CHAPTER XXXVII
THE 7TH (GUARDS) ENTRENCHING BATTALION
Entrenching Battalion. 1915-18.
The enormous amount of spade work, required for the long and intricate network of trenches, rendered some measures necessary for supplementing the work, usually done by the fighting forces; and thus entrenching battalions were formed, composed of drafts for the front, awaiting absorption in their respective units; but the system of detaching men from Battalions of Guards and sending them to fill any vacancies that might occur in one of the entrenching battalions was not at all satisfactory. In the first place, to allow men on arrival in France at once to go to an entrenching battalion, where the discipline was more lax, and the habits and customs different from those which obtained in the regiments of Guards was a measure hardly calculated to improve them as fighting men. And in the second place, it was contrary to the regulations for men of the Guards to be commanded by any but their own officers.
Frederic Robinson. Camberley. photographer Emery Walker ph. sc.
Brigadier-General A.F.A.N. Thorne, D.S.O.
The idea of forming a Guards Entrenching Battalion seems to have come from certain officers at the base. Shortly before the arrival of the new battalions of the Guards in France, rumours were afloat that an entrenching battalion for the Guards Division was about to be formed. Captain Viscount Lascelles wrote a letter to the effect that a platoon from the reinforcements of every battalion of Guards was to be diverted to an entrenching battalion. The platoon from the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers had already been told off, and was to be commanded by an officer of the Connaught Rangers, while the Battalion itself was to be placed under a cavalry captain. Captain Viscount Lascelles deplored the fact that there was no one of sufficient seniority at the base, to combat these proposals, and thought the whole matter should be referred to the Lieutenant-Colonel rather than let it lapse, on the judgment of half a dozen ensigns at the base.
Nothing, however, appears to have been done until November, when a Guards Entrenching Battalion was formed, and Major E. C. Ellice, Grenadier Guards, was sent out to take command. He arrived at Chipilly on the Somme, about five miles from Bray, on December 1, 1915, and took over the Battalion from Major Clutterbuck, who had been temporarily in command. The Battalion consisted of 230 Grenadiers, 300 Coldstream, 250 Scots Guards, and 200 Irish Guards, with 40 tunnellers from the Royal Engineers.