Dorset soldiers who died in a gas attack remembered in Belgium trip

Private Alexander William 'Will' Sanders of the Dorsetshire Regiment, who came from Shipton Gorge near Bridport, lost his life on the Western Front at the infamous Hill 60 near Ypres in Flanders.

Private Sanders died on May 2, 1915, along with around 150 of his comrades, as a result of the second ever gas attack mounted by the Germans.

His great-niece Barbara Montgomery, from Rutherglen near Glasgow, travelled to the Keep Military Museum in Dorchester to find out more about her great-uncle Will.

The visit led to her trip to Hill 60 - the place where Will Sanders lost his life, aged just 21.

Barbara laid a wreath at Hill 60, accompanied by a group of members of the local branch of the Western Front Association.

The story of the gas attack starts on May 1, 1915, at which time the First Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment was holding part of the front line at Hill 60, a large spoil heap from the construction of the nearby cutting for the Ypres-Comines railway line.

At 7.15pm, before the sentries could give the alarm, thick white and yellow clouds of gas were shot out of cylinder nozzles from the German trenches opposite.

What followed is described in this graphic extract from John Keegan's The First World War (1998): “On May 1, when the soldiers of the First Battalion of the Dorset Regiment clung to the firestep of their trenches as gas seized their throats and the German infantry pounded towards them across no man's land, the scene must have been as near to hell as this earth can show.

“The situation was saved by a young officer, Second Lieutenant Kestell-Cornish, who seized a rifle and, with the four men remaining from his platoon of 40, fired into the gas cloud to hold the Germans at bay…… The line was held by the Dorsets' almost inhuman devotion to duty and the Ypres Salient, though pushed back to within two miles of the city, was thereafter never dented.”

Robin Kestell-Cornish, an old boy of Sherborne School, was awarded the Military Cross.

The names of three of the four riflemen who held off the German attack at Hill 60 are known. They were Private Mullins, Lance Corporal Sunderland and Corporal Webb.

The identity of the fourth Dorset man will never be known, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that it might have been Will Sanders.

Captain Colin Parr MBE, who has been the Curator of the Keep Military Museum in Dorchester and a member of the Dorset & South Wiltshire Branch of the Western Front Association, said: “Sadly, Will Sanders was never recovered from this small but very significant hill and so his name is engraved as one of the missing of the Great War on the magnificent but extremely emotionally inspiring monument, The Menin Gate.

“During the commemoration ceremony at the main German bunker on Hill 60, which marks the limit of exploitation by Allied Troops in the Great War, Barbara Montgomery not only laid her wreath but also planted a poppy cross with her great-uncle's name written upon it.”

After the visit, Barbara said: “It was a privilege to be the first family member to visit Hill 60 in the 98 years since Will died there, to be able to take part in that act of remembrance, and to reflect on how such a peaceful wooded hillside could have been the scene of such horror.

“I heard Colin say that several thousand men still lie beneath the hill and wondered if Will might be one of them.

“Though I understand that the reality was that any grave might later have been shelled and destroyed. “I also saw the site of Trench 38 at the foot of Hill 60, where Will would have spent his last days.

“It is strange to think that today that site is just a grass verge on the side of the road.

“To have been able to be in the places where Will spent his last days and near the spot where he was killed brings me a little closer to someone I never knew, but would have liked to have known.

“For me this visit felt like a kind of culmination to several years of family tree research and also to the research of Will's time in the Dorsets that I have been able to do with help from Ernie Thomas and The Keep Military Museum.”

Acts of commemoration were also carried out for three other Dorsets, Corporal Christopher Thomas King from Wimborne, Tom (Theodore) Wood and Private Harry Woods, who had only been with the Battalion for three weeks and was killed on July 5 1915 along with 15 of his chums, all of whom had come from the Depot at Dorchester and were manning Trench 38 on Hill 60 when this was hit by an artillery bombardment.

Ernie Thomas, a volunteer researcher at The Keep, said: “The moving story of Will Sanders and the way that the Great War touched members of his family is just one of countless tales of heroism and loss that are typical of the experiences of so many other families in Dorset and further afield.”