Rolls of Honour may not be fashionable these days, some seeing them as merely ‘lists’, but they do serve a purpose. In his introduction to “Pro Patria Mori – The Edinburgh Academy at War 1914-1918” – Jonathan Lisher, Head of History at the school, suggests that if we really want to understand the nature of […]
Archive | Behind the Stories
Memories of Monchy, including Byng’s remedy for boils
The 12th (Eastern) Division spent much of 1917 in the Arras sector just south of the River Scarpe around Monchy-le-Preux. In ‘Arras South’ (pages 49 – 55) I went into a certain amount of detail regarding the events that took place in this locality during the Summer and Autumn of 1917 after the Battle of […]
Decisions, discipline and disobeying orders – Arras Memorials – Page 36 & Arras South – Page 321
According to “Military Operations – France & Belgium 1916 – Volume I”, the 46th (North Midland) Division sustained 2,455 casualties on the 1st July.Its attack that day was stopped in its tracks with many of those casualties lying dead or wounded out in no man’s land, but actually the picture was a bit more complicated than that. In his book, “The First Day on the Somme”, Martin […]
Arras – A very Scottish affair – Arras South – various pages
Anyone familiar with accounts of the Battle of Arras will be struck by the size of the Scottish contingent that took part on the opening day. John Buchan in his “History of the Great War”, Volume 3, notes that thirty-eight Scottish battalions left the British parapets that morning, adding that this was more than the entire British force at Waterloo and […]
Visiting the Fallen – A trio of cemeteries just beyond Arras
My working draft of “Visiting the Fallen” also had the subtitle: “A Guide to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemeteries in and around Arras”. The question was how far should I stretch that definition? In the end I decided to be guided by the map that appears on the end-paper (front) of “Military Operations – France and […]
“Same story, different tale” – Arras Memorials and Arras North
It’s not uncommon to come across different accounts of the same event and in “Visiting the Fallen” there are several such instances. Sometimes it’s a case of an event viewed from a different perspective, sometimes different people have only partial information rather than the whole story; occasionally rumour becomes shaped as fact, at other times there is even what we might call selective […]
“One more burial at HAC Cemetery” – Arras Memorials – Page 73
Friday the 11th September this year was a gloriously sunny day, at least it was in Arras. I happened to be over there for three days leading a group around the 1915 battlefields of northern France, and ahead of joining everyone for breakfast I popped out to grab a copy of the “Voix du Nord”, the regional daily newspaper, and an early morning coffee. On page 15 the […]
Appendix – Arras Memorials – Page 248
Having just received my copies of ‘Arras Memorials’ from the publisher, I would like to draw attention to the appendix at the end of the book. Although the reference to aircraft identification number 59 (the remaining digits are not fully discernible from the photograph in the book) states that there are three possible candidates, there are in fact just two, […]
“Rediscovering the Fallen” – Arras North – Page 89
Between the publication of ‘Arras South’ and the final edit of ‘Arras Memorials’ I had a little time to re-read an old favourite of mine: “War Letters to a Wife” by Lieutenant-Colonel Rowland Fielding, which I refer to on page 140 of ‘Arras South’ in connection with Croisilles Railway Cemetery. So frequent are the letters that they really amount to a diary […]
“A final word on George” – Arras North – Page 40
On the 2nd November this year I received a short e-mail from the CWGC informing me that the ‘MM’ had finally been added to the headstone of Lance-Corporal George Frederick BAKER, 1st South African Regiment. Readers may remember that BAKER had been involved in the dramatic rescue of an officer under murderous fire and had been awarded the […]