James Barsham Burgess

James Burgess was born in Tasburgh in 1897. His parents William and Annie lived in one half of a thatched cottage on Marl Bottom or Marl Pit Lane, originally part of the village Poor House but now much altered and known as Mistletoe Cottage. Like his five siblings, he would have attended the old village school until he was 12 which he would have reached via a footpath which led up from the end of the lane to Church Road opposite Old Hall Farm. Like many boys in the village he started work on one of the local farms, perhaps the same on where his father worked but when WW1 started he quickly volunteered, joining one of the three battalions of the Norfolk Regiment recruited in September 1914.

He died on 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and the records state that he was part of the 9th Regiment but the 9th having been badly mauled at the Battle of Loos the previous year only joined the Battle of the Somme in September. It is also unlikely that he belonged to the 7th Norfolks as they were not committed until 3.28am on the morning of the 2nd July so the probability is that he had either joined or been transferred to the 8th Battalion which was part of the 18th Division of XIII Corps that achieved the greatest success on the opening day of the battle, capturing the entire German front line in their sector. Overall however on that first day the British suffered 57,000 casualties either killed or wounded representing over 40% of participants, the most costly single day in British military history.

At Thiepval, the principal British Memorial in France carries the following inscription: -

Here are recorded the names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields July 1915 – February 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.

Amongst 73,000 other names, on Pier 1C and face 1D is carved the name: James Barsham Burgess.