2017 Battlefield Tour Page 14

Laying a poppy cross at Bell's Redoubt near Contalmaison on the Somme. This is the actual spot where Lt. Donald Simpson Bell VC was killed on 10 July 1916, aged 25, during the Battle of the Somme. His unit the 9th Bn Green Howards had just captured Contalmaison and when the Germans launched a counter attack he was killed attacking a party of Germans who had infiltrated their positions.

Five days earlier on the 5 July he won his Victoria Cross a mile away at Horseshoe Trench. His Company came under enfilade fire from a machine gun causing heavy casualties. Along with two of his men he crept up a communication trench, then raced across open ground to the enemy trench. He shot the machine gunner in the head with his pistol, then with his men cleared the trench of enemy with Mills bombs.

Before the war he had been a professional footballer for Bradford Park Avenue and was the first professional footballer to enlist in 1914. In 2010 his Victoria Cross was bought for £252,000 by the Professional Footballers Association and is on display at the National Football Museum in Manchester...Lt. Bell VC is buried at Gordon Dump Cemetery near Albert....RIP