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.