Lance Corporal Robert Henry Boughton
1ST EAST SURREY REGIMENT
WHILE THE VICIOUS FIGHT FOR Longueval and Delville Wood continued, casualties mounted elsewhere along the British front. From Longueval the line ran north-west towards High Wood and it was along this sector there sat a pre-war soldier who already bore plenty of scars thanks to the Great War. Twenty-five-year-old Bob Boughton had been born in Islington and listed his occupation variously as a labourer or a toy maker before he enlisted as a teenager in 1908. He had spent much of his service before 1914 in Burma, serving in the same battalion as his elder brother. They were still abroad when war was declared and were recalled swiftly. The 2nd East Surreys disembarked at Devonport the day before Christmas Eve 1914 and left for France a month later.
Shot in the left forearm near Ypres after less than four weeks on the Western Front, Bob found himself back in England in mid-February. While he recovered, his brother William was killed during heavy shelling at Hill 60 near Ypres. Shortly afterwards, Bob had to return to duty, joining the 1st Battalion of the regiment. The war found new ways to have an adverse effect on his health. At the end of 1915 the misery of the trenches was compounded when he was compelled to spend more than two months in Rouen recovering from a severe case of trench foot.
Fit again in time for the campaign on the Somme, on 19th July Bob’s battalion received orders to go up and reinforce men who were holding the line between Longueval and High Wood. They had seen the Somme before, ‘But what a change had come over the scene!’ The villages that they had once viewed were gone, ‘now only heaps of debris, with a mound of white stones marking the ruins of the Church in each place’. The lines they had known were unrecognisable:
High Wood viewed from Bazentin Ridge. (Alexandra Churchill)
Instead of a clearly defined system of trenches, with grassland and trees in between, there was a vast expanse of shell-torn ground, covered with deep, wide gashes … over all were scattered bombs, unexploded shells, arms, equipment, and all the other debris which marks the trail of modern battle.
That night the men listened to the chaos at Longueval and Delville Wood on their right. There was not enough room to accommodate the battalion and more trenches had to be dug to provide shelter for them all. Bob and his comrades went to work with their shovels. They had barely settled down when they were suddenly ordered off to relieve battered troops in Longueval.
The relief was complete at 2:30am on 20th July. An hour later nearby troops once again assaulted the remains of the village and Delville Wood. Bob spent all day under heavy shellfire frantically digging and helping to improve the battalion’s surroundings by burying the dead lying in and about the trenches. Merely staying put had cost the 1st East Surreys nearly fifty casualties by lunchtime.
The following day, High Wood burned nearby, ‘a mass of broken, blazing trees’. Enemy aeroplanes buzzed overhead at a great height, and it was no coincidence that when they left again the German artillery began to lay down an intense barrage on the valley. Bob Boughton was once again under heavy shellfire, which ripped into one company and even took out some of their cookers. While battle raged on both sides, Bob became yet another victim of the relentless artillery duel being played out on the battlefield. His widowed mother lost her last son and Robert Boughton’s body, if recovered, was never identified. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 6b/c.