KEIGHLEY man John Edgar Clayton was one of hundreds involved in fighting that lasted more than 22 hours on August 4, 1916.
By the end of that night, day and night Private Clayton was one of many British soldiers who lay dead in a corner of the bloody Somme battlefield.
John’s army records reveal no details of how the peacetime mill worker’s death.
The archives simply record how John enlisted in 1914 and was sent to France in July 1915, ending up in billets first at Esquerdes then Vlammertinghe.
There is nothing else on John until August the following year, when the records simply state “killed in action during the Battle of the Somme, no known resting place”.
The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment war diary has lots of detail of the day’s fighting in trenches with homely names like Piccadilly and Duke Street.
Of course only officers warrant their names being mentioned, most notably Captain Benton who lay wounded in a shell hole and needed rescuing.
As for Private Clayton? Amidst shell barrages, sniper fire and machine-gun volleys, his exact fate is unknown.
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