Bravery, Determination and Warfare

Henry John Ballinger, a second Lieutenant of the Monmouthshire Regiment, was the son of John and Amy Amelia Ballinger of Sherborne House, Aberystwyth. Henry enlisted as a volunteer in 1914 for the Royal Welsh Fusiliers but on the 22nd April 1915, he was sent to the Monmouthshire Regiment and went to France on 19th July 1915 as a part of the First Battalion.

On the 3rd September 1915, he joined the 46th North Midlands Division and on the 13th October 1915 the Division was sent to assault the Hohenzollern Redoubt. This Redoubt was considered by the British to be the strongest and most well-defended Redoubt on the whole of the Western Front. This strong point was positioned very close to No Mans Land and protected the important flat-topped slagheap that the British named ‘The Dump.’ The Redoubt gave the German infantry scouting information for miles and allowed for fields of fire across every single direction. 

It is important to recognise that Redoubts were temporary fortifications but had the potential of being incredibly strong points of defence that were difficult to break.The Hohenzollern Redoubt was no different to this and was an incredibly well defended position.

After vicious fighting involving mass bombardment and back-and-forth combat, the 26th Brigade of the 9th Division took the Redoubt first after awful losses due to poisonous gas, enemy fire and enemy barbed-wire. But the Germans realising its importance had already made plans to retake it and, although the British were resolute in their stand, they eventually lost much ground. 

The 46th North Midland Regiment, that Henry John Ballinger was part of, then attacked the Redoubt on the 13th October 1915 after more gas had been released. The division suffered awful losses, 3,643 to be exact, and most of these were in the first ten minutes. The only gain for their losses was the capture of the western face of the Redoubt. The strategy was too basic and poorly thought out, the Division was supposed to overwhelm the German defence with its numbers, but it was overly reliant on this, and as a result, men were acting as cannon fodder for the German machine guns. Private Sidney Richards summed up this day, where many Welsh soldiers had fought bravely and died, by being an "absolute hell with the lid off. Dying and wounded all over the place. Shall never forget this day."

Henry was trying to hold his position in a German trench, after bravely capturing German machine guns to try and use against the enemy, but whilst manoeuvring them through fearful odds he was shot by a German rifleman and killed. He was just 19 years old. He has no known grave and is commemorated in the Loos Memorial, France.

The layout of the assault by the British forces that Henry would have been a part of

Photo: https://derbyshireterritorials.wordpress.com/the-great-war-1914-1918/1915-2/loos/

Blog by Jack Atherton, project volunteer

Sources :
https://www.wwwmp.co.uk/ceredigion-memorials/aberystwyth-ww1-war-memorial/
https://britainatwar.keypublishing.com/2017/10/02/the-hohenzollern-redoubt/
https://derbyshireterritorials.wordpress.com/the-great-war-1914-1918/1915-2/loos/