Monday, 14 September 2015
Chasing the Dragon.
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
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