The Epitome Of The Fighting Suffolk Soldier

On the night of the 2/3rd October 1915 in the ill-fated attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt by the 1st Battalion, Corporal Nathaniel Bott   would reach the enemy parapet with some of the men from his section.
​Bott's officer and Sergeant had been wounded in the initial advance, forcing Bott to assume command of the section. Urging his men forward he succeeded in getting his men to the old enemy front line.
Whilst here, he organised the defence to revert the trenches into a stronghold. During this action he was wounded in nine separate places, and was extremely weak from loss of blood. Despite this, he insisted on being propped up on the German parapet to allow him to continue to give commands to his men.
As the attack faltered and the Battalion fell back, Bott was conveyed from the battlefield on the back of another man. When he recovered from his wounds in hospital, he was informed that he had been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for his actions that day.
​Bott would later be promoted to Sergeant and would be awarded the Military Medal in 1917 and granted a commission. Promoted Lieutenant in 1919, he would be gazetted with the MC following the armistice. He would remain as a Lieutenant for the the rest of his Army career before leaving the 1st Battalion in 1928. ​It was said upon his retirement from the Regiment, that if ever a single act of gallantry epitomized the fighting Suffolk soldier during the Great War, it was Bott's award of the DCM.

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