Somewhere along the line, I thought it might be useful to include the Order of Battle for Arras and Bullecourt on the website. “Military Operations, France and Belgium, Volume One, 1917”, which covers this period of fighting, only offers a skeleton Order of Battle. It does not set out which battalions made up each of […]
Author Archive | Peter Hughes
Some notes on attrition at Arras – 1917
The Battle of Arras undoubtedly took its toll on many of the divisions that took part in it. When the 2nd Division took part in the Third Battle of the Scarpe on the 3rd May 1917 it was only able to do so with a composite brigade consisting of four battalions designated ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and […]
‘Mind the gap’ – Bailleul, Gavrelle and the 4th Division
For anyone interested in the events surrounding the Battle of Arras I would recommend “Prelude to Victory” by Brigadier-General E.L. Spears. Towards the end of the book he writes about the opening days of the battle itself. In one of the paragraphs he writes: “When the 4th Division reached the Green Line it had to […]
Tinkering around the edges – Arras South
Minor operations were often carried out at the same time as much bigger affairs and, understandably perhaps, they tend to have attracted little attention over the years. The opening of the Battle of Arras was no exception. For that reason alone, while putting together ‘Arras South’, I was tempted to venture across the Bapaume-Cambrai road. […]
Squeezing Lens – Arras North – Various pages
There are numerous references to Hill 70 in ‘Arras North’ as well as the chapter in ‘Arras Memorials’ covering the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge. Although it lies on the Loos battlefield, Hill 70 was also the scene of heavy fighting on the 15th August 1917 and in the days that immediately followed. The reason it merits […]
An Edinburgh school, the Great War and remembrance
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 […]
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 […]