August 22, 2025 • 26 mins
In the first of three Bonus Episodes of the podcast to end Season 8, we travel to Fricourt on the Somme and examine the journey to unveil a memorial to the 17th (Northern) Division in the church there in July 1938, just over a year before the outbreak of a Second World War. Who made that pilgrimage to Picardy, and what does it tell us about the experience of the Great War?
The image used for this episode shows men of the 17th (Northern) Division on the steps of a captured German dugout at Fricourt in July 1916. The image was taken by Ernest Brookes. (IWM Q 814).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Inside the church of a small Somme village is a
memorial to a British divisionthat fought and suffered there
in the opening phase of theBattle of the Somme.
What was this division?
Who were the men who placed thismemorial?
And what does it tell us aboutthe experience of the Great War?
(00:25):
With the end of the specialRoyal Flying Corps and Royal Air
Force episodes, Season 8 of theOld Front Line is coming to an
end.
But I wanted to put out a coupleof bonus episodes until Season 9
starts properly in September.
And these, and this oneincluded, will be short episodes
(00:46):
focused on a particular theme orsubject.
And in this one, we're going tolook at a divisional memorial
event.
on the Somme, the Sommebattlefields.
But which one?
Tucked inside Free Corps Churchon the north wall of the church
is a plaque to the 17th NorthernDivision commemorating their
(01:09):
whole parts in the Great War andtestifying to the losses that
they had but in particular theirsacrifice in capturing the
village of Free Corps and thesurrounding ground at the start
of the Battle of the Somme.
I've often said how there is aconnection between a good old
Comrade Association after thewar, the publication of a
(01:31):
divisional history, and amemorial placed on the
battlefields.
And that certainly seems to betrue here today.
In the case of the 17th NorthernDivision, it's less clear how
the Old Comrades Associationworked, but they had an
excellent divisional historypublished in 1929, written by an
(01:55):
author that I'm not familiarwith called A.
Hilliard Atteridge.
And he used the surviving papersthat he was given access to by
veterans who'd served in thedivision.
He used the war diaries, whichwere then not publicly
available.
And he produced a pretty gooddivisional history.
(02:15):
Not every division publishedtheir history, but this is
certainly one of the better oneswith good narrative and some
history.
good maps.
It doesn't have many appendiceswith lists of commanders or
units or casualties, but itcontains a lot of that kind of
information within the maintext.
(02:36):
So that's kind of two factors.
There's some kind of oldcomrades association with the
17th Northern Division, and thenthey publish in 1929 a
divisional history.
So coming on from that was along-term project, it seems, to
get some kind of memorial on thebattlefield.
A lot of units did this, didn'talways succeed.
(02:57):
There are case files in theNational Archives that show some
memorials were rejected for allkinds of reasons.
And a lot of them took kind offamiliar shape and form with
columns or bronze statues ofsoldiers or some aspect of the
war.
There were more unusual oneslike the water trough to the
(03:18):
66th Division in Le Cateau.
But what the committee that wasformed Out of the divisional
history and out of the oldcomrades, what they decided to
do with the 17th NorthernDivisions Memorial was to place
a plaque within Free CorpsChurch.
Now I was reminded of this,having seen it quite a few times
(03:39):
over the years, researching thebattlefields when I was living
on the battlefields, but I wasreminded of this recently again
when I picked up a smallpamphlet called Somme Souvenir.
bearing the flash of the 17thNorthern Division, which is a
narrow red stripe with two whitedashes, one short and one long,
(04:01):
essentially the top of each ofthe numerals of the number 17.
And the pamphlet details whatthey did on the pilgrimage to
unveil this memorial and who wasthere.
And we shall return to thatpamphlet.
But first, who were the 17thNorthern Division?
(04:22):
Well, first of all, what is adivision?
We've had podcasts aboutmilitary formations.
And essentially, the divisionwas a self-contained division It
had infantry, three infantrybrigades at the beginning of the
First World War.
Each of those had four infantrybattalions.
And in addition to that, it hadsupport troops.
(04:45):
It had artillery from the RoyalField Artillery, Royal Engineer
Field Companies to give itengineer support on the
battlefield.
There were three fieldambulances of the Royal Army
Medical Corps to look after thewounded.
There were Army Veterinary Corpsunits to look after the horses.
There were motor transport unitsof the Army Service Corps to
(05:06):
move around supplies, equipmentand everything else, and lots of
other ancillary units thathelped keep the division in the
field.
So it became its own fightingunit, self-contained, and it was
the basic kind of formation thatthe Army used to plan and
execute battles on the frontline.
If you want to know more aboutthe division, you can go back to
(05:28):
one of those earlier episodeswhere we looked at this in some
greater depth.
Now in terms of the history ofthe 17th Northern Division it
was formed at Wareham inSeptember 1914 and the division
was part of what was known asthe Second New Army.
The First New Army formed inresponse to Lord Kitchener's
call for 100,000 volunteers hadfilled up very very quickly so a
(05:52):
Second New Army was created forthe next 100,000 volunteers and
again that filled up prettyquickly as well.
The units in this division weredrawn entirely from northern
command regiments, the majorityof them from Lancashire and
Yorkshire.
Like most second new armydivisions, part of that second
(06:14):
new army there was an initiallack of uniforms and equipment
for the men so when you look atcontemporary photographs of all
the units within this divisionin the early months the men are
still wearing their civilianclothes or a mixture of
Kitchener's Blues the blue sergeuniform produced for men of
Kitchener's army and they look abit of a kind of ragtag or bunch
(06:36):
of men often with weapons thatdon't fire and a lot of the
training during that period wasphysical training it was
marching it was boxing it wasobstacles all that kind of stuff
but not real soldiering untilthey got weapons uniform webbing
equipment or the 1914 patternleather equipment which was
(06:59):
issued to a lot of kitchenersunits i don't think they really
saw themselves as properfighting units And the majority
of men in these battalions aspart of this division did not
get service rifles, properservice rifles, until March of
1915.
Among the weapons at theartillery units, because it's
not just the infantry that havethese problems, all of the units
(07:20):
within the division do, but inthe artillery units, they were
issued with two outdatedFranco-Prussian French 90mm
howitzers.
I mean, as a gunner in the RoyalField Artillery, What do you do
with that?
And probably not a lot ofammunition, if any ammunition,
for them.
So those are the kind ofproblems that wartime-raised
(07:41):
units like these had.
Eventually, these problems wereovercome, and the division
landed in France viaSouthampton, which was a common
route to France at this periodof the war, concentrating near
Saint-Omer on the 17th of July,1915.
From here, it moved across intoBelgium, into Flanders, to the
(08:02):
front line at Ypres inYpres-Saint, where it was to
remain for the next nine months.
Moving up through Ypres, severalbattalions were attached to the
46th North Midland Division, aterritorial unit which was
already in the line, and theyoccupied the trenches in the
Sanctuary Ward to Hoog sectorsalong that Menin Road to get
acclimatised to trench warfareand understand trench warfare
(08:24):
and do training with these unitsthat had already been there for
some time.
But then fighting broke out inthat sector on 30 July 1950 and
units of the 51st Brigade in the17th Northern Division were in
the line when the Germansattacked nearby, for example,
when they used flamethrowers forthe very first time against
British troops, against units ofthe 14th Light Division, Rifle
(08:48):
Brigade, Kings Royal RifleCorps.
But they were not yet in a majoroperation.
And from that sector, just eastof Ypres, the 17th Northern
Division took over a new sectorjust beneath the Messines Ridge
to the south of Ypres.
a front that was graduallyextended by the end of 1915.
(09:09):
And by this time, from arrivingin France in July through to the
end of that year of 1915, thedivision had lost more than
2,000 men killed, wounded, sick,missing, simply by holding the
trenches at Ypres, which werethen in what was considered to
be a so-called quiet sector.
(09:29):
So you can see that formationslike this could lose significant
numbers of troops just byholding the line.
Remaining in the Ypres Salient,there was heavy fighting that
the division was involved in atthe Bluff in February and March
of 1916 along the oldYpres-Commines Canal.
And there again, they lost overanother 2,000 casualties in the
(09:50):
fighting in that area.
Testimony to a short, sharpbattle that nevertheless would
cost significant casualties.
And their lines in that part ofthe Ypres Salient would change
hands during that battle for theBluff several times during that
engagement.
So this was giving the unitswithin the division some real
(10:12):
battle experience.
Not a major operation, butnevertheless fighting the enemy
at the sharp end of the war.
Towards the end of March 1916,the division left this sector
and moved across the border tothe area around the town of
Armentières, home of the famousMademoiselle, until it went into
training then near a villagecalled Tilk, several miles
(10:36):
behind the lines, in fact, quitesome distance behind the lines.
And a lot of divisions inpreparation for moving down to
the Somme did do this.
in that late spring, earlysummer of 1916.
But it's arguable, really, asthe kind of training that they
had, did it really do them anygood when they got to the Somme?
A lot of it was based on theprinciple that the enemy was
(10:58):
going to be destroyed, and theywere kind of going through the
motions of advancing across abattlefield, capturing a line
that was already destroyed bythe guns.
That was not what was going toplay out on the Somme.
So were they prepared for whatreally happened?
I mean, that is a matter of somedebate.
But in June 1916, the divisionmoved south to the Somme.
(11:21):
So before the Battle of theSomme began, and on the opening
day of the battle, the 1st ofJuly 1916, it was officially in
reserve, but one of its brigadeswas involved in the fighting
around Freecorn.
That was the 50th Brigade.
They were at a point in the linewhere the line made a kind of a
dogleg turn to the east.
(11:42):
On their left flank was aposition called the Tambour,
where there'd been a lot ofmining operations earlier in the
war, and there were quite a fewcraters there.
And tunnelling companies of theRoyal Engineers had prepared
mines that would be blown thereon the morning of the 1st of
July, 1916.
And on the right, their positionfaced some German trenches just
(12:03):
south of the village of Fricour,which were considered to be so
well-sighted that any attackthere would be absolute suicide.
So the idea was to try and tocapture the village of Freecore.
(12:30):
However...
When the battalions movedforward at zero hour, they came
under terrific fire from theGerman positions.
And the leading battalions fromthe 17th Northern Division, the
10th Battalion, the WestYorkshire Regiment, the 7th
Battalion, the East YorkshireRegiment, came under withering
fire and both suffered heavycasualties.
And if you've been to that partof the Somme battlefields at
(12:52):
Free Corps, out in the fieldsthere is Free Corps New Military
Cemetery and is dominated bythose two cat badges, the
Rocking Horse badge, of the WestYorkshires and the cap badge of
the East Yorkshire Regiment.
Another unfortunate incidentthat occurred on that first day
of the Somme involved men of the7th Battalion of the Yorkshire
Regiment, the Greenhowards.
(13:13):
Major Ralph Kent, who was acompany commander in that unit,
was seen to lead his men overthe top against a particularly
strong German position in thatwell-sighted part of the German
defences south of Free Corps andagainst all orders from his
commanding officer, he led hismen into no man's land.
This company was practicallydestroyed in the first 20 yards
(13:35):
by a single A single Germanmachine gun.
Surprisingly, as a result ofthis, having really kind of
betrayed his men, disregardedhis orders, led them to almost
certain death, Major Kent wasnot court-martialed.
Instead, he was transferred tothe 1st 4th East Yorkshire
Regiment and was killed nearReams in 1918.
(13:56):
Casualties in that 50th Brigadethat attacked on the first day
of the Battle of the Sommeamounted to 1,155 officers and
men, with few gains.
So it was not a successfuloperation, but the fight for
Free Corps was not over becauseit hadn't been captured on that
first day of the Battle of theSomme, and the fight would then
(14:16):
continue.
So the village of Free Corps,using units from the division
for attack after attack over thecourse of the next few days, the
village was eventuallyliberated, and then the fight
continued beyond it towardsContour Maisel, the next
village, roughly to the kind ofnortheast, and then eastward
towards a large expanse ofwoodland, the Bois de Mamet,
(14:40):
Mamet's Wood.
And that, of course, was a fightfor other units for another day.
But the division stayed in theline until the 11th of July
1916, when units of the 21stDivision, which had served
alongside on the first day ofthe Somme, relieved it, and when
it came out of the line at thatpoint, in those 11 days since
the first day of the Battle ofthe Somme, since the 1st of July
(15:01):
1916, it had suffered 4,789casualties.
So not insignificant for just ashort period of time.
It then went into rest nearAmiens, in the villages in that
area, away from the front, andthe divisional commander, Major
General T.D.
Pilcher, was dismissed by thecorps commander because of his
(15:23):
division's failure to takeContal Maison.
But I think after the knockingthat it got in the beginning of
that Battle of the Somme, thefirst phase of the Battle of the
Somme, for a division tired,exhausted, having suffered heavy
losses, was it a good thing totry and continually push it
forward like that, to take newobjectives, more objectives?
(15:44):
This became part, I guess, ofthe learning curve that came out
of the Battle of the Somme in1916, often at such high cost.
So that's the division'shistory.
That's its history as aformation until it took part in
the initial fighting at FreeCorps on the first day of the
Somme.
It went on to fight in manyother locations as well, of
course.
(16:04):
But this was its first actionwith heavy losses.
So perhaps it's not surprisingthat that's where the eventual
committee that met to discussthe idea of this memorial,
that's where they wanted thememorial to be.
And this is a common factor whenyou look at the divisional
memorials and some of the unitmemorials that are placed on the
(16:25):
battlefields as we know themtoday.
Many of them are in locationswhere that unit went into action
for the first time or where theywent into action for the last
time.
I mean some units are lucky tohave multiple divisional
memorials, like the 18th EasternDivision, with one at Trones
Wood to commemorate the earlyphase of the Battle of the
(16:45):
Somme, another one on the ridgeat Chappvale to commemorate the
capture of that ground inSeptember of 1916, and a third
one on the Menin Road at ClaphamJunction to commemorate their
part in the Third Battle ofYpres in 1917.
So, There is a kind of reasonbehind these memorials, their
placement, and it connects totheir history.
(17:07):
And for this committee, lookingat the memorial, a plaque that
would be placed on the wall of achurch in that key village of
Free Corps, that was the mostobvious place to do this.
And this was now getting on to20 years since the armistice,
more than 20 years since theBattle of the Somme, and
probably this was one of thelast divisional memorials to be
(17:29):
placed on the battlefieldsbefore the outbreak of the
Second World War.
So the pamphlet I mentioned atthe start of this podcast was
seemingly published tocommemorate the unveiling of the
memorial and I'll put aphotograph of it onto the
podcast website.
It shows that when the party of50 old soldiers who were part of
(17:50):
this committee went there to theSomme, It consisted, this party,
of veterans of all ranks, fromprivate up to Brigadier General,
and the latter being BrigadierGeneral Clement Yapman, CMG DSO,
who had once, during the war,commanded the 50th Brigade of
this division from the end ofthe Somme period through to the
(18:12):
beginning of the Battle of theLys in April 1918.
and he had lost a son duringthat period of April 1918 up on
the Western Front during thatBattle of the Leas.
So he not only had served in thewar himself, he understood that
sense of loss that came withdeaths on the battlefield from
his perspective of a commander,but also his perspective as a
(18:35):
father as well.
The party had crossed fromVictoria Station to France via
the old boat train.
And then it ended up on a trainthat took them to Amiens for the
night, which many of them kindof relived memories of that.
And then they headed out ontothe battlefields where they
visited the Chapval Memorial.
They stood on that ground there,saw those endless lists of
(18:58):
names, many of them men fromtheir division.
They went to Delville Wood.
They had lunch in Albert, theHotel de la Paix, which is on
the Perron Rose, still a hoteltoday, still there, before they
got out to Freecorps.
And once at Freecorps, theyinitially visited the isolated
(19:18):
grave of Major Raper of the 8thBattalion South Staffordshire
Regiment who'd been killed atFreecore on the 2nd of July
1916.
Now he was an officer who'd beenin one of the assaults on the
village of Freecore, helpedcapture, liberate it, whatever
we're going to call it, and he'dbeen buried in an isolated grave
which in 1938, July 1938 whenthey've gone there, this is
(19:41):
still there.
It's not there today his gravewas moved after World War II
into Free Corps Bray RoadCemetery pretty much directly
opposite where he was buried andwhen this party of men went to
see his grave they crossed theroad and they went to Free Corps
Bray Road Cemetery whichcontains the graves of many of
the men of the Greenhowardsincluding men who had once been
(20:03):
commanded by Major Kent who ledthem to their deaths on the
first day of the Somme andthere's a Celtic cross in there
that replaced an earliermemorial to the men of the
Greenhowards who died on thefirst day of the Somme.
It was amazing weather duringtheir trip in that summer of
1938.
And after they visited thisComrades Cemetery, they
(20:24):
assembled just up the road atthe Free Corps War Memorial.
And I think this was a nicething to do because they paid
tribute to the local men who'dfallen in the Great War.
It wasn't just about theirsacrifice.
They were part of an Allied armyand the French were were an
essential part of that andBritish veterans often like to
remember that and recognise itand commemorate it and these men
(20:47):
did that by laying a wreath atthe Free Corps War Memorial.
They then walked up Rue MajorRaper which is a street named
after that major who had theisolated grave and then they
walked up to the church door atthe top of the hill where the
local curé met them and led theminside.
The mayor of the village wasalso present, various
(21:09):
representatives fromorganisations locally including
the Imperial War GravesCommission and the church was
also packed to the gunnels withlocal people as well which shows
how they were interested to takepart in these commemoration
services as well.
They didn't see it as separateto their lives, they saw it as
part of their lives and widercommunity and were very pleased
(21:30):
to be invited and very pleasedto take part.
Brigadier General Yapmanunveiled the memorial himself
with buglers playing the lastpost outside the church and God
Save the King being played onthe church organ.
Quite incredible, really, thewhole thing.
And in their little booklet,they concluded at the end of
(21:50):
this service that time was nowpressing and the party of
pilgrims had to regretfully turntheir backs on the little church
and village of Freecore,comforted by the conviction that
that at last, after an intervalof 20 years, fitting tribute had
been paid to the memory of theold comrades who did not return.
And that was really at the heartof what this was all about.
(22:13):
Not nailing their colours tothis mast, but remembering those
who never returned.
And that sentiment is somethingthat you see in many veterans'
accounts of this period.
Now, all of this is just afootnote in the history of the
Great War, a footnote in thehistory of the Battle of the
(22:34):
Somme and those widerbattlefields of Picardy, but
perhaps something that happenedmany times in that interwar
period right across thatlandscape of the Great War, and
it's so rarely recorded.
So to have this little pamphletto tell this story is quite
something.
And it resonated with me for acouple of reasons, really,
(22:55):
because...
Firstly, I used to stay often inthe Hotel de la Paix, mentioned
in this account, where they metto have their lunch and toast
their fallen comrades.
Back in the day when I stayedin, in the 1980s, it was run by
the charming Michel Dutrois,incredible character.
And when I was staying therethen, it really had changed a
little since the 1930s.
(23:15):
So it's quite nice to imagineBrigadier General Yapman and his
band of old soldiers toastingtheir fallen comrades there.
And secondly, at the back ofthis book, I came across a list
of those who went with theparty.
It listed all those who werethere.
That's how I know that therewere veterans in the rank of
private through to brigadiergeneral.
(23:36):
And when I scanned the list ofnames, there he was.
Captain P.
Howe, MC.
And it jumped straight out atme.
Philip Howe was a Great Warveteran whom I knew.
and perhaps he's known to someof you as he features in Martin
Middlebrook's First Day of theSomme book.
Born in Sheffield, Philip Howeserved with the 10th Battalion
(23:57):
of the West Yorkshire Regimentat Free Corps on that first day
of the Somme.
He was wounded in the fightingthere and later decorated with a
military cross for his braveryon that day.
His wound was relatively slight.
He made it back to the Britishtrenches, perhaps the only
officer still standing at theend of the day in that
(24:17):
battalion, a battalion that waspretty much wiped out on the
first day of the Battle of theSomme.
And he always described thatday, that 1st of July 1916, as
the most interesting day of mylife.
And it was nice to find his namein that pamphlet.
and that he'd returned to FreeCorps more than two decades
after he'd fought there in 1916.
(24:39):
Perhaps once the ceremony wasover, he snatched a moment to
stand by his men's graves in thecemetery in those vast open
fields near the village, wherein rough grass Skylark's nest
would have sung high in theheavens above him on that summer
day in July 1938.
Another war was just round thecorner for Philip Howe.
(24:59):
And decades later, I would speakto him before his death in the
late 1980s and then be inspiredto walk his battlefield, the
battlefield of his men, not justonce, but many times over the
years.
Those crisscross paths, thosenames we find in the most
unexpected of places, or perhapsthey find us and take us back,
(25:22):
always, to the old front line.
www.oldfrontline.co.ukpatreon.com slash old front line
(25:59):
or support us on buy me a coffeeat buymeacoffee.com slash old
front line links to all of theseare on our website thanks for
listening and we'll see youagain soon
Inside the church of a small Somme village is a
memorial to a British divisionthat fought and suffered there
in the opening phase of theBattle of the Somme.
What was this division?
Who were the men who placed thismemorial?
And what does it tell us aboutthe experience of the Great War?
(00:25):
With the end of the specialRoyal Flying Corps and Royal Air
Force episodes, Season 8 of theOld Front Line is coming to an
end.
But I wanted to put out a coupleof bonus episodes until Season 9
starts properly in September.
And these, and this oneincluded, will be short episodes
(00:46):
focused on a particular theme orsubject.
And in this one, we're going tolook at a divisional memorial
event.
on the Somme, the Sommebattlefields.
But which one?
Tucked inside Free Corps Churchon the north wall of the church
is a plaque to the 17th NorthernDivision commemorating their
(01:09):
whole parts in the Great War andtestifying to the losses that
they had but in particular theirsacrifice in capturing the
village of Free Corps and thesurrounding ground at the start
of the Battle of the Somme.
I've often said how there is aconnection between a good old
Comrade Association after thewar, the publication of a
(01:31):
divisional history, and amemorial placed on the
battlefields.
And that certainly seems to betrue here today.
In the case of the 17th NorthernDivision, it's less clear how
the Old Comrades Associationworked, but they had an
excellent divisional historypublished in 1929, written by an
(01:55):
author that I'm not familiarwith called A.
Hilliard Atteridge.
And he used the surviving papersthat he was given access to by
veterans who'd served in thedivision.
He used the war diaries, whichwere then not publicly
available.
And he produced a pretty gooddivisional history.
(02:15):
Not every division publishedtheir history, but this is
certainly one of the better oneswith good narrative and some
history.
good maps.
It doesn't have many appendiceswith lists of commanders or
units or casualties, but itcontains a lot of that kind of
information within the maintext.
(02:36):
So that's kind of two factors.
There's some kind of oldcomrades association with the
17th Northern Division, and thenthey publish in 1929 a
divisional history.
So coming on from that was along-term project, it seems, to
get some kind of memorial on thebattlefield.
A lot of units did this, didn'talways succeed.
(02:57):
There are case files in theNational Archives that show some
memorials were rejected for allkinds of reasons.
And a lot of them took kind offamiliar shape and form with
columns or bronze statues ofsoldiers or some aspect of the
war.
There were more unusual oneslike the water trough to the
(03:18):
66th Division in Le Cateau.
But what the committee that wasformed Out of the divisional
history and out of the oldcomrades, what they decided to
do with the 17th NorthernDivisions Memorial was to place
a plaque within Free CorpsChurch.
Now I was reminded of this,having seen it quite a few times
(03:39):
over the years, researching thebattlefields when I was living
on the battlefields, but I wasreminded of this recently again
when I picked up a smallpamphlet called Somme Souvenir.
bearing the flash of the 17thNorthern Division, which is a
narrow red stripe with two whitedashes, one short and one long,
(04:01):
essentially the top of each ofthe numerals of the number 17.
And the pamphlet details whatthey did on the pilgrimage to
unveil this memorial and who wasthere.
And we shall return to thatpamphlet.
But first, who were the 17thNorthern Division?
(04:22):
Well, first of all, what is adivision?
We've had podcasts aboutmilitary formations.
And essentially, the divisionwas a self-contained division It
had infantry, three infantrybrigades at the beginning of the
First World War.
Each of those had four infantrybattalions.
And in addition to that, it hadsupport troops.
(04:45):
It had artillery from the RoyalField Artillery, Royal Engineer
Field Companies to give itengineer support on the
battlefield.
There were three fieldambulances of the Royal Army
Medical Corps to look after thewounded.
There were Army Veterinary Corpsunits to look after the horses.
There were motor transport unitsof the Army Service Corps to
(05:06):
move around supplies, equipmentand everything else, and lots of
other ancillary units thathelped keep the division in the
field.
So it became its own fightingunit, self-contained, and it was
the basic kind of formation thatthe Army used to plan and
execute battles on the frontline.
If you want to know more aboutthe division, you can go back to
(05:28):
one of those earlier episodeswhere we looked at this in some
greater depth.
Now in terms of the history ofthe 17th Northern Division it
was formed at Wareham inSeptember 1914 and the division
was part of what was known asthe Second New Army.
The First New Army formed inresponse to Lord Kitchener's
call for 100,000 volunteers hadfilled up very very quickly so a
(05:52):
Second New Army was created forthe next 100,000 volunteers and
again that filled up prettyquickly as well.
The units in this division weredrawn entirely from northern
command regiments, the majorityof them from Lancashire and
Yorkshire.
Like most second new armydivisions, part of that second
(06:14):
new army there was an initiallack of uniforms and equipment
for the men so when you look atcontemporary photographs of all
the units within this divisionin the early months the men are
still wearing their civilianclothes or a mixture of
Kitchener's Blues the blue sergeuniform produced for men of
Kitchener's army and they look abit of a kind of ragtag or bunch
(06:36):
of men often with weapons thatdon't fire and a lot of the
training during that period wasphysical training it was
marching it was boxing it wasobstacles all that kind of stuff
but not real soldiering untilthey got weapons uniform webbing
equipment or the 1914 patternleather equipment which was
(06:59):
issued to a lot of kitchenersunits i don't think they really
saw themselves as properfighting units And the majority
of men in these battalions aspart of this division did not
get service rifles, properservice rifles, until March of
1915.
Among the weapons at theartillery units, because it's
not just the infantry that havethese problems, all of the units
(07:20):
within the division do, but inthe artillery units, they were
issued with two outdatedFranco-Prussian French 90mm
howitzers.
I mean, as a gunner in the RoyalField Artillery, What do you do
with that?
And probably not a lot ofammunition, if any ammunition,
for them.
So those are the kind ofproblems that wartime-raised
(07:41):
units like these had.
Eventually, these problems wereovercome, and the division
landed in France viaSouthampton, which was a common
route to France at this periodof the war, concentrating near
Saint-Omer on the 17th of July,1915.
From here, it moved across intoBelgium, into Flanders, to the
(08:02):
front line at Ypres inYpres-Saint, where it was to
remain for the next nine months.
Moving up through Ypres, severalbattalions were attached to the
46th North Midland Division, aterritorial unit which was
already in the line, and theyoccupied the trenches in the
Sanctuary Ward to Hoog sectorsalong that Menin Road to get
acclimatised to trench warfareand understand trench warfare
(08:24):
and do training with these unitsthat had already been there for
some time.
But then fighting broke out inthat sector on 30 July 1950 and
units of the 51st Brigade in the17th Northern Division were in
the line when the Germansattacked nearby, for example,
when they used flamethrowers forthe very first time against
British troops, against units ofthe 14th Light Division, Rifle
(08:48):
Brigade, Kings Royal RifleCorps.
But they were not yet in a majoroperation.
And from that sector, just eastof Ypres, the 17th Northern
Division took over a new sectorjust beneath the Messines Ridge
to the south of Ypres.
a front that was graduallyextended by the end of 1915.
(09:09):
And by this time, from arrivingin France in July through to the
end of that year of 1915, thedivision had lost more than
2,000 men killed, wounded, sick,missing, simply by holding the
trenches at Ypres, which werethen in what was considered to
be a so-called quiet sector.
(09:29):
So you can see that formationslike this could lose significant
numbers of troops just byholding the line.
Remaining in the Ypres Salient,there was heavy fighting that
the division was involved in atthe Bluff in February and March
of 1916 along the oldYpres-Commines Canal.
And there again, they lost overanother 2,000 casualties in the
(09:50):
fighting in that area.
Testimony to a short, sharpbattle that nevertheless would
cost significant casualties.
And their lines in that part ofthe Ypres Salient would change
hands during that battle for theBluff several times during that
engagement.
So this was giving the unitswithin the division some real
(10:12):
battle experience.
Not a major operation, butnevertheless fighting the enemy
at the sharp end of the war.
Towards the end of March 1916,the division left this sector
and moved across the border tothe area around the town of
Armentières, home of the famousMademoiselle, until it went into
training then near a villagecalled Tilk, several miles
(10:36):
behind the lines, in fact, quitesome distance behind the lines.
And a lot of divisions inpreparation for moving down to
the Somme did do this.
in that late spring, earlysummer of 1916.
But it's arguable, really, asthe kind of training that they
had, did it really do them anygood when they got to the Somme?
A lot of it was based on theprinciple that the enemy was
(10:58):
going to be destroyed, and theywere kind of going through the
motions of advancing across abattlefield, capturing a line
that was already destroyed bythe guns.
That was not what was going toplay out on the Somme.
So were they prepared for whatreally happened?
I mean, that is a matter of somedebate.
But in June 1916, the divisionmoved south to the Somme.
(11:21):
So before the Battle of theSomme began, and on the opening
day of the battle, the 1st ofJuly 1916, it was officially in
reserve, but one of its brigadeswas involved in the fighting
around Freecorn.
That was the 50th Brigade.
They were at a point in the linewhere the line made a kind of a
dogleg turn to the east.
(11:42):
On their left flank was aposition called the Tambour,
where there'd been a lot ofmining operations earlier in the
war, and there were quite a fewcraters there.
And tunnelling companies of theRoyal Engineers had prepared
mines that would be blown thereon the morning of the 1st of
July, 1916.
And on the right, their positionfaced some German trenches just
(12:03):
south of the village of Fricour,which were considered to be so
well-sighted that any attackthere would be absolute suicide.
So the idea was to try and tocapture the village of Freecore.
(12:30):
However...
When the battalions movedforward at zero hour, they came
under terrific fire from theGerman positions.
And the leading battalions fromthe 17th Northern Division, the
10th Battalion, the WestYorkshire Regiment, the 7th
Battalion, the East YorkshireRegiment, came under withering
fire and both suffered heavycasualties.
And if you've been to that partof the Somme battlefields at
(12:52):
Free Corps, out in the fieldsthere is Free Corps New Military
Cemetery and is dominated bythose two cat badges, the
Rocking Horse badge, of the WestYorkshires and the cap badge of
the East Yorkshire Regiment.
Another unfortunate incidentthat occurred on that first day
of the Somme involved men of the7th Battalion of the Yorkshire
Regiment, the Greenhowards.
(13:13):
Major Ralph Kent, who was acompany commander in that unit,
was seen to lead his men overthe top against a particularly
strong German position in thatwell-sighted part of the German
defences south of Free Corps andagainst all orders from his
commanding officer, he led hismen into no man's land.
This company was practicallydestroyed in the first 20 yards
(13:35):
by a single A single Germanmachine gun.
Surprisingly, as a result ofthis, having really kind of
betrayed his men, disregardedhis orders, led them to almost
certain death, Major Kent wasnot court-martialed.
Instead, he was transferred tothe 1st 4th East Yorkshire
Regiment and was killed nearReams in 1918.
(13:56):
Casualties in that 50th Brigadethat attacked on the first day
of the Battle of the Sommeamounted to 1,155 officers and
men, with few gains.
So it was not a successfuloperation, but the fight for
Free Corps was not over becauseit hadn't been captured on that
first day of the Battle of theSomme, and the fight would then
(14:16):
continue.
So the village of Free Corps,using units from the division
for attack after attack over thecourse of the next few days, the
village was eventuallyliberated, and then the fight
continued beyond it towardsContour Maisel, the next
village, roughly to the kind ofnortheast, and then eastward
towards a large expanse ofwoodland, the Bois de Mamet,
(14:40):
Mamet's Wood.
And that, of course, was a fightfor other units for another day.
But the division stayed in theline until the 11th of July
1916, when units of the 21stDivision, which had served
alongside on the first day ofthe Somme, relieved it, and when
it came out of the line at thatpoint, in those 11 days since
the first day of the Battle ofthe Somme, since the 1st of July
(15:01):
1916, it had suffered 4,789casualties.
So not insignificant for just ashort period of time.
It then went into rest nearAmiens, in the villages in that
area, away from the front, andthe divisional commander, Major
General T.D.
Pilcher, was dismissed by thecorps commander because of his
(15:23):
division's failure to takeContal Maison.
But I think after the knockingthat it got in the beginning of
that Battle of the Somme, thefirst phase of the Battle of the
Somme, for a division tired,exhausted, having suffered heavy
losses, was it a good thing totry and continually push it
forward like that, to take newobjectives, more objectives?
(15:44):
This became part, I guess, ofthe learning curve that came out
of the Battle of the Somme in1916, often at such high cost.
So that's the division'shistory.
That's its history as aformation until it took part in
the initial fighting at FreeCorps on the first day of the
Somme.
It went on to fight in manyother locations as well, of
course.
(16:04):
But this was its first actionwith heavy losses.
So perhaps it's not surprisingthat that's where the eventual
committee that met to discussthe idea of this memorial,
that's where they wanted thememorial to be.
And this is a common factor whenyou look at the divisional
memorials and some of the unitmemorials that are placed on the
(16:25):
battlefields as we know themtoday.
Many of them are in locationswhere that unit went into action
for the first time or where theywent into action for the last
time.
I mean some units are lucky tohave multiple divisional
memorials, like the 18th EasternDivision, with one at Trones
Wood to commemorate the earlyphase of the Battle of the
(16:45):
Somme, another one on the ridgeat Chappvale to commemorate the
capture of that ground inSeptember of 1916, and a third
one on the Menin Road at ClaphamJunction to commemorate their
part in the Third Battle ofYpres in 1917.
So, There is a kind of reasonbehind these memorials, their
placement, and it connects totheir history.
(17:07):
And for this committee, lookingat the memorial, a plaque that
would be placed on the wall of achurch in that key village of
Free Corps, that was the mostobvious place to do this.
And this was now getting on to20 years since the armistice,
more than 20 years since theBattle of the Somme, and
probably this was one of thelast divisional memorials to be
(17:29):
placed on the battlefieldsbefore the outbreak of the
Second World War.
So the pamphlet I mentioned atthe start of this podcast was
seemingly published tocommemorate the unveiling of the
memorial and I'll put aphotograph of it onto the
podcast website.
It shows that when the party of50 old soldiers who were part of
(17:50):
this committee went there to theSomme, It consisted, this party,
of veterans of all ranks, fromprivate up to Brigadier General,
and the latter being BrigadierGeneral Clement Yapman, CMG DSO,
who had once, during the war,commanded the 50th Brigade of
this division from the end ofthe Somme period through to the
(18:12):
beginning of the Battle of theLys in April 1918.
and he had lost a son duringthat period of April 1918 up on
the Western Front during thatBattle of the Leas.
So he not only had served in thewar himself, he understood that
sense of loss that came withdeaths on the battlefield from
his perspective of a commander,but also his perspective as a
(18:35):
father as well.
The party had crossed fromVictoria Station to France via
the old boat train.
And then it ended up on a trainthat took them to Amiens for the
night, which many of them kindof relived memories of that.
And then they headed out ontothe battlefields where they
visited the Chapval Memorial.
They stood on that ground there,saw those endless lists of
(18:58):
names, many of them men fromtheir division.
They went to Delville Wood.
They had lunch in Albert, theHotel de la Paix, which is on
the Perron Rose, still a hoteltoday, still there, before they
got out to Freecorps.
And once at Freecorps, theyinitially visited the isolated
(19:18):
grave of Major Raper of the 8thBattalion South Staffordshire
Regiment who'd been killed atFreecore on the 2nd of July
1916.
Now he was an officer who'd beenin one of the assaults on the
village of Freecore, helpedcapture, liberate it, whatever
we're going to call it, and he'dbeen buried in an isolated grave
which in 1938, July 1938 whenthey've gone there, this is
(19:41):
still there.
It's not there today his gravewas moved after World War II
into Free Corps Bray RoadCemetery pretty much directly
opposite where he was buried andwhen this party of men went to
see his grave they crossed theroad and they went to Free Corps
Bray Road Cemetery whichcontains the graves of many of
the men of the Greenhowardsincluding men who had once been
(20:03):
commanded by Major Kent who ledthem to their deaths on the
first day of the Somme andthere's a Celtic cross in there
that replaced an earliermemorial to the men of the
Greenhowards who died on thefirst day of the Somme.
It was amazing weather duringtheir trip in that summer of
1938.
And after they visited thisComrades Cemetery, they
(20:24):
assembled just up the road atthe Free Corps War Memorial.
And I think this was a nicething to do because they paid
tribute to the local men who'dfallen in the Great War.
It wasn't just about theirsacrifice.
They were part of an Allied armyand the French were were an
essential part of that andBritish veterans often like to
remember that and recognise itand commemorate it and these men
(20:47):
did that by laying a wreath atthe Free Corps War Memorial.
They then walked up Rue MajorRaper which is a street named
after that major who had theisolated grave and then they
walked up to the church door atthe top of the hill where the
local curé met them and led theminside.
The mayor of the village wasalso present, various
(21:09):
representatives fromorganisations locally including
the Imperial War GravesCommission and the church was
also packed to the gunnels withlocal people as well which shows
how they were interested to takepart in these commemoration
services as well.
They didn't see it as separateto their lives, they saw it as
part of their lives and widercommunity and were very pleased
(21:30):
to be invited and very pleasedto take part.
Brigadier General Yapmanunveiled the memorial himself
with buglers playing the lastpost outside the church and God
Save the King being played onthe church organ.
Quite incredible, really, thewhole thing.
And in their little booklet,they concluded at the end of
(21:50):
this service that time was nowpressing and the party of
pilgrims had to regretfully turntheir backs on the little church
and village of Freecore,comforted by the conviction that
that at last, after an intervalof 20 years, fitting tribute had
been paid to the memory of theold comrades who did not return.
And that was really at the heartof what this was all about.
(22:13):
Not nailing their colours tothis mast, but remembering those
who never returned.
And that sentiment is somethingthat you see in many veterans'
accounts of this period.
Now, all of this is just afootnote in the history of the
Great War, a footnote in thehistory of the Battle of the
(22:34):
Somme and those widerbattlefields of Picardy, but
perhaps something that happenedmany times in that interwar
period right across thatlandscape of the Great War, and
it's so rarely recorded.
So to have this little pamphletto tell this story is quite
something.
And it resonated with me for acouple of reasons, really,
(22:55):
because...
Firstly, I used to stay often inthe Hotel de la Paix, mentioned
in this account, where they metto have their lunch and toast
their fallen comrades.
Back in the day when I stayedin, in the 1980s, it was run by
the charming Michel Dutrois,incredible character.
And when I was staying therethen, it really had changed a
little since the 1930s.
(23:15):
So it's quite nice to imagineBrigadier General Yapman and his
band of old soldiers toastingtheir fallen comrades there.
And secondly, at the back ofthis book, I came across a list
of those who went with theparty.
It listed all those who werethere.
That's how I know that therewere veterans in the rank of
private through to brigadiergeneral.
(23:36):
And when I scanned the list ofnames, there he was.
Captain P.
Howe, MC.
And it jumped straight out atme.
Philip Howe was a Great Warveteran whom I knew.
and perhaps he's known to someof you as he features in Martin
Middlebrook's First Day of theSomme book.
Born in Sheffield, Philip Howeserved with the 10th Battalion
(23:57):
of the West Yorkshire Regimentat Free Corps on that first day
of the Somme.
He was wounded in the fightingthere and later decorated with a
military cross for his braveryon that day.
His wound was relatively slight.
He made it back to the Britishtrenches, perhaps the only
officer still standing at theend of the day in that
(24:17):
battalion, a battalion that waspretty much wiped out on the
first day of the Battle of theSomme.
And he always described thatday, that 1st of July 1916, as
the most interesting day of mylife.
And it was nice to find his namein that pamphlet.
and that he'd returned to FreeCorps more than two decades
after he'd fought there in 1916.
(24:39):
Perhaps once the ceremony wasover, he snatched a moment to
stand by his men's graves in thecemetery in those vast open
fields near the village, wherein rough grass Skylark's nest
would have sung high in theheavens above him on that summer
day in July 1938.
Another war was just round thecorner for Philip Howe.
(24:59):
And decades later, I would speakto him before his death in the
late 1980s and then be inspiredto walk his battlefield, the
battlefield of his men, not justonce, but many times over the
years.
Those crisscross paths, thosenames we find in the most
unexpected of places, or perhapsthey find us and take us back,
(25:22):
always, to the old front line.
www.oldfrontline.co.ukpatreon.com slash old front line
(25:59):
or support us on buy me a coffeeat buymeacoffee.com slash old
front line links to all of theseare on our website thanks for
listening and we'll see youagain soon
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