Elizabeth: last man standing

My grandfather was a Lewis gunner in WW1. His battalion was on the Somme on the 24th of August 1916 at a place called Delville Wood (which the troops renamed Devil Wood).

Fighting began in the wood in July and by August the shelling had been so relentless that only one tree remained, rain had turned shell holes to pools of water and mud, many contained decaying corpses.

My grandfather continued to fire his Lewis gun until the trench he was in was over-run by German soldiers. His comrades had all been killed and he hid beneath their bodies for two days until the trench was recaptured by the British.

A German officer described the scene after the battle: 

“Delville Wood had disintegrated into a shattered wasteland of shattered trees, charred and burning stumps, craters thick with mud and blood, and corpses, corpses everywhere. In places they were piled four deep.”

The local newspaper in Salford Priors (Warwickshire), where my grandfather lived, reported that Private F.J. Salisbury of Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, was awarded the Military Medal “for gallant conduct and devotion to duty.” 

~ Elizabeth Isaacs