Friday 1st July is the centenary of the Battle of the Somme at which over a million men were killed or wounded. Of this number are 18 Downside men, Old Gregorians who had gone to serve their country. Alongside these men, members of the Downside monastic community also served as Military Chaplains. This centenary we will be remembering them all at Downside.
Three boys of the school died on the 1st July, killed in the advances into German trenches which were supposed to be have been blown to pieces by the massive preliminary artillery bombardment, yet which remained well defended. The list of the Downside boys who died between 1st July and 18th November in this battle are listed here.
2nd Lieutenant Evan Edward Trevor-Jones. 1st July aged 20.
2nd Lieutenant Cuthbert A Stonor. 1st July aged 28.
Lieutenant Hugh Gilbert Clifford. 1st July aged 19.
2nd Lieutenant Kenneth Callan Macardle. 9th July aged 26.
Lieutenant D'arcy John Joseph Hartley. 14th July aged 26.
2nd Lieutenant Stephen Henry Hewett. 22nd July aged 23.
Captain Noel Cairns Clery MC. 24th July aged 23.
2nd Lieutenant Philip Stephen Koe. 1st August aged 20.
2nd Lieutenant Richard Walker. 9th August aged 33.
2nd Lieutenant Patrick Gilbert O'Hara. 14th August aged 19.
2nd Lieutenant Cecil William Daly. 18th August aged 19.
2nd Lieutenant Hugh Joseph Francis Fleming. 24th August aged 20.
2nd Lieutenant Roderick Alan Edward O'Connor. 1st September aged 22.
Major Noel Wilfrid Lawder. 4th September aged 29.
2nd Lieutenant Henry Lubienski Bodenham. 7th September aged 20.
Captain John Oswin Turnbull. 9th September aged 27.
Private William Forster. 7th October aged 24.
2nd Lieutenant Gilbert Austin Turner. 17th November aged 19.
Also on the Western Front during this time were monks of the community here at Downside, who had volunteered as Military Chaplains. One of these, Dom Urban Butler, was heavily involved in the Battle of the Somme, serving with 9th Cheshire Regiment. Although not in the first waves of attacks, the Cheshires were heavily involved in the fighting over the next days and weeks. Dom Urban wrote to his mother of his experiences on 7th July, his first opportunity to write since the 1st.
'Presently we arrived at the communication trenches; the brigade went in and I left them to go to the advanced dressing station in the chateau in the wood of Becourt (a good map of the battlefield ought to show it) some three kilometres east of Albert and just behind our front lines as it was on that famous first of July. The horrors of that place in which I have since spent so many hours will live in my mind till my last day. The heat was overpowering and I could hardly support the awful stench of blood and perspiration.'
Dom Urban spent three days in the basement of the chateau treating wounded men as they came back from the front lines. He wrote 'There were days in the past when men wounded one another in honourable anger, striking at the brow or the breast with clean steel. But these wounds are an outrage against heaven and I will not offend your feelings by describing what I have witnessed. Was man made after God’s image to be torn by hideous machinery and has the world developing upon an utterly false theory of civilisation determined to tear itself to pieces in rage at the sight of its own devil-worship?'
On this 1st July, Downside remembers not just those who fell, but those who served and witnessed the horrors of one of the bloodiest episodes in British history.
