Genealogical war memorials of Bournemouth’s fallen
Vlamertinghe: March 5th, 1915
Introduction
Tales from the Front (26) recounts the life of Albert Frank Dashwood, a native of Victorian Bournemouth, who fought in World War I. Before the war, he had worked as an errand boy and, later, an ironmonger’s porter. In between, he had served with the First Battalion, Dorset Regiment, later going on reserve. The regiment called him up to return to service. Lance-Corporal Dashwood died of wounds at Vlamertinghe, near Ypres, early in March 1915.
Tales from the Front (26): A successful migration
Cabs and combination
The Dashwoods came from rural Dorset—novelists’ idyll of fields and stability, but, in fact, marked by persistent poverty. Dashwood’s father left Winterborne Zelstone to arrive in Bournemouth as a baker, lodging in Norwich Road (1881). The town, though, had more to offer. When the railway arrived, the need for cabdrivers increased. This gave the Commissioners’ Board many lasting difficulties. Respectable people complained about prices and touting. Property values dropped when a cabstand appeared nearby. The cabbies did not care. Unionisation had become a formidable social movement in England. Bournemouth cabbies formed a union, established a slate fund, and attracted the patronage of a prominent local politician. Dashwood’s father left baking to drive a coach, perhaps as a servant, but soon drove a hackney cab, a symbol of entrepreneurship and independence. This enterprise supported a clutch of children, but the Dashwoods needed lodgers and the teenagers to work for survival.
Military service
Dashwood’s family moved around Bournemouth at the end of the Victorian period. When younger, Dashwood helped his family as an errand boy, then an ironmonger’s porter. In 1904, however, he had enlisted with the 3rd Dorsetshire Battalion. He served three years, then entered the reserve. His army medical examination revealed the need for a minor operation—a benefit he might never have received in civilian life. On returning to the colours during autumn 1914, he enlisted with the First Battalion of the same regiment. This suggests that he participated in the fighting after attention changed to the area between Ypres and Armentieres. In January 1915, his work received recognition, resulting in a promotion to Lance Corporal. By February, the battalion spent time coming on and off the alert. They prepared for deployment around the Ypres salient. On March 3rd, Dashwood’s unit marched with the 15th Brigade to Vlamertinghe.
Tales from the Front (26): rescue from anonymity
Frontline attrition by now swallowed men without a trace. Official paperwork offered almost nothing in return. War diaries, drafted under pressure by officers with limited time, seldom mentioned non‑commissioned ranks and seldom recorded the fate of individual infantrymen. Most deaths slipped into ledgers that listed names, numbers, dates, and nothing more. Shells hurled bodies across fields, collapsed parapets over men, or erased all signs of their last actions. Families received notices without context, and battalions advanced without knowledge of each man’s end. Sergeant Shephard’s diary cut through that darkness. His notes, written during short pauses in a day filled with snipers, shattered trees, and constant fire, granted shape to moments that official documents ignored. He wrote, “I found that what I had been sitting on during the dark was a dead man”, a line that captured the confusion and pressure that ruled the position and framed the losses around him.
Dashwood served in Shephard’s company, yet nothing in the battalion diary marked his final moments. Without Shephard, his death would drift into the same documentary void that consumed so many others. Evening approached when a fragment struck him, and stretcher‑bearers lifted him from the mud for the short, exposed journey toward the dressing station. Fire swept the ground without pattern, and every step carried risk. Shephard recorded the event with stark precision: “Dashwood was again hit and killed as he was being carried on the stretcher and not 20 yards from the dressing station.” That sentence granted Dashwood a place in the historical record, preventing his disappearance into the impersonal lists that dominated wartime reporting. Shephard’s diary granted him a final witness, a voice that refused the silence imposed by official routine. Through Shephard’s hand, Dashwood stepped out of the documentary darkness that claimed so many of his comrades.
Tales from the Front (26): Aftermath
Dashwood’s parents survived the war. His mother (d 1954) outlived her husband by decades. Brother Arthur, once a donkey boy, served in the war and survived, later working as a driver and garage hand. Some of his siblings dispersed across the Empire. A sister married a man who had served with the Australian army. Another married a gentleman’s son, who had a farm in British Columbia. Another brother had gone to Saskatchewan by 1912.
After Dashwood’s death, the war diary reported little except one action. On March 9th, they crawled up to the enemy trenches at night but received a warm welcome and suffered several casualties. Ernest Shephard’s diary, however, adds extensive detail to this skeleton. He spent a few pleasant hours relaxing in the study of a nearby chateau. Its garden had become a military graveyard. His elder brother and father wrote that they had heard of his death.
Takeaway
Tales from the Front (26) has followed the life and military career of Albert Frank Dashwood (1887-1915). A Lance-Corporal, he served with the First Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment, in the Ypres area. On March 5th, he received a wound, for which colleagues took him on a stretcher to the dressing station. Before they arrived, a second wound caused his death.
‘Tales from the Front’
A collection of personal stories honouring the natives of Victorian Bournemouth who gave their lives on the battlefield and the regiments with which they served. Blending social and military history with genealogical insight, it explores their roots, families, occupations, and the ultimate sacrifices they made for their country.
The posts weave genealogical data together with eyewitness accounts found in war diaries, contemporary press coverage, and official military histories. The series offers a powerful and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes offset with live accounts of battlefield action.
Serving as a companion and continuation of Victorian Bournemouth, Tales from the Front forms part of News from the Past: History for the Rest of Us.
References
For references and engagement, please get in touch. Main primary sources: here and here (subscriptions needed). For War Diaries, go here. See also here. The featured picture shows an imagined scene—genealogical information based on available sources.
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