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George
Centre Hastings
ON Canada
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Posts: 13338
Joined: 2009
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Battle of Loos
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I read Phil's post about the Battle of Loos that took place on Sept. 15, 1915 and if others are interested, I would like to explore it further. I don't know a lot about the battle but I do know that it was a massive offensive and quite successful in the early phases. The British and Indians (correct?) took the town and the first trench lines. Gas was deployed as well. Was that the first use of gas by British forces?
But I am unclear as to why the attack bogged down and why the British casualty numbers were so high in the later phases of the battle. Did the British have a plan for exploitation of any early success?
Cheers,
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6369
Joined: 2004
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Battle of Loos
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Very good questions, George, and thanks for mentioning my post in the This Day in History section.
The success on the first day was very significant, and the Germans were truly alarmed.
It was the first use of gas by the British, and the initial success was not exploited as it might have been if reserves had been brought forward ready.
Haig was the army commander, and he had argued that the deployment was flawed because his superior, Field Marshal Sir John French, CiC of the BEF, had failed to heed his warning about the reserves being too far back.
In the event, two green British divisions were hurried forward and, in a state of exhaustion, hunger and demoralisation, were pitched into the battle the following day by which time the Germans had recovered their equilibrium. The result was a massacre.
It’s a dreadful story of a wasted chance paid for with the lives of thousands.
I’m not sure here, but I think that the two divisions that were slaughtered were “New Army” men, comprised of the volunteers who had joined up in the opening days.
This was their debut and it was appalling.
This disaster worked to Haig’s advantage, because he’d been proven right in his protest about the failure to keep reserves sufficiently close at hand. As a result, French was sacked and Haig was promoted from First Army Commander to Commander in Chief of the BEF.
I hope I’ve got this right.
It’s a daunting test, to throw in an answer and hope that I’ve made no mistakes.
I’ll check my books now !
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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George
Centre Hastings
ON Canada
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Posts: 13338
Joined: 2009
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Battle of Loos
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Thanks Phil. When the British sent the two green divisions forward, what was it that killed so many? Artillery? MG fire? Or were the men just not sufficiently trained.
Cheers,
George
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6369
Joined: 2004
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Battle of Loos
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Artillery and MG fire combined to kill huge numbers.
There’s a tendency in the folklore to attribute the slaughter to machine guns in this war : the statistics indicate that artillery killed twice as many. But there were episodes when the machine gunners had a field day, and September 26th 1915 was one of them.
I visited the battlefield in the company of a friend whose great uncle had been killed there. We went to the notorious Hohenzollern Redoubt, where terrible fighting had raged . The miners’ cottages - ruined though they were- provided German machine gunners with ideal locations to provide enfilade fire. The image of masses of men advancing head on against the MGs is misleading: the killing was, apparently, mainly attributable to flanking fire, sometimes at long range and of an almost indirect nature.
The British soldiers in this battle had received a good standard of training. They were not properly handled, and went into battle in circumstances that were bound to make them fatally vulnerable.
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6369
Joined: 2004
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Battle of Loos
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George,
The two New Army units in this disastrous attack were the 21st and 24th divisions.
They attacked in the Hill 70 sector of the Loos battlefield.
This was to become a scene of Canadian triumph a couple of years later, as, of course, was nearby Vimy Ridge where the French were making their own grisly contribution to the huge casualty figures in September 1915.
As a Canadian, George, you will be very aware of the terrible impact of Dieppe twenty five years later: you, in particular, because you have family skin in the game with the ordeal of one of your uncles (?).
The Canadian debacle there entailed the five thousand troops who were deployed suffering three thousand casualties.
The two British divisions that attacked at Loos on 26th September 1915 are estimated to have put ten thousand men into the attack. The nominal strength of the two was much greater, but the dissolution of strength, bungled marching orders and delays meant that only ten thousand actually went in.
Exactly eight thousand of them became casualties that day, 3,941 in the 21st Division and 4,059 in the 24th.
Nearly half of these were posted as missing in action, and while there was a significant proportion of prisoners within this figure, a horrific number were killed or left to die of their wounds beyond the aid of friends and foe.
My own family folklore has it that my grandmother was engaged to become married, and that her fiancé was killed in this battle. Thank God my grandpa met her: he had a cushy number as a motorbike dispatch rider for the RFC, and wasted no time in getting his feet under the table.
Uncannily, my mum also lost her fiancé in WW2, and Dad stepped in just as Grandpa had a generation earlier!
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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George
Centre Hastings
ON Canada
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Posts: 13338
Joined: 2009
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Battle of Loos
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Certainly a terrible ordeal for those soldiers who were sent forward only to be cut down by artillery or MG fire. 80% casualties. Hard to fathom.
Your grandmother must have been one of thousands of young women waiting for their fiancés. In Britain, how would she be informed of the death of the young man? I always thought that our approach over here was rather cold and clinical with the information delivered by telegram. I suppose that she would have been told by members of the man's family.
Cheers,
George
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6369
Joined: 2004
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Battle of Loos
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Quote: Certainly a terrible ordeal for those soldiers who were sent forward only to be cut down by artillery or MG fire. 80% casualties. Hard to fathom.
Your grandmother must have been one of thousands of young women waiting for their fiancés. In Britain, how would she be informed of the death of the young man? I always thought that our approach over here was rather cold and clinical with the information delivered by telegram. I suppose that she would have been told by members of the man's family.
Cheers,
George
The likelihood is that she was informed that he was missing in action. This is what happened to Rudyard Kipling’s only son “ My Boy Jack”. The excruciating ordeal of hanging onto a diminishing hope that he might have survived afflicted families for years.
I expect that the name of her fiancé is inscribed on the panels of Dud Corner Cemetery, where twenty thousand British soldiers are commemorated as having been denied the known and honoured burial afforded to their comrades in death. My Great Aunt Dora also lost her fiancé on the First Day of the Somme, and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, along with seventy two thousand others.
Dora never married.
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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