PRIVATE SYDNEY CHARLES WHITE
Died 3rd July 1916
No. 23335 of the Bedfordshire Regiment, 7th Battalion, ‘A’ Company.
Born: Wavendon
Resided: Station Grove, Woburn Sands
Enlisted: 16th – 22nd November, 1915 at Ampthill
Sydney volunteered in August 1914, and was sent to France the following year, the battalion being in France from July 1915. He was fighting at the Somme, which had started on 1st July, but was severely wounded during the battalions assault against the Pommiers Redoubt 1st July 1916 and their subsequent stubborn defence against a string of counter attacks. The Battalion were one of the few battalions to not only break into the German trenches on the infamous opening day of the battle of the Somme, but broke three lines and the ‘impregnable’ ‘Pommiers Redoubt’.
Sydney died two days later. Listed on the La Neuville British Cemetery, Corbie, Somme, France. Listed on the Woburn Sands Memorial. His army service papers have not survived.
His widow lived at The Shrubbery in Woburn Sands after the war.
Some details kindly provided by Steve Fuller, “The Bedfordshire Regiment in the Great War”, at www.bedfordregiment.org.uk
Page last updated Jan. 2019.