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Description: | 213 ms letters to his family and other papers (including a 1914 pocket diary) relating his military career during the First World War covering service: with the 3rd Battalion Cheshire Regiment in the United Kingdom, August – September 1914, including his reaction to Army life; service in France after he had been commissioned into the 2nd Battalion, Cheshire Regiment, principally while attached to the 2nd Battalion, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment (18th Infantry Brigade, 6th Division) as a junior officer on the Western Front, October 1914 – February 1915, with useful illustrated descriptions of front line conditions, references to fraternization and a limited truce with the Germans over the Christmas period and to field punishment for drunkenness; service with the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards in the United Kingdom, March – August 1915; as a platoon commander and machine gun officer with the Battalion (3rd Guards Brigade, Guards Division)on the Western Front, August – October 1915 with references to the Battle of Loos and the Hohenzollern Redoubt; at the Guards Depot in England again after recovery from a wound, December 1915 – July 1916; with his Battalion again on the Western Front, July 1916 – January 1917 as company Lewis gun officer and second in command No 3 Company with good descriptions of the Battle of Ginchy, where he won the Military Cross and excellent illustrated references to the use of tanks during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, as well as graphic details of terrible conditions in the trenches before he was evacuated sick; with the 2nd (Reserve) Battalion Welsh Guards in the United Kingdom, April – August 1917. Also correspondence and other papers relating to his military career, 1919 – 1947, including service records, a 1933 pocket diary, 67 ms letters written during his service as Brigade Transport Officer at HQ 1st Guards Brigade, Constantinople with comments on the military and diplomatic situation during the Chanak crisis and life in Constantinople (1922 – 1923), orders relating to Operation Harpoon (the intended Allied landing at the Hook of Holland) and a photocopy of a report on the defence and evacuation of Boulogne, both May 1940, items relating to Major General Beckwith-Smith in Singapore (1942), correspondence (both photocopies and originals) with HRH The Duke of Windsor (1940 – 1947) and official letters kept while Commander 203 Sub Area British Forces in France (September 1945 – September 1946) which includes his recollections of the evacuation of Boulogne and correspondence with the author Lady Winifred Fortescue.
Cataloguer AC | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | 3rd Battalion Welsh Guards 1st Battalion Cheshire Regiment British Army Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment 2nd Battalion | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Fox-Pitt, William Augustus Fitzgerald | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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