My paternal grandmother, Florence, would often speak with sadness about her 'young' brother Teddy killed somewhere at some time during the Somme offensive of July to November 1916.
Robert was intrigued by this story and, being a scholar of the Great War himself, keen to help identify when and where great uncle Teddy was killed. We obtained an age of 13 for Edward Mellor of Oldham in the 1901 Census. This will be he. With the help of Robert's books and the War Graves Commission website we found that an Edward Mellor aged 28 was with the Manchesters for the Somme offensive. He was killed on 29 August, but there is no known grave. The records show that on that day the Manchesters saw action near or in an enemy communication trench leading from their stronghold at Delville Wood, Longueval through what was then called 'Waterlot Farm'.
Below, Robert is working out on the map where he thinks the action might have taken place. It seems most likely that my great-uncle Teddy was killed in that field behind him.
And then we move off towards the formidable redoubt of Thiepval Wood. I am presently reading Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War. He was there and on the day of our visit it looms out of the Somme mist much as Blunden described. Now it is a memorial to British & Commonwealth dead of the Somme offensive who have no known grave. And there we shall seek for my relative's inscription.
The wood has been replanted, there is a fine visitor centre with excellent and ample toilets and parking, but most of all there is Lutyens' memorial.
On pier 14C we find Teddy's name with all the other Manchesters.
There is now no one alive in our family to ask for clarification or confirmation of these events - or even just to show them these images and findings. Our families were very, very lucky. Teddy was the only casualty during either world war.
There are some 73,000 names on the memorial.
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