From “Deeds That Thrill the Empire”: On February 1st 1915, a fine piece of work was carried out by the 4th (Guards) Brigade in the neighbourhood of Cuinchy, where fierce fighting had been in progress for some days. Very early in the morning the Germans made a determined attack in considerable force on some trenches near the La Bassee Canal, occupied by a party of the 2nd Coldstream, who were compelled to abandon them. A counter attack by a company of the Irish Guards and half a company of the Coldstream, delivered some three quarters of an hour later, failed to dislodge the enemy, owing to the withering enfilading fire which it encountered. But about ten in the forenoon our artillery opened a heavy bombardment of the lost trenches, which is described by General Haking, by whose orders it was undertaken, as “splendid, the high explosive shells dropping in the exact spot with absolute precision.” This successful artillery preparation, which lasted for about ten minutes, was immediately followed by a brilliant bayonet charge made by about fifty men of the 2nd Coldstream and thirty of the Irish Guards. The Irish Guards attacked on the left, where barricades strengthened the enemy’s position; and it was here that Lance-Corporal Michael O’Leary performed that heroic feat of arms, which gained him the Victoria Cross and made his name a household word. But the Coldstream also had their heroes that day, and amongst them a young Yorkshire man. Private Duncan White, whose action, if necessarily overshadowed by that of O’Leary, was nevertheless, a most gallant one.
Private White was one of a little party of bomb throwers who led the assault, and on Captain Leigh Bennett, who commanded the Coldstream, giving the signal for the charge by dropping his handkerchief, he dashed to the front and, passing unscathed through the fierce rifle and machine gunfire which greeted the advancing Guardsmen, got within throwing distance and began to rain bombs on the Germans with astonishing rapidity and precision. High above the parapet flew the rocket-like missiles, twisting and travelling uncertainly through the air, until finally the force equilibrium supplied by the streamers of ribbon attached to their long sticks asserted itself, and they plunged straight as a plumb line down into the trench, exploding with a noise like a gigantic Chinese cracker and scattering its occupants in dismay. So fast did he throw, and so deadly was his aim that the enemy, already badly shaken by our artillery preparation, were thrown into hopeless disorder; and the Guardsmen had no difficulty in rushing the trench, all the Germans in it being killed or made prisoners. A party of the Royal Engineers with sandbags and wire, to make the captured trench defensible, had followed the attacking infantry. Scarcely had they completed their task, when the German guns began to shell its new occupants very heavily; but our men held their ground, and subsequently succeeded in taking another German trench on the embankment of the canal and two machine guns. Private Duncan White, whose home is at Sheffield, was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his gallantry and skill, as also were Privates F. Richardson, S.B. Leslie and J. Saville, of the same regiment.
Stuart Lyon