The Tragic History of the 7th Leicestershire Regiment

Private Thomas Edwin West, 41647, 7th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment, was killed in action on 27 May 1918 during the Third Battle of the Aisne and was buried at Hermonville Military Cemetery.

Family report and Commonwealth War Graves Commission details

Early Life and Family

Thomas Edwin West was born before 14 May 1899 in Elham, Kent, the son of Thomas West and Edith Hogben, and was baptised at St Mary the Virgin, Elham, on 14 May 1899.[file:184] The 1901 census places him on Elham High Street, while in 1911 he was living at Magpie Cottages, Elham, still recorded simply as a scholar.[file:184] By 1917 the family address was Park Gate, Elham, the home later cited in the records of his death and burial.[file:184]

These details present Thomas as a young Kent village boy whose life followed the pattern of many rural Edwardian children until the war intervened.[file:184] He never married and left no children, so the surviving record of his life rests almost entirely in parish, family and military sources.[file:184] The report identifies him as a fourth cousin twice removed to the researcher, ensuring that his memory continues through family history as well as official commemoration.[file:184]

Military Service

Thomas enlisted at Dover between 1917 and 1918 and served as Private 41647 in the Leicestershire Regiment.[file:184] The report notes that he had previously been associated with the Northamptonshire Regiment, 4th Battalion, in 1917, before serving in the 7th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment, by the time of his death.[file:184] Such transfers were common in the later war, when manpower needs often led to men being moved between regiments and battalions to reinforce depleted units.[file:184]

The 7th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment, was a Service battalion raised in September 1914 and by 1918 was serving in 110th Brigade of the 21st Division.[web:195][web:193] The battalion had already seen heavy fighting earlier in the war, and sources on its wartime movements note that in 1918 it fought on the Somme, at the Lys, and then at the Battle of the Aisne.[web:196] By the spring of 1918 Thomas therefore belonged to a battle-worn infantry battalion within a brigade closely identified with the Leicestershire Regiment.[web:193][web:196]

Unit Context at the Time of Death

The military setting of Thomas West’s death was the Third Battle of the Aisne, known to the Germans as part of Operation Blücher, launched on 27 May 1918 against the French front between Soissons and Reims.[file:184] The British IX Corps, including 21st Division, had been moved into what was thought a quieter sector to rest after earlier fighting, but instead found itself in the path of one of the most devastating German assaults of the year.[file:184] The attack opened at about 1.00 a.m. with a massive bombardment of high explosive and gas shells, followed by a major infantry assault around dawn.[file:184]

Thomas’s own unit, the 7th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment, formed part of 110th Brigade in the centre of the 21st Division line.[file:184][web:193] The family report’s military notes explain that the brigade had taken over the Châlons-le-Vergeur sector between the River Aisne and the Aisne Canal on the night of 14/15 May 1918, leaving it directly exposed when the German assault began on 27 May.[file:184] Communication lines were shattered by the bombardment, the forward companies were overwhelmed, and the brigade was compelled to fall back under intense pressure as neighbouring formations on the left were swept away.[file:184]

The collapse of 62nd Infantry Brigade on the left exposed the 7th Leicesters even more severely, and the report states that the battalion suffered extremely heavy casualties as it too was forced into retreat.[file:184] The 6th and 8th Battalions of the Leicestershire Regiment, together with the divisional pioneers and engineers, fought bitter delaying actions as the remnants of the division attempted to withdraw towards Cormicy and Cavoy, later stabilising briefly between Bouvancourt and Hermonville.[file:184] By the end of 27 May 1918 the 110th Brigade had suffered catastrophic losses, with 52 officers and 1,378 other ranks lost, including 33 officers and 1,168 reported missing.[file:184]

This context is crucial to understanding Thomas’s death, because he was not lost in an isolated trench skirmish but in one of the most destructive single days experienced by the Leicestershire Regiment in 1918.[file:184][web:196] The battle notes show that the brigade’s all-Leicestershire character, with the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Battalions grouped together, meant the losses fell with particular intensity on men from the same regimental family.[file:184] Thomas thus died as part of a brigade-wide disaster that helped break the British line on the Aisne before the German advance finally outran its supplies and was checked.[file:184]

Thomas Edwin West died during one of the most shattering days in the history of the 7th Leicestershire Regiment, when the German Aisne offensive overwhelmed the exhausted British IX Corps sector.

Family report and battalion context

Circumstances of Death

Private Thomas Edwin West was killed in action on 27 May 1918 in France at the age of nineteen.[file:184][web:197] The date coincides exactly with the opening day of the German assault on the Aisne front, when the 7th Battalion was caught in the centre of the 21st Division’s collapsing sector.[file:184] The violence of that day, including sustained artillery fire, gas shelling, and close infantry attacks, explains the scale of casualties among his battalion and brigade.[file:184]

Because Thomas lies buried at Hermonville Military Cemetery rather than being commemorated as missing, it is likely that his body was recovered during or after the fighting and buried in the area to which the division fell back.[file:184][web:191] Hermonville became closely linked with the desperate rearguard fighting and subsequent withdrawals of late May 1918, and the report itself notes that the divisional line stabilised between Bouvancourt and Hermonville during the evening of 27 May before another retreat the following day.[file:184] His burial location therefore fits closely with the known route of the division’s withdrawal and resistance.[file:184][web:191]

Burial and Commemoration

Thomas was buried in Hermonville Military Cemetery, Marne, France, in grave III.B.3.[file:184][web:191] This cemetery contains First World War burials from the fighting in the area and lies north-west of Reims, close to the ground over which the 21st Division retreated and fought in the last days of May 1918.[web:191] His grave gives his parents as Thomas and Edith West of Park Gate, Elham, Canterbury, preserving the family connection within the official commemorative record.[file:184][web:197]

The family report records his entitlement to the Victory Medal, British War Medal and Memorial Death Plaque.[file:184] These items formed the standard package of commemoration for British soldiers who died in service overseas and would have been sent to his next of kin after the war.[file:184] In the absence of a longer adult life, these medals and his grave in France became the principal surviving symbols of his service and sacrifice.[file:184]

Legacy

Thomas Edwin West’s life was painfully short, taking him from village childhood in Elham to military service and death in one of the fiercest German offensives of 1918.[file:184] He was only nineteen when he died, one of many young infantrymen whose lives were cut short before marriage, parenthood, or settled working adulthood could begin.[file:184] His story embodies the cost paid by small Kent communities as well as by the hard-pressed front-line battalions that fought on the Western Front.[file:184]

Sources and Further Reading

• Compiled family report: Individual Report for Thomas Edwin West.[file:184]
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Thomas Edwin West.[file:184]
• The Long, Long Trail: Leicestershire Regiment.[web:195]
• Imperial War Museums: 7th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment in the Great War.[web:196]
• 110th Brigade (United Kingdom).[web:193]
• Hermonville Military Cemetery, Marne.[web:191]
• A Street Near You: Leicestershire Regiment casualties.[web:186]