Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

"The Battle of Loos (25 September to 18 October 1915) was the major battle on the Western Front in 1915, surpassing in every respect all that had gone before in terms of numbers of men and materiel committed to battle. The preliminary bombardment was the most violent to date and the battle was charaterised by the committment of Regular and Territorial battalions on a large scale, in which the Territorials performed just as well as the Regulars. As the battles on the Western Front in 1915 increased in size and violence, so the casualties increased in proportion: Neuve Chapelle 12,000, Aubers Ridge/Festubert 29,000 , Loos 60,000. 1916 was to take the casualty cost to another level. Loos was intended as a minor role in support of French efforts around Arras but circumstances reduced the French effort. It marked the first use of poison gas by the British. Once the initial assualt had failed the battle continued in a series of actions mostly focused on the northern sector around the tactically important Hohenzollern Redoubt."

Detail :

Ralph Eustace HEMINGWAY 2/Lieutenant 1/8 The Sherwood Foresters Educated at Rugby Public School, he was gazetted to 2nd Lieut. 8th Battalion The Sherwood Foresters on 3.10.1914. He was wounded in 1915, when he was heavily cut by glass in the face and hands from a trench periscope which was shot to bits. He was killed in Action 15.10.1915, has no known grave, and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial, France. At 0415 hrs on 14 Oct 1915 the 8th Foresters ( temporarily under command of 138 Brigade) attacked the approaches to the Hohenzollern Redoubt at Loos to take pressure off the rest of 46 Division who were under severe pressure in the redoubt itself from German counter attacks. The Battalion was relieved after 25 hours fighting having established a strongpoint 80 yds short of Point 60. On the same day Capt Charles Vickers of the 7th Foresters was winning a VC by his bombing exploits inside the redoubt itself. With 170 casualties the 8th Foresters had suffered more heavily than any other Bn in the Forester Bde. Ralph HEMINGWAY was one of those who fell and was the brother of P.C. Hemingway also a subaltern in 8th Sherwood Foresters. In the same attack his fellow officer in the 1/8 Sherwood Foresters and Brother Mason 2/Lieutenant Edward Stanley STRACHAN of SIR THOMAS WHITE LODGE No 1820 also fell. Sources: John Cotterill

Masonic :

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley