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13th (Wandsworth) Battalion, East Surrey Regiment
13th (Wandsworth) Battalion, The East Surrey Regiment was raised at Wandsworth on the 16th of June 1915 by the Mayor and Borough and was adopted by the War Office on the 28th of August 1915. After initial traning close to home they moved to Witley in September and joined 41st Division. In October they transferred to 118th Brigade, 39th Division at Barrossa Barracks, Aldershot, returning to Witley in November. On the 23rd of February 1916 they moved to Blackdown and transferred to 120th Brigade, 40th Division and underwent final training. They proceeded to France, landing at Le Havre on the 4th of June 1916, the division concentrating near Lillers. They went into the front line near Loos and were later in action in The Battle of the Ancre on the Somme. In 1917 they saw action during The German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, The capture of Fifteen Ravine, Villers Plouich, Beaucamp and La Vacquerie and The Cambrai Operations, including the capture of Bourlon Wood in November.
On the 16th of February 1918 they transferred to 119th Brigade, still with 40th Division.
They fought in The Battle of St Quentin and The Battle of Bapaume on the Somme then the The Battle of Estaires and The Battle of Hazebrouck in Flanders, suffering heavy losses. On the 5th of May the battalion was reduced to cadre strength and on the 3rd of June transferred to 34th Division, then on the 17th to 39th Division and on the 30th to 7th Brigade, 25th Division. They returned to England and went to Lowestoft, where the battalion was reconstituted by troops transferring from the 15th East Surreys. On the 3rd of November 1918 the battalion was disbanded in England.
16th Oct 1915 The Derby Scheme
16th October 1915 Reorganisation
1st Dec 1915 Derby Scheme Armlets
11th Sep 1915 Last day of Derby Scheme Recruitment
10th Jan 1916 Group System Reopens
9th February 1916 Call Ups
1st May 1916 On the Move
5th May 1916 On the Move
8th May 1916 Concentration
9th May 1916 Orders
10th May 1916 Orders
11th May 1916 Preparations
12th May 1916 School of Instruction
13th May 1916 Postponement
14th May 1916 Trench Raid
15th May 1916 Instruction
17th May 1916 Gas Alert
18th May 1916 Orders 
12th August 1916 In Reserve
5th September 1916 Reliefs
13th Sep 1916 Instructions
15th Sep 1916 Orders
18th Sep 1916 Reliefs
19th Sep 1916 Reliefs Complete
30th December 1916 March Table B.O.O.52
27th Nov 1917 Congratulations
30th Nov 1917 Congratulations
31st of March 1918 Relief Completed
1st Apr 1918 Reliefs Complete
2nd Apr 1918 Moves
3rd Apr 1918 Quiet
4th Apr 1918 Quiet
5th Apr 1918 Orders
6th Apr 1918 Reliefs Completed
7th Apr 1918 Reorganisation
9th Apr 1918 In Action
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Pte. Frank Martin 13th (Wandsworth) Btn. East Surrey Regiment  Frank Martin, East Surrey Regiment was a PoW during WW1
He was captured on 8th of May 1917 at Fresnoy, France while they were defending Fresnoy against a massive German counterattack. Frank was one of 420 missing.
Bob Nunn sent me a photo which shows him with two other soldiers with Kr. Gifhorn written the back. In the photo, he is the man on the right as viewed wearing 13th East Surrey’s Wandsworth Battalion cap badge. Kr. is the German abbr. for Kreiss, a Government area. Regardless, Gifhorn is fixed and is on Luneburger Heath.
During the Great War the prisoners in Hannover area were administered by X Army Corps and it's area contained some huge Mannschaftslager such as Soltau on Luneburger Heath which, to get a scale of the challenge here, held 35,000 men but had some 50,000 registered from there and assigned to other Work Camps in the area. After capture Frank was recorded at the following camps: 23rd of June 1917 at Dulmen, 11th Aug 1917 at Limburg and 24th of November 1917 at Hameln.
Hameln was a parent camp in X Corps administrative zone and had many attached work camps. Kr. Gifhorn may have been home to one of the attached work camps. There was a PoW camp in Kreis Gifhorn in WW1, 1.7 km down the "Lagerweg" in Rádersloh on the south side ( coordinates 52.715673 10.382309 )
The postcard photographs were taken by a local photographer 'Frau Anna Niewerth, Gamsen kastoft, Kr Gifhorn'.
The camp was divided by a barbed wire fence. The figures on the right of the fence are possibly Russian prisoners with British on the left. Spaced out above the barbed-wire mesh are several strands of wire, which appear to be electrified!
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Pte. Albert John "Wrecker" Taylor 7th Battalion East Surrey Regiment Looking into my grandfather's contribution to the war, Albert Taylor recieved three medals, My Auntie Ann has these. As far as I can work out, he served in 7th, 13th and 8th Battalion. He was engaged in France on 1st of June 1915.
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Pte. William Henry Smart 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment  My grandfather William Smart is a World One soldier from Hull. He fought in the lesser known campaigns of the War. The Macedonian Campaign in Greece 1916-1917 and in the North Russian Intervention in 1918-1919 before being finally demobbed in September 1919 nearly a year after the Western Front Armistice. This is his story.
The story is cobbled together from desk research, online records and my mother’s memories
William Henry Smart was born 1895 in Hull. At the start of the hostilities in 1914 William was working as a groom and joined up in May 1915, just before his 20th birthday, joining the East Riding Yeomanry. His training took place on the Beverley Westwood and he was transferred into the 2nd Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment becoming a lance corporal in August 1916.
The 2nd battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment was in India at the start of the war but returned to serve with gallantry in France at the Battles of Loos and Ypres in 1915 as part of the 28th Division. At the end of 1915 it was shipped, firstly to Alexandria in Egypt and then to Salonika, Greece at the start of 1916.
My grandfather set sail from Davenport in September 1916 and arrived in Salonika in October where he was almost immediately transferred to the 2nd Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment.
The Regiment took part in the Macedonian Campaign. After preparing the port of Salonika for defence, the troops moved up country to Lake Dorian and The Struma Valley.
Whilst the lines were steady and little fighting took place, the conditions, however, were terrible. Boiling hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. Malaria proved to be a serious drain on manpower during the campaign. In total the British forces suffered 162,517 cases of the disease and in total 505,024 non-battle casualties.
William Smart was one of these statistics and he was hospitalised firstly with malaria and then a serious ear infection and anemia.
He was finally invalided, to be sent, home in late November 1917. He set sail from Itea in Southern Greece, arriving in England in March 1918. Although he stated on his record he was past fit to service in France or Italy.
He made it back to Hull and in on 12th of September 1918 he married my grandmother Catherine Witty.
If he thought his war was over he had to think again! In July he was posted to the 13th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment and transferred once more into the 11th Battalion East Sussex in September 1918 for one more final adventure.
On 18th of September 1918, as part of the 236th Brigade, he set sail from Leith to Murmansk, for Northern Russian Expedition. This was part of the Allied Intervention in Russia after the October Revolution. The intervention brought about the involvement of nearly 30,000 Allied troops in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement. While the movement was ultimately defeated, the Allied forces fought notable ending defensive actions against the Bolsheviks in the battles of Bolshie Ozerki, allowing them to withdraw from Russia in good order. The campaign actually lasted from 1918, during the final months of World War I, to 1920.
My grandfather survived the campaign returning on the SS Toloa, landing back in the UK on 26th August and was finally demobbed on on 4th September 1919.
He lived until 1974, having two sons, one of whom, Roy Smart, served in WW2 and is also a D-Day veteran and twin daughters, Margaret and Patricia, who is my mum.
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Pte. William Charles Frank Palmer 13th (Wandsworth) Battalion East Surrey Regiment William Palmer is my grandfather. I know very little about his service during WW1.
I know that he was awarded the Victory Medal and the British War Medal
He was born in Southwark on 2nd February 1899, he married Edith May Bull on 26th June 1926, and died in 1986 at St John's Hospital in Battersea
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Pte. Leonard Alfred Thorpe 13th Battalion East Surrey Regiment My grandfather, Leonard Thorpe was aged 16 when he signed up at Wandsworth on 13/07/1915 to the East Surrey Regiment. He was immediately assigned to the 13th (Wandsworth) Battalion. Moving to Le Havre in April 1916.
During action on 24th of April 1917 he is shot in the right wrist, leading to amputation. He is sent home on the Hospital Ship Essequibo on 1st of May 1917 before being honourably discharged on 17th of May 1917. It is believed that he saw action at the Battle of Ancre and was wounded on the assault of the town of Villers Plouich. He died in 1977. May he rest in peace, never forgotten.
He earned the Silver War Badge, Victory Medal & British War Medal
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2nd Lt. Cecil John de_Beaurepaire 13th (Wandsworth) Battalion East Surrey Regiment  In 1914, Cecil at 14 was already 5'11", and had achieved success on the football and cricket fields at a representative level. This enabled him in August 2015 to enlist and he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the 13th (Wandsworth) Battalion, East Surrey Regiment at the age of 15. He was the youngest officer in the British Army for WW1. He did not lie about his age.
Cecil's brother, Percival was also a Lieutenant in the 13th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment and was wounded.
Cecil should have been in Year 9 at school, instead he managed to survive, and lead fully grown men, for nearly a year at the front (including the Battle of the Ancre during the Somme Offensive) before being wounded in April 1917. He was initially hit by a machine gun, on advancing upon German trenches at Villers-Plouich. We presume that whilst wounded he was also gassed.
Overcoming very long odds of gas and gunshot wounds to survive through rear aid centres he was repatriated to England where he spent a year recovering in one of the many hospitals established to receive the 100,000s of wounded.
During this time, he not only managed to nearly memorise the dictionary which gave him a lifelong edge in Scrabble, he also met his wife (and nurse) Gladys. Gladys like many young women throughout the Empire enlisted as a nurse and looked after Cecil during his year in hospital.
Gladys was the daughter of William Taylor, Queen's Grand Bargemaster of The Worshipful Company of Watermen and Lightermen and owner of one of England's largest barging businesses at the time. As the story goes, he did not approve of the match between his very eligible daughter and a disabled youth of 18, whose education had ceased at 15.
Suffering from the English cold and damp with half a lung, Cecil and Gladys left for Bermuda and ultimately came to Australia. He passed away in 1975.
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Pte. Albert Edward Bance MM 13th Btn. East Surrey Rgt. (d.26th November 1917) My great grandfather, Pte Albert Bance MM, served in the 13th Btn East Surrey Regiment in WWI. He died on 26th November 1917 in the Battle of Cambrai. I know he was fighting around Bourlon Wood and that's where I believe he was killed. I would like to find detailed information about this battle.
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