A History of
the 66th (2nd East Lancashire) Division During the Great War
February 1917 - Off To War
Despite the improvements the 66th had achieved the division was still
constantly dogged by the demands for drafts thus delaying its fitness
for overseas service and it was not until 18 January 1917 that the War
Office were able to notify GHQ France that the 66th was ready for war.
A new and much more terrifying chapter in the history of the 66th Division
was about to be written.
On 22 February King George V inspected the 66th Division and throughout
the remainder of February and early March the Division left for France.
Along with the change in scenery came another change of CO. Blomfield
was replaced by the remarkable Maj.-Gen. Hon. HA Lawrence. Lawrence was
a self-made financial genius who had abandoned his military career when
he was passed over as CO of 7th Lancers in favour of Haig. He would later
be promoted to Chief of Staff, GHQ, effectively Haig’s right-hand
man.
By 16 March the entire Division had entrained, detrained, marched, inspected
and assembled, and after a few days gathering stragglers and organising
last minute details, the division was sent ‘up the line’ under
the command of XI Corps, First Army– the 66th’s first taste
of ‘real’ war.
The Division found itself holding the line in the GIVENCHY sector. Its
strength lay in the ‘spirit of the men’ rather than Regular
Army training. And by God did it need such strength in this area. The
Givenchy sector, near La Bassee, was foul panorama of depressingly flat
coalfields and shell holes, interspersed with conical slagheaps and wrecked
mine heads that made excellent defensive bastions for the Germans. During
1915 Givenchy had been at the centre of fierce fighting but by 1917 it
was a quiet, miserable, and forgotten sector.
The Division’s first task was to create some semblance of order
– the trench system was a flooded and destroyed shambles that relied
on isolated forward outposts, wire and Machine Guns, that was described
as ‘unattackable and indefensible’ by FG Guggisberg, the Divisional
CRE. Guggisberg was a remarkable man who was branded a rascal and a dangerous
maverick by British society after the war. He was also the last British
WW1 general to have a statue raised to him.
Life In GIVENCHY & LA BASSEE
It is the nature of military history and historians to concentrate on
battle but the reality of the Western Front was that soldiers spent very
little of their time actually engaged in combat, and most of it ‘holding
the line’. ‘Lineholding’ (or ‘Goalkeeping’
as it was known) was an unglamorous but essential task that was never-ending.
In order to understand what this entailed it’s important to understand
the nature of trenches and trench warfare. ‘Trenches’ are
not channels dug into the ground in order to provide protection for troops.
They were in fact vast cities containing millions of men and requiring
all the support, maintenance, administration and infrastructure of any
metropolis, but considerably magnified. Unlike a ‘normal’
city most of this activity took place underground, at night, and under
fire, necessitating the most elaborate methods of protection, camouflage,
and deception.
The 66th Division spent its time here recovering communication trenches
(of which 17,000 yards had been recovered by May), laying water supplies
and telephone cable, and repairing the damage caused by Minenwerfers.
They also laid tramways and light railways, and were constantly at work
trying to drain the all-pervasive mud described as having a ‘rare
and gluesome tenacity’. The decision not to equip the 66th with
a Pioneer battalion dramatically increased the workload, requiring the
attachment of up to 300 infantry per Field Company – 900 men in
all. This was not so much a ‘Soldier’s War’ as an ‘Engineers’
and Navvies War’.
In addition whilst there was no actual ‘fighting’ as such
on this sector preparations for offensive and defensive schemes had to
be made. In the spring of 1917 there was reason to believe that the Germans
would be retiring on this front as they had further south and extensive
preparations were made.
These preparations included the construction of forward routes for infantry
and wagons, all of which had to be differently sign-posted every 30 yards,
allocated as up or down routes, and policed by Traffic Control. They also
built fences and bridges, created gaps in the wire for movement, dealt
with water supplies, and hauled thousands of planks for duckboards. This
covers just a fraction of the work required. Of course, all of this was
administered and integrated by the overworked Staff Officers of the various
units involved mostly at Brigade level. Very heavy German Minenwerfer
fire, bad weather, and a shortage of men so acute that 199 Brigade Training
School had to be closed down further hampered these preparations, whilst
in June Lewis Gun fire was curtailed in order to release men for wiring
party duties.
Despite the toughness of the job and the inexperience of the Division
the preparations were completed. Alas it was all to no avail as the Germans
had no intention of retiring just yet and the Division moved a few miles
north to the La Bassee sector.
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