Remarkable War Memorial in All Saints Church High Wycombe

This extraordinary memorial in All Saints is to Lieutenant Viscount Wendover, Royal Horse Guards, mortally wounded at the Second Battle of Ypres during the desperate dismounted attack by the 8th Cavalry Brigade on 13th May 1915 to recover the British trench line, lost to the German advance during a heavy bombardment. Wendover died in Boulogne on 19th May and his body brought home by his family, a practice subsequently banned by the army.
The memorial, high up on the east wall of the church, comprises the sword, spurs and heraldic devices of the 20 year old viscount, with a brass plaque. Above these relics are a standard and trumpet with banner of the Blues. It must be unprecedented for a regiment to provide such important artefacts for a memorial.
The dismounted attack by the three regiments of the brigade, the Royal Horse Guards, the 10th Hussars and the Essex Yeomanry, is described in the Essex Yeomanry history of the war: ‘At this moment a group of Germans fled from the positions they were holding, and someone holloaed, “Tally ho! Yonder they go.” As a response to the view holloa the whole line, the Essex on the right and the 10th Hussars on the left, rose as one and rushed the hill. The going was deep, but no one halted until the trench was reached as were also a series of holes which the line degenerated into on the right. Very heavy casualties were suffered in both regiments..’
The Royal Horse Guards attacked in the charge on the right of the Essex Yeomanry. Each of the three regiments lost around 10 officers and 150 other ranks in the charge. The commanding officers of the 10th Hussars and the Essex Yeomanry were killed.
In All Saints there is also a memorial to a VC from Wycombe Royal Grammar School, Lieutenant Frederick Youens, Durham Light Infantry, killed in 1917.
A surprising find in All Saints was a memorial to Captain Edward Kennedy RN, father of Ludovic Kennedy, who rejoined the Royal Navy in 1939 at the age of 60, and was in command of the converted liner HMS Rawalpindi off the Faroes, when Rawalpindi encountered the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Kennedy refused a demand to surrender and fought his ship until it was sunk by shellfire, going down with it.