1915 - The Battle of Loos and After

I had intended this post be ready for the centenary of the start of The Battle of Loos, 25 September 2015, so am disappointed it is late.  However, a further post will be uploaded soon as, along with Walter Hitchcock’s Grandson, Allan Hitchcock, one hundred years later, to the hour I managed to be at the locations described below in the Battle of Loos on 26 September 1915 …

August 1915

Blackdown, Surrey.

Given the comparatively slow progress of converting civilians into soldiers over the last twelve months, events now move very quickly.  Soon after the inspection by H.R.H King George, the Commanding Officer Col. F.H. Fautlough, is informed by Brigadier General Mitford that the battalion will be despatched to the front in a matter of days.  The next day, Sunday 22 August, all officers and men are granted a ‘leave of absence’.  This lasts until the Friday, 27 August, when all men are ordered to rejoin by 1200 midnight, ready for parade on the Saturday.  Come Monday (30 August), the troops find themselves marching to Frimley station to board trains to Folkestone, which is reached at 10pm.  Sailing for France happens with immediate effect.  In the early hours of 1st September, WH disembarks in Boulogne, and is marched with the men to a camp south-east of the port town.  The troops are in France.

The Surrey Mirror & County Post, Friday, 27 August, 1915

The next day, the troops are on the move again, first by train to Montreuil, arriving at 5.30pm, and then marching 12 miles to Herly for billeting in farms [see Map 1, below.  Temporary headquarters are set up in the local school].  Three weeks training then commences, during which time WH and the Royal West Surrey Regiment become part of XI Corps.  The regimental history notes that the weather has a negative effect on training, with wet days followed by hot and dry, followed by wet again.  The adjutant diary, reserved for only the most key details of the day, notes on 7th September, 1915, “Very hot & men very tired - probable cause change of climate & food”.W1  One cannot wonder, though, with WH’s previous outdoor life on Denbies, whether the ‘climate & food’ may not have been an issue for him personally - he certainly did not feel it worth mentioning when interviewed years later.

Map1 - Boulogne, Montreuil and Herly

21st September and the orders arrive to depart Herly.  Departure is by foot, marching via Glem to Berguettes on the 22nd, where, as the adjutant diary records, the men rest after “having bathed in mill steam”.W1  The 23rd is a day of rest.  The 24th sees the men marching again, reaching Bethune at night and into billets in the local school.  Morale is not good.  Although greater distances have been marched by the men while in the UK, now, with the added paraphernalia of war, the men are tired - WH simply recalls, “and we marched, and we marched, and we marched”.

Map 2 - Herly to Bethune

On arrival in Bethune, the weather, again, turns wet.  WH later records, “We marched to a place called Bethune - if my memory's right - and we went into a field and the rain was pouring down. The Colonel said (impersonates upper class voice) "We shall be staying here for about four or five hours. You men must get some sleep. We shall be going into action tomorrow morning." and Jimmy Laing, a chap - I've got his photo somewhere - and I, we were both Sergeants at that time, and he put one ground sheet on the ground and we covered ourselves over with the other one and we lay down and tried to get some sleep.”  [See Note 1 for more information on Jimmy Laing.]

The regiment soon realises it has marched into disorganised chaos.  As one history of the Battle of Loos records,

“The men marching up to the front ran into men who had been relieved by the attacking troops and who were marching back to billets. Halts were frequent and roads were only just wide enough to take a column marching in fours. There were wide ditches on either side that made passing or being passed by horsed transport a difficult business.  There were hold ups at nearly every crossroads and at railway level crossings; march discipline in the two New Army divisions was not good – hardly surprising when one considers that they had only been in the country a matter of weeks – and there were instances of over-zealous military policemen stopping marching units because the commanders lacked the necessary movement orders. The soldiers of the two divisions did not reach their allotted positions until 0200 hours if they were lucky, and 0600 hours if they were not. The leading units of 21 Division were at Noeux les Mines, and the rearguard was near La Buissière, four miles back. The head of 24 Division was at Beuvry, and its tail three miles behind near Béthune. The lead battalions of both divisions were now about four and a half miles from the British front line, or less than two hours marching for fresh troops. Unfortunately these troops were not fresh. They were exhausted by marching, not helped by the wet weather, and there were no billets available for them. Men lay down in fields off the roads and tried to get some sleep under their groundsheets. As the artillery bombardment was still going on, rising to a crescendo from 0400 hours, there was little rest for anyone.“  B4

The next twenty-four hours were to be a brutal introduction to the style of conflict of the First World War.

September 25th, 1915

Vermelles

At mid-day, the regiment moves to Vermelles, a small village no more than two miles south-east of Bethune.  Positions are taken in the trenches west of Le Rutoire Farm, the Allied batteries firing all the time.B1 [See Map 3, below]  WH recalls the memory of being at ‘the front’ for the first time’.

“[...] on the Saturday night, September 25th - it was very positive because I'd got my calendar - we marched into the line, and a lot of people had never seen a dead man. There was got soldiers were hanging on the wire, you know, where they had been killed the day before and hadn't been taken off. This barbed-wire was just in front of us. Well, we got into the trenches and we were told to make ourselves comfortable” T

Map 3 - British & French positions before Battle of Loos, 25 September 1915

The battalion moves forward in the darkness in the labyrinth of trenches, edging closer to the enemy position.  The Officer Commanding the Battalion is directed to prepare for an attack on ground south of Hullach village.B1  However, the instructions are not clear.  The regimental diaries record that, “C.O. [Note 2] then ordered to prepare for an attack on the ground south of Hulluch village - 8th W.Kents & 9th E.Surreys in the attach.  8th Queens in support of W.Kents.”  The regimental history documents, “No written orders were given, and no zero hour was mentioned, and no objective pointed out, while the dusk had fallen, and the troops knew nothing of the country, the position, the enemy, or the whereabouts of our own forces.”  B1  The regimental diaries note, “For a time we lose connection with W.Kents owing to darkness & difficult nature of the country, which is a maze of trenches”. W1

Worse is soon to come: Before a plan of attack can be formulated, the trenches in which they are settled come under heavy shell fire.  Remarkably, no-one is killed.

September 26th, 1915

Vermelles

In the early hours, the battalion moves into the previously captured German communications trenches.  It is from here the attack is to be executed. B1

“The two divisions, less one brigade each, were not able to move from the Vermelles / Mazingarbe area until it was nearly dark, and they were being asked to cross ground that they had not seen, marching on a compass bearing, with only maps and out of date air photographs to guide them and in a steady downpour of rain. Each division set off with one brigade in the lead and the other following up, and progress was painfully slow. It soon became apparent that there could be no question of seizing the Haute Deule Canal that night, a fact that Haig realised early on, and which prompted him at 2027 hours to issue orders to 21 and 24 Division to take up a position between Hill 70 and the west end of Hulluch, and to be prepared for an advance next morning.” B4  [See Map 3, previous pages]

Verbal orders are received at 10.30am: The order is to commence at 11.15.  No clear goal definition has yet been received but at 11.15 an ordered advance begins.  As WH recalls,

“[...] it was a beautiful sunny day [...] and we went over the top, and we went over in a line, as though we were going partridge shooting, and presently you'd see one go down, and we'd previously been told, of course, ‘Under no circumstances must you stop if there's anybody wounded or’, erm, ‘knocked down; your job is to keep going’."  T

The Germans are currently out of sight but there is intense heavy shrapnel and machine-gun fire.  The majority of fire seems to be coming from Hulluch, which has erroneously been reported as being in British hands.   The fire increases as The Queen’s cross the Lens - La Bassée road.  B1

WH again, “They were some distance away. Well, we marched, or we got in line, we were advancing on Hulluch, a place called Hulluch, coal mining area, and, erm, <sounds surprised> our Colonel got killed almost as soon as we went over the top. He got killed, I didn't know he had but I knew afterwards he was killed, there were a lot of the Officers got killed and we went on. [...] However, we went on, and we kept going, all we knew was that this coal mining area around Hulluch was the place that we were trying to get to. Well, we got into a corn field. The sun was shining down all round, well it was ten o'clock when we went over and by the time we got there it was half past eleven, twelve o'clock. So, I searched around, we'd got people on the right of us, we'd got people on the left of us, we'd got people in front of us, all from different companies, so I said ‘Well, we've got to do something’, so some said ‘Well, let's go back’. I said <concerned> ‘No! We don't go back. We'll wait here, we'll wait and see what happens’.  So we lay down in this cornfield until two o'clock, half past two I suppose - time, was, well … Then, up there, and up there, and up there, we saw the Germans come and mount machine guns, and then they opened up, on this cornfield. So that's when I said, ‘Look, everyone that can get back, go back’, and back we went, and, the first battle was at Loos, where we suffered terribly.”

So what, exactly, had gone wrong?  Simply put, the battalion had encountered a wall of barbed wire between it and the German position on HIll 70.  Clearly, command had expected the barbed wire to have been cut.  It hadn’t.  A number of factors had led to the advancing troops of 24th Brigade maneuvering into an impossible position.

The battlefield historian, Gordon Corrigan, sets the scene (note that Map 3 can be used for reference here):

“The men who were to carry out the 1100 hours attack were tired, hungry, wet and, no doubt, frightened. They had spent the last two nights marching, and of the six brigades of the two divisions only one (72 Brigade of 24 Division) had been able to provide their men with a hot breakfast, all others having to make do with their emergency rations – perfectly nourishing but neither hot nor appetising. It should have been an attack by twenty-four battalions, and it should have driven through the German defence line and sent the enemy reeling. As it was, due to orders arriving late or not at all, and the difficulty in moving over the ground, it was carried out by six battalions of 24 Division on the left, and two battalions and the intermingled remnants of four others of 21 Division on the right.

“On the extreme left of the attack 1 Division was supposed to attack the village of Hulluch, strongly held by the Germans and able to direct fire into the flank of the attacking troops. Due to a mixture of muddle, misunderstanding and severed telephone wires, this attack was uncoordinated and half hearted. It failed to capture or neutralise Hulluch from where both artillery and rifle fire began to take its toll on 24 Division.” [B4]

And so the regiment advanced in good faith, only to find itself faced with uncut barbed wire.  As the regimental record notes, “[...] the Brigade line lay down while all possible effort was made to cut through it, but scourged by machine gun fire from both flanks at the closest range, the task was manifestly impossible and the 72nd Brigade fell back to its starting point.”  B1

Gordon Corrigan again,

“The German second line was well protected by wire; the artillery bombardment, such as it was, had damaged it not a jot, and to add to the wretched infantry’s misery their own artillery shells began to fall amongst them instead of in the enemy trench. Try as they did no one could get through the wire and the division’s advance ground to a halt, under fire from in front and from their left.

“The operation required the attacking infantry of 21 and 24 Divisions on a frontage of just under a mile to ascend a gently rising slope for about a thousand yards, when they would come upon the German second line of defence. This was only one trench, without the usual support or reserve lines, but it was strongly held and well protected. “Reinforcements of men had been fed in during the night and they had thrown up a barbed wire entanglement four feet in height and up to twenty feet deep. There would be a preliminary artillery bombardment lasting an hour. If the bombardment went according to plan, it would be carried out by the artillery of both divisions plus two heavy batteries. “This was little enough to blast a mile of German line that had not yet been subjected to any artillery at all – the bombardment prior to 25 September being aimed at the first line of defences only – and the heavy batteries were allocated only 200 6-inch shells, and ninety of 9.2. The bombardment did not go according to plan.

“Wire obstacles came in various shapes and sizes but the most common were the standard entanglement and the metallic trellis.  The entanglement [...] was a criss-cross maze of bull wire, or, preferably, barbed wire, fastened to vertical pickets driven into the ground, the whole varying from two feet eight inches to four feet in height.  The metallic trellis used barbed wire coils to create a rather higher (but more visible) obstacle, and there were all sorts of permutations including the Brun system, which in essence involved chucking barbed wire coils about any old how and generally used to create a rapid obstacle on the enemy side of a newly captured trench.  Whatever their type, all wire obstacles, or combinations of obstacles, had to be at least 100 feet in depth, that is more than the maximum distance that anyone could throw a grenade, and had to be covered by fire, for if they were not then an attacker could cut through them at leisure. Where possible wire obstacles were camouflaged – not difficult if the area in front of the trenches was grass or scrubland, but much more difficult after any covering had been burnt off or destroyed by shelling. [...] The obvious way to get through obstacles was to use the artillery to cut lanes through the wire before the infantry attacked. The problem was that it didn’t always work.

“Over on the 24 Division portion of the front no advance was possible, and the troops were horribly exposed in front of the German trench. Should they hang on where they were, avoiding giving up the ground that they had taken, as some officers averred, or should they accept that they had done all that they possibly could (as Major General J E Capper, who took over command of the division shortly after the battle, said later) and withdraw? The sight of 21 Division pulling back on their right was another pressing influence, and as the senior officers began to be killed or wounded, command devolved on company and platoon commanders or on NCOs.

“Officers were dying; units were intermingled, communications to the rear were non-existent, and then somebody – nobody knows who – shouted ‘Retire’. Back went the men of 24 Division, and now both divisions were retreating as best they could, back across the open, bullet-streaked no-man’s-land, to the Grenay-Hulluch road and the trenches of the old German front line, from where they had started that morning. There the few officers and senior NCOs still on their feet ran themselves ragged to rally the remnants of the two divisions. The Germans did not press home their advantage by a major counter-attack, but, proving that gentlemanly conduct had not been entirely eradicated from modern warfare, they sent out medical orderlies to minister what attention they could to the British wounded, sending all those who could walk or crawl back towards the British line unmolested.”  B4

WH picks up the narrative, “Well, I and one or two others, we got into a trench which went right back up the hill.  At the top of the hill was an old tree, it was called 'Lone Tree' and I got in this trench it was full, of wounded, and most of them hadn't got any water, you know, or drunk the water, it really took some sticking.  Now, I got back up the top and then I found remnants of our Battalion were there. Amongst them was a Major Fox who was our company commander, so I naturally went and reported to him and he said, ‘Well look, I am glad to see you Sergeant, what we're doing, we're holding a line along here and’, he says, ‘we're very, very weak’. Then he said, ‘I've got six men there, they haven't got an NCO with them’, so he said, ‘I want you to go and take charge of the section’.  I thought right. Well, I was worn out, so I went and I found them and of course it was two on, two off and two working. I sat down on the side of the trench , and, erm, ‘Sergeant, Sergeant, they're coming up in front!’, and I went and looked over the top of the trench and there you could see these blasted Germans, a whole line of them coming up to where we were.  I sent one of the chaps off to report to Major Fox and he came down.  He said, ‘Have they moved far, Sergeant?’.  I said, ‘I don't know’, so he said, ‘Well shut your eyes for a minute will you?’, and he says, ‘Now have another look’, and I had another look, and he says, ‘Do you know what they are?’, he says, ‘They're barbed wire posts’.  There we are, but they weren't, they were alive, they were crawling up there, I mean to say that a lot of it was to do with the state you were in. I was like the other people, I was completely exhausted.

“Well, we stopped there that night, and the next day they pulled us out and that was the worst night I've ever had in my life. It was cold, we had nowhere to lie down - I got under a GS wagon and tried to get some sleep - and then they marched us back, and we were reformed and we had reinforcements come in”.  T

GS Wagons

History generally records the battle at Loos as a disaster.  Twelve attacking battalions suffered 8,000 casualties out of 10,000 men in four hours. W2   Among the thousands of individual stories of personal tragedy was that of Second Lieutenant John ‘Jack’ Kipling, the only - and much doted on - son of Rudyard Kipling.  Perhaps John Kipling’s death personifies much that was painful about Kitchener’s fighting force as, far from being a soldiers in a historically professional sense, one of Jack's former platoon members later confirmed that Jack was killed in the Battle of Loos, shot by enemy gunfire, after losing his glasses and searching in the mud during an assault on a German machine-gun post; John Kipling was severely short-sighted.  [See Note 3]

Perhaps it is the case with retrospective reviews of any battles but things clearly could have been different at the Battle of Loos - should have been different.  Gordon Corrigan approaches the scenario thus,

“During the night of 25 September the artillery of 21 and 24 Divisions should have been pulled out of their existing positions and moved forward to the rear of Lone Tree, where they would have been nicely sheltered on a reverse slope unseen by German spotters.  As it was, the area between the original British front line – the jump off line – and where the battle had got to at last light on 25 September, was a parking attendant’s nightmare. The normal procedure was for administrative transport – carrying a resupply of rations, ammunition, water and all the other bits and pieces that soldiers need in order to carry on making war, and including the wherewithal to produce a hot meal – to move forward and make contact with their parent units at night. As no proper traffic plan had been laid down, and as there were insufficient movement control officers and military police to impose compliance even if there had been, it was every quartermaster for himself. There were few maps of the scale needed and throughout the night horse-and-mule-drawn vehicles floundered about trying to find their owners. As Le Rutoir was one of the few easily identifiable landmarks on what had been no-man’s-land, nearly every brigade sent their battalions’ wagons there. The inevitable gridlock, with roads and tracks blocked with lost transport or transport all trying to get to the same place, inevitably affected the artillery move, which had been predicated on the basis of unclogged roads and the normal traffic priority for artillery. Navigation was not helped by a thick mist that covered the battlefield With all the movement difficulties met during the night the artillery could get no farther forward than the western side of Le Rutoir, or about a thousand yards short of where they should have been. This in itself would not have mattered – the second German line was now well within the range of both field and heavy guns – but it meant that instead of being nicely sheltered behind Lone Tree the guns were now on the forward slope, and as soon as the mist lifted, which it did at about 0900 hours, they were clearly visible to the Germans from their positions. Attempts by the gunners to camouflage their guns were useless, and the Germans were soon able to bring down counter-battery fire from their own artillery, and some guns even suffered the indignity of receiving infantry rifle fire. It is hardly to be wondered at that the bombardment was even less effective than that originally planned – which itself would have been far from devastating – and that little damage was done to the German trench before the infantry advanced to attack it.”  B4

With the absence of luck or fate, perhaps it was doomed to fail from the outset.

British Infantry Advancing at Loos, 25 September 1915

October 1915

It is the start of October and the troops are resting in Berguette before marching to Gotwaerselde then on to Houtkercque where, on 2nd October, the 8th Queen’s Adjutant notes, “Men billeted in barns, great difficulty in finding billets as people not very friendly”. [W1]  Morale is low.

In his interview, WH is not specific about his movements for the remainder of 1915.  However, on the 5th October half the battalion joins the 27th brigade, “in the trenches for instructional purpose”.  This meant a march of about 18 miles in heavy rain and through deep mud.  They arrived in the trenches very exhausted around 1am”. W1

This tallys with WH’s description, “[...] we went to a place called Messines.  At Messines we then had our first initiation into trench warfare. The Blackwatch were holding that particular line, we were put in to get a little idea of how to get on in the trenches”.

The 10th October see the battalion at Reninghelst where, during church parade, a message is read out by the Chaplain from Brigadier General Mitford, who is “unwell and unable to present”.,

“Last Sunday the Brigade went into action for the first time, only a year after they came forward at their country’s call.  The way the Brigade advanced under heavy machine-gun fire from flanks and rear, has evoked the approbation of the Divisional and Corps Commanders; you were an example of steadiness and determination to carry out your tasks, not only to the New Armies, but to seasoned troops who could not have done better than you did.  As I say, you carries out your task, but had to retire.  Yet, do not think it was a failure for it was not, as you caused sixteen of the enemy’s battalions of reserve to be brought up into our area and taken away from the French just south of us, thereby enabling the French to make an appreciable advance.  I should like all of you to know the relatives of those who are not with us to make known to them how gallantly they fought and how nobly they serve their country in whose service they fell and what prestige they brought on the names of the regiments to which they belonged.  Men of the Queen’s, Buffs, East Surreys, Royal West Kents, you have added glory to the ancient regiments of which you are the children; you have made for the 72nd Brigade a name which none of you can be anything but proud of and which, I know, in the future you will never allow to diminish.  I feel it a great honour to have the chance of commanding such troops on service and I shall never forget the ground about Hulluch Village.”

On the 12th October, Lieutenant-General J. Capper, now in command of 24th Division, arrives to inspect the troops and calls on them, “not to be disheartened at their recent losses, but rather to be urged to greater fury against the enemy who had caused them”.

A pattern now emerges, which sees the Battalion through the remainder of October, November and December.  15th October and the battalion relieves the Scotch Fusiliers from trench numbers 27 and 28 then the cycle begin in earnest - time in the trenches 24, 25 and 26, time back in Reninghelst for training and Trench Working Party duty, then back to the trenches again.

The adjutant diaries records some of the more macabre elements of the day in the same tone as one would document the weather, “snipers active”, “slight bombardment” and “2nd Lt. Wilcox of A Coy. was killed by a stray bullet while the Company was marching away towards camp”.

December sees the battalion moving north and billets are taken in Nordausques, south east of Calais, the previous billets in Dickebusch having been shelled by German artillery.  Although further from the front line at this point, there is no chance for the troops to become too relaxed; The regimental diaries record, “Various competitions were held in the Division e.g. Football, Cross Country Run, Sniping etc.  The Battalion gained second place to the 9th E.Surrey Regt. in the Cross Country Run, and we held 2nd place to the 1st N Staffs in the Sniping Competition.”

And so, on into 1916 ...

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Notes

Note 1 - Who was Jimmy Lang?  As explained to me in an email from Richard Novell, a WW1 researcher from the United States of America - and to whom I am hugely indebted - “[...] the Serjeant Jimmy Lang to whom your great-grandfather refers in the interview is G/2340 James Alexander Laing, who enlisted at Guildford on September 21, 1914, a few days after your great-grandfather, and was posted to the 8th Battalion, The Queen's (RWSR).  Serjeant Laing received a second lieutenant's commision on July 26, 1917.  He was killed in action on October 14, 1918, while serving with the 10th Battalion, The Queen's (RWSR). “

Note 2 - The Colonel referenced was Lieutenant Colonel F. H. Fairtlough.  The rank of Lieutenant Colonel is often shortened to simply ‘Colonel’ in conversation and in unofficial correspondence.  [LTC Keith E. Bonn, Army Officer’s Guide, 50th Edition, p. 14 Mechanicsville, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2005.]

Note 3 - “John had been desperate to join up but his eyesight was appalling. He was unable even to read the second letter on the chart, despite his thick glasses.  He went at the beginning to try and enlist on his own, but was rejected.  He tried again; this time accompanied by his father, but was again rejected.  It was time to pull some strings.  His father was at the height of his celebrity. His was the authentic voice beating the drum for the jingoistic spirit of the times and had been life-long friends with Lord Roberts, colonel of the Irish Guards. John was thus accepted into the regiment.  When it came, John's death was a hammer blow to Kipling.  He was devastated.  He was besotted with his son.  The author carried out hundreds of interviews with his late son's comrades; building up a detailed picture of his last moments, but his son’s body was never recovered nor identified.” W3

The Officers, 8th (Service) Battalion The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment)

Blackdown, 1915

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References

B1  History of the Queen's Royal (West Surrey) Regiment In The Great War, Colonel H. C. Wylly, C.B., N&M Press, ISDN 9781843425397

B4  Loos 1915: The Unwanted Battle, Gordon Corrigan, Endeavour Press,  9781862272392

W1  Website of The Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment - http://www.queensroyalsurreys.org.uk/war_diaries/local/8Bn_Queens.shtml

W2  Battle of Loos, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Loos

W3  IWM Lives of the First World War, Lieutenant John Kipling: https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lif

T CQMS Walter Hitchcock (Interview Transcript)  http://walterhitchcock-ww1.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/walter-hitchcock-interview-transcript.html