L/Cpl Harry Bromwich

Of those who served in the First World War from the village of Crick, Northamptonshire, eleven fell and one hundred and four returned, with four dying within six years of the end of the war. Those figures are small enough to be spoken in a single sentence, yet large enough to alter the life of a village. 

One of the names of the fallen is Harry Bromwich (born Enos Jonathan Harry Collier Bromwich), commemorated on Crick's Roll of Honour. He served as a Lance Corporal in the 1st Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment. He was killed on 18 July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, in the fighting around Bazentin-le-Petit and High Wood. He was twenty years old. The battalion’s Somme roll places the 1st Northamptonshire in the line on 18 July 1916, shortly before later attacks towards the Switch Line and during the same hard phase of fighting that followed the capture of Contalmaison and the struggle for High Wood.

When Harry was born in 1896, the family were living in Crick. Harry had a younger brother, John, who also served. John died on 5th November 1918, just before the armistice. He was eighteen. Harry enlisted in the Northamptonshire Regiment as a regular soldier when he was fourteen years old. He saw service in Malta and Egypt between 1911 and 1914. The Regiment went to France on 18th November 1914. He was wounded and returned to England. When he was discharged from Lewisham Military Hospital, he returned to France in 1916.[1]

What follows is not a claim to know Harry Bromwich’s exact final movements, because battalion war diaries rarely preserve that degree of personal detail. They record units, positions, shelling, patrols, carrying parties, and casualties; they do not usually tell us what one lance corporal saw in his last hour. But as with Harry Mayne in the previous chapter, they do allow a likely reconstruction of the conditions in which he died, and in a book such as this, that matters. It helps return one name on a village memorial to the ground on which he served, and to the kind of day the Somme was still demanding of men in mid-July 1916. 

By 18 July 1916, the great attack of 1 July had passed, but the battalion remained in one of the most dangerous parts of the front, and the Battle of the Somme continued. The 1st Northamptonshires were holding recently won ground east of Bazentin-le-Petit, with High Wood still a source of threat and German resistance. This was a period of consolidation rather than dramatic advance. Men were sent out to strengthen shallow positions, deepen or connect trenches, carry ammunition, and maintain communication routes across ground that was still exposed to shellfire and machine-gun fire. Patrols probed towards High Wood and reported strong resistance. Casualties on such days could be described as light or moderate in battalion terms, yet for the men who fell, there was nothing light about them. A single burst of shellfire, a sniper’s round, or machine-gun fire sweeping a working party was enough to decide a life.

It is likely that Harry Bromwich did not die in some grand, clearly bounded assault, but in the grim continuation of battle after the headlines of attack had passed. He may have been in the forward line, or moving between lines with a carrying party, or helping to consolidate a position under observation from High Wood. As a lance corporal, he would have carried not only his own fear and fatigue, but also some responsibility for the men around him. Mid-July on the Somme was full of such moments: exposed labour under shellfire, messages passed along broken ground, brief movements through trenches not yet worthy of the name, and the constant knowledge that the enemy could still see enough to kill. That is the truest setting in which to place him-not in romance, but in duty under fire.

Harry has a marked grave at Contalmaison Chateau Cemetery, France, one of 244 identified casualties there. His headstone bears the words: 

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

The officer in charge of infantry records at Warley listed Harry's personal effects as 5 letters, a metal cigarette case, a broken watch, a chain and seal, a notebook, a purse with a small sum of money, a key chain, a metal box, 2 metal rings, photographs and a pipe.[2]

Mayne, P. (2026) The Western Front 1914–1918: A Personal Journey. 4RLife. Available on: Amazon (Proceeds from the sale of the book will be made to the Memorial fund.)

_____________________________________

[1] Crick's Roll of Honour publication – Crick History Society

[2] Crick's Roll of Honour publication – Crick History Society