Monday 14 September 2015

Chasing the Dragon.

Time to head back to the Somme! A three night trip based in Arras starting tomorrow, 15th September. It's a bespoke tour, following in the footsteps of a Welsh soldier who was killed in the last few weeks of the war as the Allied army chased the retreating Germans across the old 1916 battlefield.

Friday 4 September 2015

ARTHUR JAQUES






 ARTHUR JAQUES

The figure in the striped blazer in the middle of the front row is Arthur Jaques, a newcomer to the Hampshire side in the two seasons leading up to the Great War. A tall opening bowler, he lived in Bassett, a suburb of Southampton. A hundred years ago, in the late summer of 1915, he was on his way to the catastrophe that became known as The Battle of Loos. He had ended his season, and his cricketing career, with 6 wickets for 55 runs in 23 overs at Dean Park, Bournemouth. Arthur had also just married. By the early autumn of 1914, however, he and his twin brother had signed up.

Having gained commissions in the 12th West Yorkshire Regiment, the Jaques brothers would have undergone training in the Home Counties. The West Yorkshires were part of the 21st Division, which was based near Tring. June 1915 saw them at Halton Park, where they were finally issued with rifles. Soon they were on the move, this time to the camp at Witley. Lord Kitchener inspected them on manoeuvres on 12th August. The losses incurred by the B.E.F. in the failed campaigns of 1915 meant that the 21st Division was soon sending advance parties over the Channel, and the remainder of the Division left for France from Folkestone on the 7th of September. The different units gathered at a camp near the town of Tilques.

A sense of excitement must have been building by this time, but the worsening weather, allied to a series of taxing forced marches, would have tested that early enthusiasm. The men were marching ten to fifteen miles a night, carrying heavy packs in pouring rain. Exhausted and soaked to the skin, they would be allowed to rest at daybreak, and lay down in the mud by the side of the road. It was up to officers such as Arthur to keep these troops moving and following orders. This would have been no mean feat when the men discovered two days out of Loos that their food supplies had not caught up with them.

One of the great mistakes made at the Battle of Loos was that reserve units such as the 12th Yorkshires were kept too far back from the front. The modest gains of the initial attacks were then lost as German counter attacks wrestled back control of their trenches before Allied reserve units could help to consolidate the ground taken. So it was that the 12th Yorkshires did not get into action until Sunday 27th September. For such inexperienced troops, the sloping ground near Bois Hugo became a killing ground. With most of their officers (including Arthur and Joseph Jaques) dead, the remainder of the men crawled back to their frontline trenches. The 21st Division had suffered 3800 casualties. No ground was gained. It was the final nail in the coffin for Sir John French, who was sacked as Commander-in-Chief of the B.E.F. shortly afterwards.

According to one report by Major-General Forester-Walker the 12th West Yorkshires did not behave with credit and retired without due cause. When one looks at the shortcomings of the planning and execution of the Battle of Loos, it is easy to see why men such as Forester-Walker were so quick to play the blame game. Inexperienced, exhausted and hungry, Jaques and his men found out exactly what Haig meant when he talked about “unfavourable ground”. For one young officer in the Royal Welsh, it was his first taste of combat. Robert Graves describes Loos as a “bloody balls-up” A hundred years later, looking out from the viewing platform at the Loos Memorial which bears the names of the Jaques brothers, one instinctively trusts the judgement of the junior Royal Welsh officer over the Major-General.
For more on Jaques and other Hampshire cricketers in WW1 see A Torch in Flame