2nd Lieutenant Patrick Riddle Grey
8TH NORTHUMBERLAND FUSILIERS
TWENTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD PATRICK RIDDLE GREY WAS a Northumberland native, the son of a wine merchant and volunteer artillery officer from Berwick-upon-Tweed. Educated at Avenue Academy, by the outbreak of war, both Patrick and his younger brother William were studying engineering at Heriot Watt College in Edinburgh and lodging at Marchmont Crescent near the castle. A member of the Berwick Amateur Rowing Club, with military experience gleaned from the engineer’s contingent of the Edinburgh University OTC, Patrick and his brothers enlisted in May 1915. Patrick spent time in Egypt with a Lancashire regiment and, after receiving a commission, he joined the Northumberland Fusiliers and relocated to the Western Front.
2nd Lieutenant Patrick Grey. (Authors’ collection)
Whilst Rawlinson’s army went forward on 15th September, Gough’s distracted the enemy in their sector with a monstrous artillery bombardment. There was an ulterior motive. After two months of minor ‘but sometimes fierce’ scraps, there were now plans to attack in force at the northern end of the Somme battlefield. Convinced that the Germans were rocking, Haig believed that it was the right time for Gough to assault with ferocity. His men would strike north along the Thiepval Ridge, finally seizing the village and the ground east of it. As soon as it had been secured, Haig anticipated turning Gough’s men about and resuming the eastward advance, like that which had been planned but never really got started in that sector at the onset of the campaign.
In the third week of September, orders were issued for an attack on Thiepval Ridge to begin on the 26th at 12:35pm, the first big offensive effort for Gough’s army proper. The front line had barely changed since 1st July at Thiepval and the Germans were dug in securely behind the village. Redoubts with names such as Zollern, Schwaben and Stuff were about to become achingly familiar to the troops ordered to claim them. A British division that included Patrick Grey’s battalion was selected to attack in a northerly direction towards Zollern Redoubt, before moving on to Stuff Redoubt on the crest of the ridge beyond. Success would help drive the enemy on to lower ground, cutting off their view towards the British bastion of Albert and opening up observation for Gough’s men over the whole valley of the upper Ancre.
The preliminary bombardment, 800 guns bludgeoning Patrick’s objectives and the German positions across no-man’s-land, began in the Thiepval sector on 23rd September as the Northumberland Fusiliers were advancing up from La Boisselle towards the front lines. By the night of the 25th, with rain cascading down on the battlefield, Patrick’s battalion had taken over the front lines in preparation for the attack. They were in position by 3:30am the following morning, having elbowed their way through congested trenches, their progress made even more difficult by the fact the men had their packs on and were forced to shuffle sideways past each other. Then the waiting began, punctuated by desultory shelling and rifle fire. Half an hour before zero hour, rum was issued. Set up at Pozières Cemetery, Patrick’s commanders were ready to send their charges into battle.
At zero hour, Patrick Grey and his men attacked with the 9th Lancashire Fusiliers at their side. Almost immediately the enemy barrage took up on the front line, and voluminous machine-gun fire erupted from Mouquet Farm and from the Zollern Redoubt ahead. The battalion had met with heavy resistance and swathes of men were killed within 40 yards of their line. Some had not even managed to scramble over the parapet before they had been cut down. Smoke masked the battlefield and immediately the whole attack became confusing. Troops were pinned down by enemy fire and observers could not decipher what was going on. Reports going back ‘tended to be somewhat over-optimistic’. The likes of Patrick Grey were being ordered to consolidate the Zollern Redoubt while it was still brimming with Germans.
Map showing Mouquet Farm, Courcelette, Thiepval and surrounding areas. (Authors’ collection)
Nonetheless, both battalions reached the first objective. The Northumberland men pushed on gallantly and reached the centre of the Zollern Redoubt, sticking their coloured flags in the ground as markers, but this initial success had come at a great cost. One single officer was now alive and fit to continue. Patrick’s men were engaged in a desperate struggle around the enemy dugouts. All cohesion was lost, communications were cut. The day had been a partial success, with notable advances made in places, but although the enemy’s losses were heavy, the most commanding positions on the Thiepval Ridge remained in German hands and the Kaiser’s men still appeared capable of vigorous resistance.
Late that night, two officers of the 8th Northumberland Fusiliers that had remained to the rear were sent out from headquarters to see if they could find out what had happened to their worryingly silent battalion. Six hours later they had reported that there appeared to be no trace of them and that the Germans remained in Zollern Redoubt. One of the officers returned to find the Germans gone later on the 27th and began to collect the men that he could find, who had been cowering in shell holes. The battalion managed to scrape together just 170 men, some of them unarmed members of carrying parties. Nineteen officers and 430 others were gone, including Patrick Grey.
Tributes were paid by the company commander and chaplain, who referred to him as ‘a real good fellow and a good soldier’. Another officer wrote that ‘his loss is one which will not easily be replaced either in the mess or in the company’. Patrick’s body was later recovered and buried by a fatigue party, but the grave was lost during subsequent fighting. If discovered, Patrick’s body was never identified and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 10b/11b & 12b.
The Battle of the Somme continued to inflict misery on the Grey family for decades to come. Patrick’s brother, William, had been given a commission in the 11th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers alongside an officer by the name of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He was grievously wounded at the end of August 1916 at the northern end of the battlefield. With shell and gunshot wounds to his chest, back and shoulder he was shipped home at the beginning of September and, at just 19 years old, his health was permanently destroyed, rendering him incapable of continuing with his engineering work. In 1922 William emigrated to Australia to try to fashion a life for himself in a new climate, but he fell ill and returned five years later. ‘He returned to his family home but was unable to work and was only able to take an extremely restricted diet.’ In the early hours of 12th July 1939, Patrick and William’s sister entered his bedroom to find William had attacked his own throat with a razor blade. Unable to stem the flow of blood, by the time she returned with a neighbour he had bled to death. A doctor who had seen him recently, ‘found him to be seriously ill and depressed. He had noticed his shrapnel scars and believed him to be suffering from shell shock.’ Twenty-three years on from 1916, after more than two decades of misery, 42-year-old William Grey joined his brother as a casualty of war; a chilling testament to the thousands of men who never recovered from their part in the Battle of the Somme.