The West Riding Territorials in the Great War

by Laurie Magnus

All accounts agree that the close of 1917 found the Allies very unfavourably situated. The balance seemed to be shifted against them; and the contrast, in retrospect, is striking between the natural elation of the troops who had taken part in the push at Cambrai, and had put to a practical test the three-in-one new factors of success—Tanks, secrecy and speed—and the equally natural depression of public opinion at home, and even at the front, wherever the chances of the campaign were accurately weighed. The mere strategic satisfaction at having relieved the pressure on Italy, or, at least, at having kept it short of full strength, by tactical operations in France, afforded inadequate compensation for the knowledge, growing to certainty, that the issue of 1917 would be a German offensive in 1918. All the credits on the side of the Allies were likely to mature in the remote future. All the debits, the heaviest of which was Russia, could be calculated at once.

Take, for instance, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fifth volume.[99] It opens on a very piano note. ‘The late winter and the early spring of 1918 saw the balance tilted against the British and their comrades in the West, through causes over which they had no control.... From November [1917] to March [1918] an endless succession of troop trains were bearing the divisions which had extended from the Baltic to the southern frontiers of Russia, in order to thicken the formidable array already marshalled across France.’ Or take the expert evidence of Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice[100]: ‘In Europe 1917 was a year of disappointment for the arms of the Allies.... From the beginning of November onward they [the Germans] were moving troops from the Russian to the French front as fast as their trains could carry them. It was calculated that the Germans would be able to increase their strength on the Western front between the beginning of November and the end of April by not less than a million and a half of men’: a very nasty calculation for the Allied Command, and for the two Governments behind it at home.

Moreover, there was not much time. This was the key to the situation. Troops moving as fast as they could travel would reach their destination earlier than troops which were moving through a longer distance at a slower rate. ‘While it would be possible,’ wrote Sir Douglas Haig,[101] ‘for Germany to complete her new dispositions early in the new year, the forces which America could send to France before the season would permit active operations to be recommenced would not be large’: again, a very simple calculation, but it entailed serious consequences. The first was, that ‘it became necessary to change the policy governing the operations of the British Armies in France’[102]; or, rather, this was less the first consequence than the sum-total of the consequences, which involved in their train all kinds of major and minor changes. The policy governing the operations of the British Armies in France had to be changed. 1918 had to be adjusted to 1917; and, while the process of adjustment unmade, or, at least, disturbed, the whole basis of British dispositions, and robbed the seed-time of the harvest, it was by no means clear that the new course would be either satisfactory or complete. For the change from an offensive to a defensive policy, under the urgent threat of a German advance, was accompanied by (1) a reduction in the British fighting strength, (2) a deficiency in defensive training, and (3) an extension of the British front by over twenty-eight miles. Such, briefly, was the problem at the opening of December, 1917, while General Braithwaite’s gallant troops were still winning laurels in front of Cambrai, and public opinion in England was still uncertain whether the ‘break-through’ had come or not. As a fact, it was coming from the other side. It was coming with a weight of men and guns unequalled in the history of warfare. It was coming before the United States could pour their forces into Europe. It was coming against spent soldiers, unprepared with rear-line systems or with the latest developments in defensive fighting. It was coming, when our man-power was at its lowest, measured by the demand that it had met, and by the demands which it had to meet. It was coming, accordingly, when Army Commanders, from the Field Marshal downwards, were upset, if we may use an expressive term, by the necessity of defending an extended front with numerically reduced forces. The re-organization of Divisions from a 13-battalion to a 10-battalion basis affected, of course, even the smallest unit, and every Commanding Officer had to adapt himself to the new methods. That the fighting efficiency of units was impaired is a conclusion contradicted by events. That it could not be otherwise than impaired, under these novel and cumulative conditions, is an inference in accordance with expectation.

We may select a very simple entry from the Diary of the 1/6th Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment (49th Division). On January 29th, 1918, when the battalion was at Hondegem, a draft of eight Officers and one hundred and ninety-five other ranks from the 1/5th West Riding Regiment was posted to it, ‘the 1/5th W.R.R. having been transferred to the 62nd Division.’ Next morning, this draft was posted to companies, ‘after which all companies reorganized on a 4-platoon basis.’ Take the 2/4th Battalion of the same Regiment, and its entry on January 31st, 1918: ‘The Brigade was reduced to three Battalions, the 2/6th being broken up, ten Officers and two hundred and twenty other ranks being transferred to the 2/4th Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.’ On the same day, seven Officers and one hundred and fifty other ranks were posted to the 2/5th West Yorkshires from the 2/6th West Yorkshires, ‘who were disbanded’; and, briefly, if reference be made to the Order of Battle of the 62nd Division, given at the end of Chapter VI above, the range and complexity of the changes in personnel, consequent on the supreme need of defending a longer line with fewer men, and defending it against imminent assault, may be judged by these random examples. There was not a Company Commander in all the Divisions of the British Armies who did not feel the effects of the new policy in the early days of 1918.

Purposely, we have dwelt on the soldier’s view. To him it mattered not at all that the Versailles (Supreme War) Council had been formed at Rapallo in the previous November, or that Mr. Lloyd George, on his way home through Paris, had delivered a rousing speech on the topic of the barrier in the West. Neither Council nor speeches would break that barrier, the dams of which were about to burst on him. To him, again, it mattered little more that, before the dams burst in fury on his long, thin, tired khaki line, the same doubts, or nearly the same doubts, weighed heavily on the minds of his Commanders as had oppressed them in 1915, when the 49th Division first came out to France. Now, as then, behind the narrow wall of Troops, which still guarded Ypres from the invader, lay Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne. We may call this the horizontal line, leading from Brussels to the sea, and across the sea to hated England. That way lay the end of the war, and Prussia’s satisfied ambition. Now, as then, too, a vertical line pointed southwards from Ostend to Paris, through Arras, Albert and Amiens, and the battlefields of 1916. That way lay a bisection of the Allied Forces, a spectacular occupation of the French capital, and, at best, a prolongation of the war into 1919 and even 1920. Either way lay disaster to British arms; and the stars pointed both ways at once. To the soldier, as we say, it mattered little that a kind of choice had to be made, and a kind of balance had to be struck, between two alternative enemy aims, which were yet not mutually exclusive. His business was to fight, not to think, and, in the fighting days to which we are now coming, he fought tenaciously till he fell, leaving to those whom they concerned the fate of London and Paris. Yet, because their fate was involved in the disposition of the Allied Armies at the beginning of 1918, we are bound to consider the problem by which Sir Douglas Haig was confronted. ‘In the northern portion of the British area,’ he wrote, in the Despatch which we have already quoted in this chapter, ‘lie the northern channel ports, the security of which necessitated the maintenance of sufficient troops in the neighbourhood. Little or no ground could be given up on this front.... In the central portion,’ he continued, ‘lie the northern collieries of France and certain important tactical features which cover our lateral communications. Here, also, little or no ground could be given up.’ What could be given up? A hateful consideration for the High Command, but it had to be faced and answered, in order to save what could not, or to concert, at least, the best measures for its safety. ‘In the southern portion of the British area, south-east of Arras,’ it was held, ‘ground could be given up under great pressure without serious consequences.’ The ‘great pressure’ was certain to be applied, and it afforded some consolation to reflect that, in contrast to the central and northern portions, the forward area of this sector consisted chiefly ‘of a wide expanse of territory devastated by the enemy last spring in his withdrawal.’ He had held it in 1916. Early in 1917, as we saw, he had partly retired from it and had partly been driven back, destroying and ravaging as he went, to his prepared lines in the rear. Let him come again in 1918. We knew the ground as well as he. The ground ‘to be given up under great pressure’ was sacred to the heroes of the Somme, and would not be given up for ever.

The time passed quickly to the appointed day.

We return to the 62nd Division, in rest on January 1st in the Reserve area of the XIIIth Corps in the Maroeuil district, above Arras. ‘It was evident,’ runs the great Despatch, dated July 20th, but going back to the previous November, ‘that the enemy was about to make a great effort south of Arras. An attack on this front would undoubtedly have as its object the separation of the French and British Armies and the capture of the important centre of communications at Amiens. To meet this eventuality more than half our available troops were allocated to the defence of this sector, together with the whole of the cavalry.’ On January 5th, the front from Gavrelle to Oppy, at right angles to the Arras-Douai road, was taken over from the 56th by the 62nd, with the 185th Brigade holding the left section all the time, and the 186th and 187th alternating on the right. On January 9th, Major-General Braithwaite, the 62nd Divisional Commander, assumed command of the sector. On the 18th, a German runner was captured, and valuable information was elicited from him as to the enemy dispositions. The 240th German Division was opposite the 62nd; many troops, mostly from Russia, had been collected in the back areas; the appointed day was plainly drawing nearer. There had been heavy snow and a sudden thaw: ‘Conditions in the line very bad,’ writes a Battalion diarist (January 19th), ‘but men very cheerful and happy’ (the italics are his).

When they were not in the line, they were providing working parties; when they were not at work, they were undergoing training. ‘The construction of new communications and the extension of old, more especially in the area south-east of Arras, involved the building of a number of additional roads and the laying out of railways, both narrow and normal gauge. All available men of the fighting units, with the exception of a very small proportion undergoing training, and all labour units were employed on these tasks.’ So far, the Field Marshal in his Despatch, and we may quote Sir A. Conan Doyle’s comment: ‘There were no enslaved populations who could be turned on to such work. For months before the attack the troops ... were digging incessantly. Indeed, the remark has been made that their military efficiency was impaired by the constant navvy work upon which they were employed.’[103] It may be. But Sir Douglas Haig bore testimony, that ‘the time and labour available were in no way adequate, if, as was suspected, the enemy intended to commence his offensive operations in the early spring....’

On January 31st, as we saw, the re-organization of the Division took place. Under the new scheme of nine battalions plus a Pioneer Battalion to a Division, the nucleus of Battalions to be amalgamated arrived from the 49th Division further north. In the 185th Brigade, the 2/6th West Yorkshires were disbanded, and the 2/8th were amalgamated with the 1/8th to form the 8th West Yorks. In the 186th Brigade, the 2/6th West Ridings were disbanded, and the 5th West Ridings were formed out of an amalgamation of the 1st and 2nd Line Battalions. In the 187th Brigade, when it left the line, the disbanded unit was the 2/5th York and Lancasters; the 2/5th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry were amalgamated with the 1/5th as the 5th K.O.Y.L.I.