To War with the Old Gent

An extensively researched account of an exceptional battalion at war "Perhaps you can try and imagine being faced with the prospect, on a cold Sunday evening in November, of rising from your sleeping bag at two-thirty the following morning to lead your men through hedges and over fields in an attack down to a canal bank two miles away, leaping into the icy water and paddling across the length of a cricket pitch on a flattened jerrycan, and then sitting on the far bank in your soaking uniform to help your soldiers across with ropes. To do this when subject to continuous machine-gun fire but with the possibility that if you are successful and survive, you may never need to fight another battle." Many of us had a relation who served in the Great War, the majority of those men defending trench lines or attacking from them. They undertook wiring parties and raids on enemy trenches, but well over half their time was in reserve, in training and repairing trenches, tracks and roadways. They endured bitter cold, terrible rains, deep mud and moments of terror. Some suffered from trench foot or shell shock. They were ordinary men doing extraordinary things, all for their fellow soldiers, their country and their King. The '1/8th Worcesters' rose to the challenges to become one of the most effective infantry battalions of the War. This is their story, written with the help of letters, diaries, memoirs and newspaper articles, as well as conversations with the surviving sons of two of the most bemedalled young officers.