Home of the Infantry Regiments of Berkshire and Wiltshire
New Feature - Object of the Month
The
object for this month of September is a helmet with a bullet hole in it which
was used by a Wiltshire Regiment soldier during the First World War which has a
special story attached to it.
It
was worn by Lance Corporal Thomas Uzzell of the 5th Battalion, The Wiltshire
Regiment who is believed to have been part of a reinforcement draft from the
2nd/4th Battalion who were stationed in Poona in India during most of the 1st
World War when he was transferred to the 5th Battalion in 1915. He was involved
in the siege of Kut, Mesopotamia and was wounded at Gallipoli by a bullet that
penetrated the helmet and took out his right eye and came out through his right
cheek. He was left for dead but on
regaining consciousness managed to reach safety and treatment and lived to the
age of 93!
The
titanic struggles on the Western front now so dominate the popular view of the First
World War that the fact that, as its name suggests, it was a global conflict is
often forgotten. Men of the 5th Battalion Wiltshire Regiment served elsewhere;
at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and on the North -West Frontier of India and
Persia, a series of gruelling campaigns in tough environments that cost more
than 600 hundred of its soldiers their lives either in battle or from disease.
Yet in Wiltshire the unit, raised from volunteers who rushed to join the
colours amid the patriotic fervour of 1914, became ?The Forgotten Battalion?.