8th Bn Welsh Regiment, Help please

[ypres]

Does anybody have a copy of the above, at the moment it is not available for download.

The dates i am looking for are December 1915 - January 1916.

Thanks for your help. Jim

[Bernard_Lewis]

Can't help with the diary but after our daily oysters and champagne (a normal meal in Wales ;0D ) I shall look and copy for you the relevant bits from the Welsh regiment history. It will give the flavour if not the detail.

Bernard

[Scalyback]

http://royalwelsh.org.uk/research/unit-war-diaries.htm

If desperate!

[Bernard_Lewis]

first bit:

THE history of September and October, 1915, on the Suvla Front was bare of incident. Work and sickness filled these months. The flies, bad at any time in this sandy region, multiplied enormously on account of the mass of men and animals confined in small areas, and because of the unburied corpses which lay between the opposing trenches. Dysentery and diarrhoea raged like a plague. The food was monotonous and canteens non-existent for many weeks. Luckily there was much work to be done on defences and this served to pass the time. Sea bathing under occasional shell fire could also be indulged in by those out of the trenches.

On the night of 19th-20th September, the 4th and 5th Welsh were relieved by units of the 13th Division which had been brought from Anzac early in that month, and on arrival at Lala Baba found there the 8th Welsh. The change was not welcomed. This spot was crowded with men, mules, forage, and rations which constantly drew shell fire. This was, however, more annoying than dangerous, as the casualty lists show few losses.

Major-General W. R Marshall had succeeded Major-General Lindley in command of the Division, and under this experienced officer, the trenches were soon efficiently organised. Sickness, however, exacted a heavy toll, and early in October the numbers in the 4th and 5th Welsh had fallen so low that the two Battalions were amalgamated into one, called the 4th-5th Welsh, under command of Major H. H. Southey of the 5th Welsh, Major Dowdeswell having been invalided home during that month. The 8th Welsh contmued to receive large drafts, and on October 6th the strength of the Battalion had risen to 21 Officers and 785 Other Ranks. The next day Major R. I. B. Johnston, 8th R.W.F., assumed command. The 8th Welsh had one company up at Chocolate Hill employed in Pioneer work, while the remainder were at Lala Babe, quarrying, digging, and making roads.

To turn to the general situation on the Peninsula, the British forces (including the French contingent) were now inferior in numbers to the Turks, and the demand by Sir Ian Hamilton for reinforcements brought up the question of what was to be the future of the Gallipoli campaign. This was decided by events in other theatres of war. The British Armies in France had sustained very heavy losses in the Battle of Loos and had the first call on reinforcements, while on 20th September Bulgaria announced her adherence to the German cause. This, together with the advance of the Germans and Austrians into Serbia brought Greece nominally to side with the Allies, as under a former treaty she was bound to come to the assistance of Serbia if attacked by Bulgaria.

M. Venizelos [The Greek Army mobilised the last week in September under the orders of Venizelos, the Prime Minister, On October 15th, the day on which Bulgaria declared war, King Constantine of Greece declared his neutrality. The Greek Army remained mobilised, however, and some Divisions later took part in the Salonika Campaign as volunteers] called on the Allies for 150,000 men to stem the tide of invasion into Serbia. The French sent two Divisions from the Western front, and the British promised two as soon as possible. in the meantime as the need was pressing, the 10th (irish) Division was despatched from Suvla, as was also a French Division from Relies. It was clear that with this new enterprise, the Gaflipoli Army could not be remforced sufficiently to give it a chance of success.

Lord Kitchener now asked Sir Ian Hamilton for an estimate of probable losses if the Peninsula were evacuated. Sir Ian replied that evacuation was unthinkable, and General Sir Charles Munro was thereon sent out to report on the situation, while Sir Ian Hamilton was replaced as Commander-in-Chief by General Birdwood.

Sir Charles Munro decided that at Suvia the position lacked depth, the communications were dependent on the weather, that the troops could not withdraw for rest, that the Turks dominated the entrenchments; in short, that the situation contained the germs of disaster. He counselled evacuation, which course was eventually approved.

Meanwhile winter had come, flies had almost disappeared, sickness lessened considerably. Then there happened on November 27th an event which will never be forgotten by those who experienced it, and which caused as much loss of life as a general engagement. For 24 hours a south-west gale with torrents of warm rain raged. Ships were driven ashore, piers, and landing stages wrecked, trenches filled with water. Gullies became roaring torrents, and men and mules were swept away, and drowned. Suddenly the wind veered round to the north, and for two days it snowed, and then for two days it froze hard. This blizzard caused 200 deaths, while 10,000 sick and frostbitten men had to be evacuated from the Peninsula. The suffering was almost incredible.

To return to the last act in the Gallapoli drama—evacuation was ordered on 8th December. The losses to he expected in evacuating troops from open beaches in the face of an active enemy were estimated as from 15 per cent, to 50 per cent, of the force according to circumstances of weather and enemy intervention. At Anzac and Suvla alone there had to be embarked 83,000 men, 5,000 horses and mules, 2,000 carts, 200 guns, supplies for 30 days, engineenng and medical stores and baggage. It was a stupendous undertaking, which called for ingenuity as well as mthod and discipline. It is intended to describe only the evacuation at Suvla, where the 4th, 5th, and 8th Welsh were quartered. The front extended for 11,000 yards from the sea on the north to the point where the trenches joined the Anzac lines in the swampy valley of Biyuk Anafarta. The gale of 27th November had filled the SaltLake to a depth of 4 feet, and south of it a marsh extended for 1,000 yards, so that this portion of the front was well defended. On the remainder three lines of entrenchment were dug and wired.

The embarkation was to take place from the north and south points of SuvlaBay. A small harbour had been made at the extreme edge of Suvla Point and a steamer run aground to serve as a stage along which a transport could lie; on the south the embarkation was to be effected from B and “C Beaches under the cover of the cliffs and Lala Baba.

The 53rd Division, now reduced to 217 Officers and 4,552 Other Ranks, was the first to leave on 11th December, the 13th Division the last on 19th December. The 11th, 13th, 29th and Mounted Divisions were withdrawn gradually, the troops, as they became fewer, exposing themselves as much as possible, while the Indian muleteers drove their mules backwards and forwards like a stage army, creating dust and the appearance of activity. Finally by 19th December there were only 12,000 men left and these embarked 6,000 at each extremity of the Bay, the last parties left in the trenches lighting candles which burnt at irregular intervals a string which discharged a rifle, while sappers closed the gates through the barbed wire, set wire trips, and cut telephone communications. The Turks who had received new German guns were hard at work blasting gun positions at Kayak and Tekke Tepes, and apart from sporadic shelling of the beaches, did not notice the withdrawal, which was successfully accomplished without the loss of a single life.

When, however, at dawn, the piles of forage and stores left behind and which had been set alight by the beach parties began to blaze, the Turks directed heavy gun fire on them to prevent the British putting them out, a tangible proof that the withdrawal had been unnoticed. General Byng on the north, General Maude on the south, were the last to leave. Twenty-four hours later a south-west gale arose, which would have wrecked all the carefully made arrangements, and exposed a weakened force to a possible attack, At Anzac the 40,000 men on that front were equally skilfuly evacuated. There remained only the 35,000 men at Helles, together with 4,000 of the French Division (who were evacuated on the nights of 1st-2nd January). The 42nd Division was withdrawn and replaced by portions of the 13th and 29th Divisions who had had a rest at Imbros. The final evacuation took place on the night of 8th-9th January, 1916.

The total British Army losses in the Gallipoli campaign were: Killed, 28,200; Wounded, 78,095; Missing, 11,254—a grand total of 117,549.

Though the casualties had been heavy and. though the enterprise had not fulfilled expectations, yet it had compensations, for the flower of the Turkish Army had been destroyed and the effects of this became apparent in the later campaigns in Palestine and Mesopotamia.

[Bernard_Lewis]

Second bit, transcription by Steve John (author Carmarthen Pals and Carmarthen in the Great War)

Seems a bit thin...

THE 53rd Division landed at Alexandria on 18th and 19th December, 1915, after evacuation from Suvia. To appreciate the situation at this time, it is necessary to trace events in Egypt since the outbreak of the war in August, 1914.

As every schoolboy knows, the British were in Egypt to ensure the Suez Canal being kept open for the passage of British shipping to India, China, Australia and New Zealand. The British Government owned the bulk of the shares in the Suez Canal Company, the actual territory through which it passes having been bought originally by a French Company. We had expended blood and money freely in Egypt since 1881 when we had rescued the country from a state of anarchy, and had since that date turned Egypt into a prosperous semi-independent state by means of controlling the waters of the Nile, developing railway communications, crushing the fanatical Mahdi, and freeing the peasants from a corrupt admmistration. Egypt was peaceful in 1914, and its British garrison was insignificant—only a Cavalry Regiment, a Battery of Horse Artillery, a Mountain Battery, a Field Company Royal Engineers, and four Battalions of Infantry. With the outbreak of war, the situation became one of alarming possibilities.

Egypt was still nominally a province of Turkey and its inhabitants were nearly all Moharnmedans, who owed spiritual allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey as head of the particular sect of Islam to which they belonged. Turkey was not yet our enemy, (she did not enter the war till 30th October, 1914), but for some time past the Germans had been training and organismg the Turkish Army and hail financed and engineered the railway from Constantinople to Baghdad, with its branch line which ran south to the city of Medina, in Arabia, thus facilitating the massing of troops for the invasion of Egypt. It was common knowledge that Turkey was an ally of Germany, and that the latter would sooner or later attempt to secure the Suez Canal, and cut ‘the jugular vein” of the British Empire.

The defence of the Suez Canal thus became an urgent question. Though there exists between the Canal and the frontier between Egypt and Syria a desert of some 100 miles in width, yet it is traversable by four routes, and contains enough oases to provide water in the winter for 100,000 men to cross it, given due preparation. The long-expected attack was eventually delivered on 3rd and 4th February, 1915, by 25,000 men, on the centre of the Suez Canal, but easily repulsed by the 10th and 11th India Divisions, assisted by some British Yeomanry and a portion of a New Zealand Brigade. There followed in April the landings in Gallipoli, and thenceforward the attention of the Turks was fully occupied by that campaign and by the operations in Mesopotamia, until December, 1915, which saw the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula and the besieging of General Townshend’s Army in Kut.

The Senussi in the WesternDesert had begun to give trouble; all Egypt was excited by the failure of the British and French to advance in Gallipoli, and the Turks had just finished the extension of their railway to Beersheba, 35 miles from the Egyptian frontier, to which a metalled road had been constructed.

The defence of Egypt had again become a burning question when the Gallipoli Divisions, (except the 10th Division which went to Salonika), landed at Alexandria in December, 1915, and January, 1916.

Here, under General Sir Archibald Murray, was formed from these troops what the C.I.G.S., (General Sir William Robertson), termed “the Imperial Strategic Reserve.” His instructions state:

“It is at present quite uncertain what the future action of the enemy in the East and Near East may be. The Turks may elect to make their main effort in Mesopotamia, while demonstrating against Egypt, or they may make their main effort against the latter country… Both for the defence of Egypt and the creation of an effective strategical reserve, the first requirement is to reorganise the troops in Egypt and to get the depleted and tired divisions from Gallipoli in a condition to take the field.”

The Brigades of the 53rd Division were sent to Wardan, a small station in the desert some 35 miles north-west of Cairo, to get fit and be re-equipped.

Early in January, 1916, the Battalion moved again to Wadi Natrun, one company being detached at El Khatatba, a small station on the railway some 10 miles from Wardan, whence the light railway runs out from the main line to Wadi Natrun. This company was employed loading and unloading trains.

At Wadi Natrun the composite 4th-5th Battalion joined a mixed force, of Australian Light Horse, Bikanir Camel Corps, and a squadron of Egyptian Cavalry, which was watching for a possible advance on Egypt by the Senussi. The 4th-5th Battalion continued its training, including musketry, and found the necessary outposts by night. Wadi Natrun is a long valley stretching east and west; this mixed force was located round the works of an Egyptian Salt and Soda Company among a collection of salt lakes, surrounded by swamps and well below sea level. By day the heat was intense, and by night the mosquitoes were unpleasantly plentiful and active, necessitating the use of all sorts of devices to protect the sentries.

During January, Major-General A. Dallas, C.M.G., an expert in machine gun training and musketry, assumed command of the 53rd Division.

Drafts of men of the Regiment from the base at Alexandria and from hospital, and men of many other regiments, arrived at various periods; and on 21st January, the composite 4th-5th Battalion readied a strength sufficient to warrant the 4th Battalion and the 5th Battalion being unlinked. Captain F. H. Linton commanded the former until the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel H. J. Kinsman, 4th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers early in March, while Lieutenant-Colonel G: F. Pridham took command of the 5th Battalion. Colonel G. F. Pridham was a regular officer of the Regiment and had just completed ten years’ service with the Egyptian Army, and thoroughly understood the local conditions.

At the end of March, the 159th Infantry Brigade returned to Wardan and shortly afterwards Brigadier-General J. H. Travers, C.B., late of the South Wales Borderers, replaced Brigadier-General R. O. B. Taylor in command of the Brigade. It is curious that Brigadier-General Travers was commanding the South Wales Infantry Brigade, Territorial Army, of which the 4th and 5th Welsh formed part, when War was declared in 1914.

Bernard

[ypres]

Bernard, thank you for taking a time out from Oysters and champers, great stuff! much appreciated. Jim

[ypres]

Scalyback. Thanks for the link, and your time. Jim

[Scalyback]

No worries. Bernard has done more, top chap he is. I do visit regimental museum often, just not in the Xmas period. Otherwise save you some money on look ups via the link.