Memorial Drill Hall Monmouthshire Regiment

Text on the memorial:
Here stood Stow Hill Drill hall. from which sallied Newport's own territorial soldiers, the First (Rifle) Battalion the Monmouthshire Regiment to fight for Britain at the outbreak of two world wars.

They wrote the saddest yet most glorious chapter in Newport's history on May the 8th 1915, when in an heroic stand against great odds before Ypres, the Monmouthshire's helped to bar the Germans from the vital channel ports. Of their strength of nearly 500, only 129 officers and men survived.

The wooden carving seen in the photo to the left of the memorial to the drill hill depicts men of the 1st Bn. Monmouthshire regiment and their stance at the battle of the Frezenberg Ridge during the 2nd Battle of Ypres on the 8th May 1915. It depicts Cpt. Harold Thorne Edwards who replied to the German offer of surrendering to them with the words, "Surrender be damned!" The carving is taken from a painting by Fred Roe commissioned by the South Wales Argus and was unveiled and dedicated on 8th May 2015 just after a new memorial to the men of the three Monmouthshire regiments was also unveiled and dedicated on the banks of the river Usk near to Newport’s Transporter bridge. On the 8th May 1915, over 230 men of the three Monmouthshire regiments died this day with Newport loosing over 80 men. The men of the 1st Bn. Monmouthshire regiment were recruited at the Stow Hill drill hall.

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