WW1
2nd XX The Lancashire Fusiliers
The Somme

"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.