OVILLERS MILITARY CEMETERY

Ovillers

Somme

France

General Directions: Ovillers is a village about 5 kilometres north-east of the town of Albert off the D929 road to Bapaume. The Military Cemetery is approximately 500 metres west of the village on the D20 road to Aveluy. The Cemetery is signposted in the village. 

On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the 8th Division attacked Ovillers and the 34th Division La Boisselle. The villages were not captured, but ground was won between them and to the south of La Boisselle. On 4 July, the 19th (Western) Division cleared La Boisselle and on 7 July the 12th (Eastern) and 25th Divisions gained part of Ovillers, the village being cleared by the 48th (South Midland) Division on 17 July. The two villages were lost during the German advance in March 1918, but they were retaken on the following 24 August by the 38th (Welsh) Division. Ovillers Military Cemetery was begun before the capture of Ovillers, as a battle cemetery behind a dressing station. It was used until March 1917, by which time it contained 143 graves, about half the present Plot I. The cemetery was increased after the Armistice when Commonwealth and French graves where brought in, mainly from the battlefields of Pozieres, Ovillers, La Boisselle and Contalmaison.

Casualty Details: UK 3268, Canada 95, Australia 57, New Zealand 6, South Africa 13, France 120, Total Burials: 3559

17410 Private

Horace Angier

2nd Bn. Royal Berkshire Regiment

01/07/1916, aged 21.

Plot XVII. G. 6.

Horace Angier was born on the 23rd October 1894 at 12 Vansittart Street,
Deptford, south-east London. He was the third child of Frederick William
Angier and Keziah Jane Angier.'Holly', as he was known, had various jobs on
leaving school and at one time worked a a kitchen porter.
His family, originally from London's East End, lived at 4 Walker Street,
Limehouse. They then moved via Bermondsey to 23 Wellfield road, Streatham,
where Holly attended Wellfield Infants School. He went on to attend
Sunnyville School and was a regular at the Band of Hope Sunday School.
Sometime after the turn of the century the Angier family moved once more, to
58 Corsehill Street, Streatham, and it remained an Angier household until
1998. It was from this home that Holly left for the Great War in 1914,
enlisting at the age of twenty at Lambeth into the 2nd Battalion Royal
Berkshires. On joining the battalion he was placed into A Company, where he
became the company runner, and it was while carrying out this duty he lost
his life.
On July 1st 1916 in Mash Valley, he was sent with a message to the Machine
Gun Team at the Glory Hole at La Boiselle. On reaching his destination a
shell exploded amongst them killing him and the entire machine gun team.
Almost a year later, the Red Cross found an eye-witness who gave a true
account of what happened to Private Angier and the Machine Gun Team. 19937
Private Hubert Hemmings, 2nd Royal Berkshires, gave a statement to the
British Red Cross from his bed in the Red Cross Hospital at Torquay:
                          On July 1st, at Albert, in the Glory Hole, Private
Angier was killed by  a shell which came over and killed all the machine gun
team. Private Angier had only been there a few minutes, having been a runner
with a message to the team. I was doing sentry duty and saw it all happen
and afterwards heard enquiries made for the runner. It was in the middle of
a  summer morning. The 2nd Royal Berks had a terrible time from the Germans
and when they were relieved that night, only 36left the trenches.

Private H. G. Angier is buried in the Ovillers Military Cemetery, Plot 17,Row
G, Grave 6.
 

Picture and text courtesy of Harry Angier

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