Month: September 2014

A locality of great interest

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15th September 1914

The Dorsets returned to their sunken road at 4am. I’ve had a think about the location of this road overnight. I’m guessing they were using it as a pre-dug trench. It must have run north to south to protect the troops from shellfire coming in from the east. Gleichen mentions that the Dorsets were “pushed on to help the 12th, and filled a gap in their line on the hill above the village front at the eastern end.” So I think it was either the little lane called Petit Chivres or Rue du Moulin de Laffaux, probably the former as it’s pushed further ahead than the actual village. It appears on Google maps to be heavily hedged and run beneath the surface of the surrounding fields. All the other nearby roads run along the surface of the land.

Rolt’s farm is mentioned by Gleichen over the next few days so I’ve located that on the map from his small drawing in his book. I’ve also located the farm at La Biza again as it remained the 15th Brigade’s HQ. I’m going to assume that the Dorsets’ diary refers to this location when it mentions La Bezaie farm.

An hour later, at 5am, the Dorsets received a message that the Chivres spur was about to be attacked again in a joint operation between the 15th and 13th Brigades. The Dorsets remained under the care of the 14th Brigade as reserve battalion.

By 1pm the news came back that the attack had broken down. General Stuart Peter Rolt, Commander of the 14th Brigade, ordered the Dorsets to join the best of the 215th Brigade in Missy. At 2pm they moved to “Rolt’s Farm” and then spread out. Frank’s A Company was ordered to occupy a small green hill 600 feet east of the farm, while C Company was to remain in support. The hill is visible on Google Maps if you turn on view terrain. A Company immediately caught the attention of a German machine gun. Several men were hit.

The remaining Companies were ordered to move south down the little stream that ran past a mill. They dug themselves into the bank.

At about 3pm the Dorsets were surprised by Gleichen and Brigade Major Weatherby leaping through the hedges coming the other way followed by an angry swarm of German bullets.

We must have offered very sporting targets to the Germans on the hill, for we ran all the way, and—I speak for myself—we got extremely hot.

The Dorsets received orders at 5pm to move towards Missy and entrench the line south of La Biza down to the railway. I’ve had a look for this railway to see if there are any marks left in the ground, but it’s long gone, although the land is scored with what could be old trenches. I’m assuming the railway line ran where the D925 road now passes the bottom of the village.

CBR line through Missy-sur-Aisne in 1927
The CBR line shown here running through Missy-sur-Aisne in 1927

It’s not clear how far the Dorsets got in digging their new line. At 9pm the order came for them to retire south of the Aisne. They crossed a new pontoon bridge which had appeared next to where Johnston’s rafts were the day before. The enemy’s search lights played over the water as they crossed but they were not seen and retired to the billets in the relative safety of Jury.

The Dorsets’ war diary records 1 killed with 21 wounded and 4 missing. The CWGC reports 8 dead from this area of operations. Some of Frank’s close friends must have been included in this grim harvest.

Missy was “a locality of great interest” according to Sir John French.

“On the 15th my impression of the previous day, namely, that the enemy was making a firm stand in his actual position, was confirmed also by an intercepted German wireless message. It seemed probable that we had the whole of the German 1st Army in front of us.”

The 5th Division was still waiting for heavy artillery to come up and support the exposed troops on the northern banks. The Germans were one step ahead. The increase of “Black Marias” and other monstrous shells indicated that the large siege guns had finished smashing Belgian forts and were now ominously sited on the heights about the Aisne. Faced with an entire army and their massed artillery, there was only one option left to the men of the BEF. To dig. Dig in and entrench or face annihilation.

The elderly chicken and other murders

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14th September 1914

Captain William Johnston VC
Captain William Johnston VC

The rest of the brigade followed the Dorsets across the River Aisne over the next few hours. Captain Johnston and Lieutenant Flint continued to punt troops across and ferry back the wounded. They did this under constant shellfire throughout the day until 7pm. Johnston was awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in this extraordinary feat, Flint the DSO. We’ll meet the inimitable Captain Johnston again, later on in the year.

At 4am the Dorsets, acting once more as advanced guard, headed to Sainte-Marguerite via Bucy-Le-Long, where they took up shelter in a sunken road. The enemy’s shellfire had increased in intensity. Gleichen recalls “the enemy’s artillery had meanwhile opened on us, and shells began to crash overhead and played the devil with the tiles and the houses. But they did not do us much harm.”

In fact the Dorset diary reports that at around 12pm 3 shells hit them in the sunken road causing casualties. The Dorsets’ diary records 1 dead and 20 wounded that day. The CWGC records 3 dead on that day who were subsequently buried at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre. The additional two deaths could easily have died from wounds received previously, like Lieutenant George who sadly died today in Coulommiers military hospital. Another man, Private A.R. Pearce, passed away at Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley, Southampton.

Gleichen claims that the Dorsets “were our leading battalion, and they were pushed on to help the 12th, and filled a gap in their line on the hill above the village front at the eastern end.” The Dorsets’ diary is more vague and simply states that they were in touch with the 14th Brigade on their right and the Essex Regiment was to their left. The Dorsets remained here for the rest of the day. We’ll come back to them tomorrow.

The rest of the 15th Brigade had been ordered to attack the Chivre spur and then push onto Condé beyond it. Gleichen raises his eyebrows with the comment that this is “rather a ‘large order.'” The Chivre spur was one of many fat fingers of land that pushed out into the banks of the river Aisne below. It rose impressively for 400 feet with densely wooded sides. This high ground needed to be taken in order to join I Corps on the left hand of the BEF with II Corps on the right. The attack, without close artillery support, was difficult enough but there was another problem.

The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 ended in a total thrashing for the French. One of their military responses was to build a large amount of fortresses along key strategic points; a ring around France itself and then a series of forts defending Paris. One of these stood at the top of the Aisne right at the tip of the Chivre spur. It was called Fort de Condé and is still there today, testament to its enduring strength. The Germans used it to their full advantage reportedly housing three artillery batteries in its walls. It later became a hospital and remained in their possession until 1917. None of the British accounts mention this fort. With it, the Germans had an almost impregnable hold on the spur.

Histoire & art

The entrance to Fort de Condé, taken by Flickr user Geneviève Prevot

Meanwhile Gleichen gathered his troops along with stragglers from the 14th and 13th Brigades. The attack on Chivre spur was launched from Missy quite late in the day at 4:30pm but soon broke down in utter confusion. Some men attacked their own troops by way of a horsehaped track leading them back towards their own lines. Other men were trapped by 6 foot high wire enclosures in the woods. They never stood a chance against such overwhelming odds. Eventually the British fell back in disarray, chased by shrapnel rounds, rifle and machine gun fire, and hid behind Missy’s ancient, thick walls. The Norfolks, in particular, suffered badly, with 37 men killed.

The Brigade Headquarters withdrew a little further to the south, to a farm called “La Biza”. It’s still there today and is a now B&B. I’ll leave you with Chef Gleichen’s final thoughts on the day’s action.

We bought, murdered, and ate an elderly chicken, but otherwise there was devilish little to eat except a store of jam, and we had only a very few biscuits and no bread.

 

Black Marias and Cow-Guns

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13th September 1914

At 4am the Dorsets set out and by 5am had formed up with the rest of the 15th Brigade at Le Mont de Soissons.

Here they were ordered to support the 13th Brigade who had crossed the Aisne and were attacking Missy, about six miles to the north. The brigade marched to Serches, arriving at 8am, and here they waited for most of the day. They has finally reached the southern banks of the Aisne River.

The Germans were defending the heights across the Aisne vigorously, dropping shells with pinpoint accuracy onto the advancing BEF. Most of the bridges across the Aisne had been destroyed as they withdrew. The British found themselves having to repair bridges under fire or improvise other ways of crossing the River Aisne, which was unfordable. The river is at least 15 feet deep in the centre and 170 feet across. Steep-sided spurs rose up from the riverbed up 400 feet to plateaus either side. These plateaus were obscured by dense woods, especially on the northern bank, where the Germans had massed their artillery. The BEF had no way of gauging the enemy’s strength ahead of them. Was this resistance another rearguard or were the Germans standing and fighting?

At 2:30pm the 15th Brigade was moved back about 300ft away from incoming shellfire. Gleichen couldn’t eat his bully beef and biscuits in peace. The Cheshires found a cave, into which they moved their men and horses. I wonder of one of their batmen found it? The rest of the brigade scattered out among the surrounding village.

The Brigade had moved away from a 60lb* battery in front of them, which was attracting considerable interest from German artillery. Gleichen calls the exploding shells “Black Marias”. There’s considerable debate about exactly to what this term refers to. I am going with the more widely held view that it is a generic term for a large German shell, typically fired from a Howitzer between 15 and 21cm calibre, which exploded with a black cloud of smoke. These shells were also referred to as Jack Johnsons (after the famous US Olympic boxer), Woolly Bears** and Coal Boxes. The latter also encompassed the sound they made in the air, like coal falling down a chute.

At 9pm the Dorsets moved out on the final leg of their 15 mile march, towards the river bank. They were heading northwest, towards a place called Moulin Des Roches, in between the bridges at Missy and Venizel. Here, having sloshed through a flood meadow in pitch black, they met the hushed whispers of men from the 59th Field Company, Royal Engineers, led by Captain William Henry Johnston and Lieutenant Robert Bradford Flint. They had built two rafts and were already busily transporting wounded back from the other side. Now they prepared to ferry the 15th Brigade across the Aisne. The Dorsets were sent first, 50 or so men at a time, at about midnight.

* A 5 inch heavy artillery gun, which, according to Gleichen, was also known as a Cow Gun having been drawn by oxen in the Boer War. This can’t have been the case as the BL 60 pounder was only in use from 1904, a full 2 years after the end of the Second Boer War. But you get the picture; this was a big gun with a range of 10,000 yards, or 5.7 miles.

** Woolly bears are, more often than not, used as a specific reference to shrapnel canisters exploding.

A bottle of Harvey sauce and a ham-bone

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12th September 1914

By morning, the wet weather had turned the roads into a quagmire. The going was slow. The Dorsets’ war diary reports many halts, as does the Cheshires’, “Weather again very bad. Roads a sea of mud”.

The diary reports of “heavy gunfire” on their right. While the Cheshires report “a very big battle was going on to the North West along the River Aisne this day.” They were approaching the next big river crossing in their advance north. They’d made it over the Marne without too much of a fuss, but would the Aisne treat them so kindly?

The whole brigade stopped in a farm called Ferme de l’Épitaphe. Gleichen describes it as being “a huge farm standing by itself in a vast and dreary plain of ploughed fields”. There is still a farm along that road surrounded by fields, so I’ve placed them there for the night on the map. It was a tight squeeze. At one point 14th Brigade turned up but they were sent back to “Chrisy”. I think Gleichen means Chacrise, a couple of miles back down the road. The Dorsets and Norfolks were also sent back to billet in Nampteuil-Sous-Muret a mile away.

Gleichen, ever the gastronome,  laments a lack of food and is made even less happier by eating late and also having to share dinner with some gunnery officers. He turns to the contents of their mess basket, “which consisted only of Harvey sauce, knives and forks, an old ham-bone, sweet biscuits, and jam”. Delicious.

If you fancy a drop o’ Harvey’s on your ham-bone then here’s a recipe from Foods of England. It sounds a bit like Worcestershire sauce to me. It was later renamed Lazenby’s (with a great strap line – The World’s Appetiser).

Image of an advert for Harvey's sauce
Harvey’s sauce (later named Lazenby’s Sauce) – image from Foods of England

Dissolve six anchovies in a pint of strong vinegar, and then add to them three table-spoonfuls of India soy, and three table-spoonfuls of mushroom catchup, two heads of garlic bruised small, and a quarter of an ounce of cayenne. Add sufficient cochineal powder to colour the mixture red. Let all these ingredients infuse in the vinegar for a fortnight, shaking it every day, and then strain and bottle it for use.

Everything of the smallest value stolen

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11th September 1914

The Dorsets didn’t leave until 9:25am because they were waiting for supplies, which were late. They marched throughout the day without any sign of the enemy, apart from what damage they had left behind in retreat. The rain continued to fall as the 15th Brigade climbed up to a plateau between the Marne and the Aisne. News came back from the front that the Germans were demoralised. Whether they were remained to be seen, but the Germans were certainly withdrawing along the line facing the BEF.

Once “very comfortable” billets were finally found in Saint-Rémy-Blanzy, Gleichen took up his headquarters in the Curé’s house and reports that “his poor little rooms had been ransacked, drawers and tables upset and their contents littered over the floor, and everything of the smallest value stolen by the Germans.”