April 18, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode we travel to the last major battlefield of the Great War on the Western Front - the Sambre Canal. Here we follow the story of the infantry and the engineers who attacked the Canal on 4th November 1918, including the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment. We also see what remains of the battlefield today.
The interview with Josh Grover MM is on the IWM website here: Josh Grover MM interview.
Recommended Book: Decisive Victory by Derek Clayton.
Thread on the Great War Forum: Royal Sussex Regiment at Lock No 1.
Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
On the last great battlefield of the First World
War, we discover a timelessscene along the Sombré Canal.
Here at lock number one, thelast big push took place on the
4th of November, 1918.
I was recently on a recce for anew ledger battlefield tour,
(00:23):
looking at the fighting on theHindenburg Line in the final two
years of the Great War.
When I design a new battlefieldtour, any tour, I approach it in
a similar way to how we used toconstruct TV documentaries and
how I've written some of mybooks.
The tour isn't just a whiz rounda few places.
(00:44):
It should be a vehicle forlearning and, in my view, should
have a beginning, a middle bitand an end.
And this is what we try toachieve with the tours that we
do.
So this new Hindenburg Line tourstarts at Rossignol Wood on the
Somme, Nightingale Wood or COPS125, as Ernst Jünger called it,
(01:08):
close to the 1916 battlefield.
So we've got kind of a backreference there.
But more than that, it's also aplace where the Germans on this
sector of the Somme front beganto pull back and where the 16th
Battalion of the West YorkshireRegiment, the Bradford Powells,
who had been involved in theassault on that summer's day, on
(01:31):
the 1st of July 1916...
in the early part of 1917 foughta costly battle here against an
enemy who seemed to be pullingback but wasn't keen on yielding
ground and that became a kind ofan insight into that early stage
of the retreat to the HindenburgLine by German forces on this
(01:55):
part of the Western Front andthe cemetery here has the dead
from that battle from theBradford Powells of the West
Yorkshire Regiment and you cansee the wood you can see the
ground where that action tookplace so it kind of sets the
scene for what the retreat tothe Hindenburg line was and then
the subsequent battles on theHindenburg line were all about
(02:17):
so in following that idea of abeginning a middle bit and the
end that was the beginning andthe kind of middle bit is when
the tour then follows thefighting in the outposts on the
Hindenburg line the approachesto that set of trenches all the
problems involved with suddenfacing an enemy dug into new
defences and you have to do thesame that's what British and
(02:40):
Commonwealth forces foundthemselves doing in that early
part of 1917 and We then followthe story of the battles on the
Hindenburg Line at differentpoints between Arras and Cambrai
and Saint-Quentin in those yearsof 1917-18, in the final phase
of the war on the Western Front.
(03:02):
And it ends, as we move towardsthat ending, it ends with the
breaking of the Hindenburg Linein September 1918, the crossing
of the Saint-Quentin Canal, thefamous picture of the soldiers
the escarpment close to thebridge at Rickerville, one of
the kind of iconic images ofthat last phase of the Great War
(03:22):
on the Western Front, and thebreakthrough of the final line
of trenches, the end of trenchwarfare, in places like the
Beauvoir-Fonson line, near toJoncourt, just up the road,
where units like the 2ndBattalion of the Manchester
Regiment attacked trenches inpositions like that, and broke
through that final line ofGerman defences.
(03:43):
And amongst those in the 2ndManchester's, who was in that
action in breaking theBeauvoir-Fonson line was
Lieutenant Wilfred Owen who wasawarded a military cross for his
bravery there.
Owen, one of the great war poetsof the First World War.
But I wanted there to be adefinitive ending and an
understanding as to where all ofthat fighting across the
(04:05):
Hindenburg line brought theBritish and Commonwealth
soldiers to and what happenednext once the trench systems
like the Beauvoir-Fonson linewere broken.
What were the battles like?
What where were they fought andwhat kind of fighting took place
in those final weeks of theGreat War.
And I wanted the groups thatwill travel with us on this tour
(04:27):
this year and in the comingyears to understand that period
of the war because it's kind ofa neglected one.
Once the trenches were over andthe war became mobile again,
it's almost as if we blink andthe war is over on the 11th of
November.
But there were hard weeks aheadwith tremendous casualties and a
lot of very hard fighting.
(04:49):
So in that ground beyond theHindenburg Line, in those final
weeks of the war, when it cameto ending this tour, telling
this story and bringing it to aconclusion, I used the fighting
on the Sombre Canal on the 4thof November 1918, and that
brings us to this week'sepisode, because just as we will
(05:10):
use it in that tour to bringthat to a conclusion, here I
think it helps us explain whatthat final period of the war was
like and it's a date that is notperhaps unfamiliar because of
Wilfred Owen who we mentionedearlier he was killed in action
at oars right by the canal sideencouraging his men to get onto
rafts and pontoons and getacross the canal when he was
(05:33):
struck probably by machine gunfire and killed instantly he's
the most famous casualty of the4th of November 1918 but he's
not the only one his death hislife kind of overshadows that
day which is an importantimportant day because it marks
the last great battle of thefirst world war on the western
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front so it's not owen it's notoars that we're going to look at
in this episode but a slightlymore obscure and lesser known
location i hate to use that wordforgotten because it isn't
forgotten but it's certainlylesser known and while we were
on that recce this journey thatwe made that week took me and my
(06:14):
fellow battlefield guides to oneof my old favorites a place i've
visited for more than 30 yearsthe battlefield around lock
number one on the sombre canalclose to the village of rege de
beaulieu so what is lock numberone where is the sombre canal
and what was this battle here onthe 4th of november 1918 The
(06:36):
Battle of the Somme, thecrossing of the Sombre Canal,
the Battle of the Somme being abattle honour awarded to the
regiments that took part in thisaction, was that last final big
attack, allied attack of theGreat War, because seven days
later was the armistice and theend to the conflict on the
Western Front.
And it wasn't a small affair,far from it.
(06:58):
In fact, more men in the BritishArmy and the Commonwealth forces
that were there went over thetop on the 4th of November than
on the 1st of July 1916 thefirst day of the Battle of the
Somme but this was more than twoyears later nearly two and a
half years later and the war hadmoved forward incredibly during
(07:19):
that period the British army haddeveloped and refined its way of
fighting as had all of the othernations that fought alongside it
as part of that wider Britishexpeditionary force that had
come at a price in thecasualties that had been
suffered in the battles such ason the Hindenburg line in 1917
1718 but by that final year ofthe war in those final months of
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the war it was a modern armyfighting a modern war with
modern weapons in a modern wayso it had changed but of course
it had fought to break thestalemate of trench warfare and
when that had ended in the finalbreakthrough of the German
trenches across the Hindenburgline in early October 1918 the
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army found itself on the moveagain it found itself mobile
fighting over open ground fieldsand woods and copses and lanes
and areas covered in hedgerowsand small villages and towns
with street fighting a war thatwe would kind of more associate
with the later conflict thesecond great war rather than
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events on the western front in1918 but this attack on the 4th
of November 1918 was on a widefront from the Belgian border
right down to this area of northeastern France and across
following the of the SombrayCanal in some places, but not
exclusively.
There was a large area ofwoodland where many of the units
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that were attacking that dayadvanced through.
That was the Forest of Mormau,where four years before, in
August 1914, men of the BritishExpeditionary Force, the BEF,
the Old Contemptibles, hadmarched down that road during
the retreat from Mons.
And on the southern part of theSombray Canal front, where it
turned and kind of wenteastwards, that was where the
(09:04):
British forces joined with theFrench troops and the French
army was attackingsimultaneously as well.
This was coalition warfare.
The British army and theCommonwealth forces fighting
alongside them did not exist inisolation, and the French were
far from a spent force, whichmany who study the Great War
seem to think sometimes thatthey are.
After the actions of 1917,they're very heavily involved in
(09:28):
these final offensives, andthey're there alongside British
troops on the 4th of November1918.
We're not going to cover theirstory in this, because that's a
story in its own right but itwas a big battle like we said
more men went over the top onthe 4th of November 1918 than in
that opening day of the Battleof the Somme but it wasn't as
catastrophic when it comes tothe casualties so with 20,000
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dead or thereabouts on the 1stof July 1916 on the 4th of
November 1918 there was justover 2,000 battlefield deaths
now that doesn't mean that thebattlefield was less deadly in
that attack across the SombrayCanal area it just means the war
was different by that stagemen's lives could be saved
because of medical advances butalso the army was fighting the
(10:15):
war in a very different way of avery different countryside and a
very different landscapelandscape that forever factor in
whatever we examine connectedwith the war on the western
front and while this was thelast great battle of the first
world war fighting would ofcourse continue beyond it right
(10:36):
up to that last minute on the11th of November 1918 but these
were all much smaller actionscompared to what happened here
the Canadian Corps in particularthat was on the northern part of
this advance they would continueright into the streets of Mons
on that final day of the FirstWorld War with George Lawrence
Price a Canadian soldier beingthe last of four who died in the
(10:59):
streets dragged off that streethaving been shot by a sniper he
died in his comrades arms andwhen they looked up at a clock
on a mantelpiece in the housewhere he passed away they could
see it was at 10 58 two minutesbefore the armistice came into
effect and that for a britishand commonwealth point of view
was the end to the fighting onthe western front with that last
(11:23):
casualty so what of the sombrecanal and lock number one which
we're going to look at in thisepisode the was sombre canal was
actually built in the 1830s sosome time before the great war
to link northern France near theBelgian border with other canals
in this area on the Aisne andalso link up eventually to
(11:44):
Paris.
It's part of that kind of superhighway of canals that existed
in this region of France.
And it was a working canal whenthe war broke out in 1914.
But it was swept up in theGerman advance in those early
months of the conflict.
And although this region wasoccupied, life continued fairly
(12:05):
normally here for the Frenchpeople although many had been
displaced by the fighting andothers were sent eventually to
force labour in Germany but thefarms kept running the fields
were cultivated the canal seemsto have operated although there
would eventually be Germanmilitary traffic on it but life
(12:26):
to the average French personhere would have seemed vaguely
normal although there would havebeen the ever presence of an
occupier with German forces andgarrison command and in some
degrees martial law beingimposed on some of these areas
too.
German units were billeted inthis region throughout the First
World War.
(12:47):
Many of the villages where thefighting was on the 4th of
November 1918 had been placeswhere units coming to and from
the fighting at Arras or Combréor the Somme had spent rest
periods there.
The Germans definitely seemed tohave used the canal to move war
material around and why wouldn'tthey because it was a convenient
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way to move a lot of heavy gearparticularly when it came to the
construction of the HindenburgLine.
I suspect they were using allthe material that was needed to
create concrete for the bunkers.
Could well have been moved downthese canal systems as part of
the preparation for that.
And just as the British Armyused the canals behind their
front in northern France toevacuate the wounded on hospital
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barges, the Germans did asimilar thing on their part of
the line as well.
So this was part of the medicalevacuation route for Germans.
German soldiers and then in theautumn of 1918 it took on
another significance once trenchwarfare had ended because it now
became a battle area and whenthe Germans began to look at
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these areas beyond the trencheshow were they going to defend
them they used landscape theyused the geography so they
looked at the ground for whichthey were pulling back over and
they could defend woods hillsand villages and river valleys.
They could blow the bridgesalong those rivers.
(14:16):
And once the rivers ran out, youwere getting towards an area
where there were canals.
So it would be obvious that youwould use the canals in exactly
the same way.
And so what you see in thatfinal phase leading up to this
battle here on the 4th ofNovember, 1918 is an army,
British army and itsCommonwealth forces alongside it
adapting to the circumstances onthe battlefield.
(14:38):
And one of the key things thatsuddenly becomes very important
is engineering because if you'vegot rivers and obstacles and
then canals to cross you needsappers you need engineers to
help you do that build bridgesbuild assault bridges build
pontoons and carry pontoons andboats up to get across those
(14:58):
water courses so the engineersalthough they've been heavily
involved in all aspects oftrench warfare on the western
front we've spoken about therole of sappers on and off quite
a lot and they certainly deservetheir own episodes which I'm
sure will come one day, here inthis final phase, assault
engineers, as we'd probably nowcall them, came to the fore,
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assisting the infantry gettingacross the obstacles that lay in
their path on these kind ofchanging battlefields, compared
to the sorts of battlefields, ofcourse, that they'd been used to
in the static war on the WesternFront previously.
But when it came to lock numberone and this stretch of the
Sombray Canal, the canal comesfrom north to south towards a
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lock, lock number one, wherethere was a two-storey control
building overlooking the lockitself with another building
alongside it.
Close to that, the canal movedinto a bend and beyond that bend
is where the French forces wereon the 4th of November 1918.
It was south of the small townof which was also part of the
(16:08):
assaults on the 4th of November1918 and close to the village of
Régé de Beaulieu to the westwhich is a small little village
with a church and a few housesbut it commanded the ground in
the approach to the canalitself.
British troops of the 1stDivision and Infantry Division
reached this area in the firstfew days of November of 1918 as
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the offensive gradually caughtup with the German withdrawal
and the advance towards thisnext feat on the landscape they
were going to have to attackover, which of course was the
Sombre Canal itself, and thatwas when the plans for the
attack on the 4th of Novemberwere in their final phase.
A lot of the plans being made atthis stage of the war were
hastily done by necessity, butthe learning curve that those in
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charge had built benefited fromcame in handy really because
this was an army of conscriptsof young soldiers with only
often fairly basic training inBritain enhanced once they came
to the Western Front, once theywere in the theatre of war, but
most importantly commanded byveteran troops in many cases,
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the platoon commanders, thecompany commanders, the
battalion commanders, and ofcourse the brigade and
divisional commanders often hadgone right through it since the
very beginning.
And at this stage of theconflict, you could have men who
were platoon commanders in theoriginal British Expeditionary
Force in 1914, who were nowbrigade or even divisional
commanders leading men intobattle on a much bigger scale.
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So this area around Régé deBeaulieu facing lock number one
and this stretch of the SombréCanal would be the southern
flank of the British advance onthe 4th of November 1918 close
to those French forces and inthis sector where the assault
would take place the leadbattalions were the 2nd
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Battalion Royal Sussex Regimentand 2nd Battalion King's Royal
Rifle Corps supported by the 1stBattalion the Northamptonshire
Regiment.
Now all of these were regulararmy battalions they'd been in
France since August of 1914 andwhile in each of those
battalions there would have beena handful of men who had been
pre-war regulars and were stillserving these were very
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different battalions to thebattalions that have gone off to
war four years before because aswe've said this was a conscript
army most of the men in theranks were conscripts and they
were very young 18 and 19 yearsold which we see reflected in
the cemeteries of this part ofthe Western Front battlefields.
When we go into these cemeterieswe can see how young the army
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had become by that final phaseof the Great War.
Now as soon as I mention in thatlist 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex
Regiment you can understand myinterest being a Sussex boy
researching the Royal SussexRegiment as a kind of pathway to
understanding the wider aspectsof the Great War then this was
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something that I became familiarwith as I delved my way through
the records of the regiment andthe different battalion war
diaries and analysed soldiersdied to see key dates and this
was one that came up quite a lotbecause actually the 9th Royal
Sussex fought in the northernpart of the battlefield but yet
again that's a tale for anotherday so this was something I was
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familiar with and for the 2ndBattalion the Royal Sussex
Regiment this was their finalchapter really of a very very
long war and the main road whenyou look at a map they were
going to attack from near regede beaulieu across the
countryside through thehedgerows and streams up towards
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the canal cross the canal movethrough another hedgerow area to
a main road and that main roadhad been part of their route
that they'd advanced downmarched down during the retreat
from Mons in August 1914.
So for them, quite literally inthis case, their war had pretty
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much brought them full circle.
They were back where they'd beenat the very beginning of the
conflict.
And for the Second Royal Sussex,that very long war that had
brought them to this point hadseen them take part in all of
those battles of 1914, from theretreat to Mons, to the fighting
on the Marne, and then theAisne, the first Battle of Ypres
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in October and November of 1914.
They lost three commandingofficers in the first few months
of the war.
They were involved in all of theearly British offensives on the
Western Front in reserve forNeuf Chapelle, then in the
vanguard of the assault onAlbers Ridge on the 9th of May
1915, and then held the line inthat sector for much of the rest
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of that summer, and then becamea leading assault battalion in
the first day of the Battle ofLoos on the 25th September 1915
and continued to fight rightthrough to the end of the battle
in October of 1915.
Later they would fight on theSomme around Pozières and High
Wood and in 1917 moved up to thenorthern, very northern sector
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of the Western Front and wereone of the British units that
began to take over from Frenchand Belgian troops near to
Newport on the coast of on thesector of the Issa Canal, and
they prepared, well, one of theunits that was preparing for a
seaborne invasion along thatcoast in the summer of 1917 as
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part of the Third Battle ofYpres.
I kind of hastened to call it aD-Day, but it was an amphibious
operation, no landing craft,none of the kind of specialist
armour or equipment that wasgoing to be used a generation
later on the 6th of June 1944,although tanks were modified to
be able to move across sand butthe troops are going to be moved
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up in huge barges protected by anaval flotilla but the coastline
was bristling with heavy gunsparticularly in places like
Knokke Heist where there weremassive German artillery
fortifications there that ifthis landing had ever taken
place I think would haveresulted in catastrophic
casualties for all of those whowere taking part in it and it
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didn't happen the Germans gotwind of the movement of British
troops up into that sector andin July of 1917 they attacked
along the Issa Canal at Newportand that's something that we've
mentioned in a previous podcastepisode when their attack pushed
hard against the positions ofthe 2nd Kings Royal Rifle Corps
and the NorthamptonshireRegiments both of whom figure to
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lesser or greater degree in thisstory here at the Sombray Canal
but for the Sussex lads that wasnot the end of their war they
were involved in the tail end ofthe fight fighting at
Passchendaele in 1917 and thenthroughout 1918 fought in pretty
much every battle along theWestern Front where British
soldiers were holding theGermans back and were wiped out,
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rebuilt, wiped out, rebuiltagain and again and again as
were so many battalions in theBritish Expeditionary Force in
that final year of the GreatWar.
But having said that, when wekind of analyse the details of
those who were still serving,who were here for the attack on
the 4th of November 1918.
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It's quite a broad church.
There are obviouslypredominantly conscripts, but
when we look at the records, andthey're quite good records for
the 2nd Royal Sussex in thecounty archives, in the
regimental archives thatsurvive, we can see there's a
lot of men from some of theKitchener battalions.
We can tell that by theirregimental numbers.
They're so low, they've got Gprefixes, and in some cases SD
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prefixes, indicating they'reoriginal men.
of the south downs battalionsand there were quite a few of
those serving in the secondroyal sussex in this attack and
even some men whose numberswhich have an l prefix which
indicates a regular armyenlistment with a fairly small
four digit number oftenbeginning seven or eight that
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indicates they are pre-warregular soldiers so there were
still a few of those old sweatswho'd gone through it all here
and what a war this battalionhad had and here in its final
hour it had kind of seeneverything from the war of
movement that everyone had goneto war to fight in 1914 the
first trenches on the Aisne thefighting the desperate fighting
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to hold the Germans back in thefirst battle of Ypres the whole
gamut of trench warfare on thewestern front the arrival of
tanks gas everything else andthen here in this final phase
they're back fighting an openwar war of movement again but in
a very unfamiliar landscape andthat's what lay before them for
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this assault so this battle forthe second royal sussex lads and
all of those taking part in theattack on the sombre canal would
prove very different to anyother they'd fought because the
war had changed, and thenchanged again, as conflict often
does.
And as we've said, in thisbattle, like some of the others
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in the preceding weeks,engineers would prove just as
important as infantry, becauseto get to that canal that you've
got across, the role of theengineers would be absolutely
pivotal.
The engineers were not there tofight.
Probably only a handful of themwent into battle with weapons,
(25:49):
They had too much engineeringkit to carry to worry about
wielding a short magazine in theEnfield or even a sidearm,
although the officers would havebeen armed.
Their task was to useengineering equipment, in this
case, bridges and pontoons andportable drop bridges, as well
as potentially boats if theywere needed, get that kit across
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the open ground, following,going alongside the infantry,
get to the obstacles that werethere.
And when they mapped this, theycould see that there wasn't just
canal but a stream in front ofit that would need to be crossed
that could be overgrown or evenprotected by the enemy and that
the infantry's chance of successwas based on their chance of
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success getting this engineeringequipment in place and while We
look at the designs and there'sa very good book on the fighting
for the 4th of November calledDecisive Victory by Derek
Clayton.
We'll put a link to that ontothe podcast website.
When we look at some of thedesigns of these bridges, you
can see that they are clearlybased on previous engineering
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designs for battlefield bridges.
But the difference is they haveto be portable now and they have
to be able to be dropped or putin place very easily over not
just major features, but oftenminor ones as well, such as
dreams that might block the wayof an infantry assault on a
position like this canal.
So to help the 2nd Royal Sussexin this attack they had the
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409th Field Company RoyalEngineers which had been serving
with the 1st Infantry Divisionfor quite some time.
They would provide the bridgingsupport at the lock where they
were going to cross and thatwould be really important there
because the lock itself was 17feet wide.
So unless they had a few Sussexsupermen serve in that battalion
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no one was going to easily leapacross that and foot bridges
drop bridges would be absolutelyessential to get across there
and that stream that was runningparallel to the canal would also
feature in any kind of outcomeof this battle if that couldn't
be crossed you couldn't even getto the canal so 409 field
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company that would be part oftheir task as well this unit
this field company of the RoyalEngineers was commanded by the
29 year old Scott Major Georgede Cardenal Emsil Findlay MCM
Bar who had been commissioned in1910 in the Royal Engineers but
he broke his legs in the earlyphase of the war and he didn't
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go overseas until 1917 afterhe'd recovered but In that
period, since his arrival on theWestern Front, he'd fought
through many battles with amilitary cross awarded for
bravery in the Third Battle ofYpres in 1917 and a bar for the
actions at a village calledWassigny in October of 1918.
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So he was a commander, abattlefield commander, respected
within his unit and decoratedfor his bravery.
He was a man who didn't just asksoldiers to do something, he did
it himself and that bravery andaptitude had been recognised on
the battlefield by hissuperiors.
His men would have small woodenbridges that they could carry
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available for the stream itselfand then larger drop bridges
which a group of engineers wouldhave to carry for the canal
itself and they'd also suppliedwhat we'd call today assault
boats and they certainly wouldhave been called that in a
second world war for example andthe bridges were specially
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constructed by Royal engineerworkshops by the unit itself and
were all part of thatdevelopment of engineering on
the western front that had takenplace in those final weeks of
the war and its reaction to thechanging nature of warfare
during this period similarbridges for example this wasn't
the first time they've been usedsimilar bridges have been used
(29:47):
in the crossing in october 1918of the cell river which has
proved another big obstacle tothe advance of british troops in
in that phase of the battlebeyond the Hindenburg Line.
The battlefield that they andthe infantry were about to cross
in this action was pretty dense,different to some of the terrain
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that they'd experienced before.
This was an area of a lot ofkind of bockage-style hedgerows
with small enclosed fields andlots of trees blocking line of
sight and small buildingsscattered here and there.
So you would describe it asdense terrain with lots of cover
cover for an advance but alsocover for an enemy the germans
(30:31):
to be bedded down in and if yousuddenly advance across the
ground and they see you theyhave the advantage of cover to
open fire at you from and one ofthe reports noted The country on
both sides of the canal was veryenclosed with hedges and
orchards making it impossible todistinguish any marked tactical
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features or pick out anylandmarks which would serve as
distant direction guides duringthe advance.
A liberal supply of excellentaeroplane photographs however
were found to be of the greatestassistance and these were used
in time for officers andnon-commissioned officers to
make a thorough study of theground which they would be
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required to advance over.
Now again this itself kind ofreflects the changing nature of
the war at this point becausetwo years before on the Somme
ordinary soldiers would neverhave seen a trench map let alone
an aerial photograph but inthese final battles it had been
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realised by this stage of thewar through bitter experience
the more information that youcould give soldiers the better
they performed on thebattlefield and aerial
photographs which we'vediscussed in previous podcast
were essential in theintelligence understanding of
the battles and battlefieldsover which these men would
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fight.
And they could send a flight updeliberately to get some aerial
photographs from them, fly back,develop them, and then deliver
those by dispatch rider towhichever headquarters had
requested them.
And again, when I kind of readabout these air photos in these
reports and how important theywere, got a bit of a connection
to that because in one of thesemythical brighton junk shops one
(32:14):
time i remember lifting up a boxof stuff and tucked in there was
a whole pile of aerialphotographs and one of them was
an aerial photograph and a bleakso looking down at an angle at
the bend in the sombre canalwhere the first division
including the second royalsussex made their attack on the
4th of november and when ipeered at the photograph i could
(32:36):
see the lock number one controlbuilding the lock house very
clearly on this photograph andI'll put a copy of that image
onto the podcast website so youcan see it it's an official
photograph and it's in thearchives of the Imperial War
Museum but I've got an originalcopy of it pasted onto a bit of
paper that a veteran forwhatever reason has kept perhaps
(32:59):
he was in the engineers perhapshe was in the Sussex who knows
so with the infantry in placeclose to the village of Rish
there were no trenches here.
So these men were kind of dugin.
The trench warfare was over.
They weren't occupying formerenemy positions, German
positions.
They were digging in as and whenrequired.
So the entrenching tool becomesa very important bit of kit in
(33:22):
this phase of the war.
And also the Mark I infantryshovel, which you see a lot of
soldiers have tucked down theback of their equipment, useful
for digging in as and whenrequired.
And the engineers linked up withthem.
They too became ready for theattack.
and were assembled by 4 o'clockin the morning on the 4th of
November 1918 with theirengineering kit with the
(33:44):
infantry ready to go in battleorder and the momentum of the
battle begins by 0530 they'dreached the streams west of the
canal and they found thatobstacle not just to be a
difficult obstacle to get acrossbut they found it clogged with
fallen trees perhapsdeliberately undergrowth in
(34:04):
there as well and also Germanbarbed wire so the Germans had
seen the importance of thisobstacle and had wired it up
just to make it even moredifficult to cross so the
engineers had to get out wirecutters and do this by hand and
cut their way through that aswell as get their bridges
assembled heavy fire began todrop on these positions while
(34:25):
they were doing this work andone account stated so intense
was the enemy's fire that eventhe stoutest troops hesitated
and it seemed impossible for anyman to get to the lock and yet
live.
One area of the stream was foundto be crossable but only by
using two of the small bridgestogether or one of the larger
(34:48):
bridges designed for the lock.
So they kind of underestimatedjust how difficult it would be
to bridge even this stream.
So two of the smaller bridgeswere put together to kind of
form an inverted V shape and inone case one of the heavier
bridges was used as well.
So that got them in, that gotthe infant and the engineers
supporting them across thisstream and Lieutenant Colonel
(35:12):
Johnson commanding 2nd BattalionRoyal Sussex Regiment and Major
Finlay who commanded theengineers the 409 Field Company
they were very much in the thickof this thing they weren't
sitting back and watching theirmen go forward they were in
there taking command at the verysharp end of this battle calming
the men down taking chargegiving orders the bridges were
(35:36):
put in place the sappers and theinfantry streamed over and Lewis
gunners of which there was agreater number in infantry
platoons by this stage of thewar were given covering fire
from their automatic weapons toenable that advance to move
forward because the Germans werein the lockhouse, the control
building firing down at almostpoint blank range as the men who
(35:56):
crossed over that stream thatwas now literally in the shadow
of the bank of the canal and menwere dropping left and right
there was close quarter fightingthat took place in and around
the lock house itself as Germanscame out to meet and greet that
assault to try and push it backand once drop bridges had been
placed over the lock some menmounted the actual lock gates
(36:19):
themselves climbed over that wayand then got into the building
cleared that wiped out theGerman defenders and then pushed
on towards their objectivesbeyond the canal towards that
main road at this point Germanresistance had pretty much
collapsed and the battle for thelock was over.
(36:39):
It was short, it was sharp andin many cases it was deadly but
it was decisive.
The canal had been crossed, thelock had been captured, the
enemy had been silenced andpushed back and the objectives
beyond these positions had beentaken.
To the south, on the right ofthe Sussex Lads, 2nd Battalion
(37:00):
King's Royal Rifle Corps hadcome forward and found their
bridges destroyed by enemy fire.
So they had made the decision touse boats to cross the canal.
But the boats took someconstruction.
They weren't kind of flat-packedand ready to go.
They took a lot of effort and alot of time to actually build
(37:21):
and get ready.
And while the battle wasunfolding on their left, the
commanders of the KRRC guys feltthat this was taking far too
long not a single boat had beencompleted so the officer in
charge told his men to dump theboats forget them and head
straight for the Sussex lads atthe lock cross on their bridges
get over the canal and thenstream out beyond and that's
(37:43):
exactly what they did so thosetwo battalions 2nd Royal Sussex
2nd Kings Royal Rifle Corpsessentially crossed over
together by 0630 the lock was inBritish hands the And then,
first Australian TunnellingCompany came up with the task of
building a tank bridge here,which was eventually used by one
(38:05):
tank just a few hours later.
Now, the first AustralianTunnelling Company had been in
action right across the WesternFront, doing just as it says on
the tin.
They'd been carrying outtunnelling mining operations
beneath the battlefield.
That was over in a mobile war,so they were doing all kinds of
engineering tasks.
They were detached from the mainAustralian Corps which had
(38:27):
fought its last battle atMontbriand on the 5th of October
1918 and again we've got aprevious podcast episode on that
but these were some of the lastAustralian soldiers at the tip
of the spear right in the frontline in this final great battle
on the western front and theyset about building the bridge
(38:47):
that would be needed to supportthe weight of a tank that could
cross at this advantageousposition on the canal the lock
itself but the position despiteits capture and despite the
enemy being pushed back theGermans knew where the British
soldiers were now and Britishand Australian soldiers came
under artillery fire while theywere working on the bridges and
(39:09):
some got hit got injured gotkilled going about their work
the Australians alone sufferedthree men killed here and eight
wounded while building theirtank bridge in fact total
casualties in the assault hereat lock number one were 409 So
we're talking hundreds ofcasualties here not thousands
(39:56):
but nevertheless for battalionsthat were reduced in strength
with only a small proportion oftheir battalion actually in the
forward part of the battlefieldattacking this was not
insignificant casualties incapturing a position like this
plus of course the 11 Australiancasualties from the 1st
Australian Tunnelling Companyand a further 21 Royal Engineer
(40:19):
casualties from 1st DivisionEngineer units who were also
attached for this attack So youcan see unusually in a battle
like this, a significant numberof the casualties are from
engineering units, which showshow the scope of the battlefield
had changed by this period ofthe war.
(40:39):
So the capture of lock numberone was not without cost, not on
the scale of the Somme, as we'vesaid, or Passchendaele, but not
in considerable losses giventhis short, sharp engagement.
And a whole host of awards anddecorations were given out out
for bravery to both the infantryand the engineers who took part
in this attack includingVictoria Crosses to Major Finlay
(41:02):
of the 409 Field Company andLieutenant Colonel Johnson of
the Royal Sussex Regiment.
Both of them survived the warand went on to live long lives.
But what was the significance ofthis action and this wider
battle on the 4th of November1918, the Battle of the Somme?
Well, this marked a final phaseof the war.
(41:24):
The men who took part couldn'thave really known it at the
time, but within a week the warwould be over with the signing
of the armistice.
The final preparations of Germanparliamentarians to cross the
Allied lines to seek anarmistice were about to take
place, but to the men on theground and even the commanders
at the top the war did not lookover even Haig was thinking that
(41:49):
the Germans would continue withthe fight and the war could
easily move on into 1919 andconsidering the casualties that
his expeditionary force hadsuffered on the western front in
those battles of the autumn of1918 and the manpower problem
that he had to replace thoselosses then his concern was that
(42:09):
the war would move towards anAmerican war where American
troops from the AmericanExpeditionary Force would form a
much greater proportion of thoseat the sharp end and that any
victory could easily become anAmerican victory and all the
things that Britain and itsempire and its allies had
suffered in the preceding yearscould easily be lost, the
(42:30):
significance of it could easilybe lost because of that but that
was not to be.
The German army, the Germannation, the German people were
on their knees by this stagewith submarine blockades causing
starvation in many German townsand cities, and the army itself
finding it increasinglydifficult to bring up
(42:50):
replacements and call up youngerand younger soldiers to serve in
frontline infantry regiments,running out of fuel, running out
of weapons, running out ofammunition, running out of
everything, and the end of thewar for them was now when rather
than if.
But for Britain, it marked onelast major push in that war, a
(43:13):
war that had seen battle afterbattle after battle and this was
the last of those great battlessomewhat forgotten more than a
century later despite the factthat it was extensively written
about in the official historiesthat were published in the
post-war period it neverresulted in an actual book on
(43:34):
the subject until DerekClayton's most recent Decisive
Victory which we mentionedearlier and which there is a
link to that on the podcastwebsite But it's an important
battle and one that's easy tofollow on the ground.
The terrain really has notchanged much since 1918.
And you can find the traces ofit on the buildings, many of
(43:56):
them original.
And you can see the dead fromthe battles along the Sombre
Canal and the Forest ofMontmartre and up towards the
Belgian border in many, manybattlefield cemeteries that are
part of that landscape of thefinal phase of the Great War on
the Western front but it's notjust the wider significance it's
(44:17):
a spot that is special to me notjust because of the Sussex
connection but because one ofthe veterans that I knew and
interviewed Josh Grover MM wasthere he was one of the Lewis
gunners in that attack I metJosh back in the 1980s when he
was a prominent member of theWestern Front Association I used
(44:38):
to bump into him a lot on thebattlefields wherever he
travelled he wore his originalsteel helmet with the badge of
the Royal Sussex Regiment on it.
He'd been transferred into theRoyal Sussex by the time of the
Battle of the Somme in 1916 andhad fought through all those
different battles that wediscussed earlier but awarded
the military medal for hisbravery and become part of the
(45:00):
Lewis gun section of his companyand in this attack he went
forward with the Lewis gun wasabout to deploy it but didn't
actually fire it on that actionand when he got over the canal
went to use the weapon on theother side and found that the
Germans had struck the Lewis gunwith a round so it wouldn't
function.
The weapon had absorbed theenemy's bullet and essentially
(45:24):
had saved his life.
He came back to the SombraeCanal quite a few times in the
latter part of his life, and hewrote quite a lot of poetry that
was published in the earlyeditions of Stand 2, the journal
of the Western FrontAssociation, and one part of one
of his poems remembering thisaction here at lock number one
(45:44):
reads, Now we're across, thestrong point captured, the
crisis over, resistance ceases,the reaper she is it true this
eerie silence are we still alivethe day is drawing to its close
and all objectives carried werest and clean the lewis gun but
(46:06):
had we known we wouldn't havetroubled for a bullet meant for
one of us was embedded in thebarrel we have survived the war
is over and we a tale can tellhow death the reaper reaped his
harvest at the crossing of theSombre Canal.
Josh Grover was also interviewedby the oral historians at the
(46:29):
Imperial War Museum and thoserecordings are now online and
I'll put a link to hisinterviews in the show notes so
you can go and listen to those.
There's a huge amount ofrecordings on there now which
you can listen to and it's justincredible to have those voices
of veterans and for me to hearJosh Grover's voice once more
after all these years.
(46:50):
But what of lock number onetoday?
It's always good to tell thestory of a lesser-known battle
and battlefield of the GreatWar, but we like to visit those
battlefields as well.
And what can we find when wetravel to lock number one in
that wider area today?
Well, very little, as Imentioned earlier, has changed.
And you can follow a path fromthe village of Régé de Beaulieu.
(47:14):
There's a track, a walkway now,that you can follow through the
countryside, that kind of densebocage style hedgerows up to the
stream which has now got amodern bridge across it you
don't need any sappers to buildone for you and that brings you
up onto the canal bank and infront of you is the canal and
the lock and the control housethe lock house itself of lock
(47:36):
number one the original buildingthat was there in 1918 And it's
almost as if history has stoodstill.
It's got a modern lock, it's gotmodern equipment here, but
nevertheless, this is a placewith a lot of atmosphere and you
can really picture what thebattle was like here more than a
(47:57):
century ago on the 4th ofNovember 1918.
And I'll put some photographs ofwhat it looks like today, again,
onto the podcast website.
But whenever I visit, I try toend at the Régé de Beaulieu
communal cemetery back in thevillage where the Sussex and the
Sappers and the Kings RoyalRifle Corps lads made their
(48:19):
attack from, because here thedead from this action were
brought back to this place forburial, burial by their
comrades.
When I look at the Sussex namesin this cemetery, I find South
Downs men who joined up at thevery beginning of the war and
fought at Richborg in that daythat Sussex died.
I also find some original 2ndBattalion men who'd been out
(48:43):
since August 1914 and survivedthe whole war only to die in
their final battle and amongstthem the grave of their solitary
officer who was killed in thatattack, Lieutenant Ernest
Stanley Loder of the 2nd RoyalSussex.
He was a Londoner who hadpreviously served in the ranks
(49:04):
of the Royal Horse Guards on theWestern Front in 1917 and was
then commissioned in the RoyalSussex Regiment in April 1918
and killed leading his platooninto action.
He was typical of platooncommanders of that period of the
war having come up through theranks.
And he's another connection forme because I picked up a
(49:26):
photograph of him in a Londonjunk shop many, many years ago.
There was a part of London thathad a lot of junk shops in and
one of them was run by a formerprofessional photographer and
was full of images.
There were boxes and boxes andboxes of images and you could
kind of rummage through them andhe'd have boxes of portraits,
boxes of group photographs andmore specialist images.
(49:49):
I bought quite a lot of aerialphotographs in there over the
years And he kind of ratedimages and almost priced images
based on how good they were.
So if it was a particularly goodimage, you always knew you were
going to pay a little bit morefor it.
I mean, they were nothingcompared to the kind of prices
that these things go for today.
But I was able to secure,rescue, whatever we're going to
(50:10):
call it, quite a few littletreasures, including an original
photograph, portrait photographof Ernest Stanley Loder, who was
killed here and buried in thiscemetery and died on the 4th of
November, 1919.
And I'd love having battlefieldslike this where I have so many
of these connections to it.
(50:31):
Also laid side by side are thethree men of the 1st Australian
Tunnelling Company who died upat the lot while building their
tank bridge.
These are the final Australianbattle casualties on the Western
Front on the ground almost amonth after the last Australian
Corps action at Montbrier.
They are themselves, really, abeacon to Australian sacrifice
(50:56):
in France and Flanders.
That long war on the WesternFront for Australia, which cost
them more than 45,000 dead.
And these three lads buried sideby side in this communal
cemetery on the most easternflank of those final
battlefields on the fields ofFrance.
These are the last diggers todie attacking the enemy.
(51:19):
And as we pause in thiscemetery, sit perhaps on the
cemetery wall and look acrossthe landscape towards the canal,
perhaps as the sun is settingover the church of Roger de
Beaulieu, it seems a timelessscene, a timeless view in so
many ways.
Little has changed here since1918.
(51:42):
And here we connect with thepast, down less familiar paths,
but yet layered, with so manystories and new insights into
that final phase of thefighting.
And this is what it gives us,our journeys here.
There is so often a surprise ortwo to find as we follow our
(52:05):
learning pathway along thateternal old front line.
www.oldfrontline.co.ukpatreon.com slash old front line
(52:43):
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
On the last great battlefield of the First World
War, we discover a timelessscene along the Sombré Canal.
Here at lock number one, thelast big push took place on the
4th of November, 1918.
I was recently on a recce for anew ledger battlefield tour,
(00:23):
looking at the fighting on theHindenburg Line in the final two
years of the Great War.
When I design a new battlefieldtour, any tour, I approach it in
a similar way to how we used toconstruct TV documentaries and
how I've written some of mybooks.
The tour isn't just a whiz rounda few places.
(00:44):
It should be a vehicle forlearning and, in my view, should
have a beginning, a middle bitand an end.
And this is what we try toachieve with the tours that we
do.
So this new Hindenburg Line tourstarts at Rossignol Wood on the
Somme, Nightingale Wood or COPS125, as Ernst Jünger called it,
(01:08):
close to the 1916 battlefield.
So we've got kind of a backreference there.
But more than that, it's also aplace where the Germans on this
sector of the Somme front beganto pull back and where the 16th
Battalion of the West YorkshireRegiment, the Bradford Powells,
who had been involved in theassault on that summer's day, on
(01:31):
the 1st of July 1916...
in the early part of 1917 foughta costly battle here against an
enemy who seemed to be pullingback but wasn't keen on yielding
ground and that became a kind ofan insight into that early stage
of the retreat to the HindenburgLine by German forces on this
(01:55):
part of the Western Front andthe cemetery here has the dead
from that battle from theBradford Powells of the West
Yorkshire Regiment and you cansee the wood you can see the
ground where that action tookplace so it kind of sets the
scene for what the retreat tothe Hindenburg line was and then
the subsequent battles on theHindenburg line were all about
(02:17):
so in following that idea of abeginning a middle bit and the
end that was the beginning andthe kind of middle bit is when
the tour then follows thefighting in the outposts on the
Hindenburg line the approachesto that set of trenches all the
problems involved with suddenfacing an enemy dug into new
defences and you have to do thesame that's what British and
(02:40):
Commonwealth forces foundthemselves doing in that early
part of 1917 and We then followthe story of the battles on the
Hindenburg Line at differentpoints between Arras and Cambrai
and Saint-Quentin in those yearsof 1917-18, in the final phase
of the war on the Western Front.
(03:02):
And it ends, as we move towardsthat ending, it ends with the
breaking of the Hindenburg Linein September 1918, the crossing
of the Saint-Quentin Canal, thefamous picture of the soldiers
the escarpment close to thebridge at Rickerville, one of
the kind of iconic images ofthat last phase of the Great War
(03:22):
on the Western Front, and thebreakthrough of the final line
of trenches, the end of trenchwarfare, in places like the
Beauvoir-Fonson line, near toJoncourt, just up the road,
where units like the 2ndBattalion of the Manchester
Regiment attacked trenches inpositions like that, and broke
through that final line ofGerman defences.
(03:43):
And amongst those in the 2ndManchester's, who was in that
action in breaking theBeauvoir-Fonson line was
Lieutenant Wilfred Owen who wasawarded a military cross for his
bravery there.
Owen, one of the great war poetsof the First World War.
But I wanted there to be adefinitive ending and an
understanding as to where all ofthat fighting across the
(04:05):
Hindenburg line brought theBritish and Commonwealth
soldiers to and what happenednext once the trench systems
like the Beauvoir-Fonson linewere broken.
What were the battles like?
What where were they fought andwhat kind of fighting took place
in those final weeks of theGreat War.
And I wanted the groups thatwill travel with us on this tour
(04:27):
this year and in the comingyears to understand that period
of the war because it's kind ofa neglected one.
Once the trenches were over andthe war became mobile again,
it's almost as if we blink andthe war is over on the 11th of
November.
But there were hard weeks aheadwith tremendous casualties and a
lot of very hard fighting.
(04:49):
So in that ground beyond theHindenburg Line, in those final
weeks of the war, when it cameto ending this tour, telling
this story and bringing it to aconclusion, I used the fighting
on the Sombre Canal on the 4thof November 1918, and that
brings us to this week'sepisode, because just as we will
(05:10):
use it in that tour to bringthat to a conclusion, here I
think it helps us explain whatthat final period of the war was
like and it's a date that is notperhaps unfamiliar because of
Wilfred Owen who we mentionedearlier he was killed in action
at oars right by the canal sideencouraging his men to get onto
rafts and pontoons and getacross the canal when he was
(05:33):
struck probably by machine gunfire and killed instantly he's
the most famous casualty of the4th of November 1918 but he's
not the only one his death hislife kind of overshadows that
day which is an importantimportant day because it marks
the last great battle of thefirst world war on the western
(05:53):
front so it's not owen it's notoars that we're going to look at
in this episode but a slightlymore obscure and lesser known
location i hate to use that wordforgotten because it isn't
forgotten but it's certainlylesser known and while we were
on that recce this journey thatwe made that week took me and my
(06:14):
fellow battlefield guides to oneof my old favorites a place i've
visited for more than 30 yearsthe battlefield around lock
number one on the sombre canalclose to the village of rege de
beaulieu so what is lock numberone where is the sombre canal
and what was this battle here onthe 4th of november 1918 The
(06:36):
Battle of the Somme, thecrossing of the Sombre Canal,
the Battle of the Somme being abattle honour awarded to the
regiments that took part in thisaction, was that last final big
attack, allied attack of theGreat War, because seven days
later was the armistice and theend to the conflict on the
Western Front.
And it wasn't a small affair,far from it.
(06:58):
In fact, more men in the BritishArmy and the Commonwealth forces
that were there went over thetop on the 4th of November than
on the 1st of July 1916 thefirst day of the Battle of the
Somme but this was more than twoyears later nearly two and a
half years later and the war hadmoved forward incredibly during
(07:19):
that period the British army haddeveloped and refined its way of
fighting as had all of the othernations that fought alongside it
as part of that wider Britishexpeditionary force that had
come at a price in thecasualties that had been
suffered in the battles such ason the Hindenburg line in 1917
1718 but by that final year ofthe war in those final months of
(07:41):
the war it was a modern armyfighting a modern war with
modern weapons in a modern wayso it had changed but of course
it had fought to break thestalemate of trench warfare and
when that had ended in the finalbreakthrough of the German
trenches across the Hindenburgline in early October 1918 the
(08:01):
army found itself on the moveagain it found itself mobile
fighting over open ground fieldsand woods and copses and lanes
and areas covered in hedgerowsand small villages and towns
with street fighting a war thatwe would kind of more associate
with the later conflict thesecond great war rather than
(08:22):
events on the western front in1918 but this attack on the 4th
of November 1918 was on a widefront from the Belgian border
right down to this area of northeastern France and across
following the of the SombrayCanal in some places, but not
exclusively.
There was a large area ofwoodland where many of the units
(08:43):
that were attacking that dayadvanced through.
That was the Forest of Mormau,where four years before, in
August 1914, men of the BritishExpeditionary Force, the BEF,
the Old Contemptibles, hadmarched down that road during
the retreat from Mons.
And on the southern part of theSombray Canal front, where it
turned and kind of wenteastwards, that was where the
(09:04):
British forces joined with theFrench troops and the French
army was attackingsimultaneously as well.
This was coalition warfare.
The British army and theCommonwealth forces fighting
alongside them did not exist inisolation, and the French were
far from a spent force, whichmany who study the Great War
seem to think sometimes thatthey are.
After the actions of 1917,they're very heavily involved in
(09:28):
these final offensives, andthey're there alongside British
troops on the 4th of November1918.
We're not going to cover theirstory in this, because that's a
story in its own right but itwas a big battle like we said
more men went over the top onthe 4th of November 1918 than in
that opening day of the Battleof the Somme but it wasn't as
catastrophic when it comes tothe casualties so with 20,000
(09:51):
dead or thereabouts on the 1stof July 1916 on the 4th of
November 1918 there was justover 2,000 battlefield deaths
now that doesn't mean that thebattlefield was less deadly in
that attack across the SombrayCanal area it just means the war
was different by that stagemen's lives could be saved
because of medical advances butalso the army was fighting the
(10:15):
war in a very different way of avery different countryside and a
very different landscapelandscape that forever factor in
whatever we examine connectedwith the war on the western
front and while this was thelast great battle of the first
world war fighting would ofcourse continue beyond it right
(10:36):
up to that last minute on the11th of November 1918 but these
were all much smaller actionscompared to what happened here
the Canadian Corps in particularthat was on the northern part of
this advance they would continueright into the streets of Mons
on that final day of the FirstWorld War with George Lawrence
Price a Canadian soldier beingthe last of four who died in the
(10:59):
streets dragged off that streethaving been shot by a sniper he
died in his comrades arms andwhen they looked up at a clock
on a mantelpiece in the housewhere he passed away they could
see it was at 10 58 two minutesbefore the armistice came into
effect and that for a britishand commonwealth point of view
was the end to the fighting onthe western front with that last
(11:23):
casualty so what of the sombrecanal and lock number one which
we're going to look at in thisepisode the was sombre canal was
actually built in the 1830s sosome time before the great war
to link northern France near theBelgian border with other canals
in this area on the Aisne andalso link up eventually to
(11:44):
Paris.
It's part of that kind of superhighway of canals that existed
in this region of France.
And it was a working canal whenthe war broke out in 1914.
But it was swept up in theGerman advance in those early
months of the conflict.
And although this region wasoccupied, life continued fairly
(12:05):
normally here for the Frenchpeople although many had been
displaced by the fighting andothers were sent eventually to
force labour in Germany but thefarms kept running the fields
were cultivated the canal seemsto have operated although there
would eventually be Germanmilitary traffic on it but life
(12:26):
to the average French personhere would have seemed vaguely
normal although there would havebeen the ever presence of an
occupier with German forces andgarrison command and in some
degrees martial law beingimposed on some of these areas
too.
German units were billeted inthis region throughout the First
World War.
(12:47):
Many of the villages where thefighting was on the 4th of
November 1918 had been placeswhere units coming to and from
the fighting at Arras or Combréor the Somme had spent rest
periods there.
The Germans definitely seemed tohave used the canal to move war
material around and why wouldn'tthey because it was a convenient
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way to move a lot of heavy gearparticularly when it came to the
construction of the HindenburgLine.
I suspect they were using allthe material that was needed to
create concrete for the bunkers.
Could well have been moved downthese canal systems as part of
the preparation for that.
And just as the British Armyused the canals behind their
front in northern France toevacuate the wounded on hospital
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barges, the Germans did asimilar thing on their part of
the line as well.
So this was part of the medicalevacuation route for Germans.
German soldiers and then in theautumn of 1918 it took on
another significance once trenchwarfare had ended because it now
became a battle area and whenthe Germans began to look at
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these areas beyond the trencheshow were they going to defend
them they used landscape theyused the geography so they
looked at the ground for whichthey were pulling back over and
they could defend woods hillsand villages and river valleys.
They could blow the bridgesalong those rivers.
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And once the rivers ran out, youwere getting towards an area
where there were canals.
So it would be obvious that youwould use the canals in exactly
the same way.
And so what you see in thatfinal phase leading up to this
battle here on the 4th ofNovember, 1918 is an army,
British army and itsCommonwealth forces alongside it
adapting to the circumstances onthe battlefield.
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And one of the key things thatsuddenly becomes very important
is engineering because if you'vegot rivers and obstacles and
then canals to cross you needsappers you need engineers to
help you do that build bridgesbuild assault bridges build
pontoons and carry pontoons andboats up to get across those
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water courses so the engineersalthough they've been heavily
involved in all aspects oftrench warfare on the western
front we've spoken about therole of sappers on and off quite
a lot and they certainly deservetheir own episodes which I'm
sure will come one day, here inthis final phase, assault
engineers, as we'd probably nowcall them, came to the fore,
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assisting the infantry gettingacross the obstacles that lay in
their path on these kind ofchanging battlefields, compared
to the sorts of battlefields, ofcourse, that they'd been used to
in the static war on the WesternFront previously.
But when it came to lock numberone and this stretch of the
Sombray Canal, the canal comesfrom north to south towards a
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lock, lock number one, wherethere was a two-storey control
building overlooking the lockitself with another building
alongside it.
Close to that, the canal movedinto a bend and beyond that bend
is where the French forces wereon the 4th of November 1918.
It was south of the small townof which was also part of the
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assaults on the 4th of November1918 and close to the village of
Régé de Beaulieu to the westwhich is a small little village
with a church and a few housesbut it commanded the ground in
the approach to the canalitself.
British troops of the 1stDivision and Infantry Division
reached this area in the firstfew days of November of 1918 as
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the offensive gradually caughtup with the German withdrawal
and the advance towards thisnext feat on the landscape they
were going to have to attackover, which of course was the
Sombre Canal itself, and thatwas when the plans for the
attack on the 4th of Novemberwere in their final phase.
A lot of the plans being made atthis stage of the war were
hastily done by necessity, butthe learning curve that those in
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charge had built benefited fromcame in handy really because
this was an army of conscriptsof young soldiers with only
often fairly basic training inBritain enhanced once they came
to the Western Front, once theywere in the theatre of war, but
most importantly commanded byveteran troops in many cases,
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the platoon commanders, thecompany commanders, the
battalion commanders, and ofcourse the brigade and
divisional commanders often hadgone right through it since the
very beginning.
And at this stage of theconflict, you could have men who
were platoon commanders in theoriginal British Expeditionary
Force in 1914, who were nowbrigade or even divisional
commanders leading men intobattle on a much bigger scale.
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So this area around Régé deBeaulieu facing lock number one
and this stretch of the SombréCanal would be the southern
flank of the British advance onthe 4th of November 1918 close
to those French forces and inthis sector where the assault
would take place the leadbattalions were the 2nd
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Battalion Royal Sussex Regimentand 2nd Battalion King's Royal
Rifle Corps supported by the 1stBattalion the Northamptonshire
Regiment.
Now all of these were regulararmy battalions they'd been in
France since August of 1914 andwhile in each of those
battalions there would have beena handful of men who had been
pre-war regulars and were stillserving these were very
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different battalions to thebattalions that have gone off to
war four years before because aswe've said this was a conscript
army most of the men in theranks were conscripts and they
were very young 18 and 19 yearsold which we see reflected in
the cemeteries of this part ofthe Western Front battlefields.
When we go into these cemeterieswe can see how young the army
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had become by that final phaseof the Great War.
Now as soon as I mention in thatlist 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex
Regiment you can understand myinterest being a Sussex boy
researching the Royal SussexRegiment as a kind of pathway to
understanding the wider aspectsof the Great War then this was
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something that I became familiarwith as I delved my way through
the records of the regiment andthe different battalion war
diaries and analysed soldiersdied to see key dates and this
was one that came up quite a lotbecause actually the 9th Royal
Sussex fought in the northernpart of the battlefield but yet
again that's a tale for anotherday so this was something I was
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familiar with and for the 2ndBattalion the Royal Sussex
Regiment this was their finalchapter really of a very very
long war and the main road whenyou look at a map they were
going to attack from near regede beaulieu across the
countryside through thehedgerows and streams up towards
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the canal cross the canal movethrough another hedgerow area to
a main road and that main roadhad been part of their route
that they'd advanced downmarched down during the retreat
from Mons in August 1914.
So for them, quite literally inthis case, their war had pretty
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much brought them full circle.
They were back where they'd beenat the very beginning of the
conflict.
And for the Second Royal Sussex,that very long war that had
brought them to this point hadseen them take part in all of
those battles of 1914, from theretreat to Mons, to the fighting
on the Marne, and then theAisne, the first Battle of Ypres
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in October and November of 1914.
They lost three commandingofficers in the first few months
of the war.
They were involved in all of theearly British offensives on the
Western Front in reserve forNeuf Chapelle, then in the
vanguard of the assault onAlbers Ridge on the 9th of May
1915, and then held the line inthat sector for much of the rest
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of that summer, and then becamea leading assault battalion in
the first day of the Battle ofLoos on the 25th September 1915
and continued to fight rightthrough to the end of the battle
in October of 1915.
Later they would fight on theSomme around Pozières and High
Wood and in 1917 moved up to thenorthern, very northern sector
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of the Western Front and wereone of the British units that
began to take over from Frenchand Belgian troops near to
Newport on the coast of on thesector of the Issa Canal, and
they prepared, well, one of theunits that was preparing for a
seaborne invasion along thatcoast in the summer of 1917 as
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part of the Third Battle ofYpres.
I kind of hastened to call it aD-Day, but it was an amphibious
operation, no landing craft,none of the kind of specialist
armour or equipment that wasgoing to be used a generation
later on the 6th of June 1944,although tanks were modified to
be able to move across sand butthe troops are going to be moved
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up in huge barges protected by anaval flotilla but the coastline
was bristling with heavy gunsparticularly in places like
Knokke Heist where there weremassive German artillery
fortifications there that ifthis landing had ever taken
place I think would haveresulted in catastrophic
casualties for all of those whowere taking part in it and it
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didn't happen the Germans gotwind of the movement of British
troops up into that sector andin July of 1917 they attacked
along the Issa Canal at Newportand that's something that we've
mentioned in a previous podcastepisode when their attack pushed
hard against the positions ofthe 2nd Kings Royal Rifle Corps
and the NorthamptonshireRegiments both of whom figure to
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lesser or greater degree in thisstory here at the Sombray Canal
but for the Sussex lads that wasnot the end of their war they
were involved in the tail end ofthe fight fighting at
Passchendaele in 1917 and thenthroughout 1918 fought in pretty
much every battle along theWestern Front where British
soldiers were holding theGermans back and were wiped out,
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rebuilt, wiped out, rebuiltagain and again and again as
were so many battalions in theBritish Expeditionary Force in
that final year of the GreatWar.
But having said that, when wekind of analyse the details of
those who were still serving,who were here for the attack on
the 4th of November 1918.
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It's quite a broad church.
There are obviouslypredominantly conscripts, but
when we look at the records, andthey're quite good records for
the 2nd Royal Sussex in thecounty archives, in the
regimental archives thatsurvive, we can see there's a
lot of men from some of theKitchener battalions.
We can tell that by theirregimental numbers.
They're so low, they've got Gprefixes, and in some cases SD
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prefixes, indicating they'reoriginal men.
of the south downs battalionsand there were quite a few of
those serving in the secondroyal sussex in this attack and
even some men whose numberswhich have an l prefix which
indicates a regular armyenlistment with a fairly small
four digit number oftenbeginning seven or eight that
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indicates they are pre-warregular soldiers so there were
still a few of those old sweatswho'd gone through it all here
and what a war this battalionhad had and here in its final
hour it had kind of seeneverything from the war of
movement that everyone had goneto war to fight in 1914 the
first trenches on the Aisne thefighting the desperate fighting
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to hold the Germans back in thefirst battle of Ypres the whole
gamut of trench warfare on thewestern front the arrival of
tanks gas everything else andthen here in this final phase
they're back fighting an openwar war of movement again but in
a very unfamiliar landscape andthat's what lay before them for
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this assault so this battle forthe second royal sussex lads and
all of those taking part in theattack on the sombre canal would
prove very different to anyother they'd fought because the
war had changed, and thenchanged again, as conflict often
does.
And as we've said, in thisbattle, like some of the others
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in the preceding weeks,engineers would prove just as
important as infantry, becauseto get to that canal that you've
got across, the role of theengineers would be absolutely
pivotal.
The engineers were not there tofight.
Probably only a handful of themwent into battle with weapons,
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They had too much engineeringkit to carry to worry about
wielding a short magazine in theEnfield or even a sidearm,
although the officers would havebeen armed.
Their task was to useengineering equipment, in this
case, bridges and pontoons andportable drop bridges, as well
as potentially boats if theywere needed, get that kit across
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the open ground, following,going alongside the infantry,
get to the obstacles that werethere.
And when they mapped this, theycould see that there wasn't just
canal but a stream in front ofit that would need to be crossed
that could be overgrown or evenprotected by the enemy and that
the infantry's chance of successwas based on their chance of
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success getting this engineeringequipment in place and while We
look at the designs and there'sa very good book on the fighting
for the 4th of November calledDecisive Victory by Derek
Clayton.
We'll put a link to that ontothe podcast website.
When we look at some of thedesigns of these bridges, you
can see that they are clearlybased on previous engineering
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designs for battlefield bridges.
But the difference is they haveto be portable now and they have
to be able to be dropped or putin place very easily over not
just major features, but oftenminor ones as well, such as
dreams that might block the wayof an infantry assault on a
position like this canal.
So to help the 2nd Royal Sussexin this attack they had the
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409th Field Company RoyalEngineers which had been serving
with the 1st Infantry Divisionfor quite some time.
They would provide the bridgingsupport at the lock where they
were going to cross and thatwould be really important there
because the lock itself was 17feet wide.
So unless they had a few Sussexsupermen serve in that battalion
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no one was going to easily leapacross that and foot bridges
drop bridges would be absolutelyessential to get across there
and that stream that was runningparallel to the canal would also
feature in any kind of outcomeof this battle if that couldn't
be crossed you couldn't even getto the canal so 409 field
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company that would be part oftheir task as well this unit
this field company of the RoyalEngineers was commanded by the
29 year old Scott Major Georgede Cardenal Emsil Findlay MCM
Bar who had been commissioned in1910 in the Royal Engineers but
he broke his legs in the earlyphase of the war and he didn't
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go overseas until 1917 afterhe'd recovered but In that
period, since his arrival on theWestern Front, he'd fought
through many battles with amilitary cross awarded for
bravery in the Third Battle ofYpres in 1917 and a bar for the
actions at a village calledWassigny in October of 1918.
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So he was a commander, abattlefield commander, respected
within his unit and decoratedfor his bravery.
He was a man who didn't just asksoldiers to do something, he did
it himself and that bravery andaptitude had been recognised on
the battlefield by hissuperiors.
His men would have small woodenbridges that they could carry
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available for the stream itselfand then larger drop bridges
which a group of engineers wouldhave to carry for the canal
itself and they'd also suppliedwhat we'd call today assault
boats and they certainly wouldhave been called that in a
second world war for example andthe bridges were specially
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constructed by Royal engineerworkshops by the unit itself and
were all part of thatdevelopment of engineering on
the western front that had takenplace in those final weeks of
the war and its reaction to thechanging nature of warfare
during this period similarbridges for example this wasn't
the first time they've been usedsimilar bridges have been used
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in the crossing in october 1918of the cell river which has
proved another big obstacle tothe advance of british troops in
in that phase of the battlebeyond the Hindenburg Line.
The battlefield that they andthe infantry were about to cross
in this action was pretty dense,different to some of the terrain
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that they'd experienced before.
This was an area of a lot ofkind of bockage-style hedgerows
with small enclosed fields andlots of trees blocking line of
sight and small buildingsscattered here and there.
So you would describe it asdense terrain with lots of cover
cover for an advance but alsocover for an enemy the germans
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to be bedded down in and if yousuddenly advance across the
ground and they see you theyhave the advantage of cover to
open fire at you from and one ofthe reports noted The country on
both sides of the canal was veryenclosed with hedges and
orchards making it impossible todistinguish any marked tactical
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features or pick out anylandmarks which would serve as
distant direction guides duringthe advance.
A liberal supply of excellentaeroplane photographs however
were found to be of the greatestassistance and these were used
in time for officers andnon-commissioned officers to
make a thorough study of theground which they would be
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required to advance over.
Now again this itself kind ofreflects the changing nature of
the war at this point becausetwo years before on the Somme
ordinary soldiers would neverhave seen a trench map let alone
an aerial photograph but inthese final battles it had been
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realised by this stage of thewar through bitter experience
the more information that youcould give soldiers the better
they performed on thebattlefield and aerial
photographs which we'vediscussed in previous podcast
were essential in theintelligence understanding of
the battles and battlefieldsover which these men would
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fight.
And they could send a flight updeliberately to get some aerial
photographs from them, fly back,develop them, and then deliver
those by dispatch rider towhichever headquarters had
requested them.
And again, when I kind of readabout these air photos in these
reports and how important theywere, got a bit of a connection
to that because in one of thesemythical brighton junk shops one
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time i remember lifting up a boxof stuff and tucked in there was
a whole pile of aerialphotographs and one of them was
an aerial photograph and a bleakso looking down at an angle at
the bend in the sombre canalwhere the first division
including the second royalsussex made their attack on the
4th of november and when ipeered at the photograph i could
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see the lock number one controlbuilding the lock house very
clearly on this photograph andI'll put a copy of that image
onto the podcast website so youcan see it it's an official
photograph and it's in thearchives of the Imperial War
Museum but I've got an originalcopy of it pasted onto a bit of
paper that a veteran forwhatever reason has kept perhaps
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he was in the engineers perhapshe was in the Sussex who knows
so with the infantry in placeclose to the village of Rish
there were no trenches here.
So these men were kind of dugin.
The trench warfare was over.
They weren't occupying formerenemy positions, German
positions.
They were digging in as and whenrequired.
So the entrenching tool becomesa very important bit of kit in
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this phase of the war.
And also the Mark I infantryshovel, which you see a lot of
soldiers have tucked down theback of their equipment, useful
for digging in as and whenrequired.
And the engineers linked up withthem.
They too became ready for theattack.
and were assembled by 4 o'clockin the morning on the 4th of
November 1918 with theirengineering kit with the
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infantry ready to go in battleorder and the momentum of the
battle begins by 0530 they'dreached the streams west of the
canal and they found thatobstacle not just to be a
difficult obstacle to get acrossbut they found it clogged with
fallen trees perhapsdeliberately undergrowth in
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there as well and also Germanbarbed wire so the Germans had
seen the importance of thisobstacle and had wired it up
just to make it even moredifficult to cross so the
engineers had to get out wirecutters and do this by hand and
cut their way through that aswell as get their bridges
assembled heavy fire began todrop on these positions while
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they were doing this work andone account stated so intense
was the enemy's fire that eventhe stoutest troops hesitated
and it seemed impossible for anyman to get to the lock and yet
live.
One area of the stream was foundto be crossable but only by
using two of the small bridgestogether or one of the larger
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bridges designed for the lock.
So they kind of underestimatedjust how difficult it would be
to bridge even this stream.
So two of the smaller bridgeswere put together to kind of
form an inverted V shape and inone case one of the heavier
bridges was used as well.
So that got them in, that gotthe infant and the engineers
supporting them across thisstream and Lieutenant Colonel
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Johnson commanding 2nd BattalionRoyal Sussex Regiment and Major
Finlay who commanded theengineers the 409 Field Company
they were very much in the thickof this thing they weren't
sitting back and watching theirmen go forward they were in
there taking command at the verysharp end of this battle calming
the men down taking chargegiving orders the bridges were
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put in place the sappers and theinfantry streamed over and Lewis
gunners of which there was agreater number in infantry
platoons by this stage of thewar were given covering fire
from their automatic weapons toenable that advance to move
forward because the Germans werein the lockhouse, the control
building firing down at almostpoint blank range as the men who
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crossed over that stream thatwas now literally in the shadow
of the bank of the canal and menwere dropping left and right
there was close quarter fightingthat took place in and around
the lock house itself as Germanscame out to meet and greet that
assault to try and push it backand once drop bridges had been
placed over the lock some menmounted the actual lock gates
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themselves climbed over that wayand then got into the building
cleared that wiped out theGerman defenders and then pushed
on towards their objectivesbeyond the canal towards that
main road at this point Germanresistance had pretty much
collapsed and the battle for thelock was over.
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It was short, it was sharp andin many cases it was deadly but
it was decisive.
The canal had been crossed, thelock had been captured, the
enemy had been silenced andpushed back and the objectives
beyond these positions had beentaken.
To the south, on the right ofthe Sussex Lads, 2nd Battalion
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King's Royal Rifle Corps hadcome forward and found their
bridges destroyed by enemy fire.
So they had made the decision touse boats to cross the canal.
But the boats took someconstruction.
They weren't kind of flat-packedand ready to go.
They took a lot of effort and alot of time to actually build
(37:21):
and get ready.
And while the battle wasunfolding on their left, the
commanders of the KRRC guys feltthat this was taking far too
long not a single boat had beencompleted so the officer in
charge told his men to dump theboats forget them and head
straight for the Sussex lads atthe lock cross on their bridges
get over the canal and thenstream out beyond and that's
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exactly what they did so thosetwo battalions 2nd Royal Sussex
2nd Kings Royal Rifle Corpsessentially crossed over
together by 0630 the lock was inBritish hands the And then,
first Australian TunnellingCompany came up with the task of
building a tank bridge here,which was eventually used by one
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tank just a few hours later.
Now, the first AustralianTunnelling Company had been in
action right across the WesternFront, doing just as it says on
the tin.
They'd been carrying outtunnelling mining operations
beneath the battlefield.
That was over in a mobile war,so they were doing all kinds of
engineering tasks.
They were detached from the mainAustralian Corps which had
(38:27):
fought its last battle atMontbriand on the 5th of October
1918 and again we've got aprevious podcast episode on that
but these were some of the lastAustralian soldiers at the tip
of the spear right in the frontline in this final great battle
on the western front and theyset about building the bridge
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that would be needed to supportthe weight of a tank that could
cross at this advantageousposition on the canal the lock
itself but the position despiteits capture and despite the
enemy being pushed back theGermans knew where the British
soldiers were now and Britishand Australian soldiers came
under artillery fire while theywere working on the bridges and
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some got hit got injured gotkilled going about their work
the Australians alone sufferedthree men killed here and eight
wounded while building theirtank bridge in fact total
casualties in the assault hereat lock number one were 409 So
we're talking hundreds ofcasualties here not thousands
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but nevertheless for battalionsthat were reduced in strength
with only a small proportion oftheir battalion actually in the
forward part of the battlefieldattacking this was not
insignificant casualties incapturing a position like this
plus of course the 11 Australiancasualties from the 1st
Australian Tunnelling Companyand a further 21 Royal Engineer
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casualties from 1st DivisionEngineer units who were also
attached for this attack So youcan see unusually in a battle
like this, a significant numberof the casualties are from
engineering units, which showshow the scope of the battlefield
had changed by this period ofthe war.
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So the capture of lock numberone was not without cost, not on
the scale of the Somme, as we'vesaid, or Passchendaele, but not
in considerable losses giventhis short, sharp engagement.
And a whole host of awards anddecorations were given out out
for bravery to both the infantryand the engineers who took part
in this attack includingVictoria Crosses to Major Finlay
(41:02):
of the 409 Field Company andLieutenant Colonel Johnson of
the Royal Sussex Regiment.
Both of them survived the warand went on to live long lives.
But what was the significance ofthis action and this wider
battle on the 4th of November1918, the Battle of the Somme?
Well, this marked a final phaseof the war.
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The men who took part couldn'thave really known it at the
time, but within a week the warwould be over with the signing
of the armistice.
The final preparations of Germanparliamentarians to cross the
Allied lines to seek anarmistice were about to take
place, but to the men on theground and even the commanders
at the top the war did not lookover even Haig was thinking that
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the Germans would continue withthe fight and the war could
easily move on into 1919 andconsidering the casualties that
his expeditionary force hadsuffered on the western front in
those battles of the autumn of1918 and the manpower problem
that he had to replace thoselosses then his concern was that
(42:09):
the war would move towards anAmerican war where American
troops from the AmericanExpeditionary Force would form a
much greater proportion of thoseat the sharp end and that any
victory could easily become anAmerican victory and all the
things that Britain and itsempire and its allies had
suffered in the preceding yearscould easily be lost, the
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significance of it could easilybe lost because of that but that
was not to be.
The German army, the Germannation, the German people were
on their knees by this stagewith submarine blockades causing
starvation in many German townsand cities, and the army itself
finding it increasinglydifficult to bring up
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replacements and call up youngerand younger soldiers to serve in
frontline infantry regiments,running out of fuel, running out
of weapons, running out ofammunition, running out of
everything, and the end of thewar for them was now when rather
than if.
But for Britain, it marked onelast major push in that war, a
(43:13):
war that had seen battle afterbattle after battle and this was
the last of those great battlessomewhat forgotten more than a
century later despite the factthat it was extensively written
about in the official historiesthat were published in the
post-war period it neverresulted in an actual book on
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the subject until DerekClayton's most recent Decisive
Victory which we mentionedearlier and which there is a
link to that on the podcastwebsite But it's an important
battle and one that's easy tofollow on the ground.
The terrain really has notchanged much since 1918.
And you can find the traces ofit on the buildings, many of
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them original.
And you can see the dead fromthe battles along the Sombre
Canal and the Forest ofMontmartre and up towards the
Belgian border in many, manybattlefield cemeteries that are
part of that landscape of thefinal phase of the Great War on
the Western front but it's notjust the wider significance it's
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a spot that is special to me notjust because of the Sussex
connection but because one ofthe veterans that I knew and
interviewed Josh Grover MM wasthere he was one of the Lewis
gunners in that attack I metJosh back in the 1980s when he
was a prominent member of theWestern Front Association I used
(44:38):
to bump into him a lot on thebattlefields wherever he
travelled he wore his originalsteel helmet with the badge of
the Royal Sussex Regiment on it.
He'd been transferred into theRoyal Sussex by the time of the
Battle of the Somme in 1916 andhad fought through all those
different battles that wediscussed earlier but awarded
the military medal for hisbravery and become part of the
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Lewis gun section of his companyand in this attack he went
forward with the Lewis gun wasabout to deploy it but didn't
actually fire it on that actionand when he got over the canal
went to use the weapon on theother side and found that the
Germans had struck the Lewis gunwith a round so it wouldn't
function.
The weapon had absorbed theenemy's bullet and essentially
(45:24):
had saved his life.
He came back to the SombraeCanal quite a few times in the
latter part of his life, and hewrote quite a lot of poetry that
was published in the earlyeditions of Stand 2, the journal
of the Western FrontAssociation, and one part of one
of his poems remembering thisaction here at lock number one
(45:44):
reads, Now we're across, thestrong point captured, the
crisis over, resistance ceases,the reaper she is it true this
eerie silence are we still alivethe day is drawing to its close
and all objectives carried werest and clean the lewis gun but
(46:06):
had we known we wouldn't havetroubled for a bullet meant for
one of us was embedded in thebarrel we have survived the war
is over and we a tale can tellhow death the reaper reaped his
harvest at the crossing of theSombre Canal.
Josh Grover was also interviewedby the oral historians at the
(46:29):
Imperial War Museum and thoserecordings are now online and
I'll put a link to hisinterviews in the show notes so
you can go and listen to those.
There's a huge amount ofrecordings on there now which
you can listen to and it's justincredible to have those voices
of veterans and for me to hearJosh Grover's voice once more
after all these years.
(46:50):
But what of lock number onetoday?
It's always good to tell thestory of a lesser-known battle
and battlefield of the GreatWar, but we like to visit those
battlefields as well.
And what can we find when wetravel to lock number one in
that wider area today?
Well, very little, as Imentioned earlier, has changed.
And you can follow a path fromthe village of Régé de Beaulieu.
(47:14):
There's a track, a walkway now,that you can follow through the
countryside, that kind of densebocage style hedgerows up to the
stream which has now got amodern bridge across it you
don't need any sappers to buildone for you and that brings you
up onto the canal bank and infront of you is the canal and
the lock and the control housethe lock house itself of lock
(47:36):
number one the original buildingthat was there in 1918 And it's
almost as if history has stoodstill.
It's got a modern lock, it's gotmodern equipment here, but
nevertheless, this is a placewith a lot of atmosphere and you
can really picture what thebattle was like here more than a
(47:57):
century ago on the 4th ofNovember 1918.
And I'll put some photographs ofwhat it looks like today, again,
onto the podcast website.
But whenever I visit, I try toend at the Régé de Beaulieu
communal cemetery back in thevillage where the Sussex and the
Sappers and the Kings RoyalRifle Corps lads made their
(48:19):
attack from, because here thedead from this action were
brought back to this place forburial, burial by their
comrades.
When I look at the Sussex namesin this cemetery, I find South
Downs men who joined up at thevery beginning of the war and
fought at Richborg in that daythat Sussex died.
I also find some original 2ndBattalion men who'd been out
(48:43):
since August 1914 and survivedthe whole war only to die in
their final battle and amongstthem the grave of their solitary
officer who was killed in thatattack, Lieutenant Ernest
Stanley Loder of the 2nd RoyalSussex.
He was a Londoner who hadpreviously served in the ranks
(49:04):
of the Royal Horse Guards on theWestern Front in 1917 and was
then commissioned in the RoyalSussex Regiment in April 1918
and killed leading his platooninto action.
He was typical of platooncommanders of that period of the
war having come up through theranks.
And he's another connection forme because I picked up a
(49:26):
photograph of him in a Londonjunk shop many, many years ago.
There was a part of London thathad a lot of junk shops in and
one of them was run by a formerprofessional photographer and
was full of images.
There were boxes and boxes andboxes of images and you could
kind of rummage through them andhe'd have boxes of portraits,
boxes of group photographs andmore specialist images.
(49:49):
I bought quite a lot of aerialphotographs in there over the
years And he kind of ratedimages and almost priced images
based on how good they were.
So if it was a particularly goodimage, you always knew you were
going to pay a little bit morefor it.
I mean, they were nothingcompared to the kind of prices
that these things go for today.
But I was able to secure,rescue, whatever we're going to
(50:10):
call it, quite a few littletreasures, including an original
photograph, portrait photographof Ernest Stanley Loder, who was
killed here and buried in thiscemetery and died on the 4th of
November, 1919.
And I'd love having battlefieldslike this where I have so many
of these connections to it.
(50:31):
Also laid side by side are thethree men of the 1st Australian
Tunnelling Company who died upat the lot while building their
tank bridge.
These are the final Australianbattle casualties on the Western
Front on the ground almost amonth after the last Australian
Corps action at Montbrier.
They are themselves, really, abeacon to Australian sacrifice
(50:56):
in France and Flanders.
That long war on the WesternFront for Australia, which cost
them more than 45,000 dead.
And these three lads buried sideby side in this communal
cemetery on the most easternflank of those final
battlefields on the fields ofFrance.
These are the last diggers todie attacking the enemy.
(51:19):
And as we pause in thiscemetery, sit perhaps on the
cemetery wall and look acrossthe landscape towards the canal,
perhaps as the sun is settingover the church of Roger de
Beaulieu, it seems a timelessscene, a timeless view in so
many ways.
Little has changed here since1918.
(51:42):
And here we connect with thepast, down less familiar paths,
but yet layered, with so manystories and new insights into
that final phase of thefighting.
And this is what it gives us,our journeys here.
There is so often a surprise ortwo to find as we follow our
(52:05):
learning pathway along thateternal old front line.
www.oldfrontline.co.ukpatreon.com slash old front line
(52:43):
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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