Green Street Trench

Here's detail from a rough sketch map of the area around Guillemont, where the Hammers Battalion suffered again, just a few days after their defence of Delville Wood in Summer 1916.

Most of the experienced senior NCO's were already gone... Many of the original Officer's had been wounded in Delville Wood, more than a hundred 'originals' were in hospitol or a known or unknown grave.

Now, at very short notice, the West Ham Battalion were required to take the village of Guillemont. It didn't go well...



The map was hastily drawn by Captain James Murray Round. He had been born in Witham, Essex and would win the Military Cross for his actions on this day (and previously at Delville Wood)



Ten years after the Great War ended, Lieut-Col Papillon DSO, the West Ham Battalion's first commanding officer, renamed one of the farms on his vast Sussex estate to 'Green Street Farm'...