Private John Gibson

Private John Henry Gibson, 1st/8th ( Service ) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in action in France on 25th September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France.  He was the son of Ellen Gibson and had been born in Gateshead. The photograph shows a recently captured trench on the Somme with the chalk soil of the Region very evident. The autumn rains soon turned the churned up battlefields into a glutinous quagmire making movement very difficult for men and guns as can be seen from the photographs. The colour image shows a peaceful Somme landscape today.