WW1
2nd XX The Lancashire Fusiliers
The Somme

Charity shop finds rare gun in clothes
A rare First World War gun has been given to a charity shop by a mystery donor.


Captain Hugh Wingfield Sayres.

Click here
for
http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=312247

The revolver belonged to Captain Hugh Sayres of the Lancashire Fusiliers, who was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Click on this photo it will enlarge

Captain Sayres, 27, died alongside his dog Nailer while leading his company in an attack on Beaumont-Hamel on July 1 1916.

His gun was discovered in a bag of clothes donated to a charity shop in Earl Shilton, Leicestershire, nine months ago.

The donor was never traced.

A Leicestershire Police spokesman said that ordinarily the gun, which was handed to police, would have been destroyed.

However, a Loughborough police officer recognised the rarity of the 1912 Webley Revolver and received permission to research its history.

Sergeant Rich Matlock of Leicestershire Police learned that Captain Sayres joined the Lancashire Fusiliers after graduating from Sandhurst.

In 1912 he was sent to India and in 1915 was shot in the right shoulder while landing in Gallipoli.

Sgt Matlock said: "Hugh Winfield Sayres was a remarkable officer who excelled at everything he did including boxing, hockey, steeplechase and cricket.

"He could have remained an Acting Major but chose to return to his men and was sent 'over the top' at Beaumont Hamel in the mistaken belief that the Germans posed little threat.

"Of course the opposite was true and 19,000 men died that day.

"All his affects, including his gun, would have been sent home to his family who had it engraved again, this time in his memory.

"It is unusual for a gun to have been used in Gallipoli and at the Battle of the Somme which is what makes it so rare."

The gun was made by Wilkinson Wembley and the barrel is inscribed with the words "In Honour of Capt. H.W Sayres 1st July 1916".

Leicestershire Police will donate the gun to the Fusiliers Museum in Bury, Greater Manchester, on 18 February. 2009.


Dave Guest BBC,
Sergeant Rich Matlock, and Tony Sprason

Mike Glover and Sergeant Rich Matlock

Click Here to see the BBC Video report Thanks to BBC Northwest Jim Clarke
its a large file so give it time to download

"Light Trench Mortar Battery"
Corporal Horace Edwards
Born in Aberdare (14 March 1896) and (I think) conscripted in Cardiff in 1916, I think he was a Private 2nd Battalion. I think he was captured at Peronne (1917?) and ended the War a prisoner near Brussels. Returning to Cardiff after Armistice he lived a long, simple life as a family man and passed away in 1992 just days short of 96yoa. I am his only daughter's son.
Richard Llewellyn

My Grampa, 21yoa at the time, wrote in pencil on the back of the original ' To Dear Mama and Dada, LTM Battery, from somewhere in France 1917'.
Family history has it that my Grampa was a Private. First spanner in the works is that the attached Medal Card is for Corporal Edwards and nobody knew anything about Horace Edwards having the middle initial 'V'. There is another Fusilier Horace Edwards in the 1914-18 Medal Cards list but the site wouldn't let me buy any more! I shall return to that.
The War Diary
The Battalion Orders

The Chemical Works mentioned as a area boundery in the diaries

sent in by
Richard Llewellyn

 

Orders for a raid on the German trenches on the
9th July 1916,
probably during the
"Battle of Albert "

War Diary
 of
2Lt Hawkins
2nd Bn Lancashire Fusiliers
The Somme
(click on a date to see the pdf file)

11th October 1916
to
12th October 1916
7 pages
see Report of the action 0n the 12th Oct 1916 below



2633 Private Charles Robert Levett
2nd Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers.

Shot through the right shoulder 1st July 1916 serving with the
2nd Bn The XXth The Lancashire Fusiliers
at Beaumont Hamel.
They comprise of his medals, hat badge and old contemptible badge, his discharge paper, a photo of him and his brother Arthur (who joined the Light Artillery) taken at Eastbourne, East Sussex presumably in 1914 prior to them entering France with the expeditionary force. The other photo is of him at Alderley Park convalescent home, Chelford, Cheshire. As you can see he has aged considerably in the two years he was on the front. I have also attached two scans of a newspaper cutting I found folded with his discharge paper, it list all the men of the 2nd Battalion suffering from gas, I guess after one of the Ypres engagements.
Send in by Greg Chuter
(Grandson of Charles Levett)

 

37958 Sgt Jonathon Richard Himsworth

killed in action 1916

37958 Sgt Jonathon Richard Himsworth

One of the Battalions outside the Chemical Factory at the Somme
Station's Somme salute
Yakub Qureshi Manchester Evening News


The War Memorial in Victoria Station
Geoff Pycroft, Danny Daniels, and Dennis Laverick.
The soldiers who lost their lives in one of history's bloodiest and most notorious battles were remembered in Manchester.

The Battle of the Somme claimed the lives of more than a million men during World War One.

A service at Manchester's Victoria station marked the 90th anniversary of the struggle in which Allied Forces attempted to break a bitter deadlock with Germany over a 25-mile fortified line in northern France.