A Small Hamlet Near Wedmore, Who Served With The 1st Battalion

 

19th June 2018 marks the 100th Anniversary of the death of a young soldier from Sand, a small hamlet near Wedmore, who served with the 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry on the Western Front.

26728 Lance Corporal Albert Patch, 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry (1898-1918).

Albert Patch was born on 17th April 1898 at Old Wood at Sand, the son of Edwin Patch (1879-1953) and his wife Bessie (1880-1964) nee Pimm. He had four brothers – Fred, Herbert, George and Edwin– and four sisters – Alice, Edith May, Ethel and Hilda. On 15th May 1898 he was baptised in Wedmore. In April 1911 12 year-old Albert was attending Wedmore Board School and after leaving he was later employed by Gabriel Puddy delivering coal and later animal feed to local farms and smallholdings on the Isle of Wedmore.

19 year-old Albert Patch was conscripted into the wartime British Army at Weston- super-Mare during early 1917. Following basic training he was sent overseas on 18th June 1917 to serve on the Western Front, as part of a reinforcement draft destined for the 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry. This ‘hostilities only’ unit had been raised at Taunton in August 1914 as part of K1 – the first wave of Kitchener’s New Army – and after training at Aldershot and Godalming had landed in France on 21st May 1915 at Boulogne. The Somersets quckly moved to near Ypres where during June it understudied the experienced 1/5th Battalion North Staffordshire Regiment in 46th Division in a quiet sector of the frontline trenches. It later fought at Hooge and then the second Battle of Bellewaarde and then served in and out of the frontline trenches until the end of the year. It moved to the Ypres Salient early in January 1916. The 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry took part in the Battle of the Somme and early the following year took part in the Battle of Arras. Between May - August 1917 the Somersets enjoyed a comparatively quiet four month period of ‘normal’ trench warfare, during which ‘patrol work and the maintenance of defences when in the front line, and training when out of it, occupied the Battalion from morning till night at times ... and kept it free from the possibility of becoming stale.’

The 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry, part of 43rd Brigade in 14th (Light) Division, was deployed near Bus les Artois in June 1917 when Private Albert Patch joined the unit. On 10th July the battalion left this quiet sector and spent the remainder of the month at Bailleul near the Belgian border. Following training at Caestre, it moved into Belgium and on 17th August was occupying Dickesbusch Huts where the 14th (Light) Division received orders to carry out an attack north-west of Ypres – a small-scale operation following the Battle of Langemarck - to reduce enemy strong points in the area. Since 31st July 1917 when the Passchendaele Campaign or Third Battle of Ypres had begun, the Ypres Salient had witnessed intense fighting. On the night of 20/21st August the 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry took over the frontline in the Inverness Copse sector from the 7th Battalion Rifle Brigade. It was Albert’s first taste of a major battle on the Western Front.

43rd Brigade was scheduled to attack on 22nd August, with the objective of securing the line from Herenthage Chateau to the southern edge of Glencorse Wood, with II Corps’ heavy artillery providing support. 4 tanks were also deployed in support to overcome enemy strong points. At 7.5am the Somersets ‘went over the top’ when the barrage lifted and quickly reached the edge of Inverness Copse as planned before 1 and 4 Companies secured their final objectives. The Somersets had suffered heavy casualties, however, and as it came under heavy German attack required immediate reinforcement. e remnants of the battalion and elements of the 10th (Service) Battalion Durham Light Infantry beat off three enemy counterattacks throughout the day, before the exhausted survivors were withdrawn into support that night at the western edge of the wood. On the night of 23/24th August continuous shelling was experienced – the heaviest ever encountered by the battalion. At dawn on the 24th the surviving Somersets beat off a fourth determined German counterattack by “Sturmtruppen” that reached the support line position. By 10am on 24th August the battalion had been reduced to three officers and command of the area was handed over to the 10th (Service) Battalion Durham Light Infantry who were driven back at 12.20 from Inverness Copse apart from its western edge. On the 25th August the battalion and the rest of 43rd Brigade was withdrawn to rest and rebuild at Dominion Camp near Busseboom. The 6th Somersets, when the ‘butcher’s bill’ was totalled up in billets at Le Roukloshille, had lost 6 officers killed, 9 wounded and 2 missing, as well as 44 Other Ranks killed, 213 wounded and 74 reported missing. The 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry spent the remainder of the year alternating between duty in the frontline, in support and in reserve near Ypres. Even when training out of the frontline its men provided working or carrying parties during which casualties from enemy artillery were not uncommon.

The 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry and the rest of 14th (Light) Division spent a largely uneventful late winter and early spring of 1918, with heavy rain and snow ‘once again turning the front-line and communication trenches into filthy ditches, foul with deep, sticky mud, though covered in some sectors, drier than others, with duck-boards’. Early in January the 14th (Light) Division took over a sector of the frontline from the French Army, with 43rd Brigade deployed just north of La Verte Chasseur. The 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry’s sector of the frontline near La Folie came under intense bombardment at 4.30am on 21st March 1918 from guns of all calibre, with the a mixture of mustard gas and high explosive shells raining down on their position. By 8.30am all telephone wires to the rear were cut and the dense fog cloaking the defences made visual signalling impossible completely isolating the battalion from help. The Germans attacked with massed infantry through the dense fog cloaking the battlefield shortly before 10am, quickly overwhelming or surrounding the detachments in the outpost line and quickly closing up with the main line of resistance which had been hurriedly manned. The isolated forward companies, occupying strong points quickly surrounded by the enemy, held out until mid afternoon, but one by one they eventually succumbed to intense enemy pressure with the last being captured at 5pm. The Support Company and Battalion HQ had only just manned a strongpoint when a runner arrived at 10.20am reporting the enemy had penetrated in the battalion’s frontline. By 10.30 the leading German troops were advancing around both flanks of the battalion. At 11.10am the Adjutant, two runners and one signaller, fought their way clear to Brigade HQ to warn it of the German advance. The 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry – which had started the day with a strength of 20 officers and 540 Other Ranks – had ceased to exist as a fighting unit apart from these men. A handful of survivors who had escaped death or capture were attached to the 9th (Service) Battalion Scottish Rifles, which withdrew to Jussy the following day and then under heavy enemy pressure further back. At Estree St Denis the unit was re-formed from 43rd Brigade Pioneers, transport details, NCOs and men returned from leave and divisional and Reinforcements Camp. It is likely that Private Albert Patch was one of these men away from the unit on 21st March or far more improbably was one of the fortunate men to escape. It occupied billets at Nampty before briefly seeing action on 4/5th April near Villers Bretoneaux. On 14th April it ceased to be a separate unit when the battalion was amalgamated at Reglinghen with the 5th (Service) Battalion Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. On 29th April the composite battalion was in turn broken up and the following month 14th Division was reduced to a training cadre. The 6th Somersets were transferred to 16th Division that returned to England in June 1918 for reconstruction.

The officers, NCOs and Other Ranks still on the strength of the 6th (Service) Battalion Somerset Light Infantry did not all return home, with these men being distributed to other battalions of the regiment in action in France and Flanders. Lance Corporal Patch was in a reinforcement draft sent to the 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry on 17th May 1918. This regular infantry battalion, part of 11th Brigade in the 4th Division, had seen heavy fighting on the Western Front since landing at Le Havre on 22nd August 1914, including the Battles of Mons, Le Cateau. It fought during the Second Battle of Ypres, as well as serving in and out of the frontline trenches, during 1915. The 1st Somerset Light Infantry suffered crippling losses during the Battle of Albert – the opening day of the Somme campaign – and later again during the Battle of Transloy as the offensive dragged on into the late autumn and early winter. During 1917 it took part in the Battle of Arras and was again heavily committed during the Passchendaele Campaign. The 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry, under the command of Lt.-Colonel Vivian Majendie, after having been rebuilt once again following the Passchendaele campaign, endured the bitterly cold and uncomfortable winter of 1917-18, with the frontline trenches transformed into muddy swamps by rain and melting snow. Although heavily shelled while holding frontline trenches north of the River Scarpe near Arras, it was not directly attacked on 21st March when the Imperial German Army launched its spring offensive. It had been deployed in April near Busnes, north-west of Bethune holding the frontline running along the Le Bassee Canal facing northwards – the furthest west to which the British frontline had been driven back by the German advance. Following the capture of Riez de Vinage, a small wooded village lying to the north of the canal and north-east of Mont Bernenchon, by the battalion on 14-16th April (which cost it 215 casualties) the sector was generally quiet and the unit was not called upon to beat o renewed German attacks on 18th April further to the north during the Battle of Bethune.

The 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry enjoyed a largely quiet life during May and early June 1918, with the British frontline running along the Le Basse Canal remaining static. Work continued each night on improving the defences and building new communication trenches. On 8th June the battalion was relieved and went into reserve in Cense la Vallee where it carried out uninterrupted training, apart from when 10 German 5.9inch shells landed near the billets and wounded two men. On the night of 13/14th June 1918 the 1st Somerset Light Infantry came out of reserve along with the rest of 11th Brigade and relieved the 10th Brigade on the right flank of the divisional sector of the frontline. It took over the trenches held by the 1st Battalion Seaforth Highlanders with only one man wounded during the changeover. B Company was deployed in the frontline, with C Company in support. e Light Company was deployed along the Canal Bank with A Company in the front and support trenches in the second defensive system. Work immediately began on improving the existing defensive positions despite intermittent high explosive and gas shelling that continued over the next few days. Although delaying progress on deepening and improving the front and support trenches, work continued unabated. On 17th June the companies were rotated between their positions in the frontline and reserve and four ‘very keen and willing, and wishing to learn’ US Army NCOs, attached to the battalion to learn about intelligence work, were shown the frontline. Lance Corporal Albert Patch died during the night of 19/20th June 1918, when the German artillery shelled the British frontline trenches and the nearby bridges over the Le Basee Canal. As the Adjutant recorded in the War Diary the following day: ‘Enemy artillery showed increased activity all night, shelling approaches to trenches, and crossing of canal. Otherwise all quiet.’ Albert was the only fatality reported that night with 3 Other Ranks also being wounded. Although a quiet month June cost the battalion as a whole 45 battle casualties – 7 men killed, 2 men gassed and 36 wounded.

20 year-old Lance Corporal Albert Patch was laid to rest in Mont-Bernanchon British Cemetery, near Bethune, Pas de Calais in France (Grave I.J.4) alongside 168 other casualties of the First World War. An announcement that appeared in the Wedmore Parish Magazine in August 1918 recorded: ‘Lance-Corp, Albert Patch, of Old Wood, has made the supreme sacrifice in giving his life for his Country. To his parents we offer our truest sympathy, and acclaim with honour and respect the soldier hero.’ For his services his grieving parents – Edwin and Bessie – later received a named British War Medal and Victory Medal and Memorial Plaque and Memorial Scroll. A cigarette case and watch belonging to Albert Patch were later returned to his family by Sergeant H. Gas who had been standing next to him when he had been killed.