#G/7803 Private Frederick Silsby
7TH ROYAL SUSSEX REGIMENT
IT HAD BEEN ORDAINED THAT the next cohesive push along Rawlinson’s line would take place on 7th October and the ground beyond the village of Gueudecourt, to the north-east of Flers, was to be among the objectives. Filing into the lines facing the village to prepare for its intended capture was the 7th Royal Sussex Battalion.
Frederick Silsby had already given the regiment fourteen years before leaving the army, but in August 1915 the 40-year-old labourer left his home in the Caterham Valley in Surrey to travel to Guildford and re-enlist. He arrived in France in the spring of 1916 and joined the 7th Battalion just before the beginning of the Battle of the Somme.
On 1st October his Sussex outfit received orders to go into the trenches near Gueudecourt. By 1am the following morning, Frederick and his companions had taken up residence in the support line behind two battalions of the Royal Fusiliers. As soon as their stint began, the men were heavily shelled throughout the day. It continued on the 3rd, when the Germans also bludgeoned Flers behind the Sussex line with shells. At 6pm, Frederick moved up to switch into the front trenches, during which time the enemy artillery was mercifully quiet, but the battalion was soon to find out that the German gunners had their weapons ranged perfectly on these trenches.
Although the weather began to improve slowly as the next offensive on the Somme approached, the nights were quiet in terms of small arms fire, so that the men could hear orders being shouted in the distance. But during the day the enemy artillery remained relentless, pouring unceasing shellfire on the front and support trenches. It grew so traumatic that the Sussex men crawled out in front of their trenches into no-man’s-land and began digging a new trench to sit in that was not in range of the German guns. Of course, this kind of barrage came at a cost to the men in the front lines and, on 5th October, nineteen men of the 7th Royal Sussex were killed, including Frederick Silsby. He was wounded in the back by a shell fragment and rushed to a casualty clearing station, but died later in the day. He left behind a wife, two step-children, Ellen, 14, and Wilhelmina, 11, and a son, 3-year-old Frederick. His wife, Elizabeth, was a widow for a second time. Frederick Silsby was laid to rest at Longueval Road Cemetery, plot B.15.