adds an infantry platoon to his WWI Brits.
A dedication event will take place on Sunday, 17 September, at the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, for a new regimental memorial dedicated to the Devon and Dorset Regiment. The poem Before Action by W N Hodgson, who served with the Devonshire Regiment and lost his life during the Somme offensive, will be recited during the Service.
Before Action – a biography by Charlotte Zeepvat: William Noel Hodgson never intended to be a soldier; he wanted to write. The Great War made his reputation as a poet but it also killed him.
This groundbreaking biography traces his path through the pre-war world and explores why he set his own hopes and plans aside to join the army. His story is personal but it evokes the experience of a generation. A hundred years on, Hodgson is not only remembered for his poetry. He has become one of the best-known casualties of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the most deadly day in British military history. His own unit, the 9th Battalion, The Devonshire Regiment, lost well over half the men who went over the top that morning and every officer but one: dead, wounded or missing, most in the first half-hour.