We will remember them…
September 1914 – the beginning of trench warfare
The resistance of the British Expeditionary Force at Mons (23rd August) delayed the advance of the Germans, but they resumed their advance on the 25th.
By early September they were within 30 miles of Paris. At the Battle of the Marne (6-10 September) the Allies halted the German advance and forced them to retreat.
The Germans in their turn halted the Allied pursuit at the Battle of the Aisne and at this point both sides began to entrench.
The ‘race to the sea’ from late September to early November resulted in the 400-mile lines of trenches from the Swiss frontier to the Channel which became the defining feature of the war on the Western Front
The 1st Battalion, the Cheshire Regiment, was involved in all these operations.
The Call toArms
On 28th August 1914, after the retreat from Mons, Kitchener issued an appeal for another 100,000 men to volunteer to join the army.
The result was a surge in recruitment: by mid-September nearly half a million men had volunteered.
They included one of the men on this panel the War Memorial:
Private James W Burgess, who joined up on 8th September 1914 and was killed in action just two months before the armistice.
Undoubtedly they also included a number of other men from Alderley Edge who are not commemorated on the War Memorial because they survived the war.
Some can be traced, but others cannot because many WW1 Army Service Records were destroyed in the 1940 blitz.