Thomas Bertram Cowey
 |
Of Tibshelf. 6th Battalion, The Buffs (East Kent) Regiment, killed in action 7th October 1916. 37th Brigade, 12th Division, XV Corps |
By October 1916 the battle of the Somme had been raging for three months. Allied advances had been tortuously slow and only at the cost of enormous casualties. On October 7th another attempt to break the stalemate was made, part of a series of attacks that would become known as the Battle of the Transloy Ridges. The attack would involve the 37th Brigade of the 12th (Eastern) Division, currently occupying the village of Gueudecourt. In the 37th Brigade was the 6th Buffs and in the 6th Buffs was the Tibshelf man, Thomas Cowey. Thomas had enlisted further away from Tibshelf than any other man from the village, travelling to Canterbury in Kent. Naturally he joined the East Kent Regiment, better known as The Buffs.
The 6th battalion of the Buffs was attached to the 12th (Eastern) Division, which had been formed in Colchester in August 1914 as part of the First New Army. After training the Division landed in France in May 1915. On the 25th September the Division was exposed to its first serious test, the Battle of Loos, where 10 men of the 6th Buffs were killed. Shortly afterwards, between the 13th and 19th of October, the battalion was severely affected by the actions of the Hohenzollern Redoubt where 194 men and 2 Officers were killed.
The 6th Buffs were not involved in any serious fighting again until their introduction to the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, but the winter and spring months introduced the battalion and Private Cowey to the misery of trench warfare. A further 149 men lost their lives in the daily attrition of sniping and shelling. As a total, from all causes the battalion had suffered the loss of 402 lives. If the large number of wounded were added to the figure it becomes phenomenally high when one recalls the theoretical strength of a battalion was 1,007 men.
The 12th Division had joined the Battle of the Somme on its third day, relieving the 8th Division in the line opposite Ovillers and about one thousand yards north of La Boiselle. At this stage the Division was part of III Corps and on the 4th of July they went into the attack. At 2.15 a.m. a huge artillery bombardment was unleashed on the German trenches in front of Ovillers. At 3.15 a.m. the 35th Brigade of the 12th Division went 'over the top'. The attack was a total disaster and incurred 2,400 casualties, a figure of around 50% of the Brigades manpower. Although not directly involved Private Cowey and his comrades in the 6th Buffs must have been deeply affected by the lethal opposition that lay a mere 300 yards away.
Elements of the Division, now under the command of X Corps, tried another assault on Ovillers on the 7th of July. The 37th Brigade had moved up the line towards Authuille Wood, being replaced opposite Ovillers by the 36th Brigade. Providing supporting fire the 6th Buffs would have observed the attack by the 36th Brigade. The Brigade was caught in a heavy enemy artillery barrage causing 300 casualties even before it went 'over the top' at 8.30 a.m. Despite the effects of the initial shelling the attack proved successful, ploughing through three layers of German trenches, though the third, ultimately, could not be held. The following day, a Saturday, the 36th Brigade was involved in bombing operations to consolidate its new position and during the night 12th Division was withdrawn and replaced by the 32nd Division.
The Division was back in the line again near Ovillers by the 29th of July, now under II Corps command. Attacks in the previous days had inched the British front line forward so that the Division now occupied trenches facing in a northerly axis towards Thiepval with Pozieres on the right. To this point in the Battle of the Somme the 6th Buffs had not seen serious action but had lost eleven men, 3 of whom had been killed in action and 8 of whom had died of wounds.
On the 4th August the Division was involved in sporadic skirmishes following the capture of Ration Trench during the night by elements of 36th Brigade. 35 men of the 6th Buffs were killed. A key position in the new line was Mouquet Farm at the apex of a British salient jutting out into the German lines. This left British troops in an exposed position but with the possibility of breaking the enemy line. Not unexpectedly the Germans launched numerous attacks on the Mouquet Farm zone, which was held by the 9th Royal Fusiliers of the 36th Brigade on the 12th Divisions' right flank. On the 6th August, at 4 a.m., the Fusiliers were attacked by a combination of flamethrowers and bombs and were split in two within their section of Ration Trench. Bravely they held on despite 30 deaths but a pocket of bays and traverses in the trench was now occupied by German troops. The three days of fighting cost the lives of 80 Royal Fusiliers.
On the 8th August the Germans delivered further attacks on Ration Trench but the Division held again and on the 12th an attack by two battalions of the 35th Brigade succeeded in gaining control of Skyline Trench to the Division's front. The salient had expanded even more but further attempts to expand the hold on Skyline Trench were defeated on the 15th. For the next few weeks the Division saw little action other than occasional shelling and skirmishes that caused an additional 8 deaths.
On the 1st October the 12th Division relieved the 21st Division and went back into the line, under XV Corps control. Their position was about 2,000 yards north of Flers in Gird Trench. The Battle of the Transloy Ridge was about to begin and Private Cowey would have been impressed by an unusual example of firepower at 3.15 p.m. when the attack began following the predictable barrage. Royal Engineers had installed 36 giant flamethrowers, or oil projectors, which belched flame and smoke at the beginning of the attack.
Therefore, by the 7th of October 1916, the 6th Buffs were no strangers to battle and the battalion was probably at half strength. Up to this point the battalion had lost 138 men killed and many wounded since July 3rd. Private Cowey and the 6th Buffs were about to receive their first major test of the Somme offensive, an attempt to capture Rainbow and Bayonet Trenches directly ahead of them. The Germans obviously sensed an impending attack and laid down a barrage of machine gun fire just before zero hour that was to seriously disrupt British plans.
The battalion war diary had this comment on the action,
"Quiet morning. At 1.30 p m the enemy opened heavy machine gun fire and shrapnel barrage on the front line. At 1.45 p m the attack commenced. Very heavy M.G. fire was opened, which held up "C" Company on the right. "A" and "B" companies reached the 1st objective (Rainbow Trench) with fairly heavy casualties but on advancing from 1st to 2nd objectives were completely held up with M.G. fire. Twenty men of "C" Company succeeded in getting into the German trench, with troops from the 61st Brigade, and advanced with them. The 1st objective was held until 12 midnight when the Battalion was relieved by the 6th Queen's."
The attack was yet another Somme disaster. If the battalion were roughly at half strength at the start of the attack, which is a reasonable assumption, it would have numbered in the region of 500 men. Total casualties for the day amounted to 367 of whom 121 were killed. Amongst the dead was Private Thomas Bertram Cowey. His body was either not recovered or not identified and, with over 70,000 other British men, his name is inscribed on the Thiepval Memorial.
Author's notes
The
above is one extract from the authors developing book on the fates of
the men on the Tibshelf War Memorial, tentatively titled 'Faithful Unto
Death'.
© A.D. Hesketh 2001.