The West Riding Territorials in the Great WarMagnus, Laurie
History
The West Riding Territorials in the Great War
Magnus, Laurie
Great Britain. Army. Division, 49th; Great Britain. Army. Division, 62nd; World War, 1914-1918 -- Regimental histories -- Great Britain
In the extreme right-hand corner will be seen the village of Pozières
on the straight road (Albert-Bapaume), which ran diagonally across the
battlefield. In the extreme left-hand bottom corner are Martinsart
and Martinsart Wood, on the safe side of the River Ancre, where spent
Battalions of the 49th Division used to withdraw to lick their wounds.
The course of the Ancre is clearly shown from just above Albert to
Miraumont, winding its stream under Authuille and Hamel Bridges; and
between Authuille and St. Pierre Divion lie Thiepval and Thiepval Wood,
the possession of which was so hotly contested since the battle was first
joined on July 1st. The more we look at this timbered countryside, with
its chalk-pits, its farms and mills, the more unsuitable it seems to
the red carnage of 1916. Yet the troops behaved magnificently, and Sir
Douglas Haig sent several messages during these trying weeks to express
his thanks and appreciation. To one Battalion he sent on August 30th by
the hands of the Divisional Commander a sprig of white heather as an
emblem of good luck. Hard though the going was, and bad though the luck
seemed to be, making acclimatization tedious and difficult, it rarely
happened, even among raw troops, that the conditions proved too exacting.
Very typical of the spirit of the Division, in the midst of its harassing
experiences, where the room designed by nature for smiles was too narrow
almost to contain its special circles of man’s inferno, was the part
borne in the third week of September by the 7th Battalion of the West
Riding Regiment. They had been at Hedauville since September 4th, at
two hours’ march from Martinsart Wood, whither, in order to go into the
line, they moved on Friday, September 15th. There they had tea, and took
rations for the next day, and were loaded with two bombs per man, and
so proceeded from 7 p.m. to new trenches, south of Thiepval, which had
been captured only the night before. The relief was delayed in execution
partly by artillery barrage, partly by an attack of German bombers,
partly by heavy rain, and partly by too few guides; there was only one
guide to each Company, ‘and these were strange to the trenches and had
difficulty in finding the way.’ It was completed by 4-20 in the morning
(September 16th), and during ‘intermittent shelling’ all that Saturday
arrangements were concerted for an attack on the German trenches in the
evening of the 17th. This operation was most successful; on the left an
objective was gained, and held, 350 feet in advance of schedule. The
details are not uninteresting, and will repay closer study, not because
the area of the attack was large in proportion to the whole battlefield,
but because it was difficult _terrain_ and the obstacles were well
overcome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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