The Dorsets remained in billets all day, along with the remnants of the Cheshires. At 6.30pm they were assembled and bivouacked for the night, in case of any sudden attack.
The 5th Division had withdrawn to a new position during the night. The 14th Brigade occupied Richebourg to La Quinque Rue. The 13th Brigade held from there to just in front of Festubert. The 15th Brigade held the rest of the line down around the eastern edge of Givenchy to the canal at Pont Fixe. The fighting continued with sniping and shellfire throughout the day as Germans pushed forward in small groups trying to find gaps, as they had done so successfully the previous day. The British line held while Royal Engineers scurried up and down, strengthening the hastily dug entrenchments.
The Dorsets remained in and around Festubert all day in billets.
I wonder if I detect some of resentment towards Cuthbert and the 13th Brigade in Gleichen’s memoirs? Comments such as “but Cuthbert was not there, so it was a little difficult to combine any action”, “we met the Headquarters of the 13th Brigade, minus their Brigadier” and “Cuthbert eventually turned up from somewhere” don’t exactly sing his praises.
Perhaps I am looking too hard. But certainly Cuthbert, CO of the 13th Brigade did not seem to be a popular man. A martinet with old fashioned views, his leadership of the 13th Brigade came to an abrupt end on the 1st October due to “illness”. Gleichen puts it succinctly. “Cuthbert, seedy”. This illness was pure fabrication. Cuthbert was fired. The 13th Brigade war diary states “Cuthbert ordered to England” and “Cuthbert left by motor for Paris”.
His replacement was Dublin-born General William Bernard Hickie. He was popular but he was also very unexperienced. His leadership of the 13th Brigade lasted just 11 days. He was carted off in an ambulance in the afternoon of the 13th October. Another “illness”. Smith-Dorrien, commander of II Corps, says in his diary that Hickie “had to go sick”. Hickie had refused to push his men forward along the south side of the canal. This refusal made it into the 5th Division’s war diary: “General Hickie considered open ground so unfavourable between his right and enemy’s position that he declined to co-operate without orders from superior authority.” This decision not to move forward had a huge impact on the failure of the French and the Dorsets’ attacks. But I don’t think we can blame the 13th Brigade.
Nikolaus Gadner, in his book Trial by Fire: Command and the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, follows the same line of enquiry. Although some of his assessment of the day is a little unfair (he claims the Dorsets retired in disarray due to lack of officers) he argues that a lack of experienced officers was really starting to tell in the 5th Division, leading to the replacement of senior officers, and ultimately Fergusson, commanding the 5th Division, on 18th October. Sacking experienced commanders was incredibly damaging to the BEF. There were few replacements available.
Gadner goes on to argue that all these sackings stemmed from Sir John French’s own insecurity as Commander-in-Chief of the BEF. He despised Smith-Dorrien of II Corps so it was easy for him to pass criticism from London his way. Smith-Dorrien did what managers do all over the world. He passed the blame down the line. And down it went. All the way to 13th Brigade. Ultimately, this power struggle led to the Dorsets dying in droves on the 13th October 1914.
As ever, the Dorsets were not left to rest. At 6am they rendezvoused along the Rue de Béthune and were put under orders of the 13th Brigade as Divisional Reserve with the West Riding Regiment. They marched into Festubert and went into billets.
I’m not sure being attached to the 13th Brigade would have been a popular decision among the tattered ranks of the Dorsets. After all, it was the failure of the 13th Brigade to get along the south side of the canal that had ultimately led to them getting cut up so badly in the beet fields.
I have been researching on the day I write a post. I want this blog to feel like a voyage of discovery rather than an authority on the subject, which I will never be. The learning experience for me is what’s keeping me going. Some days I get more time than others and mistakes have and will continue to be made. But it’s only when you turn thoughts and ideas over and over in your mind that patterns begin to emerge.
I didn’t want to spoil the narrative, but we’ve now reached a short gap in the action, and so I thought I would share my thoughts on the last few days of Frank’s war.
When I was writing the post for the 13th it was pretty depressing. I knew vaguely what had happened beforehand, but it’s hard to visualise these battles until you actually pull the facts apart and piece them back together again. Not all so-called facts are accurate. I keep going back to the strange reasons given for their failure of the attack on the 13th October. In the back of my mind is the idea that tremendous errors were made by the Dorset officers and they didn’t go unnoticed.
It’s easy to be an armchair general and I can’t for a second imagine what these men went through a hundred years ago. But I don’t think the truth is in the war diaries or the stories that came back with the men who survived the Battle of La Bassée.
Tomorrow I am going to try to see what really happened by looking at a higher operational level.
The Bedfords joined the Dorsets in the morning along with the remnants of the Cheshires. the Norfolks had been attached to the 3rd Division on the 21st September. To bolster their dwindling ranks, Gleichen had a rag tag mix of troops attached to his command. He recalls “the K.O.Y.L.I., and West Kents (of the 13th Brigade), already holding the eastern edge of Missy, were put under my orders, besides the 15th Brigade R.F.A. under Charles Ballard (a cousin of Colin’s*), and a Howitzer Battery (61st)** of Duffus’s 8th Brigade.”
The History of the 1st Bn. The Dorsetshire Regiment highlights the danger they were in at this time: two battalions totally unprotected from attack with only one bridge to retire across without any supporting troops. This is a bit of a false claim, as there were a lot more than two battalions on the north bank of the Aisne, but the precariousness of their situation cannot be denied. It made everyone very edgy.
The Dorsets busied themselves during the day by developing a better defensive position, connecting support lines with lateral trenches, deepening existing trenches and blockading the streets of the village with anything they could get their hands on.
Perhaps it’s worth drawing back from Missy for a moment to get a better picture of why the 5th Division were here at all. High above the south bank of the River Aisne, in possibly the same cave the Cheshires had hidden in on the 13th September, we find Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, watching the action unfold over the Chivres spur and Missy. He observed “the clearance of this hill by our high-explosive shells. We found see the Germans flying in all directions to the rear, and we subsequently got reliable information that their losses on this occasion were very heavy.” It was here that he became convinced that observation of the enemy’s position was crucial to success. It was therefore critical, in French’s mind at least, that the 5th Division held onto the north bank of the Aisne in order for the BEF to maintain this supposed superior position over the enemy.
* Brigadier General Colin Robert Ballard was the Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion Norfolk Regiment.
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.
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.
“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.
