Lieutenant Eustace Emil Hyde
1ST ROYAL IRISH FUSILIERS
TO THE SOUTH-EAST OF THE King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers were ready to attack on 12th October. Among their officers was the 24-year-old son of another clergyman, from Dudley Hill, near Bradford. Educated locally at Bradford Grammar School, Eustace Hyde worked for the Hunsworth branch of the Bradford Dyers’ Association. He and his brother joined the local pals battalion together at the height of the recruitment boom in September 1914 but both later received commissions. Eustace, the younger of the two, was gazetted to the Royal Irish Fusiliers in April 1915. He was present for the Easter Rising in Dublin in the spring of 1916, and then travelled to the Western Front in July.
Lieutenant Eustace Hyde. (Private collection)
Eustace’s brother Charles had remained with the Bradford Pals. While Eustace had yet to set foot on the Somme, the Pals had been shattered on 1st July, almost completely wiped out on the northern reaches of the battlefield. Among the dead on that day was Eustace’s brother, who fell aged 27.
By now divisions being pulled on to the Somme to participate in the autumn advances knew exactly what they were getting into. Many had already been there. Before Eustace’s arrival, the Irish Fusiliers’ division had been bludgeoned at the northern end of the battlefield on day one. Now the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, Eustace included, were to attack in a north-easterly direction towards Le Transloy on 12th October.
By 9:30pm on the 11th, Eustace’s battalion, which numbered just over 450 men, had cleared everything away in its trenches and orders had been received for the following day. The Irish Fusiliers’ advance was to take place in two stages, one to mop up small trenches in their path and the second to move on to their objectives proper. Zero hour was to be 2:05pm the following afternoon.
The 12th October brought heavy showers. An artillery bombardment started promptly at zero hour and Eustace’s battalion rushed forward, hugging the creeping barrage so closely that some of the men were tragically hit by their own shells. Taking a moment to regroup on account of the confusion that this caused, the advancing troops were then caught by fire from a machine gun, which began spraying through the artillery barrage. The men stopped. This was all the time that the German machine gunners needed to swing their weapons around. ‘The Regiment then had no chance at all.’ All the officers in the leading two waves were hit bar one or two. Reports were sketchy as to what then transpired. Coming up in support, Eustace and his men could make no inroads into the trenches north-east of Lesboeufs. A witness in a company moving up behind saw the 24 year old heading for an enemy machine gun just after 3pm when, some 30 yards away from it, Eustace was caught by the German fire. His men were forced to retire and had to leave his body behind. It took until midnight for the Royal Irish Fusiliers’ staff to ascertain that the regiment was holding its original lines. Eustace Hyde’s remains were eventually retrieved and identified. He was finally laid to rest at A.I.F Burial Ground, plot III.H.1.