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 | March, 2016
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 […]