The Middlebrook Guide to the Somme Battlefields by Martin & Mary Middlebrook

Author:Martin & Mary Middlebrook
Format: epub
Published: 2017-03-11T05:00:00+00:00

At the northern end of the village is the much larger Combles Communal Cemetery Extension , which has a chequered history. The cemetery was started by French troops in October 1916 and was later used in turn by the British, the Germans in 1918 and the British again later in 1918. The French and German graves were moved after the war, leaving the empty space of the old Plot 1 on the left of the cemetery. There were only ninety-seven British graves at the end of the war, but a major concentration of graves brought the number up to 1,051 when the register was printed in 1927. Still more British graves were added even later when most of Row D and all of Rows E and F in Plot 3 (on the left of the cemetery) were made; many of these were 1 July 1916 graves of the 18th (Eastern) Division from the Mametz – Montauban area.

It is a handsome cemetery, despite the many changes, and there are some interesting features. In the first row on the right of the entrance is the grave of Corporal G. E. Pattinson who was killed on 15 September 1916. The register shows him to have been a member of ‘C’ Company, Machine Gun Corps (Heavy Branch). This was the title under which the first tanks went into action on that day; it is now the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment. Other tank men killed on 15 September have Machine Gun Corps badges on their headstones but Corporal Pattinson has the Tank Corps badge, making this the earliest dated Tank Corps headstone. The family inscription is: He, taking death on himself, saved his comrades; it has not been possible to find out what incident on 15 September lay behind this. Another feature is the large number of Northamptonshire Regiment graves to the left and right of the central pathway. Finally, at the very end of the cemetery, is the grave of Private J. Hollingworth, 2nd Manchesters, whose date of death was 15 August 1915. Soon after British troops took over the Carnoy-Marricourt sector from the French, this man was in a forward listening post when he was ‘snatched’ by a German raiding party and brought to Combles in a wounded condition. He may have been the first British soldier to have been taken prisoner on the Somme. Unfortunately he died and a Bavarian medical unit buried him in the nearby civilian cemetery. His body was later moved and his grave is now the last one in Plot 2, Row C, directly to the right of the Cross of Sacrifice.

There are two memorials to French soldiers on the side of the village where their units fought. At the side of the road to Rancourt, in what was once a quiet spot but now stands looking over the busy Paris motorway, is one of the largest private memorials I have ever seen. It is to Sous-Lieutenant Charles Dansette from Armentières, who died here on 25 September 1916.

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