The picture above shows the area of the London Rifle Brigade's attack on 1st July 1916.

A Company on the left attacked Point 94 at the corner of Gommecourt Park and were to build a strongpoint there with the help of Royal Engineers and Cheshire Pioneers prior to the storming of the Park and village by B Company, London Rifle Brigade later in the morning. They were held up by heavy machine gun fire from the park and strong bombing attacks and were eventually forced back into the Fen/Ferret trenches.

C Company's objective was the Maze, a network of small trenches on the edge of the village. They held this for a long time before being forced to withdraw to the German front lines.

D Company, bombed their way along Ferret and then up Eck trenches towards the cemetery and then dug in. It was in this trench that 2nd Lt Rex Petley held out until late in the afternoon before he withdrew with his men, chased all the way by German bombers.

By the end of the day, all of the 169th Brigade's remaining men in the German lines were surrounded in Fen/Ferret trenches. At about 8.30 pm the order 'every man for himself' was issued and those men able to escaped into No Man's Land. Many men were caught by German machine gun fire from the Park and were killed. Others hid in shell holes and a few got across back to the British lines. One of the unlucky ones was 2nd Lt Teddy Bovill of the QWRs who was shot just as he was about the jump into the British trenches.

The area just in front of the jump off areas for the London Rifle Brigade was the graveyard of the 1/2nd London Regiment. Three times companies of this battalion tried to get men and supplies across to the LRB and on every occasion they were cut down by machine gun and artillery fire within a few yards. The Lord Mayor of London described their actions as akin to the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Such was the confidence of senior officers in the success of the attack that the 1/3rd London Regiment were ordered to dig a trench across No Man's Land along the approximate line of the A Company, LRB's attack. They were shot down by machine guns and had to abandon their work withing minutes.

For other detailed panoramas of the brigade and battalion frontages click on the following links:

169th Brigade
Queen Victoria's Rifles
The Rangers
168th Brigade