2nd Lieutenant Alec John PARTRIDGE
9th (Service) Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment attached to C Company 5th (Service) Battalion

Date of birth: 11th November 1892
Date of death: 3rd July 1916

Killed in action aged 23
Commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial Panel and Face 11D
He was born at 31 Lennard Road, Beckenham on the 11th of November 1892 the only son of Sir John Lockyer Partridge, bank manager, and Mary Jane, nee Caswell, of “Wymondly”, Balcombe in Sussex.

He was educated at King Edward’s Grammar School, Birmingham from 1905 to 1906 and at the King’s School Canterbury from May 1906 to July 1912 where he won the V Form divinity prize for the 1910/11 academic year. From King's he went on to St Edmund’s Hall Oxford gaining a 2nd Class degree in Theology in 1915. During his time at Oxford he was a keen member of the Officer Training Corps.

He had intended to take holy orders but instead applied for a commission and on the 12th of July 1915 he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 9th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment. He landed in France on the 25th of April 1916 where he was attached to the 5th Battalion of his regiment.

On the 3rd of July 1916 he was a platoon commander with C Company, under the command of former King’s science master 2nd Lieutenant Harold Masters Brown, when they attacked the German lines at Ovilliers. The attack was set for 3.15am and was preceded by an artillery bombardment for one hour. The assaulting troops of the first wave, of which C Company was one, began to crawl into no-man’s-land at 3.03am, partly to escape the overcrowding in the British first line but mainly to reduce the distance to the German first line which had resisted capture two days before on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. They crossed the first and second German lines but there was heavy fighting for the third line which was notable for the number of deep dugouts which contained large numbers of German troops, many of them bombers. Much of the fighting was hand to hand and the Germans had a larger supply of bombs and after a sharp engagement the Berkshires were forced out of the third line and retreated to the first line. After a time they were forced back still further to the Albert-Ovillers sunken road between the two front lines but this too became untenable and the Berkshires were forced to retire to their start line.

Attempts to determine his fate by a wide range of people and Lady Rose Weigall, daughter of the Earl of Westmoreland, received a letter from Admiral Karl von Eisendecker of Karlsruhe dated the 2nd of December 1916 in response to her enquiries: -

"As to your enquiries about the fate of the missing Lieut. Partridge, I can now give you the following information. A prisoner in the Camp of Hessberg belonging to the officer's Regt. (5th Berks. C Coy.) states that Partridge was killed by a shrapnel bullet near Albert on July 3rd: he died at 6.30 (am) on that day. I regret I can only give such sad news to the poor parents. If they should wish for the name of the informant prisoner at Hessberg I could ascertain it."

Statement of Lance Corporal 10200 G. Harris C Company, 5th Royal Battalion Berkshire Regiment taken at prisoner of war camp at Munster: -

"He was with my section, I saw him struck with a German bomb. I did not see him buried."

He is commemorated on the war memorial at St Edmunds Hall Oxford.
Day Boy

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