AT the end of a dusty track in a small town south of Ypres in Belgium lies a small brick war memorial. Behind it stands the ugly, rusty cladding of a shed and the approach is lined by rows of regulation modern houses. If the British Empire was saved here, then it certainly doesn’t look like it.

Yet mention the name of this place and the years roll back to possibly the Worcestershire Regiment’s finest hour.

At 1300hrs on October 31, 1914, 500 war-weary and exhausted men of the Second Battalion fixed bayonets, stuffed their pockets with ammunition, said their prayers and prepared to die. They then set off on one of the most heroic charges of the First World War, across 1,000 yards of open country in the face of determined enemy fire.

By nightfall, they had recaptured the village of Gheluvelt from the Germans and plugged a vital gap in the Allied defensive line. If the attack had failed, the Germans would have been through and on their way to Paris. The war would have been over by Christmas.

The soldiers’ extreme bravery brought lavish praise from the Army’s commander-in-chief Sir John French, who exclaimed: “The Empire was saved.” Considering at that time the British Empire covered nearly a third of the globe, this was praise indeed.

Back in the late summer, Worcester lawyer David Hallmark journeyed to the site of this memorable military engagement and after some searching, found the memorial in its honour.

“For such a dramatic event, the brick memorial at Gheluvelt is modest and describes itself as having been paid for ‘by a man of Worcestershire’, as if official recognition or public subscription was not available,” said David.

“A cross stands below it and the site is one of comparative dereliction.

If this is a memorial to the event that saved the British Empire, then it is a signal of how the heroism has been relegated to just another symbol of that awesome slaughter which destroyed the youth of Europe.”

In contrast, the famous Menin Road Gate Memorial stands astride the road along which hundreds of thousands of troops passed and commemorates more than 54,000 from the Empire who died before August 16, 1917. Here there is long list of Worcesters. A few miles to the north at Tyne Cot memorial another 35,000 are commemorated and again a long list of Worcesters.

“At 8pm each evening those dead are remembered,” said David. “The traffic is stopped. The spectators silently assemble beneath the huge arch. The small corps of four Belgium buglers and a lone piper march quietly to their position looking west towards the church and the setting sun. The Last Post is played. The poem of dedication and devotion is declaimed. Two minutes’ silence. The whole ceremony takes just 10 minutes.

“These moments of daily respect have been repeated for 80 years and are expected to be continued. So few of those commemorated are officers.

The names are the ‘poor bloody infantry’ . They came from all over the British Empire, identified as Aussies and Kiwis and Boks and Indians of many different regions such as Pathans and Baluchis and Sikhs and Rajputs and Punjabis and also from the West Indies. By what irony might these men have lived if the Worcesters had failed to ‘hold the line’ in those few hours on the last day of October 1914.”

The story of the Battle of Gheluvelt is told in many official and unofficial reports and publications. To Sir John French the moment of the counter-attack was “the worse half hour of my life”.

The 2nd Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment was down to about 500 men and half its original size after nearly two weeks of continuous fighting when it was exhorted to regain Gheluvelt after the line had been broken with the capture of both the village and of its chateau which dominated the area.

David said: “The exercise was simple enough. These men with extra ammunition, but leaving their personal kit behind, would advance shoulder to shoulder with fixed bayonets from Polygon Wood downhill towards to the chateau, which was occupied and defended.

As they did so, they were passing the signs of abandoned equipment from those who earlier had fled this place.

“There was a ridge over which they had to pass to reach the chateau and then they had to cover 1,000 yards of open country. This ridge was within range and target of the defenders. The only option was speed of attack to cover the ground and then to get close enough soon enough to be able to counterattack the waiting, watching enemy.

“One hundred, or one in five, never made the chateau, being shot or shelled as they came over that ridge and advanced. The others running and firing then forced their way through hedges and fences and into the gardens of the chateau and were in hand to hand combat with the Germans.

“The Worcesters captured the chateau and then pushed on to the village. The Germans tide had been stopped. The price was 187 killed or wounded by 1800 hours that day.

Nearly 40 per cent of those who had shared breakfast together that morning.”

However, the Worcesters were not entirely alone for to their surprise when they were nearing the chateau they found a few remnants of the 1st South Wales Borderers, who were trying desperately to save their lives and positions from earlier attempts to hold the line.

“The order given to the Second Battallion that day had been ‘to advance without delay and deliver a counterattack with the utmost vigour against the enemy who was in possession of Gheluvelt and to re-establish our line there’,”

said David.

“They had delivered. According to historian David Lomas: ‘The Worcesters burst out of the trees onto the grass by the chateau... the sudden eruption of 200 belligerent British soldiers panicked the novices of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, the 244th Reserve and the 245th Reserve. After some brutal bayonet work by the Worcesters, the Germans fled in disorder. The line was restored’.

“According to Field Marshall Sir Claud Jacob: ‘Let it never be forgotten that the true glory of the fight at Gheluvelt lies not in the success achieved but in the courage which urged our solitary battalion to advance undaunted amid all the evidences of retreat and disaster to meet great odds in a battle apparently lost.’ “Yet for all the evident success of the Worcesters on that fabled day,”

David said, “they would later learn that one particular German not only survived the battle, but was decorated with the Iron Cross and escaped to return one day with an even bigger army.

“His name was Adolf Hitler. If only one more bullet...