Genealogical war memorials for Bournemouth’s fallen.
Mons: August 24th, 1914
Introduction
Tales from the Front (4) tells the story of Edmund Ernest Trent, a private serving with the 1st Cheshire Battalion. Born in Heatherlands, 1885, Edmund may have enlisted at the Great War’s beginning. The battalion’s war diary shows them arriving at Mons by August 23rd, 1914. The following day, the battalion played a significant role in delaying the Germans, thereby enabling the BEF to make its withdrawal. Official records suggest that Trent fell on that day.
Tales from the Front (4): Part 1
Unaccustomed chaos
The second day at Mons may have come as a rude awakening to those soldiers who expected to fight in the traditional order of the parade-ground: European warfare, days of yore. The Cheshires learnt this bitter lesson early. Trent had come from a world of order. It ran in his family. As a grocery assistant, he put packets of tea on shelves to make an ordered, disciplined display. Several brickmakers featured in his genealogy; skilled men, trained to reproduce endless numbers of the same item without variation. Parade-ground fighting, ordered Victorian squares, died at Mons. The Cheshires played a central role in providing a rearguard for the BEF’s retreat to Paris. On the previous day, many had expected to march into Germany. This action’s killing ground took the shapeless perspective of slagheaps, railway works, gardens, and cobbled streets. Pure disorder, lost messages, your pals lying about you, a red harvest.
Tales from the Front (4): Part 2
Bricks
Trent’s paternal grandfather and grandmother came from the rural villages lying to the south of Yeovil and Sherborne. Most of their children came from that part of the world, but the birthplace of others shows that the family lived in Wales for a while. As often happened, the family had a nomadic existence, no doubt drawn by work opportunities. His grandfather, a brickmaker, immigrated to Heatherlands, later Parkstone, by 1881. His family accompanied him. This area lay to Bournemouth’s west, a patchwork of settlements having little collective identity. Trent’s mother also came from a brickmaking family. The occupation ran for several generations. She gave her birthplace as Poole. Her husband, Trent’s father, did make bricks for a while, but perhaps without success, for he held a range of other occupations. Trent would have lived in a noisy and busy household. According to the census, he had around a dozen siblings.
Tea
During his life in Heatherlands, Trent will have watched how the unsettled area acquired streets, shops, and people. By 1911, aged 26, he had a job, working as a grocer’s assistant. Still single, he lived in his family home. The census of that year did not list his father at home. Edmund’s name appeared in the position reserved for the head of household. The family may have had a difficult time. His mother and two sisters did laundry, while two teenage brothers ran errands, perhaps for Edmund’s employer. Two years later, however, he married. His wife, a native of Tyneham, Dorset, her father a carter, worked as a parlourmaid in Bournemouth. Thus, his wife’s family belonged in a similar social position to his. The couple had time to start a family, Trent’s sole child, Edmund Arthur. According to the 1921 census, he may have arrived after his father’s death.
Tales from the Front (4): Part 3
The sad day
Three messages sent ordering the Cheshires to withdraw had never arrived. ‘The Cheshires, together with a small party of the Norfolks, were thus left alone.’ They fell back to the road running from Elouges to Audregnies, where they offered enough resistance to halt the Germans for a while. ‘But the Germans, seeing how few were their assailants, returned to the attacking, and there was nothing left for the remainder of the Cheshires, mere handful though they were, but to fight to the last … at last, surrounded and overwhelmed on all sides, they laid down their arms.’ The war diary used a short paragraph to cover this day’s events. At the evening roll call, they discovered the battalion had lost 78% of its strength. Chaos, disorder, and savagery had harvested them. Neat lines of bricks and tea had gone. Somewhere in this terrible time, Edmund Ernest Trent fell in action.
Aftermath
Trent’s widow, Edith, remained thus, caring for their young son, until she remarried in 1920. Her husband, a bachelor, older than her, worked as a gardener. From Oxford, a wheelwright’s son, he had served in India as a driver with the RHA. Her son with Trent retained his father’s name. He worked as a telephone cable tester in 1939. Trent’s father died in 1919, but his mother lived longer. The family may have had little work during the post-war depression.
After their near destruction at Mons, the First Cheshires appeared to have had a quiet time. At Le Cateau, they formed part of the reserve. The diary says little about involvement in the crossing of both the Marne and Aisne rivers. In early October, they formed part of the BEF’s transfer to Flanders. The 5th Division took up its position near La Bassee. Here, they would, again, incur heavy losses.
Takeaway
Tales from the Front (4) has followed the life and military service of Edmund Ernest Trent (1885-1914), who served for a short time with the First Battalion, Cheshire Regiment. At almost 30 years old, he enlisted in 1914. He had employment to support a wife and small child, whom he may not have seen. The appalling conditions he experienced on August 24th must have seemed far from his world as a grocery assistant and a new family. On that day, this head of household entered the ledger as KIA or missing. His name also appeared in the press, which listed over 500 casualties, many dead or missing.
‘Tales from the Front’
A collection of personal stories honouring the Bournemouth natives 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.
Set against the backdrop of regimental war diaries and enriched by period media accounts, the series offers a powerful and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes — a mosaic of personal courage within the broader sweep of history.
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.
Kitablios