By Kathryn White

ONE hundred years ago this week, readers of what was then the Stroud News were eagerly anticipating news of the British Army’s rumoured Big Push on the Western Front.

In a special feature to commemorate the centenary of the Somme, final year history student Kathryn White looks back at the some of the soldiers from the Stroud area who were involved in the 140-day battle.

In the July 7 edition of the Stroud News, an over-enthusiastic reporter cooed that the soldiers ‘sniffed battle, and, like the aged hunters, their nostrils were distended, every nerve was taut, and they were ready for the fray’.

Looking back, this appears to be wildly misjudged given the 60,000 British casualties taken on July 1, but the journalists at the time were subject to the government’s extensive press censorship and could only imagine the excitement of battle.

In fact, for most of the Stroud soldiers, July 1 was a dull day spent in the reserve trenches behind the action.

For the many serving in the Gloucestershire Regiment, it would be another two days before they would enter the battle.

Just one Stroud man was among the 19,000 killed on the infamous first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Fred Skerton, of Lypiatt Villa, Eastcombe, died in the chaos of the attack at Gommecourt, at the north end of the Somme frontline.

He had volunteered with the London Scottish battalion in 1915, local to east London where he had been living briefly before the war.

He sailed to France just three weeks before the battle began.

Aged 23, the Somme was his first experience of conflict.

The London Scottish made progress early in their attack, but by evening they had been driven back to their original position at a cost of more than 4,000 casualties.

Skerton was among them, his body lost in the battle like so many others.

He is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing alongside numerous other Stroud men.

Among the next to fall was George Tanner, of Summer Street, Stroud on July 3.

This was the day his battalion, the 10th Worcestershire Regiment, went into battle alongside units from the Gloucestershire Regiment.

Countless lives from the Stroud district were lost in the capture of the small village of La Boisselle to the south of the British sector.

This had been a target for July 1, but it wasn’t until reinforcements were brought in on July 3 that the half mile distance across the village could be captured.

Tanner left behind a wife, Emily, and at least two children, Gladys and Henry, aged 11 and nine respectively.

It is unlikely that the family had much money: Tanner had previously been employed as a labourer in one of Stroud’s mills.

Their story is all too common, particularly after the Gloucestershire Regiment went over the top again on July 23 in the battle to capture Pozières Ridge, an outcrop of hill in the centre of the British Somme sector.

In this joint Australian-British assault, the soldiers crept into No Man’s Land from 12.30am, protected by the darkness.

By the following day the ridge itself had been captured, winning the battlefield’s high ground, but the land on either side, where many Stroud men were fighting, was not so well-held.

Among the fallen to the north was William Organ of Stonehouse, and to the south William Pash, a mill hand from Nailsworth.

They are remembered together on the Thiepval Memorial.

The slim successes of July 1916 were extremely costly to the British Army and did not achieve the breakthrough the generals had hoped for.

The Stroud area would continue to suffer losses until after the Armistice in 1918, with the same Somme land being fought over again in the final months of the war.

The scale of the losses was unimaginable to the Home Front, and the sacrifices of those we remember on our war memorials, as well as those who survived the horrors of war, have undoubtedly shaped our communities to this day.

Lest we forget them this centenary year.

If you would like to know more about the local soldiers of the First World War or have a family story to share, please visit Kathryn’s history blog at waltertheraleigh.blogspot.com

Kathryn White, from Cam, is studying history at the University of Manchester.

Whistles will be blows at war memorials across the Stroud district to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of the Somme tomorrow morning (Friday).

At 7.30am on July 1, 1916 whistles blew along the Western Front as a signal to the troops to go over the top.

It marked the beginning of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of the Great War.

At 7.30am on Friday, July 1, Stroud Town Council will blow a whistle at Park Gardens, Stroud, in tribute to the soldiers who fought.

A whistle and two minutes silence will also be held at the war memorial between north and south Woodchester on the morning of July 1.

Anyone interested in attending the even is requested to arrive at 7.15am before the remembrance at 7.30am.