Ch3:E29 The Immortal Story of 'L' Battery, an Epic of the Retreat, by Gunner Darbyshire, 1 Sept 1914

The story of one of the outstanding actions of the early days of the war, the artillery and cavalry stand at Néry on September I, 1914, is here told by Gunner Darbyshire, of the famous 'L' Battery. Of the characters in this immortal story Captain Bradbury was awarded a posthumous VC, Sergeant Nelson and Battery Sergeant-Major Dorrell (later Bt Lt-Col and MBE) were awarded VCs, and the author of this thrilling narrative and Driver Osborne, the highest French decoration for bravery in the field, the Médaille Militaire.

I Was There! Is a project produced by The Western Front Association. Our aim is to try to bring to life each of the 377 personal reminiscences included in the I Was There! series of weekly magazines published after the Great War of 1914-18. Our intention is to make the content of the readings more accessible to a much wider audience of interested First World War historians. The general aim of the production is educational, and to inform the narrative of this fascinating part of our history.

Each episode is read entirely by one of our team of volunteers. All are members or are otherwise associated with The Western Front Association. We would like to record here our grateful thanks to all those who have participated in the project.

As far as possible, we have attempted to match the voice of the original author to the voice of the narrator to aim to bring some small amount of authenticity to the spoken word.

Our narrators have been left to pronounce the various unusual (to them) non-English place names or personal names as they see fit. There is, after all, no knowing how the original authors of each episode themselves would have pronounced the words they have written.

As far as we have been able, we have attempted to match original images exactly to the events recorded. However, there are many images which are indicative of people and events, and especially military units, for illustrative effect. It proved impossible to achieve full historical accuracy throughout and the visual images should be viewed accordingly.

PDF copies of the original I Was There! documents are available exclusively to members of The Western Front Association to download via the Members’ Portal.

A Note on Sources
Document readings are sourced from I Was There! by Sir John Hammerton, a part-work published over 52 weeks.

All images sourced are from:
I Was There!
Wikimedia Commons
The Library of Congress

Wikimedia Commons sources are public domain or Creative Commons - various attributions.

We have provided a general attribution notice here, but if you feel we should provide a more specific content attribution, please get in touch with The Western Front Association via our website.

Every attempt has been made to ensure items are available to be used freely within the public domain for the purpose of these educational videos. However, if you feel there has been an inadvertent misuse of any copyright, please get in touch with The Western Front Association via our website.

The Western Front Association is an educational charity and makes no profit from the I Was There! project.