On Friday, the Jersey Field Squadron is holding a regimental dinner in their honour at the Le Quesne Centre at Mount Bingham.
The event, which is due to be attended by the Lieutenant-Governor General Sir John McColl, the Bailiff, William Bailhache and States Members, has been titled ‘The Stocker Dinner’, in honour of the Jersey Pals Contingent’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Stocker.
The author of ‘Ours: The Jersey Pals in the First World War’, local historian and battlefields tour guide Ian Ronayne is the guest speaker at the dinner.
He said it was right that Colonel Stocker and the Jersey Contingent should be honoured with a ceremonial regimental dinner.
‘One hundred years ago, they were engaged in final preparations for crossing the Channel from England and going into the trenches for the first time. From letters it’s clear that their thoughts were on Jersey at that time, and the Island was thinking about them.
‘But sadly, as the war progressed, many of these former Militia soldiers felt that Jersey forgot them, with the unique identity of the Jersey Contingent lost in wider sacrifice of that war.
‘By the time I began research for my book around ten years ago, the memory of the Jersey Contingent had almost disappeared.
Jerseymen who signed up to fight after the outbreak of war in 1914 went on to form the Jersey Contingent.
The men, who gathered in the Royal Square before they were sent to train in Ireland and then went on to fight battles in Europe, formed the D Company of the 7th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles.
Of the 328 men that formed the unit, half were evacuated due to injury or illness and a quarter were killed.
‘Now, however, they are rightly back in our consciousness, and this event will firmly connect them to their modern day counterparts,’ he said.
Prior to volunteering in December 1914, Lieutenant Colonel Stocker had been the second-in-command of the Jersey Militia’s East Battalion.
Mr Ronayne says he was a natural leader, well suited to command with his strong sense of discipline and order tempered by a genuinely outgoing and humorous nature.
During the First World War, 6,292 Jersey men served in the British forces, of whom 862 were killed in action or died of wounds.
After the war, Colonel Stocker became honorary president of the Old Pals Association.
He died in May 1941, from injuries received when he was knocked down by car driven by a German soldier.
