Lance Corporal Charles Reid

Lance Corporal Charles Reid, 2nd Battalion, Kings Own Scottish Borderers. He was killed in action in France, aged 21, on 25th September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Thiepval, Somme, France. Before enlisting in August 1914 he had been employed as a a farm worker at Sunlaws farm, Roxburghshire. He had originally enlisted in the 8th K.O.S.B. then the 7th/8th K.O.S.B. and finally the 2nd Battalion. He fell in the successful attack towards the village of Morval where nearly 700 prisoners and 15 machine guns were captured at the cost of 170 casualties of which 42 were fatal. The photograph shows a captured trench on the Somme with the chalk soil of the Region very evident. The autumnal rains however turned the ground into a glutinous quagmire making all movement very difficult as can be seen from the photographs. The colour image shows a peaceful Somme landscape today with ” no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now”.

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