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3rd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment 10th Aug 1914 New Battalion  Siege of Kut al Amara If you can provide any additional information, please add it here. Want to know more about 3rd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment? There are:5231 items tagged 3rd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment available in our Library   These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War. Those known to have served with 3rd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment during the Great War 1914-1918. Gomes Alvaro Druce. Lt. Hammond George. Pte. Plested Herbert James. Cpl. (d.25th Feb 1919) Suller Alfred Edward. Pte. All names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List Records of 3rd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment from other sources. The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website. 1st of September 2023 marks 24 years since the launch of the Wartime Memories Project. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over this time. Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the Great War? Our Library contains many many diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text. Looking for help with Family History Research?    Please see Family History FAQ's Please note: We are unable to provide individual research. Can you help? The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web. If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation. Announcements 22nd April 2024     Please note we currently have a massive backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263973 your submission is still in the queue, please do not resubmit. Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to the Great War. If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted. We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates, add a comment or ask a question. If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page. World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great battalion regiment artillery Did you know? We also have a section on World War Two. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.   Cpl. Herbert James Plested Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (d.25th Feb 1919) Herbert Plested, born in 1892, was the 9th of 11 children of William Plested and Elizabeth Stretton. He was an agricultural labourer and lived in Shabbington with his parents and siblings. He served first with the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry. He was then moved to the 3rd Royal Berkshire Regiment, finally he was transferred to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and he became a Corporal. He was attached to the 111th Company of the Chinese Labour Corps. He died in the 41st Stationary Hospital, in Gailly, France and is buried in St Pierre War Cemetery, Amiens, France. Peta Millard Add to this record.   Pte. George Hammond 1st Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment Pte George Hammond joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment of Infantry in June 1914 shortly after his 18th birthday. A month later he was transferred to the 1st Battalion. In his civilian life he was a Porter of Fancy Leather Goods. George had originally joined the Special Reserves in February 1914 at Stratford and his medical history describes him as having a fair complexion, light brown hair and dark blue eyes. At 5' 5" tall and weighing only 108 lbs he was considered to be in fair physical shape with a fully expanded chest measurement of 33". He was based in Aldershot when war broke out and was soon sent to the front line with the British Expiditionary Force, moving to the 3rd Battalion on 8th August 1914 then back to the 1st Battalion on 4th May 1915. Just over a year later, fighting at Vimy Ridge, on 23rd of May 1916 George was seriously wounded, suffering gunshot wounds to his right knee and having to have part of his left forearm amputated before being sent back to England on the 23rd of July 1916. George spent the next year in hospital having his forearm re-amputated and operations on his right leg. Finally, fitted with an artificial limb he was discharged from the Army and released into his mothers care at 22 Every Street, Kingsland Rd, London N. At only 22 years of age George's life was over. Despite having grown to 5' 10" he now had an artificial hand and his right leg was virtually useless, wearing a caliper and a 5" high boot. Little is known of what happened next to George Hammond, but it appears he never married, and in the 1939 Register he can be found without any family and shown as a boarder in Shoreditch and described as having 'No Occupation, Disabled Ex-Soldier'. George passed away on the fifteenth of January 1947 at the age of 50 years. He had finally found work and was employed as a Time-Keeper. His death was a sad and lonely one at 79 Hows Street, Shoreditch, with Cause of Death stated as a) Pneumonia, b) Myocardial degeneration, and c) Influenza. His landlord found his body and caused it to be buried. This is my tribute to a Great Uncle I never knew and have never seen a photograph of. My Grandfather was separated from his brother and they never found one another, despite searching in the 1930's. It is thanks to DNA testing I have found my ancestor's family and feel a great sadness reading about a young man, proud to fight for his Country but ended up broken and lonely. God Rest Your Soul, Great Uncle George, not forgotten. Evelyn Threlfall Add to this record.   Lt. Alvaro Druce Gomes 3rd Btn. Royal Berkshire Regiment Alvaro Druce Gomes was commissioned into the 3rd Royal Berkshire Regiment on 6th May 1915 and was subsequently seconded to the 39th Machine Gun Corps in Grantham on 14th March 1916. While training at Grantham, he learned that there was an urgent requirement for a detachment to travel to Baghdad as part of a force being assembled to go to the immediate relief of General Townsend at Kut-al-Amarah. He later related: "The 13th Division had been moved to Mesopotamia to strengthen the force being assembled for the relief of the besieged garrison at Kut al Amara. The troops readied to fight their way up both banks of the river Tigris consisted of Royal Engineers, Gloucesters, Worcesters, Warwicks, South Staffords and the Machine Gun Unit, plus Artillery Units and Indian Cavalry and Infantry. On the right bank of the river we advanced towards the enemy in open line formation, in slightly undulating country of sand, with the river on our right and flooded marshes about a mile away on our left. On the left bank we were entrenched with the original force, but no advance could be made as the enemy was far superior in numbers and guns. The relief force therefore decided to attack on the right bank so as to relieve the left bank and then a final attack would be made simultaneously by both forces. Suddenly, as we were going over from one cover to another in sections, the enemy opened fire. They were entrenched about three to four hundred yards away. We were ordered to dig in and continued throughout the night in spite of flares. Our main body dug in too and we finally had a nest of trenches connected up. We next started digging out towards the enemy and it did not take us very long before we were within striking distance as it was easy digging in the sandy soil. Of course, we suffered fairly heavy casualties during this operation but we had gained valuable ground and realised that we could no longer advance in the open. We were eager to engage the enemy as General Townsend was invested since December 1915 and it was now about the end of March 1916. In the meantime, our divisional heavy artillery was engaging the enemy’s German heavy guns and especially two long range guns which gave us a great deal of trouble. Our light artillery only came into play when we were about to attack. With the light artillery in position, and with our machine guns firing overhead, we provided good cover for our advancing troops. The enemy attacked us as we were completing our advanced trenches and that night, after we had repulsed the enemy’s attack and with great loss to them, we were walking over the dead bodies of our comrades, about three deep in the front trench. We evacuated the dead and wounded as quickly as possible in case of another attack. After a couple of days, we attacked but unfortunately our artillery had not destroyed the enemy’s machine guns. Our men were caught by their machine gun cross fire but we rallied, got into their trenches and captured most of the machine guns. Backed by the overhead fire from our own artillery and machine guns, our infantry inflicted very heavy loss on the enemy and gained a good deal of ground. We advanced fairly rapidly on the right bank of the river Tigris and captured the enemy’s position not far from Kut-al-Amarah; several counter attacks by the enemy were repulsed. However, luck was against us as floods impeded any further advance and the garrison capitulated on 29th April 1916, after all their supplies had finished. In February 1917, we eventually captured Kut-al-Amarah after very intense fighting, with the Turks who were assisted by German troops. After we forced the Turks from the right bank of the river to the left bank at Kut-al-Amarah, they blew up their bridges. While we were making a pontoon bridge across the river, they repeatedly sent their planes over to bomb it, in order to cover their retreat. Their infantry made a very orderly retreat in spite of the terrific shelling and machine gun fire we were pouring into their ranks from across the river. After we crossed the river, the Turks left a strong force to fight a rear guard action. The Turks sent General Townsend to Turkey for safe custody. The Turks are exceptionally good fighters, especially at close quarters, and were supported by very accurate German artillery.” During these operations, we had to wear our spine pads and helmets at all the times otherwise one went down with sunstroke. The temperature in the shade reached 120 degrees, and there was no ice until after the capture of Baghdad." Mike Watkinson Add to this record. Recomended Reading. Available at discounted prices.

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