Moving the West Riding Division to France, 12th -16th April 1915

The first elements of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), initially 2 Corps in strength, had moved to France from 15^th August 1914, only eleven days after the British Government declared war against Germany.

Britain declared war in response to a plea for help from the King of the Belgians, invoking the obligations contained in the Treaty of London that Britain had signed up to in 1839, following the creation of Belgium as an independent nation the previous year. The terms of the treaty called upon all European nations to respect Belgian neutrality. Britain demanded that Germany respect the treaty, and on Germany’s refusal to comply by the set deadline, war was declared, and as a result, the British Royal Navy and the Army, and all their reserve elements were mobilised to meet the threat.

The war was eight months old when it became the turn of the West Riding Division (re-designated the 49^th (West Riding) Division on 12^th May 1915)  to join the BEF. By this time, the country had become used to moving large numbers of troops by road and rail. The systems the army employed, in conjunction with civilian transport operating companies, had become ever more efficient and worked well, transporting, as they did, hundreds of thousands of men, and their horses and equipment from all over the United Kingdom to the embarkation ports in the south east of England.

IWM Q 33550 Southampton Docks. Troops forming up after leaving train

On 31^st March 1915, the Divisional Commander, Major General Thomas Sandford Baldock, received orders to prepare the division for a move to Southampton on, or about, 18^th April.  A week later, on 7^th April, the division despatched a small advance party, drawn from the headquarters elements of the Division and each of the Infantry Brigades under the Division’s command, to cross to France through Le Havre to plan for the division when the main body began to arrive. This advance party consisted of five billeting officers, one senior supply officer, and six officers’ servants, who would be driven in four cars by chauffeurs. Their job was to go ahead of the Division and secure for it adequate accommodation, appropriate to role, for each of the units belonging to the Division, and ensure that feeding and watering of all the horses belonging to the Division; more than 5,500 of them, could be done. In the very earliest period of a division’s deployment to France, this was largely done by means of local purchase from civilian contractors, and the division had a schedule of suppliers local to where they would move to, and the daily rates they charged for their services, issued to it soon after arriving in France, which was possibly part of the work of the advance party to prepare.

At this stage of the Great War, an Infantry Division consisted of just over 18000 officers and men, and almost 6000 horses, both Riding, and Working. Each unit in the Division also had several horse-drawn wagons for baggage and general transport use, a smattering of motor cars and cycles, and about 170 bicycles. The population of an Infantry Division was similar in size to that of a small mobile town, and to move it was a huge logistical exercise. If the Division lined up on a single road, it would cover more than 14 ½ miles, and would take well over three hours, at the marching speed of the infantry, for the entire Division to pass a single point on the road.

Unlike the Regular Army Divisions, which were already in barracks in their respective garrison towns at the time of the mobilisation, those of the Territorial Force (TF), which existed largely only on paper until they concentrated each year for their annuals camps, were headquartered in towns and cities across the country, and their part-time officers and soldiers lived at home. Their barracks were largely barracks in name only, and would only be large enough to store their equipment, run their administration from, and to hold their routine drill and training parades. Many units of the TF maintained sub-units in satellite drill halls in outlying towns, which allowed men who lived away from the larger towns to serve in the TF.

IWM HU 129272 Men of a Territorial battalion of the Norfolk Regiment resting in a farm field during a summer camp before the First World War

When it was ordered to mobilise, the West Riding Division was in and around Scarborough and other Yorkshire coast towns concentrating for the Annual Camp of 1914. It received orders to mobilise, and immediately began returning to barracks so that the units could prepare their equipment for war, take in reservists and new recruits and to organise the administration that would be needed to ensure that the men would be paid, fed, and clothed, and that their families received the correct allowances while their soldier husbands and fathers would be away. All the West Riding based units that were already under the Division’s command reported that mobilisation was complete, except for the need of more men, within ten days of receiving their orders, and began to move to their pre-arranged war stations. 

 

IWM Q 51206 View of Boulogne Harbour with rows of ambulances. Spring 1915

Various units of the Division were distributed around South and East Yorkshire, as well as in Lincolnshire, and so it was that temporary tented camps sprang up in, or near, Doncaster, Hull, York, Bawtry, Gainsborough, Grimsby, and Selby, and it was from those places that the units left from, between 12^th – 16^th April 1915, by train, to travel to Southampton and Folkestone and onwards to France. They were joined, at Southampton Docks, by C Squadron of the Yorkshire Hussars coming from Bishop’s Stortford, and the Divisional Ammunition Column coming from Woolwich. Sixty-four men and an officer drawn from artillery units escorted their ammunition to, and sailed from Avonmouth, near Bristol.

In all, the Division, less those artillerymen going to Avonmouth required 80 trains to move it to Southampton and Folkestone. The journey time averaged 6 hours for the units travelling from the north, but even the Ammunition Column, coming only from Woolwich took five hours to reach the docks at Southampton.

IWM Q 33306 Long Line of Troops marching off to rest camp after disembarking for the first time in France

Divisional Headquarters, and the Headquarters of the Divisional Artillery, as well as all the infantry of the Division, crossed from Folkestone to Boulogne, while the mounted troops and those of the Artillery, the Engineers, including the Signal Company, the medical units, including the Sanitary Section, and the Veterinary Section, and the Divisional Train of the Army Service Corps, all sailed from Southampton to Le Havre.

On their arrivals in France, the units unloaded and hastily organised their kit and equipment, gathered their horses, and moved off to tented transit camps set up a few miles from the port areas, where they spent a night getting what rest they could. Over the course of the next three days, the Division travelled by train and concentrated in the area surrounding Estaires, Merville and Neuf-Berquin on the river Lys where the units set up to perform the roles they had trained for at their war stations in England, and at the annual camps over previous years.

IWM Q 50732 Merville, April - May 1915

By 22^nd April 1915, the Division was ready to take over the defence of the sector then held by the 8^th Division, a Regular Army division commanded by Major General Francis John Davies, and a week after first taking to the line, the first West Yorkshire Regiment TF soldier was killed. Private Harold Burgess of 1/6^th Battalion died of wounds on 30^th April 1915 and is buried in Merville Communal Cemetery. He was 17 years old. He was not, however, the first soldier of the West Yorkshire TF to die in France. Nineteen-year-old Rifleman John Bailey, serving with 1/7th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, from Guiseley, had drowned while bathing in the River Lys the previous day. He and Private Burgess lie buried side by side, separated only by Private Horrocks of 1^st Bn Grenadier Guards, who also died on 29^th April.