The Somerset Light Infantry's part in the first day of The Battle of the Somme.

The attack on Beaumont Hamel began at 7.30 a.m. on a fine warm morning. The 1^st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry was part of the 11^th Brigade of the 4^th Division and was in the second line of the attack, advancing between the 1^st Battalion Hampshire Regt. and 6^th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regt.

All six of the Brigade’s battalion commanding officers became casualties early in the attack and the Brigade’s commanding officer, Brigadier-General Prowse, was mortally wounded. By early afternoon those members of the Battalion who had reached the German trenches were under the command of Coy.-Sergt.-Major Chappell, all the officers having become casualties. 

Although a segment of the German front line was captured during the day Major V.H.B. Majendi writes:  
“Later in the night it was decided to evacuate the small portion of the German trenches that remained in our possession, and by dawn on July 2^nd the British line on this part of the front was exactly the same as it had been before the attack.

The losses of the Battalion were exceedingly heavy. With the exception of the Medical Officer, Captain Acland, R.A.M.C., and Sec.-Lieut. Marler, Brigade dump officer, no single officer, including those in charge of carrying parties, who formed up in the assembly trenches remained for duty at the end of the day.  Lieut.-Colonel Thicknesse and the Adjutant, Captain Ford, were both killed before no-man’s land was reached. The Battalion’s casualties were 26 officers and 438 other ranks.”*

Such casualties, killed, wounded and missing, amounted to around 50% considering that the strength of a British infantry battalion at that time was around 1,000 men. 

The 8^th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry was part of the 63^rd Brigade of the 21^st Division when that division prepared to attack north of Fricourt.

An hour before the attack was to start the Germans poured an accurate artillery barrage on to the front-line trenches of the 4^th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, to the right of the 8^th Somersets, causing many casualties.  Five minutes before Zero hour the men of both regiments left their trenches only to be raked by rifle and machine-gun fire in no-man’s land.  When the British artillery barrage lifted and the advance began all but three of the 8^th Somersets’ officers had become casualties.  By the time the forward German positions had been captured only about 100 men of the Battalion remained in action.  They held their positions until the early hours of July 4^th when they were relieved by men of the 12^th Battalion, Manchester Regiment.

Casualties were almost as heavy as those suffered by the 1^st Somersets.  The Battalion commanding officer, Lieut.-Colonel J.W. Scott, was wounded and a total of 18 officers and 425 men were killed wounded or missing.

Battalions from the Somerset Light Infantry would continue in action throughout the Battle of the Somme and suffer grievous losses but not on the appalling scale of those opening attacks around Beaumont Hamel and Fricourt.

*A History of the 1^st Battalion, The Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert’s), July 1^st 1916, to the end of the War.  (Goodman and Son, 1921).