Military History

Circumstances of Death

The circumstances behind Reginalds death are, at the moment impossible to work out with any certainty. The CWGC, his Medal Card and Register of Effects list his death as being on 15 Jul 1918 with the Register of Effects stating that his death was "officially accepted" as being on 15 Jul 1918 at Neumarkt, Italy.

However this is complicated by a newspaper report in The Evesham Journal on 13th July 1918 which reported that:

"Corpl Fitter F C Beachus, in a letter from the Italian front to his parents at Shipston, states that Pte Reginald Langley, recently of the Bell Hotel, Shipston was missing and either a prisoner or killed.  He was a Territorial when the war broke out, belonging to the Shipston section of the Gloucesters and has seen considerable service in France and Italy. Corpl Beachus states that he received this news directly he returned to his battery after a month in hospital, suffering from an accident and an attack of influenza".

The only known hostilities that took place before his death was the Second Battle of the Piave River which was fought between the 15th and 24th June 1918. In the absence of the Italian Campaign war diaries the events of that Battle involving the 1st/5th are described in the book A Gallant County: The Regiments of Gloucestershire in the Great War by Robin Grist by Pen & Sword Books (buy it here) and the following is an extract from that book, a copy of which is owned by SWFHS.

"In June the Austrians launched an offensive aimed at breaking the Piave River defensive line and inflicting a major defeat on the Allies. It failed, and they suffered some 175,000 casualties, but 1/5th Gloucesters, who were in the front line on the Assiago Plateau, fought a desperate battle. On 15 June 23rd and 48th Divisions were attacked by four Austrian divisions. 23rd Division were able to repulse the assault but the Austrians penetrated 3,000yds in the 48th Division sector.

1/5th Gloucesters was in the front line holding the right sub-sector. Their strength was about 490 men, 30 per cent of all ranks being in hospital with influenza. The brigade commander was doubtful whether they should go into the line at all, but two of his other battalions, the 1/6th and 1/7th Royal Warwickshires, were down to even fewer men. The main line held by 1/5th Gloucesters was immediately south of the winding Ghelpac stream. The line itself was no more than a string of scattered posts, placed as high as possible and overlooking the forest but not necessarily affording a clear field of fire. Four outposts were also positioned north of the stream in no-man’s-land, although still 1,000yds or so from the Austrian lines. The 1/4th Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry were on the Gloucesters’ right. The boundary between them was a 400yd stretch of railway line running north-south that connected Canove di Roana behind the Austrian lines with Cesuna behind the British line.

At 2.45 am on 15 June the Austrian bombardment commenced. Some of the firing was erratic, but on the Gloucesters’ front a number of their posts were specifically targeted and two were completely obliterated, leaving a gap in the line. An ammunition dump at Handley Cross, behind the 48th Division’s front, was also hit, and this hampered the bringing up of reinforcements. It was a misty, damp morning and the large quantities of smoke, gas and dust thrown up by the bombardment further reduced visibility. Many posts could see nothing at all but heard rifle and machine gun fire going on all around them as the Austrian infantry advanced at 4.00 am.

B Company, in the outpost line, retired at 4.30 am to positions just north of the Ghelpac in accordance with a predetermined plan. At about 6.30 am they drove off the first Austrian scouts who approached them but still risked being outflanked and cut off, so withdrew to the Battalion’s main line. The Austrians relied on sheer weight of numbers to maintain their advance and they had no shortage of manpower. Shortly after 10.00 am the Austrians succeeded in breaking through where the railway line divided the Gloucesters and the Oxfords. A Company was in danger of being surrounded and so retired, covered by twenty-one-year-old Private Gilbert Oliver of 28 Albert Place, Cheltenham, who sacrificed both his Lewis gun and himself to allow the rest to escape. The Gloucesters’ Battalion Headquarters had been organized by the Adjutant, Captain Basil Bruton, and put up a determined resistance but was overrun in hand-to-hand fighting, during which he was killed.

The remaining men, perhaps 100 or so, were forced back into an ‘S’-shaped defensive line along Ghelpac Road. There they held the Austrians until about 8.15 am but were then outflanked and had to retire again in two further stages to behind the railway line. A critical situation was saved by a counter-attack by 1/7th Warwicks, which stabilized the line. Eleven officers and 138 other ranks were killed or missing, and 9 officers and 64 other ranks were wounded. The Battalion was awarded 1 DSO, 2 MCs, 1 DCM and 5 MMs. At 5.30 pm 145 Brigade, including 1/6th Gloucesters, launched a counter-attack but was forced to withdraw; at 7.30 pm it attacked again but was forced back; a further attack the next morning found, however, that the Austrians were withdrawing.