Monday 1 January 2018

New Year Round-Up


Tuesday 1st January 1918

On this fourth New Year at war your correspondent has received messages from each of our local units serving at the front, including the Bedfordshire Yeomanry and the East Anglian Royal Engineers, now renamed 483rd Field Company, Royal Engineers. They are stationed as follows:
  • 1st Battalion: at San Giorgio delle Pertiche in Italy, undertaking training;
  • 2nd Battalion: in a support area near Stirling Castle outside Ypres;
  • 4th Battalion: in front line trenches near Villers-Plouich on the old Cambrai battlefield; it has had the dubious honour of having the regiment’s first casualty of 1918 - Private Arthur Woodham from Northampton having been killed;
  • 1st/5th Battalion: marching to Selmeh in Palestine, three miles east of Jaffa, to occupy bivouacs;
  • 6th Battalion: in trenches near Hollebeke south-east of Ypres;
  • 7th Battalion: training at Claude Chappe Camp at Roesbrugge-Haringe, north of Poperinge;
  • 8th Battalion: has marched to billets in Bailleulmont from the front line trenches near Ayette. The adjutant reports “the roads were in a bad condition owing to frost. The march was done in good time by the battalion and no men fell out during the march”;
  • Bedfordshire Yeomanry: at Mesnil-Bruntel on the east bank of the River Somme directly west of Saint-Quentin working on the camp, erecting stabling, hutments etc.;
  • 483rd Field Company, Royal Engineers: at Bertincourt, east of Bapaume, working on defences
Sources: X550/2/5; X550/3/wd; X550/5/3; X550/6/8; X550/7/1; X550/8/1; X550/9/1; WW1/WD2; WW1/WD3

(1) a now depopulated Arab village called Salama, today represented by Salameh Street in the Kfar Shalem neighbourhood of Tel Aviv)

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