Bourlon Wood, November 28th 1917

Bourlon Wood in 1917

 

Following the battle of Cambrai earlier in November, the London Regiment found themselves with the task of taking Bourlon Wood from the enemy, and holding onto it. They suffered terrible casualties. This text is an edited extract from the 47^th (London) Divisional History, by A H Maude. It gives the reader some idea of what was going on in that small scrap of woodland.

Period 29^th November to 4^th December 1917

The enemy had lost valuable ground in Bourlon Wood and village. Its retention by us threatened his line to the north, enabling us to observe and enfilade his trenches as far as Oppy and Gavrelle, From the high ground at Bourlon Wood, too, we had excellent observation of Cambrai and the intervening country, as well as of that to the north towards Douai. In consequence, attack and counter-attack had followed each other almost without cessation for a week, the village changing hands each day. The casualties on both sides had been heavy ; the issue still hung in the balance.

The Division take over the wood

When the Division took over the Bourlon Wood Sector at 10 a.m. on November 29th, the greater part of the wood was still in our hands, the British line running from west to east a mile to the north of the Bapaume-Cambrai Road.
We relieved the 62nd Division on the night of November 28th-29th, the three dismounted regiments of cavalry, who were reinforcing them, remaining with us for twenty-four hours. This relief was not carried out without considerable difficulty, owing to heavy shelling by the enemy, who continually barraged all approaches to Bourlon Wood.
The guides were late, but the relieving battalions, led by Lieut.-Colonel Mildren, commanding the 6th Battalion, pushed on without waiting for them and completed the relief at the cost of several casualties.

Map of the disposition of troops
The London Irish Rifles (part of 141st Brigade)
can be seen in the east of the wood denoted by the number 18

The 141st Brigade took the right sub-sector, with the 140th Brigade on the left, and the 142nd in reserve in the Hindenburg Line. The 62nd Division, acting under orders from the Corps, insisted on the whole of the 141st Brigade being sent into Bourlon Wood to relieve their brigade. In protest against this Major-General Gorringe urged that to crowd seven battalions (four of 141st Brigade, one of 140th Brigade, and two of dismounted cavalry) and forty-seven machine-guns into the wood, which already contained one battalion of the 59th Division on the right, would only invite excessive casualties without increasing the adequacy of the defence.
For a wood in modern warfare is more safely held by rifle and Lewis gun posts, suitably placed on the forward edge of the area under some sort of cover, and machine-guns in depth outside the wood, with a fair field for fire and observation, than by a mass of units struggling in the undergrowth, half-blinded by the gas that clings to every bush.

The Division goes in

The protest was overridden, and on the night of November 28th-29th seven battalions were all in position in the wood. The enemy bombarded heavily with gas-shells during the night, and the 141st Brigade suffered many casualties. The disposition of the battalions will be observed in the map. On the morning of Friday, November 30th, the enemy made a counter-attack in force, directed chiefly against the trenches of the new salient, and he renewed his efforts to recapture the wood.
Our troops found themselves in circumstances peculiarly unfavourable for defence. The trenches, when taken over, were barely 4 ft. deep ; there was no wire, and few tools. The support trenches were not continuous ; the trees obscured the situation ; the gas hung in the thick undergrowth. Efforts had been made during the twenty-four hours of our occupation to get wire set out in front, and the trenches fire-stepped and dug to 6 ft. in depth. The enemy had shelled heavily during the night, but the guns rested before dawn, breaking out again about 8.30 a.m. into a heavy bombardment of our lines.
Meanwhile, Bourlon Wood was treated to an intense gas-shell bombardment. Heavy casualties resulted among the defending troops.

The Germans counter attack the wood

The enemy advanced in waves from Quarry Wood in a southerly direction, but their advance was checked for a while by the accurate fire of our artillery and machine-guns. The latter were arranged in batteries of four, thus facilitating control, and giving a heavy volume of fire with a maximum of surprise. The enemy advancing were thus enfiladed from positions north of the sugar factory, and the attack driven westward. Soon after midday the enemy were seen retreating in disorder over the crest of the hill.
About 2 p.m. the enemy assaulted again after a heavy bombardment of our lines on the west of Bourlon Wood. The right flank of the 2nd Division, on the left of our 6th Battalion, gave ground at the same time, and the enemy drove in a wedge between our left flank and the right of the 2nd Division. A gap formed between the 6th Battalion and the 15th Battalion, and the enemy forced our left flank to a position a few hundred yards in rear. Lieut. -Colonel Mildren, commanding the 6th Battalion, thereupon counter-attacked with his reserve company, reinforced by all the runners, signallers, and orderlies at Battalion Headquarters, and restored the line.
Meanwhile, attacks against the 141st Brigade on the right were launched by the enemy, but were broken up before they reached our trenches by our Lewis gun and rifle fire, supported by the artillery and machine-guns. The hostile bombardment which preceded them was very severe, and the 19th Battalion suffered many casualties from gas, their strength being ultimately reduced to 9 officers and 61 other ranks.
For some days the German artillery had been steadily pouring gas shell into Bourlon Wood, until the thick undergrowth was full of gas. Many casualties were caused to our troops, and gas masks had to be worn continuously for many hours. None the less, when the enemy attacked, he was again hurled back with heavy loss. A distinctive feature of the defence was the gallantry of the Lewis gunners, who, when the attack was seen to be beginning, ran out with the guns in front of our line, and from positions of advantage in the open mowed down the advancing German infantry.

Evacuation

The Division received orders to evacuate on the morning of December 4th, and the orders only reached battalions at 4 p.m. on the same day for a withdrawal to be effected seven hours later. Throughout the following days our field ambulances carried out the evacuation of the wounded under great difficulties, but with unwearying gallantry and marked success. The 4th Royal Welsh Fusiliers especially distinguished themselves by carrying up ammunition through the gas-infected area, working hard all night in improving the line and carrying back all wounded who remained in the aid-posts and advanced dressing-stations in Bourlon Wood at dawn.
By 4.30 a.m. there were no British troops left in the wood. Before 10 a.m. it was again occupied by the enemy. The 141^st Brigade suffered over two thousand casualties.

 

 

Lieutenant Ewart Alan Mackintosh, MC

Lt. Mackintosh, MC

On the outbreak of the Great War, Ewart Mackintosh was accepted by the Seaforth Highlanders, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 31 December 1914. He served with the 5th (The Sutherland and Caithness Highland) Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, part of 51st (Highland) Division.
On the evening of 16 May, 1916 Mackintosh led a raid on German trenches in the sector of the front line north-west of Arras. By the end of the night there were sixteen British casualties, including fourteen wounded and two killed. One of the dead soldiers was Private David Sutherland. Mackintosh had been trying to bring Sutherland, who had lost a number of limbs, back to the trenches. Sutherland died of his wounds and had to be abandoned; he has no known burial place. For his part in this action, Mackintosh was awarded the Military Cross (MC). His citation reads:

"For conspicuous gallantry. He organised and led a successful raid on the enemy's trenches with great skill and courage. Several of the enemy were disposed of and a strong point destroyed. He also brought back two wounded men under heavy fire."

The action, and particularly the loss of Sutherland, affected Mackintosh deeply, and he wrote perhaps his most famous poem, In Memoriam, in response:

"So you were David's father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

 

Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.

 

You were only David's father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.

 

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers',
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.

 

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed 'Don't leave me, sir',
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer."

Later, Mackintosh fought and was wounded at High Wood on the Somme, and I include part of one of his other poems in my book about that struggle:

"Oh gay were we in spirit
In the hours of the night
When we lay in rest by Albert
And waited for the fight;
Gay and gallant were we
On the day that we set forth,
But broken, broken, broken
Is the valour of the North.

 

The wild warpipes were calling
Our hearts were blithe and free
When we went up the valley
To the death we could not see.
Clear lay the wood before us
In the clear summer weather,
But broken, broken, broken
Are the sons of the heather.

 

In the cold of the morning,
In the burning of the day,
The thin lines stumbled forward,
The dead and dying lay.
By the unseen death that caught us
By the bullets' raging hail
Broken, broken, broken
Is the pride of the Gael."

Mackintosh was killed in action 96 years ago during the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917.

The fly

Having previously stated that I dislike poetry generally, and war poetry specifically, here's another poem by the great MacGill. The true enemy of the British Tommy was the fly:

"Buzz-fly and gad-fly, dragon-fly and blue,
When you're in the trenches come and visit you,
They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,
Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.

They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,
They come in close formation, in column and platoon.
There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die :
For Tommy takes his puttees off and strafs the blooming fly."

Rifleman Patrick MacGill

1/18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles)

Was it only yesterday?

Dud Corner Cemetery, Loos

"Was it only yesterday
Lusty comrades marched away?
Now they're covered up with clay.

 

Seven glasses used to be
Called for six good mates and me
Now we only call for three.

 

Little crosses neat and white,
Looking lonely every night,
Tell of comrades killed in fight.

 

Hearty fellows they have been,
And no more will they be seen
Drinking wine in Nouex les Mines.

 

Lithe and supple lads were they,
Marching merrily away
Was it only yesterday?"

 

Rifleman Patrick MacGill

1/18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles)

The morning after the Battle of Loos, 26th September, 1915

Battle of Loos

By the autumn of 1915, the Allies had launched several attacks against the Germans, all largely unsuccessful. The Battle of Loos, fought from the 25^th September until early October 1915, is often overlooked and certainly overshadowed by the Battle of the Somme which followed in 1916. However, it can be remembered for three important factors: it is the first time the British used chlorine gas, the Germans having been the first to use this horrific weapon in April 1915; it is the first time that Kitchener’s new armies, made up from the men who flocked to the flag in the early months of the war, went into battle, along with the Territorials, both largely untried and untested; it was a battle that ended in failure, but so nearly in success.

The battle was part of a wider campaign, with the French attacking further south at Vimy Ridge in Artois, but as with the later Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Loos occurred at neither the time nor place of Britain’s choosing, but rather as a gesture to the French, the senior partners in the alliance against the Germans.

Whilst Sir John French had overall command of the BEF in France, it was Douglas Haig that commanded the First Army; from this army were allocated six divisions to take part in the attack at Loos: three regular divisions, the 1^st, 2^nd and 7^th; two divisions from the New Army, the 9^th and 15^th Scottish Divisions; and the Territorials of the 47^th (London) Division. In addition, two more divisions, both New Army, the 21^st and 24^th, were held in reserve some six miles from the battlefield. All in all, this represented a total of around seventy five thousand men that would attack across a frontage of eight miles. This frontage was manned, from the north to the south, by: the 2^nd, 9^th, 7^th Divisions (I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Gough); 1^st, 15^th, and 47^th Divisions (IV Corps commanded by Lieutenant-General Rawlinson); Lieutenant-General Haking commanded XI Corps, the reserve.

Despite the fact that the gas was a disappointment, the initial assault, especially in the south, was a great success, with many of the objectives being realised on the first day; the German front-line and parts of the second-line were taken, as was the town of Loos itself. However, German counterattacks were swift and vicious, and although the two reserve divisions were committed on the first day, they were not able to participate until late on the second day. When they did, attacking in columns across the open ground between the German front and second lines, the 21^st and 24^th Divisions paid a terrible price, with almost one man in two becoming a casualty.

By the end of the battle some three weeks later, British casualties were in the region of 50,000 dead, missing or wounded. Amongst the dead were 2^nd Lt. John Kipling, son of Rudyard Kipling; Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, brother of the late Queen Mother; and three divisional commanders, George Thesiger (9^th Scottish Division), Thompson Capper (7^th Division) and Frederick Wing (12^th Division, who joined the fray in early October) making a lie of the myth that the generals stayed safe miles behind the lines in beautiful chateaux.

After the failure of the battle to breach the German line, Sir John French resigned as commander of the BEF to be replaced by Douglas Haig. It is possible that had the gas been more effective and had the reserves been in closer proximity to the battlefield so that they were fresh upon arrival, then the attack could, indeed, have breached the German line and led to breakthrough and early success on the Western Front in 1915; however, that is speculation.

 

As it was, the war dragged on for another three years, but it was to be another nine months before Britain felt strong enough to go on the offensive once more; at the Somme.

In the morning

The route into Loos taken by the London Irish and 9/Black Watch

 

"The firefly haunts were lighted yet,
As we scaled the top of the parapet ;
But the East grew pale to another fire,
As our bayonets gleamed by the foeman's wire ;
And the sky was tinged with gold and grey,
And under our feet the dead men lay,
Stiff by the loop-holed barricade ;
Food of the bomb and the hand-grenade ;
Still in the slushy pool and mud
Ah ! the path we came was a path of blood,
When we went to Loos in the morning.

 

A little grey church at the foot of a hill,

With powdered glass on the window-sill.
The shell-scarred stone and the broken tile,
Littered the chancel, nave and aisle
Broken the altar and smashed the pyx,
And the rubble covered the crucifix ;
This we saw when the charge was done,
And the gas-clouds paled in the rising sun,
As we entered Loos in the morning.

 

The dead men lay on the shell-scarred plain,
Where Death and the Autumn held their reign
Like banded ghosts in the heavens grey
The smoke of the powder paled away ;
Where riven and rent the spinney trees
Shivered and shook in the sullen breeze,
And there, where the trench through the graveyard wound,
The dead men's bones stuck over the ground
By the road to Loos in the morning.

 

The turret towers that stood in the air,
Sheltered a foeman sniper there
They found, who fell to the sniper's aim,
A field of death on the field of fame ;
And stiff in khaki the boys were laid
To the sniper's toll at the barricade,
But the quick went clattering through the town,
Shot at the sniper and brought him down,
As we entered Loos in the morning.

 

The dead men lay on the cellar stair,
Toll of the bomb that found them there.
In the street men fell as a bullock drops,
Sniped from the fringe of Hulluch copse.
And the choking fumes of the deadly shell
Curtained the place where our comrades fell,
This we saw when the charge was done
And the East blushed red to the rising sun
In the town of Loos in the morning."

Rifleman Patrick MacGill

1/18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles)

The morning of the Battle of Loos, 25th September, 1915
 

 

Patrick MacGill was wounded during the battle and never returned to active service.

Battalion orders: 1/18th London Regiment (London Irish Rifles) for attack on Loos, September 25th 1915

Trench map of London Regiment objectives
Blue is British trenches, red is German

"The Battalion has been ordered to Capture the Hostile Second Line of trenches from point 51 to point 63 and having done so to consolidate the captured position with the greatest of possible speed.

The attack will be carried out on a three Platoon frontage from Sap 6 to Sap 18 both inclusive.

In accordance with Appendix 1 of Secret BM 36 the GAS and SMOKE attacks will take place for 40 minutes prior to the hour named for the assault. This hour (the actual time when the Assault is to commence) will be known in these instructions as "TIME" and all movements having relation to this word will be carried out at the VERY SECOND laid down.

At exactly FIVE minutes before TIME all men except those in the Saps will be ordered to fix bayonets.

At TIME leading platoons of the attacking Coys will at once move forward - getting out of the Trench by scaling ladders provided (2 in each bay).

Exactly 30 seconds after TIME the SECOND line will advance from their places of formation getting out by footholds and hands pegs provided and will move forward in rear of the FIRST line doubling over the New Front Line Trench."

Taken from Battalion orders for the attack on September 25th 1915.

 

Author's picture of battlefield of Loos, from atop the current
slag heap that marks position of original double crassier.
Notice new town cemetery extreme right. London Irish crossed this whole
panorama under fire to take German positions.

Before the Charge

"The night is still and the air is keen,
Tense with menace the time crawls by,
In front is the town and its homes are seen,
Blurred in outline against the sky.

 

The dead leaves float in the sighing air,
The darkness moves like a curtain drawn,
A veil which the morning sun will tear
From the face of death. We charge at dawn."

Rifleman Patrick MacGill

1/18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles)

The night before the Battle of Loos, 25th September, 1915

Reversed bullets

This, from the orders given to the 1/18th Battalion, London Regiment (London Irish Rifles), on the eve of the battle for Loos, 25th September 1915:



Battalion orders

"All men should be warned against probable misuse of white flags and signs of surrender by the enemy. The enemy have been known to sham death and then shoot into the backs of our assaulting troops. Officers are reminded of the procedure of dealing with prisoners found with expanding or reversed bullets."

I know it doesn't actually say anything, but you know what they mean, right?

La Bassée Road

Written during the summer of 1915 at Cuinchy.

Garhwal Rifles marching up La Bassée road, 1915

 

"You'll see from the La Bassée Road, on any summer's day,
The children herding nanny-goats, the women making hay.
You'll see the soldiers, khaki clad, in column and platoon,
Come swinging up La Bassée Road from billets in Bethune.

 

There's hay to save and corn to cut, but harder work by far
Awaits the soldier boys who reap the harvest fields of war.
You'll see them swinging up the road where women work at hay,
The straight long road, La Bassée Road, on any summer day.

 

The night-breeze sweeps La Bassée Road, the night-dews wet the hay,
The boys are coming back again, a straggling crowd are they.
The column's lines are broken, there are gaps in the platoon,
They'll not need many billets, now, for soldiers in Bethune.

 

For many boys, good lusty boys, who marched away so fine,
Have now got little homes of clay beside the firing line.
Good luck to them, God speed to them, the boys who march away,
A-singing up La Bassée road each sunny summer day."

Rifleman Patrick MacGill

1/18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles)

The birth of the tank at High Wood, Somme

 

"High Wood to Waterlot Farm,

 All on a summer's day,

 Up you get to the top of the trench

 Though you're sniped at all the way.

 If you've got a smoke helmet there

 You'd best put it on if you could,

 For the wood down by Waterlot Farm

 Is a bloody high wood."

Lieutenant E A Mackintosh MC, 1893-1917

5^th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, 51^st (Highland) Division

High Wood, in the southern sector of the Somme front, sits halfway between the villages of Martinpuich to the west and Flers to the east, dominating the Bazentin ridge. In 1916, its position atop this low rise in an otherwise flat landscape gave it a tactical significance. For two months before the arrival of the tanks, the British threw men at the wood, trying to dislodge the Germans from their strong defences; all to no avail.

 

But the British didn’t give up, and in September, 1916, they decided to try again; this time, with a trick up their sleeves.

One hundred years ago, on 15^th September, across the whole front at Flers-Courcelette, fifty tanks trundled forward under cover of night to their allotted start points.

The tank had been in development for a very short time. Only in February, 1916 had the prototype, Big Willie (also known as Mother) been driven around Hatfield Park, the grounds that surrounded the Jacobean Hatfield House, home of the 4th Marquis of Salisbury. Members of the Admiralty’s Land Ship Committee liked what they saw, and made an initial order from Fosters of Lincoln. Six months later, these tanks were in action. From prototype to first action in 180 days is astounding.

 

Little Willie

Big Willie - possibly at Hatfield Park

 

The Londoners go in

The 47^th Division were assigned the ticklish task of prizing the wood from the Germans. The British lines are very close to those of the Germans in High Wood, and so Lieutenant-General Pulteney, the III Corps commander, decided that there was to be no artillery bombardment on High Wood before the men of the 47^th Division went in.

General Barter, OC 47^th Division, took his concerns about this lack of artillery support to the Fourth Army commander, General Rawlinson. But Rawlinson was enamoured of the idea of the tank, and reassured by Pulteney’s assertions that the tank could cover the ground with sufficient speed to provide the support required by the assaulting infantry of Barter’s division. Rawlinson discounted Barter’s objections.

And so the assault went in without artillery support. The Londoners of the 47^th Division had three objectives, High Wood being only the first.

This, from the Divisional History of the 47^th Division:

The final objective was prolonged westwards along Prue Trench in the valley. On the right the 8th Battalion were to pass through the 7th and 15th, and capture the Starfish Line, and the 6th Battalion to pass through them again to the Flers Line. On the left the 19th and 20th Battalions were to capture and consolidate the second and third objectives. The 142nd Brigade, under Brigadier-General Lewis, was in reserve about Mametz Wood, ready to move forward at zero to Bazentin-le-Grand, where it would be immediately in support of the attacking brigades. Zero was at 6.20 a.m.

Some thirty minutes before zero, men of Barter’s division clambered out of their forward trenches and walked forward a few hundred yards before lying down, thus closing the distance they had to cover to their first objective: High Wood itself.

The tanks arrive

Officers of D Company, Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps

At about the same time as the Londoners crept forward, the tanks allotted to the 47^th Division began to make their way into the woods. One can only imagine what the troops lying up in no man’s land must have thought of the vehicles as they became visible in the predawn light.

Trench map with tank start and end points marked

The 47^th Division had been allocated four tanks from the fledgling Tanks Corps, then known as the Heavy Section, Machine Gun Corps: three from D Company and one from C Company. These were:

·       D21, a female tank commanded by Lieutenant Sharp, and driven by Gunner Wilson. The tank lost a track and became stuck in a shell hole.

Female tanks were equipped with Vickers guns, whilst male tanks carried six pounders.

·       D22, a male tank commanded by Lieutenant Robinson. This tank became bogged down in a trench, and soldiers of the 1/17^th Battalion, London Regiment, set to with their entrenching tools to help to free it. It is believed that this tank fired upon British troops in error (the 1/6^th Londons), but if true, the subsequent award of the MC to Lt. Robinson seems somewhat surprising.

·       D13, a female tank, was commanded by Lt. Sampson. Perhaps inevitably, he gave the name ‘Delilah’ to his tank. Sampson was wounded in the action, steel splinters entering his eyes. Of the four tanks in the wood, D13 came closest to reaching its objectives, and this shows considerable courage and skill on the part of the crew. For his part in the action, Lt. Sampson was awarded an MC. Gunner Chandler, a big man, climbed out of the very small rear door of the D13, under heavy German fire, to rehang it when it had fallen off; for this conspicuous act of bravery, he was awarded the Military Medal (MM).

Delilah - ditched after being struck by shell

 

·       C23. This fourth tank was male, and commanded by Lt. Henderson. I am uncertain about the name, but believe the tank was called Clan Ruthven. I also have no information about the crew. C23’s action was short, as it became stuck a mere fifty yards from its start point. It was able to continue to provide covering fire support with its six pounder guns, although this covering fire was too close for Lt. Sampson, and he left the safety of Delilah, ran across the wood and asked the surprised Henderson to be careful where he shot his guns.

 

C23 - hopelessly stuck

 

It is difficult to imagine the conditions in these vehicles when they went into action (but you can get some idea at the excellent Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset).

 

Aside from the noise, the fumes and the splinters of hot metal slicing through the air within the tank, the crews were inexperienced, the ground totally unsuitable and the numbers of tanks involved too small to make up for the lack of artillery support.

By this stage, the wood was no more than a slight bump in the surrounding terrain, surmounted by shattered tree stumps and shell holes, filled with the rotting corpses of two months of fighting. A quick look at the attached photographs shows what the terrain was like; no place for any vehicle.

Of the fifty tanks allotted to the attack, eleven failed even to reach their start points and a further seven failed to reach the British front-line, leaving only thirty two for the actual attack. Only nineteen of these reached their first objectives.
 

High Wood is captured

By 8’oclock in the morning, after bitter fighting, the Londoners captured High Wood.

More from the Divisional History of the 47^th Division:

The troops attacking High Wood were at once engaged in heavy fighting. Four Tanks accompanied the attack, but could make no headway over the broken tree-stumps and deeply-pitted ground and were stuck before they could give the help expected from them. The infantry, thus disappointed of the Tanks' assistance, were also deprived of the support of the guns, which were afraid to fire near the Tanks. The 17th and 18th Battalions and half the 15th Battalion had a desperate fight for every foot of their advance. The enemy met them with bombs and rifle-fire from his trenches, and machine-guns from concrete emplacements, still undamaged, mowed them down. With the second wave of attack the 19th and 20th Battalions and part of the 8th joined the fight, and during the morning five battalions were at once engaged in the wood. Casualties were very heavy.

Aftermath

Burials for men of the London Regiment at the London Cemetery, High Wood

At the end of September 1916, because of their failure to secure their other objectives, Barter was dismissed from his post, ostensibly for ‘wanton waste of men’. At the same time, there was criticism for his ‘lack of push’, despite the fact that his division suffered over 4,500 casualties in the successful attack on High Wood. This figure included two battalion commanding officers killed in the assault (including Major Trinder of the London Irish Rifles, who was shot through the head whilst supervising the removal of German prisoners).

Within the 47^th Division, the First Surrey Rifles had the dubious honour of suffering particularly horrendous losses, with only 62 men answering roll call on the morning of the 16^th September.

This is not the time for a discussion on the merits of the tank on the 15^th September, and I advise the reader to consult some of the sources I cite below in the acknowledgement below to make up their own minds. However, it’s my opinion that Barter was right, and that the tank was not suited to the task assigned to it in High Wood. That said, this now ubiquitous weapon played an important role elsewhere in the wider battle of Flers-Courcelette; indeed, in the village of Flers, to the right of High Wood, tank D17 with the 41^st Division, commanded by Lt. Hastie of the Highland Light Infantry, drove up what was left of the High Street of Flers virtually unopposed, the enemy having fled in terror. It was reported that:

“A tank is walking up the high street of Flers with the British army cheering behind”.

Whatever the truth of this last statement, by the end of the following year, the tank better displayed its potential in November 1917, in the all-arms Battle of Cambrai.

In the end, what enabled the infantry of the 47^th Division to secure the woods where so many other divisions had failed in the preceding two months was the humble trench mortar. It is likely that the action of Captain Goodes of the 140^th Trench Mortar Battery, who had the foresight to move his eight new Stokes mortars into the front-line the night before the assault on High Wood, helped ensure the success of the action. Captain Goodes ordered his men to fire, and his crews fired a staggering 750 rounds in a matter of minutes, utterly demoralising the German defenders in their part of the wood, and helping to ensure that the infantry assaults across the rest of the wood were successful.

But despite the localized success, the action did not lead to a breakthrough, and as the autumn approached, and the weather turned cold and wet, the wider Battle of the Somme slowed, and in November, finally ground to a halt. With over four hundred thousand casualties, many have called the Battle of the Somme a disaster for the British. But, it was at the Somme that the British learned about modern warfare, and in the second half of the war, they applied these hard learned lessons and went on to defeat the Germans.
 

Memorial to men of the London Division in Camberwell, London

Memorial to men of the London Division at High Wood, Somme

You can walk around the edge of High Wood, but do not enter the wood itself unless you have permission from the land owner. And be aware that it remains the final resting place of around 8,000 men who died in the struggle to take and hold it.

The history of the development of the tank and its first use in anger at High Wood is the background to one of my novels, Farewell Leicester Square, available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IGBRJFE.

Acknowledgements

The Tanks at Flers, Trevor Pidgeon

The Landships of Lincoln, Richard Pullen

Beyond the Green Fields, Richard Pullen

The History of 47th (London) Division 1914 – 1919, Alan Maude

The Hell they Called High Wood, Terry Norman

The Somme, Peter Hart

Somme, Lyn MacDonald

 

Photographs from "The Tanks at Flers, Trevor Pidgeon" and author's own library

 

 

 

 

Announcing the launch in the Kindle Store of: Goodbye, Piccadilly

Men of the London Regiment advance through gas at the Battle of Loos

On 25th September, 1915, Rifleman Edwards and other members of the 1st Battalion London Irish Rifles’ football team kicked a ball towards the enemy trenches during their assault on the German-held village of Loos.

On 22nd September 2013, the London Irish Rifles, (now a reserve army company based in Camberwell, London) will celebrate and remember Rifleman Edwards and his comrades at their Loos Sunday parade. To coincide with the anniversary of the Battle of Loos, I’m publishing Goodbye, Piccadilly.

Goodbye, Piccadilly follows the adventures of Reg Kendrick and his brother in the London Irish Rifles at the outbreak of the Great War, and through to the Battle of Loos in September, 1915.
 
You can find it in the Kindle Store here. You can read the synopsis at the bottom of this post.

I hope you enjoy reading it, and if you do, please leave feedback and tell a friend!

 

It is 1914, and the last thing anyone expects is a war. Yet on the first Saturday of August, the Territorial Army is mobilized. Germany has invaded Belgium, and Britain is at war. Reg Kendrick finds himself at the front in charge of a section of men, without any clue as to what’s going on or what’s expected of him; but he begins to learn, and quickly.

Albert Kendrick is both resentful and disdainful of his younger brother’s accomplishments. But something good happens to Albert: he meets Florence Russell, a wonderful young woman. She could be the making of him, but he manages to mess it all up, and he loses her. To Reg. Consumed with jealousy and swearing revenge, he joins the army and follows Reg to France.

The brothers begin to adjust to life on the Western Front; the life of a soldier with its periods of boredom, of horror and terror and even of humour. But then their division is selected to play a crucial role in the Great Push, a major combined assault by both British and French forces.

Across flat, featureless terrain, seventy thousand men advance towards the well-entrenched enemy. Through a fog of chlorine gas and on into the streets of Loos, they wrest the town from the Germans at the point of their bayonets.

And within this maelstrom, the two brothers finally face up to their differences.

 

Rifleman 3008, Patrick MacGill

MacGill served in the 1st Battalion London Irish Rifles at the battle of Loos in September 1915 as a stretcher-bearer. He was wounded in the hand and never returned to the front. I'm not a big fan of poetry, much less war poetry, but I enjoy his style.

Now when we take the cobbled road we often took before,

Our thoughts are with the hearty lads who tread that way no more.

Oh ! boys upon the level fields, if you could call to mind

The wine of Café Pierre le Blanc, you wouldn't stay behind.

 

But when we leave the trench at night and stagger ‘neath our load,

Grey, silent ghosts as light as air come with us down the road.

And when we sit us down to drink you sit beside us too,

And drink at Café Pierre le Blanc as once you used to do.

Goodbye, Piccadilly

Ready to upload my latest book, Goodbye, Piccadilly. Finally got the cover sorted out, so I shall be ready to go shortly.

 

It's as historically accurate as I could make it, and deals with the 18th Battalion of the London Regiment (the London Irish Rifles) as they experience life on the Western Front, and it culminates in the Great Push - the Battle of Loos, September 1915.

Here's the historical context for the Battle of Loos:

By the autumn of 1915, the Allies had launched several attacks against the Germans, all largely unsuccessful. The Battle of Loos, fought from the 25th September until early October 1915, is often overlooked and certainly overshadowed by the Battle of the Somme which followed in 1916. However, it can be remembered for three important factors: it is the first time the British used chlorine gas, the Germans having been the first to use this horrific weapon in April 1915; it is the first time that Kitchener’s new armies, made up from the men who flocked to the flag in the early months of the war, went into battle, along with the Territorials, both largely untried and untested; it was a battle that ended in failure, but so nearly in success.

The battle was part of a wider campaign, with the French attacking further south at Vimy Ridge in Artois, but as with the later Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Loos occurred at neither the time nor place of Britain’s choosing, but rather as a gesture to the French, the senior partners in the alliance against the Germans.

Whilst Sir John French had overall command of the BEF in France, it was Douglas Haig that commanded the First Army; from this army were allocated six divisions to take part in the attack at Loos: three regular divisions, the 1st, 2nd and 7th; two divisions from the New Army, the 9th and 15th Scottish Divisions; and the Territorials of the 47th (London) Division. In addition, two more divisions, both New Army, the 21st and 24th, were held in reserve some six miles from the battlefield. All in all, this represented a total of around seventy five thousand men that would attack across a frontage of eight miles. This frontage was manned, from the north to the south, by: the 2nd, 9th, 7th Divisions (I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Gough); 1st, 15th, and 47th Divisions (IV Corps commanded by Lieutenant-General Rawlinson); Lieutenant-General Haking commanded XI Corps, the reserve.

Despite the fact that the gas was a disappointment, the initial assault, especially in the south, was a great success, with many of the objectives being realised on the first day; the German front-line and parts of the second-line were taken, as was the town of Loos itself. However, German counterattacks were swift and vicious, and although the two reserve divisions were committed on the first day, they were not able to participate until late on the second day. When they did, attacking in columns across the open ground between the German front and second lines, the 21st and 24th Divisions paid a terrible price, with almost one man in two becoming a casualty.

By the end of the battle some three weeks later, British casualties were in the region of 50,000 dead, missing or wounded. Amongst the dead were 2nd Lt. John Kipling, son of Rudyard Kipling; Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, brother of the late Queen Mother; and three divisional commanders, George Thesiger (9th Scottish Division), Thompson Capper (7th Division) and Frederick Wing (12th Division, who joined the fray in early October) making a lie of the myth that the generals stayed safe miles behind the lines in beautiful chateaux.

After the failure of the battle to breach the German line, Sir John French resigned as commander of the BEF to be replaced by Douglas Haig. It is possible that had the gas been more effective and had the reserves been in closer proximity to the battlefield so that they were fresh upon arrival, then the attack could, indeed, have breached the German line and led to breakthrough and early success on the Western Front in 1915; however, that is speculation.

As it was, the war dragged on for another three years, but it was to be another nine months before Britain felt strong enough to go on the offensive once more; at the Somme.

 

 

 

 

 

Mircale on the Marne

The Battle of the Marne began today, 99 years ago. It resulted in an Allied victory against the German Army. The battle effectively ended the German offensive that had began the war and saw the British stop their headlong retreat from Mons.
The counterattack of six French armies and one British army along the Marne River forced the Germans to abandon their push on Paris and retreat.
There then began a series of outflanking manoeuvres towards the channel coast, and then the protagonists dug in, setting the stage for four years of trench warfare.
The battle of the Marne was an immense strategic victory for the Allies, wrecking Germany's bid for a quick victory over France and forcing it into a protracted two-front war which it ultimately could not sustain.

Pipes and drums of the London Irish Rifles

When I made the earlier post, I remembered this photograph of the pipes and drums of the 1st Battalion, London Irish Rifles, in France 1915.

This is taken before the big push in September 1915 at Loos.

Footballer of Loos

The London Irish Rifles, now a Reserve Army company based in Flodden Road, Camberwell, London, have a long and illustrious past. They won their first battle honours in the second Boer War in 1900 and served with distinction in both world wars.

In 1915, at the battle of Loos in northern France, Rifleman Edwards helped lift the morale of his chums by kicking a football across no man’s land towards the enemy trenches. This act forms the centrepiece of Loos Sunday.

The London Irish Rifles parade on the Sunday nearest the 25th September each year, and after the pipes and drums of the regiment comes a short memorial service in the drill hall.

To coincide with this annual event, I’ll be releasing my book, Goodbye, Piccadilly, and running a free promotion over Loos Sunday weekend. More details to follow.

Being of sound mind

The government are in the process of digitizing the wills of several hundred thousand soldiers killed during the Great War. I've already been online and paid my £6 for my great-grandfather's will.
You can find out more about this here, and you can go and search for your relatives' wills here.

Action at Néry

The story on which I am currently working ends up in a small field outside a village north east of Paris. The action at Néry saw an outnumbered British cavalry brigade fight off a German cavalry division. The men of the Royal Horse Artillery's L Battery won three VCs that day, and fought until all the ammunition was expended, all the guns destroyed, and all the officers and a quarter of the men had become casualties.
You can read 'Over by Christmas' here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I80T0DM

Augustus and the Great War

I uploaded my book, Augustus and the Great War, to the Kindle Store. You can read it here. It's aimed at children aged around ten to twelve.

It’s no fun getting your head stuck down a toilet, but that’s what happened when I decided to stand up to The Three Amigos, a gang at my new school. Somehow, this made me a troublemaker, and I was kept back in detention. On the way home, I got picked up by the police, so things weren’t great in my first month of senior school.

And when I got home, my parents were still arguing. They stopped long enough to let me know that I had to move out of my bedroom for Granddad to come and stay. Great! Granddad told me he could travel through time using an old compass to guide the way. Right. Sure. Humour the old man. But I was having a fiddle with it, and somehow, I managed to send myself back in time. When I returned, Granddad told me he got the compass from his father who was given it by a young infantryman during the First World War. 

When Granddad got suddenly ill with chlorine gas poisoning, I just knew he’d been back to the First World War. And then he told me I was the young infantryman, and that I’d have to go back in time to give the compass to my great-grandfather.  

The crash of the shells was beyond anything I imagined as I sat in the trenches with the other soldiers of the London Regiment, waiting to go over the top. The whistles blew, we all stood and fixed bayonets, and then clambered up the ladders and over the parapet into the fog of smoke and gas, the machine-gun bullets plucking at the soil all around us. We crossed the muddy fields towards Loos, and using rifle and grenade, house by house, we forced the Germans from the village.  

But then I knew I must face my biggest trial: I had to join the attack on Hill 70, the infamous German stronghold. I knew my great-grandfather lay wounded on the hill, and that unless I could get to him, I would never be born.

The story revolves around a young boy, Augustus, who travels back in time to the Battle of Loos, September 1915. If you like it, please leave feedback.

I'm working on another book about two brothers in the opening weeks of the war that deals with the retreat from Mons. Should be done in a few months. With luck!