How Lance
Corporal Fred Aspinall, Of The 15th Hussars, Won The D.C.M.
During The Retreat From Mons
On
the morning of August 27th 1914-the day following Smith-Dorrien’s
gallant rearguard action at Le Cateau, which broke the vigour of the
German pursuit and foiled Von Kluck’s attempt to envelop and cut off our
Second Army Corps-Lance-Corporal Fred Aspinall, of the 15th
Hussars, was sent, with one of his comrades, to a platoon on the 2nd
Royal Munster Fusiliers, posted on extreme right rear of the second Corps.
Their orders were to reconnoitre and, if required, to act as
dispatch riders. Having
reported themselves to the officer in charge of the platoon, the two
hussars proceeded to look for suitable cover for their horses, which they
left behind a farmhouse, and then joined the infantry to await events.
They had not long to wait, for about half an hour late the enemy
showed themselves from behind a wood which flanked a road running at right
angles to that along which the Munsters were posted, though they were some
considerable distance away. On
catching sight of them, the officer asked Aspinall to get his horse and
endeavours to ascertain the strength of the enemy.
The hussar hurried off to the farm, and, mounting, made a long
detour to the right, and then cautiously approached the Germans, until he
reached a spot whence he was able to obtain an excellent view of them.
He then saw that they were in great force, though the wooded nature
of the enemy prevented him from even a rough estimate of their numbers,
and he also perceived, by the direction in which they were marching, that
they must soon outflank the Munsters.
Turning his horse’s head, he galloped away to warn the Irishmen,
who, as he came up, opened a brisk fire on the enemy.
On hearing his report the officer dispatched the other hussar to
summon reinforcements; but they did not arrive, the rest of the battalion
being, in point of fact, already engaged in a desperate struggle with an
overwhelming force of the enemy, who had contrived to cut off their
retreat. Orders were
accordingly given for the platoon to retire, and not a moment too soon,
for the Germans, moving obliquely across their front, had succeeded in
outflanking them, and had begun to enfilade them from the right.
Aspinall, however, who had found excellent cover behind a heap of
stone by the roadside, courageously volunteered to cover the retreat,
pointing out that by firing rapidly he might succeed in bluffing the enemy
into the belief that they had a number of hidden marksmen to face instead
of only one, and thus hold them in check long enough to enable our men to
take up a new position.
His offer was accepted, and while the infantry effected their
retirement in good order, the brave hussar remained behind the stone heap,
facing down the road, with his rifle ready.
By this time many of the enemy had begun to break through the hedge
on his left and to cross the road, with the intention of making their way
through the opposite hedge, at a point not more than two hundred yards
from where Aspinall lay hidden. The
latter waited until the road was full of them, and then fired into the
brown-or rather into the grey. So
rapidly did he shoot, and so easy was the target which the Huns, crowding
towards the gaps in the further hedge which the foremost had made,
presented to a skilled marksman at that distance, that inside a couple of
minutes more than a score lay dead and dying in the road; and; in full
belief that they were being enfiladed by a regular posse of sharpshooters,
the whole line came to a halt, and a apart of them took up a position
below a dip in the road, where they lay down and opened fire.
The stone heap suffered severely, but the
hussar behind it was untouched. However,
thinking about it was time to be moving, he crawled along the ground for
some ten or twenty yards-still keeping the friendly stone heap between him
and the enemy-and then jumped up and made a sash for the farm where he had
left his horse. He reached it
in safety and found, to his surprise, another horse tethered beside his
own, whom’s owner-a man from his own troop named Soper-made his
appearance a few moments later. There
was no time to inquire he had come from, as bullets were already striking
the post of the gate, which was the only way by which they could leave the
farm. So Aspinall sprang into
the saddle, calling out: “We shall have to make a dash for it.
One-two-three!” And away they went at full pelt, zigzagging from one side o
the road to the other to make as difficult a target for the enemy as
possible. They had gone
some distance without either they or their horses being hit, and Aspinall,
thinking that they were now safe, had taken off his cap to give a cheer,
when a bullet struck him in the hip, coming out just below the groin and
passing through his field dressing. He
managed to keep his seat, but pulled his horse into a walk, put his rifle
in the bucket attached to the saddle and hung his ammunition on the rifle
butt. Then he got off-or
rather fell off-as the pain caused by proceeding even at a walking pace
was unendurable, and tried to drive his horse in the direction in which
the Munsters had gone. But
the animal refused to leave his master, until a man belonging to the
R.A.M.C. came by and led him away. Shortly
afterwards, an officer of the same corps came up, examined the hussar’s
wound took his name, and promised to send an ambulance for him.
However, before the ambulance arrived, a body of Germans appeared
upon the scene, and Aspinall found himself a prisoner.
Drawing his revolver, an officer approached the wounded man, and
demanded in which direction the Munsters had retired, threatening to shoot
him out of hand if he refused to tell him.
But Aspinall, without changing countenance, calmly inquired what
answer the German would make if he were in his place.
Upon which the officer, seeing that there was nothing to be got out
of his prisoner and admiring his courage, laughed good humouredly, and
without pressing the question, put back his revolver and went away.
Lance-Corporal Aspinall who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct
Medal for his gallant conduct, appears to have been well treated by his
captors, and was afterwards sent as a prisoner to Hanover.
He is thirty-three years of age and a Yorkshire man, his home being
at Doncaster. Extracted
from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire
How
Sergeant Edward John Clarke, Of The 15th Hussars, Won The D.C.M.
At The Chateau Herentage
It
was on Wednesday, November 11th 1914, that the German legions
made their supreme effort to break through the British line to Ypres.
As Napoleon had used his Guards for the final attack at Waterloo,
so the Kaiser used his for the culminating stroke in the longest,
bloodiest, and most desperate combat which the world has ever seen.
The 1st and the 4th Brigades of the Prussian
Guards-thirteen battalions in all-were brought up from the Arras district
and launched against Gheluvelt. Stubbornly did the 1st Division, upon which the
brunt of the attack fell, oppose them; nevertheless, they succeeded in
piercing our front at three points and in taking our first line of
trenches. But here their
success ended, for when they tried to advance further, they were met by so
withering a frontal and enfilading fire that they were obliged to abandon
the attempt and to fall back sullenly to the trenches they had won, from
most of which they were subsequently driven by a determined British
counter attack.
One of the most stirring moments episodes of
that eventful day was the gallant defence of the Chateau Herentage,
situated between three and four miles east of Ypres, near the Menin road,
and about 150 yards behind our first line trenches, by Sergeant Clarke and
a handful of men of the 15th Hussars, in conjunction with
thirty Turcos and their sergeant. On
the previous evening Sergeant Clarke had received orders to take his
troops up to the first line trenches, as escort to two machine guns
belonging to the 15th Hussars, which were going into action.
On reaching the Chateau Herentage, he was told by the officer in
charge of the machine guns to leave his troop there and accompany him to
the trenches; but after seeing the guns, which were attached to the West
Ridings, placed ready for action, he returned to the chateau, with orders
to defend it at all costs. At
the chateau Sergeant Clarke found thirty Turcos under a sergeant, and some
more of these fierce warriors were stationed in dugouts to the left of the
house. Behind the chateau
were some shallow trenches, unoccupied, and between them and the Menin
Road the Brigade Headquarters. There
were no troops between the first line trenches and the Brigade
Headquarters but the little garrison of the chateau and the Turcos in the
dugouts.
Between five and six o’clock on the morning of the 11th
the Germans began a fierce bombardment of our first line trenches, and
soon the shells were dropping close to the chateau.
About nine o’clock its occupants saw the Turcos leaving their
dugouts and retiring, and at the same time the British first line falling
back. Shortly afterwards, a
strong force of Germans appeared in column on the edge of a wood about one
hundred yards in front of the chateau, where they halted, and looked a
though they intended to deploy and rush the house. Clarke, who had stationed his men-twelve in number-at the
loopholes on two floors of the chateau, at once ordered them to fire,
which they did with considerable effect.
The enemy, evidently under the impression that the chateau was far
more strongly defended than was actually the case, and unwilling to waste
time in taking it by assault, thereupon began to advance across the front
of the house, and obliquely, towards the Menin Road, passing-so great was
their haste to reach their objective-within fifty yards of our men and
being mercilessly enfiladed in the process.
They had almost reached the Menin Road when the British supports
came up, and drove them back in disorder through the grounds of the
chateau, where they again suffered severely from the enfilading fire of
the garrison, over one hundred of their dead being counted afterwards.
Before our broken first line was restored Clarke and his men had
been cut off for two and a half hours, and, with the assistance of the
remaining three troops of his squadron, they subsequently held the chateau
for three days against very heavy shelling and machine gun fire.
Sergeant Clarke, who received the Distinguished Conduct Medal
“for very conspicuous ability and gallantry,” is twenty-five years of
age and a Londoner, his home being at Wood Green. Extracted
from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire
How
Private Frederick Neville, Of The 15th Hussars Won The D.C.M.
At Zandvoorde
Few military exploits are more calculated to impress the
imagination than the accomplishment of some daring feat of despatch riding
through the midst of an enemy’s country or over ground swept by
artillery or rifle fire; and perhaps never in the present war has work of
this kind performed with more conspicuous gallantry than that done by
Private Frederick eville, of the 15th (“The King’s”)
Hussars, in his perilous rides on three successive days at the end of
October 1914. The 15th
Hussars at this time were acting as Divisional Cavalry for the First
Division and were engaged in patrol work in the neighbourhood of Ypres.
On October 28th, Private Neville formed one of a patrol
consisting of a corporal and four men, which, on reaching a farm at
Zandvoorde, ascertained that the enemy was preparing an attack on our
infantry. After information
to that effect had been sent to Headquarters, the patrol found itself
obliged to retire a tremendous artillery and rifle fire from the advancing
Germans, who were composed chiefly of battalions of the Prussian Guard.
Private Neille was sent with a message to Headquarters, where he
was requested by the late General Lomax to return to Zandvoorde with an
important despatch. On reaching Gheluvelt, he found that the road between that
and Zandvoorde was being so heavily shelled by the enemy that it seemed
that no living thing could win through in safety.
But, without a moment’s hesitation, the gallant Hussar touched
his horse with the spur and rode at full gallop into the inferno.
Before, however he had proceeded very far, there came a deafening
crash, and he found himself lying in the ditch with his horse on top of
him. Fortunately, neither man
nor horse was hurt, and, crawling out of the ditch and dragging his
trembling charger after him, he remounted his perilous ride and reached
his destination, which was within two hundred yards of the enemy’s
lines, in safety. On the
following day (October 29th), the services of this daring light
cavalryman were again requisitioned, this time to convey a message of a
windmill to which the British staff had retired during the night.
Learning that it was impossible to proceed by the Gheluvelt Road,
he was obliged to make his way thither across some open country upon which
the German shells were falling with alarming frequency.
He was still some five hundred yards from the windmill when a
“Jack Johnson” exploded in front of him, the concussion of the
bursting shell blowing rider and horse completely over though neither was
hit. Regaining his feet, he
led his horse to a farm two hundred yards from the windmill and, leaving
him there, accomplished the rest of the journey by crawling along the
ground.
After delivering the message with which he
had been entrusted, Private Neville returned to Headquarters.
On the way he noticed that whenever any attempt was made by the
British to send reinforcements to the firing line the, intervening ground
was immediately covered by a curtain of shrapnel and high explosive, and
came to the conclusion that the neighbouring church was being used by the
Germans as an observation post. His
opinion was speedily confirmed; for no sooner had the fire of our
artillery than demolished the church it was found that reinforcements
could be brought up in perfect safety.
On October 30th Private Neville again rendered valuable
service. While conveying a
despatch to our infantry brigade, he came upon a wounded motorcyclist
lying by the side of the road. The
latter had been charged with a verbal message of the highest importance,
which he repeated to the Hussar, who delivered it safely at its
destination, and by so doing contributed to relieve a very critical
situation. On this day, as on
the two preceding ones, Private Neville was continually exposed to the
greatest danger, but once more the good fortune to escape unhurt. When
not soldiering, Private Neville, who at the time of these gallant exploits
was in his thirty-second year, lives in London.
Extracted
from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire
