Albert HUDSON

FLERS & GUEUDECOURT 15-26 SEPTEMBER 1916, Trevor Pidgeon (Leo Cooper 2002; Pen & Sword Books Ltd.)

9th (Service) Bn. Kings Royal Rifle Corps

Having begun the attack on a fairly narrow front, 14th Division’s sector had now broadened out. From the First Objective, where it was only 650 yards wide, it had expanded to 1,000 yards at the Second Objective (Gap Trench). From now on it was gradually to widen even further to reach as much as 1,500 yards at the Third Objective (Bulls Road) lying ahead. The men of 42 Brigade – 9/Rifle Brigade and 5/King’s Shropshire Light Infantry in front, followed by 9/KRRC and 5/Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry – had suffered casualties even before arriving at Gap Trench. Now, leading the attack, they suffered more, but the widening front and consequent thinning of their formation may have saved them from even greater losses, especially east of Watling Street, where a German machine gun or guns at Point 91 in Gird Trench on their right front had already inflicted much damage . . . Parties of men had already pushed forward on either side of, and inside, the sunken course of Watling Street. They had attacked two German cannon – 77mm field guns belonging to the Sunken Road Section (Hohlwegzug) of 1/Battery, 7/Saxon Field Artillery Regiment, positioned just south of the junction with Bulls Road. In the encounter they had taken the full force of case-shot from these guns, commanded by Leutnant Kohl, son of a German general. Despite their losses, men of 9/KRRC under the command of Sergeant Elderfield, supported machine guns further back, crept forward close enough to pick off the crews. Others escaped, and in the end only Kohl and a few of his men were left to defend themselves with small arms fire. They finally disabled the guns and fled, but Elderfield’s men shot Kohl before he had gone 10 yards. Gravely wounded, he was dragged 200 yards along Watling Street by his companions before they abandoned him to die.

Elderfield and his party pursued them northwards, reportedly as far as Gird Trench, but must now have become conscious of the lack of support being given by their own side. The few men still around them, both Rifle Brigade and KRRC, were thinning out, their ranks still subjected to withering fire from the machine guns at Point 91 and elsewhere in Gird Trench to their east.

[Albert Hudson was killed on the 15th September 1916.]