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BICKERSTETH (Rev. S.S., DD)
Morris Bickersteth 1891-1916, By His Father.
1st Ed., xi+155pp., portrait frontis., 9 plates, sketch & map. Cambridge: Printed for Private Circulation Only at the University Press.
1931
#69345
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Stanley Morris Bickersteth was educated at Rugby and Christ Church College, Oxford, and was commissioned in 1914 in the 15th (Service) Battalion, West Yorkshire Regt., the Leeds Pals. He was Killed in action at Serre on 1st July 1916, commanding "B" Company. He was twenty-five and is buried in Queens Cemetery, Puisieux. Fine memorial including extensive extracts from war letters 1914-16, training in the U.K. until December 1915, then briefly in Egypt before the battalion landed in France in March 1916. Private Bateson, who was within two feet of him when he was hit, told his brother (Rev. K. Julian F. Bickersteth, M.C.) what happened to the Company on 1st July: "Far from taking the first three German lines – their objective – the brave lads never reached – or only a few of them – the first German trench. After going ten yards they found the remainder of the 7th and 6th Platoons mixed up together, only a few left alive, just behind the rising ground. Morris gave the order to lie down for a moment to try and disentangle the living from the dead, then he looked round to see if any support was coming from the trenches behind, and at that moment a piece of shrapnel struck him in the back of the head. He just rolled over without a word or a sigh… what was left of the Battalion got back to Monk trench, 100 yards behind their first line trench, from which the attack started, finding it absolutely impossible to hold the front line." (In just a few minutes the Leeds Pals lost twenty-four officers and 504 other ranks, of whom fifteen officers and 233 men were killed.) Printed to coincide with his parents' golden wedding anniversary. Orig. blue cloth, gilt, VG with presentation inscrip. "To Bill & Vi Monier-Williams from Morris' Father & Mother on their Golden Wedding Day 21 June 1931 Samuel Bickersteth, Canterbury."
£145
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