PRIVATE ALEXANDER TOD
SOUTH AFRICAN INFANTRY
15TH JULY 1916 AGE 36
BURIED: LONDON CEMETERY AND EXTENSION, LONGUEVILLE, FRANCE
Private Alexander Tod served with the 3rd South African Regiment, which attacked with the South African Brigade at Delville Wood on 15 July 1916 - "a corner of death. When the Brigade withdrew on the 20th two thirds had become casualties. It had been a titanic struggle, which the History of South Africa in the Great War attempts to explain:
The six days and five nights during which the South African Brigade held the most difficult post on the British front - a corner of death on which the enemy fire was concentrated at all hours from three sides, and into which fresh German troops, vastly superior in numbers to the defence, made periodic incursions only to be broken and driven back - constitutes an epoch of terror and glory scarcely equalled in the campaign.
Alexander Tod went into battle on the 15th and didn't answer at roll call on the 20th. His date of death in the War Graves Commissions' records is therefore given as "Between 15/07/1916 and 20/07/1916". For eighteen years his fate was "missing, believed killed in action". Until 1934 when three bodies in a single grave were discovered at map reference 57c.5.18.b.65.20. Tod still had his identity disc, the other two men had to be reburied as unidentified British soldiers - USBs.
By 1934 both Tod's parents were dead and it was his sister who chose his inscription. She makes no bones about where her brother's loyalties had lain - "He fought for Scotland and for South Africa".