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Key dates over December 1917

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Lives lost on this day: 0

18th December 1917 - Dean Inge’s Hopelessness

Rolling casualty count: 8383

War Front:

1st Batt: Heavy snowfall and very frosty but men still in training. 1 other rank joined the Batt.

4th Batt: Batt marched at 9am over 2 miles of frozen plough as the road to Sus St Leger was impassable owing to snowdrifts 6 feet deep. Men marched 17 miles to billets at Blangermont and there were no stragglers. The blanket lorries were held up by snow so men had no blankets or greatcoats that night.

2/8th Batt: Another hard frost. Ptes T Collier, PJ Bridges, CH Garrett, LCpls R Winter and AA Hudd were awarded the Military Medal.

10th Batt: Batt proceeded to camp at Havringcourt Wood.

Home Front:

Worcestershire Hop Growers – Protest Against New Order – At a meeting of Worcestershire and Herefordshire hop-growers at Hereford, a resolution was adopted protesting against the recent Order in Council and expressing the view that it was unfair by reason of not affecting all hop-growers equally. The resolution petitioned the Board of Agriculture to withdraw that part of the Order which excludes from the 1914 acreage hops planted after October 1st 1913.

Dean Inge’s Hopelessness – Worcester’s Dean on League of Nations – Dean Inge, who long before the war was known as “the gloomy dean”, delivered a dismal war speech on Friday in London at a conference of the British Council of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. “We were told this war would never be ended until German militarism was destroyed. That programme was always hopeless; we now see it is absurd. We cannot even destroy the German Army and if we could we should not thereby destroy German militarism. After this war Europe, exhausted and half bankrupt, will be pressed between the upper millstone of America and the other millstone of Asia. This mutual suicide club will have to be dissolved”.

Information researched by The Worcestershire World War 100 team