Waiting for Spring

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14th January 1915

The Dorsets spent the day in billets in Dranoutre.

The Daily Telegraph journalist, and ex-Bedfords officer, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, summaries the war so far in a prescient article entitled “Waiting for Spring” on page 10 of today’s newspaper. He writes that “this strange war is drifting through a dull period.” and so he turns to speculate on the outcome of the war. He goes on to ask the reader “which nation will produce the great man, the inspired genius, who will devise a means of making modern warfare decisive?”

The title of the article echoes Kitchener’s recent alleged soundbite (overheard secondhand from a British officer in a French mess) that “I don’t know when it [the war] will end, but I know when it will begin, and that is in the month of May!”

Ashmead-Bartlett went out to Gallipoli as a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and even filmed the only movie footage of the battle. He was very critical of the Dardanelles campaign and its commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton. He later spent time on the Western Front. After the war he went off to fight Bolsheviks in Hungary, as you do, returned to become a Tory MP and died in Lisbon at the early age of 50.

Photo showing Carles Bean and Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, war correspondents in 1915.
Australian official historian Charles Bean (front) and British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (rear) at Imbros during the Battle of Gallipoli, 1915.

I never had the slightest idea of what was going on

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13th January 1915

The narrative on the blog has become much narrower since the war went to ground at the end of November. I haven’t written much about what was going on in the wider field of operations. The reason for this is threefold. Firstly I am lazy. Secondly, I am short of time. And, thirdly, I wanted this story to show the world from Frank’s perspective.

I feel that once the soldiers dug themselves into the ground they ceased to be part of a fighting brigade and became small parts in a larger war machine. They became less aware of what was happening beyond the confines of their trench as time went on. Battalions became less important than the company and ultimately the platoon became the defining relationship between fighting men in the trenches.

C.O.Lilly’s recollections describe this shift in perspective perfectly.

I never had the slightest idea of what was going on, my whole life was confined to one small portion of the line and now I realise what an extraordinarily bad training trench warfare was, and is, to teach a soldier his trade.

And in notes at the end of the typed document:

I don’t think it can be denied that trench warfare is about the worst sort of campaigning to teach a young officer his job. He never has any idea of what is going on, except what he can see with his own eyes from his trench.

The Dorsets were relieved by the Bedfords and moved back into billets in Dranoutre.

Three Dorset men were killed today, all privates: W J Mitchell, from Bermondsey, Stephen McCarthy, from Finsbury, and Frederick Thaxter from Thornton Heath, just to the south of Brixton. London supplied the Dorsets with an awful lot of men.

There’s no mention of these casualties in the diary.

 

Up periscope

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12th January 1915

The clipped “situation unchanged” in the Dorsets’ diary sounds like a British Rail announcement and described, with economy, another day of monotony in the trenches.

The Dorsets’ Captain Partridge features in the 15th Brigade’s diary entry for today. He’s been busy with an unnamed Royal Artillery officer, sending intelligence back to Brigade HQ. Major General Thomas Morland’s report for the 5th Division bears this activity out the following day, with the line “observations from front trenches show the great value of powerful periscope binoculars.” Presumably Partridge was using something like this through which to observe the enemy lines:

Image showing Captain J C Scott, 2nd A & SH. using box periscope with binoculars. Rue de Bois, February 1915
Using box periscope with binoculars. Rue de Bois, February 1915. Captain J C Scott, 2nd A & SH. Image from Imperial War Museum website.

One Dorset man died today, according to the CWGC: His name was Francis James Harwood and he was 34. Intriguingly, he served under the surname of Westlake. He’s listed as having been killed in action in the medal rolls. There’s also evidence that he served with the Somerset Light Infantry, which makes some sense as he was born in Bridgewater, Somerset. Quite why he’d transferred to the Dorsets is a mystery. It requires more time, and I have run out of minutes in the day, so I will leave poor Francis James alone and return to him another time perhaps.

What a bastard

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Envelope – to Mrs Webster, 29 Strathleven Rd, franked 12 Ja 15  – censored by A Griffith
dated 11-1-15

Dear Aunt

Just a few lines hoping this finds you in the best of health. Well Aunt I am getting on as well as can be expected and still in the pink. We are getting on as well as can be expected and still dodging Jack Johnsons. The weather out here is terrible don’t talk about rain the country is absolutely flooded so you can guess what it is like.

I expect you have got over Xmas by now I see you had a full house, I wish I had been at home. Tom is getting plenty of leave, I wish I could get away for a few days, but I believe I am getting seven days before long, but it will be some time yet, but still lets hope it will be soon, and then we will have a good time together all of us, that’s providing all goes well out here.

Aunt have you received my two PC, well I expect you only got on, for I have [heard] that one lot of mail got burst (?burnt) and I expect your PC was in it. Please to hear that Uncle Matt is still on the knocker let’s hope he as the luck to keep it. Old Till’s Johnnie seems to be a knut tell her I have just received the Chocolate from him, and he said he had a good time at Brixton, said he nearly got (succled ?) on cold tea. Well Aunt I don’t think there is any more news at present, so will conclude hoping to hear for you soon, and also Uncle Matt.

I remain

Your affectionate Nephew

Bid xxx

11th January 1915

Let’s deal with the censor first. We meet a new officer in charge of Frank’s section, and I’m pretty sure this is Lieutenant Allix James William Griffith. He’s joined as a reinforcement from the 3rd Battalion. His father was the Venerable Reverend Henry Wager Griffith, who was an army pastor out in the Punjab, India, where Allix was born. He’s only 19, a pupil of Charterhouse and a typical Public School Boy product of the British Empire. I talk about officers being posh but this chap takes the Bath Oliver. He’s as posh as his almost-namesake, Alexander Armstrong, and comes from the same lineage too. This website lists him as a direct descendant of that old Norman bastard, William the Conqueror.

Griffith, sadly, didn’t survive the war. He was transferred to the 2nd Battalion and sent to the Middle East, after being wounded in St Elois later in 1915. He went missing in Mesopotamia on the 25th March 1917 and is commemorated on the Basra War Memorial in Iraq. He was one of the 1200 Allied men who were casualties in the battle of Jebel Hamlin, as the British tried to push the Turkish out of Iraq. The battle, fought largely unsupported by artillery against a well dug in enemy (surprise, surprise), was disastrous for the newly reconstituted 2nd Battalion Dorsets who lost nearly 220 out of 500 men in the action.

Frank’s letter to his Aunt Caroline is filled with his usual abundance of positivity, but there is one line that expressed his resignation about the situation he finds himself in: “that’s providing all goes well out here”.

He’s very complimentary about my Great Grandfather, Carl Robert Debnam, of whom the beer of Brixton seems to have got the better of. A “knut”, according to the ever-excellent Edwardian Promenade’s glossary, is “an idle upper-class man-about-town”. (My grandfather, Bob, wasn’t a man who could hold his beer and I don’t have hollow legs when it comes to ale either – although we both enjoyed a pint when he was alive). He’s also finally got the chocolate promised back in November.

The Dorsets hunkered down in their soggy trenches while the artillery on both sides played out a deadly game of cat and mouse. The landscape, once liberally dotted with farms and villages in November, was slowly being reduced to piles of rubble and heaps of mud as the two sides pounded any landmark that might offer advantage to the other side.

Wish you weren’t here

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10th January 1915

Regrettably, yet inevitably, the Dorsets left Dranoutre and relieved the Bedfords in Sector D during the late afternoon. The rain continued to fall.

The Bedfords had endured a fairly awful time in the trenches with continued rain causing the edges of the trenches to collapse, with murderous sniping (six killed on the 8th January), regular shelling, and an irritating mobile gun shelling them from various points along the Messines-Wytschaete Road (or at least west of Messines) causing several casualties. The 5th Division describes the gun as being a light gun. The Bedfords’ diary goes further and suggests it’s a “quick-firer (probably motor-gun)”. It was probably a standard FK96 7.7cm artillery piece attached to a horse-drawn carriage or motor vehicle. The troops couldn’t respond with small arms due to a bulge in the land between them and the road so it must have been extremely frustrating for all concerned.

The author of the Dorsets’ diary remains taciturn. I don’t think they were enjoying themselves.