PRIVATE HERBERT CYRIL DAVIS
7TH OCTOBER 1916 AGE 25
BURIED: WARLENCOURT BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
It was not unusual for families to record biographical details of the dead man on his headstone: school, university, profession - chartered accountant, butcher, newsagent, poet. Herbert Davis was a printer, as his father had been before him, but his sister, Ada Moss, chose to record the fact that he had been an altar server at St Mary Magdalene, Woolwich.
Herbert Davis served with the 1/7th Battalion the London Regiment, a territorial battalion. He was killed in action on 7 October 1916 in yet another failed attack on the Butte de Warlencourt. This ancient burial mound may only have been 50 to 60 ft high but it gave the Germans an advantageous position from which to survey the surrounding flat lands. The Australians eventually captured the Butte in April 1917, the Germans took it back in March 1918 and it was recaptured by the British for the last time in August.