ARTHUR WILLIAM BOWLES was serving as a Private in the 9th (Service) Battalion, The Devonshire Regiment when he was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, on 1st July 1916. He was aged 23 and is buried in the Devonshire Cemetery, Mametz on the Somme.

He was born to parents Albert and Elizabeth Bowles of Cornwell, having been born in Fairford. In 1911 he was living in Bratton Clovelly, Devon where he worked as a gamekeeper, and enlisted into the Devonshires in Okehampton. 

The 9th Battalion, the Devonshire Regiment was one of Kitchener's New Armies, formed in August 1914 in Exeter. It landed at Le Havre on 28th July 1915 and was pitched, almost immediately on 25th September, into the Battle of Loos, taking 476 casualties. After a spell near Givenchy both Battalions moved to the Somme area.  The Somme remained a relatively quiet sector until the offensive began on 1st July 1916.  On that morning the 9th led the attack towards Mansel Copse, where well-placed machine guns, whose crews had survived the preliminary bombardment, cut down hundreds of advancing men. 

Arthur Bowles, along with 160 officers and men from the 8th and 9th Devonshires were buried on 4th July in the trench from which they had launched the attack. Their units were among the few that achieved their objectives on that fateful day.

Steve Kingsford