Cycling the Somme

Extract from a letter written by L/Cpl ALFRED CRABTREE MM, to his family 6th December 1916

Well it wasn't long before we moved to the nearest village to the firing line, which is called Mailly--Mailly, and is a pretty warm place at times as it is in range of the enemy's guns, in fact we got shelled out of one billet there. Instead of going in the trenches with the rest of the battalion I was sent to the R E's for a fortnight during which time I helped to lay a mine under old Fritz's second line, with about 30 tons of explosives in it, so you can imagine that we meant business, and was to be made use of in this new advance, but owing to the terrible wet weather that we were having at the time, the advance which had been planned out for some time kept being postponed, and when it did come off, it was only a small scale, but we've done remarkably well but paid a terrible price for what we gained and it was a miracle how anybody came through it without a scratch. Well you may judge for yourself what it was like when I tell you that only two more besides myself out of 30 in my platoon came through safe and one of those was a Yorkshireman in the R.F.A. with me.  In the whole company out of 100 that went over, there were 70 casualties, and out of the whole battalion about a quarter of us were left, but of course a lot were only wounded, but still it was hell and words cannot describe it.

Alfred Crabtree MM was killed in action 24th August 1918 aged 23. His grave is just one of those that we visited and photographed.

This letter is reproduced with the kind permission from his family.

Although this letter does not refer to the battle of the Somme itself, the mine to which Alfred refers is almost certainly the second blowing of Hawthorn Ridge. It is also very likely that this letter was sent home by hand as it contains information that would not have made it past the censor.