Jump to content
Free downloads from TNA ×
The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Battle of Arras 1917


fritz

Recommended Posts

How have I missed this continued superb thread , great finds Jim

Love the maps and views

Andy

:rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice photographs guys

Andy

:rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

Hello All

Have been reading this thread with increasing fascination at the knowledge and interest you guys all have. I recently learnt that my mother's great uncle died at Neuville Vitasse and yesterday we visited his grave at the NV Road Cemetery. It was a fantastic day made all the more poignant by the information and photos you have shared on this site. Thank you

Julie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Julie

Just got back after 4 weeks in the area -just missed you! If you are happy to share the name & unit of your Gt Uncle I might be able to shed some light on the events - unless of course you have the whole chapter and verse already! Hope the weather is still good - I was very lucky. Will be adding some photos to this thread when I have fixed my poorly computer :(

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Julie,

nice to see that others have their advantage too reading this thread about Arras. Hope you also know this

 

with more informations and with splendid maps and aerial pics of this site.

Kind regards

Fritz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Just about got my computer back together again so as a taster here is another bunker found above St Martin sur Cojeul, in the area unsuccessfully attacked by 21st Division on the 9th April 1917. There are a couple of others in the field but it was just before harvest so I'll have to wait till late October for a better look. Fritz, its the one we couldn't get to in August due to the farmer and his broken harvester!

post-28845-1251833785.jpg

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's the view form the bunker back to St Martin - generally the area over which 9th KOYLI attacked. Amazing on this photo is what you can't see - anybody know!!? Clue - you can still hear it if you are there. ;)

post-28845-1251834132.jpg

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Jim, hope you will excuse my jumping in here !, you very kindly helped me out regarding my grandfather and the positions of 6th KOYLI on the opening day of the battle, another family member, my grandmothers cousin,cpl.T.W.Sanderson mm, was also involved that day with 7th KRRC, just wondered if you knew what their objectives were this day, his MM was in the gazette in july 1917 so it may have been won for some action at Arras, sadly cpl. Sanderson was killed at passendaele in dec 1917 on the day grandfathers battalion replaced the 7th KRRC in tthe trenches opposite Passendaele village.

many thanks and kind regards,

John.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you, Jim, for this supplement. Another good example of visible remains of those days.

I took a pic of these more than 90 years old German barbed wire supports. Now used by French farmers to fence their properties in Monchy-le-Preux. Schwerter zu Pflugscharen. :D

Best wishes

Fritz

post-12337-1251906243.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure they were not British Fritz - let the experts on here have their say on that!

John

7KRRC were in 41st Brigade of 14th Division which was in reserve on the 9th. Their first action was on the 10th when, during the afternoon they were ordered to relieve 43rd Brigade, by now well past Neuville Vitasse and on the way to Wancourt. Under a heavy snowstorm they were able to enter the Wancourt-Feuchy Line. Their major action came on the 11th when asked to withdraw 200 yards to allow a bombardment, after which they were to move up the valley towards Wancourt. Unfortunately Hill 90, on their right, had not been taken and fire from here caused heavy loss, especially to 7 KRRC. It could be in this attack that Cpl Sanderson won his MM. They finished in the line from which they had withdrawn.

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On another tack - Hill 90 is quite a conundrum. It is not where people think it is due to the trench maps not having the same contours as the modern ones. For all those who think the bunker remains on the hill above N-V is Hill 90 think again (I have seen at least one photograph of those bunkers labelled Hill 90) - it was actually more to the north east - then it looks over the valley that 41st Brigade tried to advance. Strangely not the highest point!

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jim,

many thanks once again for the info, this has really helped me in building up the picture of my families involvement in the battle , it is most appreciated. I have added a picture of cpl.Sanderson's grave at Passendaele new british cemetery on my visit there in 2008,

kind regards,

John.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

looking this photograph I guess these wire supports are British indeed.

Fritz

post-12337-1252343891.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Frotz, I think you are correct when you said the wire supports are German. You are also correct when you say they are British. (there was a forum discussion on this some time ago)

Both sides used similar/same items.....most of them made in Sweden and sold equally to both sides.

Regards, Peter

Woops, sorry Fritz to mis-type name, Peter

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

Fritz (or anyone)

Referring back to Neuville Mill, is there any mention in the German histories of a British patrol which encountered the German troops at the Mill on the night of 7 April? My interest is in 2nd Lt Rallison, 17th Manchesters who was killed there, along with another officer and two other ranks.

TIA

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi John,

please look to my post 7. This action happened in the night from 7th to 8th April. It is mentioned in the Regimental History of Schleswig-Holsteinisches Infanterieregiment 163.

Regards

Fritz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fritz

Yes, I'd read that. But that extract identifies the men as being Royal Fusiliers and, clearly, in raiding strength. My men are a small group of Manchesters (4 killed) undertaking a scouting patrol which makes me think there must have been another incident.

Any thoughts?

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry John, there are no more comments about British activities at Neuville-Mill on those days.

Fritz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John

Most units were putting out small patrols on each night from the 6th onwards to check the state of the wire etc. I have come across quite a number of casualties reported on these nights in almost all the divisions in 3rd Army where they were caught in the open, heard etc. It will have been one of those patrols where your unit lost men. A famous example of this was a patrol of the 12th London (Rangers) on the night of the 7th to 8th which reported the wire uncut. This led to Major-General Hull reporting the fact and asking for more artillery preparation. This to no avail when men of the Rangers got hung up on the wire and suffered many casualties, until a tank flattened the wire and the attack could continue. I have a report of that raid where the men were actually in Pine Lane Trench and met no Germans - quite remarkable really!

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 9 months later...

I've posted about this elsewhere, so please excuse any duplication.

This enquiry is about the construction of an allied observation post near Beaurains, April 1917. It was S of Arras, about half a mile W of Telegraph Hill.

According to biographer Matthew Hollis, biographer of Edward Thomas:

“Thomas started late for the observation post and had not rung through his arrival when the bombardment began…. two hours later, he left the dugout behind his post and leaned in to the opening to take a moment to fill his pipe. A shell passed so close to him that the blast of air stopped his heart..”

I am trying (and failing) to see the dugout and the OP (assuming they are different parts) in detail in my mind’s eye, as if I was making a film of it (though I’m not!). How might this post have been constructed? How big? Is it likely to have been a trench, behind the guns, a little higher up? With some kind of protective parapet, if so, made from what? Or?? Would Thomas have been using field glasses? A periscope?

And, very importantly, what is "the opening" to which Hollis refers? Is it just the way in an out of the OP, Or?

The “opening” is previously referred to in an eye witness account recorded in a memoir by Eleanor Farjeon. She reports a sergeant who saw him die saying, “Mr Thomas came out from the dug out behind his gun and leaned into the opening to fill his pipe.”

I'm trying to work out the distance Observation Post and the guns. Hollis writes that on the 7-8 April “the heavy guns of 244 siege battery stood wheel to wheel on the sunken road before the quarry that ran parallel to the front.

Thomas’ letter of 30 March mentions the observation post as being close to “a chalk-stone cellar with a Bosh dug-out far under, and by the last layer of stones is a lilac bush… nearby a graveyard for the ‘tapferer franzos soldat’ with crosses and Hun names.” It sounds as if he slept in the cellar. He mentions a hedge through which he observes, and a cherry tree with its roots in the trench.

There are other references to chalky mud.

I don’t think there is much to see of the OP these days, but of course the view of the landscape from that spot would also interest me too...

Supplementary info:

Thomas refers to: “Gun positions which are at the edge of a cathedral town a mile or two along the road we look out on. We are to fight in an orchard there in sight of the cathedral.”

According to another biographer, R. George Thomas, on Monday 2nd April, Thomas supervised the reconstruction of an “emergency dugout” close to the final position of their guns.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Kathy

I have placed the battery in your other thread. I am very unsure of Hollis' description as it would firstly be rare at this time to put 6" Howitzers wheel to wheel and you will see on the map in the other thread that they are not placed on a sunken road at all. Thomas' letter of the 30th is the most interesting. After the German withdrawal in March the British took over the German lines in Beaurains - it's best if you look at this map to get the idea.

post-28845-0-08465100-1361819290_thumb.j

The red lines are/were German trenches. The bold black line is the approximate British front line for the offensive. You will see a great number of German trenches are now behind the British front line. The sleeping in a cellar near the OP places him within the last of the houses in Beaurains (as it was). I don't have any details of the orders of 244 for the bombardment - that would place the OP better as he would have had to have been able to view the state of the wire and fall of shells, or 35 H.A. Group may also give you the details.

Going back to Hollis, the statement he had left for the OP means he was no longer by the battery but forward in the trenches close to the front. This doesn't tally at all with the 'eye witness' saying he had come out of a dugout 'behind his gun'.

Beaurains now extends far further south than at the time of the war. The trenches and OP will now be in built up housing estates and so it is unlikely to be able to see much of the landscape from there - but who knows. If you pin down the location it might prove very interesting.

I pass by Agny very often (Auchon shopping) and also sometimes call in at the cemetery so I know Thomas' resting place very well. Good luck with your continuous search; clearly not all your sources are reliable.

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Kathy. PM sent. Don't live there all the time as yet but plan to in 18 months.

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...