|
Baron Alexis the Gunzburg
6.5.1887 – 6.11.1914
Alexis de Gunzburg were born on 6 May 1887 and was the youngest son of baron and baroness de Gunzburg from Paris.
He was Russian by birth, was trained in Eton Memorial college and was a naturalised Briton at the outbreak of war with Germany. As translator he was incorporated at the Royal Horse Guards (7th cavalry brigade).
He left the United Kingdom with his regiment in October 1914 and went to the front line in Flanders more or less straight away. He obtained appreciation for his hazardous audacity under fire. He was always willing to undertake dangerous missions. He served with the life Guards and he lead three other young officiers of the Royal Horse Guards ahead to support an attack on Zillebeke. They called themselves the 'Fire brigade'.
They acquitted themselves well, operating on foot, and had to run across an open field for approximately 200m, but all four were cut down on their way back by enemy machine-gun fire.
Alexis de Gunzburg were buried in Zillebeke, with Colonel Gordon Wilson of the Royal Horse Guards, Major Dawnay and Captain Wyndham of the Life Guards.
His mother, widow Baroness de Gunzburg, received a dispatch, in which she read the appreciation of the heroic courage of her son from the British King, George V.
' His Majesty has learnt how gallantly Baron de Gunzburg fought with his comrades of the Royal Horse Guards although his duties as interpretor did not necessitate his presence in the firing line '.
After the war the family asked which permanent memory to their son they wished the village to commemorate him with. The answer was a bell. The first bell which hangs in the church of Zillebeke is called Catharina and weighs 774 kilogrammes. The second bell, Alexis, Baroness de Gunzburg was given and carries as a heading:
"Alexis. Given by Baroness Henriette de Gunzburg to remember her son, the soldier, Baron Alexis de Gunzburg who fell in Zillebeke in the year 1914."
She weighs 397 kilogrammes. Both bells were manufactured by Slegers-Canard Tellin, of Luxembourg and were first rung on the eve of the August village fair in 1924.
|
