File:Patrick Cousins' British War Medal.jpg

English: Patrick Cousins was my grand-uncle and he was in the 5th Dragoon Guards (Princess Charlotte of Wales’s). Service number: D/10056. The items I brought with me today were in my grandmother’s house where my sister, now deceased was living. I found them in the house 2 years ago. I do remember my mother talking about her uncle being in the war and being killed in France. The address on the memory card is my grandmother’s house on Dempsey’s Terrace, Wexford even though Patrick and my grandmother were from New Ross, Co. Wexford. I remember there was a photograph of him in the house but I’m not sure what became of it. I don’t know of any other siblings and I think we are probably the only living relatives. According to the card he died in Etaples in France aged 22, on 4 January 1916. In 1915 a local newspaper published an extract of a letter from him to his sister (my grandmother) Katie Rossiter. In it he describes some of the action he saw: “We were called out at 4 am and went into the firing line. We got into the trenches at 9 pm. on the same day. The Germans were 400 yards in front of us. Everything went all right until 4 am the following morning and then it was ‘hell on earth’. The Germans must have had 109 guns on us. They bursted in the trench on top of us by 12 o’clock. There were dead and wounded in the trench. I cannot explain the noise and roar of their guns, and our trench was rocking. Our officers and men expected we would be killed at any moment. The bombardment was kept up all day and at 4 pm we had to retire. When leaving the trench they fired and shelled us. We lost about 110 men of the regiment during the day.”’ Trooper Patrick Cousins is buried in Etaples Military Cemetery.