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Key dates over April 1918

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Lives lost on this day: 14

25th April 1918 - WORCESTERS’ DOGGED DEFENCE – LAST TO LEAVE NEUVE EGLISE

Rolling casualty count: 9547

War Front:

2nd Batt: Coys busy training but ready to move at ½ hours’ notice.

3rd Batt: Batt sent to support 22nd Corps near Hoograf Cabaret. At 7pm 2 patrols sent out under 2Lt WH Parker MC and Lt GH Duffield to reconnoitre the route to La Clyste and report on position of the enemy. At 8.30pm Batt marched to La Clyste area.

4th Batt: Batt moved at 10.15am to 1 mile east of Sercus, where tents were pitched for Lewis gun classes.

Yeomanry/Cavalry: Reg. marched all day to Enab.

Home Front:

MALVERN LADY OBTAINS DIVORCE – Husband’s Deception and Infidelity –In the Divorce Division on Wednesday a decree nisi for dissolution of her marriage to Mrs Irene Preen, of Albert Road, Malvern Link. Petitioner was married to Sydney Preen at Holy Trinity Church, Malvern in December 1899, there being one child of the marriage. Respondent was an electrical engineer and the parties lived happily together until 1917, when the first troubles of their married life began. Respondent said he was going to South Wales to get work and was absent for a fortnight. She heard however that he had not been to Wales, but he denied that the rumour was true. In January 1915, Respondent said he was going to stay with some friends near Malvern, but he never came back to petitioner. Then he was found living at Whitchurch with another woman, who had given birth to a child.

WORCESTERS’ DOGGED DEFENCE – LAST TO LEAVE NEUVE EGLISE - The special correspondent of “The Times” says:- “You know that we have fallen back from our positions in the Passchendaele area, where we have given the enemy most of the ground won in last years’ Flanders fighting. If you look at the map you will see why this retirement was compelled by the changed situation in the area of the Messines Ridge and below there. It must in any circumstances be unpleasant to give up ground which has been won in fighting at the cost of gallant lives, but it cannot be too often repeated or too clearly grasped that local topographical gains have little significance in the gigantic struggle now in progress. Today I have heard some details of the doings of troops which did stubborn fighting in the defence of Neuve Eglise, when some five separate German attacks in strength were beaten back. For two days some Worcester’s and King’s Royal Rifles held on to the Neuve Eglise positions at great odds and when the enemy more than once broke into the village they counter attacked and drove them back. The last man to leave the Neuve Eglise was the commanding officer of the Worcester’s, who declares that the German dead were literally piled in heaps before the positions his troops had defended and we know from many sources that the German casualties were terrible”.

Information researched by The Worcestershire World War 100 team