The year 1915 in the history of the Great War stands out, because, unlike every other year, it doesn’t really stand out. It was the first full year of fighting on the Western front and was very much one of learning lessons. Those lessons were far too often extortionately expensive and of course the price paid was in lives. In this talk historian Dan Hill will explore three major battles which took place in 1915 on the pan flat ground between the far better known Ypres and Arras battlefields, namely Neuve Chappelle, Aubers Ridge and Loos. Each had it’s own problems, in many cases the same ones, but did the British Army emerge from that bloody year as a more professional fighting force? Dan will address that major question and explore the experiences of many of the men who fought and fell across that ‘unfavourable ground’.
So uh quick look the three battles that I’ve chosen to pick out here and in truth I could have really picked sixs to cover are going to be new Chappelle running on the 10th to the 12th 13th of March 1915 orber Ridge which takes place
On the 9th of May and then loose or loss as it properly called running from the 25th to the 27th with a caveat that there’s actually quite a lot of fighting goes on into October it’s quite often rolled in to the Battle of loose but reality it’s the three-day Affair is the
Uh is the meat of that fight so let’s have a look at the first of those battles and I do stress these will be a fairly quick um run through because there’s uh quite a lot to cover and I’m not going to go Battalion by Battalion
Rather try and give a flavor of the battlefield as a whole um new Chappelle of course is known really is an Indian army attack it’s actually about 50/50 troops about 50% British of the fourth core and about 50% Indian of the Indian Corp so this is the area of the
Battlefield it’s going to be 4ov and it’s a very small area actually new Chapelle as a battlefield is relatively tiny it’s probably two miles from these two positions here the key position of the moted Grange German strong point and Port Arthur which for those of you guys that know the
Battlefields will recognize this little spot down here which is the new Chappelle Indian Memorial interestingly though the battlefield takes a bit of a dog leg here it’s almost a right angle um and the intention here and this is where we can look at the British intentions for
1915 and whether they’re a bit pie in the sky sometimes there are multiple intentions first of all capture new Chappelle Village well that’s realistic so the village we see in the middle of the screen capture it the next is to capture the bu which is a wooded area
That you can see a bit further up the screen there really important part of the ground that needs to be captured beyond that an offc screen is something called The oras Ridge um this is going to be the subject of both this and the following attack just a a point on the
Orus ridge here I don’t know if anybody’s ever been there but you could walk across the orus ridge you could walk over the other side you could turn around see a completely flat piece of ground and not realize that there was anything even resembling a ridge there
It’s very very low but as we saw on that previous drone shot any elevation in 1915 is going to be useful and that’s the the kind of key to the orb attack so they’re going to be two prongs to this attack uh it’s going to be fourth core uh going to be attacking
Basically through the village and then you’ve got the Indian core who are going to be attacking um at a right angle around this area called Port Arthur and the idea is they’re going to snip off this section of Western Front you can see the German lines as they stood and
The British lines as they stand at that time and ideally they’re going to launch what is euphemistically I think perhaps known in the in in 1915 as an Into the Blue attack this is a very general British Doctrine which says break through the Enemy Lines do what you can
Kind of open a gap in the Enemy Lines and something good will happen so there are these kind of General looks at what might be possible but Into the Blue is a concept that’s to get through the Enemy Lines first and then something good will happen so as we overfly here we’re kind
Of on the uh we we’ got the moted grain that um key German strong point off to our left and we’ve got newel Village kind of slightly to our right uh B in the distance what actually happens is the Brits get out of their trenches and they manage to attack and capture the
German front line fairly easily it should be said the Germans at this point have not really developed what we sometimes refer to as a defense in depth it’s elastic and we’ll come back to that but it’s not deep it’s only really one heavily loaded front line trench and
Once that falls the Germans have to pull back to some other barrier and in this case they’re going to be really pulling back almost to the B to the B ba in the distance so they’ll learn from this in between these two battles but actually their significant success less so on the
Indian core front but more on the uh more on the fourth core front where eighth division do very well in this sector just moving on to give you an idea you can see this blue line marked on the map here this is approximately the location that is captured during the
Fight so limited around the Indian Corr partly that’s because of some stubborn German defenses just uh north of Port Arthur um partly it’s because of confusion so the the way that this battle really rolls out you can kind of sum up in the following ways initial
Success so Germans do pretty well at the start uh no they don’t the British do pretty well at the start the Germans struggle to a certain extent partly because there’s an effective bombardment it’s not a big bombardment and by 1918 standards it’s going to be minuscule almost not worth registering this is
About 90 guns firing thousands of rounds over a few hours but what they do is they manage to effectively Target the German front line and the wire in front of it more importantly and they create gaps which can then be assaulted so the bombardment is effective there’s also numerous instances of individual bravery
Which unlock different set of the Western Front and this is something we see a lot particularly in 1915 sometimes the difference between success and failure is quite simply one man it’s it’s really incredible um new Chappelle is captured albeit not all of it the moted gra the area on the map there that
Holds out pretty strongly um stubborn defensive positions the bu ba is never captured and actually puts down some quite heavy fire on the advancing Brits and eventually checks their attack Communications though is the big problem the communication break down quick and Communications particularly wired Communications break down very quick in
An area that’s filled with artillery shells artillery shells are fantastic at breaking Communications cables and actually the the lack of exploitation on that first day why the Brits don’t end up in the B ba or even on the orus ridge is really down to communication and it’s
A bit of a unique situation um in comparison to battles from 50 or 100 years before because previously you’ve got generals that see every every Soldier on their Battlefield they can send Runners out and communicate them and simply with trench warfare you just can’t do that and that doesn’t really
Get solved until about 1918 um in addition to that the Germans uh the the famous uh the famous comment here three things certain in life uh which is life death and German counterattacks very true on the Western Front if any any attacks ever comeing against the Germans they’re going to
Throw a Counterattack back that’s their Doctrine they’ll sometimes recoil bit like a boxer being punched they’ll bounce back onto the ropes but they’re they’re going to come forward again and the reason they’re going to do that is because they know if the Brits have captured a German trench amongst other
Things just from a practical point of view trenches only have a fire step dug into one side of them the fire step is the thing you stand on to shoot over they’re seven feet deep apart from that and the fire steps only dug towards the Brits so when the Brits capture a German
Trench you can’t actually defend out of it it’s basically impossible to defend out of unless you what they call reverse a trench and dig a ditch into the other side so you can step up on the thing that takes time so the Germans typically will wait until you get to your furthest
Point of Advance you’re tired you’re exhausted you’re low on ammunition you got loads of wounded and then they’re going to launch their Counterattack and they do that here at new Chappelle interestingly it’s not super successful it doesn’t actually dislodge the Brits what it does do though in enough with
Enough force is it dissuades them from continuing the forward motion so it checks the British Advance the British in turn check the German advance and the Brits in a sense settle down and say right we’ve actually captured a good bit of ground here in addition we need to mention lack of reinforcements the
Reinforcements for new Chappelle are kept a couple of Miles back when Communications break down very difficult to get the reinforcement brought up they kept back to keep them out shellfire and to keep an element of surprise by the way but they’re too far back and by the
Time they’re needed it’s too late and they get thrown into the wrong place at the wrong time the addition to that and both and this one relates of course to reinforcements is the lack of supplies men at the front being short on ammunition well it’s the reinforcements
That are bringing those up and if they can’t do that we can’t push forward so there’s a couple of reasons for that and then finally the story of 1915 lack of shells hardly any shells in the British Army in 1914 or in 1915 and of those
Hardly any of them go bang when you want them to either so it’s uh it’s a pretty depressing State of Affairs as far as the Gunners go but new Chappelle is you could I think argue not a bad first attempt and it is the first formal British over-the-top assault um
Offensive assult of the Great War so the battlefield today I just find fascinating I just want to do a quick spin around here of the new Chappelle Indian Memorial um really really stunning location it’s on those Crossroads Port Arthur sometimes referred to as labomb Crossroads British casualties for the battle about 12,800
Which include about 4,000 Indian casualties German casualties less than that 8,500 this um Memorial here is is a real stunner you can actually see new Chapelle just going out screen on the left there and the famous B ba in the distance one interesting thing if you
Guys have been to visit this one is it’s actually covered in battle damage and that battle damage is from 1940 from when Garian panzas come rolling through here there’s actually a pitched fight in and around this Cemetery so it’s scattered with with uh battle damage from
1940 but new Chappelle comes to an end and the next thing that’s going to happen here is the assault on orber Ridge um Now spoiler alert this does not go well um but it’s worth considering because actually there are Lessons Learned in a very broad sense but there
Are many of the same mistakes made and they’re important when it comes to understanding the Battle of loose afterwards so in short this is going to be a single day two pronged assault from either side of new Chappelle with the idea being to capture that orbz Ridge in
Part to support French assaults which are going on in two key places further to the South one’s called VII Ridge and the other is notredam dorett or the lorett spur um both of which are fascinating fights in their own in their own right um the main reason for this
Attack or one of the main ones is to threaten leil here and it’s hoped that by threatening leil German troops who are fighting hard on the lorett spur and at vimi Ridge you’re going to be have to be redeployed to defend Lil so to free
Up a bit of uh a bit of movement space for the French now it’s not going to work out that way and for a couple of reasons there are going to be two assaults one’s around the famous 1916 froml Battlefield and the second is going to be a place called rebor laavu
Sometimes better known as the rud du let’s have a look at them in turn so the northern one this is the Fel Battlefield with a map overlaid over the satellite image to show the general area the idea here is to punch through an area outside the village of Fel and around an area
Known as locally as Rouge Bon or Rouge banks sometimes and that’s identified by this curving Road in the distance for those of you that know fromel this is really the limit of exploitation for the 1916 battle there’s also a key part here that’s forming this part of the line is
Going to be really important it’s known in 1916 incidentally not at this point but the the line still exists as the Sugarloaf and it’s a Salient that sticks out into no man’s land and allows importantly enade or sideways fire to be dropped on the attacking
Troops um the intention here as I say is to punch through get through from El Village and eventually up to the orbas Ridge and then following that we’ve got down in the South the other if you like the sister attack to this and this is to
Take place I’ll just try and um identify the area you this road here this is the main road with new Chappelle under this map sitting just here so if you remember that right hand turn in the road that’s just about here the line has moved forward slightly because it’s been
Captured in the March attack but this is the the famous um Indian Memorial just here the road that runs along it that many people will give the name of the battle to is this one right here this is called the rud very famous road to
Troops in 1915 and running off that is a much smaller track here this is called the cinder track this is going to be very famous for 1915 it’s also going to be the site of a battle called the B’s head in 1916 17 um important to note here two farms
And this whole landscape is studded with Farms of course when the bef get there in 19 in 1914 1915 these Farms are actually quite often a really good opportunity for defense so what the Germans are doing is they’re taking the Farms behind their own lines and they’re going to reinforce them and they’re
Going to place machine guns in the upper stories and turn them into fortresses if you know watero you can imagine hugar and Leeson being the the Bastion for for Wellington’s defensive lines well this is the same except they’re behind the front line so they’re going to be firing over their own front
Line troops heads but interestingly and importantly they can easily hit the Brits as they Advance this is going to be vital to the story of auber’s Rich so back to the north briefly and I’ll just run this drone shot so you can have a look at the the battlefield as I say
This is absolutely nailed on the Australian battlefield of 1916 in fact this is the Australian Memorial Park today the attack came in from the bottom left and was going across to this remember the road with that distinct turn in it this is Rouge bong here so the German line is in
Around this area and the Brits just simply get annihilated trying to get across it there’s honestly there’s no good thing that you can say about the northern part of the orbz ridge attack apart from there’s some damn Brave Lads doing the attacking very weak bombardment Terri wire cutting which
Leaves only a couple of gaps in the enemy wire and of course enemy machine guns are just going to be trained directly at those gaps lots of enemy wire is another one sometimes as far as 25 to 30 feet thick and we’re not talking agricultural Farmers field Barb wires today we’re talking really
Aggressive coils and coils and coils of the stuff um as a result of these basically horrific casualties that are sustained on going across these fields casualty evacuation chain so the the uh the medical side of things they’re just overwhelmed you know they’ve planned for bad attacks the worst they’ve seen so
Far is New Chappelle nobody expects 50 60 70% casualties to battalions and they’re just ripped to pieces and very lucky guys are the first ones that that get back into the medical evacuation chain maybe get wounded straight away but some of the other guys you know it’s
Just it’s a death sentence because they just get swamped um the real problems here are lack of surprise which is partly an issue at new Chappelle the other thing is having a weak bombardment is a is a double-edged sword having any bombardment is a double-edged sword it’s
Of course going to give the game away that something’s happening in that sector but if it’s strong enough you can get away with it but a weak bombardment is a lose lose because not only you’re giving away the element of prize but you’re actually not doing any damage so
This is what happens at orber Ridge in the north shells again terrible the shell scandal famous shells Scandal of 1915 will come about as a result of this battle basically not many shells they’re not getting produced quickly enough at home and those that do are really poor quality the fuses particularly something
Like 25 to 30% of shells don’t go off when they hit the ground that’s terrible terrible thing at the time and again Communications basically it’s figured out that as soon as a battle starts in 1915 that the whole thing devolves into a mess let’s um have a look at the South
Here this is a view along the famous Cinder track so looking from the British front lines here two battalions area in this area there’s actually multiple waves but the two that stick in my mind is going to be the the Royal moner fusers and uh the sanport Battalion of
The uh of the Sur as well they’re going to be attacking left and right of this track as we go and I’ll just run the Drone so you can get a look we are looking directly down that track then so slightly to the right you’ll see a
Little clump of trees that is the site of firm C davu which is one of those those reinforced Farms to the left of that um not really anything marking it today in the left side of the track was the other Farm um which is firm DUIs both of those are studied with machine
Guns they’ve not been effectively targeted by British artillery the German front line incidentally is about where this field boundary is in front of us so running left right in front of us here the idea is to storm through that go on capture those Farms push on Beyond those
And eventually get over to the orbus ridge which at about 10:00 as we look at it at the moment but four or five four miles off it’s a disaster probably not a single man makes it beyond the German front line there may be a pocket here and there that make
It the Northampton Who attack from the right hand side of our screen possibly get into the second lines but in essence men are cut down before they even go over the top there’s thick wire here poor wire cutting weak bombardment poor planning and those fortified Farms are
Just ripping in over the over the heads of their own Frontline troops to hit the guys in the fields number of the sank ports Lads uh they’re going to actually talk about being stuck in this little patch of field directly in front of us for hours and hours on end on that day
And uh you know it’s it’s a horrific loss uh there’s a lack of learning basically from the issues that are found at new Chappelle um and you know these lessons aren’t free either British casual this is about in terms of Great War battles from a British point of view it’s about
The biggest disparity you’ll see of any battle on the Western Front we lose 11,600 men killed wounded and missing compared to German losses a little under a tenth of that 1, 1550 you don’t get a worse day in the office than that in the first world war
In the Western Front uh this is manned by the name of Tony or Anthony Wilding he’s a New Zealander he is Believe It or Not N times Wimbledon champion he’s the David Beckham of his era and he’s almost unknown today he is a fantastic doubles player wins Wimbledon a couple times
Singles as well um he’s an outstanding tennis player he’s a bit of a daredevil too he famously is is due to go to a tennis cor Tournament down in Cornwall one time on his motorbike and he’s famously seen with his motorbike his tennis racket strapped to the back of it
On his way down to the tennis tournament he finds that there’s a motorbike race going from lanzen to J groos decides to cancel the tennis tournament and wins the bike race all the way through the United Kingdom with a tennis racket stuck to the back of his to the back of
His bike he’s a fantastic character he’s tragically killed with the raw Marines fighting at orbus Ridge um unusually using an armored car which is another story for another day um and then the other image on the right here this is the lore Memorial to the missing and
Cemetery so large number of those that are killed in 1915 are going end up on the Lor Memorial in short orbus ridge is an utter utter disaster but it doesn’t mean the Brits won’t try again and they’re going to be trying in September this time over these battlefields here
This is of course the Battle of loose or loss now it looks something like this this is the the area of the battlefield as we see it today um for anybody ever visiting the battlefield you can see importantly a couple of key areas so if you want to understand the northern and
Southern bound which are about six miles apart these are the two things you need to look at one uh and if anybody’s ever been to France here you’ll know these as you cross from Cal and you drive down the auto route theong the same one that
Takes you to the south of France on the left hand side about 50 miles into your journey you’ll see a couple of really big clear pyramids in the distance a pair of them twin pyramids that’s these two things they’re called the double cier uh they’re actually slag heaps from
The mining that goes on in this very flat area pre War so this is the double cier marks the southern boundary of the loose Battlefield then up in the top harder to see here this is the labas canal marks the northern boundary effectively the northern boundary in
Between that is this area that’s going to be attacked starting in the north what’s known as the Scottish attack so the ninth and 15th division including James your relative here who’s going to be attacking uh very famous and very deadly place called The hensol and redout in the center we have uh attack
Which is going to be really problematic because of these two Villages this is going to be between the Villages of L and ULU both of which are arride a road Left Right running Road here that you can see this is a really important Road as far as the battle goes and then down
In the South you’re going to have um two divisions in this area attacking loose Village itself now this is going to be an interesting part of the fight and we’ll come on to that just now so this is the double cier at the top the southern part of of the loose
Battlefield boundary I just going to run the drone over here because on the opening day of the battle of loose this is about the most successful part of the entire Battlefield the London Irish are famously going to attack across this ground directly as we’re going now there’s loads of stories in the Great
War of people kicking footballs about in no man’s land very rarely happens but it does happen here London Irish famously kick a football over the top and they’re going to advance into the enemy trenches which are actually slightly to the left of the double cier so you can see loose
Village just in the distance there on the left they’re going to get into the village in the south on that first dat that’s utterly shocking but very very impressive now it’s not all successful here though the south is the most successful in the center there’s mixed success really and
What we find in this area here so the bulk of the battlefield some troops are going to get into Hulu Village which is here some troops are going to get even up to this road here the Germans really struggle to react to this first level of attack and they’re actually going to
Going to sway back quite far this is where the idea of an elastic defense comes in they’re going to bend but not break and this is the the story really of the the German defense of 1915 um they’re going to overnight they’re going to going to react to these
Attacks and they’re actually going to reoccupy a number of the positions they lost on the previous day but in the South enila Fire from the houses on the edge of lost Village and the edge of ULU Village are going to create a beaten Zone which is a crossed Lane of machine
Gun fires not even aimed at individuals but rather just filling an imaginary box of air with lead knowing that for Soldier a to get from to get to his objective he’s got to walk through it um it’s that deadly um in the north things go differently it’s it’s definitely the
Toughest nut to crack on the opening day um 9th and 15th austral uh Australian been talking about Australian are week uh Scottish divisions are incredibly incredibly good in the Great War um Scottish divisions are amongst the the best divisions of the entire uh bef they
Get into the front edge of the hones and Ral and they actually get into a fight and almost capture and retain it unfortunately a couple of things go wrong here one is there’s diff pretty poor wire cutting which is problematic in itself the second is gas has been
Used on the day of the battle of loose gas has been used in the center and the North and partly in the South but not exclusively what the problem here is that the gas used in the center has been used really in conditions it probably shouldn’t have been launched in because
The general idea was that gas is going to sweep ahead and kill or incapacitate with chlorine German troops holding these lines here in reality what happens is that morning the wind shifts and because this is dependent on the Wind to drift it across enemy land this actually
Is going to go northwards so the central part of the line is going to gas the northern part of the British line it’s it’s quite often said that gas blows back into the trenches it really doesn’t it kind of the central guys gas the guys in the north more predominantly so it
Doesn’t necessarily it’s not going the wrong way it’s uh not completely it’s it’s drifting northwards um and that’s going to cause hell for the lads attacking the hens on and Redal they’re going to end up grabbing the front edge of it there’s going to be some really
Really bitter fighting on it we maybe come back to this when we hit the next map in a moment but I just want to go to the the second day very briefly um this is I think I don’t I should say I don’t subscribe to the lines led by donkey’s
Idea in the Great War doesn’t doesn’t ring true with me um there are certainly some idiotic idiotic decisions made but they’re never made with with malice in mind um with I think one exception in 1915 and that’s this one it’s the second day of the battle of loose um the fight
Is going on in loose Village and and actually is reasonably successful in the north up towards a place called Hill 70 in the center though there’s a tragic decision made now to put this into context on the opening day of the battle of loose in the center those troops have
Attacked in between Lucen and ULU and got caught in that beaten Zone and been smashed a bits those guys are regular army pre-war professionals with tons of experience on the second day the reserves that are kept back behind the lines have been brought forward they’re going to launch an absolute carbon copy
Attack of that first day on the second day except on the second day they’re going to be brand new troops kitcheners troops that have never been in a trench let alone on the Western Front they certainly haven’t been in action they’ve marched basically direct from the coast having arrived the first two divisions
Of kiter troops about 20,000 guys they’re going to be thrown straight into this attack in the middle of the battle of loose on the second day with no ele no element of surprise now no gas to help them no experience a 20 minute artillery bombardment which is next to
Useless and they’ve never even seen the ground that they’re attacking across and surprise surprise they get absolutely massacred um the Germans even dubb this area as the field of corpses now there’s lots of things where you get that kind of name in The Great War but there are
Literal accounts of Germans saying we just stopped firing couldn’t do it anymore moving on to day three here I’m going to pick out one story here because it’s a it’s a fascinating and tragic one in the same sense don’t know if anybody recognizes this chap on the left here um
This is a young man by the name of uh leftenant John Kipling son of the famous writer rard he is going to be going into attack on the third day of the battle of loose very much like the two divisions we just discussed except this time he’s
Going to be attacking with the second Battalion of the Irish guards their job is to attack not far from the field of corpses actually and to try and capture an area to the north of loose Village called the chalk pit uh John and his men
Are going to go into the attack that day John’s just 19 maybe eight uh just 18 I should say um he’s leading a platoon on that day and he probably shouldn’t be there his father has had to pull strings to get him into the army in the first
Place his eyesight is shockingly bad um his father gets him into the Irish guards and this is his very first time in action and he’s attacking across these very Fields here uh Records tell us that this is the last place um the Irish guards actually do quite well and
They make it to the edge of chalk pit wood which is what we’re looking at right here um Beyond which is a chalk pit which is the Quarry that’s been there since before the war and as the Irish guards disappear into this front hedge line here you can just see the
Building in the background they start taking fire from the building that was there at the time called P4 Beast which is a Min head and a structure around a minine head and John Kipling along with a number of Irish guards disappear on this very spot and tragically are never
Seen again really the Battle of loose of course will go on um particularly around the hens on and red out here so this is the the attack on the hoens alland made by men of the 46th North Midland division um amongst those men to be doing the attacking and it’s a really
Bitter fight that goes on much longer into October 3rd and 12th of October 13th of October see additional fights should mention here the hoen and redou has broken two of the Prime British divisions in the early days of the battle of loose the ninth and the 15th divisions two Hardy Scottish Battalion
Divisions um the 46th North Midlands territorials are going to be sent in after them to try and do exactly the same thing they’re also going to get broken and and sadly get a really bad reputation for not failing to capture what is in reality probably an uncapturable um objective the hens zand
Sadly will not be taken but parts of it will it’s it’s a tremendous fight and really deserves to be it its own story on a different day now just moving towards the end here um to sum up the Battle of loose in 19 1915 there are problems which really
Should have been seen before reinforcements again same problem as new Chappelle and orus ridge keeping the reinforcements to back particularly reinforcing failure so throwing troops into the area where um on the second day 21st and 24th they go in they’ve already failed there could have easily easily
Fed them in south at loose where there’s much better chance of breakthrough unfortunately that’s a classic British thing in the first world war is to is to throw troops at the bad bits not the good uh artillery it’s clear is not enough the numbers Aren’t Enough the
Guns aren’t enough and uh really the bombardments need to be far more substantial we’ll see that the following year at the S uh Communications is an everpresent problem everybody knows it’s a problem by the by the Battle of loose but actually nobody can really figure
Out how to get round it the Battle of loose is six miles six miles wide and thousands of yards deep it’s it’s really tricky to solve this problem and it’s going to remain a problem for a long time and then finally a fairly unique one to loose is rigid command structure
And this is a bit of a Victorian throwback because typically at loose it’s um the most senior officers on the battlefield are going to be leftenant Colonels so Battalion commanders and they’re really the guys that have been given all the information and typically they’re not going to really disseminate disseminate
That information down below about the level of captain now what you find with troops going over the top in areas where you got terrible amounts of machine gun fire and particularly in 1915 officers who look distinctly different to their soldiers they’re wearing cuff ranks they’re carrying sticks and revolvers
They’re easily identifiable officers are going to get picked off really quick and then when you left with second left tenants and sergeants and corporals to direct the attack well unfortunately you haven’t told them where they’ve got to go so there need to be a more flexible command structure with devolved command
Throughout all of the ranks and that’s a big lesson from loose in 1915 this is a place called St Mary’s Advanced dressing station it’s it’s a really powerful one for me personally and I highly recommend a visit the two reasons actually one of them is that this grave right here is the chap
That I was part of the team that discovered in 2015 he’s an unknown leer regiment Soldier um and he was buried in 2018 it’s OB see the slightly newer headstone there in terms of style and the second one which I think is uh is really interesting as well is that this grave
Here um this is in fact the grave of leftenant John Kipling of the Irish guards now John’s father rard and his mother Carrie who are both seen in this smaller picture down here they were devastated by John’s loss in fact it’s a great film about it my boy Jack um
Interestingly John Kipling never known as Jack if you’d called him jack he wouldn’t even turn around no idea who you’re talking about my boy Jack comes from the poem that Roger Kipling writes about Jack tar a t a sailor missing in 1915 um John’s body is actually
Discovered in the 1920s and he’s buried as an unknown soldier um it’s only in 1992 after some work is done it’s realized that John Kipling is actually buried in Sam Mar’s Advanced dressing station I think what’s really tantalizing about this story is that Raj yard and Carrie seen here by the way at
The loose Memorial place called dud Corner they spend years and years searching for John’s body and every time rajar who becomes a a big player in the first Imperial wargraves commission before it comes to the Commonwealth wargraves Commission mission go to the battlefields he’s looking to try and
Find Graves of Irish guards and he’s always spending time searching the loose battlefields he dies without ever knowing that Jon’s body’s been discovered as does his wife as does John’s sister so there is no more Kipling family um but interestingly we know that rard actually comes to St
Murray’s ads in the 1920s and he tours the cemetery and as was his practice at the time he would go to Every Irish God’s grave he could see so I think there’s a very high chance he actually stood at this grave at the time that it was an unknown leftenant of the Irish
Guards and there weren’t many unknown left tenants missing in that area of the Irish guards I wonder if he wondered at that time whether he was standing at John’s grave um today of course we know that he was so just to round up the casualties at the Battle of loose um
British if you include the October fighting in the subsequent attack to the north with the second division about 59,000 big big casualties um about 25 to 30% of those guys are going to be killed in action it’s fairly typical in the Great War German casualties about
26,000 what the Brits show is that it is possible to achieve a break in in the Great War but it’s very hard to achieve a break through um this is a really a really important difference and it’s actually going to change to a switch in tactics to what we sometimes refer to as
Bite and hold which is going to be a key part of the coming Battle of the s in 1916 so to round off then a couple of Lessons Learned here I’ll just rattle through them very quick artillery artillery is not good enough there’s not enough shells they’re not good enough at
Wire cutting the shell quality is is too low aerial reconnaissance really important particularly in targeting dugin enemy machine guns and pinpointing those for the artillery this is going to be really become an art by 1917 but using AA reconnaissance to to highlight and identify key enemy strong points
Going to be a really big deal light fighting order is debuted at at um the Battle of loose for the first time so that’s men not taking their great coats and packs and things into battle seems pretty obvious to us today but light fighting order is used with Reserve
Waves then bringing up um more slowly heavy kit and things like tools for reversing trenches uh gas does have potential as do a number of new weapons but it’s not it’s a bit of a one-trick pony um and it certainly shouldn’t be used alone um it still needs to be in tandem
With an artillery bombardment uh the pigeon there Old Speckled Jim this is a Communications issue Communications you need multiple sources of communications methods all across the battlefields you need Runners running multiple routes in different directions you need landlines to send messages back you need homing pigeons to
Run messages back in different ways you need semi for all of these because communication breaks down so quick once the once the bullets start flying um and the cemetery there dud Corner um is just a reminder for me really that you know courage is is quite
Often not enough um as tragic as that is because there’s a damn lot of courage in 1915 really all of those lessons are not going to come together until 1918 and probably the August of that year when the Battle of am or even July the Battle
Of lam where all arms Warfare is going to come about and eventually all branches of the British military can work together to create a um I think is remarkable um series of victories in 1918