LANCE CORPORAL HENRY WILLIAM COX
DORSETSHIRE REGIMENT
8TH JUNE 1918 AGE 29
BURIED: HAWTHORN RIDGE CEMETERY NO. 1 AUCHONVILLERS, SOMME, FRANCE
Lance Corporal Cox was the father of two little girls who were aged 4 and 3 at the time of his death. Their mother, Mrs Eliza Cox, chose the inscription, speaking for her daughters rather than for herself. A boot and shoe finisher at the time of the 1911 census, Henry Cox married Eliza, a boot machinist, in 1911.
Cox was killed in a joint attack by the Dorsetshire and East Yorkshire regiments on the German trenches near Beaumont Hamel. The Dorsetshire Regiment's history gives a rather exuberantly savage account of the fighting. The attack took place at 10.05 pm:
"Blood was up. C.S.M. England took charge of a Lewis gun when the team was knocked out, killed many as they came out of dug-outs, and then, though unarmed, closed with a German and slew him hand to hand with his fists. C.S.M. Beck killed six Germans and took eleven prisoners from two dug-outs: Sergt. Chidgey killed two and took four prisoners; Sergt. Drake captured a machine-gun and team; Sergt. Hall killed three and took four prisoners ... It was fierce and murderous work of not an hour's duration; one of three definite occasions when blood was hot for killing, and the Dorsets showed their fangs in real anger and slew their enemies face to face. "
Meanwhile, Lance Corporal Cox was killed, one of eleven members of the regiment to be killed that day.