Tag: dorsets

They’re shelling the bathroom!

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11th November 1914

At 9am the Dorsets report “considerable shelling by German light guns”. So much so that D Company withdrew from their positions. No casualties were reported. The shellfire died away in the afternoon.

The German light gun was very possibly the 7.7cm FK 96 n.A. It was light and mobile and saw much action during the early stages of the war. It couldn’t compete with the heavier French 75 and British 18 pounder on range and so fell out of favour as trench warfare took hold. Here’s one with some early Movember crew members.

7.7cm Feldkanone 96 n.A. with crew
7.7cm. Feldcanone 96 n.A. with crew
I’ve missed old Gleichen. He’s holed up at Château Beukenhorst in Zillebeke slightly to the north. He tells a lovely story today so I am including it here:

The 11th November was a typically unpleasant day. It started with a touch of comedy, Weatherby arriving stark naked in my room at 6.30 A.M., just when I was shaving, saying, “I say, sir, may I finish my dressing in here? They’re shelling the bathroom!” He had a towel and a few clothes on his arm, et præterea nihil*.

*A Plutarchian phrase meaning here, I think, a threat not carried out.

Down the Ploeg ‘ole

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10th November 1914

Like a series of hurricanes, the battles of La Bassée and Armentiéres had blown themselves into the battle of Messines and they all culminated in what was developing now: the First Battle of Ypres. Really they’re just one long series of German attacks and British defence and piecemeal counterattacks, while the French continued to attack where they could, with huge resulting losses on all sides.

We are witnessing the last gasps of the British Expeditionary Force. Only the trenches, the one thing we most associate with the horrors of World War One, saved them from utter annihilation.

Poor Frank has now been living in shallow, poorly dug, filthy trenches for a week. The trenches at the beginning of the war were little more than holes in the ground. In Ypres, where the waterline was shallow, they had to build up breastworks on top of the ground. Sometimes they dug along hedgerows or tree lines and pulled the hedges down to form the breastwork. Most of the time sandbags and fascines of twigs were heaved out into no mans land to form a defensive line.

Dug outs for the men were practically non-existent. Some holes in the ground were made and covered over in sheets of corrugated iron, stripped from farms here and there. The farms and outbuildings themselves tended to house the HQs dotted along the frontline at this point in the war.

The Dorsets reported another quiet day with shelling throughout the night.

Four Marks war memorial

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9th November 1914

It was yet another day in the line, similar to the previous day, except that the intermittent shelling took the first Dorset life since the 22nd October*; Henry Lovatt from Barnes in London. He was 19. Two other Dorset men were wounded.

The 11th Brigade counterattacked late in the evening along the eastern edge of the woods with disastrous results. The Germans had deployed barbed wire in front of their trenches, a new arrival on the scene. The newly arrived 2nd Battalion Argylle and Sutherland Highlanders lost 7 officers and 123 men in the ensuing mayhem.

The Dorsets might have been having the quietest time of all the units in Ploegsteert Wood but their fluid left flank continued to cause them problems. The French were in perpetual motion and it was hard for the Dorsets to predict their whereabouts on a daily basis.

I wandered down to a Remembrance Day event in our village today. I stood in the rain, rather appropriately, while a brand new war memorial was unveiled in a ceremony ably hosted by the Assistant Bishop of Winchester, John Dennis. As far as I can tell, being a newcomer, Four Marks was never really an established community beyond a cluster of colonial small holdings in between older villages like Medstead and Ropley. As a result many of the 29 men listed on its coal black sides were included on other, more distant, memorials.

Today we remembered them.

* See comments below. This is not accurate. Firstly apologies, I missed a death from the 6th November: Frederick James Allen – and, secondly, please note that I am filtering out men who died of wounds or away from the scene we’re describing. I will return to casualties in more detail, once this part of the project ends. I’ll leave this errata in as they are more interesting rather than simply editing out my original inaccuracies. Thanks to Stephen Potter for his comments.

Rhyme nor reason

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8th November 1914

The Dorsets record “A quiet day. Nothing unusual.” This kind of diary entry makes me happy. I am glad Frank gets a respite.

I feel ambivalent about much of the recent outpourings from the British media but Simon Armitage’s Culture Show Special was utterly compelling.

In the programme, a series of mini documentaries bookended with poems by Simon Armitage, we see the poet handle a poppy from the war, bleached white by light and by time. He returns to the “Thankful Villages” with the men who returned to their lives, alive. He laments the silent grief of a mother, brought to life by letters home from her five dead sons. He wriggles through escape tunnels dug by bread knives through German loam. He swims with a nurse in the sea by the light of Venus and the memory of a thousand dying men.

He remembers.

Mysterious mishaps in the mist

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6th November 1914

Teething baby alert! Although I might have promised more letter stuff tonight I fear the alarm may go off at any minute so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

The Dorsets enjoyed, if that’s the word, a quiet morning. Fog seems to have been the main cause of the calmer day – the 11th Brigade’s diary reports that it was so thick that they couldn’t see further than 100 yards.

Later in the evening the Dorsets reported a certain amount of fire and at 9pm a machine gun was placed in Frank’s Company (A) trenches. The strange mishap with C Company yesterday is recorded as miscommunication in the 11th Brigade’s diary. It appears that they didn’t retreat but no explanation other than confusion is forthcoming. It’s not the first time that we’ve seen the Dorsets get muddled in foggy conditions.