The Princess Of Wales Own Yorkshire Regiment

 The Princess of Wales Own Yorkshire Regiment-Regimental district No.19-consists of the old 19^th Foot.  Though so few names appear on the colours the 19^th is a regiment possessing a notable and long record of varied services well performed.  Rose in 1688 from the hands of pike men assembled in Devonshire to assist the cause of William of Orange, they were sent four years later to Flanders, and fought at Steenkirk, though without loss.  The following year they were at Landen, and were subsequently engaged in covering the siege of Namur.  In 1702 they took part in the operations against Cadiz, leaving Europe shortly after for the West Indies.  In 1710 we find them again in Flanders, where they fought at Douay and Bethune, and at Malplaquet, “the bloodiest action in the whole war.”  From 1714 they enjoyed a period of home duty for thirty years, repairing again to Flanders in 1745, when they took part in the battle of Fontenoy, and suffered severe loss there.  Seldom, indeed, has an army in which the British were so strongly represented, sustained such a defeat.  “Still, however, Cumberland, with his brave British and Hanoverian troops, preserved in his attack on the left, leaving the cavalry in the rear, and dragging some pieces of artillery with their own muscular arms; the foot crossed a ravine, and advanced full in front of the wood, the batteries and the abattis, and of the best part of the enemy’s army, for Saxe had been allowed time and opportunity to gather strength from his right wing.  The combat soon became close, and was terrific; our men were killed in heaps by the enemy’s artillery, but still they went closer, sweeping away the French foot and the sturdy Swiss guards, and giving back death for death.  From the necessity of the ground they now occupied, which was hollow and narrow, the British and Hanoverian foot were huddled together in compact masses.  Saxe, by the advice of the Duke of Richelieu, brought four pieces of heavy artillery to play upon them in this condition; and while the cannon roared and inflicted death in the front, they were attacked in flank by fresh troops, both foot and horse.  The Duke of Cumberland was the last in the retreat; he called upon his men to remember Blenheim and Ramillies.  If the English soldiers had had their will and no enemy in their rear, it might have been difficult to prevent, that evening, a new kind of combat, for their fury against the Dutch amounted almost to madness.”  A highland officer (Culloden Papers) wrote: “The action will, I believe, be found to be the bloodiest as to officers that has happened to the British in the memory of man.  The Hanoverians behaved most gallantly and bravely, and had the Dutch taken example from them, we had supped that night in Tournay.”  They fought at Val and Roncoux; in 1761-as the Duke of St. Albans, or Beauclerc’s Foot-they formed part of the force of ten thousand men under General Studholm Hodgson, destined for the capture of Belle Isle, in Brittany.  “The citadel of Palais, the capital of the isle, is a strong fortification fronting the sea, composed principally of a horn work, and is provided with two dry ditches, the one next the counterscarp, and the other so contrived as to secure the inner fortifications.  This citadel is divided from the largest part of the town by an inlet of the sea, over which thee is a bridge of communication.  From the other part of the town, that which is most inhabited, it is only divided by its own fortifications and a glacis, which projects into a place called the Esplanade, where the reservoir is kept.  Though there is a fine convenience for having wet ditches, yet round the town there is only a dry one, and some fortifications which cannot in many places be esteemed of the strongest kind; indeed, the low country which lies to the southward can easily be laid under water.”  Taking advantage of the fact that the steep and formidable nature of the approaches on one side rendered the enemy careless at these points, the Grenadier Company of the 19^th, under captain Paterson, clambered up them, “and were in full possession of the rocks before the French were aware of the circumstances.”  Here they held their ground in a fierce contest with superior numbers, in which Captain Paterson lost and arm, and subsequent reinforcements enabled them to drive the French back.  “In this affair a private, named Samuel Johnson, displayed remarkable bravery.  On perceiving a subaltern of his regiment, to whom he felt grateful for some act of past kindness, overpowered by numbers, and about to be bayoneted by a French Grenadier, he rushed to his assistance and rescued him, killing no fewer than six of his assailants.”  The regiment spent several years at home and at Gibraltar, and in 1794 shared in the skirmishes and sufferings endured by our army in Holland.  In May 1794, Pichegru, who had continued to outwit the Austrians, swooped down with about fifty thousand men upon the British camp at Tournay.  The Duke of York’s army numbered, perhaps, thirty thousand, of whom, fortunately, only a small proportion was Dutch.  “But though flushed with success, the French were repulsed in every attack they made, and compelled to retreat from a field which they left covered with their dead.  The celerity of their movements and the superiority of their numbers were of no avail against the steadiness and determination of the duke’s troops.  The latter were occasionally brought to fight when they ought not to have fought at all, but whether attacking or attacked, the British troops invariably proved their pluck and stamina.” “There was staunchness, there was heroism of the highest order in this fighting on the part of the troops who had previously experienced every possible disaster; and after this there was a glorious fortitude in the manner in which they withstood cold and hunger, and the fierce war of the elements, and in the midst of an unceasing hurricane of wind, snow, and sleet.  Many of the sick and wounded carried in open wagons were frozen to death, or perished of want, but not a living man in the army spoke of a halt or of a surrender.”

           In 1796 they were ordered to Ceylon, and in 1799 five companies took part in the important battle of Seringapatam.  For many years after that their duties were in Ceylon, where the frequent risings of the Candyans afforded them plenty of active and dangerous service.  In 1803 many of the officers and men were massacred in a rebellion of formidable proportions, and peace was not restored without some sharp fighting, of which the 19^th bore the brunt.  The Mauritius, the Ionian Islands, Corfu, North America, with a brief sojourn in England, occupied the attention of the regiment till the Crimean War, when the opportunity offered for them to add three famous names to their colours.  They were in the Light division under Sir George Brown; and at the alma shared, with the Welsh Fusiliers and Connaught Rangers, the glory of that magnificent charge up-hill, during which, from rock and boulder, from thicket and vine-trellis, poured a devastating hail of Russian bullets.  “The 19^th, with the Grenadiers and the Fusiliers, the 95^th, the 30^th, and the 47^th Regiments, pressed eagerly forward with the regularity and firmness of troops and parade.  Just beyond the battery the heads of a strong body of Russians were visible, and these at last formed and charged down the hill in a compact mass upon the British troops toiling up the steep in face of the dreadful fire that was doing such execution into the ranks.  Some guns that had been brought up by the English artillery, with much difficulty, now opened upon this Russian column, and, so true was the aim, that at every discharge a clear passage was made through the serried mass.  The well-executed manoeuvre decided the day, the Russians turned, broke, and fled over the hill.” In this trying and painful ascent the indomitable valour of our men-many of them in action for the first time in their lives-was fully displayed.  Exposed to a continual roar of artillery, without being able for some time to return the fire, they kept on their course undaunted. The men never quailed nor paused in their toilsome and perilous march.  After the retreat of this formidable battalion of the enemy the battle was speedily won.

           They fought like heroes at Inkerman, where confusion seemed to multiply the terrors of the strife.  As the 19^th with the rest of the Light Division pressed onward the scene was intensely bewildering.  One thing was only terrible distinct in its doings: the grim death, which was so busy that drear November day.  From the valley where seethed the battle in fullest fury rose a defending din-boom of cannon, rattle of muskets, the clang of steel, the hoarse word of command, the hoarser cries of fighting men, shout of triumph, and groans of pain.  Men fell fast, yet oftentimes no foe was visible-only the lurid flash gleaming from the dense thicket, and the white smoke drifting hither and thither on the blood-laden breeze. At the Quarries and the Redan they vied with the bravest.  “One of the most heroic episodes at the last assault was connected with a mere youth, named Massey, a lieutenant in the 19^th Regiment, who kept out in the open in the hope of inducing the soldiers to follow; and there, amidst the most dreadful fire, he stood with a reckless courage that excited the astonishment even of the enemy.  He was dreadfully wounded, but won the sobriquet of ‘Redan Massey.’”  On the termination of the war he returned to the University of Dublin, exchanging “feats of broil and battle” for the “still air of delightful studies,” though even to the retirement of the academic walls his fame had preceded him; his fellow-students feted and be lauded him, as well they might; and men who passed him in the street stopped to point, with enthusiastic admiration, at the young hero of the Redan. Amongst other individual instances of bravery the men of the 19^th may be mentioned that of Private john Lyons, who on one occasion took up a live shell that had fallen amongst our men, carried it to the edge of the parapet and hurled it over the trenches.  Again, there was Private Samuel Evans, who, seeing, on the 13^th of April, a Sapper engaged singly in repairing an embrasure under a heavy fire, went with Private Callaghan to his assistance, and completed the work.  

           The 19^th arrived in India at the end of the mutiny, and for years were engaged in the numerous tribal disturbances, which threatened the peace of the empire.  After a short sojourn at Bermuda and in Canada they took part in the last phase of the war in the Sudan, “being employed of the line of communications during the Nile campaign of 1884-5 and in the subsequent operations on the Sudan frontier including the battle of Giniss.”  Extracted from 'Her Majesty’s Army'   

ALFRED ATKINSON  (Sergeant)  1^st Battalion Yorkshire Regiment  In a letter from the Adjutant of his battalion he is reported as having been a most exemplary soldier and excellent non-commissioned officer.  Born at Armley, Leeds.  He rejoined the Colours from the Reserve at the call of duty in October 1899, and was entitled to the Queen’s medal with clasps for Kimberley (Relief) and Paardeberg, where he fell.  He was the son of the Farrier-Major James Atkinson, “H” Battery, 4^th Brigade Royal Artilery (who is stated to have beenone of the party who captured the original cannon from which the Victoria Cross is now cast), and in accordance with the regulation of August 8^th 1902, his Cross-is now possession of his father.

CONWYN MANSEL-JONES  (Captain)  West Yorkshire Regiment               On February 27^th 1900, at the attack on Terrace Hill, north of the Tugela, Natal a terrific shell and rifle fire was directed on the companies of the West Yorkshire Regiment, which for the moment checked their advance.  Captain Mansel-Jones, by his courageous initiative, gave confidence to his men, and although he fell severely wounded, the companies took the ridge without any further check.  It was “this officer’s self-sacrificing devotion to duty at a critical moment” which prevented the whole attack being possibly checked. Born in 1871, Captain Masel-Jones entered the Army in 1890, becoming Captain in 1899.  Served in the Ashanti Campaign of 1895-6.

Early To Rise by Spencer Coleman.