F. W. Bewsher

Immediately after the battle of Beaumont Hamel, Lieut.-Colonel Ian Stewart, D.S.O., left the Division. Colonel Stewart had been chief staff officer to the Division through all those months in which it was learning the art of war, and in which many battalions were for the first time blooded in active operations.

During this period the amount of work which Colonel Stewart carried out, and the careful thought exercised by him on behalf of the Division to lessen the difficulties of all and to raise it to the high standard that it reached, was indeed vast. It was therefore a matter of great satisfaction to the Division to hear that his services had been rewarded by promotion to be Brigadier-General, General Staff of the XIIIth Corps.

It must also have been equally satisfactory to Colonel Stewart that the Division should have proved its worth at Beaumont Hamel before his service with it came to an end.

Lieut.-Colonel J. K. Dick Cunyngham, D.S.O., Gordon Highlanders, succeeded Lieut.-Colonel Ian Stewart as G.S.O. 1. Lieut.-Colonel Dick Cunyngham will always remain to those who came into contact with him the ideal of what a staff officer should be. He had a wide sympathy with the regimental officer, and understood his difficulties thoroughly. He had, moreover, an unruffled temperament, which enabled him to keep a clear head and think quickly and correctly even in the most adverse circumstances. The speed with which he would write a long and intricate operation order in clear and unambiguous language was a definite asset to the whole Division, and largely eliminated that confusion which is so liable to occur during the fluctuations of a modern battle. “Dick,” as he was familiarly known, was certainly one of the chief pillars on which the efficiency of the Division rested.

The whole Division was now out of the line, lying in the area ArquÈves-Rancheval-Hedauville-Varennes-Forceville-Lealvillers. It was not, however, to be allowed to rest, for on 25th November the 153rd Brigade began its march to Ovillers Huts. The following day the 154th Brigade moved to Aveluy, and the 152nd Brigade to Bouzincourt and Senlis. It was then learnt that the Division was immediately to take over a peculiarly unpleasant sector.

On the 27th the 153rd Brigade relieved the 12th Canadian Brigade, 4th Canadian Division, in the Courcelette sector. This sector extended from the dyke valley just west of Le Sars to the western of the two roads running from Courcelette to Miraumont. The Dyke Valley in particular, and the whole area in general, were painfully open to observation from tree observation-posts in Loupart Wood. This wood was perched on the summit of a commanding upland. There was hardly a square yard in the Divisional sector which was not overlooked from some portion of it.

Moreover, the enemy made the fullest use of his observation. Even single men were frequently sniped by howitzers and field-guns to such an extent that movement in the forward area by day became out of the question.

The ground taken over by the Division had been captured by the Canadians a few days previously. The conditions could not have been worse; the limits of human endurance were all but reached. The whole area had been ploughed up by shell-fire to such an extent that the vegetation had completely disappeared. The rain, which had been the cause of the frequent postponement of the attack on Beaumont Hamel, continued day after day. The whole country-side had in consequence been transformed into unending acres of treacherous and, in some places, dangerous mud. It was no uncommon thing for men to sink up to their waists and for horses to be drowned. By December the mud had become saturated with water to such an extent that it became necessary to issue ropes as trench stores to enable men who had become bogged to be extricated.

Moreover, the earth had become so disintegrated by the shocks of the continuous bursting of shells that trenches could not be cut in it. No sooner had they been dug than the sides fell in and filled them again. The front and support line troops thus lived in shell-hole posts. In a few cases these were connected to one another by what had once been trenches.

The condition in which the men lived in these posts defeats imagination, and needs to have been seen to be appreciated. They could not move by day. Their only seat was the oozing fire-step; if they stood up they gradually sank into the mud; even ration-boxes and duck-boards used as platforms soon became submerged. The conditions of sanitation were ghastly, the possibilities of cooking were non-existent, and from dawn till dusk the troops were cut off from communication even with the next post.

Trench feet became an epidemic, frost-bite occurred frequently. In some cases old wounds reopened, as they did in the days of scurvy. In December dysentery appeared. The wastage amongst the troops became serious, and a general air of depression settled down over the Division. In fact, General Harper once confessed that he had never seen a man smile east of PoziÈres.

One of the great problems of the Courcelette sector was the difficulty of finding one’s way to the forward area. All movement being restricted to the hours of darkness, and the whole country-side being a featureless abomination, working parties, runners, reliefs, and ration parties were continually losing their way, and wandering through the mud until they had become exhausted.

To make matters worse, when the Division took over the sector there were no wire entanglements created, so that there was always a reasonable chance of men who were lost wandering into the German lines, as it was difficult to discover when one was in No Man’s Land. This, indeed, happened several times, while similarly lost Germans were more than once found wandering in our lines. In fact, prisoners were taken in this manner on six different occasions.

The Division, therefore, had many problems to face on its arrival in this area. At first an attempt was made to link up the front line posts, wire them in, and dig communication trenches leading up to them.

The whole area was further littered with the unburied dead and with salvage of every kind.

The troops in the reserve line had in a few cases dug-outs, which had been discovered in Regina Trench—a famous trench captured by the Canadians a few days previously.

The reserve battalions were little better off than those in the line. They were for the most part quartered in disused gun-pits and Bairnsfather villas, proof neither against shell-fire nor the weather.

The artillery were in a similar plight; their gun-pits were constantly flooding, and the movement of wheeled transport became impracticable. All gun ammunition had therefore to be brought to the gun emplacements on pack-saddles, eight rounds only being carried on each horse. Journey after journey with the pack animals had therefore to be made by the gunner-drivers, with the German field-guns doing their best to aggravate the conditions.

The Division took over this sector within a few hours of leaving another battle front. The men had been given little or no opportunity of resting and recuperating after a severe engagement. The result was that their vitality was low, and that their powers of resistance were not at their best. They in consequence suffered considerably more from the adverse conditions than would have been the case with fresher troops.

Every method of constructing trenches was tried, and pumps were employed to keep them dry. The results were, however, always the same. No sooner was a trench dug to a depth of three feet than water began to rise in it and the sides fell in. Trenches had therefore to be given up, and overland tracks took their place. For this purpose duck-boards or wattle tracks were laid, the routes being marked out with tracing-tape or posts and wire until such time as the track was completed.

As regards protection for the troops against the weather, it was evident that if men were to be left lying for many hours exposed to the weather in shell-holes the wastage from sickness would be appalling. A considerable effort was therefore made to provide the battalions both in the line and in brigade reserve with weather-proof accommodation.

For the troops in the line the Divisional engineers designed a highly satisfactory form of shelter, composed of corrugated iron elephant shelters sunk below the level of the parapet of the trench or shell-hole. The material for each shelter could be carried up to the line by ten men, and could be completed in a day and night’s work. When completed it accommodated a section post.

Large elephant shelters were made for reserve battalions in the sides of sunken roads, while all troops that could be spared were moved back to the camps in the back areas.

Thus, after three weeks, conditions had been materially improved. During this period, however, there was a snap of sharp frost. For a while this dried up the mud and much improved the situation; but, as is always the case, the thaw which followed seemed to render the mud, if possible, more all-pervading than had been the case before the frost came.

Meanwhile the “Q” staff had been making every effort to alleviate the sufferings of the men. A gum-boot store had been established at PoziÈres, with sufficient boots for the whole brigade in the line. There was, however, a continual wastage of these boots, as, though they reached almost up to the hip, many of them were sucked off the men’s legs in extricating themselves from the mud. It was found that these thigh boots and the kilt did not make a good combination. The boots had to be worn underneath the kilt, with the result that the top edge of the boot, rubbing against the bare thigh, used to chafe the men and cause septic sores. In consequence, the kilt was for the time being abandoned, and six thousand pairs of trousers were issued to the men.

A soup-kitchen was also established outside brigade headquarters. Here the Divisional master-cook, an old Hussar, used to issue hot soup to working parties and reliefs on their way to and from the trenches. The master-cook was shelled in his kitchen on most days of the week; but beyond asking for a party to repair it when it had sustained any damage, he made no complaints. His services to the Division on this and, indeed, on many occasions were invaluable.

Efforts were also made to provide the men with hot meals in the line. The portable hot-food containers issued for this purpose proved too heavy a burden for a man to carry over two thousands yards of water, shell-holes, and slippery mud, and they had to be abandoned.

In place of them the men were issued with Tommy Cookers, small tins of solidified alcohol on which they could heat their own food. Tins of meat-and-vegetable rations were on this account made the permanent issue for troops in the line. Each man was thus able to heat for himself a really good and nourishing stew, even if he lived in a shell-hole and had no previous knowledge of cooking. This system proved very satisfactory, and the number of hot meals a man could have during a day was only limited by the number of Tommy Cookers that could be obtained. Ingenious quartermasters therefore discovered means of improvising Tommy Cookers, and making them in large numbers for their battalions. This in itself was a great improvement for the men, and it became no longer necessary to live from dawn to dusk with nothing but cold meat and biscuit to eat and with cold water to drink, as had been the case when the sector was first taken over.

In spite, however, of all the arrangements made, the men did not recover their vitality, and the wastage remained immense. A system of relief was therefore introduced by which battalions held the line for only forty-eight hours each. They were also given twenty-four hours complete rest before going into the line and after coming out. This system had an immediate effect on the health of the men.

Further, on 11th December it was arranged that the whole Divisional front should be held by two battalions, each battalion being on a one company front. These front-line companies were reinforced by two Lewis guns of the remainder of the battalion manned by nucleus crews. As company strengths had by this time fallen to about fifty to sixty men, this meant that the line was extremely lightly held. So much was this the case that a German machine-gunner, who was returning to his emplacement with filled water-bottles and had lost his way, wandered right through our lines, and was captured by some machine-gunners close to brigade headquarters. These machine-gunners were the first British troops he had seen.

Operations in the line, apart from combating the mud and water, were confined to sniping. When the Division first took over the line the Germans showed themselves in a most daring manner. The 153rd Brigade took full advantage of this in their first few days in the line, Colonel Cheape’s battalion claiming eleven hits in one day. After this the Germans unfortunately became very much shier, and the bags fell off considerably.

Brigade reliefs in this sector were a sore trial to the men. Apart from the exhaustion caused by the conditions in which they lived, the struggle through the mud from the line to brigade headquarters was in itself a heavy task for a man in battle order.

Added to this, the continual standing in mud and water and the prolonged wearing of gum-boots caused the men’s feet to become so swollen and soft that a march of even a few thousand yards became a physical impossibility to many of them. It was therefore necessary to bring motor-buses along the Albert-Bapaume Road to PoziÈres. Here, as the men straggled in, the loads were made up and driven off to Wolfe Huts, near Ovillers, where the men spent the night.

For many hours after the relief was completed, stragglers would come limping along in ones and twos to the embussing point, coated from head to foot in mud, with a three days’ growth of beard on their faces. They were a depressing spectacle. Their exhaustion was in some cases so great that many of them would lie at the roadside in these winter nights wet through, and fall asleep often when another half-mile would have carried them to the buses, to daylight, and to a warm hut. War has certainly lost much of its romance since going into winter quarters went out of fashion.

To the rank and file Courcelette will remain as a nightmare. Though the men in the shell-holes may have been too obsessed by the beastliness of their conditions to appreciate the fact, yet on few occasions can the administrative services of the Division and its commanders have exercised more thought on their behalf. Nothing that could have been done to alleviate their sufferings was left undone; much was done which would not have occurred to a less efficient staff.

Left to himself, the Jock, exhausted as he was, was in danger of sitting down and doing no more than saying, “Isn’t this b——y?” He was right; it was what he called it, and General Harper, who had visited the men in their shell-holes, knew that it was so. But he knew also that so long as the men remained passive it would become still more so. He therefore insisted that the men should either be in complete rest, or should be working their utmost to improve the conditions. On no account was the merely passive and reflective attitude to be adopted.

During this period Colonel A. J. G. Moir, D.S.O., who had come out with the Division, and after leaving it for a short time had returned to it as chief administrative staff officer, and Major J. L. Weston, D.S.O., were responsible for the “Q” services of the Division. The latter had also come out with the Division, and subsequently succeeded Colonel Moir, remaining as A.A. and Q.M.G., 51st Division, until a few months from the armistice.

Colonel Moir seconded General Harper’s efforts to keep the Division going in a most effective manner, and it was largely due to his administrative ability that the Jocks ultimately went back to rest with sufficient powers of recuperation left in them to recover their old form after a nineteen days’ rest behind the line.

Colonel Moir was, in turn, admirably served by Major Weston, whose unwearying devotion to his Division and unfailing good temper made him an ideal “Q” officer.

Great as was the wastage owing to sickness, casualties owing to enemy action were few. This was owing to the small number of men employed holding the line. The total in killed, wounded, and missing for the months of December and January amounted to 4 officers killed, 15 wounded, and 1 missing; and to the men, 86 killed and 333 wounded.

Amongst the killed was Captain Lauder of the 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, son of the famous Scottish comedian. He was shot while moving from one front-line post to another in the early morning.

Amongst these casualties, twenty-five were caused by a single 4·2 shell at Tulloch’s Corner. This shell burst amongst a working party of the 6th Seaforth Highlanders, killing the officer and 3 men, and wounding 21 other ranks.

On 12th January the Division was relieved by the 2nd Division. Divisional headquarters moved to Marieux, the 152nd Brigade to Beauquesne, the 153rd Brigade to Puchevillers, and the 154th Brigade to RubemprÉ. The Division then marched to the Buigny-St Maclou area west of Abbeville, arriving there on 16th January, having staged in the Bernaville and St Riquier areas.

At the time that the sector was handed over to the 2nd Division, a vast change had been wrought in it. A system of defence had been put into force which reduced the number of defenders to a minimum. Shelters had been provided for the whole trench garrison. Dug-outs were nearing completion, one in the East Miraumont Road being capable of holding two companies. Overland routes had been marked out, laid, and notice-boarded. Large numbers of elephant shelters had been erected for the reserve battalions, so that men not actually holding the line were able to obtain adequate rest in fair comfort. The whole front had been wired so as to have at least one belt to protect the garrison of the front line from hostile raids. A vast amount of material had been salved and put into use. All dead had been buried except those lying in the actual trench area.

Considering the conditions this is a fine record of work. Though the infantry contributed to it in some degree, it must be said in justice to the Royal Engineers and pioneers that theirs was the lion’s share. The efforts which these units made to ameliorate the conditions for the infantry were magnificent. That the sickness and wastage was not greater, and that the whole conditions of life materially and visibly improved, was mainly due to the enterprise, energy, and endurance of the three field companies and the 8th Royal Scots.

The Division was, however, now at its lowest ebb. It had been in the line for a year, including two very trying periods of mine and trench warfare, plus the fighting in July and August on the Somme and the battle of Beaumont Hamel. It was considerably reduced in strength, and had lost heavily in company commanders and N.C.O.’s. A period of at least a month’s rest was considered essential in which to train the new drafts and restore the fighting efficiency of the Division. It was therefore with some misgiving that it was learnt that on 30th January the 8th Royal Scots and the 1/1 and 1/2 Highland Field Companies, R.E., had proceeded to Arras to work in the Third Army area. This could have only one meaning.

The rest lasted exactly nineteen days, as on 5th February the Division moved to the Barilly area en route to join the Third Army.

The Buigny-St Maclou area was not a good one. Training-grounds were difficult to obtain, while in many villages the billets were indifferent. They consisted for the most part of mud-plaster barns, verging on a state of collapse, and with unpleasantly ventilated walls. Since this was the coldest period experienced in France during the Great War, the men suffered considerably. An intense frost set in, which continued almost without interruption up to the last days of February. On some nights twenty-four degrees of frost were registered. In consequence, both work and recreation were greatly hampered, and it was extremely difficult to provide warmth for the men at nights. Where men were housed in the mud-plaster barns there were numerous cases of frost-bite, the men’s knees suffering in particular.

Thus the recollections of the first nineteen days’ rest which was vouchsafed to the Division since it first went into action are not as pleasant as might be imagined.

When the march to Arras began, the effects of the frost were felt still more acutely. The march lasted six days, the route lying across a country of hills and valleys, including many steep ascents and descents. The result was that, as in many places the roads were little better than sheets of ice, the transport had the greatest difficulty in carrying out the march. In consequence, field-kitchens and cooks’ carts often arrived several hours after the men had reached their billeting area. This was attended by considerable discomfort to the troops, as they were dependent on the kitchens and the cooks’ carts for their next hot meal. The cold was also felt considerably more “on trek” than in ordinary circumstances, as the men, since they were changing their billets daily, had no time or opportunity to make their quarters comfortable.

The difficulties of this march reached their climax at St Pol. Water-mains had in many places burst, and flooded the roads with several inches of water, which had frozen into hard ice. In consequence, the steep descent into, and the equally steep ascent out of, the town became barely negotiable. In fact, it was only by employing large numbers of men with drag-ropes and additional teams that the transport could make its way through the town. Blocks occurred in the road which checked the columns, often for considerable periods, and which kept the men shivering in the roads and delayed them from reaching their billets until late in the evening.

Indeed, it was hard to believe during the last three months that one was in what the railway advertisements call “Sunny France.” One had lived in fogs which were a match for London, and mists and rain which compared favourably with the Western Highlands, and degrees of frost, wind, and snow which could hardly have been improved upon in Caithness. There were, however, no winter quarters in this war in Gaul. The men lived as hard a life as could well be imagined; and though it would not be true to say they thrived on it, they endured it in an exemplary manner. One requires to have wintered in “Sunny France” in canvas tents, open-work barns, and “Bairnsfather” shacks on perhaps one hot meal a day to appreciate the hardships and discomforts of winter warfare.