This history of the Royal Naval Division does not claim to record all
the doings of the many separate units which served in the Division. Selection
is essential to the writing of history, and the idea that the history of a
division should provide an exception to a very golden rule is one which I do
not share, and for the same reason as that for which I feel the terms
"Divisional History ," and, still more, "Divisional Historian," to be
misconceived. A history of the evolution of the division as an administrative
and tactical unit might perhaps, for want of a better epithet, be called
..divisional." But there should be nothing sui generis about the history of the
officers and men who go to make up a particular division at a particular time.
Their deeds must surely be weighed and judged by the same standards as those of
other men, by the quantity they achieved, but most of all by the quality
they touched.
And so I have endeavoured to see and to write of the Naval Division
from the standpoint of the historian rather than the chronicler, and I have
unhesitatingly selected for the most detailed treatment those episodes which
bear on the widest issues.
By reason of its origin and its organization, of its prominent share
in two famous military operations, and because among its officers was more than
one famous personality, representative of the culture of an age on which the
future will look back at least with interest, the name of the Royal Naval
Division will live in history. I have tried so to write this book that round
the name may linger some flavour of the quality of its exploits, some
reflection of the several tragic if splendid scenes among which its lot was
cast.
I am conscious of omissions and imperfections. This book has been
written in the intervals of a rather scanty leisure, and it is too much to hope
that it contains no inaccuracies. I can only trust that they will be brought to
my notice, and that there will be an opportunity of correcting them.
My main authorities have been the War Diaries of the different units
and, in particular, of the General Staff of the Divisions. The detailed
contemporary reports on operations which these Diaries contain have made it
unnecessary to consult many to whom otherwise I should have had to refer
constantly. This is particularly true of the Divisional Com- manders and their
staffs. As regards some of the earlier operations, however, even the General
Staff Diaries are incomplete, and in all cases the records of lower formations
are barren of much detail essential if the actual experiences of the infantry
battalions are to be understood. In these circumstances my thanks are due to
many for invaluable assistance in supplementing the available written records.
In particular I must express my gratitude to Lieut.-General Sir
Herbert Blumberg, K.C.B., Major-General Sir Archibald Paris, K.C.B.,
Brigadier-General A. M. Asquith, D.S.O., Colonel Commandant H. C. du Preet
C.B.t C.M.G., Captain H. D. King C.B.E., D.S.O., R.N.V.R., M.P., Lt.-Colonel
Bernard Freyberg V.C., C.M.G., D.S.O., Commander A. W. Buckle, D.S.O.,
R.N.V.R., Major H. D. Lough, D.S.O., R.M.L.I., Lieut.-Commander R. Blackmore,
M.C., R.N.V.R., and Lieut. F. W. Sowerby, R.N.V.R., for assistance in con-
nection with particular operations, and to Mr. Gordon H. N . Inman, A.R.I.B.A.,
and Mr. G. M. C. Taylor, M.C., A.M.I.C.E. (both of them former officers of the
Division), for their help with the maps. Finally, my especial thanks are due to
Brigadier-General J. E. Edmonds, C.B., the official historian of the Military
Operations of the late war, and to his staff, for their unfailing assistance in
helping me to fill the gaps in the Divisional War Diaries, to my mother for
reading the proofs, and to my wife for compiling the index.
Those who have helped me by lending me documents and maps are so many
that I cannot attempt here to thank them individually. I hope to do so later.
February, 1923. DOUGLAS JERROLD.
The foundations of the Royal Naval Division were laid before the War
began. It was perceived that on mobilization there would be at least twenty or
thirty thousand men belonging to the Reserves of the Royal Navy for whom there
would not be room on any ship of war which went to sea. It had already been
proposed on the Committee of Imperial Defence to form from these elements one
Brigade of Marines and two Naval Brigades to increase the Forces available for
Home Defence, or for any special purpose, such as the seizure of an advanced
naval base, for which they might be needed by the Admiralty. On the outbreak of
War these three Brigades were assembled and formed into the Royal Naval
Division. In those August and September days our Military resources were on a
very small scale. Six regular Divisions were going to France, two others were
being collected from the garrisons of the Empire, and only the first six
Divisions of Lord Kitchener's new Army had yet been planned. The addition
of another Division of men of high quality, of prolonged if partial training,
and of considerable discipline, for whom weapons were available, was,
therefore, an appreciable factor. Lord Kitchener was delighted to include the
Division in our Military Forces. He welcomed the Admiralty's intention, and
announced its creation to the House of Lords in one of the earliest speeches
which he made as Secretary of State. Afterwards, when many hundreds of
thousands of eager volunteers had swarmed in to the recruiting stations, and
when over seventy British Divisions were being organized and trained, the
relative importance of the Naval Division diminished proportionately, and by
the time that it was definitely incorporated with the Armies under the War
Office, it bulked much smaller than at its birth.
The three Brigades were formed with almost incredible rapidity. Cadres
were created from the Petty Officers of the Navy, from the Instructors and
Sergeants of the Royal Marines and with a sprinkling of retired regular
officers of high quality, mostly belonging to the Brigade of Guards. On
this structure it was easy to build the men of the Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve, of the Royal Naval Reserve and of the Royal Fleet Reserve, and of the
Royal Marines, in suitable proportions. At a later stage several thousand
recruits who could not at that time be handled by the New Armies, mostly
Tyneside miners, were added to the Battalions and maintained consistently the
reputation of the North Country.
The method employed in forming the units may be studied in detail by
those who care to read the two or three operative Minutes by which this process
was regulated. These are reprinted as an appendix to this history .
The Royal Naval Volunteer Reservists and many others in the various
elements of which the Division was composed had set their hearts on serving
afloat, and it was with much disappointment and many heartburnings, but with
boundless and unflinching loyalty, that they devoted themselves to the deadly
work ashore. The pressure of the opening events of the War was so intense that
it was not easy to forecast or measure what would happen after the first
decisive battles on land ; whether the War would be long or short, or what
character its secondary phases would assume. The overwhelming numbers of
volunteers who joined the Army in the latter part of 1914 made this small
Admiralty contribution seem superfluous. On the other hand, the vast expansion
of the flotillas and small craft of the Navy, together with the need of
increasing the complements of the Grand Fleet caused by the conditions of
protracted War and by the German submarine campaign, would have afforded five
or six months later ample scope in the Naval Service and afloat for all these
keen and valiant would-be sailors. Others were forthcoming when the time came
to take their places in the Navy, but the original elements of the Royal Naval
Division, who certainly had the first claim to the coveted service afloat, were
by that time locked in the heart of the land grapple. All criticisms on these
and kindred grounds were, however, to be swept away by the extraordinary
achievements and almost incomparable prowess which this small band of men
continued to display in every theatre where they fought during the whole course
of the War.
By their conduct in the forefront of the battle, by their character,
and by the feats of arms which they performed, they raised themselves into that
glorious company of the seven or eight most famous Divisions of the British
Army in the Great War. Their reputation was consistently maintained in spite of
losses of so awful a character as to sweep away three or four times over the
original personnel. Their memory is established in history and their
contribution will be identified and recognized a hundred years hence from among
the enormous crowd of splendid efforts which were forthcoming in this terrible
period. Deriving as they did their nomenclature, their ceremonial, their
traditions, their inspiration from the Royal Navy, they in their turn cast back
a new lustre on that mighty parent body of which it will ever be proud and for
which it must ever be grateful.
The chronicles which these pages unfold put on faithful record the
episodes by which all this work was accomplished. From " Dunkirk to Belgrade,"
from Antwerp to Gallipoli, from the Somme and Ancre in 1916 to the
Drocourt-Queant switch in 1918, through every bloody battle and in the brunt of
it, they marched and suffered. Again and again shot to pieces, always rising
anew unconquerable, never failing, never faltering, until in the end their
story stands out as an epic ineffaceable in national gratitude and long
fortified against the ravages of time.
The great majority of the original Company are dead. The gallant
Guards Officers were among the first to fall. The meteor brightness of Rupert
Brooke was extinguished almost as soon as his rays began to light the storm.
Arnold Quilter, Denis Browne, Charles Lister, of the Hood; Tisdall and Grant of
the Anson ; W. L. Maxwell and Frank Wilson, the Brigade- Majors of the two
Naval Brigades * ; Evelegh of the Nelson, Luard of the Portsmouth Marines,
Spearman of the Collingwood **, Barker and Lancelot Cherry of the Drake, were
among those cut down and swept away before a year of the War had run its
course. But their spirit lived on, their example was emulated, their
names and memories were cherished, and here and there an Asquith or a Freyberg,
a Hutchison, a Ramsay Fairfax, a Beak, or a Buckle, salamanders born in the
furnace, survived to lead, to command, and to preserve the sacred continuity.
The long list of bright names grew with every month that passed. Burge of the
Nelson, Tetley of the Drake,* Vere Harmsworth and William Ker of the Hawke, F.
S. Kelly of the Hood, were among the many officers of fine promise and
attainment who fell in the Ancre Valley. Cartwrightt of the Ist Marines was
killed at Gavrelle and Sterndale Bennett was mortally wounded at Passchendaele.
Patrick Shaw Stewart and Alan Campbell fell on Welsh Ridge, and Farquharson of
the 2nd Marines, Kirkpatrick of the Anson and Ellis of the Hawke,! till then
unscathed, in those resolute engagements in which the Division stemmed the tide
of the German advance in March, 1918. Jones of the Hawke,§ Surgeon Pocock
of the Drake, Fish of the Hood, fell in the final and triumphant advance.
* Lt.-Colonel W. L. Maxwell (Indian Army) and Major F. Wilson, R.M.L.I., killed
on the 11th and 18th May, 1915, respectively.
** Commander A. Y. Spearman, R.N ., was killed in action at Gallipoli on June
4th, Lt.-Colonel E. G. Evelegh, R.M.L.I., on July 13th, and Lt.-Colonel F. W.
Luard, R.M.L.I., on July 14th, 1915.
page xiv
* Lt.-Colonel W. L. Maxwell (Indian Army) and Major F. Wilson, R.M.L.I., killed
on the 11th and 18th May, 1915, respectively.
** Commander A. Y. Spearman, R.N ., was killed in action at Gallipoli on June
4th, Lt.-Colonel E. G. Evelegh, R.M.L.I., on July 13th, and Lt.-Colonel F. W.
Luard, R.M.L.I., on July 14th, 1915.
When the Division went to France in the spring of 1916 a new set of difficulties began to assail it and even to menace its existence. It was a Naval Division. It had different rates of pay, different ranks, different customs, different methods, different traditions, from those of the British Expeditionary Army. Its officers and men used consistently the Naval parlance on every possible occasion. To leave their camps, in which the White Ensign flew and bells recorded the passage of time, men requested " leave to go ashore; " when they returned they " came aboard," and when they did not they were reported as " adrift." Men were " rated " and " disrated," and for Sergeants and Lance-Corporals they had Petty Officers and Leading Seamen. Anchors were stencilled on their limbers and emblazoned on their Company flags, and their regimental badges were in the form of the crests of the Admirals whose names their Battalions bore. When ill or wounded they attended " Sick bay; " field kitchens were the " galley"; the King's health was drunk sitting in the "wardroom" where Officers wanting salt are even reported to have been heard asking their neighbours to " give it a fair wind;" all Wrights were "Shiner," and all Clarks were Nobby." Many of the men and some of the Officers requested "leave to grow," and paraded creditable beards in the faces of a clean-chinned Army. *
page xv
* Lt.-Colonel N. 0. Burge, R.M.L.I., and Lt.-Colonel A. S. Tetley, R.M.L.I.,
were both killed on the morning of November 18th, 1916.
** Lt.-Colonel F. J. W. Cartwright, D.S.O., R.M.L.I., died on April 30th, 1917,
of wounds received in the second battle of Gavrelle. Commander w. Stemdale
Bennett, D.S.O., R.N. V .R., died on November 7th, 1917.
*** Lt.-Colonel C. G. Farquharson, M.C., R.M.L.I., was killed on the 23rd, and
Lt.-Colonel Kirkpatrick, D.S.O. (The Buffs), and Commander Bernard Ellis,
D.S.O., R.N .V .R., on the 25th March, 1918.
**** Commander S. G. Jones, R.N.V.R., killed on August 25th, 1918.
It need scarcely be said that these manifestations inspired in a
certain type of military mind feelings of the liveliest alarm. To this type of
mind anything which diverged in the slightest degree from absolute uniformity
according to the sealed pattern was inexpressibly painful. Yet these very
peculiarities of the Naval Division, this consciousness they had of partnership
with the great traditions of the Royal Navy, these odd forms and ceremonies,
this special nomenature, which were cherished and preserved so punctiliously by
officers and men, few of whom had ever been to sea, were in fact the mainspring
of their exceptional prowess. It is strange how men deprived of everything that
makes for happiness and pleasure in human life, confronted with the cruellest
trials and under the constant menace amounting most to certainty of death, find
comfort and revivifying strength in little things which to others, freed from
these circumstances, living in an easy and exalted sphere, only appear trivial
and, perhaps, absurd.
Two remedies for the shocking spectacle which the Naval Division
presented to the eyes of martinets were alternately and repeatedly proposed.
The first was to break them into uniformity, the second was to disband them.
When at last General Paris, whose proved sagacity had led the Division from the
outset, had fallen wounded, the first of these remedies was tried. An Army
officer with unexceptionable credentials for the task was placed in command.
For six months in 1916 he laboured to force the officers and men of the Royal
Naval ivision to amend their ways, to drop their naval vogue, to forget their
naval tradition, and even to shave their beards. Army officers selected for
this express purpose were placed in commnand of many of the battalions over the
heads of those who had won their way to these situations by continued promotion
under the fire of the enemy. But so stubborn was the resisting power which all
ranks developed in a perfectly obedient and respectful manner, and so high was
their conduct in action, that after six months the essential character of the
Division was unchanged. Under a new commander they reentered a period in
which their only troubles were provided by the Germans.
page xvi
* When going aboard the train which was to take them from Dunkirk to Antwerp in 1914", the Anson and Hood Battalions were warned that in case the train was attacked during the night the Anson Battalion was to fall out on the "port" and the Hood on the "starboard" side of the train.
The second remedy, which would naturally occur to the particular type
of military mind which has been referred to, was next attempted. A concerted
and vigorous effort was made in the spring of 1917 both by General Headquarters
and the War Office to disband the Division. The first remedy had failed through
the obstinacy of the troops and their fine performances against the enemy. The
second encountered a not less effective opposition in the person of Sir Edward
Carson, then First Lord of the Admiralty. Wielding at that time ample political
influence and gifted with not less ample controversial powers, he was able to
repulse the attack in a decisive fashion. The War Office and General
Headquarters accepted their defeat this time with good grace, and henceforward
the Royal Naval Division, confirmed in all its pre-rogatives, was permitted to
go forward without molestation. Neither to the enemy in their front, nor to
their pedantic friends in the rear, had they yielded in any respect. Even the
Artillery, purely military in their origin, who were attached to the Division,
adopted with the utmost punctilio its naval customs, and so continued to the
end of the War.
It would be impossible to pass from this aspect without referring to
those Army units who, with unfailing constancy and comradeship shared the
fortunes of the Division throughout all the campaigns in France and Belgium.
The 223rd and 817th Brigades of the Royal Field Artillery sustained the
Division from midsummer, 1916, until the Armistice under a succession of
skilful and intrepid Commmanders, and the exploits of the 190th Infantry
Brigade, which included the Honourable Artillery Company and the 4th Bedfords,
were a shining part of the record of the Division.
* * * * * * *
It was a long road to tread. Few there were who survived from first to
last. Two, whose names have been mentioned, Asquith and Freyberg, rose from
Sub-Lieutenants to Brigadier Generals across a succession of battlefields on
which they gained every distinction prized by fighting men and sustained
between them more than a dozen wounds. For these and others like them the story
of the Royal Naval Division must indeed seem a vivid panorama of changing
scenes and un- forgettable episodes. All is recounted in Mr. Douglas Jerrold's
faithful and moving pages with the sincerity and accuracy of one who saw and
endured. Antwerp and its seething, cheering crowds when these young soldiers
arrived on their desperate errand of succour ; Antwerp under bombardment;
Antwerp evacuated, with its streams of refugees pouring over the bridges and
along the roads, huddled together, hurrying on, impelled by the crash of the
cannonade and lighted on their way by the blaze of the great oil reserve
flowing in rivers of fire along the ditches. The retreat - the fateful moment
at the Dutch frontier: Sub-Lieutenant Grant under arrest for refusing to cross
into neutral territory ; hanging back until his superior officer, by himself
crossing it, had forfeited authority, and then, by byways, leading through the
night thirty-five men to safety and freedom. The retreat again: the train load
of refugees and Marines intercepted in the night by German riflemen and
machine guns: Colonel Luard and Major French extricating their weary men who
had already marched thirty-five miles and breaking through. Such was their
first experience.
Then to the Mediterranean. On the scented Island of Skyros the little
band of friends, themselves nearly all marked for death, gathered at the grave
in which they buried Rupert Brooke and his dawning genius. The landing on
Gallipoli: Freyberg's midnight swimming exploit in the Gulf of Xeros; Tisdall's
repeated journeys to and from the River Clyde saving the wounded on the
terrible beach, surviving incredibly the intense rifle fire only to perish a
few days later, his life no longer charmed. Warwick and other Anson officers
leading forward to the recapture of their positions Senegalese troops, all of
whose French officers were killed. The sunsets behind Samothrace, seen from the
front lines in the rising heatherland of the peninsula, bathing the Troad in
golden light ; night by the calm Aegean, illuminated by the red and green
lights of the hospital ships and the fitful flashing of artillery. The fierce
scenes of battle in the cruel, cramped positions at Cape Helles; the awful
midsummer of dust, flies, dysentery, and the nausea of corruption; the rigours
of the November blizzard; the sorrow of the final evacuation. Then an interlude
of peace, unshelled, and the quiet beauty of early spring in the Greek Islands.
The scene shifts to France. The November attack at Beaucourt in the
fog and mist of the Ancre Valley , when the Royal Naval Division, at the cost
of more than a third of its strength, in the words of Sir Douglas Haig, "
advanced further and took more prisoners than any Division had done in one
day." Here Freyberg, twice wounded, but still continuing to lead the attack,
took every objective, and, pressing on beyond the furthest, gained his immortal
V.C. All this was but a prelude to 1917, which brought a new series of bloody
trials to the inexhaustible Division: the night attack in the bitter frost and
brilliant moonlight of February 3rd. The storm of Gavrelle after the Arras
battle, Stemdale Bennett leading the Drake in column of route between the only
gap of wire on his front, and Surgeon McCracken, in a mist of red brick dust
and of the yellow and black shell fumes, leading the survivors of his own
stretcher bearers and of captured German Red Cross men to clear the village
streets of wounded under withering fire: the capture of the Gavrelle Windmill
by Captain Newling of the Marines and its brilliant defence.
Then Passchendaele, with its daily and nightly flounderings through
the swamp, and ghastly struggles in the dark for enemy pill-boxes. Welsh Ridge
after the Cambrai disaster, with the German storm troops attacking white-clad
across the snow, securing a lodgment in the vital second line, hurled out of it
again by the Anson counter-attack.
At last 1918 is reached with its terrific 21st of March, its difficult
and exhausting retreat leading up to the brilliantly sustained engagements of
March 25th, when at Les Boeufs, at High Wood and at Courcelette, the Naval
Division stood in the van of the Vth Corps and saved the line of the Ancre.
And so all through the long summer struggle till the victorious
advance. Still the Division is in the forefront--taking part in the storming of
the redoubtable Drocourt-Queant switch of the Hindenburg Line (September 3rd)
with the Anson and the Marines on the flank of the Canadian advance, and Beak,
with the dash and exploiting enterprise of the born leader, thrusting forward
to Pronville and opening the way to the banks of the Canal du Nord. On
September 3Oth, begins that astonishing advance of the Division towards
Cambrai, when, with Beak and Buckle once more in the front of the battle, we
see them forcing the passage of the Canal du Nord, carrying Anneux and
Graincourt, storming the almost impassable defences of the St. Quentin Canal,
capturing the village of Niergnies and repelling with a captured field gun and
captured German anti-tank rifles a German counter-attack made with captured
British tanks-an extraordinary inversion. They were fighting still in the
neighbourhood of Mons when 11 o'clock struck on the morning of November 11th,
and the annals of the Royal Naval Division came in honour to a close.
Long may the record of their achievements be preserved, and long may their
memory be respected by those for whom they fought.
April, 1923. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL.