Last Stand at Zandvoore 1914: Lord Hugh Grosvenor's Noble Sacrifice

by Mike McBride

Being the son of the Duke of Westminster, whose family traces its lineage back to 1066, Lord Hugh Grosvenor was destined to become a cavalry officer in the prestigious 1st Regiment of Life Guards. Using unpublished letters home and contemporary accounts Noble Sacrifice describes Lord Hugh's embarkation for France and the early mounted encounters which halted the enemy onslaught against the 'contemptible little army'. These led to the stalemate of trench warfare and found Lord Hugh and his Squadron holding out at Zandvoorde during the First Battle of Ypres 1914 and being annihilated by superior numbers of enemy forces in some of the most desperate fighting of the First World War. Due to the advances in military hardware, the war for Lord Hugh and his comrades marked a turning point in cavalry tactics. As well as being a dramatic account of Lord Hugh Grosvenor's last stand, Noble Sacrifice is a very personal story of courage and self-sacrifice. This heroic yet tragic story has a mysterious twist. The bodies of Lord Hugh and his 100 soldiers were never found - it was as if they had never existed.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2017

Reviews

[JD · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book's title subject is but a small part of this book, as it mainly focuses on all the people, forces and events that lead to this Last Stand. The book focuses heavily on the early months of the war where the small and professional British Expeditionary Force fought bravely, and always outnumbered, against the German onslaught on the Western Front, especially around the Ypres salient. It also goes into good detail about the role of cavalry at the beginning of the war, and how the death blows fell upon them with the new kind of warfare that took over the world at this time. The cavalry units that are focused on are the regiments of the Household Cavalry and how they were an elite unit filled with English nobility, and the terrible price paid by them in blood to save the Western Front in 1914. The battle in which Lord Grosvenor and his squadron were annihilated are not well covered and a lot of conjecture is thrown in there as to exactly how they met their end, as there were no survivors from his unit and German reports were destroyed during World War 2, so that let the book down a bit for me, which is unfortunate as we shall never know how these men simply vanished from the battlefield.

Reading books like this always make me wonder what the world might have been had we not needlessly lost men like these to the tragedy of war. This was my Remembrance Month read for the year. LEST WE FORGET!!

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unimaginative, cookie cutter hero fairy tale made to prepare the young to be cannon fodder and die for cheap.

[Simon Exton · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been so many books about the big battles of WW1 like The Somme, Cambrai or Passendeale yet none specifically about Zandvoorde- until now. It seems like the author has hunted down every scrap of information about this pivotal, but little known battle. On top of that, there are bespoke maps and never before seen letters and photos from the Grosvenor family archives. The reader follows the main character on his short wartime campaign from horseback to the horror of trench warfare. It explores first hand accounts of being shelled and sniped at as well as discussing controversial topics such as whether or not to accept surrender. A must read for anyone interested in the Great War.

[Simon Exton · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been so many books about the big battles of WW1 like The Somme, Cambrai or Passendeale yet none specifically about Zandvoorde- until now. It seems like the author has hunted down every scrap of information about this pivotal, but little known battle. On top of that, there are bespoke maps and never before seen letters and photos from the Grosvenor family archives. The reader follows the main character on his short wartime campaign from horseback to the horror of trench warfare. It explores first hand accounts of being shelled and sniped at as well as discussing controversial topics such as whether or not to accept surrender. A must read for anyone interested in the Great War.