8.3.15 (Ploegsteert): L/Cpl Redfern ‘C’ Company killed on 8th with working party.

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8th March 1915. Reveille 5-30 a.m. Went to wash up in a ditch nearby. The water was frozen over. We had to break the ice before we could wash (rather parky). We fell in at 7-30 a.m. to go as a fatigue party for the Engineers at Ploegsteert Wood. We were working just behind the firing line making corduroy paths.

Corduroy path through Ploegsteert Wood. Imperial War Museum © IWM (Q 11744).

These paths have all sorts of names ‘Bunhill Row’ etc. Plans are drawn of these paths just as though it was a town. All the time we were working there, stray bullets would come and shells would go whistling through the trees. C Company were doing their turn in the trenches that day. In the middle of the morning we got the news that Lc Corporal Redfern had been shot through the heart by a sniper. They buried him half an hour later in the cemetery in the wood.

Cemetery in Plugstreet Wood, May 1915. A view of several graves marked with wooden crosses and plaques in Ploegsteert Wood. Imperial War Museum © IWM (Art.IWM ART 4786).

We went for a walk in the morning in the wood, we saw something in a ditch. We touched it with a stick and there it was a dead German. We left at 1 o’clock for our billet. In Ploegsteert Wood the Somerset Light Infantry and Rifle Brigade were stationed. When we arrived back to our barn we had orders to pack up so as to be off next morning. We received our first mail in France here.

[2381 Pte. George Potter Bagshaw]

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L/Cpl 1470 Allen Redfern of Buxton who was the first man to be killed on active service. He is now buried in the original Plot I of Ploegsteert Wood Military Cemetery in Belgium.

1470 L/Cpl Allen Redfern a printer from Buxton, who was serving with “C” Company, was shot through the heart whilst on duty with a working party behind the lines; he was only 20 years of age. Allen was buried in Somerset Light Infantry Ground in Ploegsteert Wood and was the only 6th Battalion man to be buried in that cemetery.