The BEF Campaign on the Aisne 1914 by Jerry Murland

Author:Jerry Murland [Murland, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I
ISBN: 9781783378395
Google: HwTMDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2013-01-19T03:06:41+00:00

He was the younger son of Sir John Lentaigne, the well known surgeon of Merrion Square, Dublin. He was a modest, quiet lad who could have been severe with me many times …He was over eager to get into action. His orders yesterday were to hold his platoon in reserve till called upon …He fixed his sword in the ground to mark the point of advance, went forward alone and was not seen again.’154

Victor Lentaigne was one of three Connaught officers killed with a further five wounded. In the ranks 18 men were killed, 102 wounded and 97 declared missing. The Grenadiers’ losses were comparable: two officers – John Cuncliffe and Frederick des Voeux – killed and six others wounded in addition to seventeen other ranks killed, sixty-seven wounded and seventy-seven missing.155 The Coldstream casualties amounted to two killed – including Second Lieutenant Richard Lockwood – and sixty-three wounded in the 2nd Battalion and twenty-five killed and 153 wounded in the 3rd Battalion.156 The dead included the 26-year-old Lieutenant Percy ‘Perf’ Lyulph Wyndham who had inherited the magnificent Clouds estate at East Knoyle two years previously on the death of his father, the Rt Hon George Wyndham MP.157 ‘Perf’ had been married for less than two years to the Hon Diana Lister and was a cousin of the 17-year-old Edward ‘Bim’ Tennant who himself would be killed serving with the Grenadier Guards in 1916.158 Tom Bridges – a family friend – was at Soupir Château with 4/Dragoon Guards when he heard of Wyndham’s death: ‘the evening was marred by the death of a friend, Percy Wyndham, close by, and the opening of a heavy battery on our billet later in the night’.

After dark Matheson and Jeffreys reorganized their respective battalions from the ‘proper mix-up’ which the day’s fighting had produced. It was agreed between the two battalion commanders that the Grenadiers would hold a line from the wood east of the farm as far as the Chavonne road, the 3/Coldstream along the Chavonne road to link up with the 2/Coldstream at Chavonne. On the right of the Grenadiers the Irish Guards were in contact with the KRRC of 6 Brigade. Thus the 2nd Division found itself digging in from the southern edge of the Beaulne spur, across the Braye valley north of La Metz Farm to Cour de Soupir Farm and down to Chavonne.

Darkness was also the opportunity for recovering the wounded, some of whom had been lying out in front of the lines since the engagement began. Jeffreys had seen a, ‘considerable number’, of both British and German wounded as well as, ‘a very large number of dead Germans’. There were also those who had been lying doggo and had been waiting for darkness to give themselves up. The sheer numbers of wounded men threatened to overwhelm the battalion medical teams which had been working feverishly for most of the day. The farmhouse was already full and the wounded now overflowed into the farm enclosure buildings, yet even though

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