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
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