#306830 Private Joseph Shearman
1/8TH ROYAL WARWICKSHIRE REGIMENT
JOSEPH SHEARMAN WAS A 38-YEAR-OLD steel polisher from Handsworth in Birmingham. Long estranged from his wife, he was raising his teenage daughter alone when he was compelled to enlist in January 1916. In the spring Joseph’s absent wife had passed away and within a few weeks, before his departure for the front, he had married again, his new bride, Annie, a local widow with two toddlers. Once on the Western Front, by 24th August Joseph was in the vicinity of Skyline Trench undergoing a rigorous programme of training that included trigger pressing, bomb throwing, judging distances and bayonet fighting in preparation for the battalion’s next stint in action to the south of Thiepval. When these sessions were finished, the men went up the front lines in working parties in grim weather, being heavily shelled in Skyline as they worked to improve and repair it in muddy conditions. Any rest from physical labour was punctuated by lectures and demonstrations.
On the morning of 27th August final preparations were under way with the men stocking bomb dumps and carrying up ladders to their jumping off trenches. The ladders were not in the right location and it was mid-afternoon before the men had got them into place. It was later suspected that this confusion gave the game away to a certain extent, for half an hour later Joseph and the rest of his battalion moved up ready to attack and the enemy appeared to know that they were coming.
‘The men moved out of our trench in splendid style, there was not a single waverer among them!’ Despite the apparent enthusiasm of the Warwickshire men though, the damaged nature of the ground they were attacking meant that their objective was indistinct. As soon as the barrage began pummelling it further Joseph and the rest of the troops lost sight of their destination and men began to veer off in the wrong direction and lost touch with the rest of the battalion. Officer casualties wrought even more confusion on these unfortunate men, who found themselves leaderless in the midst of battle. Others ran into the British barrage straightaway, or overshot their objective completely and fell into the second phase of their own artillery bombardment. Any men who reached the correct objective were bombed out of it again and forced to retire, taking heavy losses. The 1/8th Royal Warwickshires had suffered almost 200 casualties. Annie Shearman was seven months pregnant when Joseph disappeared into the confusion. Their daughter, Nancy, was born in October 1916, seven weeks after her husband died. Her elder daughter died less than a year later at the age of 4. Joseph Shearman’s body, if recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 9a/9b & 10b.
Men of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment at rest on the Somme. (Authors’ collection)