#452396 Private Thomas Carson
58TH CANADIAN INFANTRY
BACK AT REGINA TRENCH, GOUGH’S men were preparing to make a second attempt at seizing it from German hands once and for all. Among the thousands of emigrants serving in the Canadian force was 26-year-old Thomas Carson, originally from Omagh, Co. Tyrone. He left for Canada in June 1913 with his brother, sailing from Londonderry for Quebec and Montreal. They were heading for rural Watford, near the shores of Lake Huron, where Thomas settled, like Donald Connor, as a farmer in Ontario. He joined the army in July 1915 and arrived in France in January the following year, before finding his way to the Somme with his battalion.
Early on 6th October, Thomas and the rest of the men waded back to Tara Hill, behind La Boisselle on the road to Albert, and into reserve after a forty-eight-hour stint in the trenches. The journey was slow, taking most of the night, and caused nearly twenty casualties, two of whom finally reached the end of mental endurance in the miserable conditions and had to be sent away. Despite the slog back, Thomas and the rest of the men were, of course, enthused to be away from the cold, wet misery of the trenches. But it was not to last. The following day they were ordered to relieve a front line battalion. After just a short respite, they had arrived by 11:30pm on 7th October to join the latest attempt on Regina Trench. No less than eight battalions were to attack in an attempt to wrench the objective from the Kaiser’s men and withstand the inevitable counter-attacks. Thomas’ battalion was to be towards the left of the line. Soaked to the skin from lingering in wet trenches awaiting zero hour, the 58th Battalion advanced shortly before 5am. Long lines of Canadians went forward supported by bombing parties and Lewis guns. The artillery had failed to knock out the German machine guns beforehand and their inevitable torrent of fire began, cutting through the ranks of Thomas’ battalion. One company commander was shot in the stomach at the onset, and there he lay, cheering on his men before he found his way into a shell hole, where he died of his wound.
All three companies then ran into uncut wire on the approach to Regina Trench. The entanglements were barbed up to 4ft high and 5ft deep, having seemingly been missed by the British artillery. As Thomas’ battalion attempted to cut through it, they were subjected to more heavy fire. One company managed to slice through it, another to find a gap big enough to edge through, at which point they began to file into Regina Trench. Working methodically along it, these men managed to hold on to 100 yards of the trench for half an hour until they reached a strong bombing post. More men were fashioning breaks in the wire to begin crawling into the enemy trench. The Germans bombed them viciously from a position further to their rear to enhance the effects of their machine guns and not long after their arrival the enemy also ranged their artillery on to the captured trenches.
Canadian soldiers fix bayonets. (Authors’ collection)
In the meantime, the battalion to the right had failed to capture its allocated portion of Regina Trench. Seeing that the 58th was isolated, the Germans began to target the battalion even more. A fierce fight ensued. Once again, the fighting for Regina Trench had become desperate and took place at close quarters. Inside, the Canadians ran out of bombs and were annihilated almost to a man. One officer was last seen fighting hand-to-hand, surrounded by the enemy. One NCO, finding himself without a leader, rallied the men and helped the wounded into shell holes. Then, under fire, when it became clear the attack could not continue, he dodged from hole to hole, helping his comrades to dress their wounds. Then he found his own shell hole, and with three other men spent the rest of the day sniping at nearby Germans, before they managed to drive off a small bombing attack coming towards them.
Men worked from shell hole to shell hole, crawling across no-man’s-land to get back to their own lines, although most of them resolved to lay out until nightfall when they stood a better chance of getting back unharmed. One single officer was still capable of finding his own way back. After an exhausting effort, the Canadians were back where they had started. Regina Trench remained in German hands. That week the Canadian contingent on the Somme lost nearly 3,000 more men, including Thomas Carson. His brother Joseph had also enlisted in the Canadian Infantry and he died aged twenty-six with the 47th Battalion on 29th September 1918, just a few weeks before the end of the war. Buried where he fell, Thomas Carson’s body, if recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Vimy Memorial.
Sculpture on the Canadian National Memorial, Vimy Ridge. (Alexandra Churchill)