ANDY OLVER

RHODESIANS ON THEWESTERN FRONT

The Experience of the Rhodesian Platoons of the

King’s Royal Rifle Corps in Northern France and Flanders

1914 -1918

Cover photograph - Australian gunners on a duckboard trackin Château Wood near Hooge, 29 October 1917.

The photo was taken by WW1 photographer James Francis “Frank” Hurley, OBE. Hurley was an Australian photographer and adventurer. He participated in a number of expeditions to Antarctica and served as an official photographer with Australian forces during both world wars.

In 1917 Hurley joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) as an honorary captain and captured many stunning battlefield scenes during the Third Battle of Ypres. In keeping with his adventurous spirit, he took considerable risks to photograph his subjects, also producing many rare panoramic and colour photographs of the conflict. Hurley kept a diary in 1917-1918 describing his time as a war photographer.

Preface

With the centenary of the commencement of the First World War falling shortly after the period

covered by the 9th edition of the ‘Sunset Call’, the MOTH Matabeleland newsletter, I felt it fitting that I

include a short four or five page account of the experiences of Rhodesians in WW1. Accordingly I

chose to focus on the experience of the “Rhodesian” platoons of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in the

trenches of Northern France and Flanders. Well, that proved a far larger task than envisaged and this

still incomplete account now measures some forty pages. As such it is now included as a separate

supplement to the ‘Sunset Call’.

It is my intention to continue to research and provide a comprehensive account of the Rhodesian

Platoons on The Western Front. The account, as it currently stands, essentially covers the period from

the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914 to 20 March 1918, the date which marks the end of static

entrenched warfare on the Western Front and a return to open warfare.

I need to apologise here for the incomplete source referencing and absence of a bibliography. This will

be corrected in the larger “work in-progress”.

Andy Olver

Bulawayo, 14 August 2014.

Introduction

The First World War was sparked in the Balkans when, on 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip1 shot and killed the Austro-Hungarian heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who had been invited to Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital, Sarajevo, to inspect army manoeuvers. Princip’s bullet struck the Archduke in the neck and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in the abdomen. Both died. It was “the shot that was heard around the world”. Spurred by imperialism, militarism, chains of alliances, nationalism, and finally the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, what had started out as a localised Balkans conflict, was quickly catapulted, with Britain’s declaration of war against Germany on 4 August 1914, into a global conflict - and the world was never the same.

Europe quickly became engaged in a gruesome struggle disfigured by mechanised warfare previously unimaginable: submarines, battleships, aircraft, tanks, machine guns, flame-throwers and legions of poison gas—the largest-scale use of chemical weapons in history. After the initial battles of 1914, both sides held an entrenched line that stretched some 700 kilometres from Nieuport on the Belgian coast to Pfetterhouse on the Swiss border. The trench line was the result of the stagnation of battle where both sides "dug in" and settled down to a war of attrition, with little movement for over three years. The name given to this fighting zone in France and Flanders, where the British, French, Belgian and (towards the end of the war) American armies faced that of Germany, is “The Western Front”.

The intense and mechanical destruction of Northern France and Flanders created a new and terrifying landscape that had, until then, only ever been imagined or seen in medieval visions of hell: one of mud, bloated corpses, barbed wire and shell-holes through which wound a series of rotten, death-strewn trenches - an inconceivable maze of thousands of miles of freezing, disease-ridden and rat-infested tunnels where men subsisted below the earth. They rose from this hell only to be fed into a far worse one—no man’s land - the human meat-grinder. The human cost of casualties and dead in such a grinding type of siege warfare would be recorded in the tens of thousands in a single day.

The First World War was a disastrously wasteful affair; one that Pope Benedict XV publicly declared an unjust war, a mad form of collective European suicide. The pontiff rightly judged that there were no salient moral issues dividing the combatants. These countries should not have been at war, let alone slaughtering their boys by the millions.

During this “war to end all wars ”, Southern Rhodesians served in over eighty British imperial regiments, but the largest concentration was in the regular 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC) where wholly “Rhodesian” platoons, numbering 60 to 90 men at full strength, were formed.

It was in the trenches of the Western Front that Southern Rhodesia’s main contribution to World War One was made and it is on that front and the major battles in which the “Rhodesian” Platoons of the KRRC fought between November 1914 to March 1918 (the 2nd and 3rd phases of the war 2), that this account focuses.

1 Gavrilo Princip was a Bosnian-Serb student and member of the secret Black Hand Society (a nationalist movement favouring a union between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia). Princip was one of three men sent by the Serbian Army’s Intelligence Department to assassinate Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand during the latter’s visit to Sarajevo to inspect army manoeuvres in late June 1914.

2 The war on the Western Front was fought in 4 phases: Phase 1 (Aug to Nov 1914) - a war of encounter and movement, leading to both sides digging-in and trench warfare beginning; Phase 2 (Nov 1914 to Jul 1917) - entrenched warfare in which the British worked to the French strategy; Phase 3 (Jul 1917 to Mar 1918) - trench warfare in which British and Commonwealth forces begin to play a leading role; and, Phase 4 (Mar to Nov 1918) - return to open warfare as German offensives are held and Allied offensives succeed.

Rhodesians leave

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE RHODESIAN PLATOONS OF THE

KING’S ROYAL RIFLE CORPS IN NORTHERN FRANCE AND FLANDERS

1914 -1918____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1.OUTBREAK OF WAR

Britain declared war on Germany at 23h00 GMT on Tuesday 4 August 1914. Word of the declaration reached Salisbury during the night. Early on Wednesday 5 August, the British South Africa Company (BSAC) administrator of Southern Rhodesia, Sir William Henry Milton, wired Whitehall: "All Rhodesia united in devoted loyalty to King and Empire and ready to do its duty” . Similar messages of support had been received from each of Britain’s overseas territories. In response King George V sent the following message to his Colonies:

I desire to express to my people of the Overseas Dominions with what appreciation and pride I have received the messages from their respective Governments during the last few days. These spontaneous assurances of their fullest support recall to me the generous, self-sacrificing help given by them in the past to the mother country. I shall be strengthened in the discharge of the great responsibility which rests upon me by the confident belief that in this time of trial my Empire will stand united, calm and resolute, trusting in God. -George R.I. (The Daily Mirror, 5 August 1914)

At around 8.00 am on 5 August Milton officially announced to his countrymen that Southern Rhodesia was at war. The ''Bulawayo Chronicle'' and “Rhodesia Herald” newspapers published special editions the same day to spread the news; it took about four days for word to reach the whole country.

The news of Britain’s declaration of war was greeted throughout its overseas possessions by British settlers with patriotic fervour. In Salisbury a packed meeting at the Drill Hall turned into stirring and emotional outpourings of support for the Mother country. In Bulawayo mass meetings, awash with pro-Empire sentiments, were held at the Drill Hall and Bulawayo Club. Gatooma prepared to form a special unit for military service, while in Umtali residents demonstrated their concern for Belgium which the German Army had just invaded. The enthusiasm to answer the call was infectious and all the talk was of war. By 13 August over 1,000 young Rhodesian men had volunteered for service. However it would be some four and a half months before the first Rhodesians would see action on the Western Front.

As a commercial venture, the BSAC needed to carefully consider the financial implications of the war for its chartered territory should it commit directly to the war effort. In the face of the BSAC’s resulting inaction, the Rhodesian public’s frustration came close reaching boiling point. A number of letters were received by the Press strongly urging the BSAC to commit to the war effort and ‘German baiting’ became endemic. In September a number of German settlers were taken prisoner and sent to an internment camp in Johannesburg. Impatient and frustrated at the BSAC’s apparent inertia, many individuals paid their own way to England to join British Army units. Most of the colony's contribution to the war was made by Southern Rhodesians’ individually. By the end of October 1914 about 300 Rhodesian volunteers were on their way as part of the massive satanic spasm that was to spew forth a conflagration the likes of which the world had never before experienced.

Throughout the duration of the war, which was expected to be over by Christmas, drafts of young Rhodesians would arrive on the Western Front. Though it was one of the few combatant territories not to raise fighting men through conscription, by the war’s end in November 1918, proportional to

white population, Rhodesia contributed more manpower to the British war effort than any other British dominion, including Britain. White troops numbered 5,716, about forty per cent of white men in the colony. The Rhodesia Native Regiment enlisted 2,507 black soldiers, about thirty of whom scouted for the Rhodesia Regiment and around 350 served in British and South African units. Of a total of 7,436 Southern Rhodesians of all races, over 800 lost their lives on operational service during the war, with many more wounded.

___________________________________________________

Men of the original Rhodesian Platoon of the KRRCTaken in November 1914 at the KRRC training depot at Sheerness before the Rhodesian platoon went to the Western Front. Centre of the second row from the front sit the Marquess of Winchester and Captain John Brady. Only 12 members of this original platoon survived the war.

2.

FORMATION OF RHODESIAN PLATOONS WITHIN THE KING’S ROYAL RIFLE CORPS (KRRC)

At the commencement of the war the renowned KRRC Regiment comprised four regular battalions – the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Battalions. On 12 August 1914 the 1st and 2nd Battalions, having enjoyed a five-year period of home service, left the comforts of home for France as members of the 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions respectively, and by 23 August both battalions had taken up positions near Mons in Northern France.

In November 1914 the 3rd and 4th Battalions, drained by four and a half debilitating years in India, were recalled to their base at Winchester. On 21 December, after a brief period of training and re-fitting, both battalions were sent to France where, on 5 January 1915, they took over trenches from the French at Dickebusch near St. Eloi, north of Ypres.

In October 1914, on board the ship that took the first draft of Rhodesians from Cape Town to Southampton was Henry Paulet, 16th Marquess of Winchester, who had links with Southern Rhodesia dating back to the 1890s. Coming across Captain John Banks Brady who led the Rhodesian volunteers, the Marquess asked where Brady’s party was headed. Brady said they were on their way to war in France. The Marquess suggested to Brady that since it might be difficult to prevent his men from being separated during the enlistment process, it might be wise for the Rhodesians to join the King’s Royal Rifle Corps3 (KRRC) where he could keep a close watch on them through his connections with the Winchester-based regiment.

On arrival in England the Rhodesians underwent several weeks training at the KRRC training depot at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. The

training was intensive and went on from 06h00 to 21h00, seven days a week. While At Sheerness the Rhodesians broke the Regimental rifle range record of seven years’ standing. Most, if not all of the Rhodesians knew their way around a rifle, having spent much time in the Rhodesian bush hunting big game; whereas many of their English counterparts had never held a rifle. Each batch of Rhodesians that passed through Sheerness lived up to the reputation established by that first draft of being “crack” shots.

In December the Rhodesians were sent to France, joining the 3rd Battalion KRRC (3/KRRC), mustering as No. 16 “Rhodesian” Platoon, ‘D’ Company, with Captain Brady as its commander. In the wake of the formation of an explicit KRRC “Rhodesian” platoon, Rhodesian volunteers began to concentrate in the KRRC and in particular, within the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, both of which raised Rhodesian platoons. The Regiment was soon thought of as Rhodesia’s ‘own’ regiment.

As the war progressed the KRRC raised a further 22 battalions. Rhodesians served in a number of these, but not in sufficient numbers to form “Rhodesian” platoons.

3 The King’s Royal Rifle Corps was not a Corps, but a Regiment.

3.

IN NORTHERN FRANCE AND FLANDERS

During October and November 1914, the 1st and 2nd KRRC Battalions, both in France since August, had suffered terrible casualties at the First Battle of Ypres (21 Oct – 13 Nov). During the battle three companies of 2/KRRC had become isolated and despite putting up a desperate fight, were never seen again. Accordingly the Battalion needed to quickly make up its numbers and on 26 December a draft of newly arrived Rhodesians joined 2/KRRC on the Western Front. The Rhodesian draft was quickly formed into a “Rhodesian” platoon that soon earned for itself a great reputation for valour and good shooting. On 5 January, the 1st and 2nd Battalions joined the 3rd and 4th Battalions in the reserve trenches north of Ypres.

When the Rhodesians arrived on the Western Front the first thing they saw were lines of wounded soldiers being taken to the rear. As they got closer they could feel the earth shake and hear the constant ‘crump crump’ of artillery shells. The sound was loud enough to make their ears ring and became their bone-shattering companion for the next three years. Next they saw a series of muddy trenches littered with the waste of war. Boxes, cart wheels, wire and often the bodies of the dead and dying were strewn everywhere. These were the reserve trenches, far enough from the battle for soldiers to try to grab a little rest from all the death and madness in the front line.

THE STRATEGIC OUTLOOK IN EARLY 1915 With the beginning of trench warfare in late 1914 both sides began assessing options for bringing the war to a successful conclusion. Overseeing German operations, Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn preferred to focus on winning the war on the Western Front as he believed that a separate peace could be obtained with Russia if it was allowed to exit the conflict with some pride. This approach clashed with Generals’ Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff who wished to deliver a decisive blow in the East. As heroes of Tannenberg4 they were able to use their fame and political clout to influence the German leadership, and as a result, the decision was made in 1915 to focus on the Eastern Front.

In the Allied camp there was no such discord. The British and French were keen to expel the Germans from the territory they had occupied since August 1914. For the French it was a matter of national pride and economic necessity as the occupied territory held much of France's industry and natural resources. Instead, the challenge faced by the Allies was where to attack. This choice was largely dictated by the Western Front terrain. In the south, the woods, rivers, and mountains precluded a major offensive, while the sodden soil of coastal Flanders5 fast turned into a quagmire during shelling. In the center, the highlands along the Aisne and Meuse Rivers too, greatly favoured the defender. As a result the Allies focused their efforts on the chalk lands along the Somme River in Artois and to the south in Champagne. These points were located on the edges of the deepest German penetration into France and successful attacks had the potential to cut off the enemy forces. In addition, breakthroughs at these points would sever German rail links east which would compel the Germans to abandon their position in France.

THE FIRST CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE (20 DECEMBER 1914 – 17 MARCH 1915)An assessment by the French High Command in November 1914 noted that the German offensive on the Western Front had ended and four to six German corps were being moved to the Eastern Front. Consequently, a French offensive would assist the Russian army on the Eastern Front by forcing the Germans to keep more forces in the west. As a result the First Champagne Offensive, a joint French-British initiative centered upon the Reims region, was planned.

4 The Battle of Tannenberg was perhaps the most spectacular and complete German victory of the First World War. The encirclement and destruction of the Russian Second Army in late August 1914 virtually ended Russia's invasion of East Prussia before it had really started.

5 Flanders refers to the entire Dutch-speaking and northern part of Belgium.

Map of the 1914-1918 Western Front Battlefields

The offensive, rather than a mass offensive, was essentially a series of on-going attacks against points of tactical worth. However, the Allies were up against a well-entrenched enemy and their gain in ground was minimal and costly. For the four regular KRRC battalions a trying period of alternate spells of trench warfare and rest with training and fatigues followed. Fighting continued without a break until mid-February, during which the Rhodesians sustained a number of casualties and attempted to come to terms with the suffering and horror of trench warfare.

For the Rhodesians, coming from the open sun-splashed southern African veld, the confinement, mud and winter’s cold alone, were a nightmare. The Rhodesians had only two blankets each and had to sleep as close as possible to one another just to survive. The winters’ could get so cold that water was carried to the soldiers as blocks of ice. Men would wake after a few hours sleep only to find their eyelids frozen shut. Their feet would swell to three times their normal size because they had been standing for a week in ice-cold water up to their knees. Ice would form around the rim of a boiling mug of tea after it had been carried just twenty paces. Within forty-eight hours of the Rhodesians reaching the trenches, Brady, then commanding the “Rhodesian” Platoon 3/KRRC, reported that some of his men had contracted frostbite.

In the trenches death was a constant companion and at once the Rhodesian platoons began suffering regular heavy casualties. In busy sectors the constant enemy shellfire brought sudden and random death. The uninitiated were quickly cautioned against their inclination to peer over the parapet into ‘No Man's Land’. Many soldiers died on their first day in the trenches from of a precisely aimed sniper's bullet.

Under these conditions the numbers of the Rhodesian platoons in 2nd and 3rd KRRC Battalions began to decline, their ranks being filled by newly arrived Rhodesian volunteers. Rhodesian volunteers continued to arrive piecemeal in England throughout the war, so Rhodesian formations on the Western Front received regular reinforcements in small batches. However, because casualties were usually concentrated in far larger groups, it would often take a few months for a depleted Rhodesian unit to return - Phoenix-like - to full strength. A cycle developed whereby Rhodesian platoons in Belgium and France were abruptly decimated and then gradually re-built, only to suffer the same fate on returning to the front line.

Once in the trenches the Rhodesian’s shooting skills were clearly evident. Lieutenant General Sir Edward Hutton records that:

When the opposing forces first settled down to trench warfare the Germans very soon attained an ascendancy in sniping. The 2nd Battalion (KRRC), during the winter of 1914-15, received a draft of Rhodesians. A section of snipers was made up from them under Lieutenant L. C. Rattray. In the words of the 2nd Battalion 'Records': “Thanks to their enterprise and accurate shooting, we soon got the upper hand of the German snipers, and this ascendancy was maintained throughout the campaign and in every section of the line before the Battalion had been three days in the trenches. (A Brief History of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 1755-1918, 2nd Edition, p. 57).

Following a pause by the French in mid-February to re-organise, the offensive was resumed without any significant gains until 17 March when it was called off by the French, owing to the strength of German counter-attacks, combined with a costly lack of success. The First Champagne Offensive was a failure with casualties in the region of 90,000. It was also a harsh lesson for the Rhodesian soldier on how to stay alive in the trenches.

THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES (19 APRIL TO 13 MAY 1915)

The Second Battle of Ypres was the only major attack launched by the German forces on the Western Front in 1915. The attack was used as a means of diverting Allied attention from the Eastern Front and to remove the Ypres salient by introducing a new weapon, chlorine gas.

In the first week of April two British Divisions (which included the 3rd and 4th KRRC battalions) and a Canadian and the French (Algerian) Division, were moved to a bulge in the Allied line in front of the city of Ypres. This was the infamous Ypres salient where the British and Allied line pushed into the German line in a concave bend. The Germans held the higher ground and were able to fire into the Allied trenches from the north, south and east.

On April 22, following an intensive artillery bombardment, 5,700 canisters of chlorine gas was released into a light northeast wind. Captain Hugh Pollard, in his “The Memoirs of a VC (1932)”, describes what followed:

Dusk was falling when from the German trenches in front of the French line rose that strange green cloud of death. The light north-easterly breeze wafted it toward them, and in a moment death had them by the throat. One cannot blame them that they broke and fled. In the gathering dark of that awful night they fought with the terror, running blindly in the gas-cloud, and dropping with breasts heaving in agony and the slow poison of suffocation mantling their dark faces. Hundreds of them fell and died; others lay helpless, froth upon their agonized lips and their racked bodies powerfully sick, with tearing nausea at short intervals. They too would die later – a slow and lingering death of agony unspeakable. The whole air was tainted with the acrid smell of chlorine that caught at the back of men's throats and filled their mouths with its metallic taste.

The gas affected some 10,000 troops, half of whom died within ten minutes of the gas reaching the front line. It also left a gaping four-mile hole in the Allied line.

German troops pressed forward, threatening to sweep behind the Canadian trenches and put fifty thousand Canadian and British troops in deadly jeopardy. Here, through terrible fighting, withered with shrapnel and machine-gun fire, violently sick and gasping for air through urine soaked and muddy handkerchiefs, the Rhodesian platoon fought, sustaining terrible losses. All through the night the British and Canadian troops fought to close the gap. Little ground was gained and casualties were extremely heavy, but the attacks bought some precious time to close the flank.

On 24 April the Germans, aiming to obliterate the salient once and for all, launched a violent bombardment followed by another gas attack. This time the target was the Canadian line, which bravely held on until reinforcements arrived.

Following a failed Allied counter-attack, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), Field Marshal John French, executed a planned withdrawal on 1-3 May. On 5 May a further withdrawal was made nearer to Ypres with the Canadians and 4/KRRC in the front-line and 3/KRRC in close support. On the 9th, 3/KRRC relieved the Canadians who had been badly mauled, while 4/KRRC fought hard to repulse a German infantry attack.

On 10 May, after a large German bombardment and strong covering rifle and machine-gun fire, a German infantry advance was halted, enabling the 3rd and 4th KRRC Battalions to lend close support to the Canadians against a concentrated enemy attack to the south. The two KRRC Battalions fought side-by-side with great effect and individual acts of gallantry were many. By 18h00 the bombardment ceased and further advances by the enemy were checked. By midnight the bare remnants of 4/KRRC were withdrawn and on the following day moved to a temporary bivouac where the men lay down to sleep for a full night's rest after twenty-six battle-intensive days in the trenches.

Two nights later, on the night of 12 May, 3/KRRC was the recipient of yet another intense bombardment which called for reinforcement by the North Somerset Yeomanry. Together they defeated the German infantry attempt to advance. Finally, on the 14th, after acquitting themselves with splendid gallantry and a continuous spell of twenty-five days of active work in the trenches, 3/KRRC and the men of the now much depleted Rhodesian platoon, were at last able to get much needed rest in a bivouac four miles west of Ypres.

The resolute valour of the two KRRC battalions was rewarded by a message from H.Q. Army Corps: "The G.O.C. is lost in admiration at the way in which the 3rd and 4th Battalions have stuck out the pounding which they have received." On 14 May 4/KRRC, sadly reduced, merged with the remnant of the Canadian Light Infantry and marched again into the trenches until 17 May, when the Battalion moved to billets in the rear.

The Rhodesian Platoon 3/KRRC incurred heavy losses during the battle and the fatalities for the two KRRC battalions were numerous, losing 1,035 men. 3/KRRC lost 542 men - seventeen officers and 525 other ranks killed, wounded and missing while 4/KRRC, in the three days from 8 to 10 May, lost 493 men - fifteen officers and 478 other ranks killed, wounded and missing.

Total losses during the battle are estimated at 69,000 Allied troops (59,000 British, 10,000 French), against 35,000 German, the difference in numbers being explained by the use of chlorine gas. The Germans' innovative use of gas set the trend for the rest of the war.

During the Second Battle of Ypres, Private John Condon, sheltering in a trench to escape from the artillery and grenade onslaught of the advancing enemy, was killed by chlorine gas. Private Condon was just fourteen years old. The boy soldier had claimed that he was eighteen when he enlisted two years earlier. John Condon was World War One’s youngest British fighter and just one of thousands of lads who lied about his age to fight for his country. (Daily Mirror, 29 July 2014)6. It was also during the Second Battle of Ypres that Canadian Army surgeon John McCrae was driven to write the famous WW1 poem, “In Flanders Fields”.

THE BATTLE OF AUBERS RIDGE (9 MAY 1915)

It was not long before the Rhodesian platoon of 2/KRRC was in the thick of it. A Franco-British offensive, intended to exploit the German diversion of troops to the Eastern Front by pushing the Germans off the dominating high ground of the Loretto and Vimy Ridges north of Arras, and disrupting vital German rail supply routes, was planned. The British attacks on the German line took place on the flat Flanders plain at Aubers Ridge and Festubert.

6 The legal age limit for armed service overseas was nineteen.

The British First Army, employing a pincer movement, was to attack two areas of the German front line either side of the Neuve Chapelle battlefield. The Southern pincer, comprising the 2nd Infantry Brigade, was to attack on a one and a half mile front from the Rue du Bois. The 2nd Infantry Brigade comprised: Fire and support trenches - 1st Northamptons and 2nd Royal Sussex Battalions; 2nd line - 2nd KRRC and 5th Royal Sussex Battalions, and 3rd line - 9th Liverpools and 1st Loyal North Lancashire Battalions. The Northern pincer, comprising battalions of IV Corps, was to attack on a one mile front opposite Fromelles. The attacks were intended to make two breaches in the German defences after which the infantry were to advance to and hold Aubers Ridge about two miles beyond.

In the weeks leading up to the attack the Germans had energetically improved the defences in this area and the troops opposite 2/KRRC shouted across that they were expecting an attack. Air observation had also revealed that the German front line defences at Aubers had been strengthened.

During the night of 8 May 2/KRRC moved into battle positions while the Royal Engineers bridged a large ditch between the support and fire trenches, and also the ditches in front of the Brigade’s fire trench.

The morning of 9 May was bright and good for observation and at 05h00 the British guns bombarded the enemy’s breastworks, wire and support trenches until 05h30 when the shelling became intense. Clouds of dust were raised so that it was not possible to see much beyond the breastworks.

During the intense bombardmentthe firing line and supports of the 2nd Royal Sussex and 1st Northamptons, climbed over the parapet, two men of each platoon carrying a light bridge, and ran forward to gain a line about eighty yards from the enemy’s parapet. The machine-gun fire was heavy, cutting the men down, even on their own ladders and parapet steps, but they pressed forward as ordered. When the bombardment ceased at 05h40 the men of 2/KRRC and 5/Royal Sussex were arriving in the vacated fire trenches. Shortly after their arrival, two 2/KRRC Companies – one of which included the Rhodesian Platoon - and nearly all 5/Royal Sussex, crossed the breastwork and went forward in support. As soon as the British guns ceased, the enemy’s fire increased and the two leading battalions lost very heavily, chiefly from the German machine-guns which swept across the few yards of open ground between the British trenches and those of the enemy. The men of 2/KRRC and 5/Royal Sussex continued to advance bravely but only very few succeeded in getting as far as the enemy’s wire with many wounded or pinned down in No Man’s Land by withering rifle and machine-gun fire.

At 06h05, 2/KRRC sent a message that the enemy’s wire had not been cut by the bombardment, and later a similar report was received from 1/Loyal North Lancs. At 06h20 the assaulting troops could advance no further.

At 08h20, without any change in the situation, the 1st Guards Brigade was ordered to relieve the 2nd Infantry Brigade which was to withdraw and re-form behind the breastworks. This was done as far as possible, but as any movement by those who were lying out between the British and the enemy’s parapets at once attracted enemy fire, only a few men managed to make it back to their trenches before dark, with hundreds more – Rhodesians among them - still pinned down in No Man's Land, unable to advance or fall back.

Lt. Colonel Langham, Commander of the 5/Royal Sussex, which had to ‘mop up’ after the assault wrote:

We had, therefore, to mop up on the front of the two assaulting Battalions and it means sending up a third Company to follow the KRRCs and 'mop up' behind the Northants. After a bombardment of 40 minutes the advance began. Three Companies of the 2nd Battalion [KRRC] and all the Northants went out over and got to from 40 to 80 yards from the German lines. "C" Company, less one platoon, “A" Company, less one platoon and the whole of "B" Company, went out in the second line, and two Companies of the KRRCs. Then the most murderous rifle, machine gun and shrapnel fire opened and no one could get on or get back. People say the fire at Mons and Ypres was nothing to it. No ends of brave things were done, and our men were splendid but helpless. They simply had to wait to be killed. After some considerable time, we got orders to retire, but this was easier said than done. Some men were 300 yards out from our parapet, many dead and some even on fire; and in two cases, men of ours who were burning alive, committed suicide, one by blowing out his brains and another cut his own jugular vein with the point of his bayonet.

David Tuffley provides the following first-hand account by his maternal grandfather, Private Albert Money, who fought in a 2/KRRC Company beside the men of the Rhodesian platoon:

We got up alright on the night of the 8th, it was very cold, they gave us a good dose of rum in the morning around 5:00 a.m. I gave my mate mine, he was shaking but not with fear, he was a brave fellow but that was his second time out, he went through all the battle of Mons and the Aisne and Marne and at Ypres.

We had a fine Captain, Hesseltine, that was his second time, but he said to us, "We are going into this charge so we will do the best we can”. None of that silly talk, we must do this and do that, he spoke like a man, they all said they would follow him to the last man and I believe them too.

The poor old Northamptons were in the firing line and we [2/KRRC] were reinforcements. The bombardment started at 0500, steady for half an hour and 10 minutes as hard as they could go, about five to seven hundred guns going off, all sorts.

Just at half past five the Northamptons had to leave their trenches and get up to the Germans under the ten minutes, heavy bombardment, as soon as they left we had to rush across the open and take them over [occupy the front line] while the Northamptons charged. The Germans were pouring shrapnel between the reserve trenches and the firing line. We could see the Northamptons going over the open in good order, through the smoke. It was simply raining lead, what with shells and machine guns, they had to get over a bit of a river, three or four yards wide and ten feet deep, nearly full of barbed wire.

Our engineers put small bridges over the night before, just room for one man to run over...a good target and playing on them with machine guns, not much chance to get over. Some got across and some tried to jump across the water. If you got in it, then ten to one you would never get out, no chance at all if you were wounded. That is where a lot of the missing of the Northamptons are, poor fellows.

We started over to reinforce them when they got half way, no time to see who was dropping. I saw two of my section get hit, I got about 250 yards when I got hit...I stopped one through the hip but had sense enough not to stop, the ditch was only eight yards in front. I got there and stayed, had a look to see how the wound was, cut all my equipment off and had a rest. The ditch was full of wounded and dead.

My leg was dead, could not move it, fellow nearly blind with blood got my waterproof off to cover me up with and then the order came along to tell the Northamptons and the King's Royal Rifles to get back the best way they could. Couldn't take the position and no more reinforcements.

They were coming back one at a time, those wounded in the ditch where I was all started back, crowding over me so I was left with the dead. The ditch was very narrow and only two feet deep and I was lying the wrong way around to get out. Tried to turn around but no hope, put the waterproof sheet over me and had another rest.

I knew it was no use staying there if they made a counter charge so had another try and got around and pulled myself along the ditch hand over hand and into the one with water; had a rest every ten or fifteen

yards. Got out once but could not get the leg out hanging over the side, but the Germans saw me and the bullets started spitting all around, so just rolled in again.

I got up to our wire entanglement and there was a great shell hole so could get no nearer. One of the Black Watch had been watching me coming along, he called over to me and asked if I could get any nearer. I said "No", and he said "Right, I will come and get you over the top". He came, got in the shell hole and pulled me over his back and up to the parapet and dumped me on the top and some others pulled me over, no time for gentle handling. Then he went over again and brought in another, he went over himself then went under fire again in the open and went to some of the dead and got four [waterproof] sheets, overcoats and water-bottles and fixed the two of us up. I will never forget his bravery and kindness. The last I saw of him he said "I am going in this next charge." I wished him luck, but before he went I know for a fact he went back and brought four more fellows who were wounded. I am sorry I did not ask his name. (‘A Soldier’s Tale: Wounded at Battle of Aubers Ridge, May 1915’ , Griffith University, Australia. Web site: http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/~davidt/ z_ww1_slang/).

A second bombardment and attack was planned for 11h30 but was cancelled owing to the extremely heavy casualties of the 2nd Brigade. Instead, the 1st Brigade would carry out the attack. At 17h00 the 1st Brigade moved up into the front trenches while 1/Loyal North Lancs were to hold the fire trench during the attack of the 1st Brigade. The bombardment commenced at 17h20 following which the 1st Brigade attacked from the left half of the line, the Black Watch and Cameron Highlanders being the assaulting battalions. As the assaulting troops advanced, many officers and men of the 2nd Brigade who had been lying out in the open since early morning, joined in the assault. At 18h15 1/Loyal North Lancs was ordered to support the Black Watch, but a few minutes later, when it became apparent that the 1st Brigade attack had no chance of getting through, this was cancelled.

The Northern pincer assault achieved its first objective and the Rifle Brigade bombers extended the trench system they occupied to 250 yards broad. However, by 06h10 the front and communication trenches were very crowded and chaotic; German shelling added to the confusion and the fire across No Man's Land was so intense that forward movement was all but impossible.

At 02h30 on 10 May, British units that had made it to the German lines were withdrawn and all further orders for renewing the attack were cancelled.

Mile for mile, Division for Division, Aubers Ridge had one of the highest rates of loss during the entire war. British losses on 9 May were 11,497 of which 451 were officers, the vast majority of which were sustained within yards of their own front-line trench. The Rhodesia Platoon sustained heavy losses with the Battalion losing 251 men, including eleven officers. Total Southern pincer casualties were 6,696 of which 256 were officers. Northern pincer casualties were 4,801, of which 195 were officers.

Aubers Ridge was an unmitigated disaster for the British army. No ground was won and no tactical advantage gained. It is very doubtful if it had the slightest positive effect on assisting the main French attack to the south which did not quite achieve the capture of the crest of Vimy Ridge despite the expenditure of 2,155,862 shells!

By the end of the offensive there were approximately 216,000 casualties - 100,000 French, 26,000 British and 90,000 German.

After the First Champagne Offensive the Western Front under British control in the Artois and Flanders sectors enjoyed a relatively quiet summer with no major attacks being attempted, although both sides continued to lose hundreds of men to sporadic shelling, sniper fire and enemy raids. For the men of the 2/KRRC Rhodesian platoon, four months of severe trench work followed during which the platoon sustained its usual weekly toll of casualties. Even in 'quiet times' a battalion could lose fifty men each month. In addition to these ongoing losses the Rhodesian platoons lost a large number of men to officer training. By mid-1915 so many Rhodesians were withdrawn for officer training that Captain Brady was forced to appeal for more volunteers through the Salisbury and Bulawayo presses.

During their several months on the front line the Rhodesian’s natural leadership and fighting qualities had come to the fore. They and other colonial troops were generally regarded as being physically superior to their British comrades and displaying more intelligence, imagination and initiative. For their sins the Rhodesians were often given specialised and dangerous work such as the “post of honour”- the trench, crater or position closest the enemy. Rhodesians excelled as snipers, ‘bombers’ (specialised grenade throwers) or Lewis gunners. At one stage in ‘D’ Company 2/KRRC, all the ‘bombers’ were Rhodesians, as were the best snipers, Lewis gunners and other specialists. Wherever Rhodesians fought on the Western Front, they were conspicuous. A member of the proud Indian Sikhs said of the ‘Africans’; “English Tommy good, Australian very good, but Africans go like hell plenty much”.

The Rhodesian’s became particularly proficient at carrying out of raids across No Man’s Land, a task feared and dreaded by most soldiers. Trench raids were small scale attacks on an enemy position. Surprise was everything, for an expected raiding party could literally be cut to pieces by rifle and machine-gun fire. On occasion raids would develop into dramatic and bloody miniature battles as vigilant enemy machine-gunners detected the approach of the raiding party.

Raids were made by both sides and always took place at night for reasons of stealth. Small teams of men would blacken their faces with burnt cork before crossing the barbed wire and other debris of No Man's Land to infiltrate enemy trench systems.

Trench raiding was very similar to the brutality of medieval warfare insofar as it was fought face-to-face with crude weaponry. Trench raiders were lightly equipped for stealthy, unimpeded movement. Typically raiding parties were armed with deadly homemade trench raiding clubs, bayonets, entrenching tools, trench knives, hatchets, pickaxe handles and brass knuckles. The choice of weaponry was deliberate: the raiders' intention was to kill or capture people quietly. Trench raiders were also armed with modern weapons such as pistols and hand grenades, though these were only used in an emergency.

Standard practice was to creep slowly up on the sentries guarding a small sector of an enemy front line trench and then kill them as quietly as possible. Having secured the trench the raiders would complete their mission objectives as quickly as possible, ideally within several minutes. Often grenades would be thrown into dugouts where enemy troops were sleeping before the raiders left the enemy lines to return to their own.

Trench raiding had multiple purposes. Typically, the intention would be to capture, wound or kill enemy troops; destroy, disable or capture high value equipment such as the MG08 machine gun; gather intelligence by seizing important documents or enemy officers for interrogation; reconnaissance for a future massed attack during daylight hours; or to keep the enemy feeling under threat during the hours of darkness, thereby reducing their efficiency and morale.

Of the trench raid, Edmund Blunden (in Leo van Bergen, Before My Helpless Sight - Suffering, Dying and Military Medicine on the Western Front 1914 – 1918) says it is the ideal way for soldiers to commit suicide without ever being found out, since anyone who volunteered to take part had a good chance of not coming back. Blunden states this repeatedly in his book. He writes that the word “raid” may be defined as the one in the whole vocabulary of the war which instantly caused a sinking feeling in the stomach of ordinary mortals. Blunden states, “I do not know what opinion prevailed among other battalions, but I can say that our greatest distress at this period was due to that short and dry word – ‘raid’ ”. The Rhodesians had become adept at this form of warfare.

THE SECOND CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE (25 September - 6 November 1915)In the autumn of 1915 the French and British Armies carried out a second large-scale, two-pronged offensive against the German positions which, by this time, were well-consolidated and proving increasingly difficult to penetrate. The Second Champagne Offensive had the objective of forcing the German Third and Fifth Armies in the Argonne sector to withdraw along the Meuse river towards Belgium. A simultaneous attack by French and British forces from Vimy Ridge to La Bassée, called the Artois-Loos Offensive (25 September - 15 October 1915), aimed to break through the German Front in

Artois. This would compel the German Second and Seventh Armies, caught between the two attacks, to pull back to the Belgian border in order to protect their road and rail routes on the Douai plain.

The Artois-Loos offensive saw the first use of a gas cloud weapon by the British Army at the Battle of Loos. It was at this battle that the Rhodesian platoon 2/KRRC, which had already experienced countless horrors and sustained heavy casualties, was to experience more tragedy. Captain Brady, who had transferred to 2/KRRC some two months earlier, was to be a part of the experience.

Recognising the obvious signs of impending attack, the Germans spent the summer strengthening their trench system, ultimately constructing supporting line fortifications three miles deep.

THE BATTLE OF LOOS (25 September - 8 October 1915)

The Battle of Loos involved fifty-four French and thirteen British divisions on a front of some ninety kilometres running from Loos in the north to Vimy Ridge in the south. On 21 September the British began a four-day artillery bombardment of the German lines, intent on destroying the enemy trenches and clearing the barbed-wire entanglements. Over 250,000 shells were fired, seriously depleting the British store of munitions.

Order of Battle – Battle of Loos

At 06h30 on 25 September the attack was launched. The 1st Division, of which the 2/KRRC and the “Rhodesian” Platoon were a part, took the centre, facing a section of the line known as "Lone Tree," named after the only tree still standing between the two lines. The attack was to commence with the release of chlorine gas which was expected to blow into the German lines. This was to be followed immediately by an attack, with the honour of “going over” first, being given to the 2nd Infantry Brigade with 2/KRRC and the 1/Loyal North Lancs in the forefront. At 06h00 the whistles blew and the gas and smoke bombs were fired while the two battalions went over the top, walking or trotting towards the German trenches with rifles at the high port and bayonets fixed. Unfortunately, before the gas had reached half the distance across, the wind changed and blew it back onto the advancing battalions causing 2,500 casualties, though only seven died from the gas. Captain Brady and a number of Rhodesians were gassed but all were able to keep advancing7.

7 By 6 July 1915, the entire British army was equipped with the "smoke helmet" which was a flannel bag with a celluloid window, which entirely covered the head. In April 1916 the more effective British small box respirator was first introduced to British soldiers - a few months

Having endured the chlorine gas, 2/KRRC crossed No Man’s Land under the protection of a thick blanket of smoke, but it was the very thickness of it that was their undoing. It was not until the German trenches near Lone Tree had been reached that it was seen that the trenches were intact and strongly covered by wire. Regardless, 2/KRRC and 1st Loyal North Lancs, with the 2nd Sussex in immediate support continued the attack, but no progress could be made. Despite the great sacrifice and gallantry displayed by all ranks, the attack proved fruitless and after suffering great loss, 2/KRRC had to be withdrawn until the regiments on the flanks, more fortunate in finding the enemy's entanglements destroyed, had carried the Lone Tree trenches and taken some 400 prisoners. During the battle the Rhodesian Platoon suffered devastating casualties.

The British attack achieved some success north of Loos and by the end of the first day had passed through Loos village and reached the outskirts of the industrial town of Lens. There was also some success in the north where a German strong point - the Hohenzollern Redoubt - was stormed and taken. Elsewhere, the soldiers discovered that neither the German trenches nor the barbed-wire had been cleared by the four-day bombardment and they found themselves pinned down in No Man's Land by intense enemy artillery and machine guns.

Worthy of mention here is that despite these setbacks, the controversial General, Douglas Haig (nicknamed “The Butcher”), then Commander of I Corps, requested that two additional “New Army”8

Divisions, that had never seen combat, be brought forward. The “New Army” Divisions attacked on the afternoon of 26 September.

The delay in waiting for the New Army Divisions had allowed the German Fourth Army to bring in reserves which reinforced a new German Second Position located on higher ground with good views across the British attack area. When the New Army attacked, the German machine guns went to work, cutting them down by the hundreds. German soldiers climbed above their parapets and fired their rifles into the mass of men trying to advance, and still the New Army columns kept coming, and still the German machine guns fired. Finally, the British could go no further, blocked by impenetrable barbed-wire and brutal machine-gun and rifle fire. A German Regimental Diarist described the scene.

Never had the machine-gunners such straightforward work to do nor done it so unceasingly. The men stood on the fire-step, some even on the parapets, and fired exultantly into the mass of men advancing across the open grassland. As the entire field of fire was covered with the enemy's infantry the effect was devastating and they could be seen falling in hundreds.

A German soldier provides the following account:

We were very surprised to see them walking. We had never seen that before. The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. You didn't have to aim. We just fired into them.

The fierceness of the fighting during the Battle of Loos was such that only 2,000 of the 8,500 soldiers killed on the first day of the attack have a known grave. The death toll at Loos was greater than in any previous battle of the war. During the battle 2/KRRC lost 506 men – eighty-six killed, 328 wounded, seventy-six gassed and nineteen missing.

Among those killed at the Battle of Loos was Second Lieutenant John Kipling (1/Scots Guards), the only son of Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling. A shell blast had apparently ripped off young John Kipling’s face and with the fighting continuing, his body was never identified. Rudyard Kipling later wrote a haunting elegy to his son and to the legions of sons lost in the Great War:

That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given

To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes – to be cindered by fires

To be senselessly tossed and re-tossed in stale mutilation

before the Battle of the Somme. By January 1917, it had become the standard issue gas mask for all British soldiers.

8 The New Army, often referred to as Kitchener's Army or, disparagingly, Kitchener's Mob, was an (initially) all-volunteer army formed in the United Kingdom following the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War. It was created on the recommendation of Horatio Kitchener, then Secretary of State for War. The first New Army divisions were used at the Battle of Loos.

From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.

But who shall return us our children?

During the battle the British suffered 50,000 casualties. German casualties were estimated at approximately half the British total. The British failure at Loos contributed to Haig's replacement of General John French as Commander-in-Chief of the B.E.F. at the close of 1915, this despite Haig’s reckless sacrifice of thousands of British troops.

By this stage of the war the Rhodesian platoons had suffered appalling losses, only to be replenished by new drafts from Southern Rhodesia, to be followed later by further losses and further drafts. However, despite their losses, the Southern Rhodesians had distinguished themselves through their gallantry and had gained a reputation as brave and valiant soldiers and their sniping skills continued to receive wide acclaim.

In November 1915, the 3rd and 4th KRRC Battalions, having endured twelve grinding months on the Western Front, were sent to Salonika in neutral Greece to assist the Serbian Army which was in full retreat from Bulgarian forces.

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4.

THE SALONIKA CAMPAIGNOCTOBER 1915-NOVEMBER 1918

The Salonika Front is arguably one of the most forgotten in terms of where British and Commonwealth troops served in the Great War. The Salonika Front has become known as the “forgotten front” and the troops that fought there – “The Gardeners of Salonika”9 - could well be called the “forgotten army” of the First World War. The British troops of the British Salonika Force (B.S.F.) had many names for this theatre of war, some unpublishable, but the commonplace ‘Muckydonia’ (a play on the region’s other name, Macedonia) summed up how many of them felt about being there. The campaign was, from the British perspective, always destined to be a 'side show'. But when the moment came for the force to push north in September 1918, its assault along the front into Macedonia was so intense it bore comparison with the heaviest fighting of the Great War.

A result of the First Balkan War (1912-13) fought between the Balkan League, comprising Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, and the Ottoman Empire, was a reduction in size of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of an independent Albanian state while enlarging the territorial holdings of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. Dissatisfied with its share of the spoils, Bulgaria, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, in June 1913 (the Second Balkan War) - a result of which was the loss to Bulgaria of most of its Macedonian region to Serbia and Greece.

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Austria-Hungary delivered a series of ten demands to Serbia intentionally made unacceptable, intending to provoke a war with Serbia. When Serbia agreed to only eight of the ten demands, Austria-Hungary declared war on 28 July 1914. Serbia had an experienced army, having fought two successful Balkan wars in the previous two years, but it was also exhausted and poorly equipped, which led the Austro-Hungarians to believe that it would fall in less than a month. Serbia's strategy was to hold on as long as possible, while also constantly worrying about its hostile neighbour to the east, Bulgaria.

By 12 August, Austria-Hungary had amassed over 500,000 soldiers on Serbian frontiers, and Serbia mobilised some 450,000 troops, but because of the poor financial state of the Serbian economy and losses in the Balkan Wars, the Serbian army lacked much of the modern weaponry and equipment necessary to engage in combat with its larger and wealthier adversaries. Over the course of the following thirteen months the Serbians fought several battles against the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies, which though not suffering ultimate defeat, severely weakened the Serbian army.

Germany was also keenly interested in Serbia in that if Serbia fell, they would then have a rail link from Germany, through Austria-Hungary and down to Istanbul and beyond. This would allow the Germans to send military supplies and troops to help the Ottoman Empire.

On 7 October 1915 the Austro-Hungarians and Germans launched an assault on Serbia crossing the Drina and Sava rivers and after fierce street-by-street fighting, occupied Belgrade on 9 October. Serbia had appealed to the British and French governments for military support and in early October, a small two Division strong Franco-British force began landing at Salonika on the Aegean Sea coast. French forces numbered 34,000 and the British forces (the 10th ‘Irish’ Division), 14,000. Additional British reinforcements were soon to follow, including the Rhodesian Platoon of 3/KRRC. The French were under the command of General Sarrail and the British under Lieutenant General Sir Bryan Mahon.

On 14 October 1914, the Bulgarian Army attacked Serbia from the north of Bulgaria towards Niš and from the south towards Skopje. The Bulgarian First Army defeated the Serbian Second Army at the

9 Clemenceau, France’s wartime leader, scornfully branded the Allied forces at Salonika as “The Gardeners of Salonika” as they were perceived as doing little more than digging trenches.

Battle of Morava, while the Bulgarian Second Army defeated the Serbians at the Battle of Ovche Pole. With the Bulgarian breakthrough, the Serbian position became untenable; the main army in the north (around Belgrade) could either retreat, or be surrounded and forced to surrender.

Meanwhile, the newly arrived French and British divisions had marched north from Salonika under the command of General Sarrail. However, the British War Office was reluctant to advance too deep into Serbia, so the French divisions advanced on their own to the Vardar River. In the Battle of Kosovo the Serbs made a last and desperate attempt to join the two Allied divisions that had made a limited advance from the south. However, by the end of November the French Division had to retreat in the face of massive Bulgarian assaults. The British at Kosturino were also forced to retreat and by 12 December all Allied forces were back in neutral Greece. Fortunately the Bulgarian Army was not permitted by the German High Command to enter Greek territory, as they still hoped that the unpredictable Greeks would enter the war on their side.

With no relief coming from the Allied forces, Serbian army commander, Marshal Putnik, ordered a full retreat, south and west through Montenegro and into Albania. The weather was terrible, the roads poor, and the army had to help the tens of thousands of civilians who retreated with them with almost no supplies or food left. But the bad weather and poor roads worked for the refugees as the Central Powers forces could not press them hard enough, and so they evaded capture. Many of the fleeing soldiers and civilians did not make it to the coast, lost to hunger, disease and attacks by enemy forces and Albanian tribal bands. The circumstances of the retreat were

Serbian Army during its retreat towards Albania disastrous and all told, only some 155,000 Serbs, mostly soldiers, reached the Albanian coast on the Adriatic Sea. Despite the Central Powers' victory, the battered, seriously reduced and almost unarmed Serbian Army was carried to various Greek islands (many to Corfu) by Allied transport ships. The evacuation of the Serbian army from Albania was completed on 10 February 1916. The survivors were so weakened that thousands of them died from sheer exhaustion in the weeks after their rescue. Marshal Putnik had to be carried during the whole retreat and he died a bit more than a year later in a hospital in France. Six months after its evacuation, and having been rebuilt almost from scratch, the Serbian Army was again in the front lines.

It had been an almost complete victory for the Central Powers at a cost of around 67,000 casualties as compared to around 90,000 Serbians killed or wounded and 174,000 captured. The only flaw in the victory was the remarkable retreat of the Serbian Army. As a result of Serbia’s defeat, the Germans opened the railway line from Berlin to Constantinople, allowing Germany to prop up the Ottoman Empire.

Between November 1915 and January 1916 the British reinforcements – the 28th, 22nd, 26th and 27th Divisions - in that order - landed at Salonika. As part of the 27th Division were the 3rd and 4th KRRC Battalions of the 80th Infantry Brigade.

After withdrawing from Serbia the Allies first priority was to set up defensive positions around Salonika, assuming that Bulgarian forces would try and advance into Greece. The expected invasion never took place. Instead, the Bulgarians dug in and fortified their positions along the Greek-Serb border from the coast of Albania to Lake Doiran and the Bulgarian border.

In their turn, the Franco-British forces were chiefly engaged in the creation of a bastion about eight miles north of Salonika connecting with the Vardar marshes to the west and the lake defences of Langaza and Beshik to the east and so to the Gulf of Rendina (Orfano) and the Aegean Sea. The area became known as ‘The Birdcage’ on account of the immense quantity of wire used.

In January 1916, the British 80th Brigade, including the 3rd and 4th KRRC Battalions, was posted on the extreme right of the British line at Rendina Gorge on the Gulf of Rendina/Orfano, about forty miles from Salonika, where they were put to work entrenching their position. In due course the Allied Army, reinforced by a reconstituted Serbian Army of 80,000 and Russian and Italian forces, was brought up to a strength of 350,000 men, opposed to whom were 310,000 Germans, Austrians, Bulgars and Turks. Despite this build-up of troops there was very little action over the next four months. The bigger enemy was the weather and malaria.

According to the KRRC men’s diary, they claimed that "...the weather conditions are worse than the enemy itself". During the summer months in the central Struma valley the temperature could reach 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Men fainted in their scores while marching and one young soldier died on the

side of the road. Sometimes the rain would reduce the ground to a sea of mud – and with the heat and the rain came the mosquitoes and malaria which took a large toll amongst the soldiers.

In 1916/17, of the 300,000 British and French troops based in Salonika, some 120,000 became unfit for active service due to malaria. Allied with other diseases, at one point it reduced the effective strength of the Allied force to 100,000.

The casualties of the Central Powers in the war zone were also dramatic, but reportedly considerably lower: probably due to its forces holding the healthier higher ground, allied with better anti-malarial drug regimens and disease control measures.

On 26 May the perfidious, and still neutral Greeks, handed over to the Bulgarians the Fort at Rupel, a strategic fortification above the deep gorge along which the River Struma led into Bulgaria.

In late July 1916, after preparing Salonika’s defences, the Allies commenced their offensive, advancing to the River Struma and Lake Doiran without opposition and establishing a stable front, holding a line from the Gulf of Rendina on the right to Albania on the Adriatic on the left. The River

Men of the 1st Royal Irish Regiment marching into the Struma Valley, June 1916 Vardar divided the British from the French - the British being on the right of the line. The two KRRC Battalions were pushed forward from Rendina Gorge to the unfordable Struma, holding about six miles of the front between Lake Tahinos and the mouth of the Struma on the Gulf of Rendina. The fighting during this phase was not severe, though many casualties were caused by malaria, and it was only patrol work and small mobile columns that kept the troops from stagnating.

It was not until August that shots were first exchanged with the Bulgarians when on 17 August, a joint Bulgarian-German offensive was launched, just three days before a scheduled French offensive. The enemy force in front of the 80th Brigade outnumbered it occasionally, perhaps as much as by ten-to-one. So far as the two KRRC Battalions were concerned, an offensive movement was impossible, but a post on the further bank on the enemy's side of the Struma was occupied by two battalions, one of which was 3/KRRC.

On 23 August, a British column with Major Alexander MacLachlan in command, was tasked with blowing up three bridges over the River Angista, a tributary of the Struma in the vicinity of Kuchuk. The Rhodesian platoon and the remainder of 3/KRRC, commanded by Lieut. Colonel W. J. Long, was in support. The three bridges, despite heavy Bulgarian fire, were successfully blown and the columns withdrew with minimal casualties. The attack achieved early success thanks to surprise, but after two weeks the Allied forces held a defensive line with the B.S.F. taking up positions at Doiran.

THE MONASTIR OFFENSIVE (12 September – November 1916)

Having halted the Bulgarian offensive, the Allies staged a counterattack, the Monastir Offensive, starting on 12 September. The offensive intended to break the deadlock on the Macedonian Front by forcing the capitulation of Bulgaria and relieving the pressure on Romania. The offensive took the shape of a large battle and lasted for three months.

The terrain was rough and the Bulgarians were on the defensive, but the Allied forces made steady gains with the B.S.F. advancing into the Struma Valley to the east. On 30 September, after eighteen days of heavy fighting, the Serbian Drina Division finally captured Kajmakcalan from the exhausted 1st Infantry Brigade of the 3rd Balkan Infantry Division and achieved a breakthrough in the Bulgarian defensive line.

A major problem for the Bulgarians was that their army and resources were stretched to the limits from Dobruja to Macedonia and Albania. With the Germans heavily engaged on the Western Front in the Battle of the Somme, Germany could spare few reinforcements. Consequently, Bulgaria turned to the Ottoman Empire which provided some 24,600 men over October-November. With an impending offensive of the Romanian and Russian forces against the Bulgarian Third Army in Dobrudja (situated between the lower Danube River and the Black Sea), General Sarrail planned to use this by coordinating it with a renewed push against the Bulgarian Eleventh Army's ‘Kenali Line’ and eventually knock Bulgaria out of the war. On 4 October the Allies attacked with the French and Russians in the direction of Monastir. The Allies had 103 battalions and 80 batteries against 65 battalions and 57 batteries of the Central Powers.

In early October, with the French, Serbian and Russian forces engaged at Montasir, the B.S.F. launched diversionary operations on the River Struma towards Serres. The campaign was successful with the capture of Rupel Pass and advances were made to within a few miles of Serres. It was during this period that a fine piece of work was executed by No.2 “Rhodesian” Platoon, 3/KRRC, commanded at the time by Lieutenant F. D. Fletcher. Headquarters was anxious to capture a prisoner for interrogation purposes and Fletcher with the Rhodesians, who had honed their trench-raiding skills on the Western Front, volunteered for the job. With blackened faces and armed with crude but lethal trench-fighting weapons, the Rhodesians stealthily made it to the enemy trench line and quietly disposed of the sentries. After a sharp fight in the enemy trench and another with an enemy patrol, the raid was swiftly and successfully executed. It was also during this period, on 31 October, that the Rhodesians, with the remainder of 3/KRRC and a Shropshire Light Infantry battalion, took part in a successful holding attack against a whole Turkish Division. Their losses were very small. The Turks, who had relieved the Bulgarians, lost heavily and apparently thought a major attack had been repelled.

After several failed Serbian attacks against the Bulgarian defensive position in the area of the River Crna, the renewed Serbian forces finally crossed the left bank of the river at Brod on 18 October and fortified it. Over the next two weeks the battle raged back and forth with massive casualties suffered by both sides. On 7 November the Serbian artillery started intense fire against the Bulgarian force and after three days Bulgarian losses became so immense that on 10 November it abandoned its positions to the Serbians. Despite the arrival in early November of two more German Divisions to help bolster the Bulgarian Army, the French and Serbian Army captured Kaymakchalan, the highest peak of Nidže mountain, and on 19 November compelled the Central powers to abandon the town of Monastir. The Bulgarians established a new position on the Chervena Stena - Makovo - Gradešnica defensive line. Almost immediately it came under attack but this time the new position held firm because the Allies were exhausted, having reached the limits of their logistical capacity. Thus all French and Serbian attempts to break through the line were defeated and with the onset of winter, the front stabilized along its entire length. On 11 December General Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, called off the offensive.

An outcome of the Monastir Offensive was the depletion of the Rhodesian Platoon. The fighting had been intense in certain sectors and by January 1917, the veteran No. 2 “Rhodesian” Platoon had dwindled to a mere twenty-six men. The platoon’s Commanding Officer, Lieutenant A. H. Miller wrote: “I suppose there is no chance of reinforcements being sent to us for, if possible, it is our wish to keep the Rhodesian platoon going till the end”.

During 1917, there was comparatively little activity on the British part of the front in Macedonia. In March the two KKRC Battalions, as with the whole British 27th Division, withstood further Bulgarian

attacks. The Official History records the Bulgarians using gas for the first time in a bombardment on 17-18 March on British lines between Doiran and the Vardar, and French lines across the river. In the course of three nights they fired about 15 000 asphyxiating shells on a small sector of British trenches, inflicting about 113 casualties, of whom only one died. German and Bulgarian chemical harassment fire, with deadly poison and tear gas, directed mainly against artillery batteries, continued to the end of the war, causing their temporary neutralization.

On 22 April the battle for a British breakthrough in the Bulgarian positions began and continued intermittently until 9 May 1917. The assault commenced with a bitter four-day artillery barrage in which the British fired about 100,000 shells. As a result, the earthworks and some wooden structures in the front positions were destroyed. The Bulgarians also opened fire from their batteries between Vardar and Doiran. Bulgarian General Vladimir Vazov ordered fire day and night on the Allied positions. The initial several-hour struggle between the British and Bulgarian batteries was followed by a one-hour Bulgarian counter-barrage in which 10,000 shells were fired.

Two days later, on the night of 24-25 April, the British infantry companies began an attack against the Bulgarian 2nd Brigade and after a bloody fight, managed to take the "Nerezov", "Knyaz Boris" and "Pazardzhik" positions. Bulgarian counter-attacks repulsed the British. The artillery duel continued until 9 May but due to heavy casualties the British had to abandon all attacks. The British lost 12,000 killed, wounded and captured of which more than 2,250 were buried by the Bulgarian defenders.

By April General Sarrail’s army had been reinforced to the point that he had twenty-five divisions: 6 French, 6 Serbian, 7 British, 1 Italian, 3 Greek and 2 Russian. In late April the Allies launched a second major offensive which made little impression on the Bulgarian defences. The main thrust was made by French and Serbian forces to the west while the British launched diversionary attacks at Lake Doiran. The British forces faced some hard fighting. The attacks gained a considerable amount of ground and resisted strong counter-attacks, and any question about the fighting ability of the Bulgarians was dispelled. However, both attacks eventually failed with major losses. After the failed Lake Doiran offensive, the British retreated to their original positions behind the Jumeaux Ravine; the Bulgarians erected banners to tell them ‘We know you are going to the mountains, so are we ’. The British action in May triggered a series of attacks elsewhere on the front by the other Allies, known as the Battle of Vardar. The campaign settled down to a stalemate. The offensive was called off on May 21 and the B.S.F. took up a defensive position on the Struma. For the next six months little of major consequence took place.

At the commencement of 1918 the two KRRC Battalions, with the remainder of the 80th Brigade, moved northward to the Struma valley. Here a number of patrol encounters took place and much skill was displayed, particularly by 4/KRRC on 15 and 16 April. By this time the vacillating Greeks had determined to throw in their lot with the Allies and brought up troops by degrees to the amount of about 400,000 men. This of course helped the general situation and enabled the British Government to withdraw some of its battalions to France, where, in view of the successful German advance, their services were badly needed. Among the battalions to be withdrawn was 4/KRRC which returned to the Western Front in the summer of 1918, embarking at Itea on 25th June.

In late June 3/KRRC, with the remainder of the 80th Brigade quit the Struma Valley and after a march of about sixty miles westward took over the position previously held by the French in mountainous country west of the River Vardar. At this point the enemy's shell-fire was heavy and on 1 August the trenches held by 3/KRRC were unsuccessfully attacked. However, partly through malaria and partly by the enemy's shell-fire, 3/KRRC losses had been very heavy, and at the beginning of September it could only muster for fighting purposes about 130 rank and file.

In the middle of September a general advance was begun. The French and Serbians broke through the enemy's line between Monastir and the Vardar, and a day or two later a successful attack was made by British and Greek troops at Doiran, the enemy retreating in disorder. The 80th Brigade was not part of the force engaged but shared in the subsequent pursuit of the enemy. By 21st September the

Bulgarians were in full retreat through the Kosturino Pass and on the 22nd September they crossed the frontier into Serbia, but an Armistice with the Bulgarians on the 30th September brought hostilities to a close.

In October 3/KRRC and the Rhodesians marched into Bulgaria. Like a pack of dominoes, Bulgaria then Austria fell and the whole Central Axis began to crumble. The war began in the Balkans and arguably ended there thanks in large part to the supreme efforts of the British forces.

By the end of the war, of the original seventy men of No.2 “Rhodesian” Platoon, 3/KRRC that had arrived at Salonika in December 1915, only twelve remained. Fifty-eight Rhodesians died in this harsh and beautiful place where so many soldiers now lie buried in a corner of that foreign field.

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5.

TRENCH WARFARE

Trench warfare has become a powerful symbol of the futility of war. Its image is of young men going "over the top" into a hail of fire leading to near-certain death. It is associated with needless slaughter in appalling conditions, combined with the view that brave men went to their deaths because of incompetent and narrow-minded commanders who failed to adapt to the new conditions of trench warfare: class-ridden and backward-looking generals put their faith in the attack, believing superior numbers, morale and dash would overcome the weapons and moral inferiority of the defender. The British and Empire troops on the Western Front were commonly referred to as "lions led by donkeys"10. It has been estimated that up to one third of Allied casualties on the Western Front were incurred in the trenches.

For the Allies, life in the trenches was far worse than for the Germans. Often German trenches were even described as comfortable, with electricity, kitchens and beds (Fussell 1977: p. 44). Conversely, Allied trenches (left) were usually temporary in nature, squalid, badly drained and ill supported against cave-in and damage. Where the trenches had been bombed out, the front line sometimes consisted only of shell holes in which the men fought and died.

As Fussell describes it, there were usually three lines of trenches: a front-line trench located fifty yards to a mile from its enemy counterpart, guarded by tangled lines of barbed wire; a support

trench line several hundred yards back; and a reserve line several hundred yards behind that. A well-built trench did not run straight for any distance, as that would invite the danger of sweeping fire along a long stretch of the line; instead it zigzagged every few yards.

There were three different types of trenches: firing trenches, lined on the side facing the enemy by steps where defending soldiers would stand to fire machine guns and throw grenades at the advancing offense; communication trenches; and "saps," shallower positions that extended into no-man’s-land and afforded spots for observation posts, grenade-throwing and machine gun-firing. In total the trenches built during World War I, laid end-to-end, would stretch some 25,000 miles - 12,000 of those miles occupied by the Allies, and the rest by the Central Powers.

While the trench system protected the soldiers to a large extent from the worst effects of modern firepower, trench life was horrific. For many veterans the dominant feature of life in the trenches was the problem of trench rats. Rats – big, brown, black and bloated - thrived literally in their millions among trenches in most Fronts of the war. Trench conditions were ideal for rats. Empty food cans were piled in their thousands throughout “No Man's Land”, heaved over the top on a daily basis. Aside from feeding on rotting food in discarded cans, rats would invade dug-outs in search of food and shelter, crawling across the face of sleeping men in the process. McLaughlin (Ragtime Soldiers, p.54) writes: “On the whole...they [the trenches] were fetid holes in which men lived a dank, subterranean existence like constantly endangered moles, sometimes asphyxiated by their braziers or buried alive by shell-fire”.

10 The phrase, “lions led by donkeys” is thought to have originated in 1854/55 during the Crimean War when a letter was reportedly sent home by a British soldier quoting a Russian officer who had said that British soldiers were ‘lions commanded by asses'.

As they gorged themselves, many rats reportedly grew to the size of cats. However the feature that caused the most revulsion among soldiers was that rats openly fed on the decaying remains of comrades killed while advancing across No Man's Land. Attacking and eating the eyes of a corpse first, rats would steadily work their way through the remainder of the body in a short space of time. One soldier described finding a group of dead bodies while on patrol: "I saw some rats running from under the dead men's greatcoats, enormous rats, fat with human flesh. My heart pounded as we edged towards one of the bodies. His helmet had rolled off. The man displayed a grimacing face, stripped of flesh; the skull bare, the eyes devoured and from the yawning mouth leapt a rat.” The earth contained the remains of thousands of rotting corpses – a virtual rat’s banquet.

Rats were not the only source of infection and nuisance. Lice were a never-ending problem, breeding in the seams of filthy clothing and causing men to itch unceasingly. Lice caused Trench Fever, a painful disease that began suddenly with severe pain followed by high fever. Recovery - away from the trenches - took up to three months. Lice were not identified as the cause of Trench Fever until 1918. Frogs, slugs, beetles and nits also crowded the trench with many men choosing to shave their heads to avoid nits. Trench Foot, a fungal infection of the feet caused by cold, wet and unsanitary trench conditions, was also a problem. It could turn gangrenous and result in amputation.

Patrols would often be sent out into No Man’s Land. Some men would be tasked with repairing or adding barbed wire to the front line. Others would go out to assigned listening posts, hoping to pick up valuable information from the enemy lines. Sometimes enemy patrols would meet in No Man's Land. They were then faced with the option of hurrying on their separate ways or engaging in hand-to-hand

fighting. They could not afford to use their handguns while patrolling in No Man's Land for fear of the machine gun fire it would inevitably attract.

Finally, no overview of trench life can avoid the aspect that instantly hit new-comers to the lines: the appalling stench given off by the numerous conflicting sources. Rotting carcasses, human and animal, lay around in their thousands. For example, some 200,000 men were killed on the Somme battlefields, many of whom lay in shallow graves. The reek of rotting corpses was not easy to take. Lieutenant Hutchinson, a Rhodesian serving with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders wrote of his trench cutting into a line of graves from an earlier battle which contained grisly ‘semi-digested’ corpses: “We dig; a limb, already black, oozes from the sodden ground; a hand propped against barbed wire waves a continual ‘good bye’” (Ragtime Soldiers p.53).

In her memoirs (Testament of Youth, 1933), British writer, feminist and pacifist Vera Brittain, provides the following extract from a letter from her fiancé Roland Leighton, an officer who served with the Worcestershire Regiment in France.

Among this chaos of twisted iron and splintered timber and shapeless earth are the fleshless, blackened bones of simple men who poured out their red, sweet wine of youth unknowing, for nothing more tangible than Honour or their Country's Glory or another's Lust of Power. Let him who thinks that war is a glorious golden thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking Honour and Praise and Valour and Love of Country. Let him look at a little pile of sodden grey rags that cover half a skull and a shin bone and what might have been its ribs, or at this skeleton lying on its side, resting half-crouching as it fell, supported on one arm, perfect but that it is headless, and with the tattered clothing still draped around it; and let him realise how grand and glorious a thing it is to have distilled all Youth and Joy and Life into a foetid heap of hideous putrescence.

Brady wrote of finding seven corpses, four German and three British, in the bottom of a trench. A dozen men had difficulty in pulling even one of them from the mire for burial as the clothing and equipment had become mud and water-soaked and enormously heavy.

Overflowing latrines would give off a foul odour and add to the already overpowering stench. Brady (Ragtime Soldiers p.54) comments on trench hygiene: “From the sanitation point of view you can visualize the state of things which must exist with the men crowded in a stooping posture for forty-eight hours, unable to move either to the rear, right or left without becoming at once a target for rifle fire at point-blank range”. What he was getting at was that the men had to defecate and urinate where they stood or crouched. Since they were often reduced to boiling water from the trench bottom and considering that trenches often contained unburied corpses and dead and rotting rats, it is surprising that the appalling conditions did not kill the men.

Men who had not bathed in weeks or months would emit the suffocating stench of dried sweat, though the feet were accepted as giving off the most disgusting odour. The smell of cordite, lingering poison

gas, creosol (used to stave off disease and infection), rotting sandbags, stagnant mud, cigarette smoke and cooking food added to the all pervading stench.

The soldiers suffered physical and psychological consequences of the trench war. In the words of writer Philip Gibbs, those in the trenches “...lived in a world which is as different from this known world of ours as though they belonged to another race of men inhabiting another planet” . Simply staying physically and mentally in control of oneself in the trenches required courage of a high order.

Combatants on the Western Front faced extremely harsh conditions in the muddy and rat infested trenches. Left alone with their thoughts, soldiers would experience a variety of emotions including depression, fear, confusion, helplessness and regret. A. D. Macleod (Journal of the Society of Medicine, 2004, p. 87) writes that “The profound psychological effects of trench warfare, compounded by the effects of “shell shock” - a helplessness appearing variously as panic and being scared, flight and/or an inability to reason, sleep, walk or talk - drove many soldiers to the brink of suicide”.

Estimated suicides during the Great War still remain unknown. According to the Military historians, a large number of combatants committed suicide between 1914 and 1918. Deeply depressed and physically worn-out soldiers took their lives inside the trenches. In his evidence before the War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock, J. F. C. Fuller said healthy fear degenerated first into indifference and later into obsessive fear, and the chances of this happening were greater than in previous wars because of new military technologies that increasingly depersonalized war. Soldiers who could not control their fear sought the physical way out of misery, self-mutilation or even suicide. Since the early months of the war, desperate British and Empire soldiers killed themselves, or attempted to. The rate among soldiers increased in the final phase of the conflict. In August 1918 there were officially 3,500 cases. In November, the last month of the war, there were more than 5,100. Few would doubt that the true figure was higher.

In 1917, 2nd Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon, the renowned WWI poet wrote ‘Suicide in the Trenches’:

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

6.

2/KRRC CONTINUE THE FIGHT

In early June 1916, the “Rhodesian” Platoon of 2/KRRC was about sixty strong but had incurred heavy losses when “going over the top” in an attack on the Triangle near Fosse 8 in the Loos sector. In another attack on Wood Lane seventeen members of the platoon were lost. In a further attack at the same time, the platoon’s strength stood at seventeen or eighteen and thirteen were lost, including two killed, leaving just four or five men. The platoon was rebuilt from the wounded and a fresh draft of twenty-five Rhodesians and stood at ninety strong on 30 June, the eve of the Battle of the Somme.

THE SOMME OFFENSIVE (1st July - 18th November 1916)The Battle of the Somme was one of the largest of World War I and one of humanity's bloodiest. More than one million men were killed or wounded on the Somme.

At Verdun, French and German troops were bogged down in a battle of attrition. The aim of the joint French-British Somme offensive was to relieve the pressure on Verdun and push the British line forward in what was termed “The Big Push”. The attack was preceded by an eight-day bombardment of the German lines beginning on 24 June. The expectation was that the bombardment would destroy all forward German defences, enabling the attacking British troops to virtually walk across No Man's Land and take possession of the German front lines from the battered Germans. 1,500 British guns, together with a similar number of French guns, were used in the bombardment.

Following the artillery bombardment, a creeping barrage would precede the advancing infantry to the German front line and then onwards to the second and third trench lines. Twenty-seven divisions (750,000 men) went into the attack of which over 80% (610,000 men) were from the B.E.F. Ranged against them in the German trenches were sixteen divisions of the German Second Army. The odds were apparently stacked heavily in the B.E.F’s favour.

However, the advance artillery bombardment failed to destroy either the German front line barbed wire or the heavily-built concrete bunkers which the Germans had carefully and robustly constructed. During the bombardment the German troops sought effective shelter in the concrete bunkers.

British troops advance during the Battle of the Somme

Emerging from the bunkers after the bombardment, the Germans manned their machine guns with great effect.

The attack was set for 07h30 on 1 July. At 07h30 whistles blew all along the British Front Line north of the Somme River. Thousands of British troops clambered over the trench parapet into No Man's Land making for the German Front Line, among them the 90-strong Rhodesian Platoon of 2/KRRC.

The first attacking wave of the offensive was by no means a surprise to the German forces. Consequently the B.E.F. made strikingly little progress and for the most part was forced back into its trenches by the deadly German machine gun response. Many troops were killed or wounded the moment they stepped out of the front lines into No Man's Land. The attack soon stalled and deteriorated into disaster.

The tragedy and heartbreak of the day unfolded as tens of thousands of British troops were cut down and wounded or killed by German machine-gun and rifle fire, many not even reaching the German wire on the other side of No Man's Land. For the Rhodesian Platoon the outcome was catastrophic.

Of the ninety Rhodesians present at roll call on the evening of 30 June, just ten remained alive and unwounded by the end of 1 July. Despite the appalling losses during that first day - 58,000 British troops alone - Haig persisted with the offensive in the following days. The first day on the Somme was the first of 141 days of the Battle of the Somme. In the days and weeks that followed little progress was made.

After two weeks of battle, the Germans were still holding firm in the north and centre of the British sector—here the advance had stopped and the Allied line had been split into sections by a right angle at Longueval-Delville Wood, meaning that an advance on a wide front would result in the attacking forces diverging as they advanced. In order to "straighten the line", General Haig decided to exploit the advances made in the south by taking and holding Longueval. This would protect the right flank and allow the Allies to advance in the north and align their left with that of the XIII Corps on the right. The XIII Corps, of which 1/KRRC and a few Rhodesians were a part, was ordered to capture Longueval.

To capture Longueval, the XIII Corps would first have to clear Trônes Wood and Delville Wood. If left in German hands, Delville Wood would permit unhindered shelling of the town and would provide ideal cover for the assembly of German reinforcements for a counterattack on Longueval.

The Division Commander of the 9th Scottish Division, Major-General W. T. Furse, ordered that once the town had been secured, the 27th Infantry Brigade of the 9th (Scottish) Division was to take Delville Wood. The 1st South African Brigade was to be kept in reserve.

The attack on Longueval met with initial success - then resistance stiffened. Furthermore, the 27th Brigade which was intended for the attack on Delville Wood had been committed in support of the 26th Brigade in the attack on Longueval. Major-General Furse thus had no option but to commit his last reserve—the 1st South African Brigade.

THE BATTLE OF DELVILLE WOOD

The 1st South Africa Infantry Brigade comprised the 1st Infantry Regiment (Cape), the 2nd Infantry Regiment (Natal and Orange Free State), the 3rd Infantry Regiment (Transvaal and Rhodesia) of which “A” Company included some ninety Rhodesians, and the 4th Infantry Regiment (South African Scottish). Delville Wood was the 1st South Africa Infantry Brigade's first engagement.

With the 1st South African Infantry Regiment engaged in a supporting role in an attack on the German second line on the Longueval-Bazentin le Petit ridge, the remaining three South African regiments were to take and hold Delville Wood as soon as the entire town of Longueval was in Allied hands.

Furse thus ordered Brigadier General Henry Lukin to deploy his 1st South African Brigade to advance and capture Delville Wood as soon as Longueval was in Allied hands. However, due to the limited progress being made in Longueval, Lukin was ordered to “take the wood at all costs” and instructed that his advance was to proceed, even if the 26th and 27th Brigades had not captured the northern part of the town.

At 06h00 on 15 July 1916, the three remaining regiments advanced towards the wood with the 2nd and 3rd Regiments in the lead, followed by the 4th Regiment which was in support. The 3rd Regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. E. F. Thackeray, was sent to the far side of the wood, the 2nd Regiment off to the north and “C” Company, 2nd Regiment manned the southern perimeter close to Longueval.

The South Africans advanced and their broad line of skirmishers pushed its way rapidly through the wood, sweeping all opposition before it. By noon they occupied the whole tract with the exception of the north-west corner. This was the corner which abutted upon the houses north of Longueval, and the murderous machine-guns in these buildings kept the South Africans at bay. By night, the whole perimeter of the wood had been occupied, and the brigade was stretched round the edges of the trees and undergrowth. Already they were suffering heavily, not only from the Longueval guns on their left, but from the heavy German artillery which had their range to a nicety and against which there was no defence. With patient valour they held their line and endured the long horror of the shell-fall during the night.

By 10h00 casualties were mounting. Later during the morning, the 3rd Regiment (Tvl/Rhod) progressed well towards the east and north east of the wood taking three German officers and 130 men prisoner, but their losses, and those of the other South African units were very heavy. By 14h40, Lt. Colonel Tanner reported to Lukin that he had secured the whole wood, with the exception of a strong German position in the north west adjoining Longueval. Through the whole of the 16th the shelling was terribly severe, the missiles pitching from three separate directions into the projecting salient. As dusk fell, the South Africans and Rhodesians manning the perimeters, entrenched themselves, despite non-stop enemy shelling and sniping. Through the whole of the 16th the German shelling was terribly severe, the missiles pitching from three separate directions into the projecting salient.

During the night of 16/17 July the north-west corner of Delville Wood was subjected to an Allied artillery barrage to support a combined attack by the 1st South African Infantry Regiment and the 27th Brigade, both of which had been called up in support. The Germans were becoming more active in the north western sector of Delville Wood and at 14h00 German batteries began bombarding the wood followed by an attack from the north-west, but they were halted and then driven back by a counter-attack. During the night of 17/18 July the British artillery fired on the Germans who were east of Delville Wood with many shells falling short, some amongst the South Africans. This was followed at 08h00 on 18 July by a German artillery barrage on the wood, but this time from three sides. The bombardment continued for seven-and-a-half hours. At times the incidence of explosions was seven per second. On that day, in an area less than one square mile, 20,000 shells fell. Such was the ferocity of the fighting that for every one South African or Rhodesian wounded, four were killed.

All companies were by now calling for reinforcements or requesting authority to withdraw from the area being pounded by artillery. The reply was that "...Delville Wood is to be held at all costs". Casualties were mounting by the hour in all sectors and in the early afternoon, “A” and “C” Companies of the 3rd Infantry Regiment (Tvl/Rhod) were overrun by the Germans, who approached from the rear through the devastated wood. Mud had caused most weapons to stop working and the troops had now been without food for over seventy-two hours, and more importantly – they were now without water. The terrain all but dictated that most of the combat within the wood was hand-to-hand fighting and casualties were high.

Another German attack at 17h00 was rebuffed but by now Companies were reduced to so few men that they could no longer be considered as viable fighting units. The South Africans and Rhodesians still held an uncertain perimeter but German incursions through their line into the wood were now becoming more and more frequent, simply due to the lack of troops to cover the long perimeter line.

The Germans commenced their advance from the north into Delville Wood at 06h00 on 19 July, attacking “B” Company of the 3rd (Tvl/Rhod) Regiment. The 2nd Regiment had been decimated the previous day and had left a large gap on the left flank of the 3rd Regiment and this was where the German penetration was made.

The Wood was by now devoid of any vegetation and German machine guns and snipers were taking their toll. Continued calls for reinforcements were not met as fighting on all remaining fronts prevented any troop movement and had already consumed all available reserves. Despite their perilous situation the South African survivors continued to fight. During the whole of the 19th these fine South African and Rhodesian soldiers held on against heavy pressure.

However, with so few men left, the German assault could not be countered and the remaining members of the 3rd Regiment, of which there were few, were taken prisoner.

At 16h15 Brigadier-General H. W. Higginson of the 53rd Brigade reported that the Suffolk Regiment and 6th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment had been ordered to relieve the South Africans. When the Suffolks and Berks eventually reached them, Thackeray and his remaining two officers, both wounded, led the 120 survivors of the 3rd (Tvl/Rhod) Regiment out of the Wood. Sadly, the contribution from most of the Rhodesians had ended that day. Only ten Rhodesians made it out of the Wood with another 80 Rhodesians killed, missing or captured.

After finally reaching safety, Lt. Col. Thackeray reported: "I am glad to report that the troops under my command carried out your instructions to hold Delville Wood at all costs and that not a single detachment of this regiment retired from their position, either on the perimeter of the Wood or from the support trenches."

Total 3rd (Tvl/Rhod) Regiment casualties were 771, of whom 190 were captured or missing and 581 killed.

One of the few Rhodesian soldiers’ of who survived the first day said of it:

“God knows I never wish to see such horrible sights again...for a moment you would be rational, and just long for the one and only thing that seemed possible – death...at times I wished it would come fast, anything to get out of that terrible death trap and murderous place.” (McDonald, p.62)

A South African Delville Wood survivor described the day:

Every semblance of a trench seemed full of dead, sodden, squelchy, swollen bodies. Fortunately the blackening faces were invisible except when Verey lights lit up the indescribable scene. Not a tree

stood whole in that wood. Food and water were very short and we had not the faintest idea when any more would be obtainable. We stood and lay on putrefying bodies and the wonder was that the disease (dysentery) did not finish off what the shells of the enemy had started. There was hand-to-hand fighting with knives, bombs, and bayonets; cursing and brutality on both sides such as men can be responsible for when it is a question of "your life or mine”.

By the time Delville Wood was finally cleared of Germans on 3 September, not one tree in the wood was left untouched and the immediate landscape was littered with just the stumps of what had been trees. It was not surprising that men who fought there referred to it as the “Devil’s Wood”.

Historians agree that the losses incurred by the South African Infantry Brigade holding Delville Wood had no strategic purpose, as did that of the entire Somme offensive, of which Delville Wood formed a small part.

During the first half of 1917 the Rhodesian Platoon of 2/KRRC was, for the most part, engaged in operations on the Flanders coast, except when “at rest”. Rest generally lasted about 4 days during which the battalion underwent retraining, parading, inspections, boxing and playing soccer. Unfortunately the rest was sometimes interrupted when, as experienced by the Rhodesians, they were called on to destroy enemy communication lines or rebuild demolished railway lines. Nevertheless, the majority of rest periods alleviated the constant threat of death and the psychological effects of the constant stress and trauma of trench warfare and to some extent, renewed most men.

While occupying front sectors of the line and being called on to participate in minor battles, the Rhodesian platoon continued to suffer losses. In an engagement at Lens on 2 July 1917 a Rhodesian, Captain Collins, was wounded. He had been hit twice in the same leg and in the hand by bullets, but kept going until a piece of shrapnel sliced cleanly through his steel helmet and cut into his skull. During the same action a shell hit eight men of 2/KRRC and all were literally blown to bits along with sixteen horses. Eight days later on 10 July, greater tragedy was to befall 2/KRRC and the Rhodesian platoon at Nieuport.

OPERATION HUSH (NIEUPORT, JULY 1917), THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES

Germans occupied most of the Belgian coast and used its ports as bases for submarine and surface raiders which were sinking British ships and harassing British ports and the critical supply routes across the English Channel. The threat to British naval supremacy resulted in a proposal that an amphibious landing be made on the Belgian coast, supported by a breakout attack from Nieuport and the Yser bridgehead. It was called “Operation Hush”.

In early May, Haig set the timetable for his Flanders offensive (The Third Battle of Ypres), with 7 June the date for the preliminary attack on Messines Ridge. A week after the Battle of Messines Ridge, Haig gave his three objectives to his Army commanders - wearing out the enemy, securing the Belgian coast and connecting with the Dutch frontier. This was to be achieved by the capture of Passchendaele Ridge, an advance on Roeselare and “Operation Hush”, an attack along the coast with an amphibious landing, with the proviso that...if manpower and artillery were insufficient, only the first part of the plan might be fulfilled. On 30 April 1917 Haig told General Gough of the Fifth Army that he would command the "Northern Operation" and the coastal force, despite Cabinet approval for the offensive not being granted until 21 June. On 20 June, the British XV Corps took over the French sector on the Belgian coast and the responsibility for implementing “Operation Hush”.

On the east side of the Yser River a small part of land was still in the hands of the French army on the location where the river flowed into the North Sea at a city called Nieuport. This sector was taken over on 4 July from the French by the British 1st Division, some 600 yards north of the Yser.

Commencing in the North Sea, the 2nd Infantry Brigade’s 2/KRRC and 1st Northampton battalions occupied a 1400 yard frontage in the “dune“ trenches. The two battalions had the 97th Infantry Brigade on their right.

The German MarinesKorps Flandern patrols detected the British-French changeover on the 20th. A report was sent to MarinesKorps Flandern Commander von Schroeder who correctly interpreted it as the prelude to a British attack along the coast. Schroeder immediately started planning “Operation Strandfest” (“Beach Party”), a pre-emptive strike to eliminate the Yser bridgehead. Meanwhile, the British set about improving the defences in the bridgehead. Australian tunnellers were used to lay land mines and bombs under the German trenches but their work was not complete when “Operation Strandfest” began. Nor was all the British artillery in place. Only 176 of the planned 583 guns and howitzers were available to defend the bridgehead. On the 6 July, the MarinesKorps Flandern began a half-hearted artillery bombardment, which continued for the next three days.

Fog and low cloud had prevented detection of the German build-up and eager to determine the reason behind the German bombardment, the Rhodesian Platoon of “B” Company, 2/KRRC, under 2nd Lieut. T. P. McDowell, was sent to carry out a raid for interrogation purposes. Unfortunately the German soldier they captured was killed along with one Rhodesian. Seven other Rhodesians, including McDowell, were wounded.

At 05h30 on 10 July the massed German artillery, including three 24cm naval guns, shore batteries and 58 artillery batteries, opened up on the British positions in the bridgehead, demolishing all but one of the bridges over the Yser in the process and isolating the 2/KRRC and Northamptonshire battalions. Mustard gas was used for the first time in the barrage.

The tragedy that unfolded was recorded by Arthur Conan Doyle (The British Campaign in France and Flanders, Volume 6, 1917) who at the time was visiting the British and French front lines as a war correspondent:

“The seven previous weeks of comparative peace was broken by one tragic incident, which ended in the practical annihilation of two veteran battalions which held a record second to none in the Army....The 1st Division had taken over the sector which was next to the sea, close to the small town of Nieuport. The frontage covered was 1400 yards... The positions had not been determined by the British commander, but were the same as those formerly occupied by the French. It was evident that they were exceedingly vulnerable and that any serious attempt upon the part of the Germans might lead to disaster, for the front line was some six hundred yards beyond the Yser River, and lay among sand dunes where the soil was too light to construct proper trenches or dug-outs. The river was crossed by three or four floating bridges, which, as the result showed, were only there so long as the enemy guns might choose. The supporting battalions were east of the river, but the two battalions in the trenches were to the west, and liable to be cut off should anything befall the bridges behind them.... Upon July 10, the day of the tragedy, the two battalions in front were the 2nd King's Royal Rifles, next to the sea, and the 1st Northamptons, upon their right.... The story of what actually occurred may be told from

This photograph, from a German source, shows an overrun 2/KRRC trench following Operation Strandfest in July 1917. The bunker was in the extreme northern position on the Western Front and directly overlooked the beach and the North Sea; both of which are visible in the background.

the point of view of the Riflemen [2/KRRC], who numbered about 550 on the day in question. Three companies, A, D, and B [of which the Rhodesian platoon was a part], in the order given from the left, were in the actual trenches, while C Company was in immediate support. The night of July 9-10 was marked by unusually heavy fire, which caused a loss of seventy men to the battalion. It was clear to Colonel Abadie and his officers that serious trouble was brewing. An equal shell-fall was endured by the Northamptons on the right, and their casualties were nearly as heavy. So weakened was A Company in its post along the sand dunes that it was drawn into reserve in the morning of July 10, and C Company took its place. During this night an officer and twenty men, all Rhodesians, from B Company, were pushed forward upon a raid, but lost nine of their number on their return. From 8:50 in the morning until 1 p.m. the fire was exceedingly heavy along the whole line of both battalions, coming chiefly from heavy guns, which threw shells capable of flattening out any dug-out or shelter which could be constructed in such loose soil. For hour after hour the men lay motionless in the midst of these terrific ear-shattering explosions, which sent huge geysers of sand into the air and pitted with deep craters the whole circumscribed area of the position. It was a horrible ordeal, borne by both battalions with the silent fortitude of veterans. Many were dead or shattered, but the rest lay nursing the breech-blocks of their rifles and endeavouring to keep them free from the drifting sand which formed a thick haze over the whole position.... There was no telephone connection between the Rifles' Headquarters and the advanced trenches, but Lieutenant Gott made several journeys to connect them up, receiving dangerous wounds in the attempt. About twelve, the dug-out of B Company was blown in,

and a couple of hours later that of C Company met the same fate, the greater part of the officers in each case being destroyed. An orderly brought news also that he had found the dug-out of D Company with its inmates dead, and a dead Rifleman sentry lying at its door.... The telephone wire to the rear had long been cut, and the doomed battalions had no means of signalling their extreme need, though the ever-rising clouds of sand were enough to show what they were enduring. No message of any sort seems to have reached them from the rear. The fire was far too hot for visual signalling, and several pigeons which were released did not appear to reach their destination. With sinking hearts, shaken and dazed survivors waited for

the infantry attack which they knew to be at hand....

The divisional artillery was doing what it could from the other side of the Yser, but the volume of fire from the heavies was nothing as compared with the German bombardment. To add to the misery of the situation, a number of German aeroplanes were hawking backwards and forwards, skimming at less than 100 feet over the position, and pouring machine-gun fire upon every darker khaki patch upon the yellow sand....

Great hopes were entertained that some diversion would be effected by the gunboats upon the flank, but for some reason there was no assistance from this quarter. Hour after hour passed, and the casualties increased until the dead and wounded along the line of both battalions were more numerous than the survivors. At 3 p.m. the regimental dug-out of 2/KRRC showed signs of collapse under the impact of two direct hits. Those who could move betook themselves to an unfinished tunnel in the sand in which a handful of Australian miners were actually working. These men had changed their picks for their rifles, and were ready and eager to help in the defence of the position. In little groups, unable to communicate with each other, each imagining itself to be the sole survivor, the men

waited for the final German rush. At 7:15 it came. A division of German marines made the attack, some skirting the British line along the seashore and approaching from the flank or even from the rear. As many 2/KRRC Riflemen as could be collected had joined the Australians in the tunnel, but before they could emerge the Germans were dropping bombs down the three ventilation shafts, while they sprayed liquid fire down the entrance. The men who endured this accumulation of horrors had been under heavy fire for twenty-four hours with little to eat or drink, and it would not have been wonderful if their nerve had now utterly deserted them. Instead of this, everyone seems to have acted with the greatest coolness. "The Colonel called to the Riflemen to sit down, and they did so with perfect discipline." By this means the spray of fire passed over them. The entrances were blown in, and the last seen of Colonel Abadie was when, revolver in hand, he dashed out to sell his life as dearly as possible. From this time the handful of survivors, cut off from their Colonel by the fall of part of the roof, saw or heard no more of him. The few groups of men, 2/KRRC or Northamptons, who were scattered about in the sandy hollows, were overwhelmed by the enemy, the survivors being taken. Four officers, who had been half-buried in the tunnel, dug their way out, and finding that it was now nearly dark and that the Germans were all round them, proceeded to make their way as best they could back to the bank of the river. An artillery liaison officer made a gallant reconnaissance and reported to the others that there was a feasible gap in the new line which the enemy was already digging. The adjutant of the battalion, with the second-in-command, and his few comrades, who included an Australian corporal, crept forward in the dusk, picking their way among the Germans. Altogether, there were 4 officers, 20 Australians, and 15 Riflemen. One of the Australians, named McGrady, was particularly cool and helpful, but was unfortunately killed before the party reached safety.... As the British emerged into the gloom from one end of the tunnel, a party of Germans began to enter at the other, but were so skilfully delayed by two Riflemen, acting as rear-guard, that they were unable to stop the retreat. The men streamed out at the farther end under the very noses of their enemies, and crept swiftly in small parties down to the river, which at this point is from 70 to 100 yards broad. Across their path lay a camouflage screen some twelve feet high, which had been set on fire by the shells. It was a formidable obstacle, and held them up for some time, but was eventually crossed. Here they were faced by the problem of the broken bridges, and several were shot while endeavouring to find some way across. Finally, however, the swimmers helping the others, the greater number, including the four KRRC officers, got safely across, being nearly poisoned by gas shells as they landed upon the farther side.

So ended an experience which can have had few parallels even in this era of deadly adventure. Of the 2/KRRC, it was found next day that 3 officers and 52 men had rejoined their brigade. If so many got away it was largely due to the action of Rifleman Wambach, who swam the canal with a rope in his mouth, and fixed it for his more helpless comrades. Even fewer of the Northamptons ever regained the eastern bank. "Like the Spartans at Thermopylae the men of Northampton and the Riflemen had died where they had been posted. Heroism could do no more." Out of about 1200 men, nearly all, save the casualties, fell into the hands of the victors.

Such was the deplorable affair of Nieuport, a small incident in so great a War, and yet one which had an individuality of its own which may excuse this more extended account. The total German advance was 600 yards in depth, upon a front of three-quarters of a mile”.

The official report succinctly commented on the fate of 2/KRRC: “An eyewitness who swam the Yser says that the last he saw of them was in the death grips of the enemy. Very little hope is entertained as regards the missing men” (Ragtime Soldiers, p. 64). The ''Bulawayo Chronicle'' ran a eulogy for the Rhodesian Platoon, comparing the platoon’s valiant stand to that of Allan Wilson against Lobengula’s warriors on the banks of the Shangani in 1893 – and comparable it was.

Total British casualties amounted to approximately 3,126 killed, wounded and missing. Some 1300 were taken as POWs. Of the 3,126 casualties, 50 officers and 1,253 other ranks belonged to the valiant 2/KRRC and Northamptons battalions. Despite the thorough preparations, the amphibious assault never went ahead. The expected gains from the Third Battle of Ypres never materialised.

On 12 July the ragged but splendid remnants of 2/KRRC marched to Le Clipon camp near Dunkerque where it went through a period of re-organising and training. In September more Rhodesian volunteers had arrived and were utilised to re-form the Rhodesian Platoon.

In September Captain Brady transferred to 1/KRRC as the Battalion’s second-in-command and on 6 November a reconstituted 2/KRRC marched to a forward camp in the Ypres Salient and took over the Paddebeek sector between Poelcapelle and Passchendaele where it was involved in a number of engagements with the enemy. In February 1918, 2/KRRC’s front extended from 1,000 yards north of Poelcapelle to a point about 1,000 yards south-east of that village. On 17 February the enemy raided 2/KRRC lines with a party of 40 men, led by 2 officers. The raid was repulsed with severe loss to the Germans who left behind 19 dead, 1 wounded prisoner and 1 machine gun. 2/KRRC’s only loss was 2nd Lieut. Wilmot, who was in command of the post. On 20 March the Germans attempted another raid on 2/KRRC lines which was repulsed, the enemy leaving three prisoners and many dead.

It is here, at the end of almost three and half years of grinding “entrenched warfare” during which there were over over one and a half million British and Empire casualties, that we leave the experiences of the Rhodesian platoons on the Western Front. The Rhodesian platoon of 2/KRRC continued to fight throughout the final phase of the war on the Western Front. The following provides a synopsis of the final phase (21 Mar to 11 Nov 1918), Armistice, demobilisation and the reaction at home.

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7.THE FINAL PHASE (21 MARCH – 11 NOVEMBER 1918)

The last great German offensive was launched on March 21, 1918, with Operation "Michel". It was opened with an unprecedented 6,000 gun barrage which delivered a lethal gas attack deep into Allied lines. At one point, the Germans advanced 14 miles in one day, more than at any other time during the fighting in the West. During the first six weeks of fighting, the Allies lost 350,000 casualties, but more troops were rushed in from across the channel, and American units began arriving for the first time. The attack was quickly followed by a second offensive at Ypres, but this was halted after a brief threat against the channel ports. Another German blow to Allied lines fell with the twin operations "Blucher" and "Yorck," whose combined might drove south toward Paris, occupying Soissons and nearly cutting off Reims. The spearhead of their advance penetrated as far as Chateau-Thierry, only 56 miles from Paris. This operation however, suffered from the same flaw as many which had preceded it. Ludendorf had not planned for this offensive to succeed. It had been intended as a feint in order to draw French troops away from the main offensive to the north, and so the astounding achievements were not exploited because inadequate reserves were available. Still, the Allied situation was very grim and they were forced to issue a "backs to the wall" order.

The German troops were quickly tiring from the prolonged effort, as well as giving in to periods of looting. The economic blockade of Germany had cut off many vital supplies and back home, many people were literally starving. Many German troops were chronically undernourished, and whenever they encountered Allied food stocks, much time was lost as these desperately famished troops gorged themselves. So the last German offensive, an attempted pincer operation around Rheims, was finally stopped with concentrated artillery and aircraft attacks. By late June, German strength on the Western Front fell below that of the Allies, and the final Allied assault was not long in coming.

The first attacks were made in July by the French west of Rheims. This was followed by a British offensive at the Amiens Bulge and a general offensive toward the Hindenburg Line. The Americans under General John Pershing attacked the St. Mihiel Salient south of Verdun and then attacked through the Argonne west of Verdun as part of a general advance. The Germans were now steadily pulling back, and even though the Allies continued to suffer tremendous losses (The Americans lost 100,000 casualties just fighting through the Argonne region), they were now inspired by the continued German retreat. The French and British continued to advance and on 29 September 1918 the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Ludendorff, probably fearing a breakthrough, claimed that he could not guarantee that the front would hold for another 24 hours and demanded a request be given to the Entente for an immediate ceasefire. The Kaiser concurred.

All combatant countries were anxious to agree an armistice and a German delegation crossed the front line in five cars. They were taken by train to the secret destination, aboard Ferdinand Foch's private train parked in a railway siding in the forest of Compiègne some 60 kilometres north of Paris. An armistice was agreed and signed at about 5.15 am on Monday 11 November, coming into effect at 11.00 am (Paris time) on 11 November.

The only German to keep fighting was Field Marshal Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa, who was beginning his invasion of Northern Rhodesia. He surrendered on November 23, immediately upon hearing of the surrender.

The foundation for the association between Rhodesia and the KRRC, laid by Henry Paulet, Marquess of Winchester in October 1914, was fortified by the brave men of the “Rhodesian” platoons and continued well into the 1950’s. This association endured in the form of affiliation between the KRRC and the Rhodesia Regiment's new incarnation which adopted aspects of the KRRC uniform and a similar regimental insignia.

During the course of the war 57 percent (12,824 officers and men) of the KRRC were killed. KRRC battalions gained 8 Victoria Crosses, three to 2/KRRC, and 2,128 other decorations…Rhodesians among them.

8.

ARMISTICE AND DEMOBILISATION

At the front, information about the imminent ceasefire had spread among the forces of both sides in the hours before. The fighting in many sectors however, continued right until the appointed hour. When the guns stopped firing there was no fraternisation and little rejoicing – just bewildered relief. The dominant feeling among the soldiers was silence and emptiness after fifty exhausting months of war.

The conclusion of a conflict of such cataclysmic proportions and involving millions of people cannot be easily encapsulated. Those who fought on the Western Front provide the best insight.

Major Keith, Officer Australian Corps

Nearby there was a German machine-gun unit giving our troops a lot of trouble. They kept on firing until practically 11 o'clock. At precisely 11 o'clock an officer stepped out of their position, stood up, lifted his helmet and bowed to the British troops. He then fell in all his men in the front of the trench and marched them off. I always thought that this was a wonderful display of confidence in British chivalry, because the temptation to fire on them must have been very great.

A British corporal reported

The Germans came from their trenches, bowed to us and then went away. That was it. There was nothing with which we could celebrate, except cookies ." (Leonhard, Jörnm, Die Büchse der Pandora - Geschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs, 2012).

George Grosz, a German soldier

I thought the war would never end. And perhaps it never did, either. Peace was declared, but not all of us were drunk with joy or stricken blind. Very little changed fundamentally, except that the proud German soldier had turned into a defeated bundle of misery and the great German army had disintegrated. I was disappointed, not because we had lost the war but because our people had allowed it to go on for so many years, instead of heeding the few voices of protest against all that mass insanity and slaughter.

Marine Hubert Trotman, Royal Marine Light Infantry

As we advanced on the village of Guiry a runner came up and told us that the Armistice would be signed at 11 o'clock that day, the 11th of November. That was the first we knew of it. We were lined up on a railway bank nearby, the same railway bank that the Manchesters had lined up on in 1914. They had fought at the battle of Mons in August that year. Some of us went down to a wood in a little valley and found the skeletons of some of the Manchesters still lying there. Lying there with their boots on, very still, no helmets, no rusty rifles or equipment, just their boots.

Corporal Reginald Leonard Haine, 1st Battalion, Honourable Artillery Company

It wasn't like London, where they all got drunk of course. No, it wasn't like that, it was all very quiet. You were so dazed you just didn't realise that you could stand up straight and not be shot.

Sergeant-Major Richard Tobin Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division

The Armistice came, the day we had dreamed of. The guns stopped, the fighting stopped. Four years of noise and bangs ended in silence. The killings had stopped. We were stunned. I had been out since 1914. I should have been happy. I was sad. I thought of the slaughter, the hardships, the waste and the friends I had lost.

While the individual soldier on both sides dealt with his emotions and attempted to rationalise the reason for the mass slaughter that had taken place and his part in it, London and Paris were celebrating.

In London work ceased in shops and offices, as news of the armistice spread. Crowds surged through the street, often led by airmen and Dominion troops on leave. Omnibuses were seized, and people in strange garments danced on the open upper decks. A bonfire heaped on the plinth of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square has left its mark to this day. Total strangers copulated in doorways. They were asserting the triumph of life over death. The celebrations continued with increasing wildness for three days, when the police finally intervened and restored order.

In Paris, news of the signing of the armistice was officially announced towards 9:00 am. At 11:00 am the multitudes gathered in the streets went wild with delight and bells rang and flags waved throughout Paris.

In Rhodesia, news of the armistice was received on 11 November and was announced to the Salisbury folk by the frenzied sounding of the Castle Brewery siren. Street parties erupted almost immediately, and in the evening the people let off fireworks and lit a huge bonfire on Salisbury kopje. Bulawayo threw a huge party which lasted non-stop for forty-eight hours; there were processions and on 12 November the entire Bulawayo population flocked into the streets to cheer and dance to the strains of an outdoor band. Everywhere there were parties and civic functions to celebrate the end of four years of war. Smaller towns marked the armistice with their own celebratory functions and events. All looked forward to the return of their husbands, sons, sweethearts and fathers. However, the dismantling of such a huge war machine would take time which meant that the Rhodesian soldiers in Europe would not be home for Christmas.

The original British demobilisation scheme proposed that the first men to be released from service should be those who held jobs in key branches of industry. However, as these men were invariably those who had been called up in the latter stages of the war, it meant that men with the longest service records were generally the last to be demobilised. The scheme, as shown in 1918 by the small-scale mutinies at British army camps in Calais and Folkestone and by a demonstration of 3,000 soldiers in central London, was potentially a serious source of unrest.

Thus, one of Churchill's first acts as the new War Secretary in January 1919, was to introduce a new and more equitable demobilisation scheme. Based on age, length of service and the number of times a man had been wounded in battle, it ensured that the longest-serving soldiers were generally demobilised first. The new system defused an explosive situation.

Nevertheless, demobilised soldiers from the Dominions were often left waiting in Britain for long periods until transport could be found to ship them home. Frustrated by the delays and eager to get home to their families and sweethearts, soldiers at a camp for Canadian forces in Rhyl mutinied in March 1919. The mutiny was only suppressed after a number of men were killed. A few months later, rampaging Canadian soldiers broke into a police station in Epsom, killing one policeman and causing a serious riot.

It was shortly after New Year that the first small group of Rhodesians arrived home from Europe. Small groups of soldiers would return in dribs and drabs over the course of the next twelve months. For some, in hospitals in France and England, it would be several months before they could be discharged. Many had been severely wounded on the Western Front, some dismembered, others horribly disfigured and many suffering from shell shock and other psychological problems. Some never made it home. Those with the most severe afflictions had, of necessity, to spend rest of their days in Britain so as to receive the requisite treatment and care.

More than any other group, disabled veterans symbolised the First World War's burdens. Long after the Armistice, the sight of empty sleeves tucked into pockets recalled sad memories of the war and its long drawn suffering. For the disabled themselves, as one veteran explained, the Great War ' could never be over.' Years after their demobilisation, disabled veterans bore the sufferings war inflicted. They lived with injuries that robbed them of their independence. Some had lost their faces, arms, hands, legs, been blinded or suffered from racking gas-induced coughs or uncoordinated movement brought on by shell-shock. Each disabled veteran appeared to bring the war's horrors home with him.

Once home the soldiers’ found work with varying success. There was little security or public assistance or any guarantee that the ex-soldiers would be able to find employment.

The difficult situation facing soldiers was not limited to unemployment. Among them there was a strong sense of comradeship, a sharing of wartime memories and experiences. While this shared experience formed bonds between former soldiers, it also had the effect of alienating them from the thousands who had not participated in active service in the War. Where once soldiers had a purpose and place in society, they now felt displaced and isolated. The soldiers had a strong sense of Rhodesian pride after their exploits on the Western Front and in other theatres of war, and took offence at people who did not understand what they had been through.

The former soldiers had to carve a new position for themselves in society, to rediscover a peaceful lifestyle and settle down to a productive and meaningful life. It was not always easy for the soldiers to reintegrate into Rhodesian society. Not all Rhodesians understood the importance of the Rhodesian soldier in the War, or where he belonged in society. They had shared experiences that only other soldiers could understand.

Rhodesians fought and died on all the Western Front battlefields immortalised by the British Army – Aubers Ridge, Nieuport, Ypres, Loos, the Somme, Delville Wood, Passchendaele and many others. Rhodesians bore the full impact of the war on the Western Front and it had its terrible effect on the Rhodesian soldier and Rhodesian society as well. Over twelve percent of Rhodesians who went to the Great War died with many more maimed, crippled or broken in spirit. This terrible casualty rate more than decimated the white manhood of the fledgling colony.

Lest we forget.