Month: April 2018
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Away from the Western Front 1st – 11th September 1917
The Indian Army and the EEF Some 1.8 million soldiers from the Indian Army were sent overseas during World War One. 200,000 served in Egypt and Palestine, over 95,000 in combatant roles. The main role of the Indian Army in peacetime had been to defend its North- West Frontier. Its commissioned officers were all British while other…
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Away from the Western Front : 25th August – 31th August, 1917.
Back into the Front Line In order to allow soldiers to cope with the stress of trench life and fighting, British army practice was to rotate divisions between the front and rear lines for rest periods. However, although the troops were away from direct shelling or carrying out trench raids, these ‘rest’ periods often…
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Away from the Western Front : 12th – 24th August, 1917.
Major-General S W Hare and the 54th Divisional Training Camp Major-General Steuart Hare, the regular army officer commanding the 54th Division, believed strongly that Territorial soldiers could reach the same standard as those in the regular army. This was not a widespread view – the pre-war prejudice against the ‘Saturday night soldiers’ or the ‘town…
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Away from the Western Front : 30th July – 11th August, 1917.
Reinforcing the Redoubts and Reinforcing the Battalion By summer 1917, the drafts of men sent out to join the 54th Division were no longer drawn automatically from the training battalions of the Finsbury Rifles and the other battalions in the division. Conscripts rather than volunteers were replacing men who…
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Away from the Western Front : 28th – 29th July, 1917.
Captain Tattersall DSO The warning recorded about the dangerous currents off the beaches near Gaza proved to be horribly accurate. The war diary, usually so concise and impersonal, recorded the death and funeral of Captain Tattersall with more detail than usual. Philip Tattershall had grown up in the Gray’s Inn Road in Holborn,…
Friends of Islington Museum 