How Private Charles Gudgeon, Of The 1^st Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, Won the D.C.M. At Ypres

  Although the First battle of Ypres is generally regarded as having terminated with the failure of the attack of the Prussian Guard on Gheluvelt on November 11^th 1914, spasmodic attacks still continued, and on November 12^th, and the two following days, the position occupied by the 2^nd Brigade, of which the 1^st Northampton’s formed part, was so heavily bombarded that telephonic communication was almost entirely suspended.  As it was, of course imperative for Brigade Headquarters to keep in touch with the troops in the firing line, messages had to be sent by hand; and on the evening of the 14^th, Charles Gudgeon, who was acting Headquarters orderly for his battalion, was despatched with one of them.   Gudgeon’s nearest way to our first line trenches lay through a wood, on the edge of which stood the house, which served as Brigade Headquarters.  But the Germans were so persistently shelling this wood that he considered it more prudent to skirt it, though this would entail a journey of more than a mile.  For half this distance he would be in comparative safety, but after that he would come under the observation of the enemy, and the last two of three hundred yards would be very dangerous indeed, owing to the risks of shellfire and the activities of the enemy’s snipers.

            Gudgeon travelled at an ordinary pace until he reached a house which marked the beginning of the danger zone; then, crouching low, he made a dash for the cover afforded by some machine gun emplacements about three hundred yards away.  There he paused for a few moments before embarking his next dash, to a ruined house about one hundred and fifty yards distant.  This was a very hazardous undertaking, as it was hereabouts that the snipers had brought down many an unfortunate British soldier, while the ground was dotted with shell holes, among which he had to pick his way, thus rendering rapid progress difficult.  However, he got safely across, through more than one bullet hummed past his head and took refuge behind the ruined house to prepare for his last dash of one hundred yards to the firing line, the most dangerous part of the whole journey, as the ground was swept by both shell and rifle fire.  But he accomplished it in safety and delivered his message.  He had then to make the return journey and undergo the same nerve racking experience over again; but this, too, he accomplished without mishap.   The brave fellow made this journey on another occasion, when he volunteered to conduct some reinforcements who had just lost their way to the firing line.  Private-now Lance Corporal Gudgeon, who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for these valuable services, is twenty-five years of age, and his home is at Northampton. Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'

How Sergeant David Brunton, Of The 19^th Hussars, Won The D.C.M. At Le Bizet

      On the morning of October 15^th 1914, our 3^rd Corps, under General Pulteney, who had detrained at St. Omer on the 11^th and advanced as far as Bailleul, driving the enemy before them, were ordered to make good the line of the Lys from Armentieres to Sailly, and, in the face of considerable opposition and very foggy weather, they succeeded in doing this, the 6^th Division at Sailly-Bec St. Maur and the 4^th Division at Nieppe.  At this time B Squadron of the 19^th Hussars was divisional Cavalry to the 4^th Division, and about one hour after noon on the 16^th, while at Romarin, Sergeant Bruntons troop officer, Lieutenant Murray, received orders to proceed to the village of Le Bizet and reconnoitre it.  He accordingly set off at the head of a patrol consisting of Sergeant Brunton, another sergeant named Emerson, and six men, and at about 2 p.m. arrived on the outskirts of the village.  The officer and Brunton proceeded to examine the place through their glasses, and the sergeant reported two of the enemy outside a house.  This showed that the village must be in possession of the Germans though in what strength had yet to be ascertained.  The patrol then galloped in open order to a little in some five hundred yards up the road, where they got under cover, without dismounting.  Leaving Brunton here in charge of the patrol, Lieutenant Murray, accompanied by sergeant Emerson and a private named Groom, galloped across a field to the entrance of the village, where he dismounted, and, giving his horse to Private Groom, walked into the roadway.  At once several rifle shots rang out from houses on his right, and he officer was seen to fall.  Emerson and Groom rode back at full speed to where their comrades were posted and reported what had occurred, upon which sergeant Brunton sent Emerson to Romarin to inform their squadron commander, and, with the rest of the patrol, galloped towards the village and, dismounting, called for a volunteer to help him.  A private named Jerome offered himself, and dismounted with his rifle; and Brunton having sent the rest of the patrol with the led horses to the inn, he and Jerome crawled towards the wounded officer in the roadway.

             As they raised him up, they came under a heavy rifle fire at almost point Blanc range, and were obliged to let the lieutenant go and rush for cover.  Happily, neither of them was hit, most of the bullets whistling harmlessly over their heads, and, after waiting a little while, they made a second attempt; and, though again exposed to a hot fire, succeeded in dragging Lieutenant Murray under cover.  Then they found, to their sorrow, that they have risked their lives to no purpose, as the unfortunate officer was quite dead.  He appeared to have been wounded in three places, in the head, the left hand, and the region of the heart.  Since they could do nothing more for him, they decided to leave him and endeavour to reach their horses; and, stooping low, they doubled across some ploughed fields towards the place where the rest of the patrol was waiting.  The distance they had to traverse was about four hundred yards, and the ground absolutely devoid of cover; but though they were heavily fired upon, not only from the rear, but also from some brickfields occupied by the Germans on their left, they succeeded in getting back safely.  By this time the squadron had arrived from Romarin, and on their approach, the enemy, who seemed to have numbered about eighty, evacuated the village and retreated.  Sergeant David Brunton, whose gallantry on this occasion gained him the Distinguished Conduct Medal, was severely wounded in the right shoulder by shrapnel and slightly gassed on May 24^th 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres.  He is thirty-four years of age, and his home is at Aldershot. Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'

How Lance-Corporal David Finlay, Of The 2^nd Battalion The Black Watch, Royal Highlanders, Won The Victoria Cross Near The Rue Du Bois

     On Sunday May 9^th 1915, the French began their great attack on the German position between La Targette and Carency, the advance of the infantry being preceded by the most terrific bombardment yet seen in Western Europe, which simply ate up the countryside for miles.  On the same day, chiefly as an auxiliary to the effort of our Allies in the Artois, the British took the offensive in the Festubert area; the section selected that between Festubert and Bois Grenier.  The 8^th Division, on our left, advanced from Rouges Bancs, on the upper course of the River des Layes, towards Fromelles and the northern part of the Aubers Ridge; while, on our right part of the 1^st corps and the Indian Corps advanced from the Rue du Bois, south of Neuve Chapelle, towards the Bois du Biez.  The 8^th Division captured the first line of German trenches about Rouges Bancs, and some detachments carried sections of their second and even third line.  But the violence of the enemy’s machine gunfire from fortified posts on the flanks rendered the captured trenches untenable, and practically all the ground the valour of our men had won had to be abandoned.  South of Neuve Chapelle, the First Corps and the Indian corps met with no greater success, though they displayed the utmost gallantry in the face of a most murderous fire, and many acts of signal heroism were performed, notably that which gained Lance-Corporal David Finlay, of the 2^nd Black Watch the Victoria Cross.

             The Bareilly Brigade, of which the 2^nd Black Watch formed part, attacked early in the afternoon; but while our artillery preparation was still in progress.  Lance-Corporal Finlay advanced at the head of a bombing party of ten men; with the object of getting as near the enemy’s trenches as they could under cover of the bombardment.  It was a desperate enterprise, for the German parapet bristled with machine guns, and each one of the parties knew that his chance of returning in safety was slight indeed.  About fifteen or twenty yards fro our trenches, which were separated by some one hundred and fifty yards from the German, was a ditch full of water, ten to twelve feet wide and between four and five feet deep, spanned by three bridges.  The party had got as far as the ditch before the enemy realized that they were advancing, when a fierce rifle machine gun fire was at once opened upon them, and eight out of Finlay’s ten men were put out of action, as all made for one of the bridges.  Two were shot dead while crossing the bridge, and the others killed or wounded immediately upon reaching the other side.   Undismayed by the fate of their comrades, Finlay and the two survivors rushed on, and had covered about eighty yards, when a shell just behind Finlay.  He was uninjured, but so violent was the concussion that it knocked him flat on his back, and he lost consciousness for some ten minutes.  When he recovered his senses, he saw one of his two men lying on the ground about five paces to his left, and, crawling to him, he found that he had been wounded in two places.  He opened his field dressing and bandaged him up, and then, quite regardless of his own safety, half carried and half dragged him back to the British trench.   Lance-Corporal-now Sergeant-David Finlay who was awarded the Victoria Cross, “for most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty,” is twenty-two years of age, and his home is in Fifeshire. Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'

  How Second Lieutenant Cecil Frederick Holcombe Calvert, Of The 3^rd Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment, Attached 179^th Company, Royal Engineers, was Recommended For The D.S.O.

     Second Lieutenant Cecil Frederick Holcombe Calvert, of the 3rd South Staffords, who was then attached to the 179th Company, Royal Engineers, serving with the 51st Division, performed a most splendid action, combining conspicuous gallantry with determination and resourcefulness, on September 6th 1915.  A heavy bombardment by the enemy had caused one of the mining shafts to fall in killing two men and burying two others in one of the galleries.  Second Lieutenant Calvert, who was in charge of this isolated post, at once went to the assistance of the important men, and as, owing to the close proximity of the enemy, the noise made by the use of tools would have invited certain death, he worked for three hours under heavy fire, scraping away the earth with his hands until he had made a hole large enough to rescue them.  For this brave deed the young officer was recommended for the Distinguished Service Order, but, unhappily, he never lived to receive this coveted decoration, as eight days later (September 14^th) he lost his life in a most gallant attempt to rescue a man who had been overcome by gas.  The poisonous fumes caused by the explosion of a German mine in the vicinity had overtaken the man in a mining gallery before he could effect his escape, and, although an attempt at rescue was fraught with terrible risk, Second Lieutenant Calvert, without a moment’s hesitation, went to his assistance.  Before, however, he could accomplish his task he was overcome by the gas, and although he was brought out of the shaft and treated at once by the medical officer on the spot, he was already too far-gone to rally the seizure, and died without regaining consciousness.  He was buried in the extension reserved for British officers in the Cemetery of Albert, in the Department of the Somme.  Second Lieutenant Calvert was the eldest son of Mr. Albert Frederick Calvert, the well-known traveller and author, who received many letters of sympathy from brother officers, expressing the high estimation in which his son was held.

            His commanding officer wrote: “I feel sure it will comfort you to know that he died as he had lived, a victim to his high souled sense of duty.  The Army can ill afford to lose such men.  Although he had only lately joined the 179^th Tunnelling Company, he had already made his mark, and we shall deeply feel his loss.” “I cannot tell you,” wrote one of his brother officers, “how we all mourn his loss, which has cast a gloom over all of us.  During the short time he had been with this company he had already won the admiration of all his fellow officers, on account of his absolute fearlessness and coolness on all occasions.  His death will be a severe loss to the Service and particularly to his friends.  Since not only did his coolness in action inspire confidence in all, but his cheerfulness had also endeared him to all the officers of his unit.” Extracted

How Acting Corporal George Dagger, Of The 1^st Battalion Duke Of Cornwall’s Light Infantry Won The D.C.M. At La Bassee

           The men of the fair West Country have ever responded nobly when their Sovereign required their services, whether on land or sea, and many a mother in the ancient city of Bath is today mourning the loss of one or more of her sons.  Among them is Mrs. Arthur Dagger, two of whose three soldier sons, Sergeant Arthur Dagger, of the Somersetshire Light Infantry, and Corporal George, of the 1^st Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, have already given their lives for King and country.  But at least she has the consolation of knowing that they fought right valiantly, and that the younger, ere he fell, had won for himself a foremost place on the British roll of honour.   Corporal George Dagger’s D.C.M. was awarded him for gallant conduct in somewhat unusual circumstances.  During the fighting at La Bassee on December 16^th 1914, the company to which he was attached found themselves suffering many casualties from hand grenades discharged at them from what they had supposed to be an unoccupied trench, lying between our trenches and those of the enemy, at a distance of some fifty paces, but into which a number of German bomb throwers had contrived to crawl.  These enterprising gentry having at length been driven out, the officer in command of the Cornwall’s decided that the trench must be filled in without delay, otherwise the bomb throwers would be certain to return when darkness fell; and he called for volunteers to perform this dangerous duty.  Corporal George Dagger was the first man to offer himself, and having been placed in charge of the digging party, he crawled out to the trench and remained there for three hours until the work was finished, during the whole of which time he was exposed to a very heavy fire.

             Unhappily, Corporal Dagger did not live very long to wear his well-earned decoration, as he was killed early in the following April, not long after his return to the front from a brief visit to his wife at Northfleet, Gravesend.  In an interesting letter to the dead hero’s mother, published in a Bath Chronicle of April 17^th 1915, the widow writes: “I hope you will try and bear up, as I know you have lost one son already.  It is a terrible war.  I greatly sympathize with you, as I have lost a brother as well out there.  But I did hope and trust that my husband would come back.  I received a very nice letter from his officer, which gives George great praise.  All his officers speak well of him.  The chaplain of his regiment buried him, and a cross has been erected over his grave.  The officer has sent on his D.C.M. ribbon; he had it cut from his tunic.”  A comrade of the deceased in the Cornwall’s Private R. B. Allen, writing from Flanders, also refers to Corporal Dagger’s death, and says: “He was killed by a sniper’s bullet o the 7^th of April, and we have laid him to rest in the grounds of a big chateau, and were are going to get flowers for his grave.”  Corporal Dagger, who was twenty-eight years of age, worked for some time in Bath before joining the Army.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'    

How Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Harold Wooley, Of The 9^th Country Of London Battalion, The London Regiment (Queen Victoria’s Rifles) Won the V.C. At Hill 60

    Early in the eventful August of 1914, a young undergraduate of Queen’s College, Oxford, the son of a country clergyman, and who, but for the outbreak of war, would have been by this time a clergyman himself, joined the 5^th Battalion Essex Regiment, and went with them to Drayton, near Norwich, where that unit was to undergo its training, under the command of Colonel J. M. Welch.  His stay with the 5^th Essex was very brief, however, for on August 26^th he was transferred to the Queen Victoria’s Rifles.  This young man was second Lieutenant Geoffrey Harold Woolley, who was to have the honour of being the first territorial officer to win the Victoria Cross.  The Queen Victoria’s Rifles crossed the Channel in November 1914, and in due course proceeded to take their turn in their trenches with the regular battalions of the 5^th Division, to which they were attached, where they came in on occasion for some pretty severe shelling.  But they were not employed in attack until the affair at Hill 60 in the following April, which was an experience none of them is ever likely to forget.  Hill 60-a hill, by the way, only by courtesy, since it is, in point of fact, merely on earth heap from the cutting of the Ypres-Lille Railway-lies a little to the west of Klein Zillebeke and just east of the hamlet of Zwartlehen, the scene of the famous charge of our Household Cavalry on the night of November 6^th 1914.  Its importance was that it afforded an artillery position from which the whole German front in the neighbourhood of Chateau Hollebeke could be commanded.

            At seven o’clock in the evening of April 17^th the British exploded seven mines on the hill, which played havoc with the defences, blowing up a trench line and 150 men, after which under cover of heavy artillery fire, the position was stormed by the 1^st West Kent’s and the 2^nd King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who entrenched themselves in the shell craters and brought up machine guns.  During the night several of the enemy’s counter attacks were repulsed with heavy loss, and fierce hand-to-hand fighting took place; but in the early morning the Germans succeeded in forcing back the troops holding the right of the hill to the reverse slope, where, however they hung on throughout the day.   In the evening the West Kent’s and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers were relieved by the 2^nd West Ridings and the 2^nd Yorkshire Light Infantry, who again stormed the hill, under cover of heavy artillery fire, and drove the enemy off with the bayonet.  But Hill 60 was of vital importance to the enemy if they intended to maintain their Hollebeke ground, and on the 19^th another fierce attack was made on it, with the support of artillery and asphyxiating bombs.  T was repulsed, but the hill formed a salient, which exposed our men to fire from three sides, and all through the 19^th and 20^th a terrific cannonade was directed against them.  In the evening of the latter day came another determined infantry attack, while all the night parties of the enemy’s bomb throwers kept working their way up to our trenches.  At 9.30 that night two companies of the queen Victoria’s under Major Rees and Captain Westby, received orders to advance from their trenches and take up a position close to the top of the hill.  Although the distance to be traversed was only some 200 yards, so terrible was the fire to which they were exposed, that it took them two hours to reach the post assigned to them, where they dug themselves in close to a huge crater made by one of the British mines which had been exploded on the 17^th.

            Towards midnight Sergeant E. H. Pulleyn was ordered to take sixteen men to the very crest of the hill, some twenty yards away, to fill a gap in our trenches line there.  A withering fire was immediately opened upon the party by the enemy, who were not thirty yards distant, and only the sergeant and eleven of his men reached the position, while of the survivors five fell almost immediately.  Pulleyn and the remaining six maintained there ground for a few minutes, when, recognizing the impossibility of holding it longer, they retired and rejoined their comrades, carrying their wounded with them.  Both Major Rees and Captain Westby had already been killed, and of 150 riflemen who had followed them up that fatal hill, two-thirds had fallen.  The remainder held on stubbornly, however and so accurate was their fire that the Germans did not dare to advance over the crest.  But the crossfire to which our men were exposed was terrible; never for a moment did it slacken, and man after man went down before it.  When day began to break there were but thirty left.

            It was at this critical moment that an officer was seen making his way up the hill towards them.  The men in the trench held their breath; it seemed to them impossible that anyone could come alive through the midst of the fearful fire which was sweeping he slope; every instant they expected to see him fall to rise no more.  But on he came, sometimes running, sometimes crawling, while bullets buzzed past his head and shells burst all about him, until at last he climbed the parapet and stood amongst them, unharmed.  Then they saw that he was second Lieutenant Woolley, who learning that their officers ad been killed, had left the security of his own trench and run the gauntlet of the enemy’s fire to take charge of that gallant little band.   His arrival put fresh heart into the Queen Victoria’s, and there, in that trench, choked with their dead and wounded comrades, shelled and bombed and enfiladed by machine guns, this Oxford undergraduate, the two brave N.C.O.’s, Pulleyn and Peabody, and their handful of Territorial, held the German hordes at bay hour after hour, repelling more than one attack, in which the young lieutenant rendered excellent service by the accuracy of his bomb throwing, until at last relief came.  Of 4 officers and 150 N.C.O.’s and men who had ascended the hill the previous night, only 2 N.C.O.’s and 24 men answered the roll call.  But, though they had suffered grievously, the battalion had gained great honour, both for themselves and the whole Territorial Force.  Second Lieutenant-now Captain-Woolley had the proud distinction of being the first Territorial officer to be awarded the Victoria Cross; while Sergeant Pulleyn and Corporal Peabody each received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for “the great gallantry and endurance displayed, and for the excellent service rendered, in the flight for the possession of Hill 60. Other decorations, which have fallen to the share of the Queen Victoria’s Rifles up to, the end of 1915 are: Lieutenant-Colonel R. B. Shipley-C.M.G.; Captain S. J. Sampson-Military Cross; Sergeant E. G. Burgess-D.C.M.   Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'    

How Private H. J. Hastings, Of The 2^nd Battalion Oxfordshire And Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Won The D.C.M. Near Zonnebeke

     If, on July 23^rd 1914, anyone had informed Mr H. J. Hastings, then pursuing the peaceful occupation of a telegrapher at the Central Telegraph Office, Newgate Street, that on that day three months it would be his destiny to take the lives of no less than nine of his fellow men, and to feel not the least compunction for so doing, he would have enjoyed a hearty laugh at the prophet’s expense.  But then, on July 23^rd 1914, no one in Newgate Street dreamed that we were on the verge of the greatest war of modern times, and that in less than a fortnight the British Empire would be fighting for its very existence.

             On the outbreak of war, Mr. Hastings was one of the first to answer Lord Kitchener’s call for men, enlisting in the 2^nd Oxfordshire Light Infantry.  He went to France with one of the first drafts, saw service at the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne, had his trousers ripped above the knee by a fragment of shell and his water bottle smashed by a shrapnel bullet, and on the evening of October 23^rd found himself with his battalion entrenched near Zonnebeke, some five to the northeast of Ypres.   It had been a day of desperately hard fighting; the Germans, for the most part new levies, though mown down in swathes by our fire, coming on again and again with the utmost courage and determination, and it was not expected that the night would pass without a renewal of their attacks.  Private Hastings had already made something of a name for himself by his cool courage and the excellence of his marksmanship, and he and two other men entrusted with the task of holding a culvert over a brook and a narrow footpath connecting the enemy’s line with ours, From which screened the mouth of the culvert in direct front, but they had to hold the gaps on each bank.  Hastings, having been given a free hand, put up some barbed wire over their side and across the brook and built a sod barricade.  Scarcely had these preparations been completed, when two companies of the enemy advanced to the attack.  He waited until they were almost level with him and he had them black against the sky, and then opened fire.  One of his comrades stood by to keep him supplied with ammunition, but by the time he had fired twenty-six rounds, the Germans had had enough of it and retreated.  On going out to ascertain the loss he had inflicted on them, he found nine Huns, one of whom was an officer. Lying dead and another wounded.  They were all from the 223^rd and 235^th Regiments-two corps raised since the outbreak of war-and most of them mere lads, in new uniforms.  With the assistance of another man he carried the wounded German into the British lines next day, together with five others, who had fallen in a previous attack.  They were very grateful, and one of them called him: “Kind Kamerad!”  Their friends in the German trenches were much less appreciative, for they fired upon Hastings and the other soldier.

            The next night the enemy made another attack, this time from a slightly different direction.  As the advance was beginning, Hastings saw two men approaching along the side of the brook, and under the impression that they were from his own battalion, he allowed them to come quite close, when he called out: “Hullo!  How many of you are out?”  One of the men looked up in surprise and said something in German, upon which Hastings fired at him; but, being so close, the bullet passed over his head.   The German immediately levelled his rifle, and he and Hastings fired together.  The Hun’s aim was bad, his bullet striking the bridge above, but the Englishman’s bullet took effect; and with an oath, his adversary fell and rolled into the brook, where he was drowned.  His comrade made off. The enemy’s attack that night was a very determined one, and they advanced to within twenty yards of our trenches before the withering fire, which they encountered, drove them back.  Hastings, on his part, accounted for a dozen, four of whom were killed; for, after the attack had been broken up, he crawled out to where the dead men were lying and got their shoulder straps with regimental numbers for information.  His “bag” in two nights thus totalled twenty-three, fourteen of whom would never see the Fatherland again, and he had thus taken a spacious revenge for the loss of a great friend and fellow telegraphers.  John Holder, who had been killed at his side a little while before.  Private Hastings, who a few days later was wounded in the arm, though only slightly, was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, “for conspicuous gallantry.”  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'      

How Squadron Sergeant Major Harry Croft, Of The 5^th Dragoon Guards, Won The D.C.M. At Zillebeke

    At the end of February 1915, the 5^th Dragoon guards were in the trenches near Zillebeke, performing more or less cheerfully, the work of infantry, as they had been doing all through that long and dreary winter.   Meantime, they themselves were receiving a lesson on the imprudence of yielding to a temptation to admire the landscape, where the enemy’s trenches were not a hundred yards from their own, and there happens to be a wood affording admirable cover for snipers in between.  For whenever one of them chanced to raise his head above the parapet, a rifle, and as often as not two or three together, cracked.Among the trees, and if he escaped with a bullet hole through his cap or an ugly furrow along his cheek, he might consider himself fortunate.  The unwelcome attentions of the marksmen in the word were becoming a serious nuisance, and Squadron Sergeant Major Croft made up his mind to put a stop to it.  He did not believe that the shots came from isolated snipers, since it is seldom that two or more snipers fire almost simultaneously, as so frequently happened in this instance, and came to the conclusion that the Germans must have an advanced post somewhere in the wood.  Accordingly, on the afternoon of February 27^th, he went out to endeavour to locate it; but before he had penetrated more than a few yards into the wood he was seen and fired upon by the Germans, and obliged to return.  However, he had noted the direction from which the shots came, and that night he crept over the parapet of the British trench and crawled into the wood again.  The task in which he had undertaken always very dangerous work-was rendered the more hazardous by the fact that there was a bright moon.  But, on the other hand the wood had been so damaged by shellfire, that fallen trees and broken branches were lying everywhere, and on a dark night it would have been almost impossible for him to move about without making a noise which would have attracted the enemy’s attention.

             Slowly and cautiously, Croft made his way through the wood, and had come within thirty yards of the German entanglements, without seeing any signs of an advanced post, when suddenly he heard voices quite close to him; and there, only a few paces ahead, was a trench filled with Germans.  Croft had not brought his rifle with him, since it would have hampered his movements; but he had provided himself with a couple of revolvers, and drawing these, he took cover behind a tree and began blazing away at the astonished Germans.  Shrieks and curses told him that some at least of his shots had not been wasted, and in a minute or two the enemy, evidently under the impression that they had been surprised by a party of our men, got out of the trench and made off to their own lines as quickly as they could.  Nor do they appear to have returned it; anyway the 5^th Dragoon Guards had no longer any reason to complain of their unwelcome attentions.  Squadron Sergeant Major Croft was awarded the D.C.M. for “conspicuous gallantry,” the official announcement of this honour adding that “he had been noted for courage and enterprise on previous occasions.”  The brave sergeant major is a Warwickshire man, his home being at Saltley, Birmingham.   Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'     

How Private Henry Devenish Skinner, Of The 14^th South Otaga Regiment, N.Z.R., Won The D.C.M. At Chunuk Bair, Gallipoli

    At the beginning of august 1915, the British Headquarters Staff at Gallipoli, having received intelligence that the Turks were massing forces for a new attack, resolved to anticipate them by a great offensive movement.  The plan adopted involved four separate actions.  In the first place, a feint was to be made at the head of the Gulf of Saros, as if to take the Bulair lines in both flank and rear.  Next a strong offensive would be assumed by the troops in the Cape Helles region against their old objective, Achi Baba.  These two movements were intended to induce the Turks to send their reserves to Krithia, and enable the left wing of the Anzac Corps to gain the heights of Koja Chemen and the seaward ridges, and a great new landing to be effected at Suvla Bay.  If the Anafarta hills could be captured, and the right of the new landing force succeed in linking up with the Australasian left, with any reasonable good fortune, it could be a mater of time before the western end of the peninsula would be in our hands, and the European defences of the Narrows at our mercy.

             The great movement began in the afternoon of August 6^th, with a general attack by the Allied forces at Cape Helles upon the Turkish position at Achi Baba.  At 4.30 p.m.; when this action had well started the 1^st Australian Brigade advanced to the attack of the formidable Turkish trenches on the Lone pine Plateau, a position which commanded one of the main sources of the enemy’s water supply, and rushing across the open, amidst a veritable hail of shell and bullets from the front and from either flank with irresistible dash and daring, carried them with the bayonet, and what is more, maintained their grip upon them like a vice during six days of counter attacks!      Magnificent as was this achievement, it was in essence only a feint to cover the movements of General Godley’s New Zealand and Australian Division on the left, which, as night was falling, began its march up the coast towards the heights of Koja Chemen.  This force was divided into right and left covering columns and right and left columns of assault.  With the right column of assault, which was under the command of Brigadier General Johnston, and was to push up the ravines against the Chunuk Bair ridge, were the 14^th South Otagos, and in the ranks of the South Otagos marched Private Henry Devenish Skinner, the hero of the gallant deed which we are about to relate.  By ten o’clock on the morning of the 7^th-a day of blistering heat-the gallant New Zealanders had carried the hog’s back known as the Rhododendron Ridge, just to the west of Chunuk Bair, and a dawn on the 8^th, having been reinforced by the 7^th Gloucester’s and the 8^th Welsh (Pioneers)-two of the battalions of the New Army-the Maori contingent and the Auckland Mounted Rifles, they advanced to the assault of the crest of Chunuk Bair, and, after a desperate struggle, carried that also, and through a gap in the hills were able to catch a glimpse of the blue waters of the Dardanelle’s.  But our losses had been very great, the Wellington Battalion, which had marched out of the Anzac lines on the 6^th seven hundred strong, being now reduced to fifty-three, while the 7^th Gloucester’s, in the words of Sir Ian Hamilton, “consisted of small groups of men commanded by junior non-commissioned officers and privates,” every single officer and senior N.C.O. having been either killed or wounded.

            That night the 14^th South Otagos received orders to take over the trenches just on the reverse side of the crest of Chunuk Bair, and scrambled up the slopes in the dark, through the midst of the dead and wounded who littered them.  Immediately on reaching the trenches, Private Skinner was sent by a captain of the Sherwood Foresters to find the headquarters of the South Otagos and deliver a message.  On the way he was three times stopped and covered in mistake for a Turk, but he delivered his message and returned safely, stumbling repeatedly over the dead as he walked.  During the night the battalion repulsed a counter attack and dug themselves deeper in.  Towards dawn Skinner caught sight of a small fire just in front of our lines, which he though might be attracting the enemy’s fire, and having passed the word down the trench several times that he was going out to extinguish it, in order to prevent his comrades shooting him under the impression that he was a Turk, he crawled out, accompanied by his chum, Gus Levett. On reaching the fire they found that it was a dead man burning-the head thrown back towards them, the eyes staring, the white face covered with dust, and the fists tightly clenched above the chest, which was burning with a small livid flame.  At that moment one of their own comrades fired at them at a range of ten or fifteen yards, the bullet grazing Levett’s check and striking the ground between Skinner’s hands and knees, throwing up sand and dust.  They crawled back and worked until dawn, strengthening their defences.  Then came a violent bomb attack, during which skinner crawled out of the trench and lay just behind the parados.  This was followed by an infantry charge, which the New Zealanders drove back with rifle fire.  A wounded man, who was lying exposed to the fire of the enemy’s snipers a hundred yards from the trench, lost his reason and attempted to shoot himself; but one of the Anzacs, at great risk to himself, most gallantly ran out and took his rifle from him.  An elderly man in a trench behind them also lost his senses and kept firing wildly over their heads.  The Turkish artillery shelled them heavily, and shrapnel about four inches above the knee tore the left leg of Skinner’s knickers, and his leg grazed.  A sniper, some sixty yards off, who had already killed about a dozen of the New Zealanders, fired at him, the bullet smashing his bayonet, which lay across his temple, knocking him down, and wounding him on the top of the head.  The wound, though a slight one, bled a good deal.

            It was now about three o’clock in the afternoon.  At 10 a.m. reinforcements had arrived, but since that time no one had been able to cross the fire swept ground between the troops on the crest of Chunuk Bair and their supports at Apex.  A second detachment had been set up, but had vanished under the terrible shrapnel, machine gun and rifle fire concentrated upon them into a hollow on the right of the slope, where it was supposed they were still.  The New Zealanders had no water and were suffering terribly from thirst, and were exhausted by their desperate exertions of the past two days, and, unless reinforcements reached them, their prospect of retaining the ground they had won was very slight.  The officer commanding the South Otagos wished to send back a dispatch to Divisional Headquarters at Apex, and a captain wanted a message conveyed to the reinforcements who were believed to be in the hollow.  He called for a volunteer, and Skinner at once afforded himself.  Crawling to the end of the trenches, he made a dash across a stretch of fairly level ground, which ended in a gully, where he would be comparatively safe.  The sniper, whose bullets had so nearly cut short his career a little while before, was on the alert, and immediately let drive at him, but failed to hit him, and he reached the shelter of the gully with no worse mischief than the loss of his hat.  This gully, in which our men had suffered terrible losses, was so choked with dead and wounded that he had to pick his way amongst them.  The Ghurkas, three days dead, were ghastly sight.  Skinner saw a New Zealander in a sitting position, but quite dead.  He met a friend there, shot through the leg and through the lungs, but still cheerful.  Many of the wounded were delirious; one cried for warm milk; almost all were calling for help.  He took one man’s water bottle to get water from a well.  Lower down some of the wounded told him that he could not leave the gully, as the Turks held its lower end and had snipers on the watch for anyone who attempted to climb out.  He took the water bottle back unfilled, and began to climb up the long, steep slope, which led to the hollow.  About half way up the snipers opened fire upon him, and he started to run, bounding along so as to dodge the bullets, and reaching the hollow, where the reinforcements to whom he was to deliver his message were supposed to be, and flung himself flat on the ground.  On recovering his breath, he looked about him for the reinforcements, but the only troops he saw were an officer and some twenty or thirty men belonging t an English regiment-all stone dead!  A couple of milk cans filled with water for the firing line lay amongst them.  As he lay there alone with the dead, shrapnel burst just above him, and he knew it would be unsafe to remain longer.  So leaving this gruesome hollow, he began to run down the slope towards Apex.  Scarcely had he shown himself than a Turkish machine gun opened fire and played upon him for the whole of the one hundred and fifty yards which lay between him and safety, while he was also exposed to a heavy rifle fire.  But, marvellous to relate, he was not touched, and Divisional Headquarters presently beheld a hatless young man, with a blood stained bandage round and over his head, his face streaked with dry blood, and the left leg of his knickers torn almost to shreds, come panting up with a torn scrap of paper-the all important dispatch for which this heroic New Zealander had so readily risked his life clutched tightly in his right hand.  Private Henry Devenish Skinner was awarded a most richly deserved Distinguished Conduct Medal, the official announcement adding, “his bravery and devotion to duty had been most marked.”  He is twenty-nine years of age, and his home is at Wellington.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'        

How Bandsman Thomas Edward Rendle, Of The 1^st Duke Of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, Won The Victoria Cross At Wulverghem

      By the middle of November 1914, the first battle of Ypres was over, and the tide of the German attack had receded and lay grumbling and surging beyond the defences which it had so lately threatened to overwhelm.  But if the infantry on either side were now comparatively inactive, the artillery bombardment still continued with varying intensity, and day and night hundreds of shells were bursting along the length of each line, and scores of men were being killed and wounded.  It was a fine frosty morning at the beginning of a cold “snap” which had succeeded several days of snow and rain, and the 1^st Cornwalls, in their trenches near Wulverghem, were beginning to congratulate themselves that they were at length able to keep dry.  “It is an ill wind,” however, and the one good point about the recent bad weather was that it had made the ground so soft that the enemy’s high explosive shells sank deeply in it before they detonated, and expended most of their energy in an upward direction, throwing up pyramids of mud, but doing comparatively little damage.  Now, however, on falling on the frozen earth, they carried destruction far and wide, as the Cornwallis learned, to their cost, when presently a battery of heavy howitzers began to shell them fiercely.

            Bandsman Thomas Edward Rendle was engaged in attending to one of the wounded, whose number was increasing every minute, when a huge shell struck the parapet not far from him, blowing the top completely in and burying several wounded men beneath the debris.  Without waiting to look for a spade or to summon assistance, for he knew that there was not a moment to be lost, the bandsman ran to the rescue, and began digging away furiously with his hands, and burrowing through the fallen earth to reach his unfortunate comrades.  Soon his fingers were raw and bleeding from such unaccustomed work, while he laboured at the imminent risk of his life, since the fall of the parapet had, of course exposed him to the fire of the enemy’s snipers, and every time he rose to throw away the soil bullets hummed past his head.  But he toiled on heroically until every man was got out, and even then, though utterly exhausted by his exertions, he remained on duty, administrating what relief he could to the sufferers.  Bandsman Rendle was awarded the Victoria Cross, “for conspicuous bravery,” and well indeed did he deserve to have his name inscribed upon the most glorious roll of honour!  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'     

How Corporal James Upton, Of The 1^st Battalion Sherwood Foresters, Won The V.C. At Rouges Bancs

  On Sunday May 9^th 1915, in conjunction with a forward movement of the French troops between the right of our line and Arras, our 1^st Corps and the Indian Corps attacked the German position between Neuve Chapelle and Givenchy, while the 8^th Division of the 4^th corps attacked the enemy’s trenches in the neighbourhood of Rouges Bancs to the northwest of Fromelles.  Our artillery preparation at Rouges Bancs began shortly before 5 a.m., and half an hour later our infantry advanced to the assault of the German trenches, which were separated from ours by a distance of some 250 yards, the intervening ground being destitute of every vestige of cover.  The East Lancashire and two companies of the 1st Sherwood Foresters started the attack; but the artillery preparation had been altogether inadequate, and our men came up against unbroken wire and parapets.  Many casualties occurred during the advance, and many more during the subsequent retirement. About 7 a.m., after a second bombardment of the enemy’s position, the remaining two companies of the 1^st Sherwood foresters scaled the parapet and lined up about thirty yards in front of it, where they lay down in a shallow trench, to await the order to advance.  With them was a young Lincolnshire man, corporal James Upton, who on that day was destined to win the most coveted distinctions of the British soldier. The ground in front of the Sherwood’s was strewn with the wounded, some of them terribly mutilated, and their cries for help were heartrending.  At last Corporal Upton could listen to them no longer; come what might, he was resolved to go to their succour.Crawling out of the trench, he made his way towards the enemy’s lines, and had not gone far when he came upon a sergeant of the Worcester, who was wounded in the thigh, the leg being broken.  Upton bandaged him up as well as he could an old flag and put his leg in splints, which done, he carried him on his back to out trench and consigned him to the care of some comrades.  Then, discarding his pack and the rest of his equipment, which included a couple of jam tin bombs, he went out again and found another man, who had been hit in the stomach.  As this man was too big and heavy to carry, he unrolled his waterproof sheet, placed him on it, and dragged him in.  Going out for the third time, e was proceeding to carry in a man with both legs shattered, and had got within ten yards of the trench, when a high explosive shell burst close to them.  A piece of it struck the wounded man in the back, killing him instantaneously, and giving Upton, though he escaped unhurt, a bad shock.  This obliged him to rest for a while, but soon as he felt better the heroic non-commissioned officer resumed his work of mercy, and venturing out again into the fire swept open, succeeded in rescuing no less than ten more wounded men.  During the remainder of the day until eight at night he was engaged in dressing the serious cases in front of our trenches, exposed the whole time to a heavy artillery and rifle fire, from which, however, he emerged without a scratch.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'        

How Sergeant John Crane, Of The 2^nd Royal Munster Fusiliers,Won The D.C.M. At Festubert

     Early on the morning of December 19^th 1914, Sir John Willcocks commanding the Indian corps, decided to take advantage of what appeared to him a favourable opportunity to attack the advanced trenches of the enemy.  The British position at the time on this part of our front extended from Cuinchy on the south, to the west of Neuve Chapelle on the north, passing through Givenchy and a little to the east of Festubert.  That attack was at first successful, but by the evening determined counter attacks had driven the Indian corps back to its original line; and by ten o’clock the next morning, the Germans, following up their advantage, had captured a large part of Givenchy and driven a wedge north of the town which exposed the right flank of the Dehra Dun Brigade, stationed to the northeast of Festubert.  All the afternoon of the 20^th these troops suffered severely, being, in the words of Sir John French, “pinned to the ground by artillery fire.”  But, towards evening, strong reinforcements, which included the 2^nd Munsters, were hurried up to their support; and in the early hours of the 21^st this battalion was ordered to recapture a line of distant trenches, from which the Indians had been driven on the previous day. Just before the order came, a young sergeant of the Munsters, John Crane, had been sent with a message to the 2^nd Brigade on their right, and when he returned, he heard that his battalion had charged though no one knew where it had gone or what had happened to it.  The darkness had simply swallowed it up.  The sergeant reported himself to Major Ryan, D.S.O., of the Munsters-a gallant officer who, unhappily, fell a victim to a sniper’s bullet a few weeks later-at the Brigade Headquarters, and when the forenoon passed without bringing any news of the lost battalion, Major Ryan, becoming very anxious, asked Crane if he would go out and try to locate it before darkness set in, telling him that he might take anyone with him whom he wished.  Lance-Corporal, now Sergeant, Eccles at once agreed to accompany him, and about three o’clock in the afternoon they set off having first taken off all their equipment, in order not to impede their movements.

            The ground in front of the British lines was so swept by shell and rifle fire that they found it necessary to make a wide detour, until they came to an old trench of ours, along which they advanced for some five hundred yards, when, not having seen any signs of the Munsters, they got out again, and, with bullets humming all around them, made their way, by short rushes, for some distance across the open ground until they came upon their battalion, or rather remnants of it.  For it had been badly cut up, and was besides in a very precarious position, having lost its way and being completely isolated.  They returned to their Brigade Headquarters and reported accordingly, and were asked to go out again and guide their comrades back, while arrangements were being made for troops to cover the sorely tried battalion’s withdrawal.  And this task they successfully accomplished, under a heavy fire and through a very difficult country, displaying, says the Gazette, “great courage, endurance and marked resource.” Subsequently, notwithstanding the fatigue, which they must have been suffering, they took out stretcher-bearers and brought in a number of wounded, including the colonel and the adjutant. Sergeant Crane, who is only twenty-three years of age, was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, “for conspicuous gallantry and ability,” and a similar honour was conferred upon Lance-Corporal Eccles.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'            

How Lieutenant Smyth, Of The 15^th Sikhs, Won The V.C. And Ten Brave Indians The Indian Distinguished Service Medal, At The Ferme Du Bois

  There are no finer fighting men in our Indian Army than the Sikhs, the descendants of those fierce, long haired warriors who fought so stubbornly against us at Firozshah and Chilianwala, and afterwards stood so loyally by the British Raj in the dark days of the Mutiny.  And there are no finer officers in the world than the men who lead them, for no youngster stands a chance of being gazetted to a Sikh regiment who has not shown that he possesses in a marked degree all the qualities which are likely to ensure the confidence and devotion of those whom he aspires to command. When the first Indian contingent disembarked at Marseilles in the early autumn of 1914 there were some arm chair critics who expressed doubts as to whether, under conditions of warfare so totally different from those with which he was familiar, the native soldier might not be found wanting.  But these sceptics were speedily confounded for, however strange and terrifying might be the sight of the destruction wrought by hand grenades and high explosive shells, however trying the long vigils in trenches knee deep in mud and water, the Sepoy accepted t all with Oriental stoicism, and wherever his officer led, he cheerfully followed, though it was into the very jaws of death. And on many a desperate enterprise, on many a forlorn hope, did these officers lead him, but surely on none more so than that on which Lieutenant Smyth, of the 15^th Sikhs, led his little band of dark skinned heroes on May 18^th 1915! On the previous night a company of the 15^th, under Captain Hyde Cates, had relieved a part of the 1^st Battalion Highland Light Infantry in a section of a trench known as the “Glory Hole,” near the Ferme du Bois, on the right front of the Indian Army corps.  Here for some fighting of a peculiarly fierce and sanguinary character had been in progress; and the position of affairs at the moment when the Sikhs replaced the Highlanders was that our men were in occupation of a section of a German trench, the remaining portion being still held by the enemy, who had succeeded in erecting a strong barricade between themselves and the British.

            Towards dawn Captain Cates observed that the Germans were endeavouring to reinforce their comrades in the trench, as numbers of men were seen doubling across the open towards its further extremity.  He immediately ordered the Sikhs to fire upon them, but in the dim light they presented exceedingly difficult targets; and when morning broke, it was ascertained that the German trench was packed with men, who were evidently meditating an attack.  Shortly afterwards, in fact, a perfect hail of bombs began to fall among the Indians, who replied vigorously and, to judge from the shrieks and curses which came from the other side of the barricade, with considerable effect, until towards noon their supply of bombs began to fail, many of them having been so damaged by the rain which had fallen during the night as to quite useless.  The situation was a critical one; only the speedy arrival of a bombing party from the reserve trenches could enable them to hold out. The reserve trenches were some 250 yards distant, and the ground between so exposed to the fire of the enemy as to render the dispatch of reinforcements a most desperate undertaking.  Twice had the Highland Light Infantry made the attempt, and on both occasions the officer in command had been killed and the party practically wiped out.  Nevertheless, the Sikhs were resolved to take their chance, and on volunteers being called for such was the magnificent spirit of the regiment that every man stepped forward, though no one doubted that, if his services were accepted, almost certain death awaited him.  Ten men were selected and placed under the command of Lieutenant Smyth, a young officer of one and twenty, who had already distinguished himself on more than one occasion by his dashing courage.  The names of these ten heroes deserve to be remembered.  They were: Sepoys Fatteh Singh, Ganda Singh, Harnam Singh, Lal Singh, Naik Mangal Singh, Sarain Singh, Sapooram Singh, Sucha Singh, Sunder Singh, and Ujagar Singh. At two o’clock in the afternoon Lieutenant Smyth and his little band set out on their perilous enterprise, taking with them two boxes containing ninety-six bombs.  The ground, which they had to traverse, was absolutely devoid of all natural cover.  The only approach to shelter from the terrific fire which greeted them the moment they showed their heads above the parapet of our reserve trenches was an old partially demolished trench, which at best of times was hardly knee deep, but was now in places literally choked with the corpses of Highland Light Infantry, Worcester, Indians and Germans.  Dropping over the parapet, they threw themselves flat on the ground and painfully wriggled their way through the mud, pulling and pushing the boxes along with them, until they reached the scanty shelter afforded by the old trench, where they commenced a progress which for sheer horror can seldom have been surpassed. By means of pagris attached to the boxes the men in front pulled them along over and through the dead bodies that encumbered the trench, while those behind pushed with all their might.  The danger was enough to have appalled the stoutest heart.  Rifle and machine gun bullets ripped up the ground all around them, while the air above was white with the puffs of shrapnel.  If a single bullet, a single fragment of shell, penetrated one of these boxes of explosives, the men propelling it would infallibly be blown to pieces.

            Before they had advanced a score of yards on their terrible journey Fatteh Singh fell, severely wounded; in another hundred, Sucha Singh, Ujagar Singh and Sunder Singh were down, thus leaving only Lieutenant Smyth and six men to get the boxes along.  However, spurred on by the thought of the dire necessity of their comrades ahead, they by superhuman efforts, succeeded in dragging them nearly to the end of the trench, when, in quick succession, Sarain Singh and Sapooram Singhh were shot dead, while Ganda Singh, Harnam Singh and Naik Mangal Singh were wounded.  The second box of bombs had therefore to be abandoned, and for the two remaining men to hal even one box along in the face of such difficulties appeared an impossible task.  But nothing was impossible to the young lieutenant and the heroic Lal Singh, and presently the anxious watchers in the trench ahead saw them wriggling their way yard by yard into the open, dragging with them the box upon the safe arrival of which so much depended. As they emerged from the comparative shelter of the trench a veritable hail of lead burst upon them; but, escaping it as though by a miracle, they crawled on until they found themselves confronted by a small stream, which at this point was to deep to wade.  They had, therefore, to turn aside and crawl along the bank of the stream until they came to a place, which was just fordable.  Across this they struggled with their precious burden, the water all about them churned into foam by the storm of bullets, clambered up the further bank, and in a minute more were amongst their cheering comrades.  Both were unhurt, though their clothes were perforated by bullet holes; but it is sad to relate that scarcely had they reached the trench than the gallant Lal Singh was struck by a bullet and killed instantly.  For his “most conspicuous bravery” Lieutenant Smyth received the Victoria Cross, and each of the brave men who accompanied him the Indian Distinguished Service Medal, and we may be very certain that “ne’er will their glory fade” from the proud record of our Indian Army.   It is, we may mention, the universal opinion of the men of the 15^th Sikhs Sahib bears a charmed life, since again and again he has escaped death by a hair’s breadth, on one occasion a match with which he was lighting a cigarette being taken out of his fingers by a bullet.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'   

How Lance-Corporal O’Leary, Of The Irish Guards, Won The V.C. At Cuinchy

    Before the Great War was a month old the critics and all the experts had formally decided that men had ceased to count.  They were never tried of telling us that it was purely an affair of machines of scientific destruction, and that personal courage was of no avail.  Gone were the days of knightly deeds, of hair’s breadth adventures, of acts of individual prowess.  They told us so often and with such persistence that we all began to believe them, and then one day the world rang with the story of Michael O’Leary’s great exploit, and we knew that the age of heroes was not yet passed.  Once more science had been dominated and beaten by human nerve and human grit. The school for heroes is not a bed of roses and O’Learys was no exception.  He was in the Navy, then he served his time in the Irish Guards, and after his seven years he went to Canada and joined the Northwest Mounted Police.  By this time he was twenty-five he had sampled most of the hardships that this soft age still offers to the adventurous and given proof of the qualities which were to make him one of the outstanding figures of the “Great Age.”  A long and desperate fight with a couple of cutthroats in the Far West had revealed him to himself and shown his calibre to his friends.  The “Hun-tamer” was in the making. On mobilization in August O’Leary hastened to rejoin his old regiment, and by November he found himself in France with the rank of lance corporal. His splendid health, gained in the open air life of the Northwest, stood him in good stead during the long and trying winter; but the enemy, exhausted by their frantic attempt to “hack away” through to Calais, gave little trouble, and O’Leary had no chance to show his metal.  With the spring, however, came a change, and there was considerable “liveliness” in that part of the line held by the Irish Guards.  The regiment was holding important trenches at Cuinchy, a small village in the dull and dreary country dotted with brickfields, which lies south of the Bethune-La Bassee Canal.  On the last day of January the Germans attempted a surprise against the trenches neighbouring those of the Irish Guards.  The position was lost and was to be retaken so that the line should be re-established.  There was much friendly rivalry between the Irish Guards and the Coldstreams, who had lost the ground; but at length it was decided that the latter should lead the attack, while the Irish followed in support.

            The morning of February 1^st, a day destined to be a red-letter day in the history of the British soldier broke fine and clear, and simultaneously a storm of shot and shell descended on the German trenches, which were marked down for recapture.  For the wretched occupants there was no escape, for as soon as a head appeared above the level of the sheltering parapet it was greeted by a hail of fire from the rifles of our men.  O’Leary, however, was using his head as well as his rifle.  He had marked down the spot where a German machine gun was to be found, and registered an inward resolve that that gun should be his private and peculiar concern when the moment for the rush came.  After a short time the great guns ceased as suddenly as they had began, and with a resounding cheer the Coldstreams sprang from the trenches and made for the enemy with their bayonets.  The Germans, however, had not been completely annihilated by the bombardment, and the survivors gallantly manned their battered trenches and poured in a heavy fire on the advancing Coldstreams.  Now was the turn of the Irish, and quick as a flash they leapt up with a true Irish yell.  Many a man bit the dust, but there was no holding back that mighty onslaught which swept towards the German lines.  O’Leary, meanwhile, had not forgotten his machine gun.  He knew that it would have been dismantled during the bombardment to save from being destroyed, and it was a matter of lie and death to perhaps hundreds of his comrades that he should reach it in time to prevent its being brought into action.  He put on his best pace and within a few seconds found himself in a corner of the German trench on the way to his goal. Immediately ahead of him was a barricade.  Now a barricade is a formidable obstacle, but to O’Leary, with the lives of his company to save, it was no obstacle, and its five defenders quickly paid with their lives the penalty of standing between an Irishman and his heart’s desire.  Leaving his five victims, O’Leary started off to cover the eighty yards that still separated him from the second barricade where the German machine gun was hidden.  He was literally now racing with death.  His comrade’s lives were in his hand, and the thought spurred him on to superhuman efforts.  At every moment he expected to hear the sharp burr of the gun in action.  A patch of boggy ground prevented a direct approach to the barricade, and it was with veritable anguish that he realized the necessity of a detour by the railway line.  Quick as thought he was off again.  A few seconds passed, and then the Germans, working feverishly to remount their machine gun and bring it into action against the oncoming Irish, perceived the figure of fate in the shape of Lance-Corporal O’Leary, a few yards away on their right with his rifle levelled at them. The officer in charge had no time to realize that his finger was on the button before death squared his account.  Two other reports followed in quick succession and two other figures fell to the ground with barely a sound.  The two survivors had no mind to test O’Leary’s shooting powers further and threw up their hands.  With his two captives before him the gallant Irishman returned in triumph, while his comrades swept the enemy out of the trenches and completed one of the most successful local actions we have ever undertaken.  O’Leary was promoted sergeant before the day was over. The story of his gallant deed was spread all over the regiment, then over the brigade, then over the army.  Then the official “Eye-witness” joined in and told the world, and finally came the little notice in the Gazette, the award of the Victoria Cross, and the homage of all who know a brave man when they see one.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'   

How Lance-Corporal Jacka Won The V.C. By Capturing A Trench Single Handed

  On May 10^th 1915, the Turks outside the parapet, all the men who were throwing bombs being wounded, overwhelmed a small party of the 14th Australian Battalion, who were holding a short section of trench at Courtney’s Post.  Seven or eight Turks then jumped in, and this section o the trench was for the moment left only to a wounded officer, who went to see the situation.  This officer, coming back through the communication trench said: “They have got me; the Turks are in the trench.” Lance-Corporal Jacka immediately jumped from the communication trench up to the step, or bench, behind the last traverse of the section of the fire trench, which had not yet been reached by the Turks.  He was exposed for a moment to the Turks rifles at a distance of three yards.  The Turks were afraid to cross round the traverse, and he held them there for a considerable time alone.  Meanwhile the word had gone back, “Officer wanted.”  Lieutenant Hamilton saw the Turks jumping into the trench and began firing with his revolver, but the Turks shot him through the head.  A second officer was sent up.  Then Jacka shouted: “Look out, sir, the Turks are in here.”  The officer asked Jacka if he would charge if he (the officer) got some men to back him up, and Jacka said: “Yes.”  The officer’s platoon was following him, and he called for volunteers.  “It’s a tough job.  Will you back Jacka up?”  One of the leading men answered: “It’s a sink or swim; we will come, sir,” and the leading three men went forward.  The moment the leading man put his head round the corner he was hit in three places and fell back, blocking the trench. The exit from the trench at this end now being well held, Jacka jumped back from the fire trench into the communication trench.  The officer told Jacka that he would hold the exit and give the Turks the impression that he was going to charge again.  Jacka said he would make his way round through a communication trench to the other end of the fire trench at the rear of the Turks.  This plan worked excellently.  The officer’s party threw two bombs and fired several shots into the wall of the trench opposite them.  Jacka made his way round, and a moment after the bombs were thrown he reached a portion of the trench just behind the Turks.  The party in front shots and charged, but when they reached the trench only four Turks came crawling over the parapet.  These Turks were shot, and Jacka was found in the trench with an unlighted cigarette in his mouth and with a flushed face.  “I managed to get the beggars, sir,” he said.  In front of him was a trench literally blocked with Turks.  He had shot five, and had just finished bayoneting the remaining two.  One of them was only wounded, and was taken prisoner.   Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'        

How Private James William Collins, Of The 1^st Battalion Leinster Regiment, Won The D.C.M. At St. Eloi

    It is the proud boast of the British Army that it never lacks leaders.  Unlike the Germans, whole companies of whom have been known to throw down their arms when their officers and non-commissioned officers have fallen, there is always some strong and dominant among the British rank and file ready to spring into the gap in such an emergency, and, by his courage and presence of mind, rally his comrades and inspire them to renewed exertions.  Nor do such leaders always come from among the old campaigners, men who have under fire more times than they can remember, and who have become so familiarized with the sight of death that it has long since ceased to have any terrors for them.  Sometimes, the soldier who so gallantly rises to the occasion is a mere lad, as the following incident will show.  Early in the afternoon of February 14^th 1915, during the desperate fighting at St. Eloi, a party of the 1^st Leinster Regiment, with a machine gun, were defending one of the first line trenches, which had been subjected for some hours to a terrific bombardment from the German batteries, in preparation for an infantry attack.  Suddenly they received that the troops on their left, whose trenches had been blown almost to atoms by the enemy’s guns, were retiring, and directly afterwards the Germans began to advance in great force.  Rifle and machine gun spread death amongst the oncoming hordes; but though the Germans fell in heaps, their numbers were too great to be denied and they continued to advance.  It was plain that the Leinsters must retire also, for the enemy outnumbered them by at least twelve to one, and against such odds the most indomitable courage could be of no avail.  It the trench were rushed, they would be bayoneted to a man.  But it was above all things necessary to effect an orderly retirement; otherwise their fate would be sealed. 

            It was at this critical moment that Private James William Collins, a young soldier of twenty-one happening to glance about him, perceived that some of the comrades-raw lads who had come out with the last draft and were now under fire for the first time-were beginning to loose their heads.  Without a moment’s hesitation, young Collins leaped upon the parados of the trench and stood there “like a bandmaster on a stool”-as one who was present expresses it-in full view of the advancing enemy, now not fifty yards distant, shouting encouragement and abuse at the men in the rich vocabulary of the British “Tommy.”  A shower of bullets greeted his appearance, but he seemed to bear a charmed life, for by some miracle not one touched him, and he remained in his perilous position for some minutes until he had succeeded in rallying the men, while the Germans, astonished at such reckless daring and at their failure to bring him down actually came to a halt within ten yards of the parapet.  Thanks to the gallantry and presence of mind of this young soldier, the party was able to effect a safe retirement, without sustaining any further loss.  The trenches captured by the Germans did not remain long in their possession, for that same night they were retaken by a dashing counter attack, and a terrible price exacted from the enemy for his brief success.  Private now Corporal-Collins was awarded the D.C.M. “for conspicuous gallantry and very great daring.”  He is a West Countryman, his home being at Ford, Devonport.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire' 

How Lance-Corporal Leonard James Keyworth Of The 24^th (County Of London) Battalion The London Regiment (The Queen’s) (T.F.), Won The V.C. At Givenchy

  One of those acts of almost incredible bravery and contempt for death, the account of which reads more like a page from the most extravagant of the romances of adventure than sober fact, was performed during the British attack on the enemy’s position at Givenchy on the night of May 25^th-26^th 1915.  The hero of it was a young Territory of twenty-two, Lance Corporal Leonard James Keyworth, of the 24^th Battalion London Regiment. Keyworth’s battalion having already made a successful assault on a part of the German line, determined to follow up this success by a bomb attack.  The bomb throwers, to the number of seventy-five, advanced to the attack from a small British trench situated on a slight hill, less than forty yards from the enemy’s first line trenches; but though the distance was short, the ground between had been so badly cut up by shell fire that they could not progress very rapidly, and before they were half way across, the majority of them had already fallen beneath the withering fire from rifle and machine gun which was opened upon them.  But the rest, undismayed by the fate of their comrades, came bravely on, and among them was Lance-corporal Keyworth. Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire' 

How Major Charles Allix Lavington Yate, of The 2^nd Battalion, The King’s Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry), Won The V.C. At Le Cateau

    It may be said, quite fairly that the world has rarely seen an army of such high rank as that which shouldered the burden of Great Britain during the first six months of the war in Flanders and Northern France.  Though the army was small in umbers, the men held inviolable the heritage of their race, great courage and tenacity of purpose.  These qualities alone, however, would not have suffered in view of the tremendous odds to which the men were opposed.  Added to superb morale and physical fitness.  To maintain the latter athletics had been widely encouraged in the army amongst both officers and rank and file.  Further, the methods of training the infantry followed the theory of fighting in open order, and aimed at making each man an individual fighter, who was to depend on himself in the battle line.  With so much of first-rate importance combined in the making of each soldier, it is small wonder that the army, which crossed to France in August 1914, should have proved so redoubtable a fighting force.  The most conspicuous act of bravery for which Major Charles Allix Lavington Yate, of the 2^nd Battalion, the King’s Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry) was awarded the V.C. recalls in its dramatic circumstances the heroic defence of Thermopyle, where Leonidas, the Spartan king, with three hundred of his men opposed the Persian army of Xerxes. In the battle of Le Cateau on august 26^th 1914, Von Kluck first tried to break the British line by frontal attacks and by turning movement against the left flank.  Later on, however, he used his great hordes of men in an enveloping movement on both flanks.  The position was extremely critical, and at half past three Sir John French gave the order for the British to retire.  B Company of the 2^nd Battalion.  The King’s Own, which Major Yate commanded, was in the second line of trenches, where it suffered fearful losses the enemy’s shellfire, which was directed against one of the British batteries not far behind.  Of the whole battalion, indeed, no less than twenty officers and six hundred men were lost during the battle, and when the German infantry advanced with a rush in the afternoon, there were only nineteen men left unwounded in Major Yate’s company.  But with splendid courage and tenacity, they held their ground and continued firing until their ammunition was all exhausted. At the last Major Yate led his little party of nineteen survivors in a deathless charge against the enemy.  Though courage and discipline prevailed, there could be but one result.  Major Yate fell, from which he subsequently died, a prisoner of war in Germany, and his gallant band of men ceased to exist. Halting a few yards from the parapet, Keyworth began to throw his bombs.  Then, springing on to the top of the parapet itself, he took deliberate aim at the Germans beneath him and rained his deadly missiles upon them with the most murderous effect.  When his stock was exhausted, he leaped down, replenished it from the bag of some dead or dying comrade, and then returned to the attack.  For two hours he continued thus, hurling, it is computed, 150 bombs on the panic stricken Huns, until the trench was a veritable shambles, shocked with the bodies of the dead and of shrieking, mutilated watches, and presented an easy prey.  And, marvellous to relate, though out of his seventy-four comrades no less than fifty-eight were either killed or wounded, and though he was continually standing fully exposed on the top of the parapet, so near to the Germans they could well nigh have touched him with the muzzles of their rifles, Keyworth escaped without a scratch, which goes to show that dare devil bravery such as he displayed on this occasion is often its own justification, creating as it does in the minds of an enemy a degree of amazement and consternation which renders him quite incapable of opposing it with his usual coolness and courage. Lance Corporal Keyworth, who joined the 24^th London Regiment at the beginning of the war, was born at Lincoln on august 12^th 1893.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire' 

How Naik Sar Amir, Of The 129^th Duke Of Connaughts Own Baluchis, Won The Indian Order Of Merit (2^nd Class) At Hollebeke

  October 31^st 1914 was probably the most critical day in the three weeks of obstinate and sanguinary fighting which is known as the First Battle of Ypres.  Early in the morning fighting began along the Menin –Ypres road, southeast of Gheluvelt, and a little later an attack against the place developed in overwhelming force, with the result that the line of the 1dt Division was broken, and it was driven back to the woods between Hooge and Veldhoek.  Ts retirement exposed the left of the 7^th Division, and the Royal Scots Fusiliers were cut off and destroyed; while it was only by the most heroic efforts that the right of the 7^th and General de Moussy’s troops of the 9^th French Corps on its right were able to hold their ground.  Farther south, the 3^rd Cavalry Division, under General Allenby, was also desperately hard pressed.  It had the whole of the Allied line to hold from Klein Zillebeke by Hollebeke to south of Messines, and the only reinforcements it could call upon were two battalions from the 7^th Indian Brigade, which had been sent to its support some days previously, and were already in a somewhat exhausted condition.  Nevertheless, they acquitted themselves right valiantly, and two men of the 129^th Baluchis Sepoy Khudadad and Naik Sar Amir-brought great honour to that fine corps, the former winning the Victoria Cross, and the latter, whose gallant deed we are about to relate, the Indian Order of Merit (Second Class).  About one o’clock in the afternoon, Naik Sar Amir was in charge of the Baluchis machine gun section’s mules which were under cover about three hundred yards behind the spot where the guns were in action, when two men belonging to the crew of one of the guns came running back, and told him that it had been hit direct by a shell and rendered useless.  The officer commanding the section (Captain Dill, D.S.O. who was afterwards killed) had sent them back to ask the commanding officer to arrange for another gun to be sent up.  The two men hurried off, and Naik Sa Amir at once went forward to the remaining gun, to ascertain if it were still in working order and whether more ammunition or anything were required.  When he arrived within some twenty-five yards of the emplacement, he saw that the ground directly in front of it was littered with dead and wounded Germans, who, advancing in massed formation, had been mown down like corn by the fire of the murderous weapon, but that the enemy had now opened out and were attacking from both flanks.  Soon afterwards they succeeded in rushing the trench, and killed the havildar and four men, who were working the gun, who, scorning to surrender, fought to their last gasp.

             Seeing that there were not enough of our men at hand to retake the trench, Sar Amir waited for a while in a cottage close behind the emplacement, and then, accompanied by one of the sepoys who had been carrying up ammunition, made his way back to the mules, and ordered all the kit to be loaded up.  Meanwhile the Germans had opened a hot fire on them, and the sepoy and three bullets through his puggree, but were not hit.   When everything was ready, Sar Amir quietly marched the mules back to the new line, which had been taken up by his regiment.  When he started retiring, the Germans were only some eighty or a hundred yards away on his right flank, and were not forgetting to remind him of their proximity; but the bullets, which hummed past, appeared to disturb him not at all.  He reached our lines, and having inspected the mules and equipment reported to the adjutant that, though both guns had been lost, together with the men who had actually been working them, everything else had been brought back safely.  Later in the day it was ascertained that he had been slightly wounded in the knee by a bullet, but had thought so little of his hurt that he had not considered it necessary to report it.   Nsik-now Havildar-Sar Amir, whose gallantry and coolness on this occasion gained him the decoration so much coveted by every native soldier, is a Jowaki Afridi, and his home is at the village of Sherakhal, in the Kohat district of the Northwest Provinces.  He is twenty-three years of age.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'     

Private Leonard Keysor’s Remarkable Bombing Feat At Lone Pine Trenches, Gallipoli, Which Gained For Him The V.C.

    At the beginning of August 1915, the line held by the Australian Corps at Gaba Tepe lay in a semi-circle, with the enemy’s trenches close up to it, in some places as near as fifteen or twenty yards, except in that part adjoining the shore, where the guns of our warships kept the Turks at a distance.  Bomb fighting between them and the Anzacs was, therefore, of almost daily occurrence.  One of the best bomb throwers among the latter was Private Leonard Keysor of the 1^st Battalion Australian Imperial force.  On August 7^th-8^th there was some fierce fighting of this description in the south eastern corner of the Lone Pine trenches, where our men were so hard pressed that a section of the outer trench had to be abandoned, though they continued to prevent the Turks from establishing themselves there.  During these encounters Keysor was in his element, not only throwing bombs, but constantly smothering with his coat or sandbags those of the enemy which had fallen in the trench, and often throwing them back.  Finally, when the enemy cut down the time of the fuses, he caught several bombs in the air just as if they were cricket balls and hurled them back before they burst.   In the course of these feats of heroism Keysor was twice wounded and marked for hospital; but he declined to give in and volunteered to throw bombs for another company, which had lost all its bomb throwers.  Altogether, he was throwing bombs for fifty hours almost continuously.  Private, now Lance-Corporal, Keysor, who was awarded the Victoria Cross, “for conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty,” is thirty years of age and a Londoner by birth, who went to New South Wales three years ago, previous to which he had spent several years in Canada.  Extracted from "Deeds That Thrill The Empire'

How Private Jacob Of The 1^st Sherwood Foresters (Notts And Derbyshire Regiment), Won The V.C. At Neuve Chapelle

      It is pathetic to reflect how many honours in the present war have been conferred posthumously, the brave fellows whose heroic deeds have so richly earned them having either been killed in the very action in which they were performed, or almost immediately afterwards.  Such was the fate of Private Jacob Rivers, of the 1^st Sherwood Foresters.  Private Rivers, who was thirty-four years of age and unmarried, was a native of Derby.  He had already done twelve years service in the Army, having been seven years in India with the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and afterwards five years in the Army Reserve.  At the time when war broke out, however, he was free, and was in the employ of the Midland Railway Company at Derby, working as a labourer on a ballast train.  But the old fighting spirit was there, and when his country needed his services, he was not the man to stay at home.  He was, indeed one of the first to volunteer, and was accepted by the 1^st Battalion Sherwood Foresters.  Being an experienced soldier, he was ready for service at once, and went to France with one of the earliest drafts.  The letters he wrote home appear to have been few and confined to news of a purely personal character.  Certainly, he made no attempt to describe his experiences, and the greatest of all he never lived to tell.

            This occurred on March 12^th 1915, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle.  Observing a large number of Germans massed on the flank of an advanced company of his battalion, Private Rivers, on his own initiative, crept up to within a few yards of the enemy and hurled bomb after bomb among them, throwing them into utter confusion and forcing them to retire.  This most gallant action he repeated later on the same day, again causing the enemy to retire, but, unhappily, not before a bullet had cut short the career of one of the bravest of Britain’s sons.  “The only personal effects belonging to the late Private Rivers which have been sent home to his mother,” says a writer in the Derby Daily Telegraph,” are the metal box containing Princess Mary’s Christmas gift to the soldiers and a postcard, which he had recently received.  The box had a tragic interest, for a bullet has pierced it.  It is the habit of soldiers to carry this box in their breast pocket, less as a shield against a possible bullet than as a convenient means of carrying their tobacco, and the fact that there is a hole right through it clearly indicates that Private Rivers was shot through the heart.”  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'  

How Sergeant Percy Reginald Pike, Of The 113^th Battalion he London Regiment (Princess Louise’s Own Kensington Battalion), Won The D.C.M. Near Rouges Bancs

  The British attack on the enemy’s position near Rouges Bancs on May 9^th 1915, was a very disappointing and a very costly business, most of the ground which the valour of our infantry had won having to be subsequently abandoned, owing to the weight of the German gunfire.  In this action a Territorial Battalion, the 13^th (Kensington) of the London Regiment, on the extreme British left, covered itself with glory, performing, according to the general commanding the Fourth Corps-Sir Henry Rawlinson a feat of arms surpassed by no battalion in this great war.”  The Kensington carried three lines of German trenches with the bayonet, and held them until they were rendered untenable by shell and machine gun fire, when they fell back with but four company officers left.  On that day one D.S.O. and no less than four D.C.M.’s were won by these gallant Territorials among the recipients of the latter decoration being Acting Sergeant Percy Reginald Pike, who gained it in the following circumstances: Acting Sergeant Pike was on the right flank of his battalion, in charge of three blocking parties, each consisting of a lance corporal, six bombers and six men with spades, and picks, whose duty it was to block a captured trench as soon as the bombers had driven the enemy for a sufficient distance along it.  On reaching the German trench, the bombers got to work at once, and had driven the Huns back for about one hundred yards when they ran short of the bombs.  Pike called for a volunteer to fetch a fresh supply, and three men at once offered themselves for this most dangerous mission an mounted the parapet together.  But they got no further, for one of the cunningly concealed machine guns on the flanks of the German position, whose enfilading fire wrought such havoc among our troops that day, was immediately turned upon them, and all three fell riddled with bullets. Undismayed by the fate of his comrades, Pike determined to go himself, and leaving a corporal in charge of the party, he, in his turn, mounted the parapet and succeeded in getting safely over it.  The British lines were some two hundred and fifty yards away, and the ground between was being very heavily shelled, to prevent reinforcements being sent to our men in the captured trenches.  But for part of the way he was able to make use of a ditch, filled with water and half choked with dead bodies, and he succeeded in gaining our trenches and in returning with two sacks of bombs and grenades, and with a promise from an officer of the 2^nd Scottish Rifles that he would send a machine gun to his assistance.  The machine gun and its team arrived just as the bombs were giving out again, and the trench was blocked and the gun mounted.  Pike remained with the Cameronian’s assisted them in working the gun until the order to retire came.  The Kensington’s came out of that terrible ordeal reduced to a mere shadow, and out of Sergeant Pike’s party only two men besides he returned. Sergeant Pike, who received his medal “for conspicuous gallantry and ability,” is twenty-six years of age, and his home is at Shepherd’s Bush, London. Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'  

How Quartermaster Sergeant Downs, OF The 1^st Battalion Cheshire Regiment, won The D.C.M. At Ypres

    One of the great lessons of the present war had been the repeated demonstrations which it has afforded of the enormous importance of the machine gun, which, in the opinion of some military experts may well come altogether to supplant the rifle in the defence of entrenched positions.  One of these deadly weapons light enough to be carried and worked at a pinch by a single brave and determined man, and small enough to be concealed in places where it would be impossible for any larger piece of ordnance to find cover, is capable of annihilating a whole battalion in a surprisingly short space of time and the immense numerical superiority which the Germans possessed in them at the beginning of the war undoubtedly contributed very largely to their success in the early weeks of the campaign on the Western Front.  Most happily for the British, this superiority, which has since been much reduced, was to some extent counterbalanced by the wonderful efficiency of our machine gun sections, which in accuracy of fire, coolness, courage and enterprise were more than a match for those of the enemy.  When all alike were admirable, it is not easy to discriminate, but mention may be made of the excellent work formed by that of the 1^st Battalion Cheshire Regiment, the credit of which was mainly due to Quartermaster Sergeant Downs, D.C.M.  In the retreat from Mons the Cheshire’s suffered severe losses, and their machine gun section was practically wiped out; but Quartermaster Sergeant Downs, nothing daunted, for with set to work to train, in the field, a new section, and succeeded so well that the battalion was enabled to bring five machine guns to play against an fierce attack of the Germans at Ypres.    It was in the course of this terrible three weeks struggle that Quartermaster Sergeant Downs performed the gallant action, which won him the D.C.M.  When, under the pressure of overwhelming numbers, the British had been obliged to evacuate the trenches on his left, and the Cheshire’s machine gun section, after striking to their work with dogged courage, had been nearly all killed or wounded, Downs continued to work his gun alone, and poured so accurate and deadly a fire into the advancing Germans that he succeeded in holding them in check until reinforcements could be hurried up and the trenches reoccupied.  The official announcement of the distinction conferred upon him states that by this “conspicuous gallantry” he had “secured the general line from being broken.”

            The Gazette adds that Quartermaster Sergeant Downs “had shown marked ability in machine gun work throughout the campaign,” and, indeed, the invaluable service he rendered at Ypres was preceded and followed by much excellent work elsewhere.  Thus, at the village of Violanes, near La Bassee, he placed one of his machine guns at the top window of a house and concealed another in a pit, so as to command the La Bassee road; and when, shortly afterwards, the Germans advancing in great force, had obliged the Cheshire and Manchester to retire, they were thrown into such confusion by the murderous fire which the hidden machine guns suddenly opened upon them, that the Manchester’s were able to counter attack and hold them in check until their supports came up.  This gallant non commissioned officer appears to have had some strange experience.  On one occasion he and some of his section spent five days on a haystack, engaged in covering the advance of his battalion.  During the whole of this time they were under very heavy shellfire, one shell actually hitting the stack on which they lay.  But though a howitzer battery hard by had three guns hopelessly damaged by the enemy’s fire, none of his machine guns were put out of action, and they wrought great execution among the Huns at a range of some eight hundred yards.  On another occasion he and his section were in the trenches east of Ypres, without relief, for fifteen days, during which they sustained a number of casualties.  In fact, when they were relieved, there were only Downs and one other man left out of the whole of the original machine gun section.  Quartermaster Sergeant downs, who is thirty years of age, is a native of Denton, Cheshire, and received his education at St. Lawrence’s church School in that town.  As a lad he was employed in a hat shop, and afterwards went to sea, as a steward on an Atlantic liner.  He joined the Army about eleven years ago.   Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'      

How Corporal Sam Schultz, Of The 10^th Canadian Battalion, Won The D.C.M. At The Second Battle Of Ypres

    The glorious achievement of the Canadians in the desperate battles of April 1915, is one that will live for ever in the annals of the British Army.  The Great War has, indeed witnessed no more stirring spectacle than the magnificent courage and tenacity with which, when their left flank had been most dangerously exposed by the precipitate retirement of the French before the first discharge of the diabolical poison gas, and it appeared as though nothing could save the Canadians from being overwhelmed and the British troops occupying the salient to the east cut off, the heroic soldiers from over the sea held their ground and averted the threatened disaster.  How the 10^th and 16^th Battalions charged at midnight on April 22^nd into the wood east of St. Julien and recaptured the guns that had been left there; how the 1^st Brigade-the 1^st and 4^th Ontarios-carried the first German trenches and held them until relief came two days later; how the 15^th Battalion (48^th Highlanders), though sick unto death with the poisoned fumes, rallied after their first retreat, and by an irresistible rush with the bayonet, regained their position; and how the 13^th Battalion (Royal Highlanders) refused to give ground at all.  These are deeds, which will surely never be forgotten!  During these terrible days and nights it is not too much to say that every man, from commanding officer to private, acquitted himself like a hero; and not the least heroic were the members of the medical staff and those who were detailed to assist them.  Among the latter was Corporal Sam Schultz, of the 10^th Battalion, who was replaced in charge of some ten other medical orderlies and fatigue men at a dressing station near Wieltje.  This dressing station was situated close behind the British lines, and within scarcely more than a hundred yards of the Germans, and during the night of April 24^th-25^th it was so heavily shelled that in a short time it was practically blown to pieces, and Schultz and his men were obliged to perform their difficult duties with the knowledge that at any moment death or mutilation might be their fate.  Nevertheless, the brave corporal did not remain at his post without flinching, displaying throughout the most admirable courage and coolness, nor was it till the afternoon of the 25^th, when every wounded man had been removed, that he at length quitted it.  Corporal now Sergeant Sam Schultz, who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, “for conspicuous gallantry and devotion,” is forty years of age, and his home is at Calgary, Alberta.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'

How Second-Lieutenant H. V. H. Throssell, Of The 10^th Australian Light Horse, Won The V.C. At Hill 60, Gallipoli Peninsula

    In the latter part of the August of 1915 a brilliant movement was carried out on the Gallipoli Peninsula by the troops under General Birdwood’s command.  Major-General Cox had begun operations for the capture of Hill 60 on August 21^st, and to complete this task another attack was planned.  Hill 60, which lies to the north of the Kaiajik Aghala, overlooks the Biyuk Anafarta valley, and was tactically of great importance.  The attack was again conducted by Major-General Cox, and under his command there were placed detachments from the 4^th and 5^th Australian Brigades, the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, and the 5^th Connaught Rangers.

             It was decided that the advance should begin at 5 p.m. on august 27^th, after being preceded by a very heavy artillery bombardment.  The moment, however, that the British left the cover of their trenches a very hot fire was opened on them from field guns, rifles and machine guns, and this was followed before long by a storm of heavy shell.  On the right of the attack a battery of machine guns opposed the detachment from the 4th and 5th Australian Brigades, and against the merciless firemen could make no headway.  In the centre, however, by a most determined assault the New Zealanders had carried one side of the topmost knoll. On the left a charge by two hundred and fifty men of the 5^th Connaght Rangers broke the Turkish resistance by the suddenness of the attack and the compactness of its mass.  In five minutes the Irishmen had carried the northern Turkish communications trenches, and they at once fought their way along the trenches with bombs, opposing strong parties, which hurried up in turn from the enemy supports and the reserves.  At midnight’s fresh troops were to have consolidated the hold of the British on the hill, but unfortunately the Irishmen were out bombed before then, and the 9^th Austrian Light Horser were driven back after making a gallant attempt to recapture the lost communication trench.  Nothing, however, could move the New Zealand Mounted Rifles.  All through the night and all the next day they were subjected to bombing, bayonet charges, rifle, shrapnel, and heavy shellfire.  But they clung to their one hundred and fifty yards of trench with the greatest gallantry, with only a sandbag barricade separating them from the Turks.    

            At 1 a.m. on the morning of August 29^th the 10^th Australian Light Horse made their memorable advance to recapture the lost communication trenches on the left.  Having rushed into the trench held by the New Zealanders, they dashed across the sandbag barricade amid the cheers of the Maorilanders; and then, by shooting, bombing and bayoneting, they drove the Turks in headlong flight down the trench for about three hundred yards to the right.  When the advance first began Second-Lieutenant Throssell was in the second line in charge of the digging party, and under his supervision the men now set to work to build up another sandbag barricade.  To give his men some protection in their work, Second-Lieutenant Throssell stood by them with a rifle, and every Turk who attempted to come round the traverse was shot down.  Finding that these methods of attack were costing them dear, the Turks massed round the right angle of the traverse and began to attack the barricades with bombs.  The rest of the trench was also hotly engaged.  The Turks opened a heavy rifle fire, and by continuous bomb attacks, advanced as near as possible to the whole line of the trench.  The trench was a veritable inferno, but the men were most hotly engaged on the extreme right, where, with Captain Fry, Second-Lieutenant Throssell had tried hard to raise some covering as a shelter against the bombs.  This task was of the utmost danger, for bombs were lobbed with deadly accuracy into the trench, and were actually caught and thrown back by Second-Lieutenant Throssell, with Corporals Ferrier and McNee and Troopers Macmahon and Renton.  When a bomb fell into the trench and could not be traced in the darkness, Second-Lieutenant Throssell shouted the order “Down!”  They at once flung themselves full length on the ground and waited for the explosion, a second or two later.  Men, however, were falling fast, but though Captain Fry was killed, Second-Lieutenant Throssell never failed in directing his men.  He had been three times wounded, and Ferrier, who was an expert in bomb throwing, had had his arm shattered by a bursting bomb.  Nearly every man in the trench had suffered some injury, but the gallant and dogged defence of the 10^th Light Horse was still kept up.  The overwhelming onslaughts of the Turks, who in numbers were superior, necessitated two retirements, and once again Second-Lieutenant Throssell stood by his men, rifle in hand, while they raised the sandbag barricades.     The long drawn out fight against desperate odds continued into the second day, and at the height of the struggle the Turks rushed forward in a furious counter attack, which tried to courage and endurance of the men to their uttermost limits.  Reinforcements at length came, and Second-Lieutenant Throssell retired to have his wounds dressed, but he insisted on returning to the trench afterwards.  This trench, which Second-Lieutenant Throssell and the men of the 10^th Australian Light Horse had so gallantly captured and held, gave the British possession of Hill 60.  Second-Lieutenant-now Lieutenant-Throssell had been promoted from the ranks, and much more credit is due to him for his strong leadership and unflagging energy in so trying to struggle.  For his most conspicuous courage and coolness he was deservedly awarded the V.C.  Extracted from "Deeds That Thrill The Empire'

How Company Sergeant Major Stanley George Glover, Of The 2^nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers Won The D.C.M. At St. Eloi

    The victory of Neuve Chapelle advanced the British line for a distance of a mile along a three-mile front; but this result was not achieved without several attempts on the part of the enemy to recover the ground, which had been lost.  Failing in this, they endeavoured to seek compensation for their defeat by ousting us from our positions at other points of our line; indeed, the most severe counter attack was not at Neuve Chapelle, but fifteen miles north, where the village of St. Eloi stands on the southern ridge of Ypres.  On March 14^th, when the mists lay thick on the flats, the Germans concentrated a great mass of artillery against the section of our trenches occupied by the 27^th Division, which included the 2^nd Royal Irish Fusiliers.  At five in the afternoon a terrific bombardment began, our barbed wire defences being swept away like matchwood and our parapet were exploded beneath a mound, known as the “Mound of Death,” which was part of our front to the southeast of the village, and also beneath a part of our trenches immediately to the right of that occupied by a company of the 2^nd Royal Irish Fusiliers, completely demolishing it.  Between the demolished trench and the German lines was a mass of debris; old and new saps, barbed wire, broken “knife rests,” which had supported it, sandbags, old trenches evacuated by us a month earlier, and so forth.  The bombardment and explosion were followed by a fierce infantry attack, the way being led by parties of bomb throwers.  The bombers came up out of the saps, which ran quite close up to the demolished trench, and those in it who were left alive were compelled to retire, leaving the Irish Fusiliers exposed to a flank attack.  While a party of bombers war pursuing the retiring British, another party to the number of forty or fifty, advanced against the Irish Fusiliers, the officer in command of whom was killed by a bullet.  But a brave non-commissioned officer, Company Sergeant Major Glover, at once assumed command, and under his direction, the Irishmen opened so effective a fire on the advancing bombers, that when within some thirty yards of the trench they turned and ran back to the shelter of the saps from which they had emerged.  Only about half a dozen reached them, however, the rest being shot down, some being killed as they were re-entering the saps.

            Meanwhile, nearly the whole British line had been driven from their trenches, and the Irish Fusiliers found themselves in danger of being surrounded.  Sergeant Major Glover stood in the centre of the trench, with his rifle in his right hand, the bayonet resting on the parados, and held up his left as a signal to his men to cease firing on the retreating bombers, in order to husband their ammunition.  There was no other way to do this, as the noise was so terrific, while the ground was shaking as though an earthquake was in progress.  He then stationed as many as there was room for to defend the rear of the trench, which had become their front for the time being, detailed four or five to fire over the extreme right of the parapet, and the rest from what was the proper front.  A little later they were practically encircled by the enemy, and Glover had to keep on diverting his men from parados to parapet, and then to parados again, which he did by tapping them on the shoulder and pointing out what was required of them.  The difficulties of the situation were increased by the fact that they were hard pressed for room, having several casualties lying at the bottom of the trench.  The Germans delivered two determined attacks on the rear of the trench, but were repulsed on each occasion by the brave little band of Irishmen, which only numbered between thirty and forty men.  Our men were also subjected to some attention from the enemy’s artillery, and on one occasion a high explosive shell fell among a German bombing party in the vicinity of the demolished trench.  When darkness fell they expected almost every moment that the enemy would rush the trench in overwhelming numbers; but happily, no such attempt was made, and about 2 a.m. on the morning of the 15^th the British counter attacked, and by daybreak we had recovered all the lost ground, which was of material importance.  Had the counter attack been more completely successful, Glover and his men would have been in danger of being driven into the enemy’s lines, or the Germans who were between them and the British would have been driven back on to them.  Sergeant Major Glover was awarded the D.C.M. for “conspicuous gallantry and marked ability,” and the Medaille Militaire of France was also conferred upon him.  He has recently completed seventeen years service in the Army, twelve of which were spent in India, where he distinguished himself in the School of Musketry.  He was wounded on May 4^th 1915, during the second battle of Ypres.   Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'

How Sergeant Tom Edward George Hayward, Of The 7^th London Regiment (T.F.) Won The D.C.M. At Festubert

    During the fierce fighting in the Festubert district, which began on the morning of Sunday May 16^th 1915, with the attack of the infantry of the Indian Corps and the 2^nd Division of the 1^st Corps upon the German trenches extending from Richebourg L’Avoue southwards, and continued for ten days, the “Shiny Seventh” performed some excellent work, and two of its members, sergeant now Lieutenant Hayward and Private Day, won the Distinguished Conduct Medal.  Sergeant Hayward’s decoration was gained in the following circumstances:

             The most successful part of the attack was that carried out by the 22^nd Brigade, on our right, against the Rue d’Ouvert, to the southeast of Festubert; and at about three o’clock on the afternoon of the 16^th two platoons of Hayward’s company were sent to reinforce some regular troops in a German communication trench which had been captured that morning.  The journey to the communication trench was not a pleasant one, as the enemy were endeavouring to place a barrier of fire between the 22^nd Brigade and its supports.  But they reached it without sustaining any casualties, and after proceeding for some little distance along it, received orders to attack a neighbouring farmhouse, which the Regulars were bombarding with a trench mortar, occupy an orchard adjoining it, dig themselves in, and hold it as long as possible.  Leaving the trench, Hayward and his men preceded, in single file, for about fifty yards along a road running at right angles to the orchard, and then making a right turn, crossed a wide ditch between four and five feet deep which divided the orchard from the road.  As they emerged from it, the Germans, who opened fire upon them and began throwing hand grenades, saw them.  Hayward was wounded in the right forearm by a piece of a grenade, but, notwithstanding the pain of his wound, he most pluckily remained at the head of his men, using a revolver which he happened t have with him in place of his rifle.  Despite the heavy fire of the enemy, the party advanced across the orchard, until a line of barbed wire arrested their further progress.  Taking what cover they could find, they held their ground for some time, but were eventually obliged to retire.  On reaching the communication trench, they found that the regulars had evacuated it, and that they were isolated in the midst of the Germans.  But Hayward’s coolness and courage extricated his men from their perilous situation, and they succeeded in reaching the British lines in safety, though during their retirement they were very heavily shelled.  Sergeant Hayward was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, “for conspicuous gallantry,” the official announcement of his decoration adding that he had “displayed great coolness and bravery, and set a fine example to the men with him of devotion to duty.”  He was subsequently given a commission in the 4^th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment.  He is only twenty years of age.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'     

How Lance Corporal Walter James Branker, Of The 2^nd Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment Won The D.C.M. At Neuve Chapelle

  The British artillery preparation, which preceded the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, was probably the most terrific in the history of modern warfare.  At the end of it, along the greater part of the German front there were no trenches left, only a welter of debris and mangled corpses, while most of the village was a mere rubbish heap.  Nevertheless, tremendous as had been the bombardment, there were places here and there in the defences where the high explosive shells had failed to do their work, and one of these was in the northern corner of Neuve Chapelle.  Here the enemy’s trenches and barbed wire entanglements were still intact, as the 2^nd Scottish Rifles-the old Cameroonians found to their cost, when they advanced to the assault and came up against unbroken wire and a hail of lead from rifles and machine guns.  Heroically did that splendid corps, which has on its regimental rolls the names of Lord Hill, Lord Wolseley and Sir Evelyn Wood, strive to break through the obstacle some of the men tearing at the wire with their naked hands.  But it was all, alas!  To no purpose, and they were obliged to fall back, with terrible losses.

             About half an hour later they made a second attempt, and Lance Corporal William James Branker, of the 2^nd Northampton’s, volunteered to accompany them.  They reached the wire entanglements, but were unable to advance any further, and all that was left of “B” Company, to which Branker had attached himself, was one officer, three non-commissioned officers, and twenty-one men.  The lance corporal’s blood was up, however, and scarcely had the remnant of the shattered battalion reached the shelter of the British trenches, when he volunteered to go out alone and bomb the enemy.  Dropping over the parapet, he went forward some way, and sent two of the deadly missiles through the air.  They fell short, however, whereupon, with a sublime indifference to danger, he ran as far as the enemy’s wire, and, standing there, with bullets whistling past him, threw the remainder of his bombs, and then ran back to our trenches for a fresh supply.  His chum, Private Mead, offered to go with him, and the two brave men made their way through the entanglements to within ten paces of the German trenches, where they threw their bombs with deadly effect.  Mead, having exhausted his supply, was returning for more, but was shot dead before he had gone half way.  Branker at once ran to his fallen comrade, but finding him beyond the reach of human aid, went back to our trenches, and after a short rest, came out again and succeeded in bombing the Germans out of their trenches, killing many of them and taking eighty-five prisoners. Lance Corporal Branker, who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, “for conspicuous gallantry,” is twenty-five years of age, and his home is at Peterborough.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'   

How Sergeant William Edward Riley, Of The 2^nd Battalion Border Regiment, Won The D.C.M. At Gheluvelt

  Very early in the morning of October 29^th 1914, the Germans began to cumulative attack upon the whole of the British line before Ypres.  A particularly determined assault was delivered against the point of the bastion in front of Gheluvelt, with the result that the 1^st Division was driven from its trenches, and the line swayed backwards and forwards all the morning.  The retirement of the 1^st Division exposed the left of the 7^th Division; and the 2^nd Border Regiment, which was in reserve, was ordered up to the support of the troops on the Menin side of Gheluvelt, who were being very heavily shelled.  The battalion advanced in three lines over open country to the top of the ridge on which Gheluvelt stands.  The machine gun section was in the third line, and with it was a young Gateshead man, Sergeant William Edward Riley, who was carrying a tripod, with its two front legs over his shoulder and its rear leg behind his back. Captain Watson, the machine gun officer, went into the village to speak to his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Wood, C.M.G., and then signalled to Riley to bring up the machine guns with all possible haste.  Riley thereupon took the two machine guns and their teams at the double up the ridge, and through he village, and took up a position on its outskirts about two hundred yards behind a line of our skirmishers, who had hastily entrenched themselves, but on higher ground.  From here the enemy could be seen coming on in great force and in massed formation over the open plain below, and it was obvious that there was not a moment to be lost if their advance were to be checked.  The two machine guns at once opened fire, but unfortunately one of them soon broke down and had to be sent back to be repaired.  Its team took cover in a ditch by the roadside, and Sergeant Riley continued to work the other gun.  Captain Watson, an officer of the 2^nd Gordon’s, with the field glasses, and a soldier with a Marindin range finder observing for him while he fired.  Three times was the position of the gun changed, so as to bring it to play in turn upon different sections of the advancing masses, and so accurate and deadly was Riley’s aim, that the Germans were mowed down in swathes, and the attack held up and finally beaten back. Sergeant Riley, who four days later was wounded at Veldhoek in the right leg and left foot, was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, “for conspicuous gallantry and ability,” and the Order of St. George (Fourth Class) was subsequently conferred upon him by the Czar.  He is twenty-five years of age. Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'   

How Sergeant William Spence Won The D.C.M. At Wasmes

  The beginning of the retreat from Mons, so prolific in brave deeds, witnessed few more deserving of being recorded here than that which gained Sergeant William Spence, of the 2^nd Battalion West Riding Regiment, the D.C.M. which unhappily he was never fated to wear. All Sunday and Monday (August 23^rd-24^th), a party of the West Riding Regiment had been engaged in holding a won near Wasmes against an overwhelming force of Germans.  In the course of the fight the commanding officer was badly wounded and would have fallen into the hands of the enemy, had not Sergeant Spence gone to his assistance and brought him safely back under a heavy fire.  By the late afternoon of Monday, the gallant Yorkshire men, decimated by shell and rifle fire, were so reduced in numbers that it was impossible for them to hold the wood any longer.  To retreat, however, was to expose them to be attacked in flank and rear by a strong party of Germans, who had crept up under cover of the trees.  Lieutenant Thompson, the officer commanding Sergeant Spence’s platoon, had been killed, but the sergeant, assuming command, headed a desperate bayonet charge which drove the enemy in rout and confusion from the position they had taken up and assured the safe retirement from the wood off all that remained of the gallant little band. On evacuating the wood, our men crossed the railway line and formed up on the lawn of as large house on its outskirts.  At the rear of the house was a narrow street, through which lay their only hope of retreat’ but this street was found to be held by the Germans, though they appeared to be unaware of the presence of the British, being evidently under the impression that the whole party had either been killed or made prisoners in the wood.  The wounded commanding officer, which had been laid behind a small summerhouse, directed Private Foley to go out and see if there were any chance of Sergeant Spence getting his men through.  Foley crept cautiously round the house, and presently returned and reported that the street was deserted.  Sergeant Spence thereupon collected his men and rushed out; while private Foley and Captain Taylor followed, supporting their commanding officer, who could only walk with the greatest difficulty.  As they reached the garden gate, they heard the sound of firing, and, on reaching the street, they found Sergeant Spence lying on the pavement in a half fainting condition, with his left arm broken and terrible wounds in his side.  It appeared that he and his men had run into a party of the enemy, who must have come up the street just as Foley had finished reconnoitring it.  The Germans fired on the tree men struggling painfully along, but happily, without effect, and then made off, leaving the remnant of the Yorkshire men to effect their retreat in safety with their wounded comrade.  Sergeant Spence was awarded the D.C.M. “for conspicuous gallantry,” but he never lived to receive that distinction, as he died of his wounds on September 25^th 1914.  He was thirty-three years of age and a resident of Halifax.  Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'   

The Northamptonshire Regiment

 The battalions forming this regiment were linked before 1881, when they were territorialized under their present title.  They were the 48^th (Northamptonshire) and the 58^th (Rutlandshire) Regiments.  The first battalion was formed in 1741 as Cholmondeley’s Regiment, received its number in 1751, and the county title in 1782.  Its first recorded active service was in Flanders, where it fought at Val with heavy loss; and next it appears in America with the unfortunate expedition of Braddock against Fort Duquesne.  It was present at Cape Breton in 1756, at Louisburg in 1758, at the attack on Quebec in 1759, in the defence of the town the same year, at Sillery and Motreal, and at Martinique and Havannah, returning home in 1763.  The regiment served in the West Indies in 1794-96, at the capture of the French West Indian Islands and St. Lucia.  In 1809 it joined the army in Portugal, fought at the Douro, Talavera (when Wellesley said “that the day was saved by the advance, position, and steadiness of the 1^st battalion of the 48^th”). Badajoz and Albuhera, at Badajoz again, Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, the Nivelle, Orthes, and Toulouse, after which it returned home and saw no further active service until 1834, when it took part in the Coorg campaign.  In 1855 it was despatched to Sevastopol, remaining until the end of the siege.

           A 2^nd battalion existed from about 1798 to 1802; another, formed in 1803, embarked for Portugal in 1809, and shared with the 1^st battalion and Peninsular battles above referred to up to Albuhera, when it returned home and was disbanded in 1814.  The 58^th, which now forms the 2^nd battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment, appears first in 1740, but became the 47^th in 1748.  The next of the number was enlisted in 1755 and became the 56^th; the third was numbered the 60^th in 1755and became the 58^th in 1757.  In that year it embarked for active service at Louisburg and Quebec, at Sillery and Montreal, and at Havannah in 1762.  It won the badge of the “Castle and Key” for its share in the gallant defence of Gibraltar from 1789 to 1793; took part in the reduction of the French West Indian Isles in 1794, was at the capture of Minorca in 1798, and after much service in the Mediterranean it accompanied Abercromby to Egypt and fought at Alexandria, Rosetta, Mandora, and Cairo.  Returning to the Mediterranean in 1805, the 58^th served at Naples, Sicily, Calabria, in the battle of Maida, etc.  And on the coast of Spain up to 1814; thence it was transferred to Canada, and formed part of the Plattsburg Expedition, after which it returned home too late for the battle of Waterloo, but shared in the occupation of Paris.  From 1823 to 1838 the regiment was stationed in Ceylon, helping to suppress the Kandian insurrection; in 1845-46 it took part in the New Zealand campaign; and between 1879 and 1881 formed part of the army in South Africa during the Zulu War and the Boer campaign.

           A 2^nd battalion, formed in 1803, saw service at Salamanca, in Barnes’s Brigade at Vittoria, Pampeluna, and elsewhere, and at Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, and Bordeaux; by which time it had become so weakened in numbers that it was incorporated with the 1^st battalion. The 48^th had Buff, the 58^th black facings; but the latter had previously worn white then buff; now both have white.  The regiment has no new special badge; but the 48^th earned “Talavera” because of its bravery in that battle, and the 58^th “Gibraltor” with the castle, Key, and motto, and the Sphinx with “Egypt.”  The Horseshoe is the badge of the county of Rutland, and was worn by its Militia, as the St. George’s Cross-was by that of Northamptonshire.  The button has the castle and key, crowned, and the regimental name; the collar a laurel wreath and the title, crowned, with St. George’s Cross and the Horseshoe; the helmet-plate bears the castle and key with “Gibraltar” and “Talavera” and the title; the waist-plate has very much the same; the forage-cap the Castle and Key with “Gibraltar” and “Talavera.” The militia battalions are furnished by the Northampton and Rutland regiments; they date from 1761, and bear the Mediterranean distinction, and also add the Horseshoe and St. George’s cross to the regimental badges.  The volunteer battalion is the 1^st Northamptonshire, clad in grey with scarlet facings. The nicknames of the 58^th are the “Black Cuffs” and the 2Steelbacks.”  The latter is said to be bestowed from their coolness in taking the floggings that were freely given in early days.  This is admirably described in “Nicknames and Traditions of the British Army” in the following words; “While serving under Wellington in the Peninsular War, one Hovenden, a private in the regiment, was ordered to be flogged for his share in a breach of discipline; at the twentieth lash he became so exhausted that he fainted.  So annoyed were his comrades that they would not recognise him.  Discovering the cause of their conduct, he marched on to the square where the colonel was standing and told him that he (the colonel) was a fool; for this he was again sentenced to be flogged.  During the night, while lying in his cell, the French attacked the regiment.  Evading the guard, he escaped from the scene of the conflict, only to see his colonel wounded and in the hands of the enemy.  Seizing a musket, he shot the Frenchman and liberated the colonel.  After binding up his wounds he left him, and was making his way back to the cell when a bullet struck him, and entering the cell he expired.  His desire to be flogged again was therefore not gratified.”

           The depot was at Northampton.

JAMES OSBORNE  (Private)  2^nd Battalion 58^th (Northamptonshire) Regiment               On February 22^nd 1881, during the action at Wesselstroom, Private Osborne rode towards a party of forty-two Boers, and under a heavy fire picked up Private Mayes, who was lying wounded, and carried him back to camp.