Somme hero who foresaw his own death
His battle model showing trap ignored
Capt Martin with steed
A SOLDIER about to die at the Somme built a model pinpointing the machine-gun post that would kill him, a medal auction revealed.
Captain Duncan Martin, an artist before the First World War, made a Plasticine model showing where German forces would site a machine gun post, on a patch of high ground.
Commanding officers ignored his warnings of the bloodbath to come.
On the morning of July 1, 1916 – the first day of the Somme – Capt Martin was one of the first to fall.
The soldier of the 9th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment, was among 464 casualties mown down by Germans stationed at the post he had identified.
Capt Martin had been born in Algiers in 1886 but his parents Thomas and Anne Martin moved back to England at the turn of the century.
He went to school in Bristol and in 1908 moved to the artists’ haven of St
Ives in Cornwall. After studying at an art school there, he volunteered for the Devonshire Regiment, and was commissioned as an officer in 1914.
Capt Martin arrived on the Western Front in France in July 1915 and fought at the Battle of Loos in September before moving to the Somme front.
He used his artistic skills to model the combat terrain when he was allowed home to prepare for the battle. The first day of the Battle of the Somme was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, with our forces suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 fatalities, all to gain just three square miles of territory.
Capt Martin’s Star campaign medal, a map of the battlefield and the devastating telegram informing his family of his death sold for £2,800.
Chris Elmy, specialist at auctioneers Lockdales of Suffolk, said: “This was a particularly poignant archive.” 1915 Star campaign medal