Return to Trenches at Death – Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog

Originally posted on Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog.

There follows a very fine ghost story from the British press.

At the beginning of the war a famous regiment left England for France. The colonel that regiment was a man beloved of all his men, idolised by his young subalterns, and highly thought of his brigadier. For a year the colonel led his regiment through the campaign in Flanders, until one misty morning a hand grenade deprived him of an arm. The colonel left for England on the first hospital ship, and his regiment knew him no more. The colonel, after months, was fitted with an artificial arm, but he was not satisfied. He wanted above all things to get back to his regiment. He moved heaven and earth to get back there with his men, but that, he was informed, was impossible. If he liked, however, he could have the command of a garrison battalion shortly leaving for the Dardanelles. Not being of an idle disposition, he took it. After landing one of the first to fall ill with dysentery was the Colonel, He had sufficient strength to warrant his being taken to a hospital ship, however, and so for the second time, he returned to England under the Red Cross. The hospital ship docked in England on a Tuesday, and midday on Wednesday the colonel was carried into the train which was leaving for London. He never reached that city, for he died at 12.30, just half an hour after the train had left.

So far another WW1 tragedy, there are many. Here things get spooky, though.

Now the extraordinary part of this story is that at the exact moment that the Colonel died on the hospital train a company of his old regiment saw him in their trench in Flanders. There was nothing out of the ordinary happening at the time, and…

via Return to Trenches at Death – Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog.