A month later, the Division was re-transferred from the First Army, Indian Corps, to the Second Army, VIth Corps, commanded by Major-General Sir John Keir, when it moved to Proven, north-west of Poperinghe, and the surrounding villages in Belgium. The weather after May 23rd had become very hot, and there was one case of sun-stroke in the trenches.
We shall return to the fortunes of the Division in the alternating periods of trench-life and billets which succeeded the intenser fighting of May. The whole Western front settled down to what seems like a phase of inactivity, but what was really a broken succession of diverse minor experiences, the monotony of which, like the sea’s, was always movement, more apparent at close quarters than afar. Meanwhile, it will be appropriate to pick up the record of that isolated unit of West Riding Divisional Engineers, which, as we mentioned above, preceded the Division overseas. They, too, reached the scene of war in April, 1915. They fought in a different field, and were even more heavily engaged, but they earned by conspicuous gallantry not less honour than their comrades in France.
This unit, the 1/1st Field Company of West Riding Royal Engineers, under the command of Major Dodworth, formed one of three Companies which served under Lt.-Col. G. B. Hingston, C.R.E., in the 29th Division. Their original destination was France, but in February, 1915, it was decided to ship the Division with all possible speed to the Dardanelles, and, had this decision been carried out, the fate of British arms in the Peninsula might have been brought to a different conclusion. As a fact, owing to causes which have been made public, its departure was postponed till March, and, after a troublesome delay at Alexandria, the Field Company, with a strength of 6 officers, 201 other ranks, 62 horses and mules, and 12 vehicles, reached Tenedos on April 24th. At midnight on the same day they were selected, much to their delight, to sail with the covering force on the ‘River Clyde’ to the South Point of the Peninsula, and there, below Sedd-el-Bahr, the modern model of the Trojan wooden horse was beached at 7 a.m. on April 25th.
The events of that day of death and glory have been sung, and painted, and told, and require but brief reference here. ‘No army in history,’ says the poet who wrote a prose-epic called Gallipoli[34], ‘has been set such a task. No other troops in the world would have made good those beaches,’ and it is heartening to recall that troops from the West Riding of Yorkshire were included in this unique band.
“MODERN MODEL OF TROJAN WOODEN HORSE.”
For five months, from April till September, our Field Company of Royal Engineers remained on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The roads, the water-supply, the trenches, the night-wiring, the bridges, the jetties: every kind of engineering job came their way. They even manufactured hand-grenades, and gave practical lessons in the use of them, and they took their bellyful of fighting and of experience of Turkish shells. In June, for example, two of their sappers, A. Jennett and G. Packard, were awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for their gallant rescue of Captain Todd, of the Argyll Mountain Battery, who was lying with a leg blown off under heavy fire on the other side of a barbed-wire entanglement; and the same decoration was bestowed on Lance-Corporal W. B. Owen, who snatched another wounded Officer out of a trench in actual enemy occupation, and carried him to a dressing-station two miles off, for the most part under fire. On September 22nd came a welcome fortnight’s rest. They were back again early in October, and had a terrible spell of work after the great gale of November 26th, which helped to confirm the decision for evacuation. For the end of the adventure was approaching, and our Engineers remained till the end. After helping to clear Suvla and Anzac, they moved in January, 1916, to Helles, where they cut steps down the cliff to W. Beach. Thence they sailed at last in two parties reaching Suez, January 16th.
The rest of their story belongs to the Division in which they became absorbed. But the praise of their famous work in Gallipoli, to which they went straight from home, redounds to the credit of the West Riding, and may be added to the praises which we have quoted from Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir Douglas Haig and Sir John French:
‘The 1/1st West Riding Field Company Royal Engineers, which forms part of the “incomparable” 29th Division,’ wrote Lieut.-General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, Commanding that Division, ‘did grand service on the Gallipoli Peninsula.... Engineers have always the post of honour in war, having to make entanglements, to mine, to sap and to carry out many dangerous jobs in the very forefront of the fray. Of all this work the 1/1st West Riding Field Company Royal Engineers had its full and more than its full share, and right well did all ranks rise to the occasion.... The casualties among them have been heavy ... but the results achieved by them have more than counterbalanced the loss incurred. They have covered themselves, their Unit, and the rest of the West Riding Divisional Royal Engineers with glory.’
This passage occurs in a letter written by Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston on September 9th, 1915, and published with the next Quarterly Report of the West Riding County Association. In that Report, Lord Scarbrough included an account of a visit paid to Flanders by himself, as Chairman of the Association, and by Brig.-General Mends, the Secretary. Their ‘object was to ascertain in what ways the Association might best provide for the needs and comfort of the troops, and to study the conditions under which they have to work’; and it will not be out of place to examine Lord Scarbrough’s conclusions in those respects in anticipation of what we shall find in the ensuing chapter.