#L/9501 Private Percy George Sharland
2ND QUEEN’S (ROYAL WEST SURREY) REGIMENT
PERCY SHARLAND WAS BORN IN Bromley, Kent, but raised in West Surrey at Haslemere. In 1909 he abandoned his job as a labourer, made the short trip to Guildford and, aged 19, enlisted in The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment. Before the war his service took him all over the globe to places including Bermuda and Gibraltar. He was stationed in South Africa in 1914 and arrived back in England in September, before the battalion embarked to join the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. His first stint in the Great War was cut short by a nasty gunshot wound to the elbow that saw him evacuated home from the 1st Battle of Ypres, and Percy’s convalescence was lengthy. He was not fit to return to the front until March 1916. Barring a slight shrapnel wound to the shoulder blade since, he had thus far come through the Battle of the Somme without major injury when The Queen’s was ordered to relieve troops at the southern end of the battlefield in the last week of August.
A bitter struggle was going on past the eastern edge of Delville Wood. The area was dominated by the ‘Alcohol Trenches’, a tangle of defences dubbed with names including Hop, Lager, Pilsen, Beer and Ale. The weather was awful as Percy and the rest of the battalion carried out training and then prepared to march up towards Delville Wood on 31st August. That afternoon the Germans released a torrent of shells and then launched three separate counter-attacks on a battalion of the South Staffordshires in the Alcohol Trenches. They stood firm through all of them until at the last they were forced back into the wood behind. A heavy barrage fell on its eastern side when Percy Sharland’s battalion began arriving to reinforce the Staffordshires in the evening.
On 1st September Percy was among those ordered to help seize back the ground lost on the previous day. At 5am the Surrey men began attempting to bomb through the eastern fringes of Delville Wood, but the trench they were moving along was too shallow and provided scant cover. German machine guns in positions outside the wood harassed Percy and his companions as they made their way long. Under a hail of bullets they had to settle for establishing a bombing block part way back to the lost position and digging a new length of trench behind it at right angles to try to prevent the Germans from forcing them back any more.
For the rest of the day, Percy Sharland and the rest of The Queen’s were under a merciless enemy artillery barrage. Telephone wires were repeatedly cut and getting information back and forth the battalion was reliant on messengers, who were forced to run a gauntlet of enemy fire. One company’s flank was uncertain of their next steps, and the men edged about with their backs pressed against their trenches to squeeze past the crowds cowering within in order to bury the fallen, clear the line and form stores of accessible ammunition and bombs. The attack of The Queen’s may have failed, but in just a few days’ time Delville Wood would finally fall permanently into British hands. Exposed to the constant bombardment on the 1st, Percy Sharland did not survive the day. His body, if recovered, was never identified. The 26 year old is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 5d/6d.