Corporal Thomas Rowe was killed in action on the 'First Day of the Somme' on 1.7.1916, while serving with the 2nd Battalion, Devonshire Regiment. Assigned to the attack on Ovillers Spur, the Battalion soon came under heavy fire while moving along "Mash Valley" towards Pozieres. At one stage onlookers from the British lines thought that its men had halted in No Man's Land to take stock of the situation. Inevitably, however, the cause for their apparent hesitancy was the fact that 431 of them had become casualties (See Westlake's British Battalions on the Somme).