Mayor will be joined by town hall staff in laying a wreath and observing a minute's silence 3pm on Friday afternoon
A special ceremony will be held in the gardens at the front of Wandsworth Town Hall in memory of the 3,000 men of the 13th (Wandsworth) Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment, who were killed in action or wounded in the trenches and battlefields of Flanders and the Somme.
The 13th East Surrey, known as a "Pals" battalion, was raised in 1915 by Sir Archibald Dawnay, the then Mayor of Wandsworth. It was a unit of some 1,000 men raised locally - including many from the ranks of town hall workers.
Among these was a council dustman from Tooting, Corporal Ted Foster, who in 1917 won the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for valour. As well as Cpl Foster's VC, the battalion was also awarded two Distinguished Service Orders, four Distinguished Conduct Medals, six Military Crosses and 21 Military Medals.
One of the battalion’s earliest casualties was Private Reginald Twyford, killed in action in 1916 - just a couple of months after arriving in France. He was just 15-years-old.
Council officers place a wreath in the town hall garden on Armistice Day - November 11- every year in remembrance of their predecessors. But as Remembrance Sunday this year falls on the 11th, the decision was taken to conduct the small annual ceremony on Friday, November 9.
The ceremony, which members of the public are welcome to attend, will commence at 3pm, and following a brief address by the current Mayor Cllr Stuart Thom and the laying of a wreath, there will be a minute's silence.
Cllr Thom said: "By the end of the First World War in 1918, the battalion had suffered 3,000 killed and wounded - three times its original strength. I would ask local people to join me in remembering not only Corporal Foster and Private Twyford and their comrades in the 13th Wandsworth Battalion, but also all those who have given their lives for this country."
Corporal Foster was awarded his Victoria Cross for bravery following an assault by the 13th East Surreys to liberate German-occupied Villers-Plouich near Cambrai in northern France.
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During the fierce battle for control of the village, which raged beween April and the end of September 1917, five officers and 87 men of the battalion were killed. More than 50 soldiers from the Wandsworth battalion now rest in a military cemetery in Villers-Plouich. They are among more than 1,264 British war graves in the village.
As the battalion advanced on the village, the troops were met by fire from two machine-guns which were entrenched and strongly covered by wire entanglements. Cpl Foster, who was in charge of two Lewis guns, rushed the German trenches and engaged the enemy. Initially one of the Lewis guns was lost, but Cpl Foster attacked again, bombed the enemy and recovered the gun. He then destroyed the enemy's position and captured their guns.
His bravery has been commemorated by the naming of a path through King George's Park as Foster's Way.
The borough's links with this part of northern France, forged by the brave sacrifices of the 13th East Surreys in 1917 remain in place today.
Following the end of the war, Wandsworth's links with the village were reinforced under the British League of Help scheme which saw towns and cities adopting devastated French and Belgian communities to help rebuild them.
In September 1920 Wandsworth Council formally adopted Villers-Plouich, which had been left utterly ruined by the war. More than £1,200 was donated by local people to help pay for the village's reconstruction.
Later that year, Robert Harker, who had served as a lieutenant in the Wandsworth battalion wrote an article for the Wandsworth Borough News, describing Villers-Plouich and how those that fought there felt towards it.
He wrote: "In the serenest spot of that once beautiful, now terribly scarred village, a piece of land has been consecrated, and here lie those gallant fellows who fell on the field of honour, their graves tended with wonderful care and pride by a venerable French fossoyeur. It is, in paraphrase of Rupert Brooke, 'A corner of a foreign field that is forever - Wandsworth'
In 1928 the Mayor of Villers-Plouich gratefully wrote that reconstruction of the village had been completed and that a tablet had been set in the wall of the Mairie (Town Hall) to commemorate Wandsworth's help.
In September 2000 the then Mayor Cllr John Garrett and council leader Edward Lister travelled to Villers-Plouich to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Wandsworth's adoption of the village. The party were met at the Mairie by virtually the entire village and both councillors laid wreaths at the military cemetery where many of the Wandsworth men are buried.
And during a private visit to the village in May 2001, Cllr Garratt was invited to unveil a plaque naming the village square 'Place de Wandsworth'.
November 8, 2007
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