Charles Cox

During the First World War Private Charles Horace Cox regiment (the Coldstream Guards 3rd Battalion) gained 36 Battle Honours and 7 Victoria Crosses, losing 3,860 men during the course of the war.

In 1914 the battalion were stationed at Chelsea Barracks, London. In August 1914 the battalion was mobilised for war and landed in Havre as part of the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) and engaged in various actions on the Western Front.

They participated in a number of battles including battles of The Somme such as the battle of Flers-Courcelette, the battle of Morval and the Capture Of Lesbouefs. On the 15th July 1916 they took part in the Battle of Delville Wood, part of the Battle of Bazentin Ridge in which Charles Horace Cox may have been injured. The initial attack by the British was successful, although costly, and included coordinated 'British Air Operation' bombing supply trains and firing Lewis machine guns on German ground troops, leading to a successful British cavalry charge routing German troops. Unfortunately there was not adequate support to take advantage of initial gains - Historians suggest it may have been possible for the infantry to penetrate High Wood and dig in on the ridge, to threaten Delville Wood and Pozières on the first day, rather than the two months it eventually took.

'the admixture of units has been so great... that there are no longer any defined divisional sectors.... The line is now held by a confused mass... whose units appear to have been thrown into [the] front line as stop gaps.'

— GHQ Intelligence Beach, J. (2004). British Intelligence and the German Army 1914–1918