14 / 32
14
Captain John Leslie Green VC of Buckden, 1st July 1916
By Tim Walker
The media coverage of the events to commemorate the
100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme brought
home to us as a nation the nature of the courage and
self-sacrifice displayed by a generation only just beyond
the memory of even the oldest of us still alive today. Our
ceremony in Buckden to commemorate the courage of
our own V.C., Captain John Green, and the men of
Buckden who gave their lives in that "war to end all wars"
made that connection with the past vivid and moving. It
was a truly significant occasion in Buckden’s history.
The courage required to climb out of the relative safety
of a trench into the maelstrom of machine gun fire and
exploding shells on that first day of the Battle of the
Somme on July 1st 1916, knowing that death or terrible injury were likely, is something few of us are able to com-
prehend one hundred years on. Perhaps that bravery was supported by a tot of rum or the indomitable camarade-
rie engendered by the regimental system of the British
Army, or perhaps the men had faith in their generals'
assertion that the defences of the waiting German army
were destroyed and the barbed wire in front of them cut
by the more than a million shells fired before the infan-
try assault that resulted in 60 000 British and Empire
casualties on that first day alone.
Captain John Leslie Green was attached as medical
officer to the 1/5th battalion Sherwood Foresters which
together with three other Sherwood Forester
"Kitchener" battalions formed the 46th North Midland
Division, which, in turn was part of the VII Corp of the
3rd Army situated on the far northern flank of the allied
assault on the Somme. This assault was designed to
punch a hole in the deadlock of two years static trench
warfare but the 46th's role was to mount a diversionary
attack on the heavily defended salient around Gommecourt. The preliminary bombardment was largely unsuc-
cessful as noted by a private in Green's regiment. " When we got to the German wire I was absolutely amazed to
see it intact after what we had been told."
It was in that unbreached tangle of wire and in front of continuous gunfire
and explosions that Captain Green of the Royal Army medical Corp, him-
self wounded, came across a wounded fellow officer whom he untangled
and took to a nearby shell hole where he tended the man's wounds, de-
spite constant grenade explosions around them, before dragging him
back towards the British Line during which, both men were again hit,
Green dying instantly. He is buried in the Foncquevilliers Commonwealth
War Graves Commission cemetery.
The army that attacked on July 1st was Kitchener's army, recruited from
men of all walks of life and often whole battalions would be formed by the
recruits from single communities, most famously from the mill towns of
Lancashire and Yorkshire. These "Pals" battalions suffered tremendous
levels of casualty which tore the heart out of so many communities after
the war.
Our own small community of Buckden also suffered, not on the same
scale, for the village's population was less than a thousand in 1916, yet
we can be proud of and saddened by the sacrifice made by the men
named on the village war memorial, and by those who returned. perhaps
scarred for life either physically, mentally or both.