Category Archives: Other Regiments

Annie Neishe & Alfred William Neishe

Army, Commemorated name/s, Nurse, Other Regiments, Registered War Grave

Annie Neishe
V.A.D. Nurse

Division 80
Extension

CIMG2148

 

Annie Neishe  was the daughter of William and Jane Neishe, of “Elem”, Pilford Heath, Wimbourne, Dorset. The 1911 census indicates that Annie, then 24, was  domestic nurse. Her father was a gardener and her brother, then 17, was working in the gardens. The home address is given as The Gardens, Iwerne Minster, Blandford. In 1901 William Neishe was recorded as the Head Gardener at Caldy Manor in Cheshire. The family had moved around the country. The second daughter Minnie is recorded in the 1901 census. A further child had died. Upon Jane’s death in 1932 Minnie was the sole beneficary of her estate.

Annie’s is a registered war grave with a private memorial.  She is buried with her mother.  The headstone bears a commemoration to her brother and father.  Grave number 16489.

Annie died on 18th October 1918, aged 32.  The circumstances of her death are unknown.  There was a serious influenza epidemic at the time.  VAD nurses also worked very hard and for long hours, in a compromised state of health they  frequently  succumbed to illness.

 

Alfred William Neishe
Private 9764
5th Wiltshire Regiment

 Alfred William Neishe was the son of William and Jane Neishe and the brother of Annie.  He is commemorated on the headstone of Annie and her mothers grave.  He was killed in action at Gallipoli on 10th August 1915.  There had been very vicious fighting since the allied landing on 6th August, in conditions of intense heat.  On the 10 August a Turkish counter attack on Chunuk Bair almost succeeded. Alfred Neish may well have been involved in these actions. The 5th Wiltshires incured heavy losses on 10 August. Alfred has no known grave and is commemorated on the Helles Memorial to the Missing, Panel 156-158. Reading.

Lieutenant Kenneth Bickersteth Murchison

Army, Commemorated name/s, Other Regiments

Lieutenant Kenneth Bickersteth Murchison
2nd Battalion (attached to 8th)
Seaforth Highlanders

Division 47/48

Kenneth Bickersteth Murchison   is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial Panel 38.  He was aged 19 when killed in action on 26th August 1917.  He was killed during the Third Battle of Ypres, exact details of the incident in which he was killed are not yet known.
His name is commemorated on the family grave.

William James Mundy

Army, Commemorated name/s, Other Regiments, Passchendaele, Ypres

William James Mundy
Private G/9171
11th Battalion Queen’s Own (Royal West Surrey Regiment)

  Division 35

Mundy WJ photo

 

William James Mundy was the son of Mrs E. E. Mundy, of 28, Henry Street, Reading. His father H. Mundy was already dead at the time of his son’s death.  He was commemorated on a his family’s grave.  The 1911 census indicates that William was working as a barman at a hotel in Aldershot. William died on the 31st July 1917, the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres.

The Third Battle of Ypres began on 31st July 1917.  A bombardment had begun fifteen days earlier and over four million shells had been fired.  (One million had been fired prior to the Battle of the Somme).  At 3.50a.m. the assaulting troops of the Second and Fifth Armies, with a portion of the French First Army lending support on the left, moved forward, accompanied by 136 tanks.  The Tank Corps was only four days old.  Previously it had been known as the Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps, a name adopted for purposes of secrecy at their formation.  Preparations for the battle had taken place in dry weather but on the first day the weather broke and three-quarters of an inch (21.7mm) of rain soaked the battlefield.  Men and tanks moved forward behind the creeping barrage over ground churned and cratered by years of shelling.  The surface was softened by the rain but, for all that only two tanks bogged down at the commencement of battle although many ditched later.  A map was prepared by Major Fuller, Staff Intelligence Officer of the Tanks, of the ground over which the tanks were expected to attack.   Where he expected the ground to be marshy, he coloured the area blue.  What he saw appalled him, it was three-quarters of the battlefield.  He sent the maps to Haig’s GHQ so that the Commander in Chief could judge conditions for himself.  However, the map was intercepted by Charteris who refused to show it to the Commander in Chief on the grounds that it would depress him.  Only 48% of the tanks reached their first objective.  Although there was some progress in the early part of the day by late morning the familiar breakdown in communications between infantry and guns occurred.  At two in the afternoon the Germans began to counter attack with a heavy shelling and this together with the heavy rain turned the battle field into soupy mud.  A halt to the offensive was called until the 4th August.  However, Haig insisted that the attack had been “highly satisfactory and the losses slight”.  By comparison with the Somme, when 20,000 men had died on the opening day, only about 8,800 men were reported dead or missing.  The total wounded, including those of the French Army, numbered 35,000, the Germans suffered a similar number.  However, the Germans remained in command of the vital ground and committed none of their counter attack divisions.  Prince Rupprecht , in his diary recorded that he was “very satisfied with the results”.

It is not known exactly when and where William Mundy  was killed, he has no known grave and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Panels 45 & 47.  He was aged 25.