Tag: dorsets

Sandbags and wet rags

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5th January 1915

German light guns shelled the Dorsets’ left hand trenches and claimed the life of one man: 18 year old William Richard Satchell, another territorial reinforcement from 3rd Battalion. Snipers also plagued the left hand side of Sector D throughout the day.

The 1/6 Cheshires brought up huge amounts of fascines (bundles of sticks), hurdles and sandbags and laid them into the sodden trenches in an attempt to try to keep the men dry. An incredible 4000 sandbags were placed on the 15th Brigade’s fire steps today.

William Satchell was born in 1897 in Portsmouth in Hampshire. His mother, Ada, had died of heart disease, aged just 36, in 1904 leaving the father, another William Richard, to fend for his five children. It looks like the children had been sent away by the time the 1911 census came around and I can’t find a definite lead to William Junior in the 1911 census reports.

There is a William Richard Satchell listed as an inmate of Portsmouth Infirmary, but his birth date is out by a couple of years and he’s also listed, rather cruelly, as an “imbecile by birth”. I’m not sure he would have been fit for military service in the Territorials but the term must have covered a wide range of ailments and disabilities. The infirmary seems to have have been part of the adjoining workhouse (now St Mary’s Hospital in Portsmouth). Had poverty, and therefore the workhouse, consumed the entire Satchell family? Perhaps his only escape was the army?

Time has dimmed our connection to the lives of many of these working class men who fought in the ranks of the Dorsets. It’s easy to pick out the lives of officers who are often mentioned by name and are easier to trace. But I think it’s important to remember the vast majority of the Dorsets were working class men, like Frank, who joined the army less for heroic derring-do and more likely because of economic necessity or social desperation.

Dig for victory

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3rd January 1915

It was another peaceful day in Bailleul for the Dorsets. The COs of 15th Brigade got together and agreed a plan for improving trenches when they returned to the front line. The schedule was agreed for each battalion to spend three days in  the trenches and three days in reserve. The recently joined territorial regiment, the 1/6th Battalion Cheshires, was to operate as a working party only.

How many bombs would a bomb chucker chuck?

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2nd January 1915

Firstly, a big thank you to Stephen Potter for sending me a copy of Charles Lilly’s recollection of the first six months of the war. It’s short and lacking in finer details, having been written well after the end of the war (past the 1930s as far as I can make out – although it’s not dated), but it’s very opinionated and honest about his naivety as a young subaltern in 1914. He gives an insight into some of my ideas about the truth behind the official records of the Dorsets’ early months in World War One. I will return to him very soon and explore whether or not he was Frank’s direct platoon commander and we’ll also hear about what he thought of his superiors.

Another wet and windy day greeted the Dorsets as they lined up with the Royal Engineers for training in revetting and bomb throwing. Revetting refers to work reinforcing and developing trenches. This involved digging features like firesteps, dug outs and communication trenches and strengthening walls.

The British Army was scrambling to provide its troops with the requisite weaponry to fight in trenches. Bomb throwing was a vital skill. But first the British Army had to produce a bomb worth throwing. Gleichen explains about how far the Germans were ahead that winter:

Soon came the period of hand grenades, in which he had six to one the best of us in numbers; and then in rifle grenade ditto ditto; and then in trench mortars, flare-lights, searchlights, and rockets — wherein we followed him feebly and at a great distance; for where he sent up 100 (say) light balls at night, we could only afford five or six; and other things in proportion.

The official British hand grenade in 1914 was the No 1 grenade but it was pretty rubbish and even modifications to the unwieldy wooden handle didn’t make it any popular. The Germans could apparently bat them away using a wooden plank.

The Royal Engineers were beginning to make their own bombs out of jam tins. I’m guessing this is what they were showing the Dorsets how to use.

It wasn’t until 1915 that a decent hand grenade became available to Commonwealth troops: the Mark 5 Mills Bomb. It remained the iconic British grenade up until the 1980s. My Action Man never went anywhere without a belt-load of them. I worked in a building in Twickenham that made the detonators for them and I believe that a factory up the road in Richmond (which was later converted into Richmond ice rink) was where they made the actual grenade body. This article gives you a lot more information about the Belgians who worked there.

The development of the British grenade is explored in detail in this article on the Western Front Association website.

Later in the day Bols, and the Brigade Major at the time (possibly Griffiths), rode to Dranôutre and then onto Wulverghem to see the trenches they were going to take over from 14th Brigade. The sectors they saw, C and D, were “very wet, some undercut, parapet not thick enough and communication trenches impossible”. The Dorsets are in for a treat.

Out with the Auld

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Field Service Postcard – franked 1 Jan 15

Message reads: “I am quite well. Letter follows at first opportunity. I have received no letter form you lately.”
Signed Frank and dated 31-12-14*

31st December 1914

As 1914 came to a close, the Dorsets remained in billets for another day.

The weather had put paid to any major campaigning in France and Belgium. For now, the fighting nations waited, licked their numerous wounds, and worked hard at keeping their enemies on constant tenterhooks.

Most of Britain’s professional army lay buried in makeshift graves, openly rotting in sodden fields, churned into the sticky Belgian mud, crushed by demolished buildings in French villages, interred in miserable camps in Germany or crippled by horrific injuries in British hospitals. The BEF was finished as a professional force but it was by no means defeated.

1915 promised to be a year for new armies, a new way of fighting war and new methods of killing on an ever larger scale. Thousands of volunteers, now known as Kitchener’s Army, were currently learning how to fight an industrial war but they were a long way from realising how victory might be achieved. Indeed, they were still a long way from being ready to fight. For now the tattered remnants of Britain’s professional army continued to do its duty.

For a war that was supposed to be over by Christmas, it looked very much like it was just getting started.

* I’ve added this postcard on the 2nd Jan – I missed as I’d been away and left my transcript behind.

Storm in a tea cup

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30th December 1914

The Dorsets remained in billets for the day.

The 5th Division’s diary writes that men were “repairing damage done by storm”. There’s no other mention of this storm in the other diaries. In the Telegraph, however, much of the paper is given over to covering the storm which affected the South East of England on Monday 28th December 1914. Much damage was done to property, including Southend Pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world, which was “breached in three places”. Winds reached almost 40 miles an hour and, in typically English aggrandisement, the storm is described as “very nearly a gale”.

I wonder if this is the same storm that had toppled over precarious sandbags and parapets in Belgium.

There’s an interesting advertisement in the Telegraph today. You could now book tickets to sail to America on January 16th from Liverpool on the RMS Lusitania.