Tag Archives: Ploegsteert

On this day 8th March 1915

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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.

Courdroy pathCorduroy 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.

Ploegsteert graveCemetery 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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RedfernL/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.

Redfern 21470 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.

On this day 7th March 1915

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On MARCH 7th at 5.30 p.m. we were under heavy shell and rifle fire.  I was put on snipers duty, at this time I was only 45 yards from the German sniper.  On our return the Germans were shelling the place we came through this place is called Ploegsteert, at this place churches and houses have been burnt down and shelled.

[1415 L/Cpl. Alfred Afford]

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7th March 1915. It is a Sunday. What a Sunday one never to be forgotten. We had the order at 5-00 a.m. to stand bye. We stood for an hour and then we began to fill sand bags to strengthen the trenches. As you passed certain places a bullet would come whizzing past your head into a tree nearby. That place would be marked by a sniper and had you stopped just in that place it would have meant that you would receive that bullet.

Soon after breakfast word came ‘stretcher bearers wanted’; a man had got killed with a sniper just behind us. He had been out since August. Hard lines half an hour after being killed he was buried. All the men worked just as though they were in ordinary times.

After dinner the order came down the line ‘At 3-30 p.m. the artillery on the left will begin to bombard German trenches, be ready for attack if necessary’. Exact to the minute the artillery began. What with the noise of the artillery, maxims and rifles it was something never to be forgotten.

When filling sandbags it was a common occurence to put your shovel into a dead German. In this wood on the 19th of December there were 2,000 casualties when the English drove the Germans out of the wood.

We left the trenches about 4-30. On our way through the wood we passed the English burial ground. It is a piece of ground railed round, full of graves with wooden crosses over the graves, all the graves being well cared far. A sight once seen never forgotten. On our way back to our billet we passed many graves by the road side. In the village of Ploegsteert which is just behind the wood, there were many houses wrecked by shell fire, the Church in particular. The roads here are in an awful state, for where the shells drop it leaves a great hole and you can’t tell there is a hole there because it is full of mud. When you drop up to the knees in mud you feel inclined to swear. We got back to our billets about 6 o’clock for a meal of bully beef and biscuits.

[2381 Pte. George Potter Bagshaw]

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The man killed on this day was 7420 L/Cpl. Henry Miller of the 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry.

7420 Henry Miller

Henry was from Chard in Somerset and was a pre War Regular who was stationed at Verne Citadel in Portland Weymouth in the 1911 Census.