#59 Lance Sergeant Nicholas Caesar ‘Corsellis’ Lawton
22ND ROYAL FUSILIERS
BY MIDNIGHT ALMOST THE ENTIRE Footballer’s Battalion was occupying a position roughly in the centre of Delville Wood. Elsewhere in its environs there were several battalions of the Royal Fusiliers still battling on and among them was a unique recruit. Almost 40 years old when he enlisted at Shepherd’s Bush, West London, Corsellis Lawton was an accountant who had been educated at Repton School. From Sorley, in Yorkshire, this wasn’t the first time he’d volunteered to join the army, having served with the South African Constabulary for two years during the Boer War. A divorcee, Corsellis’ wife, the mother of his two sons, had petitioned for divorce after fourteen years of marriage in 1910. Since then he had spent time living in France prior to the outbreak of war. Wounded at Souchez in March 1916 when fragments of a shell that landed nearby hit his back and shoulder, Corsellis rejoined his battalion in time to go to the Somme, before which he had found time to take a second wife, a Frenchwoman in Paris.
Corsellis was a machine gunner and his battalion did not attack as a unit during this period of fighting in Delville Wood. Scrapping was confused, with small bands being sent to troublesome spots. Other men found themselves split into companies and employed as carrying parties, although throughout the course of the 27th, Corsellis’ entire battalion would be thrown into the fight. By the end of the day nearly 200 men were dead, wounded or unaccounted for and all the carrying parties had been scraped together to form a force of 250 men to help continue the fight within the wood.
On 28th July the situation in the north-east corner of Delville Wood remained confusing. At 7:40am a message from the Footballer’s Battalion arrived at headquarters reporting German troops massing at the east end of Delville Wood for what might be a counter-attack. The response was to bludgeon that spot with yet more shells. By mid-morning officers within the wood were advising brigade commanders that the enemy had penetrated far inside the remains of the trees and that the men were coming under increasing pressure on their left from incessant artillery fire from the direction of Guillemont to the south-east.
‘Every endeavour should be made to hold the wood’ was the instruction being handed down to Corsellis Lawton and the men within, but this hardly accounted for any impetus coming from the German side. By midday his brigadier, who had now assumed control of the area completely, was dispatching news up the chain of command of a horrendous barrage coming from the German lines. Rapid rifle and machine-gun fire poured into the British ranks, but the artillery pitched in and came to their aid and the troops inside the wood dug in their heels and clung on. In the darkness the scene was one of utter confusion.
When the din of shell and machine-gun fire finally died down late in the evening, the strength of the 22nd Royal Fusiliers was given as just eighteen officers and 400 men, although a few more continued to drift in. Thanks to their efforts, the British flank was held up, ‘and unless this had been accomplished the wood would have been lost almost before it was won’. A fellow machine gunner reported Corsellis Lawton as having been killed, but his body, if recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 8c/9a & 16a.