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In August 1914 the 1st Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment were
amongst the small professional British Army who gathered and
prepared for a war that would ‘be over by Christmas’. With a
long and proud history, dating back to 1688, the regiment’s
fighting men had already served through numerous wars and
rebellions over and above long periods on garrison duties in the
‘Fever Isles’, the New World, and throughout the expanding
British Empire. So when war was declared the ‘Old Contemptibles’
of the 1st Battalion would find themselves heavily engaged in
more intense fighting during the first three months of the Great
War, as it came to be known, than many of the newly raised
‘Service’ battalions would experience during their entire
existence.
Despite heavy casualties, atrocious conditions, and a steep
learning curve, they remained professional and stoic through the
early fire and movement battles and then the stagnant, arbitrary
nature of trench warfare. They endured pitched battles, heavy
shelling, snipers, gas attacks, fended off overwhelming numbers
of enemy troops, and carried their bayonets across no man’s land
into the seething infernos of machine gun and artillery
barrages. This is the first part of their story, from their
first defiant defence amongst the slag heaps at Mons, through to
the ferocious fighting during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
By integrating a wide variety of official and personal
sources, supported by maps, and personalised with individual
stories and photographs, Steven Fuller brings the fascinating
and extraordinary history of this distinguished battalion and
it’s ‘Soldier Lads’ to life. |
