HOULTHOULST FOREST October 1917

[Simon_Fielding]

Looking for this area in th Salient - WD 14th Gloucesters...TIA

29th October 1917. Platoons were inspected by their respective commanders in the morning. At about 4.0 p.m. Battalion moved off by Platoons to relieve the 7^th Lincoln Regiment. Relief was completed by 9.30 p.m. without incident.

Casualties: - 3 Other Ranks wounded in action.

HOULTHOULST FOREST.

30th October 1917. Hostile shelling was regularly kept up during the day on LONVOIS FARM and PANAMA HOUSE. At 5 p.m. a barrage was put along our Corps Front as a diversion for the attack of the Division on our right. It was very quiet during the night. Our patrols were unable to get in contact with the enemy at any point.

Casualties:- 1 Officer wounded, 1 Other Rank killed, and 4 Other Ranks wounded.

[Phil Evans]

Simon,

LOUVOIS FARM: 20.U.11.a.6.5

PANAMA HOUSE: 20.U.5.b.1.1

Both are on Sheet 20SW

Phil

[EDWARD1]

Trench Map Co-ordinates Louvois Farm at 20SW4 U11a 5.5 and Panama House at 20SW4 U5b1.1

Eddie

Beaten by 2 mins by Phil

[Simon_Fielding]

Great! Thanks both!

[bierast]

I remember locating these places for the 1917 chapter of our book. In the course of following all the major Saxon units in Flanders for the duration, I think we must have looked at every part of the line at some point - and Houthulst Forest, in autumn 1917, struck me as the absolute worst. The area in front of it was quite simply a poisonous swamp full of corpses, and the forward part of the forest much the same except for the splintered tree trunks everywhere.

Saxon 58. Infanterie-Division had been here a week earlier, and returned on the night of 31st October - 1st November after being constantly on alert / in reserve in the interim with no chance to rest. I think 14th Gloucesters were opposite RIR 103 once the Saxons were back in line. My notes from the regimental histories state:

01-09.11.1917 - 58.ID holds the line south of Houthulst Forest. IR 107 on the right (with bRIR 23 on the right according to RG / IR 107), IR 106 in the centre (‘north of Mangelare’) and RIR 103 on the left. There is no wire left in front of the muddy shellholes occupied by IR 107 (Hauptwiderstandslinie with a thin outpost line) and the regiment sets to immediately to rectify this. Enemy infantry is similarly engaged, shelling now reduced to nuisance fire with light calibres and aircraft activity greatly reduced. Local attacks to improve the line are not ruled out, but considered unlikely due to the appalling condition of the ground. It is apparent that the enemy offensive has burned out (or rather drowned) here. However the division is also now extremely tired, having had little rest since its arrival from the Eastern front. All three regiments send out forward patrols, who establish the location of the enemy line and its MG positions. They also succeed in capturing British and French prisoners. This is probably when a forward patrol from IR 106 takes prisoners from French 127e RI / 162e DI (date unclear in source).

The history of IR 107 (at the other end of the divisionl front) notes that their forward patrols were out on the night of 1st-2nd November firing off flares to simulate the existence of advanced posts, which were considered impossible to actually maintain for any length of time.

[Simon_Fielding]

Really interesting - thank you Andi. My casualty is a private of the 14th attached to the army service corps who was a casualty on the 29th october and is buried in canada farm. this really adds to the context of that event thank you.

[Cnock]

Hi,

Fighting conditions at Houthust Forest in october -november 1917 were as horrible as at Passendale.

I also tramped the entire ground of the fighting for my book

Cnock

Houthulst Forest

Houthulst Forest

[Cnock]

Houthulst Forest

[bierast]

Those aerial photos are stunning and entirely new to me - thankyou for posting!

I suspect that you probably know my co-author Jürgen Schmieschek via WFA Belgie - he has done layout work for Shrapnel and several of the books published by the association.

[Cnock]

Hello,

My publisher knows Jürgen Schmieschek very good, he has done the lay out for this book.

Cnock

[bierast]

I thought I recognised the layout style! I don't remember him mentioning your book, but he is always busy with several projects at once.

With our own book, the publisher agreed to let Jürgen have full control of the layout (except for the cover) - hence we were able to use the absolute maximum number of pages allowed (256) and leave none of them blank! Right now we are completing work on a special publication for our book launch at Zonnebeke on 25-26 April.

[Simon_Fielding]

Really interesting pictures-thank you!

[johnmelling1979]

Hello

Can some one please tell me what the 14th (Service) Battalion (West of England) Gloucestershire Regiment was up to as of 22 October 1917

As a rough guess ... Panama house ? If that rings a bell....

It for my website as im researching a soldier

Cheers

John

[Sgt Thomas William Chisholm]

Very interesting indeed thanks for putting this up here. I just read and transcribed an entry from my grandfather Sgt Thomas William Chisholm recording the anniversary of him being wounded at Houthulst Forest 26th October 1917. The diary records his progress after being captured at The Battle of Aisne 27th May 1918 through as a POW at Giessen, Darmstadt, and Lamsdorf until his release 1st January 1919. If you're interested you can find it here. www.facebook.com/SgtTWChisholm

 

[mwfro]

On 27/03/2015 at 11:56, bierast said:

I remember locating these places for the 1917 chapter of our book. In the course of following all the major Saxon units in Flanders for the duration, I think we must have looked at every part of the line at some point - and Houthulst Forest, in autumn 1917, struck me as the absolute worst. The area in front of it was quite simply a poisonous swamp full of corpses, and the forward part of the forest much the same except for the splintered tree trunks everywhere.

Saxon 58. Infanterie-Division had been here a week earlier, and returned on the night of 31st October - 1st November after being constantly on alert / in reserve in the interim with no chance to rest. I think 14th Gloucesters were opposite RIR 103 once the Saxons were back in line. My notes from the regimental histories state:

01-09.11.1917 - 58.ID holds the line south of Houthulst Forest. IR 107 on the right (with bRIR 23 on the right according to RG / IR 107), IR 106 in the centre (‘north of Mangelare’) and RIR 103 on the left. There is no wire left in front of the muddy shellholes occupied by IR 107 (Hauptwiderstandslinie with a thin outpost line) and the regiment sets to immediately to rectify this. Enemy infantry is similarly engaged, shelling now reduced to nuisance fire with light calibres and aircraft activity greatly reduced. Local attacks to improve the line are not ruled out, but considered unlikely due to the appalling condition of the ground. It is apparent that the enemy offensive has burned out (or rather drowned) here. However the division is also now extremely tired, having had little rest since its arrival from the Eastern front. All three regiments send out forward patrols, who establish the location of the enemy line and its MG positions. They also succeed in capturing British and French prisoners. This is probably when a forward patrol from IR 106 takes prisoners from French 127e RI / 162e DI (date unclear in source).

 

The history of IR 107 (at the other end of the divisionl front) notes that their forward patrols were out on the night of 1st-2nd November firing off flares to simulate the existence of advanced posts, which were considered impossible to actually maintain for any length of time.

Hi bierast

I have been trying to contact you for a couple of days, as I put a link to your description of Houthulst Forest October 1917 in a blog post I wrote earlier this week.  I'd forgotten my username plus BT changed all its openworld emails to another email address, so I've had to sign up again with a different username etc.  I returned my post to draft mode, while I tried to get hold of you or to send you a message.  I'm going to put it up again this morning, not sure whether I am allowed to put a link to it here.  I refer to you as 'bierast' in the post, and will leave it as that, unless you prefer me to provide an actual name?

Your description was most helpful alongside the comparatively brief entry for 12 October 1917 in the 4/Guards Machine Guns Battalion.

Who the heck am I? A family and local historian, and war memorial researcher, with a number of war memorial blogs, as well as additional blogs not specific to actual war memorials, but covering fairly random war graves.  Mostly I try to rescue from oblivion the stories of ordinary soldiers for whom the CWGC database has almost no helpful information at all.  I can send you a list of all my war memorial/random war graves blogs if you wish to check up on me/them.

Thanks again for all your work, and for sharing your expertise.

Margaret Frood

[bierast]

Hi Margaret -

Glad to be of assistance! I should really change my username now I am a published author... my name is Andrew Lucas, and I am one of the two authors behind two volumes in English (plus one in German) on the Saxons in Flanders.

In mid-October the situation was actually even worse than my above description. The following quotation is from our second English volume For King and Kaiser, and includes one of the most horrible anecdotes I encountered while researching this battle (the one about the men trapped under the overturned bunker)... I actually had to stop work on this one afternoon as it was starting to get to me.
 

Quote

While other units of 58.ID were still en route to Flanders, IR 106 was immediately sent forward on 13 October to reinforce the Prussian 119. Infanterie-Division, accompanied by a single guide. During the arduous approach march through the mire in heavy rain many men stumbled into flooded shellholes in the dark, and the regiment took painful losses to artillery fire before even reaching its new positions. The forward zone lay between the Bultehoek to Melaene-Wirtshaus road and the Corverbeek, with the enemy 200–300 metres beyond. On the first day here 4. / 106 suffered a direct hit while awaiting orders from the KTK at Melaene-Wirtshaus, losing twenty dead and twenty-one wounded. Worse followed on 15 October, a day of heavy shelling with gas and H.E. during which one bunker held by IR 106 was destroyed and a second overturned. Despite repeated attempts and assistance from pioniere of 119.ID, it took four days to rescue the two survivors trapped underneath – one of them now showing signs of 'mental disturbance'. On 16 October another bunker was destroyed when an incendiary shell through the vision slit detonated the ammunition inside; a French attempt to advance in the wake of this disaster was repelled with hand grenades and machineguns, as was a second attempt the following day.

 

[mwfro]

Thank you for your swift reply.  I'll add your name to your mention in the Source list, and a plug for King and Kaiser which I will look out for!  Very interested that you are also publishing in German.  I first read Ernst Jung's Sturm und Drang in 1996 and later the same year met a South African woman (living in Germany) at an 80th Somme commemoration at Delville Wood, whose next-door neighbour he was.  With my blogs, I often try to work out what was happening on the other side of the line.  Herbert Sulzbach has been another useful source for that.

[bierast]

No problem. glad this is useful! My co-author is German (specifically Saxon, from the Dresden area) and locally sourced most of the photos and personal accounts which appear in our books.

For clarity, here's where and when the Saxon 40.ID and 58.ID were deployed on this front (under the command of Gruppe Dixmuide). This is based on a map from the Saxon semi-official history Sachsen in Grosser Zeit.

[bierast]

...and here are the successive 'lines' held by IR 106 (actually corresponding to scattered groups of men hiding in concrete bunkers and flooded shell holes):

[mwfro]

Amazing to see these German maps. How kind of you to provide this additional insight.

I've also not neglected to write the stories behind German war graves that I come across in unexpected ways.  Here's a post on a Silesian PoW Obergefreiter, Werner Deutschmann, from my new blog for war strays. 

passersbyremember [dot] wordpress [dot] com [slash] 2021 [slash] 10 [slash] 30 [slash] werner-deutschmann [slash]

or shortlink as in bit [dot] ly [slash] 3H0p8Aw

In the spirit of Alle Menschen werden Brüder, I also support the Volksbund mostly because of their regarding their war cemeteries, like Futa Pass, as powerful messages of peace, as educational opportunities, and as warnings against the ultimate outcome of belligerence between nations. Wish all took that attitude. I have a very short post about Futa Pass, on the same blog as I've uploaded my post on William Hamilton (southafricaremembers dot wordpress etc).

[bierast]

Artist's impression from Sachsen in Grosser Zeit... the phrase "Leipziger Infanterie" must refer to IR 106, IR 107 or both. I suspect that the scene here is much more densely populated than the real thing...

[mwfro]

1 minute ago, mwfro said:

Amazing to see these German maps. How kind of you to provide this additional insight.

I've also not neglected to write the stories behind German war graves that I come across in unexpected ways.  Here's a post on a Silesian PoW Obergefreiter, Werner Deutschmann, from my new blog for war strays. 

passersbyremember [dot] wordpress [dot] com [slash] 2021 [slash] 10 [slash] 30 [slash] werner-deutschmann [slash]

or shortlink as in bit [dot] ly [slash] 3H0p8Aw

In the spirit of Alle Menschen werden Brüder, I also support the Volksbund mostly because of their regarding their war cemeteries, like Futa Pass, as powerful messages of peace, as educational opportunities, and as warnings against the ultimate outcome of belligerence between nations. Wish all took that attitude. I have a very short post about Futa Pass, on the same blog as I've uploaded my post on William Hamilton (southafricaremembers dot wordpress etc).

The maps are wonderful.  I've just been having a closer look.  I've been to Langemarck once and my husband, a history teacher (now retired) has taken his school groups to Belgium and includes German cemeteries on his tour.  From him I learnt that the Belgians were reluctant to offer land to the Germans for their  cemeteries and it's a relatively small cemetery, given that it has 44000 Germans buried there.  It's so hard when families have no known graves.