15th brigade Archives - Page 11 of 14 - Frank Crawshaw. Soldier, Londoner

The elderly chicken and other murders

14th September 201414th September 2014 ellimondo 3 Comments

14th September 1914

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.

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

13th September 201414th September 2014 ellimondo 3 Comments

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

12th September 201412th September 2014 ellimondo Leave a comment

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.

Everlasting bully beef

10th September 201411th September 2014 ellimondo Leave a comment

10th September 1914

As the Dorsets tentatively edged out from Bézu-le-Guéry towards Hill 189 they came across the debris of the previous day’s firefight. Gleichen remembers the Germans “had left that field battery on Hill 189 behind them, surrounded by about twenty or more corpses and a quantity of ammunition.” The war diary claims “forty-seven dead Germans were found here afterwards, nearly all shot through the head”. It would be interesting to confirm these reports. It would also be interesting to read any German accounts of the previous day’s action.

The 15th Brigade continued on its advance, the weather getting colder and wetter throughout the day as Autumn took hold. They were pretty much unhindered by any action with the enemy. There was an incident at Dhuisy where an enemy transport column climbing towards Gandelu was spotted and subsequently shelled. The Brigade was also shelled by its own guns as it waited to enter billets and bivouacks for the night at the farm in “Saint-Quentin”. But other than that, it was a day of marching, passing through prisoners and booty captured by the marauding cavalry units ahead.

Throughout the day they passed piles of discarded equipment and smashed vehicles. Gleichen allowed the men to take food at one point for themselves and corn for the horses. He praises the German’s “gulasch” and “blutwurst” over the BEF’s “everlasting bully beef”.

Other transport wagons were filled with bounty, “cases of liquor and wine, musical instruments, household goods, clothing, bedding etc”. Gleichen accuses the Germans of being “a robber at heart, and takes everything he can lay his hands on”. This is from the same Count Albert Edward Wilfred Gleichen, son of Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.

The farm they end up in, which the Dorsets’ war diary calls St Quentin (as does Gleichen, the Cheshires and the Bedfords) is no longer on the map and I don’t, as yet, have access to an old 1912 map. So I’ve guessed where the farm was and placed it near a wood called Bois de Louvry, roughly on the path of their advance. I wondered if the farm could be this postcard.

Image showing farm at Saint-Quentin Louvry — Farm at Saint-Quentin Louvry

The British Army of 1914 has an annoying habit of shortening place names so it makes it very hard to find some of the villages mentioned in diaries. It also appears that a lot of the names have changed along the Aisne over the last hundred years or so. I have no idea why.

They had marched 16 miles. That night more reinforcements arrived. Two parties consisted of a total of 187 men under Lieutenant J.A.F. Parkinson and Second Lieutenant A.J. Clutterbuck.

The abandoned battery on Hill 189

9th September 201411th September 2014 ellimondo 2 Comments

9th September 1914

In 1914 the commander of a battalion had access to a remarkable arsenal of technology to help them locate and fight the enemy. They had machine gun sections, long and short range artillery, plane spotters, telephones, metalled roads, railway lines, motorcycle dispatch riders and engineers. These were all used to help the soldier on the ground understand, outmanoeuvre and engage the enemy to his advantage.

On the ground, however, in the “fog of war”, it was often much more confused. There were many reasons why these new technologies failed the soldier in 1914. Planes couldn’t fly because of the weather. Artillery was unable to find a safe spot to fire from. Different units became mixed up in battle. Roads were blocked with all kinds of traffic. Telephone lines had been cut. The list goes on and on. Despite all these failings, offensives still went ahead. More often that not this had catastrophic results.

Today we’ll see this “fog of war” in action. And we’ll see, what I think is, the main failing of ground forces in 1914: Units carrying out unsupported full frontal attacks against concealed machine guns and artillery. This approach to offensive tactics was already killing soldiers by the tens of thousands*. The Dorsets experienced this for the first time on the 9th September 1914.

The Dorsets advanced in the morning, heading north through Saârcy-sur-Marne and crossed its bridge to Mery-sur-Marne. The 5th Division had established a bridgehead across the river at 9am. There was the sound of heavy gunfire up ahead of them where the 14th Brigade were pushing on ahead.

The River Marne, at this point in its course, runs in tight loops, through deep valleys which climb sharply through farmland up to heavily wooded hilltops. One of these hilltops, Hill (or point) 189 was reportedly in the possession of the 14th Brigade, away to their left. At least that’s what Divisional Staff told Gleichen when he met them for a “pow wow” at what he repeatedly called Merz, but must have been Mery(-sur-Marne). Here the 5th Division instructed the 15th Brigade to support the 14th Brigade who’d got hung up somewhere to their left towards the Montreuil Road.

The Brigade advanced east towards Le Limon, using the slope and the woods as a shield from possible enemy attack. Gleichen reports that “when we emerged from the woods there was a Prussian battery on the hill.” Here was the first mistake. Why did they assume that this was a “deserted” battery? The Dorsets’ war diary remembers “this battery had been reported as deserted”. Did Gleichen assume too much here? Whatever the mistake it would have been prudent to reconnoitre. But they didn’t. The 15th Brigade moved into the open in column file. As soon as “not more than a battalion had got clear, when the “deserted” battery opened fire and lobbed a shell or two into the Bedfords and Cheshires”. The Germans were cleverly concealed nearby, ran out fired their guns and then ran and hid again. Gleichen ordered a howitzer battery to return fire which he said silenced the battery.

The Dorsets were in the vanguard and Lieutenant Colonel Bols immediately volunteered to attack the hill, which was “only a rise” according to Gleichen. The enemy could be seen digging trenches on the ridge. After a reconnoitre it was agreed that the Dorsets would attack. By now, the Dorsets had formed up at a farm about half a mile north of Le Limon. They formed into attacking lines: D Company on the left and C Company on the right, with A Company and the Machine Gun Company in reserve. B Company was currently detached from the Battalion as vanguard to the Brigade Headquarters.

It took about an hour to reach their positions through a wood and by 2:20pm they had reached the road between Pisseloup and Genevrois. A message was sent by Bols to 15th Brigade HQ. “I shall attack shortly. What artillery support may I expect?”. None came. Undeterred, the Dorsets moved forward again into a firing line. B Company now rejoined the battalion, at the request of the Brigadier General, and started to edge its way around the west of Bois des Essertis.

At 3pm all hell broke loose. Machine guns and rifles opened up from Germans hidden in the surrounding trees. Shellfire rained down from the battery on Hill 189. The entire brigade was immediately pinned down. At this point the Dorsets tried their best to move forward under withering fire and return it as best they could.

B Company did well at first through the woods but the mortal woundings of its commander, Captain Roe, and of his newly arrived second-in-Command, Captain A.B. Priestley, whom we met on the 5th September, soon put a stop to their advance.

D Company was pinned down in open fields. Machine gun fire swept their attack lines and just after 4pm one of their platoon comanders, Lieutenant Athelstan Key Durance George (another Brixton-born Dorset), was shot in the head when he raised himself to look through field glasses. Major Saunders, the Company Commander, was also wounded but he carried on regardless. The war diary reports that he “behaved with great gallantry and exposed himself frequently”. The Dorsets simply couldn’t move under the amount of incoming fire. There was nothing at their disposal to overcome this situation they found themselves in. At no point did the Dorsets received any covering fire from supporting artillery. What happened to that howitzer battery Gleichen put to good use just a couple of hours before? There’s no mention of them in any other the other first hand reports.

A Company and Battalion HQ were also stuck where they lay, behind C and D Companies. At 4pm shellfire from an enemy Field Howitzer Battery added to their misery. At 5pm Bols received verbal orders from Gleichen for the Dorsets to retire once it was dark. The two sides exchanged fire like this until 6:30pm when the Dorsets withdrew from the deadlock to hastily dug trenches and bivouacs west of Bézu-le-Guéry to the east of Hill 189.

At 9pm the Battalion was informed that the enemy had now retired. The Dorsets received their order to march once more at 4:30am the next day. The Germans were now fighting a rearguard action and doing it very cleverly.

The diary records that the Battalion lost 3 officers (although none of them died that day), 1 wounded and 7 men killed with 31 wounded and 4 missing. A search of the CWGC shows 10 dead for the 9th September 1914.

* I’m not saying they were wrong in their approach. I think it is important that we don’t impose our knowledge of subsequent history upon people’s lives in 1914. There was no real experience of this kind of warfare at the time. Technology and tactics took a very long time to catch up on equipping a soldier against a modern army with such destructive power. There were no grenades or mortars for small scale attack like this one and the machine gun was seen as very much a defensive support weapon at this time. The British soldier didn’t even get a tin hat until late 1915.