Roy Mellor

Roy was born in January 1895 at Macclesfield, Cheshire. He was the son of a silk dyer, Richard Clowes Mellor and his wife Harriet Hannah. As a child he attended King’s School, Macclesfield and was head Boy. A noted sportsman he was over 6` tall. He arrived to study Chemistry at Manchester University in 1913 becoming a member of the Officer Training Corp.

Roy enlisted immediately war broke out joining the Public School’s Battalion, Royal Fusiliers before transferring with a commission to the 22nd (7th City Pals) Battalion, Manchester Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant when it was raised in November 1914. The Battalion crossed to France in November 1915 and joined the 7^th Division. Roy was now a Lieutenant and the battalion Adjutant. Following routine trench duty around Fricourt they began training for the Somme Offensive in February 1916. The 22nd Manchesters objective on the morning of the 1st July was to capture the village of Mametz. They stormed their first objectives Black Trench and Bucket Trench, but suffered huge losses at Danzig Alley Trench. Roy led his platoon over the top following a creeping barrage. He was shot in the leg early on in the attack, but continued to encourage his men and give them covering fire. Half an hour after going over the top he was hit by shrapnel and killed. The Battalion suffered 472 casualties that day out of 774 men.  A member of the battalion wrote: ” Lieutenant Mellor was in front of all…he must have been slightly hit the first time, because I was only about 150 yards behind him and he wasn’t there when I went past…he got a lot of shrapnel and was killed” and a wounded officer reported “…during the advance I saw Mellor lying on the ground wounded in the act of reloading his revolver. Asked if he needed assistance, he replied in the negative…half-an-hour later I returned and found him gone.”