#65680 Private George Ambrose Julier
101ST FIELD AMBULANCE, ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
FROM NORFOLK, 21-YEAR-OLD GEORGE JULIER was an engine driver when war was declared in 1914. Married just after the onset, the newlywed remained at home in Great Yarmouth until September 1915, when he enlisted and was posted to the Royal Army Medical Corps. George arrived in France at the beginning of 1916 and was sent to work with a field ambulance attached to the 33rd Division. This meant that since the onset of the Battle of the Somme he had tended the wounded men of the division through the opening stages of the offensive, then at Bazentin Ridge and High Wood.
At the end of October the division was at the far end of Rawlinson’s sector, near the southern part of Lesboeufs. East of the village were a number of troublesome trenches and the infantry had been ordered to seize them. On the 28th they poured forward. To the rear, George and the other members of the field ambulance were busy operating a relay post out of Ginchy for stretcher-bearers, bringing in the wounded from the battle and treating them at various stations, all in torrential rain.
In front of them, gains had been made, but the Germans had counter-attacked and claimed some of them back. On 29th October the division was ordered to assault the Germans again, this time to claim the rest of a trench named Boritska, east of Lesboeufs, which was at that moment shared with the enemy. Bursting forth at dawn, the assaulting troops were stopped in their tracks and mown down by German troops manning machine guns in fortified shell holes. The bloody bayonet battle that followed was to no avail either. That morning a captain of the field ambulance had taken eleven stretcher-bearers, including George Julier, all the way forward to Lesboeufs to operate during the attack. As rain cascaded down again, they would wade through the mud towards the front line, collecting immobile men from where they were sheltering within trenches or climbing out into no-man’s-land to hunt for them out in the open, or in half-filled shell holes as the artillery pounded the ground around them. It was dangerous work and on 29th October two of the twelve-man team were wounded and two were killed in action, including George Julier. The 21 year old was believed to have been laid to rest at Guards’ Cemetery Lesboeufs, but no accurate record was made to indicate where within the cemetery. He is commemorated there on Special Memorial 11.
The wounded in rows at a field ambulance behind the lines. (Authors’ collection)