EDWARD EDEN was serving as a Private in the 32nd Battalion, The Machine Gun Company when he died of wounds received on the 3rd April 1918, defending against the German Spring Offensive. He was aged 29 and is buried in Doullens Communal Cemetery Extension No 1 on the Somme. 

He was the son of James and Sarah Verina Eden, of Kingham. He worked as a farm labourer and in 1915 married Kate Durran, they had a daughter called Verina. He had enlisted originally into the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

The Machine Gun Company was one of the most difficult and dangerous roles in the Army, operating the Vickers .303 Mk 1 water-cooled machine gun, capable of firing 450-550 rounds a minute.  The MGC saw action in all the main theatres of war. In its short history the MGC gained an enviable record for heroism as a front line fighting force. Indeed, in the latter part of the war, as tactics changed to defence in depth it commonly served well in advance of the front line. It had a less enviable record for its casualty rate. Some 170,500 officers and men served in the MGC with 62,049 becoming casualties, including 12,498 killed, earning it the nickname 'the Suicide Club'. The German Spring offensive of 1918 was a series of German attacks along the Western front during the, beginning on 21 March 1918, which marked the deepest advances by either side since 1914. The Germans had realised that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the overwhelming human and material resources of the United States could be fully deployed. They also had the temporary advantage in numbers afforded by the nearly 50 divisions freed by the Russian surrender. The Allies concentrated their main forces in the essential areas (the approaches to the Channel Ports and the rail junction of Amiens), while leaving strategically worthless ground, devastated by years of combat, lightly defended. The Germans were unable to move supplies and reinforcements fast enough to maintain their advance. The fast-moving stormtroopers leading the attack could not carry enough food and ammunition to sustain themselves for long and all the German offensives petered out, in part through lack of supplies. 

Steve Kingsford