Reginald Heath

Reginald served firstly with 1st Battalion Leicestershire Regiment entering theatre (France) 04/11/14 having been a reservist since 19/10/1911. He was transferred to 9th Battalion and on 20/11/1915 was promoted to lance corporal. On 01/04/1917 he was sentenced to 6 months detention with hard labour for 1) absenting himself without leave, 2) offering violence to a superior officer and 3) being drunk. He was released early and was with the battalion as it moved out of the front line during the night of 26th August 1917. Deep mud, rain, heavy clouds and constant enemy activity made fighting arduous. It took the unit over five hours to walk back two miles. Reginald and three other members of the battalion disappeared and are all commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial. John Morse

Nottingham Evening Post 24/3/1915 "GERMAN CHAINED TO A GUN. INCIDENT IN THE NEUVE CHAPELLE FIGHT. ... Writing from a convalescent home Bolton to his parents at Carlton, Private R. Heath states that he has been in five different hospitals — three in France and two in England —since March 10th, when he was in the big bayonet charge at Neuve Chapelle. 'I went through the attack all day,' he states, ' without a scratch, and then at night, when things had quietened down a bit, I stopped a piece of shrapnel shell in my left upper arm, which is not serious. It hit in one lump and came out in two different places, but did not catch any bones. I daresay you have read about the fight. It is supposed to be the biggest since the war began. The Germans were running with their arms up in the air. Our company captured two machine guns from them, and there was one man chained to the gun so he could not run away.'" Courtesy of Jim Grundy and his facebook pages Small Town Great War Hucknall 1914-1918 Neuve Chapelle (March 10th to 13th) was one of three costly but inconclusive allied offensives on the Western Front during the first half of 1915 (the others being at Aubers Ridge and Festubert). 40,000 Allied troops took part at Neuve Chapelle and suffered 7,000 British and 4,200 Indian casualties. David Nunn