HORACE Victor Chatterley was a crack shot with a rifle.
The second of eight children, he was born in 1898 to Victor and Annie Chatterley and grew up at the family home at Wesley Villas on Evesham Road in Crabbs Cross.
Victor was a cycle fitter and as a youngster Horace was a chorister at the newly opened St Peter’s Church.
His nephew David Chatterley said that, living near the countryside, his father had taught his uncle how to shoot rabbits in the surrounding fields.
However the First World War was raging and Horace duly enlisted in Warwick.
He was transferred to the 12th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment where his expertise with a rifle singled him out as a sniper on the Western Front.
German snipers were a particular problem for the British as they prepared for the next phase of the Third Battle of Ypres – the Battle of Polygon Wood.
On September 25 German forces launched a counterattack in an effort to gain enough time for reinforcements to come up before the British attacked.
During the storm of shell and steel that followed, Private Chatterley, aged just 19, was killed in action by an enemy sniper.
He lies in the Hooge Crater Cemetery, Ypres, and is remembered today on the St Luke’s war memorial.
The same day, soldiers from the 2nd Battalion the Worcestershire Regiment stepped back in time when they took over a section of the front line they’d held three years previously on October 31, 1914, at the village of Gheluvelt just outside Ypres.
By 1917 the scene that greeted them was beyond belief – a sea of desolation and destruction.
They were positioned to the south of Polygon Wood ready to attack the following day.
Among their number was Harold Chamberlain who was born in Studley in 1897, the second son of William and Annie Chamberlain.
His father was a needle filer and the family lived in Avenue Road, Astwood Bank and at 14 Harold was working as an errand boy for a local chemist.
He enlisted in the army in June 1916.
On September 26 the plan was to attack at dawn but at 5.15am the Germans launched a fierce barrage on the British lines and followed it with an infantry attack.
The Worcs held firm but elsewhere many units were smashed by the bombardment.
Reinforcements arrived to support the Harold’s unit and a fierce day-long battle followed.
The following day was relatively quiet and a roll call on the morning of September 28 found the battalion had lost half its strength killed, wounded and missing.
Harold Chamberlain has no known grave but is remembered today on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium and on the Astwood Bank war memorial.
With thanks to the Regimental Diaries of the Worcestershire Regiment, Remembering Redditch’s Fallen Heroes and Remembering Battle of Passchendaele by Jillian Coombes.
