Friday 25 September 2015

Loos - a hundred years on

During the First World War, my grandfather Richard Little fought at the Battle of Loos with the 10th Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment. This month, almost a hundred years ago to the day, my son Max and I visited the battlefield:

My experience of France is very different to that of my immediate ancestors.
My father's first step on French soil wasn't from the car ferry at Calais, it was onto a beach in Normandy in 1944 and all his time in the country was spent worrying about stepping on or driving over a mine; being shelled or mortared; bombed, machine-gunned or sniped. Not what you'd call a great holiday!
My grandfather's experience was even worse - you can add poison gas to the list of ways to be killed.
A traffic jam on the Boulevard Peripherique or being diverted onto the tunnel because striking fishermen have blockaded Calais harbour is not in the same league. This month, Max and I enjoyed a couple of days in Artois region in north-east France visiting the area where my grandfather fought during The Great War and this post is about our experience.
My grandfather fought in the Battle of Loos in September 1915. The mass killings of the Somme, which were to see the worst casualty figures ever suffered by the British army, were still almost a year away, but in many ways, Loos was a dress rehearsal: it was to be the big breakthrough, it was fought to relieve pressure on the French and the plan was broadly the same - hurl thousands of infantry at heavily defended German positions.
In 1915, Loos was the most bloody battle the British Army had fought. It cost over 20,000 lives and 8,500 men were killed on the first day - the worst casualty figures sustained to that date. If the First World War had ended there and then, we'd view Loos like a modern-day Waterloo, unbelieveable casualty figures and a horror etched on the nation's psyche. Sadly, no lessons were learned from Loos and it was followed by the Somme and by Paschendale - battles bigger in scale and battles where many more men were wasted.
I'm not reopening the 'Donkeys' debate from my post How Haig Tried to Kill My Grandfather but just so you know where I stand: my view is that Haig was criminally incompetent and needlessly wasted thousands and thousands of lives.
Through battalion and brigade war diaries, history books and biographies, I have been able to piece together my grandfather's experience of going into action for the first time and now I wanted to see the ground where this dreadful battle took place, but in particular the area of the battlefield around Loos-en-Gohelle, just north of Lens, which is where my grandfather was.
It's easy to access from my home near Peterborough - a two-and-a-half hour drive to Dover, ferry crossing and then an hour from Calais (autoroute all the way to Lens). We stayed at the Campanile Lens, which is on the Lens northern ring-road and well placed for Loos and the countryside beyond. We also took bicycles as a good way to get around the battlefield and allow us to feel in touch with the land.
Richard Little, my grandfather, had reached Loos by a very different route. He landed in Boulogne and after a series of night marches (for secrecy) his battalion arrived at Vermelles on the first day of the battle (September 25, 1915). He approached Loos along the Bethune/Lens road, crossing the old German front line and, at the site of the Lens Road Redoubt (a German strong-point taken earlier in the day), they turned off the road and headed across open country, skirting to the north of Loos and then heading east to take positions in the new front line along the Lens/Hulluch road, occupying Chalk Pit Wood, The Chalk Pit, Puits 14 (a coalmine), Bois Hugo wood and the line of the road itself.
Their left flank was open, to their front was Bois Hugo (partly held by the British) and on their right flank was another wood (Chalet Wood) held by the Cameron Highlanders and, beyond that was Hill 70. We'd gained a foothold on Hill 70 during the first day's fighting, but battalions which had attacked it were already decimated after attacking the German front lines and then clearing the village of Loos, so consequently the key target - a redoubt built on the side of the hill and overlooking the battlefield - was still in German hands.
On September 26, 1915 there was a strong German counter-attack which drove the Camerons out of Chalet Wood and 63 Brigade out of Bois Hugo. They attempted to hold the line along the Lens/Hulluch road and Puits 14, but were driven back. An attack on Hill 70 had been a complete fiasco, so they were under fire from machine guns on the hill. from Bois Hugo and Chalet Wood and by German artillery. They were driven back to the west and formed a defensive line along a track running north from Loos. Several counter attacks were made during the afternoon, but the open countryside dominated by enemy positions meant they suffered dreadful losses.
To the north of Chalk Pit and Bois Hugo, there was a mass attack against the German Second Line. This was made with little artillery support, against German strongpoints with uncut wire. The site chosen for the attack was enfiladed by fire from Hill 70, Bois Hugo and Hulluch and the men attacked in close formation, marching across the fields. There were more than 2,500 casualties and the land was known as "Leichenfeld von Loos" by the Germans and simply "Field of Corpses" by the British.
During the early hours of September 27, my grandafther's battalion was relieved by Guards battalions. A third of them had been killed.
On September 27, the Guards attacked to try to retake Chalk Pit Wood and Puits 14, but were also massacred. Among the dead was Lt John Kipling, the son and only child of author and poet Rudyard Kipling. There were other attacks into October 1915, but no further gains. Loos remained in British hands, but the village was a ruin, shelled to rubble.
A hundred years later, the land is peaceful, with people just getting on with their daily lives. Apart from the many military cemeteries and the substantial war memorials in surrounding communities, you wouldn't know what dreadful battles had been fought here.
The land is gently undulating, with a dip into the Gohelle valley where Loos sits and then up again as you head east. The land falls more sharply to the south as you descend into Lens. It was once a major coalfield, but it's now a post-industrial landscape with many slag-heaps. greened over, but still dominating the area. Fields are wide, with no hedges; there are pockets of woodland and the ground is clay over chalk.
View across the valley towards Loos from the Lens/Hulluch road. I am
standing on the line reached by British troops on September 25, 1915.

It was surprising how familiar it was to me. Having read umpteen accounts of the battle and studied war diaries, I was able to orientate myself very easily and recognise landmarks immediately. What did surprise me was the scale, it was far more compact than I expected - Chalet Wood and what's left of Bois Hugo are only a narrow field apart. You can appreciate how devastating enfilade fire would have been from such close quarters.
Most things are not that different to 1915. There's a new ring road between Loos and Lens (the A21); some slag-heaps have been reduced, others are bigger; Hill 70 now has a prison on its northern flank and an estate of light industry around its eastern edge, while the A21 makes a deep cutting along its southern edge. Chalet Wood looks untouched, but Bois Hugo is much reduced.
Our hotel was just off the ring road and on the southern flank of Hill 70. It's bizarre to find myself sleeping and eating on land where thousands of men died trying to occupy it. All I did was drive up and check in. Well, in fact, it wasn't that easy - when we arrived the slip-road off the A21 had been closed and so we had to skirt around through Loos and approach from the direction of Hulluch, only to find police blocking the access road. We think there may have been a problem at the prison (perhaps a break-out?) but we couldn't get in, so we drove into Loos and parked up in front of the mairie. The police had said it would be an hour, so we did what any chap would do and went for a beer.
The main square in Loos and the Mairie.

There's a cafe on the corner of the square at the end of Rue 11 November 1918 and they were friendly, but not with good English. This is not a tourist area, so a smattering of French is very useful. Anyway, I 'voudrayed' a couple of beers and the proprietor, somehow sensing I was English, delivered me a couple of leaflets for the museum. This had a map of the battle on day 1 and also contacts for the museum, which is behind the town hall and open by appointment.
After our drink, we walked down to the Loos British Cemetery. It's the first time I have stood in a First World War cemetery and it's hard to relate this beautifully kept, manicured, place with the horrific events of 1915. There are 3,000 graves in the cemetery and the majority of them are unidentified. The army didn't provide 'dog tags' or any means of identifying bodies at this stage of the war and the cemetery was established in 1917 when it was used to create permanent graves for dead soldiers buried in makeshift graves around the battlefield. Many of these would have been buried in haste and subsequent decomposition meant recognition would have been impossible. Some regiments are identified by badges or buttons, but individuals remain unknown unless their rank singled them out. As a consequence, most graves simply bear the line written by Rudyard Kipling: A Soldier of the Great War - Known Unto God.
An example of a "believed to be buried" headstone
This was clearly very distressing for the relatives of soldiers posted as 'missing', who wanted to know where their loved one's body was lying. This cemetery, and others we visited during the next couple of days, had a number of memorial plaques to individuals giving a name, rank and regiment with the line: "Believed to be Buried in This Cemetery."
From a modern perspective, it shows how little respect the army had for its common soldiers that they were prepared to sacrifice so many lives so carelessly and then, even in death, the individuals were simply 'processed' without proper recognition. To me, the 'respect' now shown to these badly treated men in the form of beautiful, impeccably maintained cemeteries and memorials seems incongruous.
Their lives were wasted by incompetent commanders; they were slaughtered by shell and machine gun, often left lying on the battlefield for years reblasted by subsequent shells; then the bits were gathered together and buried in immaculate cemeteries, their graves marked by white marble headstones in rows so straight they could be laser drawn. It seems too little, too late, not in keeping with the way the men were treated in life. It's a post war apology to try to distract from a litany of incompetence; it glorifies a war that was anything but glorious.
Neat lines of graves in the British Cemetery in Loos - most of the headstones mark unknown graves.
We walked back to the main square, drove to our hotel and checked in.
There were a couple of hours before dinner, so I suggested to Max that we walk into Lens and take a look around.  The road runs steadily downhill into the town. The outer suburbs are not particularly attractive, but there's a new football stadium being built (Lens is one of the sites for Euro 2016). The town was under German occupation during the war and, being pretty much on the front line, it was heavily shelled. We walked up the main street and every lamp-post has a speaker attached from which they were playing music. It sounded a bit like Gold FM - very strange. There was a biker cafe, with a mixture of sports bikes, cruisers and a couple of Ural combinations parked up. The bikes were an odd mix but the riders had gone for a universal Hell's Angel look. We walked on to the main square and had a beer in the sunshine. There's a fine church which bears a plaque to say it was rebuilt in the 1920s after being destroyed in the Great War.
We were back at our hotel by 7.30pm and time for a nice dinner. Odd to think that we'd walked into Lens in just over half an hour - something it took the Allies four years to achieve.
Next morning was bright and sunny, barely a cloud in the sky and with a light easterly breeze. Back in September 1915, it had started raining pretty much as soon as the battle began and my grandfather's battalion would have been soaking wet by the time they took up their positions. Anyway, this was a good day for cycling.
According to Major and Mrs Holt's Battlefield Guide, the roundabout where the hotel, prison and industrial area are joined to the Lens/Hulluch road was the site of the Hill 70 Redoubt and standing there on a clear day, you can see for miles across the surrounding countryside. It's not a large hill (and wouldn't even be noticed in Derbyshire), but in this flat, open landscape you can appreciate what strategic importance it had in 1915.
I said before that the landscape was familiar to me from the reading I'd been doing, but also how much smaller and compressed it was in reality. From the Redoubt (roundabout), we rode down the hill towards Hulluch and the area where my grandfather had been in action.
Chalet Wood is reached in a couple of hundred metres. This had been taken and occupied by the Cameron Highlanders on September 25. In the German counter-attack the following day, this was the first ground wrested back and the Camerons were killed almost to a man. The shape and size of the wood seems the same as 100 years ago.
Puits 14 - the winding gear has gone and the shaft sealed. These buildings
were certainly built after the Great War. This was the scene
of bitter fighting in 1915.
Next along is Puits 14, a former pit-head, which formed the right flank of 63 Brigade (which the 10th York and Lancaster regiment were part of). There are still mine buildings here (I guess they were rebuilt after the war) and it's now an industrial unit. Opposite and a little further on is Bois Hugo. 63 Brigade troops were driven out of here on September 26 and back across the Lens/Hulluch road, suffering heavy losses. You can see how fire from Chalet Wood and Hill 70 would have been devastating to the men trying to regroup along the line of the road I'm now riding.
Bois Hugo is much reduced. An airfield has taken out the corner near the road and a supermarket has been built in the middle, with a new roundabout and a road along the wood's southern edge. When they were digging the ground to put in the new roundabout, a couple of bodies were discovered just below the surface. They were identified by their buttons as being from the Cameron Highlanders. After extensive research, one of the bodies was identified using DNA technology as L/Cpl John Brown. He was buried in the Loos British Cemetery (the one we visited the previous day) in 2004. Ironically, he's one of the few from his battalion to be identified.
We continued along the Lens/Hulluch road past the Chalk Pit on our left. The wood here is much smaller than in 1915 and the pit itself seems much bigger. After the Chalk Pit, the terrain opens out at the bottom of the valley, with wide fields on both sides. This is much like it was in 1915 and this is the ground where, on September 26, 1915, men of XI Brigade marched in formation (like a parade at Aldershot, according to one observer) towards the German second line. We stopped our cycles as if to let them cross the road ahead of us. To the right, this open ground was a killing field - the Field of Corpses - a hundred years ago. Bathed in the sun of a late summer morning, it's hard to imagine what happened here.
The Germans had the high ground immediately on the right and left flanks of the attacking British and two strongpoints - Stutzpunkt III and IV were immediately ahead. It's hard to think of a more unsuitable place to launch a mass attack or a more inept way to conduct it. The men would have marched past the York and Lancaster's left flank - my grandfather would probably have witnessed the whole bloody catastrophe.
We rode on towards Hulluch with the ground rising gently. At Hulluch, we turned west along the road to Vermelles. To our right (north) are The Quarries, The Dump and the Hohenzollern Redoubt, all the scene of bitter (and ultimately fruitless) fighting. The Queen Mother’s brother, Fergus Bowes Lyon was killed at The Quarries and, like many others, his grave isn’t marked. So when Elizabeth Bowes Lyon married The Duke of York (later George VI) at Westminster Abbey in 1923 she paused on her way into the cathedral to lay her wedding bouquet on the grave of the Unknown Warrior, who represented the thousands and thousands of soldiers with no known grave. This started a tradition with bouquets from royal weddings laid on the tomb the day after the wedding, the latest being Kate Middleton's.
From Hulluch to Vermelles, the road slopes down and then up as it crosses the shallow valley. On the left, towards the valley floor are three cemeteries - St Mary's, Ninth Avenue and Bois Carre all lying across what was the old German front line in 1915. We stopped at St Mary's, which was the site of an advanced dressing station. It must have been an unbelievably horrific place in the autumn of 1915.
St Mary's ADC Cemetery.

Like all the others, it is impeccably maintained, but 90 per cent of the graves are unidentified - an indication of the chaos of the battle. One grave that is marked is that of Lt John Kipling, the son of author and poet Rudyard Kipling. John was killed on September 27. His battalion was one of a number who relieved 63 Brigade in the early hours of September 27. He was killed by Chalk Pit Wood, where my grandfather had fought the previous day, and his body lost. Rudyard Kipling spent much time trying to find the body of his son and it was only in 1992 that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission decided they had positively identified a body as that of John Kipling. The identification was on the basis that it was right rank and regiment and that only one soldier of that rank and regiment had been killed. The identification is contested by some, but I can't see that it matters that much after all this time.
The grave of John Kipling in
St Mary's cemetery.
Kipling wrote a poem: My Boy Jack. It was used as a prelude to a book on the Battle of Jutland, so its imagery is nautical, but it clearly relates to his sorrow about the loss of his son. It was later the inspiration for a stage play, which was made into a TV programme by ITV. Kipling's sorrow would have been shared by many other families in the years after Loos.
My Boy Jack by Rudyard Kipling
“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!


We rode on along the Vermelles and then made our way via back roads to Annequin, where we picked up the main road to Bethune. This was quite a busy road, but French drivers are a little more considerate to cyclists than British drivers and there was also a hard shoulder we could use for most of the route.
I wanted to visit Bethune because it is mentioned frequently in Goodbye To All That, Robert Graves' memoire of the First World War, which I highly recommend.
The bell tower in the centre of Bethune in 1918.
Graves fought in the Battle of Loos at Cuinchy in the north of the sector and used to visit the officers club in Bethune when he was able to get a few days out of the trenches. He famously met the Prince of Wales, later George V, in the Turkish Baths. The future king, stark naked, remarked how bloody cold the water was.
Bethune was a beautiful mediaeval town and remained in Allied hands throughout the war. It was flattened by high explosive and gas shells, also bombed by Gothas during the 1918 Spring Offensive or Kaiserschlacht (Kaiser's Battle), which was the German's last attempt to break through Allied lines and win the war. In the 1920s, the town was rebuilt as closely as possible to the original. We cycled into the centre where there is a square with the old bell tower. This wonderful tower was still standing, although heavily damaged, in 1918 and is now fully restored. We sat and had a beer in the sun and listened to the bells, which chime quite a complicated tune every quarter and really let loose on the hour. Max wondered what Richard Little would have thought. I'm sure he would have appreciated the timeless delights of beer and a smoke with his grandson and great-grandson.
Beer in Bethune.


From Bethune, we headed back to Annequin, but managed to take back roads through the suburbs and avoid the busy N41 for most of the way. In 1915 Annequin was the site of the principal British artillery observation post, positioned at the top of a slagheap 135 feet high. The heap has now been reduced and Annequin is a very pleasant village when you get away from the main road.
Mini statue of liberty in Cambrin
Next village, less than a mile east, is Cambrin. There are a couple of war cemeteries here - Cambrin Military Cemetery and Cambrin Churchyard extension. We sat in the sunshine in the Military Cemetery and ate ham salad baguettes that we'd bought in Bethune. There was a chap in the cemetery who was going up and down the rows of graves with a digital camera. he was clearly photographing the headstones, but in quite a casual way (perhaps he'd honed a fast and effective technique?). On our way out I asked him what he was doing. He was taking pictures of headstones and making them available on www.ancestry.co.uk. I remarked that the sun wasn't in the best position and asked whether you'd be able to read the inscriptions. I don't think he was doing a great job, but he said he'd photographed over 2,500 headstones the previous day, so perhaps he was losing the will to live. He said he comes across several times a year and it's his hobby, he isn't paid anything.
I once had a photographer colleague whose job, at the end of the Second World War, had been to photograph graves of soldiers killed in Italy. He'd photographed all the headstones at Monte Casino and had used a special camera body that held a roll of film with 200 frames. he then had to develop the film and print each frame, so it could be sent to relatives of the dead man. His job would have been a heck of a lot easier with a digital camera.
Cambrin contains the grave of Capt A L Samson of the Royal Welch Fusliers, a friend of Robert Graves, who was killed on the first day of the battle. In Goodbye To All That, Graves writes how he waited in the trenches while the first wave went over. The men were cut down by murderous machine-gun fire and that other men, hearing the cries of the wounded only yards from the trench tried to help, but were also shot. Capt Samson had been shot 17 times and had forced his knuckles into his mouth to stop him crying out in his pain and attracting more men to their deaths. Graves wrote the poem The Dead Fox Hunter in Samson's memory:
We found the little captain at the head
His men lay, well aligned.
We touched his hand - stone cold - and he was dead,
And they, all dead, behind
Had never reached their goal, but they died well.
They charged in line, and, in the same line, fell.


There was no progress in this part of the battlefield in 1915 and soldiers were occupying exactly the same trenches in 1918.
Cambrin has an unusual war memorial. It is an exact copy (scaled down) of the Statue of Liberty and was erected in 1926 following a lottery that raised 35,000 francs. Originally, the memorial was sited on the main road in front of the Mairie, but it has now been repositioned in a new village square adjacent to the church. It's a much better position away from the busy road.
After 15 miles or so of cycling, I was now feeling quite saddle sore.
We pressed on along the road towards Auchy, but then turned off along a minor road across country towards Vermelles. This took us back across the old German front line and into the valley to Vermelles - a nice downhill freewheel. A bicycle is a great way to get around the battlefield. You can stop and park at will and you're aware of all the rises and falls of the terrain.
War memorial in Vermelles
In Vermelles, there's also an unusual war memorial. Marianne (the symbol of liberty) is catching a soldier as he is shot and falls back. Almost 500 people of the village died during the war, a dreadful toll for such a small place. Their names are inscribed on the memorial, and among them is Abbot Jules Ducourant who was executed as a spy by the Germans in October, 1914. He had been sending light signals from the top of the church bell tower to French troops. Vermelles was under German occupation until December 7, 1914 when the French fought their way through from Mazingarbe and the Germans retreated to Auchy-les-Mines.
From the centre of Vermelles, we reversed the route we had taken that morning to St Mary's Cemetery. Just to the east of the cemetery, a track runs across country in the direction of Loos and I wanted to follow this back into the village. In the war diary of the 10th Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment it describes the battles of September 26 and as the men are beaten back from the Chalk Pit and Lens/Hulluch road, they reform with other battalions along the line of a track running north from Loos and mount a number of attacks to try to win back the Chalk Pit and Puits 14.
I couldn't say this track was that same track, but I wanted to see and I think there's a good chance that it was; or at least it was very close to the line. From St Mary's we walked uphill with a tiny cemetery (Ninth Avenue) and a larger one (Bois Carre) on our right some 50 yards off the track. Looking west, you can see the Lone Tree. This was a tree in no man's land which was a landmark during the battle. In 1995, a cherry tree was planted in place of the original tree and it bears an inscription in English, French and German: "Lone Tree, replanted in memory of all those who lost their lives in the Battle of Loos."


On the track running north from Loos. I think my grandfather would have
crossed this track in the early hours of September 25, 1915, moving up to
the front line; then retreated back to it the following afternoon as the
Germans counter-attacked and won back ground.

As the track sloped down towards Loos, we spotted a figure running across the fields towards us. It was a jogger, keeping his fitness levels up. He's running for his life, just as so many were a hundred years ago. Across to our right, we waved at a tractor driver ploughing in the stubble and a little further on an old man was scavenging for onions in a field recently harvested. He had a pretty decent bag full that the harvester had missed.
Back in Loos, there was time for a drink in the cafe on the main square. That last ride up the hill to the hotel (Hill 70) was quite a haul with my tired legs.
I had e-mailed the Alexandre Villedieu Loos War Museum to arrange for it to be opened for us on Friday morning. They were very efficient, had replied promptly and we were to meet M Duparcq, president of the Loos Great War Association at 9.30am. He was a smart old chap, very friendly, but with little English. However, with his little English and my little French, plus some mimes, we just about managed to get by.
Trench mortar bombs in Loos museum. These could
contain shrapnel or poison gas.
It's an interesting little museum occupying two large rooms and a landing on the second floor behind the Mairie. There are weapons, detritus from the battlefield and some displays of maps. There's a French soldier in the uniform used by troops during 1915 when the French tried to liberate Loos. They wore red trousers, a blue coat and a red cap - they might as well have painted a target on their chests. There was also a display of trench mortars, an evil-looking club used by German troops for trench fighting and a collection of hand grenades. There's a Mills bomb with instructions, telling the user that he could pull the pin but keep the handle clasped and "throw at your convenience". That seems inappropriately quaint writing for such a deadly device. Mills bombs were quite rare during Loos, most soldiers had to use bombs with a fuse which had to be lit with a match (there was an example of one of these). They were pretty much useless when it rained (and it was raining on September 25, 26 and 27 1915).
There was a display on John Kipling, on the bodies found when the roundabout was being constructed and on Emilienne Moreau, a young woman living in Loos, who warned soldiers of the Black Watch of an ambush and who also helped tend to wounded men in the village. I asked M Duparcq where the Hill 70 Redoubt was sited and he showed me an aerial photograph from modern times upon which features could be seen marked by chalk raised to the surface. His position was somewhat to the west of the Lens/Hulluch road and not on the roundabout as stated in Major and Mrs Holt's Battlefield Guide.
Climbing the slagheap - hard work, but
the view is impressive.
After visiting the museum, we wanted to climb one of the two slag-heaps - the Double Crassier - which dominate Loos and the surrounding countryside. The Double Crassier was a strong German defensive point in 1915, but the current slag-heaps, now semi-green and part of a nature reserve, are much taller, having been added to by further mining after the war.
I'd seen a footpath marked on a map at the Mairie, so we took a picture of it for reference and set off. The path took a bit of finding, but we got there. The walk up was very steep, but at the steepest point, near the top, there are some steel ropes fixed into the earth, which you can use to help you pull yourself up (and down). The view from the top is magnificent. They are 180 metres high, so the height flattens the contours of the land below and makes it appear more even than it is, but you can see across to Lens, over the whole battlefield and towards Bethune, shrouded in haze.


Our last visit was to the Loos Memorial, which is just outside the village on the N43 Lens/Bethune road. This cemetery contains 1,800 graves and the walls surrounding it bear the names of 21,000 men with no known grave. I found the first headstones from the York & Lancaster Regiment, but none were named. There are around 200 names from the York and Lancaster regiment on the walls.
The cemetery is on the site of the Lens Road redoubt, a German strongpoint taken on the first day of the battle. The site was nicknamed Dud Corner by British soldiers due to the large number of shells which had failed to explode during the bombardment. My grandfather had marched down this road from Vermelles and they had turned off the road at this point and marched across open country, skirting north of Loos which was burning in the night sky to take up their positions in the early hours.
This is the one point in the whole battlefield where I can say for sure that my grandfather had passed.
That was the end of our tour. For us, it was a short ride back into Loos, a drink and some lunch from the 8 a Huit, back to the hotel to collect the car and a short drive back to Calais. All a far cry from 1915.
The British Memorial at Dud Corner. It has the names of all those who
died at Loos and have no known grave. Below: I found the first graves
of York & Lancaster Regiment soldiers, but they
were only "Known Unto God"

Tuesday 8 September 2015

TNG - another new member

There will soon be another new member of the next generation - Sam and Lucy have told us that Lucy is pregnant and will have the baby in March.

Nice to know that my genes (or at least a few of them) move forward into a new-and-improved model!

This will be our second grandchild in consecutive years and it's wonderful news. We don't know if it's a boy or girl at this stage, and I don't really mind.

Sam and Lucy are now settled in Jersey - Sam has bought into the Castle Quay practice, Lucy has a job in finance and they are looking (so far without luck) to buy a house, so my new grandchild will grow up in the Channel Islands.


Wednesday 2 September 2015

The Battle of Loos - how Haig tried to kill my grandfather

This very faded picture is the only image
I have of my maternal grandfather
A hundred years ago this month, on September 26, 1915, my maternal grandfather Richard Gibson Little took part in his first action of The Great War.
He was fighting with the 10th York & Lancaster Regiment, a regiment raised in the coalfields of England and soon to be machine-gunned to pieces in the coalfields of north-eastern France.
There are few 'safe' battles in the First World War, but aside from Paschendale and (for the French) Verdun, there were none with a higher chance of being killed in miserable circumstances than the Battle of Loos. The first day of the Somme saw more men killed, but it was a much bigger battle, and the percentage casualty rate for Loos was higher.
Thank goodness my grandfather somehow, by good fortune and quirk of fate, managed to be among the survivors.
His regiment was part of Lord Kitchener’s New Army. This was the first tranche of volunteers, the war having already killed a large number of the regulars and reserves. They had signed up in a wave of patriotism in 1914 and now they were being thrown into battle. I don’t know exactly why my grandfather enlisted. He was from Cumbria, a small village east of Penrith and in the 1911 census he was 22 and boarding at a farm in Burghwallis, just north of Doncaster. I guess work was easier to find in Yorkshire and, four years later, the army in France might have seemed a better option than being a farm hand.
Recruiting poster
For Richard Little and his contemporaries, war was an unknown experience. As working-class men, they would be used to a bit of hunger, a lot of hard work and general hardship, so perhaps (at first) the army seemed quite a nice number.
The training of this first wave of volunteers was not what we'd expect today, although in many ways little has changed (the army never seems to have enough, or the right, equipment). They volunteered in late summer and autumn, the first to answer Lord Kitchener's call to arms, but had no uniforms or guns. This extract is from the book Loos - Hill 70 by Andrew Rawson and describes the training of New Army recruits:
"Without weapons or uniforms, training options were limited, but days were filled with drills, parades or marches. Country lanes saw columns of marching men, dressed in a hotchpotch of clothes and boots.
"At most a battalion had only one or two officers with previous experience. Bankers, clerks and students became officers; teachers and policemen were promoted to sergeant or corporal. In many cases a man received his stripes because of his well-dressed appearance.
"The first batch of uniforms arrived in spring; not khaki as expected, but a selection of civilian outfits, including red and blue Post Office uniforms."
My grandfather's division was sent to Tring in Hertfordshire initially and then to camps at Halton Park in the Lune valley, near Lancaster. As winter came, they were accommodated anywhere they could be found a roof - churches, halls and cinemas were used. Their rifles weren't issued until summer - less than six months before going into action - when they practised shooting for the first time on Salisbury Plain.
They had no idea what they were in for - and it was probably just as well.
I must apologise for the next few paragraphs, which are full of the "10th this" and "63rd that", just stick with me and bleep over the detail if it gets too much.
The 10th York & Lancaster (my grandfather's battalion) was in the 63rd Brigade under Brigadier-General N T Nickalls, who was killed at Loos. The 63rd Brigade was part of the 21st Division (commanded by Major-General G T Forestier-Walker) and the 21st Division was part of XI Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General R C B Haking.
If Loos wasn't a battle you'd choose to fight in, Haking, nicknamed "The Butcher", was equally not a character you'd choose to serve under. He was Haig's man and a commander with a reputation for aggression. That didn't mean he sat on his horse at the head of his men and shouted "charge"; rather it meant that from the safety of his chateau, he was quite untroubled ordering men to attack. Like many First World War generals, he seemed to prize aggression and bravery over planning, preparation and training. He also seemed unperturbed by high casualties. At Aubers Ridge, a battle in May 1915, troops under Haking's command had suffered 60 per cent casualties in little over an hour, largely due to bad tactics, but also Haking's willingness to throw more and more men into an attack that was clearly failing. Perhaps he hoped the Germans might run out of machine-gun bullets?
At Loos, he had a lot more men to send to their deaths. The 10th Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment would have comprised around 1,000 men made up from four rifle companies of about 200 men each, plus support troops including machine-gunners, transport and supply. The 63rd Brigade, where the 10th Y&L was placed, also included the 8th Lincolnshire, 12th West Yorkshire and 8th Somerset Light Infantry - a total of about 4,000 men. The 63rd Brigade was in the 21st Division and that also included 62nd and 64th Brigade (so a total of 12,000 men). It also included four brigades of field artillery (12 field-gun batteries and four howitzer batteries), three companies of Royal Engineers and a company of pioneers (looking after supplies, labour and construction). There would have been upwards of 15,000 men - the equivalent to the population of a medium-sized town - in the 21st Division. Haking's XI Corps had three Divisions, so at least 45,000 men.
XI Corps was part of the British First Army with three Corps in its strength. Commander of the First Army was General Sir Douglas Haig and he was subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshall Sir John French.
French seemed to be in poor health and, prior to the Battle of Loos, spent a lot of time in bed incommunicado. Perhaps he really did have a propensity for colds and flu, perhaps he had a drink problem? Either way, he didn't exactly have his finger on the pulse and he proved unable or unwilling to stand up to French pressure to act in their interests (not necessarily the BEF's).
Haig was an ambitious man with his eye on French's position (so not the best working relationship). He was also a cavalry man, whose tactics might be summarised as "break through the lines and turn the cavalry loose", he was hopelessly optimistic, set unrealistic goals and (in his private life) he was a committed spiritualist who believed God spoke directly to him. Even in an age when people were far more religious than today, it was unusual to be having a two-way conversation with God. If that wasn't enough, Haking was Haig's appointment and was clearly desperate not to let down his patron. If that meant pushing men into hopeless actions, so be it; if it meant doctoring reports and accounts of the battle to make things look good for Haig and bad for French, so be it.
The British army (with a few notable exceptions - Marlborough and Wellington spring to mind) has a long history of incompetent command even to the present day, but this particular set really were a shower. It would be comical if it wasn't such a tragedy.
Like so many other battles already fought and battles still to come, Loos was a disaster waiting to happen. It had many hallmarks of a First World War debacle:
      A battle plan that was wildly optimistic.
      Inept planning and generalship.
      Appalling command and communication, especially on the second day.
      Poor terrain - no way would Wellington have let his men fight here.
      Not enough artillery.
      Completely incompetent logistics.
      Shells that didn’t explode.
      Hand grenades that didn’t work.
      And, of course, it started raining as soon as the attack started.
It was also the first battle where the Allies used poison gas and so determined were the generals to use it, that they ordered it to be deployed even though, in some places, the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, so it gassed many British troops who were waiting in trenches ready to attack.
My opinion of First World War generals is pretty low. On the British side, almost to a man, I rate them as criminally incompetent. The “lions led by donkeys” view has been somewhat revised by historians in recent years, pointing out that the First World War was unlike any other previous war and there was a steep learning curve to develop new tactics to overcome barbed wire, machine guns and elaborate defensive earthworks.
I can agree with the basic premise, it was a new type of warfare and, of course it demanded new tactics; what I can’t accept is that it took so long to work out what those tactics should be, or that the best way to learn was through reckless plans costings thousands of lives. For example, a creeping barrage was used successfully in 1915 but not regularly used until the last year of the war; we knew very quickly that shrapnel shells don’t cut wire but we used millions at the Somme and they still didn’t cut the wire ...
But it was far more than learning tactics, so much of the poor generalship was down to basic incompetence - not enough essential equipment, things in the wrong place, poor communication and blind optimism. The Army was steeped in class, privilege and snobbery, certainly not the meritocracy it needed to be. I find it incredible that Haig should have been given the top job after Loos and that he hung onto that job throughout the war. Despite Loos, despite the Somme, despite Paschendale, he remained in place - they even put up a statue in The Mall. What were they thinking - why is it still there?
But back to Loos and the events of a hundred years ago ...
Why did we fight the battle? It was the usual story, we had to support the French, who were launching major offensives in Champagne and Artois and wanted the British to tie up the Germans to prevent reinforcements being moved.
Even French and Haig had the good sense to know that this was a bad place to fight a battle and to choose to do so on a fairly wide front with insufficient troops and not enough artillery was a crazy idea. The BEF had suffered terrible losses and the original army and reserves had been decimated in several 1915 battles. The army was still awaiting the New Army recruits.
This part of France is not unlike East Yorkshire - wide, mainly flat, farmland with extensive coal-mining activity so the land is dotted with slag-heaps and the winding gear of pit-heads. Before war was declared, coal-mining would have been in full stream, and the slag-heaps were fresh, not greened over. Many had been fortified by the Germans and became strong redoubts with a commanding view of the countryside; in other places, small mining villages had been fortified. It was flat, open and the German lines (protected by barbed wire) extended into several depths, so that the loss of the forward trench would not mean a breakthrough.
The Germans had used poison gas (against the agreed conventions of warfare) at Ypres earlier in the year and the British had decided they now had the moral right to do the same. At this stage of the war, poison gas was a relatively unsophisticated weapon. Chlorine gas was used, released from heavy gas cylinders and directed into no-man's land by pipes. Chlorine irritates the lungs causing a discharge of fluid, resulting in choking and the victim could literally drown as his lungs filled up. Both British and German troops had been issued with gas masks, which were not completely effective and also cumbersome to use. The British gas masks were a canvas hood with round glass peepholes and a breathing hose leading to a filter with neutralising chemicals. It would have been unpleasant to sit in a chair wearing one; running across a battlefield, or any kind of physical exertion, would have been extremely demanding.
Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks by John Warwick Brooke - This is photograph Q 3995 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums (collection no. 1900-13). Licensed under Public Domain via Commons
The use of gas by the Germans at Ypres, against an unprepared defensive force without gas masks, should have resulted in a German breakthrough but didn't. A few Canadian troops stuck doggedly to their positions and repulsed half-hearted attackers who expected no resistance. Haig and his staff, over-optimistic to a man, expected that the British Army would find success where the Germans had failed. The main reason we were using gas was because we didn't have enough artillery or shells, but  we also didn't have enough gas, so it was decided that we'd use smoke candles instead and intersperse gas and smoke to confuse the Germans. No-one has ever died of confusion.
For the historian, Loos is an interesting battle. The Germans had fortified their lines and they were formidable enough, but the countryside was still relatively untouched by the war in the sense that it wasn't yet the hellish moonscape of craters and trenches, devoid of vegetation, that would soon stretch from the sea to the Swiss border. British troops fought at Loos in flat caps, with rifle and bayonet, and (except in a few areas) close trench fighting with men bombing their way along to take a trench, was not the norm. There were large-scale manoeuvres across open countryside, fighting in woodland, in towns (especially Loos itself) and on slag heaps, where the Germans were often dug in.
I won't go into a detailed account of the whole battle, but (in short summary), the attack began on September 25 and the first day saw some success. In parts, there was no forward progress possible, in other areas substantial gains were made, the village of Loos was taken and a breakthrough seemed possible.
The progress stalled because the attacking troops (even where they had broken through and achieved their objectives) had suffered massive losses - 8,500 dead on the first day, plus many more wounded. Until the Somme, nine months later, these were the worst losses in British military history. Officer casualties were a particular problem, leaving men without command. In the confusion of battle, many troops had ended up not quite where they were meant to and often mixed with other battalions.
Nevertheless, despite the dreadful losses, it would have been possible to spin the first day as a huge success (which the generals did). The challenge was to capitalise on that success and break through second-line defences. Sadly, day two of the battle was a bloody debacle and a good deal of the blame for the failure fell on XI Corps, the New Army men.
Nothing went well.
The first problem is that the reserves had been held well back from the front line and so had to make a difficult march on the last day, which took far longer than expected due to congestion and poor logistics behind the lines. You'll see from the 10th Battalion's war diary (below) that the troops had already marched some distance around northern France in the previous weeks, always at night in order to conceal movements from the enemy. The last march into the battle zone, with full kit, was undertaken in pouring rain, so they arrived tired, wet and hungry (the cooking stoves had been lost miles back). It was also dark. Some books (Nick Lloyd) say they were not issued with maps, but the war diary clearly refers to a map, so the 10th Battalion at least had one. What isn't in doubt is that battlefield intelligence and communications was appalling.
Orders either didn't arrive or arrived late. There are battalions who were given only 10 minutes to plan and begin an attack; other troops had an order to remain in trenches, delivered just as they'd obeyed the previous order to attack.
The section of the battlefield where my grandfather was engaged. Chalk Pit Wood, Bois Hugo and Chalet Wood are marked with the Lens-Hulluch road running alongside them. Hill 70 is to the south. The Loos-Hulluch road runs from the north of Loos to join the Lens-Hulluch road.
I know that at 3pm on the first day of the battle, my grandfather was at Vermelles. From there, they were ordered forwards and arrived at the battlefield at 10pm (according to the battalion diary). In his book Loos - Hill 70 Andrew Rawson says:
"For three hours they marched along the Lens highway in the pouring rain. Near Fosse 7 [a mine head] Brigadier-General Norman Nickalls moved to the front of the column, leading the 8th Lincolns and the 8th Somerset Light Infantry across country by compass bearing.
"Meanwhile, the 12th West Yorkshires and the 10th York & Lancaster [my grandfather's battalion] continued along the road as far as the Lens Road redoubt."
They were now in captured territory. The Lens Road Redoubt had been taken earlier in the day.
This description is by a Lieutenant in the 8th Lincolns, but Richard Little must have seen the same view: "as we got to the crest line [this would have been the Grenay Ridge] we could see the countryside slightly and what a sight met our eyes! Right ahead of us was Loos in flames, this was the glare that had puzzled us; the twin towers of the mine standing out like great oil towers on a burning oil field."
Those towers were twin winding gear of the mine in Loos. They were nicknamed Tower Bridge and stood throughout the battle.
The village of Loos before the war with the twin winding gear of
Tower Bridge - a landmark during the battle.
General Nickalls of the 63rd (my grandfather's brigade) and General Mitford of 72 Brigade met each other on the eastern slope of Grenay Ridge at 1am and, in accordance with their instructions they decided to press on to the German second line. Unknown to them, Haig had revised the plan - because of heavy casualties on the first day, he had decided during the afternoon to attack with the New Army troops and an order had gone out to halt on the Grenay Ridge. At 1am, this hadn't reached Mitford or Nickalls and so they decided to press on.
Mitford finally received the order before he moved out, but Nickalls (and my grandfather) had already left. That may have saved his life; if he'd stayed, his battalion may have been among those attacking the German Second line across land which was later called the "Field of Corpses." The brigade moved east, skirting the burning ruins of Loos. As they crossed the valley, they came under heavy machine gun fire and, for a time, it appeared as though it came from Chalk Pit Wood to their left. In fact the wood was held by British troops supporting 2 Brigade in Bois Hugo. The fire was actually coming from Hill 70.
It was only good luck that avoided a blue-on-blue attack on Chalk Pit Wood as the war diary of 63 Brigade reports:
"No information had been received that the position of the Chalk Pit was in occupation of our troops. Luckily no unfortunate results took place, which might very easily have occurred with new troops advancing to a position at night which was not known to be in our possession. It reflects great credit on the officers concerned, who kept their men so well in hand ... The absence of information of what was happening elsewhere was nothing short of disastrous, as no-one knew what anyone else was doing."
Brigadier-General Nickalls of the 63rd found Brigadier-General Pollard of 2 Brigade in the Chalk Pit and they decided that 63 Brigade would relieve 2 Brigade.
Andrew Rawson writes: "Throughout the remaining hours of darkness, the New Army men took over the shallow trenches in and around Bois Hugo. Although they were tired, having spent the last eight hours on the March [more like 12], there was no time to rest. With dawn approaching, the men tried to dig into the hard chalk with their entrenching tools. Brig-General Nickalls knew that his brigade now held the front line. Not sure of where troops were on his flanks, he planned to wait until further orders arrived.
"The Brigade was deployed as follows: A, B and C companies of the Lincolnshire held an east to west line east of the Lens-Hulluch road and along the southern edge of Bois Hugo and facing Hill 70. Three companies of the West Yorks were on the left of the Lincolnshire facing east; the fourth company of the Lincolnshire with the remaining company of West Yorks were in reserve in the angle formed by the front line. The Somersets (less two companies) were between the western side of the Lens-Hulluch Road and the Chalk Pit Wood, while the York & Lancaster carried the Brigade along the road north of the Chalk Pit, but the left flank was entirely in the air."
The position was not strong. Bois Hugo wood extended west to east towards the German second line and a strongpoint called Stutzpunkt V. They didn't control the whole wood and their position was an awkward bulge on the front line. As they dug in, the Germans were planning their counter-attack.
Andrew Rawson summed up the position as day two of the battle dawned: "Changing circumstances, poor planning and a complete lack of staff work had scattered First Army's reserve across the battlefield. In many cases corps and divisional headquarters did not know where their troops were."
Haig's plan was to continue the attack with the New Army divisions on the German Second Line between Hulluch and Bois Hugo, which is directly in front of where my grandfather was lying in his shallow trench by the side of the Lens-Hulluch road.
There was a major snag - the Germans held Hill 70 and would be able to pour down a murderous fire into the flanks of troops attacking to the north. So the battle plan for day two was that the British would capture Hill 70 and then the mass attack on the German second line would take place between Hulluch and Bois Hugo. If the line could be broken and Hulluch taken, a major breakthrough was on the cards.
It didn't happen. There hadn't been enough artillery to support the original offensive (which is why poison gas was used) and now the artillery was in the wrong position and not sure where to fire. If Hill 70 was to be taken, it would require robust artillery support, but it didn't happen. The artillery shelled our own troops who had been hanging on grimly through the night and then attacking troops fired on them in the belief they were Germans. If that wasn't enough, German artillery was now shelling British positions on Hill 70 and Loos itself.
This is an example of where blind optimism took over at high command. Haig had allowed a half-hour barrage to drive the Germans off Hill 70. As the war diary of the 13th Royal Scots (charged with attacking Hill 70) concluded: "It was not likely that guns, which had not been registered, would accomplish in half an hour what four days bombardment and 40 minutes of gas was considered necessary to achieve on the 25th."
By 10.30am, an hour-and-a-half after the British attack began, the Germans were in control of the hill and British troops were hanging on grimly, dug-in below the top.
My grandfather and 63 Brigade were in a perilous position. They were pushed well forward and not well dug-in. Their orders were at 11am to advance through Bois Hugo and Chalet Wood as part of a general attack on the German Second Line. If successful, they would have emerged from the wood right in front of the Studzpunkt V strongpoint and, without artillery support shelling the German line, they would have been annihilated.
What happened was a different kind of annihilation - the Germans began shelling Bois Hugo and then followed with a massed infantry attack on Chalet Wood, 200 metres to the south, where they succeeded in driving out the 6th Cameron Highlanders, who had held the wood overnight, but were exhausted and running low on ammunition. They were wiped out almost to a man.
With the Germans now controlling Chalet Wood (which had commanding views of the Loos valley), 63 Brigade's position was worsening. They were under attack and both flanks were exposed. Brigadier-General Nickalls sent a request for reinforcements from 64th Brigade to his rear but his battalion commanders were still instructed to advance eastwards (as ordered) at 11am.
It was an optimistic command, but no-one had a chance to carry it out. At 10.30am, they were attacked on the east side of the wood, but the Germans were driven off easily. Undeterred, they attacked again in greater numbers. The Germans were reserve troops rushed forward overnight from Douai. They attacked both the east and south sides of the wood simultaneously. Three companies of the 8th Lincolnshires held the southern boundary and three companies of the 12th West Yorkshire the east. The trenches of the West Yorks were overwhelmed and the survivors fell back in a confused mass. To the south, the Lincs men were also falling back. Seeing the retreat, the two companies of the 10th York & Lancaster also pulled back. I don't know if my grandfather was in this group or whether he was in one of two companies who were now in Chalk Pit Wood west of the Lens-Hulluch road.
During the attack Brigadier-General Nickalls was killed. A number of attempts were made to rally the men, but they came to nothing.
The 63rd Brigade war diary does not give a glowing account of the action: "During the retirement, regimental officers and NCOs did not give much assistance in trying to rally the men (there were a few exceptions in the case of officers but the NCOs were useless). No attempt was made to carry out the retirement as a military operation, NCOs and men simply retired in any direction and anyhow they liked."
Here, I'm reminded of the account of how men were selected at recruitment. "At most a battalion had only one or two officers with previous experience. Bankers, clerks and students became officers; teachers and policemen were promoted to sergeant or corporal. In many cases a man received his stripes because of his well-dressed appearance."
Just because a man has a smart suit, it doesn't mean he'll make a good NCO. Our selection of leaders, like so much else, had been amateurish and now we were paying a heavy price.
I find it hard to be too critical, however. An ordered withdrawal has to be one of the most difficult military manoeuvres, even for experienced troops. Also, the fighting was severe and the casualty figures reflect this. Seventy-one officers were killed or wounded in the Brigade and, in the 8th Lincolnshire, every officer was a casualty. In less than an hour, 63 Brigade had lost more than 1,300 men and was no longer an effective fighting unit. There would be no advance through Bois Hugo or Chalet Wood.
Brigadier-General Nickalls was now dead, but his request for reinforcements (sent at 8.53am) had been received (at 9.44am) and the 14th Battalion Durham Light Infantry were sent forward with orders to join Nickalls at Bois Hugo and "there act as he might require."
It's hard to be clear about what happened next. Andrew Rawson in Loos - Hill 70 says that as the DLI approached 63 Brigade, they were fired on by their own troops who rose from their trenches and charged them in the belief they had been outflanked and they were German troops (the DLI were wearing long greatcoats). Instead of consolidating the position behind Bois Hugo, there was then a general retirement of both 63 Brigade and the DLI. Nick Lloyd in Loos 1915 says that the men of the DLI, being young miners, would not enter trenches which contained dead men due to superstition. As most trenches would contain dead men, this seems unlikely and is probably an example of First Army prejudice against the New Army soldiers.
It's possible that the DLI reinforcements arrived as 63 Brigade were pulling back from Bois Hugo. This withdrawal was not well ordered (as we've learned) and most of their officers had been killed or wounded. Seeing unfamiliar, fresh troops behind them, they initially fired on them, but then (having realised their mistake and pressed by German infantry) they continued their withdrawal.
The Germans held both Bois Hugo and Chalet Wood and had time to consolidate their positions.
It was now 11am, the time planned for the general attack on the German second line between Hulluch and Bois Hugo. The planning for this attack had assumed that both Hill 70 and Bois Hugo were in British hands. By now, the Durham Light Infantry and remnants of 63 Brigade had rallied at the foot of the slope north of Loos, possibly ahead of the Loos-Hulluch road. Two battalions of DLI, part of 64 Brigade, were ordered to move east towards Bois Hugo, but instead moved south-east and began advancing in short rushes up the slopes of Hill 70.
Again, the remaining British troops on Hill 70 were mistaken for Germans. German machine-gun fire directed at the British on Hill 70 was overshooting and landing among the DLI battalions, so it appeared the fire was coming from British positions. The DLI were attacking their own troops, but as they moved up the hill, their flank was exposed to German fire from Chalet Wood and Bois Hugo.
In a final bid to secure the line along the Lens-Hulluch road, 64 Brigade sent two battalions of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry forward along with as many rallied men as possible (certainly 63 Brigade men). They were ordered not to go beyond the Lens-Hulluch road.
An observer in the German 106th Regiment occupying Bois Hugo saw "masses of infantry advance in about twenty waves on a front between Chalk Pit Wood and Loos. The advancing masses were taken under fire by the machine guns and rifles of the Hill 70 redoubt and enfiladed by those of the 153rd Regiment and 106th Regiment. The effect of this fire from two sides was very considerable, whole lines being mown down by the machine guns."
Andrew Rawson says that by 11am [I'm suspicious of that time] 64 Brigade had lost 1,000 men and (like 63 Brigade) was finished as an effective formation. He says that only two companies were holding the line north of Loos, but the war diary of the 10th York & Lancaster Battalion describes the attempt to rally and establish a line on the Lens-Hulluch road and four further attempts to move forward during the afternoon east of the Loos-Hulluch Road, which I assume is the line north of Loos which Rawson describes. It's clear that the 63 Brigade men driven back from Bois Hugo and the Lens-Hulluch road, mixed up with other troops, are continuing to fight during the afternoon.
Meanwhile, to the north, the final part of Haig's second day plan is being acted out. This is an infantry attack eastwards, north of Bois Hugo and up to Hulluch. Knowing that Bois Hugo and Hill 70 were in German hands and would fire on their flanks, plus fire from strongpoints Stutzpunkt III and IV and Hulluch, this was clearly a suicidal attack, especially with little or no bombardment of the German second line.
Essentially 4,000 men marched in formation to their deaths. They continued to press forwards, despite the fire, and then discovered German wire, uncut, in the long grass in front of the second-line defences. No-one got through the wire. By 12.30pm, the attack had ground to a halt with 2,500 casualties and the survivors pinned down in pockets in the long grass or in a sunken road south of Hulluch. The area between Bois Hugo and Hulluch was called the "Leichenfeld von Loos" by the Germans and simply "Field of Corpses" by the British.
Determined pockets of resistance prevented a German counter attack, but the Germans were probably quite happy with their day's work.
On the third day, two Guards brigades were tasked with retaking Chalk Pit Wood, Puits 14 (along the Lens-Hulluch road) and Hill 70. Chalk Pit Wood was taken, but men were driven back from Puits 14 and Hill 70 remained in German control. Among those killed was the son of Rudyard Kipling.
We ended the battle with minor gains at a massive loss of life (60,000 casualties).
The inquest began very quickly and much of the blame for the failure on day two was levelled at the New Army reserve troops (including my grandfather's battalion). Haig wrote in his diary that they wouldn't fight because they hadn't been fed - a rather trite remark, because they certainly fought (and died).
I feel compelled to defend my grandfather, but there were certainly issues with the performance of the New Army soldiers. This was their first action and how could anyone expect them to display the same effectiveness as seasoned troops. The performance of their NCOs, in particular, may have been lacking, but perhaps not unexpected as the men were chosen randomly and had no previous combat experience.
The poor handover of command from French to Haig was much criticised along with the claim that French had positioned them too far back to be in a position to relieve troops smoothly at the end of day one. This, ultimately, cost French his command, but I suspect much of this post-battle spin was engineered by the ambitious Haig to secure the top job.
My grandfather's medals. The one in the centre is the
1914-15 Star, awarded to soldiers who were under fire
in France up to the end of 1915.
Did they perform that badly? I don't think they did. The battle was horrendous and the war diary of the 10th York & Lancaster Battalion clearly tells that they were in action throughout day two and suffered almost 50 per cent casualties.
On day three, experienced, elite Guards battalions also failed to secure and hold territory that 63 Brigade had been tasked to do.
Why were the New Army troops used on day two? In 1925, Col G Stewart, GSO of 21st Division wrote: "It was thought the reserve divisions would go into action for the first time full of esprit and elan, being ignorant of the effects of fire and the intensity of it, they would go forward and do great things."
That might well have been the case had there been a better plan. Haig expected the men to break the German second line without artillery support and with no real idea what he was up against in terms of defences or opposing troops. The failure to take Hill 70 meant the Germans could see everything and fire on any troop movements. The debacle of the "Field of Corpses" is an example of men going forward and doing great things against unbeatable odds.
Loos was lost on the first day, when the poor battle plan meant gains were made only at considerable expense and the soldiers who fought were so depleted, they were unable to make further progress or hold ground they had taken. After day one, the reserves were badly deployed, staff had no idea where anyone was and there were many examples of bad communications and command. The biggest failure was British artillery, which was in short supply, failed to move up effectively and was unable to support British attacks or bombard German troops moving to counter attack.
For the record, the French failed to break through the German first line at Artois and, although they broke through the first line at Champagne, they could not penetrate the second-line defences.
The Duchess of Argyll
WAR DIARY
This is a transcript of the War Diary of the 10/York & Lancaster Regiment with some notes in square brackets added by me:
10 Sep 1915 - Folkestone
10.30pm - sailed from Folkestone on the Duchess of Argyll [this was a paddle steamer and you can read more about it here: http://freespace.virgin.net/tom.lee/argyllimg.htm] for Boulogne.
11 Sep 1915 - Boulogne
1.30am - arrived and proceeded to rest camp Ostronove, arrived 2.30am.
11 Sep 1915 - Pont a Briques [railway station in Boulogne, on the Rue de Dr Brousse]
5.15pm - entrained for Watten
11 Sep 1915 - Watten
11.07pm - arrived, proceeded at once by march on route to Nortebecourt [Mentque-Nortbécourt]
12 Sep 1915 - Nortebecourt
2am - arrived, close billeted (Brigade manning confirmed).
20 Sep 1915 - Nortebecourt
6pm - march route via St Omer.
21 Sep 1915 - Campagne
1am - arrived, close billets.
7.30pm - march route via Aire.
22 Sep 1915 - St Hilaire
12.45am - arrived, close billets.
7pm - march route to Auchel.
22 Sep 1915 - Auchel
10pm - arrived, close billets.
24 Sep 1915 - Auchel
7pm - march route for Sailly La Bourse, bivouacked for night.
25 Sep 1915 - Sailly La Bourse [Sailly Labourse]
3pm - march route to Vermelles
25 Sep 1915 - Vermelles
10pm - arrived and went straight into action towards Hulluch-Lens road and Hill 70 (appendix I attached). Relieved by the Scots Guards 3.30am 27 Sep 1915.
27 Sep 1915 - Noyelles Les Vermelles
7am - returned from action having lost approx 360 all ranks [later corrected (3 Oct 1915) to 14 officers, 306 other ranks killed, wounded, missing; 1 riding horse, 1 HD horse, 4 draught mules, 5 pack mules]. Names and ranks, officers and men - appendix II.
28 Sep 1915 - Noyelles Les Vermelles
7pm - moved by road and rail to Rely via Noeux. Passed very heavily.
29 Sep 1915 - Rely
10am - arrived, close billets.
-
Appendix I
Report of Operations 25th-26th Sept 1915 by 10th York & Lancaster Regiment.
On arrival at N Corner of Loos G29 D65 received order to proceed as fast as possible to pn 69 E of Loos-Haisnes Rd and that the Regiment would form reserve with the 12th East York Regt to an attack on Hulluch-Lens Road.
This was carried out until the leading Battalion (Lincoln and 8th Somerset LI [Light Infantry]) had crossed the Hulluch-Lens Road when orders to move more to the N and take up an entrenched position on the Hulluch-Lens Road facing E. The line when taken up extended from Red House by Chalk Pit E of Square Wood at ps H25 AG6 to junction of roads at H19 CS9 [I think the square wood would refer to Chalk Pit Wood and the line extended along the Lens-Hulluch road as far as its junction with the Loos-Hulluch road].
On arrival, I reported the fact to the Brigadier. Although entrenched one had to keep down as sniping was persistent from direction Hill 70 or Square Wood [the term "square wood" is used throughout the diary and I think it refers to several different woods. In this instance, it may refer to either Bois Hugo or Chalk Pit Wood, where men thought firing was coming from].
About 8.30am a verbal order came for two companies to attack Square Wood [this has to be Bois Hugo]. B and C Coys were detailed for the purpose and I took these two Coys personally. The remaining two Coys fell back on road Hulluch-Lens and as we were hard pressed in the Square Wood A Coy was sent up to reinforce. No further orders were received from the Brigade. As the other side of the wood was reached a very heavy machine gun fire from concealed positions drove us back. While the attack was being made D Coy again took up the original position on the Hulluch-Lens road with the right resting on Red House by Chalk Pit and eventually linked up with 8 Somerset LI. [This account suggests Bois Hugo was held by Germans and had to be cleared. Loos - Hill 70 suggests the men took over the positions and didn't have to clear the wood].
The three Coys driven out of the Square Wood on M25a fell back on sothern [sic] road Loos-Hulluch. Rallied at this place together with a number of the Scotch Brigade. During the attack through the wood C Coy lost all officers. The commander Captain DWSE Abbott, I regret to say, was shot and died shortly after while being carried back.
After the sunken road was held for some time it was seen that the position was untenable as guns placed in the vicinity NE of Benifontaine raked this road and reports received were that the Germans were there in force. A Lt Colonel in the Scotch Brigade  considered that this line should move back into the Southernmost German trenches. On this retirement as no reports were received we had no means of communicating with troops on the left. The Colonel made the above decision under very heavy machine gun fire. This movement was taking place when Captain Foster, Div Staff, suggested a rally on a line parallel to a track running NE. I took charge of this which consisted of cover from this line. Other lines were formed in the rear. After the first line had passed through this line advanced and eventually became part of the firing line with objective Square Wood in H258. This attack met with strong opposition from machine gun fire from concealed guns. Another rally was made in the sunken road, Southern road, Loos-Hulluch and this was eventually evacuated as in the preceding case. By this time the Regiment had lost a good number of officers and men. This was repeated four times during the course of the afternoon but was impossible for the troops to get beyond a line drawn NS from second O on LOOS. After these four gallant attempts were made but the machine gun fire was too powerful and the men were in a very exhausted condition. All the ranks worked very hard to attain the objective but could not locate the exact position of the concealed machine guns. After that fourth attempt it was seen that a general retirement as far back as the German trenches was taking place. I collected men of the 63rd Brigade at pt G25 and soon put them in the trenches NE of the road. After a short period Colonel Denny of the 8th Somerset LI arrived and I handed over command. I regret to report that in addition to the death of Captain Abbott 13 other officers are wounded or missing and about 400 men are unaccounted for yet. [I believe this describes a battle to hold ground to the east of the Loos-Hulluch road and retake Chalk Pit Wood, which was retaken by 2 Guards on 27 Sep]
G Jarvis Major
Commanding 10th York & Lancaster Regiment
Ref maps 5a (Hazebrouck), 36b, 36c
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Appendix II
10th Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment
Roll of casualties (officers)
Action 25th and 26th September 1915
Killed: Captain Abbott DWSE, Captain Loftus HG, Lieut Smith PL.
Wounded: Captain Mitford AH, Captain Holmes WG, Captain Willis AJ, 2nd Lieut Mein WH, 2nd Lieut Morton Smith F, 2nd Lieut Robinson AR, 2nd Lieut Swallow HLSG.
Wounded and missing: Lieut Whitaker GG, Lieut Groves SJS, Lieut Whitham GS.
Gassed but recovering: 2nd Lieut Drake DH.
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After the action, a number of men were recommended for honours (I don't know if the recommendations were accepted). They were:
Lieut Francis Barrington Baker: When detachment on right of regiment had been driven in, this officer very ably and with great coolness seconded the efforts of the Brigade Major and formed a firing line on the Hulluch/Lens Road.
Major Cecil Hugh Taylor: in rallying his company and holding on to the Chalk Pit for a considerable time.
Pte Cuthbert Waterhouse Binns and Pte John Farimond: when Lieut PL Smith was wounded and on stretcher, bearers refused to carry stretch owing to heavy shell fire. Private Binns and another Private (since killed) volunteered to carry Lieut Smith in. On the Private (above) being killed, Private Farimond volunteered to take his place and with Private Binns brought Lieut Smith in across an area swept by rifle, machine gun and shell fire.
Captain Frank Taylor: showed great coolness and devotion to duty throughout the day and by his coolness and indifference to danger set a fine example to the men. After B Coy had lost all its officers, he collected the men and deployed them under heavy fire on the Lens/Hulluch Road.
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In the days following the Battle of Loos, the men of the 10th York & Lancaster Regiment were moved to Rely where they stayed until 1 Oct. They then marched to Thiennes and Borre, arriving on 2 Oct and remaining there for two weeks. While they were there some efforts were made to make good the losses suffered at Loos. Records show 48 men from the 11th Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment were added, plus 100 men from the 3rd Battalion and eight officers from the 11th Battalion.
On 15 Oct, they marched to Strazeele where they remained until 24 Oct. Further replacements arrived during this time, including one officer and 181 other ranks from base. Fourteen men arrived back from the casualty clearing station. During this period, second in command, Major Raven was sent to England to report to the War Office.
On 24 Oct, the men were marched to Steenwerck via Bailleul and then on to Armentieres, about 10 miles south of Ypres where they were engaged in the trenches from 27 Oct.

BOOKS READ
Loos - Hill 70 by Andrew Rawson
Loos 1915 by Nick Lloyd
Catastrophe - Europe Goes to War 1914 by Max Hastings
Loos 1915 by Peter Doyle
Loos - Hohenzollern by Andrew Rawson
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
A Higher Form of Killing by Diana Preston
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
Images of England - The York and Lancaster Regiment compiled by Jane Davies
Battlefield Guide to Western Front - North by Major and Mrs Holt

QUOTES

"Our new armies entered into action for the first time and fought with conspicuous valour, and tens of thousands of them fell in the futile carnage of the Loos offensive."
- Lloyd George, War Memoirs

"What happened," I asked.
"Bloody balls-up," was the most detailed answer I could get.
- Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That