Captain Oliver John Sykes
23RD SIEGE BATTERY, ROYAL GARRISON ARTILLERY
THE SOMME WAS STILL GETTING progressively worse for the artillery. Airmen were finding it increasingly difficult to get up and over the lines in deteriorating weather to feed through information on targets. ‘Little could be seen from the air through rain and mist, so counter-battery work suffered and it was often impossible to locate with accuracy the new German trenches and shell hole positions.’ Barrages were fired too short or too long. Added to that, the maintenance of the guns was so neglected owing to their relentless work, or they were simply worn out, so that they may not have been able to fire accurately enough anyway. The ground was so soft that they sank on their platforms, and crews had to try to restore their stability using any battle debris they could find. ‘Bursts of high explosive were smothered in the ooze’ and the mud was so deep that to move one field gun, ten or twelve horses were often needed. ‘Ammunition had to be dragged up on sledges improvised of sheets of corrugated iron.’
Amidst this grime and squalor was a 41-year-old officer named Oliver Sykes. Born in India, where his father was the late principal of La Martiniere College, Oliver had been educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in the 1890s before joining the Indian Civil Service. He had been an officer in the ICS Finance Department for fifteen years and had progressed to a high level, also acting as a financial adviser at one stage to the Siamese Government and officials in Kashmir.
Oliver had also been a captain in a volunteer artillery unit at Madras since 1912. In 1915 he volunteered for Imperial Service and obtained a month’s leave from his post to join a gunnery class in the Punjab to get his knowledge of heavy artillery up to date. Then he applied for a year’s leave from the Government of India and arrived in England in April 1916. He was commissioned as a captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery two weeks later and joined his battery in June, overseeing the firing of howitzers from positions in the Ancre Valley, Ovillers-la-Boisselle and Martinpuich in the opening weeks of the campaign on the Somme.
On 16th October, from near Pozières, Oliver had written to his family. ‘The shelling has slowed down a bit,’ he explained. ‘We have to do some walking in the open above ground; we have had a lot of casualties and shall probably have more.’ He elaborated on the conditions of being under constant enemy fire. ‘The last few days have been very active; we had high-explosive shell and tear gas shell mixed for one and a half hours on end two evenings ago; my eyes are still feeling the effects.’
A howitzer undergoing cleaning on the Somme. (Authors’ collection)
That night Oliver and another officer were up to the battery approaching midnight. It had been hit by enemy shelling and a dugout blown in with men inside. Three were dead and the other six were being pulled out wounded. The shelling began again. ‘I heard [him] speaking to me from the road close by,’ his companion recalled, ‘suggesting how to get the wounded out of the battery and away to the dressing station, and as he spoke a shell arrived almost on top of him.’ Those in a fit state rushed to Oliver’s side. ‘We got him into a dugout, where the medical orderly dressed his wounds, two very severe ones, one through the thigh and another across the back, and some smaller ones.’ Oliver Sykes’ prognosis did not look good. ‘The shock must have been terrific and he was practically unconscious from the first.’ He was taken back to a field ambulance at Albert, where he died during the night. ‘I am miserable about his death,’ his fellow officer admitted to Oliver’s family. ‘A more gallant fellow never breathed.’
Oliver became number fifty-seven in the Brasenose College Roll of those who had fallen in the war so far. He left behind a wife, Dulcie, and three sons: Hugh, 8, John, 7, and 3-year-old Charles. Captain Sykes was laid to rest at Bouzincourt Communal Cemetery Extension, plot I.1.17.