#12933 Private Cyril George Bunclark
8TH NORFOLK REGIMENT
BACK AT DELVILLE WOOD, TROOPS had arrived to augment those who had already endured days of torment in trying to force possession of the mangled foliage and Longueval beside it. The night following Ernst Hahn’s death, the whole area was under terrific artillery fire; Longueval was ablaze. New troops attempted to seize the wood again in pouring rain in conjunction with the Scottish and South Africans still inside, but had to be withdrawn ‘to save them from annihilation’.
Among those about to join the fight was a tall, slim 21 year old from East Finchley. Cyril Bunclark had enlisted at St Paul’s Churchyard at the height of the recruitment boom in early September 1914. He found himself placed, as did Albert Klemp and many others flooding to that centre, in a somewhat random regiment, joining the new 8th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment.
Cyril was sent to Shorncliffe, where the manifest problems of the New Army were epitomised. Where would they sleep? How would they be fed and clothed? The men pitched in and shared everything. Sixteen men slept to each tent, between them they had perhaps two plates and a handful of cutlery, and drank from tobacco tins. More volunteers kept arriving. ‘A Company would start a route march 300 strong and return with 310, and no one knew or could find out who were the new men.’ Without uniforms, they sported a whole array of costume; from sailors in rough sweaters to boys in straw hats bearing Cambridge colours.
The 8th Norfolks were already familiar with the southern end of the battlefield. In action on 1st July near Montauban, the battalion suffered almost 350 casualties. Having been withdrawn, they were expecting a good long rest when an urgent call came for troops to go to the aid of the Scottish Division in Delville Wood. Cyril Bunclark’s battalion was one of those selected, having seen less action than their divisional counterparts, and now, having been lightly wounded on 14th July whilst the Norfolks sat behind the main battle, he passed haggard-looking Scotsmen and South Africans who had thus far escaped the clutches of the wood on his way up.
On the morning of 19th July, Cyril’s battalion was instructed to clear the southern portion of Delville Wood, deploying at an orchard on the outskirts of Longueval and pushing east. Cyril’s company was to lead the attack. Moving up in file, they reached the orchard at 6:30am and in four waves prepared to enter the chaos of the wood. Half an hour later they moved off and immediately met with stubborn resistance. All the officers leading the first two waves of the company were cut down and the men were raked with both machine-gun fire and the bullets of snipers concealed within the wreckage of brambles and trees.
Several Germans surrendered as soon as they saw the Norfolks coming, but so livid were the advancing troops at the enemy’s sniping methods that they simply shot them. Pushing forward to Buchanan Street, they found a resolute band of tired South African troops. In some areas the advance went on without much opposition, but at Campbell Street Cyril’s company found the enemy in force, hidden in dugouts, with machine-gun nests and with yet more snipers concealed among the debris. Along the southern edge of the wood the Norfolks had met with obstinate opposition, but having been reinforced by the companies behind, they prevailed. Thirty or so Germans surrendered. ‘While the remainder threw down their arms and ran round to the north side of the wood, [losing] heavily from our fire.’
By 10:45am, the south-east corner of Delville Wood had been cleared and the survivors of the 8th Norfolks took up a position 100 yards away while the spot was bludgeoned by the British artillery. As soon as the barrage lifted, they surged back inside. More machine guns, however, hampered their progress. Bombers tried desperately to silence them, but without success, although patrols reported small groups of Germans retiring to high ground to the east.
With time to breathe, Cyril Bunclark’s battalion could take stock of the devastating scene around them. They found a South African hiding in a haystack ‘where he had been for two days; needless to say he was more than pleased to see this portion of the wood again pass into our hands’. Another of his countrymen was discovered where he too had been lying for several days ‘with a broken leg, a smashed arm and a hole in his back’. Finally he was carried off to safety. Germans, South Africans, Scots, Englishmen – Delville Wood was carpeted with hundreds of wounded and dying men, littered among the remains of those already carried off by the fighting. There was only one well within the confines of the wood and the men gasped with thirst. At least one battalion received no food at all the entire time they were within the mangled trees.
Men attempt to dig in at Delville Wood in the summer of 1916. (Authors’ collection)
The 8th Norfolks had lost another 300 men. Some two-thirds of the battalion had now been wiped off its strength in a little over two weeks and still Delville Wood had not been conquered. Cyril Bunclark was one of those consumed among the ruined foliage and never seen or heard from again. In August his mother still hadn’t given up. The War Office was being inundated with correspondence from worried relatives who read daily about the struggle on the Somme. ‘I apologise if I am giving you trouble,’ she wrote, ‘but if you could kindly inform me where my son: 12933 Pte. Cyril Bunclark is, I should be so grateful.’ At that point Elizabeth Bunclark’s boy had lay dead on the battlefield for almost a month. Cyril’s body, if recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 1c/1d.