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Household Brigade Memorial, Zantvoorde. Memorial to 1st and 2nd Lifeguards and Royal Horseguards who died fighting in France and Flanders 1914. Many of them fell in defence of the ridge upon which the Memorial stands.
It was erected on the site of the original grave of Lieutenant Lord Charles Sackville Pelham Worsley. On the 30th October 1914 units of the 7th Cavalry Brigade manned trenches in front of Zandvoorde and on the zone behind them. The trenches of the narrow type of the period sited on the forward slope and easily seen by the enemy, without any form of shelter except cover from weather, were blown in whenever a heavy shell came near them, and many men were buried. From right to left the order was squadron 1st Life Guards, squadron 2nd Life Guards, machine-guns of the Royal Horse Guards, squadron 1st Life Guards, squadron 2nd Life Guards. It was obvious that under such a fire a choice between annihilation or retirement was only a matter of time and orders were issued for the second line to be manned by the supports. Nevertheless the three or four hundred men of the Household Cavalry held out until 8 am at which hour an infantry attack in overwhelming force was lauched against them. Orders for retirement to the second line were then issued but the greater part of the two squadrons on the left one of the 1st and one of the 2nd Life Guards, with the Royal Horse Guards machine- guns were unfortunately cut off and annihilated only a very few wounded being taken prisoners. The last that was seen of Lord Worsley he was still firing at the enemy rushing towards the trench and only yards away. Just before dusk on the ridge at Zandvoorde a Company of the 1st Bavarian Jager Battalion was waiting in reserve and Oberleutnant Freiherr von Prankh went forward to inspect the captured trenches and he made for the place where Lord Worsley and his section had kept firing their single gun. Von Prankh had watched from a distance until his own machine-guns firing from the flank had knocked out the men who had kept it going. He found the machine-gun had tumbled backwards onto Lord Worsley’s body his exact counter-part for Von Prankh himself was a cavalryman and a machine-gun officer and a member of the German nobility with the title of Freiherr. He arranged for Lord Worsley’s body to be recovered and buried and his effects were given to him but he himself was killed a few days later.
See Belgian Cemeteries - Ypres Town Cemetery Extension, Ypres where Lieutenant Lord Charles Worsley is buried. | 
