Peppermints and perfumed soap

### 29th November 1914

Let’s begin today’s post with a deceptively bucolic description of the local terrain by Count Gleichen:

Imagine a bit of rolling country—rather like parts of Leicestershire,—fair-sized fields, separated mostly by straggling fences interspersed with wire (largely barbed), and punctuated by tall trees. Patches of wood in places, spinney size for the most part. Low hills here and there—;KemmelScherpenbergPloegsteert Wood,—but all outside our area. For villages, DranoutreNeuve ÉgliseWulverghem, and Lindenhoek, of which the two last were already more than half shot to pieces and almost deserted. Opposite our right was Messines—a mile and a half in front of our line,—its big, square, old church tower still standing; it may have had a spire on the top, but if so it had disappeared before we came. Nearly opposite our extreme left, but out of our jurisdiction and in the sphere of the Division on our left, was Wytschaete (pronounce Wich Khâte), one and a half miles off.

14th Brigade handed over control of the Dranoutre area to 15th Brigade in the morning. All the troops in trenches, including the Manchesters and the East Surreys, came under Gliechen’s command. The 14th Brigade moved with its ambulance and baggage train to Saint Jans-Cappel four miles to the west, just over the border in France. The 15th Brigade had just arrived from there after a short rest. Gleichen stayed with the local Curé…

who liked the good things of this world … and did not disdain to make the acquaintance of an occasional tot of British rum or whisky, except on Fridays.

The Dorsets received orders to gauge the Germans’ strength in front of them. Another quiet day is reported in the diary. The Germans kept them on their toes during the night with two outbursts of rifle fire.


At home the Daily Telegraph reports the war has gone quiet in France and Belgium all along the line.

The newspaper is still banging on about Christmas present ideas for the men. Peppermint lozenges and perfumed soap (bad breath and B.O. being a big no no when hunkered down in a stinking trench) should included be offered as small gifts for those family members who are “maintaining the honour of the Country”.

There are also recipes for feeding wounded soldiers. What they do to a fillet steak possibly breaks the Geneva Convention. After the steak has been hammered flat and fried for 10 to 15 minutes I am sure the men could have used it as a bullet proof vest. Thankfully, a letter from Ethel Jonson offers to set up a society to put recent Belgian refugees* to good use and teach the English to cook. She labels English cuisine as being “lamentably inferior to that of Continental cookery”. Plus ça change.

*Did they get tax credits, I wonder?

Quite Quiet

Map of the Dorsets' trenches November 1914
1st Bn Dorsets trench map by Major Fraser – Wulverghem – late November 1914

 

28th November 1914

Today’s diary entry is very short, simply recording a quiet night, less sniping and a quiet day.

What the diary doesn’t record is the relief of the Worcesters (3rd Bn) to their right.

Knowing this to be the case, today’s map, which I mentioned a couple of days ago, shows the Worcesters as being on the Dorsets’ right. So the map must have been drawn between the 25th and 28th November 1914. The map is my version of the drawing of Major Fraser’s map from the 14th Division diary for November 1914 (WO-95-1560-2_3 page 11).

Officers of the replacement battalion arrived during the afternoon and completed the relief at 11.25pm. The Dorsets already had the Norfolks to their left. Now they had the Bedfords to their right. Was the 15th Brigade getting back together?

The tattered 15th

 

20th November 1914

The Dorsets enjoyed a day of rest. The rest of the original 15th Brigade were spread over a wide area all the way up to Ypres. The Norfolks had also just joined the 14th Brigade and were now in Kemmel. The Bedfords were up by Hooge (now with the 13th Brigade) and the Cheshires were still with Gleichen’s 15th Brigade on the Menin Road up near Ypres. Both these battalions were down to half strength and less, having suffered large casualties in holding the line in front of Ypres; the main objective of the German attacks. Gleichen recalls:

both of our battalions, who by that time were reduced to 540 Bedfords and 220 Cheshires altogether (the Bedfords having started with 1100 and the Cheshires with 600 odd).

Image of Château Beukenhorst, Zillebeke
Château Beukenhorst, Zillebeke

Gleichen is holed up in yet another château. Beukenhorst Château later became known as Stirling Castle on British Army maps. He and the rest of 15th Brigade’s HQ narrowly avoided a shell which hit the kitchen just after breakfast. It’s good to know that he puts servants just above officer’s trousers.

Poor Conway, Weatherby’s servant, whom he had left behind, was the only casualty; his dead body was found, with both legs broken and an arm off, blown down a cellar passage at the back. The next most serious casualty was Moulton-Barrett’s new pair of breeches, arrived that morning from England, and driven full of holes like a sugar-sifter.

He’s not happy about the monotonous diet of bully beef and chocolate either until…

Help was, however, at hand; for our servants, Inskip and Stairs, who we thought had ignominiously run away, suddenly turned up with heaps of food. They had gone all the way to our cook’s waggon three miles the other side of Ypres for comestibles, and whilst we were d—ing their eyes for bolting, were trudging, heavily laden, along the road back to us—good youths.

Inskip and Stairs sound like a music hall double act. Perhaps they were.

Busman’s holiday

 

1st November 1914

The Dorsets awoke on a fine Sunday morning, perhaps expecting a nice leisurely breakfast and a stroll around Strazeele. However, at 7.50am they were greeted by a II Corps Staff Officer, Colonel Shoubridge, who announced that they were to be taken away by buses to the front. How dismayed they must have been. Their promised seven days rest vanished in an instant.

I think that II Corps knew it would be a tough ask so they decided to apply a bit of motivational management. Colonel Shoubridge himself was an ex-1st Dorsets man. As the men climbed wearily into the buses Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, II Corps’ commander, arrived and spoke to them, praising their fine fighting at Pont Fixe. The phrase forms the title of a self-published book I’m still trying to track down by Captain A.L. Ransome, “The fine fighting of the Dorsets”, portions of which embellish the official History of The Dorsetshire Regiment 1914-1919.

I have reasons to doubt his sincerity. Smith-Dorrien had actually been very critical of the 15th and 13th Brigades’ performance at Pont Fixe as I’ve explored in a previous post. He also claimed that the Dorsets and Cheshires “did not put up a resolute resistance” on the 22nd October at Violaines.

But these were desperate times and every spare unit was needed. The rumble of guns heard by the Dorsets the previous evening had been the sound of the Germans breaking the British line at Gheluvelt, east of Ypres in Belgium. Only a desperate charge by the 2nd Bn Worcestershire regiment on the 31st October had saved the situation. It remained critical time for the Allies and the British and French poured their tattered troops in to plug the gaps. The Dorsets were bound for Ploegsteert, where they were being attached to the 4th Division, who were having a very hard time of it.

And so the Dorsets grudgingly clambered aboard buses. Buses straight from the streets of London., manned by volunteers, painted red and white and still plastered with adverts for Evening News and Wright’s Soap.

London Buses in World War One
London B-Type Buses

The London B-Type Motor Omnibus could hold 24 men, so between 30 and 40 buses would have trundled over the border into Belgium. It must have been a bizarre couple of hours for Frank, as if his old London life had suddenly emerged out of the past.

The journey would have been pleasant enough for the Dorsets as they enjoyed clear blue skies, very similar to today’s weather 100 years later. This wasn’t to last. As they approached Lindenhoek they could actually see heavy shelling to the north east at Wytschaete. Messines to the east had fallen and the Germans were pushing forward into Ploegsteert wood three miles east of Neuve Eglise.

At 3pm the Dorsets went into billets at Neuve Eglise. At 5pm B Company was sent out as an outpost on the Wulverghem-Neuve Eglise Road. C and D Companies entrenched nearby. Frank and the rest of A Company remained in billets in Neuve Eglise. An hour later they were joined by the rest of the Battalion, leaving just one platoon of B Company covering the road.

 

 

Gorre blimey

 

26th October 1914

The Dorsets were formed into working parties and put under the orders of the Royal Engineers. They spent the day in and around Gorre, according to the Dorsets’ war diary. They returned to their billets in the Rue de Béthune at 6pm.

The Germans continued to press all along the front. The ragged Allies held on precariously. The French were being heavily shelled in Givenchy and the 5th Division HQ received reports from the 15th Brigade that the two French battalions there were “nearly wiped out”.

Further north the Germans had pushed through the 7th Brigade (part of 3rd Division) into a town that would become a household name the following year: Neuve Chapelle.