Private Mark Richardson

Private Mark Cockburn Richardson, 21st Battalion (2nd Tyneside Scottish ), Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in France on 14th September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and is buried in Ration Farm Military Cemetery, La Chapelle-D’ Armentieres, Aisne, France. He had enlisted in Berwick. The photograph shows a typical Somme landscape with its chalky soil. The recently captured trench seems to have been well pulverised by artillery. After the autumn rains the ground which suffered from the incessant shelling turned into a glutinous quagmire in which men, guns and machines could barely move.