223888 Pte. Eustace Bates British Army 2nd Dragoon Guards from:Aldershot (d.1st Sep 1914) 6328 Private Eustace Bates was killed aged 25 on the 1st of September 1914, in the Picardie village of Néry. The village was the site of a largely cavalry-versus-cavalry action early in World War; which occurred as the overwhelmed British Expeditionary Force retreated from Mons in August 1914. Eustace Bates was in the 2nd Dragoon Guards (The Bays) part of the British 1st Cavalry Brigade. He would fall that fateful Friday along with 17 of his comrades in ‘The Bays’ – the exact details of his death at Néry are not recorded.
The British Cavalry and their Royal Horse Artillery battery at Néry were caught largely unawares, but managed to repel a surprise attack by the German 4th Cavalry Division (twice the number of cavalrymen and guns). The British defence against the odds resulted in the stemming of the German cavalry advance, the capture of 12 German guns and three Victoria Crosses awarded to soldiers of L Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, as well as numerous other decorations.
Eustace was the son of a soldier, although he would not have known him; as his father (a retired bandmaster of the 2nd Battalion Wiltshire Regiment) died shortly after Eustace was born in the Sabathu Cantonment, India – his father was aged 40. His father, Robert David Yates,
was originally from Canada; he had joined the 100th Regiment of Foot in 1864, whilst they were stationed in Malta (probably as a drummer boy aged 13). Robert eventually transferred to the Wiltshire Regiment whilst stationed in India.
Prior to his military service the 1901 census records him as being a pupil at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Chelsea, London. Eustace Bates was then recorded in the 1911 census as serving as a private in the “The Bays†- well before the outbreak of the Great War. The regiment would leave Aldershot and embark for France in August 1914 via troopship from Southampton docks.
Eustace was not married and his listed next of kin was his mother Jane Bates (nee Fletcher). She would live till 1930 and died not far from where she was born in North Lincolnshire. Eustace was the youngest of eight children (although not all eight seemed to have survived to childhood).
|