William Miller

The 4th Regiment was the South African Scottish, raised from the Transvaal Scottish and the Cape Town Highlanders, and wearing the Atholl Murray tartan. An infantry depot was established at Potchefstroom. The Brigade sailed from Alexandria between the 13th and 15th April 1916 and landed at Marseilles. By the 23rd April, the leading units had detrained and were arriving at Steenwerck in Flanders. The entire Brigade came under orders of the 9th (Scottish) Division, in which it replaced 28th Brigade. First major Brigade engagement during the Battle of the Somme : On the 2nd July 1916, they moved up from Grovetown to Billon Valley, relieving the 27th Brigade which had been ordered up to the battle. They moved up to relieve the 89th Brigade, 30th Division in Glatz (Glatz Redoubt / Chimney Trench) sector of front line near Montauban. They came under heavy shellfire. The 4th Battalion were involved in fighting for Trones Wood. The entire Brigade attacked at Longueval (Delville Wood) in the afternoon of the 14th July 1916. Fighting of the most severe kind in the wood, in which Private William Faulds of 1st Regiment won the Victoria Cross. Only some 750 of the 3153 officers and men that entered the wood mustered when the Brigade was finally relieved on the 20th July. The casualties included every officer of 2nd and 3rd Regiments and of the Machine Gun Company attached to the Brigade. The Battle of Bazentin (or the Bazentin Ridge), 14th - 17th July 1916 : By the 13th July the British advance had taken it to a point where it was now facing the second German defensive system. A well planned and novel night attack on the 14th July took British troops through that system in the area of Bazentin. There was a fleeting but lost opportunity to capture High Wood beyond it. The 9th (Scottish) Division captured Longueval on the 18th July. This was part of The Battles of the Somme, 1st July - 18th November 1916 : A Franco-British offensive that was undertaken after Allied strategic conferences in late 1915, but which changed its nature due to the German attack against the French in the epic Battle of Verdun, which lasted from late February to November. Huge British losses on the first day and a series of fiercely-contested steps that became attritional in nature. For all armies on the Western Front it was becoming what the Germans would call "materialschlacht" : a war not of morale, will or even manpower, but of sheer industrial material might. The 15th September 1916 saw the first-ever use of tanks in the step known as the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. The British army in France is now approaching its maximum strength in numbers but is still developing in terms of tactics, technology, command and control. Sailly-le-Sec is a village in the Department of the Somme, about 20 kilometres east of Amiens. The Cemetery is a little more than 1.5 kilometres north-east of Sailly Church. See photos for William's Army Register of Soldiers Effects x 2, his CWGC Grave Registration x 2, his Headstone Report x 2, Dive Copse British Cemetery, another photo of William's grave, his Pension Records x 3 and the South African Infantry Cap Badge. William's grave inscription reads "FOREVER WITH THE LORD".