at the onset of the battle on 1st July. Sixty-six per cent of the number of guns employed on the opening day of the Somme campaign were now registering on just 5 per cent of the original targets. Additionally, roads were cleared, tracks laid, useless trenches backfilled and guns rolled up with plenty of ammunition. At 5pm on the 12th final orders were issued. Zero hour was to be at 3:20am on 14th July. A night attack.
One young man, though, was part of a battalion that would go into action several hours earlier. Arthur Randall was a farm labourer from Cliffe-at-Hoo in Kent. Eighteen years old when he travelled to Chatham to enlist in 1914, he subsequently joined the 7th Battalion of the Royal West Kents, arriving in France the following June. With his unit, Arthur had taken part in the opening throes of the offensive at the beginning of July, when his battalion suffered almost 200 casualties.
As zero hour on 14th July approached, Trônes Wood was still not in British hands. Arthur and the 7th Royal West Kents were to be summoned to attack it before the main assault began, so that the newly won position could be used to help secure the right flank at 3:20am when everyone else went forward.
Since Eric Measham had been killed assaulting the wood on 9th July, higher command had continued to order unsuccessful attacks on the difficult objective. By the night of the 10th there were no British troops inside the wood at all. The spot then appeared to change hands several times before, on 11th July, it was reported that Trônes Wood had fallen and that, despite exhaustion, the British conquerors were managing to hold on inside. Unfortunately, the following day, the whole place would fall back into German hands. Later on the 12th, the fight again swung slightly in the direction of the British, but Trônes Wood was far from secure.
Arthur Randall’s task on the 13th was to prove a nightmare. The Royal West Kents were to attack from the south and capture the bottom half of the wood. It was to be taken ‘at all costs’ by midnight on the night of the 13th/14th, three and a half hours before the main offensive on the Somme began again. The situation was confusing. A number of German strong points had been marked among the remains of the trees and one pointed right at Arthur as he advanced. If he and his comrades did not find themselves being showered with machine-gun fire in the dark, they ‘wandered about in a dense jungle of fallen trees and thick brushwood, and lost all notion of their whereabouts’. It was as if units went inside and simply disappeared. All telephone wires were cut and the battalion’s commanders knew nothing of what was going on inside Trônes Wood.
The spot in Trônes Wood where Arthur Randall was discovered in 1929. (Andrew Holmes)
Battling on, Arthur and his battalion reached the railway line that ran horizontally through the wood, at a significant cost in men. The trees were in full leaf, the fallen foliage concealing enemy snipers and dead bodies. One soldier lifted a tangle of branches and found a German soldier shot away to his hip, the poor man’s entrails hanging out and covered in flies. If that wasn’t disturbing enough, he was left vomiting when a severed leg fell out of the remains of a tree on to his head.
As with previous attacks, the battalion’s formation was quickly shattered and the men roamed in small groups, cut off from their leaders in the dark. At midnight it began to rain. Indiscriminate heavy shelling continued to decimate the Royal West Kents. British shells killed British soldiers, sniping went on all night. One group suddenly realised that the enemy had got behind them. It was a terrifying experience. ‘We reversed every other man, and put in rapid fire … but creeping up under cover of the fallen trees the Germans got to within ten yards of us … Then they organised attacks in relay and came at us every quarter of an hour.’
Zero hour for the large-scale advance on Bazentin Ridge approached and still Trônes Wood had not been secured. It was not until mid-morning that it was reported that this stubborn objective had finally fallen.
The troops went forward bravely, many even managed to enter the bounds of the wood, but once inside they were lost, isolated in a tangled jungle of smashed trees, heavy undergrowth and the unmentionable mangled debris of men and equipment.
During the course of the fight, Arthur’s company commander was wounded. Seeing his plight, the 20 year old ran to him and pulled him up, attempting to drag him to safety. As they struggled along, Arthur was struck and killed. His final resting place remained a mystery for more than a decade until Arthur was recovered from just inside the south-east treeline at Trônes Wood. He was identified by his uniform and by a wristwatch inscribed ‘Miss G. Langham to Arthur’. His father had been dead for five years when his boy was finally given a grave and laid to rest at Serre Road Cemetery No. 2, XXIX.J.15 on 19th June 1929.