Description

This is the story of the last year of WW1 and the daily life and battles of the 6th Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment. They fought numerous and often bloody actions and suffered the highest casualties of any year of the war. Of the 44 Officers and 757 Other Ranks killed during the entire war, 17 Officers and 359 Other Ranks were killed between January and November 1918.
Their first major action was the German Spring Offensive, which they fought resolutely, against overwhelming numbers of enemy troops and artillery. Five days of determined rear-guard fighting was halted just West of the River Ancre, 20 miles behind the original front line. There they consolidated and actively fought skirmishes on the front line culminating in the attack on Y Ravine at Beaumont Hamel in June. In August, the final push saw them attack Thiepval Ridge, Pozieres, Flers, Gauche Wood and on to Cambrai. The final major battle was at Neuvilly which lasted 10 days with the loss of 6 Officers and 81 Other Ranks.  But the very last fight was in the Mormal Forest near Locquignol on 4th November 1918.
Whilst the brave men of the 6th Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment are no longer with us, their experiences are captured on the pages of the war diaries, personal diaries and in the orders and operational reports; their hand-written notes still legible on the ‘dog-eared’ trench maps. This is their story, in their words.

A must read for anybody interested in the Dorsetshire Regiment and The Great War.

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