#F/936 Private William Webber Walter Gerrish
17TH MIDDLESEX REGIMENT
THE ATTACK ON GUILLEMONT ON 30th July had not yielded any kind of significant progress. The situation was reviewed at a conference on the following day, when General Rawlinson said that the village should only be attacked again after thorough preparation. Guillemont, Ginchy and Falfemont Farm must be taken to help forward the French advance to the British right, but Haig was still attempting to make a stand against wasteful attacks of the attritional kind that were not yielding adequate results in return for the casualties incurred or the material used. Billy Congreve’s father, still in charge of this sector, said that for this to be observed he would not be able to attack Guillemont again until 8th August. In light of a mandate from Haig on conserving resources and attacking only when commanders on the spot were ready, so it would be.
Former Aston Villa player Private William Gerrish. (Authors’ collection)
Preparations began in force. Ammunition was gathered and the artillery continued to try to pick away at their counterpart German batteries to the east. The enemy had brought up numerous reinforcements and guns, and strengthened their existing positions so that, although they were inevitably tired after the gruelling bombardments to which they had been subjected, the idea that they would be pushovers was far from accurate. Sadly for those about to be thrown into battle too, the plan differed little from that which had failed on both 23rd and 30th July. Irrespective of how much more effort was put into communications or artillery preparation, British troops would still be walking towards incredibly well situated German machine guns.
The Footballer’s Battalion arrived in the area on the night of 5th August. Still with them after the fighting at Delville Wood was William Gerrish, a 27-year-old player who had spells at Aston Villa, Bristol Rovers, Chesterfield and Preston North End behind him and who had enlisted in the 17th Middlesex in February 1915. Detailed orders were issued less than forty-eight hours after the relief. William was to advance south to the area around Waterlot Farm, which lay about halfway between Delville Wood and Guillemont, then move south towards the outskirts of the village itself, past the train station and the railway embankment. Guillemont itself would be the task of the battalion to their right. The attack was to be preceded by a hefty seventeen-hour bombardment of heavy artillery, which began with a vengeance at 9am on 7th August. The British gunners also made six ‘Chinese attacks’, which were occasional flurries of increased fire, to confuse the Germans about when the inevitable assault would come and ease the path of William and his fellow troops. They lasted for fifteen minutes, spouting a mixture of shells that jumped backwards and forwards furiously, implying that the infantry were about to burst forward. At 9pm the artillery paused while the attacking troops got into position. Straightaway the Footballer’s Battalion began sending out patrols to check the German trenches to see how strongly they might be held on the other side of Waterlot Farm. They came back with the worrying news that the lines were full of enemy troops and that the bombardment appeared to have done little damage to their defences. The torrent of shellfire then resumed at midnight, other guns also targeting the German lines elsewhere, attempting to draw attention away from the front at Guillemont. The rampant barrage continued all the way up to zero hour.
An easterly wind threw dust and smoke from the German artillery’s intense fire into William’s face as he waited to attack. At 4:20am the 17th Middlesex climbed out of its jumping off trenches to crawl out in front and minimise the distance to be covered. Shortly after dawn the first troops got to their feet and went forward. The battlefield was cloaked in thick mist with visibility limited to about 10 yards, meaning that the troops could not actually see their objectives. As a result, on the right of the 17th Middlesex, troops lost direction coming out of the trench dug especially for launching the attack and ended up veering off to the south, missing crucial strong points that were to have eased the path of their advance once put out of action. As the British pushed on, it appeared that the enemy retreated into deep dugouts in the ruins of the village, with numerous entrances, and that after the initial wave of attack had passed over, they emerged carrying machine guns and were able to shoot their attackers in the back.
Guillemont, Longueval, Trônes Wood. (Authors’ collection)
The neighbouring troops had been unable to claim Guillemont itself. William Gerrish’s battalion was in Z-Z Trench, to the north, as planned, ready to try to fight its way down to meet them. However, it was under heavy fire too, being mercilessly enfiladed by machine guns and hit with bombing attacks. The situation was spiralling rapidly out of control. The men of the 17th Middlesex became lost; the green signalling flares that should have been shooting up to let them know the troops around them had arrived at their objectives were absent and communications were dire.
At 5am a runner shot into the battalion’s headquarters to report that the original attacking party had been entirely bombed out of Z-Z Trench. The commanding officer promptly ordered a company to send out half a dozen bombers and a handful of men with fixed bayonets. They were to go along an old trench towards an imposing German-held building, a strong point known imaginatively as Machine-Gun House, to meet up with their neighbours, who were supposed to have taken it as part of their second objective. Half an hour later his party had nearly reached the spot, but couldn’t get any further, although they were still attempting to bomb their way out of trouble. One single Lewis gun had managed to get back into Z-Z Trench. In the assault on the village itself, troops had made some progress towards Guillemont before being held up by the rate of German fire. Those who got furthest forward were stuck in isolated shell holes with no support, their front raked continuously by machine guns. This was to prove the extent of the success experienced in the advance on Guillemont on 8th August 1916. When a German counter-attack came in the village, the troops inside were in no position to withstand it. Fighting hand-to-hand, clinging on despite a lack of drinking water, many of them carrying wounds and having run out of bombs and ammunition, they were finally overwhelmed.
Despite the effort put into additional preparation efforts to maintain communications, the results of the day were dismal. Whole companies simply evaporated. The battalion suffered more than 200 casualties in one day. Guillemont was still in enemy hands and, once again, the battlefield lay littered with the bodies of hundreds of men who had been cruelly thrown in to try and claim it as part of a small force. One of those who vanished on the field of battle, William Gerrish’s death was eventually officially accepted a year later as having occurred on 8th August 1916. He was unmarried and left behind a 6-year-old son named Horace. His body, if recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 12d/13b.