Pte. John Bunce, 15th London Regiment.

Memorial Plaque.
John Henry Bunce.

John Henry Bunce was born at Forest Gate, Essex, on 24th August 1894, the second son of Samuel Bunce, a commercial clerk, and his wife Alice Amilia. The family are recorded on the 1901 Census as living at 24 Tonsley Hill, Wandsworth. John was educated at Swaffield Road and Wandsworth Technical Institute. The family later moved to 21 Dyson Road, Leytonstone. Following the outbreak of war, John joined the 15th (County of London) Battalion, the London Regiment (Prince of Wales' Own Civil Service Rifles) in August 1914. After basic training, he went to France with the Battalion on 17th March 1915. (John's two brothers both served in the army in the Great War. His older brother, Leonard, enlisted in the West Kent Yeomanry in June 1915, served in Egypt and Palestine, and later transferred to the East Kent Regiment and was wounded in France. Wilfred, his younger brother, who was a bank clerk, joined the Honourable Artillery Company in 1917, serving two months on the Western Front until being wounded and taken prisoner in May 1917.)

Serving in 'B' Company of the 1/15th Londons, John Bunce had his first experience of life in the trenches in early April 1915. In May, the Battalion played a supporting role in the Battle of Festubert, being occupied with holding the line, burying the dead, supplying carrying parties and patrolling. The conditions of trench warfare had brought many new types of weapon into general use. One such was the hand grenade, which was particularly useful in close quarters fighting or for clearing the enemy from dug-outs. John Bunce was one of a number of selected men who were sent to the Divisional Bomb School of Instruction at Noeux-les-Mines to learn something of the rather crude bombing techniques in use in 1915. According to the 47th Division History, there were about a dozen different bombs and rifle grenades being tested and new ones coming out almost every week. All were unpredictable and liable to explode prematurely and accidents were a common occurrence. Sadly, John was wounded in one of these accidents and died on 24th July 1915. Two other men from the Civil Service Rifles, 255 Sjt. E. K. Evans and 1785 Pte. C. H. Taylor, were also fatally wounded in the same incident. Soon after, it was discovered that the cause of many of these accidents was due to the way in which the fuses had been inserted into the bombs and measures were taken to correct this.

There are no surviving Service Papers for John Bunce but there is an obituary in De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour, which quotes from letters of condolence sent to his family. His Captain wrote: "Your son was a universal favourite - cheerful, willing, and a hard worker, and a very promising soldier." In the words of his platoon sergeant: "In the army the best that can be said of any man is that 'he is a good soldier.' I can say that your son had fully qualified for this high standard. He was well disciplined, obedient, and always ready to do anything he was called on to undertake; the mere fact that he was selected for instruction in bomb throwing shows that his superiors had a thorough confidence in his abilities." John Henry Bunce was laid to rest in Noeux-les-Mines Communal Cemetery. On either side of his grave are the graves of Evans and Taylor, who were killed in the same fatal accident.