Herman LAYCOCK

785863, Gunner. b. 1893, Clayton d. Thu. 19th September 1918 (aged 25).

Herman was another Claytonian by birth, and had lived there all his life. Shortly before he enlisted, his parents (John and Elizabeth) had moved to Livingstone Street in Great Horton, but Herman had decided to remain in his native village and rented a house on Crestville Terrace. His occupation was as a gardener – in his official capacity he was under-gardener at Scholemoor cemetery and it was this job and house he left to join up into the Royal Field Artillery in the middle of 1915.

After training he was sent out to France in 1916, where he joined a gun team in the 293rd Army Brigade, Royal Artillery as the ammunition runner/loader. This meant his role was to fetch the shell and to place it in the barrel of the gun before the rest of the gun team took their positions.
Unfortunately, this was to be part of the cause of his death, as after doing this for over two years, a German shell landed close by to the pile of shells he was running towards. Herman was seriously wounded and never regained consciousness. He was buried in Duisans Cemetery close by.
At this point during the war, a mere two months from the end of hostilities, the Royal Artillery was working flat out in an attempt to break the seemingly unbreakable German line – this meant pounding it as hard as possible with as many shells and guns as it could muster. This offensive had begun seven days previously, and it would be another fortnight before British infantry finally secured the remains of what once was the Hindenburg line. Before this time Herman had never been wounded in action, although in May 1917 he came very close to dying because of a bad case of trench fever.

Herman is buried at Duisans British Cemetery, Etrun. His headstone is inscribed “Ever In Our Thoughts”