2nd Lieutenant Thomas Percy Wilson
7TH BEDFORDSHIRE REGIMENT
ALTHOUGH FROM HERTFORD, 23-YEAR-OLD THOMAS Wilson had enlisted in Manchester in November 1914 and was originally part of a Lancashire territorial force. Promoted to sergeant, Thomas was then given a commission and sent to Edinburgh for training before being put into the Bedfordshire Regiment later in 1915.
The 7th Bedfordshires were part of the attack on the opposite side of the Thiepval front from Patrick Grey and Ewart Smith. On 26th September British troops were ordered to attack Thiepval from the south and the Schwaben Redoubt beyond. Thomas’ battalion was in reserve, subjected to severe shelling, while Middlesex troops and a battalion of the Royal Fusiliers worked up the enemy front-line system that had proved so immovable since the beginning of the Somme campaign. Supported by a battalion of the Northamptons, by 2:30pm the village of Thiepval, reduced to a mass of ruins over the course of the summer, had fallen almost entirely, with only the north-west corner holding out.
On 27th September, supported by men of the West Yorkshires, the 7th Bedfordshires were to attack and clear the remaining part of the village. Their relief had gone so well that two companies were in position and ready to go by 5:45am. ‘The finest example of discipline in battle and efficiency in a crisis yet displayed by the division.’ Their orders had been altered at short notice. Without guides, their path to battle was lit only by the bursting of shells. Their prompt arrival was some achievement for a battalion unfamiliar with the ground; ‘the most awful country that human being ever saw or dreamt of. July 1st was a playground compared to it.’ Nonetheless, by 11am Thiepval had been cleared by bomb and by bayonet as this approach was deemed more likely to succeed than a more prolonged preparation including artillery. Having suffered casualties of almost 100 men, the Bedfords consolidated their new positions.
Unusual lying down headstones, including Thomas Wilson’s at Mill Road Cemetery. (Andrew Holmes)
On 28th September the rest of the battalion, including Thomas Wilson, was to help take the fearsome Schwaben Redoubt to the north of Thiepval. The men had been out all night. A few were lucky enough to get into dugouts, but most had hidden in shell holes, having either exhausted themselves with bomb throwing or having been engaged with the enemy at close quarters. As they waited in position for the next phase of the assault, the men chatted among themselves and tried to mask their nerves. There was a rotten smell of decomposition coming from nearby corpses in the vicinity. There were no forming up trenches. There had been no time to dig them and they had to settle for far more exposed positions, forming up behind lines of tape that men had started to lay out the day before.
By 1pm the first significant attack on the Schwaben Redoubt since Oswald Webb’s Ulster Division had assaulted it at the beginning of July had begun. Thomas and the Bedfords followed the barrage closely, taking grievous fire coming from the redoubt. The Queen’s, a battalion of whom were also involved in the attack on this critical objective, were pressing on their left because they had swerved off course. Finding their way across the barren ground was a nightmare. ‘It was an extraordinarily difficult battle to fight, owing to every landmark such as a map shows, being obliterated; absolutely and totally.’ Recent wet weather and rampant shellfire had also taken its toll. ‘The ground was, of course, the limit itself, and progress over it like nothing imaginable.’
By 2:30pm men were approaching the redoubt from the east, but in the confusion, with troops fighting now in a maze of shell holes and broken trenches, it was decided that the best idea would be to push as a coherent force on the Western Face. Danger lurked around every corner. As one participant wrote:
The ground was made for skulking, and every yard of it afforded opportunity for men to drop down unseen and stay there. If I saw evil and wicked sights in Trônes, I saw more and varied ones in Thiepval.
Thomas’ battalion was throwing up bombing stops in trenches to attempt to block the enemy’s path. The Germans continued to attempt to counter-attack and, frantically, the Bedfords showered them with explosives thrown by hand. By 4pm they were beginning to run out of bombs and ammunition, and had begun raiding enemy supplies they came upon in dugouts.
An hour later the Queen’s battalion had taken the southern face of the Schwaben Redoubt, linking up with a muddle of troops on their left. The Western face of the redoubt and a trench facing north-west on the slope beyond had also been seized. All of the men clustered around the objective were told to consolidate their positions, but the fight was still going on. The Bedfords and West Yorkshires were still attempting to beat down German resistance to the west slope of the redoubt. By the time that it had been secured, Thomas Wilson’s battalion had suffered more than 120 more casualties. It was not until nearly midnight that the situation became clearer as to the disposition of the attacking troops and the remnants of the German defenders. Schwaben Redoubt remained in the hands of the enemy and the assault had cost 23-year-old Thomas Wilson his life. He was laid to rest at Mill Road Cemetery, plot I.C.2.