Over by Christmas

The synopsis for my latest book, Over by Christmas. Just working on the cover and then I shall upload to the Kindle Store.

L Battery RHA at Néry

Harry Thatcher runs away from home after a fight with his father. His brother is in the army, and so Harry finds a new home with the cavalry as a bugler.

A year later, Britain is at war, and Harry’s regiment is advancing on the Germans through France and Belgium. In a clash of steel on steel, they meet the German First Army at Mons, and Harry has his first taste of the reality of modern warfare.

Outnumbered, the British Army is forced to retreat, and Harry and his friend, Douglas Thomson, get separated from their regiment after a disastrous cavalry charge. Along with a downed airman, Lieutenant Carmichael, the three must get back to friendly lines. Between them and their colleagues are a hundred miles and two hundred thousand German soldiers.

When they are finally reunited with the remnants of their regiment, they find themselves surrounded by an entire German Cavalry Division. In a field near the village of Néry, just forty miles from Paris, in a bitter fight in which a regiment is lost and 3 VCs are won, Harry finally leaves his boyhood behind.

I believe that the Action at Néry, as the battle at the end of this story is often called, was pivotal to the outcome of the Great War, despite the relatively small numbers of troops and casualties involved. The damage inflicted by the British 1^st Cavalry Brigade on the German 4^th Cavalry Division meant that the latter could no longer participate in the advance on Paris.
The temporary loss of the German division weakened the German II Cavalry Corps and slowed its advance. Consequently, the French Fifth Army were able to avoid destruction and escape across the Marne. In addition, the defenders of Paris had time and resources to build-up their defences.
As Lyn Macdonald says in her book, 1914: The days of hope:
“Néry was destined to be the ‘horseshoe nail’ which in the course of a very few days would puncture the balloon of (German) plans and aspirations and decide the final outcome of the Battle of the Marne.”
It was at the Marne that the Allies halted the German advance and stopped the headlong allied retreat. Had they failed to do this, Germany would almost certainly have won the war in those opening weeks. As it was, the war against Germany was not won; rather, it was not lost.
 

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.