Corporal John Buglass

Corporal John Buglass, 20th Battalion ( 1st Tyneside Scottish ),Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in action in France on 1st July 1916 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Thiepval, Somme, France. He had been born in Berwick and was the son of the late George Buglass who had been the Berwick fisheries officer and had taken over his fathers duties. He fell in the Battalion attack on La Boiselle where the Objective was the first four lines of German trenches. Some small gains were made but casualties caused by the machine guns were very high. All four Tyneside Scottish battalions took part and suffered a total of 2,438 casualties of which 964 were fatal. His Battalion suffered 197 killed 57 missing and 310 wounded. This was part of the British Army’s blackest day when total casualties were nearly 60,000 with over 19,000 killed. The first photograph shows a shell bursting on the German trenches just before the attack. The second photograph shows the Tyneside men advancing to the attack at about 7.30 a.m. The colour image shows a peaceful Somme landscape today with ” no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now”.

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