Meanwhile the 56th Division was covered by the 6th Divisional Artillery.
Reinforcements for the shattered battalions were prompt, and all monthly strength returns show a good average of a thousand men for battalions. Horses remained steadily about 5,100, although the number fell during the battle of the Somme. In actual numbers the division was of average strength, but the quality had suffered. We find, for instance, a record that a draft of over a thousand men arrived about this period, and that they had not been instructed in musketry! With all the will in the world such men were not of very great use. Provision was made, however, for their instruction.
Almost at once the reputation of this Neuve Chapelle front began to change. It had been considered a quiet bit of line with nothing much happening beyond mining and counter-mining. On the 28th October the enemy opened a trench-mortar bombardment which Australian miners declared to have been
the heaviest they had experienced during their stay in that line. The system of holding the line by means of posts, too, gave many opportunities for patrol work, as it was a system adopted by both sides. The advantage of position, as was so often the case, was with the Germans, who were on the Aubers Ridge, with better observation and drier ground.
The month of November was a quiet month, cold and wet. No Man’s Land was flooded and patrols found it very difficult to move about, as they could not avoid splashing and consequent betrayal of their presence.
On the 30th November the enemy raided the 7th Middlesex, who occupied as part of their line a mine-crater. Major Emery was on the spot, and with two men drove them off. They failed to secure identification. The next day, however, we secured identification in the shape of a Lieut. Steinhardt, 19th Bavarian Regt., who was in charge of a patrol which was dispersed by one of our Lewis-gun teams—an experience which the lieutenant found so bewildering that he lost his way and entered our lines, under the impression that they were his own.
Two lance-corporals, Millar and Wodley, of the 2nd London Regt., also secured identification by chasing a German patrol of five men, of whom they killed one and the remaining four put up their hands. These men were of the 7th Bavarian Regt., 5th Bavarian Division, III Bavarian Corps.
The policy of the XI Corps (Gen. Haking) was to annoy the enemy on all occasions and keep him always uneasy. The month of December was therefore devoted to most active patrolling, and the enemy lines were entered again and again only to be found
empty. There is only one record of finding the line occupied, when the Queen Victoria’s Rifles captured two prisoners. The reason, of course, was the state of the ground, and it affords an interesting sidelight on the endurance shown by the men of the 56th Division, as the trenches, or rather defences, they occupied were similar to those of the Hun.
The operations of the winter are, in fact, only of interest as showing the endurance, the determination, and the spirit of the 56th Division. There was nothing in the nature of an attack or even a raid of any magnitude—it was a matter of small parties of men resisting the fearful conditions of climate, and penetrating with the greatest boldness into the enemy lines.