Lance Corporal Adam Blake

Lance Corporal Adam P. Blake, 2nd Battalion, Otago Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He was killed in action in France, aged 35, on 1st October 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and is buried in Warlencourt British Cemetery, Pas De Calais, France. He had been born in Heriot, Midlothian in 1881 and was the son of Adam and Jane Blake of Clints Farm near Fountainhall, Stow. He had emigrated to New Zealand and was employed as a storeman in Hastings, North Island when he enlisted in October 1915. He joined the newly formed 2nd Battalion in Egypt in March 1916 before going to France in April of that year. The photographs show typical Somme scenes after heavy artillery bombardments. The autumnal rains turned the chalky soil of the Region into a glutinous quagmire. The colour photo shows a peaceful Somme landscape today ” with no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now”.