Headstone of Corporal P. Cotter of the Royal Irish Regiment, died September 3, 1916 at the age of 32, and buried in Delville Wood Cemetery, France. © 2013 John M. Shea
10545 CorporalP. CotterRoyal Irish Regiment3rd September 1916 Age 32Jesus MercyAll I ask of youIs that you will remember meAt the altar of the Lord
"On the evening of September 2[, 1916], the battalion moved cautiously from Mailly-Maillet by cross-battalion tracks, through pretty Englebelmer, with ghostly Angelus on the green and dewy light, over the downs to Mesnil, and assembled in the Hamel trenches to attack the Beaucourt ridge next morning. The night all round was drugged and quiet. I stood at the junction of four advanced trenches, directing the several companies into them as had been planned. Not one man in thirty had seen the line by daylight—and it was a maze even when seen so, map in hand. Even climbing out of the narrow steep trenches with weighty equipment, and crossing others by bridges placed 'near enough' in this dark last moment, threatened to disorder the assault."
Edmund Blunden, English writer, recipient of the Military Cross, second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, writing of preparations the night of September 2, 1916 for an attack the next morning, an action in Battle of the Somme. Hamel had seen the ruin of the Newfoundland Regiment on July 1, the first day of the Battle. Blunden was responsible for supplying the troops of his unit, and had spent the previous days stocking rations, ammunition, grenades, barbed wire, and other supplies in the trenches. Once the battle began, 'all was in ominous discommunication,' with reports of men reaching the first, second, and third German lines, messengers coming bearing too-late news from an hour before, wounded men staggering in, dead men being carried in, all while shells bombarded the trenches. By noon, 'the collapse of the attack was wearily obvious.' Blunden also fought at Ypres and in the Battle of the Passchendaele.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, page 96, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
1916-09-02, 1916, September, Somme, Battle of the Somme
