Arthur Harding – Devonshire Regiment, 2nd Battalion

Private Arthur Harding – Devonshire Regiment, 2nd Battalion

Arthur Harding was born in 1896 in Barnstaple, the son of Mr. and Mrs. W. Harding. Very little survives in the historical record regarding his early life, but what is known places him among the many young West Country men whose lives were shaped — and ultimately claimed — by the First World War.

Arthur enlisted and served as a Private with the Devonshire Regiment, 2nd Battalion, a Regular Army battalion with a long pre‑war history. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the battalion was stationed in Cairo, but was immediately recalled to Britain and assigned to 23rd Brigade, 8th Division. Landing in France in November 1914, the 2nd Devons entered the Western Front during the early trench‑warfare period and served continuously in demanding sectors such as Armentières, Neuve Chapelle, and Fromelles.

Arthur Harding
Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France
credit - findagrave

By the summer of 1916, the battalion was preparing for its role in the forthcoming offensive on the Somme. On 1 July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, the 2nd Devons took part in the assault on Ovillers Spur, advancing across the exposed ground of Mash Valley. Their objective was to break through the German defences north of Ovillers‑la‑Boisselle, one of the strongest positions on the entire British front.

At 7.30 a.m., when the British artillery barrage lifted, the battalion advanced in waves — and was immediately met by devastating machine‑gun fire from the German positions. Entire companies were cut down within minutes. Only a handful of men reached the enemy trenches, and those who did were quickly overwhelmed. The battalion suffered catastrophic losses, with hundreds of officers and men killed, wounded, or missing. Many of those who fell that morning — including Private Arthur Harding — have no known grave.

Arthur’s name is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France, the great monument to the missing of the Somme, where more than 72,000 men with no known resting place are honoured. Though the surviving details of his life are few, his sacrifice is preserved in the enduring record of the battalion’s service and in the solemn stone of Thiepval, where his name stands among those who gave everything on that first terrible day of the Somme.