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Remembered Today:

'After action reports '- is 55th Division unique?


Mark Hone

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I attended a very interesting talk by Major Paul Knight, based on his new book 'Lessons From the Mud'. This draws on the remarkable cache of what would now be called After Action Reports,  written by soldiers of 55th West Lancashire Division following two attacks over the same ground on 31st July and 20th  September 1917. I was aware of this archive, preserved at the Liverpool Record Office and have used some of it when researching the attack of 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers ( including Bury Grammar School old boy 2nd Lt Tom Floyd) for my battlefield tours. However, Paul Knight has looked at the archive in toto rather than in regard to individual units. He demonstrated how candid many of the reports were, not displaying diffidence or deference, despite often being composed by very junior ranks and the insight they gave into evolving small unit tactics. Particularly interesting was the evidence of feedback following the 31st July attack being put into action by the time of the 20th September assault a few weeks later. For example, recommendations that Lewis gun ammunition drums should be distributed to all infantrymen rather than entrusted to particular carrying parties, who tended to get killed or lost,  was acted upon. As a result on 20th September, Lewis gun ammo dumps were able to be established at the objective and this was judged instrumental in helping the division to break up the inevitable German counter-attacks.

Paul said that he believes that other divisions did request after action reports like this but that the 55th Division examples, preserved amongst the Jeudwine Papers in Liverpool are the only ones extant. Is he right?

 

Edited by Mark Hone
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I don't know if the 55th (W Lancs) Div after action reports are the only ones of their kind but I agree they are remarkably candid.  I found the medical report from 3rd Ypres particularly evocative in how it describes mud always above the ankles often above the knee and sometimes to the waist.  The sheer amount of time it took to bring in some casualties is also shocking, although not surprising given the fluid terrain.  

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The after-action reports in the Jeudwine papers are a fantastic resource, but I've not heard of any similar ones surviving. One of the reasons for writing three of my four battalion biographies on 55 Division battalions was the opportunity they gave to describe large-scale actions down to platoon, and in some cases, individual section level. There are hints in some of the 57 Division divisional and brigade diaries that a similar process was undergone there, though the surviving fragments lodged in with the diaries are far from comprehensive. One often overlooked source in Jeudwine's papers is his very detailed personal diary, which gives a fascinating insight into what steps he believes his division needs to make in order to progress- in this he 'takes no prisoners' when he comes across what he considers to be any examples of incompetence among his senior officers.

 

Jeudwine very much believed that the way to improving the efficiency of his division was by raising the fighting ability of every man and was clearly happy to listen to anything the ordinary infantryman had to say that could bring this about. In addition to these after-action reports (which were written by each company commander, the senior surviving member of each platoon, or if the platoon split, the senior surviving member of each section) he would visit personnel who had taken part in large-scale raids and talk informally to the ordinary soldiers about the raid, an aide hovering in the background with a notebook. For example, in June 1916, some attackers in a large daylight raid on the Somme went adrift while advancing through the large smoke screen covering the advance. Shortly after this, every battalion underwent intensive training in navigation while wearing smoke helmets. (Other great snippets from this debrief was the inadvisability of the advance wire-cutting party wearing rubber thigh boots as these squeaked on the wet grass as they crawled forward and the efficacy of issuing chewing gum to those with serious nicotine habits as it helped reduce coughing). When the division had re-formed in January 1916, his memoranda to individual battalions about his extremely comprehensive training requirements ran to 16 typewritten pages of foolscap and he insisted that all ranks were trained to operate at one-two levels above their current rank to reduce the impact of casualties among leaders- a policy that obviously paid off as most battalions ended up with sergeants commanding a company at some point in battle. 

Edited by IRC Kevin
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The 56th Division (I think I remember correctly) had similar; I came across them in the Battalion WDs. Given the amount of learning that was going on I would be amazed if the 55th were the only division to do this, but tit is possible Jeudwine was the only Divisional GOC to collect copies and keep them (and then keep all his papers for posterity).

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Thanks for the replies. Interesting you mention 56th Div, Steven. I hadn't realised until Paul Knight ( a Territorial officer himself) pointed out that they got such a high Divisional number despite having the first Terrier unit in action on the Western Front because they were sent out piece meal (like 55th) and were only reconstituted as a complete formation in 1916. As a result, did they, like 55th, end up with some slightly unusual component units? The fiercely Lancastrian  55th, with its Red Rose badge, ended up including a Wessex Field Ambulance, for example. 

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The TF Divisions were numbered in accordance with the date of departure overseas, hence the East Lancashire Div became the 42nd, the Wessex the 43rd, etc. That created a few oddities; the 45th was the 2nd Line of the Wessex Division but had gone overseas in late 1914 (India) well before several First Line Divisions.

 

The 56th was the 1st London Division, but was reconstituted long after the 2nd London Division (the 47th) went to France. The 2nd Line London Divisions (2/1st and 2/2nd) became the 58th and 60th respectively.

 

The 56th wasn't massively messed around. It acquired an Edinburgh Fortress Engineer Company as an RE Field Squadron, but generally the Corps and Services were much as. In the infantry, a couple of Middlesex battalions (1/7th and 1/8th) arrived, and several of the London regiment battalions (13, 14 and 16) had come from the 47th, while the 6th, 7th and8th  Battalions had ended up in the 47th while the 1/10th and 1/11th found their way to the Middle East with the 54th (East Anglian) Division. In essence, the infantry battalions were originally

 

1st London Division

1st London Brigade 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th London

2nd London Brigade 5th, 6th, 7th 8th

3rd London Brigade 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th

(the first eight were 'City of London', all the rest 'County of London')

 

2nd London Division

4th London Brigade 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th

5th London Brigade 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th

6th London Brigade 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th.

 

At the time of the Somme, they were as follows

 

167 Bde: 1/7 Middx, 1/8 Middx, 1/1 London, 1/3 London

168 Bde: 1/4, 1/12, 1/13, 1/14

169 Bde: 1/2, 1/5, 1/9, 1/16

 

140 Bde 1/6, 1/7, 1/8, 1/15

141 Bde: 1/17, 1/18, 1/19, 1/20

142 Bde: 1/21, 1/22, 1/23, 1/24

 

 

 

 

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"It is indisputable that 56th Division improved significantly as the war progressed, whatever the limitations of this study. The concept of the learning curve in relation to the Division is clearly a valid one."

 

This is a quote from 'The Tactical Development of the 56th (London) Division on the Western Front, 1916-18' by Matthew J. Brosnan (2005) of the Centre for World War One Studies at the University  of Birmingham.

 

 There are some documents in the Battalions and Brigade War Diaries that could have served as 'After Action Reports'.

 

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Here's an example of one from 240646 Cpl Herbet Gobie from 'B' Coy the Liverpool Rifles concerning the attack against Hills 37 and 35 on 20 September 1917. I'd consider this a pretty frank submission. 

 

"Insufficient attention was paid to direction of advance, especially noticeable in the right battalion of 164 Brigade. 
   In the early stages of the attack, reserve companies (in artillery formation) advanced too quickly, very soon finding themselves mixed up with the front line troops, thus causing overcrowding. When the fault was discovered, parties fell back some distance in order to rectify same, thus sustaining unnecessary casualties from machine gun and from enemy snipers.
In activity of platoon Lewis guns during the advance, well-directed fire from suitable positions may well have discouraged, if not put out of action, enemy machine guns and snipers. 
   Enemy snipers were not harassed enough by our own snipers; it was however a difficult matter to locate them.
   In spite of the fact a large number of bombs and rifle grenades were carried by attacking troops, little use was made of them in this action. I consider that the rifle and the machine gun were the all-important weapons.
   Increasing use made by the enemy of white and Red Cross flags. Numbers of white flags seemed to have been left behind by the enemy, several noted around Gallipoli.
   The ground round Hill 37 should have been more thoroughly searched for enemy snipers, who seemed to be active from this area long after the objective was reached. 
   The number of stretcher-bearers employed by us was insufficient to cope with the large numbers of wounded. The supply of stretchers was certainly inadequate. 
   A more thorough search of prisoners is recommended, especially for revolvers etc., as the enemy seems to be well-equipped with these small weapons, as a large number were left behind by him
."

 

His is one of the more readable ones; sadly, many written in pencil, are beginning to fade to the point of almost complete obscurity and it won't be long before they are completely lost to posterity and they really need to be properly photographed before it's too late. Before I could transcribe some of those I photographed I had to spend considerable time digitally enhancing them. (I did mention my concerns to the staff at the Archives, but whether anything will be done remains to be seen)


Gobie1.jpg.a3ebf42d150cf7e91d099971f5ec29d2.jpg

 

Gobie2.jpg.5dcaeddf7603dcacc68ca0456445cb0c.jpg

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Paul Knight said that he had transcribed 3/4 million words of the reports' archive when preparing his book. I had a quick look at a copy before the talk (it's published by Helion) but didn't have enough cash on me to buy one there and then. It looks an impressive piece of work.

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15 hours ago, RobertBr said:

"It is indisputable that 56th Division improved significantly as the war progressed, whatever the limitations of this study. The concept of the learning curve in relation to the Division is clearly a valid one."

 

This is a quote from 'The Tactical Development of the 56th (London) Division on the Western Front, 1916-18' by Matthew J. Brosnan (2005) of the Centre for World War One Studies at the University  of Birmingham.

 

 There are some documents in the Battalions and Brigade War Diaries that could have served as 'After Action Reports'.

 

This is interesting. Helion have been threatening to publish Matt Brosnan's book on 56 Div for some years now, but it's never appeared. The quote is, I assume, from his thesis?

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On 28/11/2019 at 22:16, IRC Kevin said:

The after-action reports in the Jeudwine papers are a fantastic resource, but I've not heard of any similar ones surviving. One of the reasons for writing three of my four battalion biographies on 55 Division battalions was the opportunity they gave to describe large-scale actions down to platoon, and in some cases, individual section level. There are hints in some of the 57 Division divisional and brigade diaries that a similar process was undergone there, though the surviving fragments lodged in with the diaries are far from comprehensive. One often overlooked source in Jeudwine's papers is his very detailed personal diary, which gives a fascinating insight into what steps he believes his division needs to make in order to progress- in this he 'takes no prisoners' when he comes across what he considers to be any examples of incompetence among his senior officers.

 

Jeudwine very much believed that the way to improving the efficiency of his division was by raising the fighting ability of every man and was clearly happy to listen to anything the ordinary infantryman had to say that could bring this about. In addition to these after-action reports (which were written by each company commander, the senior surviving member of each platoon, or if the platoon split, the senior surviving member of each section) he would visit personnel who had taken part in large-scale raids and talk informally to the ordinary soldiers about the raid, an aide hovering in the background with a notebook. For example, in June 1916, some attackers in a large daylight raid on the Somme went adrift while advancing through the large smoke screen covering the advance. Shortly after this, every battalion underwent intensive training in navigation while wearing smoke helmets. (Other great snippets from this debrief was the inadvisability of the advance wire-cutting party wearing rubber thigh boots as these squeaked on the wet grass as they crawled forward and the efficacy of issuing chewing gum to those with serious nicotine habits as it helped reduce coughing). When the division had re-formed in January 1916, his memoranda to individual battalions about his extremely comprehensive training requirements ran to 16 typewritten pages of foolscap and he insisted that all ranks were trained to operate at one-two levels above their current rank to reduce the impact of casualties among leaders- a policy that obviously paid off as most battalions ended up with sergeants commanding a company at some point in battle. 

Hi

 

Very interesting that all this survived.  The Division would have collected the 'lessons learnt' from their units and then sent on their 'overall lessons learnt' to their Corps, the Corps then completing their 'overall lessons learnt' to be sent upwards to Army then GHQ.  I have a copy of the last page of  XV Corps 'lessons learnt' document dated 11 July 1916, so by this date they had received the lower level formation's 'lessons learnt', done some analysis of the data and then printed it all up to send 'upwards' but also copies were sent to the 7th, 17th, 21st Divisions, the BGRA and 33rd Division.  It was also sent to the RFC as the copy came from an AIR 1 document as the 'lessons learnt' included comments on "Co-operation with aeroplanes", which is why I copied this page (also on this page 3 is "Counter-battery work", "Patrols", and "Mopping up").  All in less detail than the lower formations reports of course.

 

Do the 'Jeudwine papers' include the Corps summary 'Lessons learnt' document?  If so it would be interesting to compare the source reports with this.

 

Mike

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7 minutes ago, MikeMeech said:

Do the 'Jeudwine papers' include the Corps summary 'Lessons learnt' document?  If so it would be interesting to compare the source reports with this.

 

 

Sadly, no.

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4 hours ago, IRC Kevin said:

 

Sadly, no.

Hi

 

That's a pity.  I have attached, for interest, some hand written 'suggestion' reference Contact Patrols from the 4th Middlesex, this was a response to a GHQ request for ideas and comments on this subject at the end of 1917.  Most of the responses from the infantry come via the Division or Corps HQs and lists different ideas, very few that remain on file are the original Battalion reply.  Probably just the nature of how paperwork was kept after sending it up the chain of command.

 

Mike

 

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2033245980_pro150212018.jpg.4834889fc816ffc444e964963c1d8a47.jpg

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When researching the men on the Galashiels war memorial who died in the German assaults of spring 1918 I came across several battalion level post action reports in the war diaries detailing German infiltration tactics, command and control difficulties and the troops lack of experience in dealing with flanking attacks, 

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  • 3 months later...

I'm reading this book at the moment, and it is a terrific resource with a useful introductory essay. Most useful for my thesis.

 

Does the archive hold these reports for periods other than Third Ypres?

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Not in the Jeudwine papers, though they survive in substantial numbers for Kaiserschlact of April 1918 in the Divisional diary- I used them when I was writing the 'Liverpool Rifles'. (It's possible these may be in the brigade diary, but off the cuff, I can't remember which one I sourced them from). They're present in both original and a transcripted form (almost certainly done at 'Divisional' rather than 'unit' level) in the relevant diary, but avoid the transcription copies as there are a number of significant typos when they were originally written up- though this is hardly surprising considering the handwriting of some of the contributors. There are also odd fragments from various other actions scattered around in brigade and Divisioal diaries, but these are nowhere near as complete as those for 3rd Ypres and Kaiserschlacht.

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Thank you, that's good to know. I'll dig out the divisional diary in due course.

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56 Bde of 19 Div produced at least two "Narrative of Operations", which included "Lessons Learnt" in 1918. The first covered  the period 21 - 27 March 1918 and its part in the Kaiserschlacht; the second 3 - 9 November and the Battle of the Selle.

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