Tag: 15th brigade

A salient point

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18th December 1914

I completely missed the Dorsets’ diary entry for the 17th. I’ve edited the post now and included the map here. Apologies for the oversight. 15th Brigade had relieved the 14th Brigade. The Dorsets had moved back to Wulverghem and relieved the Easy Surreys taking over Sector B.

This was an area to the immediate south on the Wulverghem-Messines Road pushing out eastwards out from the rest of the front line towards La Petit Douve Farm. This kind of exposed position with the enemy firing at them from two sides down a slope presumably made things very hot for the inhabitants. I will draw the trench map I have when I get a moment.

At 3am in the morning the Dorsets “thickened” their firing line. Men from the Bedfords and Norfolks had been moved into their reserve trenches. The diary doesn’t say whether the Dorsets moved men into the firing line because there was no room left in the reserves or if action was expected to take place in their sector.

After this shenanigans the day was described as quiet. One man was killed and 11 were wounded. For once the CWGC agrees with the Dorsets. The one man they have listed as having died that day was John Hill. He was 32.

 

Brew ha ha

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14th December 1914

You may have noticed yesterday, but we finally have a name to put to one of the censors. E. Rogers is revealed to be Censor No. 1611. He’s the Second Lieutenant who drew the map of the trenches on the 2nd December. We are pretty sure he’s an officer in A Company and here he’s probably revealed as being Frank’s platoon officer. That’s an incredibly granular piece of information and if I can find some history about E.Rogers it will help fill out more of Frank’s journey. But I cannot find anything about him, other than a name on a medal roll.

How the censor numbers were organised, I can only guess at. The officers weren’t always reading the letters though. Sometimes the officer in charge of censoring letters would leave them unread. This is explored in this Spartacus Educational article. Other times the censor stamp was passed onto an NCO to take care of the duty. I don’t have the originals of Frank’s letters but I am sure Geoff would have written a note if any of them been edited by a censor.

The main thing Frank has to complain about, in his second letter from yesterday, is the price of beer. Beer had increased to 3d a pint in 1914, mainly due to the huge jump in duty imposed on a barrel of beer by the government in November of that year: up from 7s. 9d to 23s per barrel. All these facts are taken from the European Beer Guide website.

By 1920 beer was was 6d a pint. Interestingly, the average strength of beer reduced in that time by a quarter, from a strong 1051 OG in 1914 to 1038 OG in 1920 (about the average for today’s dreary lagers.)

All of this change conspired to reduce drunkenness. In fact convictions for drunkenness fell from 183,828 in 1914 to just 29,075 in 1918.

At 6am the Dorsets marched with the rest, or what the war diary rather tellingly describes as “the remainder”, of the 15th Brigade. Their destination was a field just to the west of Dranoutre.

Here they waited until it got dark before moving to Neuve Église. But they didn’t leave the field without some difficulty. Such was the state of the wet ground that over time they must have sunk into the Flanders mud and they struggled to get anywhere. It must have been a miserable day for Frank.

Why were they even moving? I think it had to do with II Corps launching an offensive alongside the French against Wytschaete, Messines and Petit Douve farm. It came to nothing but 264 deaths over the next couple of days, according to the CWGC.

Had Frank been in the trenches, the day would have been even more miserable.

Having to turn out for a German

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11th December 1914

It was the early morning of another damp day as the Dorsets trudged over the frontier, back to France, and into Saint-Jans-Cappel. Here they went into billets at 2am, which Gleichen describes as “a nice little village”. It became a popular destination for troops getting some respite from the frontline.

I’ve recently read an extract from a diary by Major (his name, not rank) Swindell of the 2nd Bn. Manchesters. His entry for the 2nd December 1914, which mentions our old friend Count Gleichen, made me chuckle:

### Dec 2nd 1914
‘Aunties’*. Had a generals’s inspection by General Count von Gleeson (sic) [this was Brigadier General Edward Gleichen, then OC 15 Brigade – ST Ed.] This made the boys moan a little, having to turn out for a German. Auntie went strong today. She put a chalk mark on her wood, & of course marks and all went. She got wound up & then the music started. She only stopped for breath. The only thing I can compare her voice with is a steam hooter.

* The Manchesters had named the local farmer’s wife “Auntie”. She tried to charge the troops a penny for a bucket of water and took away the pump handle when they told her where to get off.

Heavy weather

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10th December 1914

The Dorsets were relieved by the 2nd Bn. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry but hideous weather made progress very slow. Although they were bound for billets in St Jans Cappel midnight passed and they were still en route, hence I will post the map of their march tomorrow.

The reason that the Dorsets were leaving this area so quickly was because the 13th Brigade had relived the 15th Brigade from Dranoutre. The 2nd Bn. KOYLI are allocated what 5th Division refer to as “Sector E” when they replace the 1st Bn Dorsets.

Another interesting story from the 5th Division’s diary today is that during the night the Germans opened up with a cannonade of rifle fire apparently in reply to cheering men of  the 14th Brigade. They were cheering upon hearing the news of a British victory at sea.

The Daily Telegraph reports the victory in the Battle of the Falkland Islands; .revenge for the earlier defeat at Coronel, just off the Chilean coastline. The British Government was quick to silence the earlier humiliation.

The Admiralty made known through the Press Bureau the glorious news that the major portion of the German Squadron under the command of Admiral Graf von Spee is now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean as the result of an action fought off the Falkland Islands with a British Squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Sturdee.

While the Telegraph’s reporting gets the story right here (albeit with some typically jingoistic chest beating), the same can’t be said for their “reporting” from the trenches. Their reporter’s claim that “the allied French, British, and Belgian armies on this side of the line are superior in number, equipment, and, one might assert with certainty, in “morale”” couldn’t have been further from the truth.

I’m sure Frank was glad to see the back of the filthy, wet, stinking he’d just emerged from.

Super furry animaux

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1st December 1914

The Dorsets didn’t enjoy a very long rest but, if the East Surrey’s war diary is anything to go by, they might have stocked up on winter clothing which had arrived at Dranouter the previous week. This included fabulously bushy fur jackets made from goatskins.

Image showing men of the 11th Hussars in the trenches at Zillebeke during the winter of 1914-1915
Not a yeti. Men of the 11th Hussars in the trenches at Zillebeke during the winter of 1914-1915. IWM Q 51176

In the afternoon they marched via Neuve Église and relieved their old friends, the East Surreys. The Dorsets were now in trenches, according to the diary, to “the north of Wulverghem-Messines Road”. I’ve indicated it on the map. Frank and the rest of A Company went into the reserve trenches alongside the Battalion HQ dugouts.

The 15th Brigade’s war diary documents that I’ve downloaded from the Public Records Office, although it’s meant to include August to December, only goes up to September. I wonder if the papers are lost or if they are just not digitised yet. Luckily some of the Dorsets’ trench maps for early December are tucked into the 14th Brigade’s records.