“It would be idle to pretend,” stated The Official Historian candidly and with the benefit of thirteen years’ hindsight, “that the outcome of the battle of Loos was not a bitter disappointment… The British Commander in chief had not enough men or enough ammunition to carry out a great offensive.” Nor, he continues, was the ground to be fought over, ideal.  “The area was bounded by groups and rows of the cheaply built cottages of a French mining district from which emerged the occasional lattice-girder tower of a mine head or the top of a dump of mine refuse.  A more unpromising scene for a great offensive battle can hardly be imagined.”

 

Six principal pit-heads or ‘Fosses’ dominated the area, in addition to the auxiliary shafts or ‘Puits’.  Held by the Germans, they provided in places, miles of observation across not only the British front line trenches but, in the case of Fosse 8 in the northern area to be attacked, the whole of the back area as well.  ‘Tower Bridge’, a Fosse outside Loos village and nicknamed thus by the London troops facing it because of its similarity in appearance to the bridge in their capital city, gave three miles of observation across the British lines in the southern sector.  Crassiers, huge piles of loose shale, slag  and waste from the mines, and which, in the case of the Double Crassier outside Loos were too hot to dig far into, completed the dreary landscape over which the battle was to be fought. 

 

Certainly, the area would not have been one over which the British Generals would have chosen to fight. The French though, were anxious to press home an offensive and to do so quickly before the German armies, currently engaged in a mass attack on the Russian front had had time to return to the Western Front.  Their original incursion into France had created a huge salient stretching south towards Verdun and west towards Noyon and General Joffre now proposed to strike back north and east. 

 

The French armies would tackle the area around Champagne and in the south.  The British would assist by taking over 22 miles of the French front line south of Arras and by participating in an attack immediately to the left of the French Tenth Army.  Their front would extend along six miles from Grenay, west of Loos to the La Bassee canal.  It would be carried out by the I and IV Corps of the British First Army and would see newly arrived Kitchener battalions fighting side by side with Territorial and Regular divisions. 

 

Six divisions in all, comprising around 75,000 men would take part.  They would be supported by a preliminary bombardment lasting four days and nights during which time two thirds of the total ammunition available for the estimated ten day campaign was to be allotted to it.  Impressive as this may sound, the actual number of guns available, and the ammunition at their disposal was considered insufficient to prepare an assault on a frontage of more than two divisions.  Gas released from cylinders along the British front line and a smoke screen on the day of the attack would make up for any shortcomings caused by the lack of heavy ordnance. 

 

Nearly 5,500 cylinders containing 150 tons of chlorine gas had been despatched to France by 19th September.  I Corps were allocated 2,568 cylinders whilst IV were allotted 2,460 cylinders.  Each cylinder, when filled, weighed between 120 and 160lbs and they were carried between slings – three men to a sling – by a mini army of 8,000 men.  Once in the trenches they would be held in special recesses dug under the parapets of the fire bays.  10,000 smoke shells were also available for the operations as well as Threlfallite hand grenades; cylindrical tins filled with white phosphorous, paraffin, oil and petrol.  Discharge of smoke and gas on the morning of the attack was the responsibility of specially raised companies of Royal Engineers.

 

In the meantime, according to Operation Order No 19, issued on 20th September 1915 by Major General Barter, Commanding 47th (London) Division and re-printed in the Official History, the artillery’s function, as well as removing obstacles and cutting wire would be to lower the enemy’s morale.

 

For the IV Corps, operating in the southern section of the front, The 47th (London) Division was to capture the huge slag heaps known as the Double Crassier which were situated south west of Loos.  They would then form a defensive flank facing south.  To their left, the 15th (Scottish) Division had Loos, Hill 70 and Cite St Auguste as objectives whilst to their left, the 1st Division was to take two lines of enemy trenches and the southern part of Hulluch village.  Two additional New Army divisions, the 21st and 24th, were to be held in reserve whilst the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions were warned to be ready to exploit any newly created gaps in the front.

 

The Vermelles – Hulluch Road formed the Corps boundary.  North of the road, the 7th, 9th (Scottish) and 2nd Divisions of I Corps would assault the German lines which included the heavily defended Hohenzollern Redoubt.  Whilst the six divisions were attacking, simultaneous diversionary attacks would be carried out further north by the Second Army. 

 

When Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914 she had at her disposal at home, just six infantry divisions and one cavalry division that could be called upon for instant deployment.  The rest of her available regular troops were scattered across her Empire and would take weeks in some cases to be ready to fight on the Western Front.  It was clear that drastic action would be needed if Britain were to provide more than just a token presence in France and Belgium with which to face Germany’s mass conscription armies. 

 

On 5th August, Lord Kitchener was appointed Secretary of State for War and the following day, realising the huge task facing Britain’s small and largely scattered regular army, he issued his now famous call for a further 100,000 men aged between nineteen and thirty.  The response from the men of Great Britain was unique and unparalleled before or since.  From every corner of the island, representing every conceivable profession and trade, men flocked to the recruiting offices in such numbers that by 24th August  Kitchener was able to report to the House of Lords that his target had been reached.  That first hundred thousand was followed by a second hundred thousand, the second hundred thousand by a third.  Nearly three hundred thousand men volunteered in August alone, close to 1.2 million by the end of the year and a further 1.25 million men by the end of March 1915.

 

By 12th September 1914, the first six Kitchener (K1) Divisions were up to strength.  The formation of the second six then began.  Numbered from 15 to 20 they made up the second (K2) divisions.  In under a year two of them, the 9th (Scottish) and the 15th (Scottish) Divisions (K1 and K2 Divisions respectively) would form the vanguard of the attack on the Loos front.  Two K3 Divisions – the 21st and 24th – would be called upon to consolidate the gains made.

 

The 15th Division, with the exception of two battalions from the Leicestershire and Bedfordshire Regiments was entirely Scottish and was raised at Aldershot.  It was comprised of men surplus to establishment of the recently formed 9th (Scottish) Division and from drafts sent from various Scottish depots.  By 15th September it was complete.  The major problem facing this and the other K2 Divisions however, was a lack of officers and experienced NCOs.  Divisions comprised of the first 100,000 recruits had been able to call upon the services of regular officers and NCOs from the regimental depots; not so their successors.  Each battalion had scarcely more than four officers and the 7th Royal Scots Fusiliers could muster just one officer: a recently commissioned RGA Quartermaster-Sergeant, amongst the 900 men.  “At no time”, states the Divisional history, “were there more than five Regular officers in any one brigade.” There were some ex-regular NCOs and pensioners who had taken part in campaigns in Egypt and Afghanistan and they were given acting ranks but in many cases new officers were selected, so the Divisional history states, “solely on account of their smart appearance, and in nearly every instance the choice was justified.”

 

Arthur Reeve, a Yorkshireman by birth but living in Manchester when war was declared, was on the Special Reserve and re-enlisted at Ardwick on 1st September 1914.  He was immediately posted to the 8th Kings Own Scottish Borderers, a Kitchener battalion formed at Berwick-on-Tweed in September 1914.  Reeve was 39 years old and hardly the picture of health.  Service with The Royal Lancaster Regiment from 1894 had left him with an inguinal hernia, which necessitated the wearing of a truss, and in 1907 he had been invalided home from India with malaria.  Nevertheless, as a former NCO in the Regular army, Reeve had just the kind of soldiering experience that the 15th Scottish Division so desperately lacked.  Without further ado he was appointed sergeant and posted to D Company.

 

A shortage of trained officers and NCOs was not the only problem that faced the division.  Rifles did not appear until October, and when they did arrive they were found to be obsolete and fit only for drill purposes.  Army uniform too was non-existent, the stores having been plundered by the First Hundred Thousand.  Ordinary civilian clothes not being suited to the rigours of army life, new recruits were encouraged to obtain good suits, boots and greatcoats from home and promised an allowance of ten shillings per man. This though, reports the divisional history, “… did not help matters greatly.  In these early days it was quite a common occurrence for men to be excused parade either because the state of their boots would not allow them to march or because their garments were not sufficiently decent to warrant their leaving camp or barracks.”  When clothing did arrive towards the end of September 1914, it took everybody by surprise.  “The garments consisted of English-pattern trousers and red serge jackets of every sort and description, some of which had been manufactured as far back as 1893.  There were a few pairs of tartan trews but these were nearly all snapped up by NCOs and the men had to content themselves with what was left.  One man was heard to remark that he had come down to be a Gordon Highlander and not a ****** postman.”

 

But slowly the men of the 44th, 45th and 46th Infantry Brigades, which comprised the 15th Division, settled into their new routine.  “By the end of March 1915”, the divisional history reports, “weaklings had been weeded out” or rather, those men unable to withstand the 72 hour weeks which were the rule on Salisbury Plain.  Although the men may have been ready, the division was still desperately short of the wherewithal to wage a war.  Lewis gunners learnt their drill with the help of wooden models whilst signallers used imaginary telephone and telegraphic equipment. The divisional artillery was no better placed.  Men improvised with a dummy gun made from a pine log mounted on a funeral gun-carriage and an old victoria carriage discovered in a stable was cut into two to represent a carriage and limber.  When working artillery pieces did arrive they were found to date back to the Boer War with a number of French cannon dating back to 1890.  Nevertheless, for the few months that they were in service, the 2000 men of the newly formed divisional artillery, read their manuals, practised their drill and waited for the day when they could fire real shells at a real enemy.

 

Like Arthur Reeve, William Chadwick was an Englishman amongst the Scots and like Reeve, found himself in the 46th Brigade with another battalion of the KOSB: the 7th.  Born in Hollingworth, Cheshire his attestation papers had first earmarked him for the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders but this had been scored through and ‘Scottish Borderers’ scrawled above it.  When he attested, on 8th November 1914, Chadwick was 28 years old and married.

 

On July 4th the division received the order to mobilise and three days later the first advance parties left for France. Chadwick and the 7th KOSB arrived in Boulogne on the 9th and Sergeant Reeve and the 8th KOSB the following day at 8:40 in the evening.  His battalion numbered 1020 men comprised of 30 officers, six warrant officers, 43 sergeants, 40 corporals and 901 other ranks.  The French Army added an interpreter which was to prove extremely useful as the men would find themselves billeted in areas previously unoccupied by British troops and were able, thanks to his services, to find buildings that had been overlooked by the French authorities.  By nightfall, on the 10th July 1915, the entire 15th Division was on French soil.

 

Stan Collins, living in Surrey, had been one of the first to respond when Kitchener’s call for volunteers went out.  He had enlisted at Guildford within days of war being declared and by July 1915 was in France with the 12th Battalion of the Kings Royal Rifle Corps as part of the 60th Infantry Brigade in the 20th (Light) Division.  Like the men of the 15th (Scottish) Division, the eager recruits of the 20th Division also found themselves as part of Kitchener’s second hundred thousand and like their counterparts in the Scots’ Division, they had also suffered from an acute shortage of supplies.  Just as the 9th (Scottish) Division had left their successors in the 15th with little with which to fight a war, so too had the men of the 14th (Light) Division demanded first call on uniforms and rifles.  The 14th Division would be in France by May 1915 and while they went through the rigours of training, their successors in the 20th Division had to make do with whatever they could scrape together.  “One or two experienced officers,” states the divisional history, “and a few re-enlisted NCOs were confronted with the task of turning a thousand totally untrained men into an efficient and well-disciplined fighting force.”  It was not until November 1914 that Stan Collins and his comrades had been issued with a uniform, and then only an emergency suit of blue.  Around the same time, a number of old rifles for drill purposes also became available.  In a narrative that almost exactly mirrors that of the 15th Divisional history, Captain Inglefield would later write:

 

“There were so few SMLE rifles in some battalions that only one or two companies could fire at a time, and even then each detail after firing had to hand over the rifles to another detail waiting to fire.  The artillery at first had only enough harness for one six-horse team in each brigade.  The shortage of saddles was made good to a certain extent by private gifts.  Each brigade had two 90mm and two 15-pr. guns, but these had no sights.  Wooden sights and wooden guns were improvised to carry out battery gun drill.  It was not until February that one 18-pr. gun was issued to each battery.”

 

By June however, with shortages made up, the King had inspected the Division and now, one month later, Stan Collins found himself learning the rigours of trench life from the regular soldiers of the 8th and 27th Divisions who had been overseas since 1914.  Having been trained in the art of open warfare, there was an immediate need for instruction in trench warfare, and officers and NCOs were hastily despatched to bombing courses and machine gun classes whilst the men practised gas-mask drill daily and sharpened up on ordinary training.  By the end of August 1915, the Division had taken over a section of the line.

 

The 20th Divisional front ran from the IIIrd Corps right flank north of Neuve Chapelle at Mauquissait to Petillon and, during the autumn and winter of 1915, was one of the quietest parts on the British front.  The main centre of activity was to be concentrated around the Loos area further south and between July 1915, when Arthur Reeve and William Chadwick had arrived with the 15th Scottish Division, and the end of August, a further six New Army divisions would take up positions in France with the 20th.  By the end of September, five more New Army divisions, including the 2nd Canadian, would join them.

 

Four days after landing in France, Arthur Reeve and the Territorials of the 8th KOSB were issued with smoke helmets.  The following day there was bad news.  Major Gordon Forbes of the 7th KOSB was severely wounded and died the next day in hospital.  There were also tragedies within the ranks of the 8th KOSB.  On the morning of 26th July, one of Reeves’ D Company men, 24 year old Private Joseph Golding, was accidentally shot and killed in a dug-out by Private Guest.

 

At the Field General Court Martial which was assembled one week later, Guest was charged with and found guilty of neglect to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.  He was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment with hard labour although suspension of this punishment was applied for and duly granted.  Six and a half months later, Private Guest was killed in action; he is commemorated at Vermelles British Cemetery, Pas de Calais. Private Golding is also commemorated at Pas de Calais on panel 15 of the Le Touret memorial.

 

At the same Court Martial, Sergeant Pike was charged with drunkenness when warned for duty and Corporal McKinnon charged with drunkenness on parade.  Both men were reduced to the ranks. 

 

There were other minor incidents in August.  Sergeant Ward, another D Company man, was accidentally wounded in the leg by a bayonet when returning over the parapet from wire patrol and Private Saint of C Company received a gun shot wound in the big toe of his right foot which, states the battalion war diary, was ‘self-inflicted through negligence and disobedience of orders.’  Both men were sent to hospital.

 

On 27^th August the 15th Division received preliminary orders for the battle of Loos and on the same day, Arthur Reeve and Lieutenant Herbertson, in common with the officers and senior NCOs of the other newly arrived divisions, were nominated as instructors to take eight NCOs and men on a bomb throwing course at Noeux les Mines.  Other NCOs under the guidance of Lieutenant Douglas, were sent to the same destination to practise their techniques with the Vickers Maxim on a machine gun course.  Two days later, eight officers were detailed for a special six-day course of bomb throwing.  Lieutenant Herbertson was appointed brigade instructor and Sergeant Reeve as assistant instructor.

James Sweeney and John Currie were also preparing for the coming battle.  Sweeney, an Edinburgh man, had joined the 13th Royal Scots (45th Infantry Brigade) when it was formed in the City in September 1914 and had arrived at Boulogne on the steamer ‘Invicta’ in July.  John Currie from Aberdeen was also one of Kitchener’s K2 men.  He had enlisted with The Gordon Highlanders and found himself with the 10th Battalion (44th Infantry Brigade).  All their early excitement though about going to France had been dampened when less than a fortnight after their arrival, the 10th Gordons’ commanding officer, Colonel MacDougall, on a visit to the trenches to gain some experience of life in the line, had been killed instantly by shell-fire on the 22nd July.  For men who, less than a year ago, had had no concept of army life and who, until recently, had been practising soldiery with incomplete uniforms and improvised weapons, it was a harsh awakening to the realities of war.

 

On 3rd August, the men had had their first taste of the trenches when the Division had relieved the 47th (London) Division in the right sector of the IV Corps front around Loos.  The Londoners, Territorials to a man, had been in France since March and had already seen action at Aubers Ridge and Festubert.  They would see action again at Loos when they would attack on a front immediately to the right of the 15th Division. The 13th Royal Scots took over trenches from the 8th London Regiment, a battalion known to all by its more familiar name of The Post Office Rifles, comprised as it was of men who until recently had worked for the post office in London.  As Sweeney entered the trenches, Post Office Rifleman Harold Parkinson, exited.  The two of them would take part in the battle of Loos and both would later share space in Nurse Oliver’s autograph book; Sweeney when recuperating from a wound and Parkinson much later while convalescing from sickness.  Neither man would meet the other and only one of them would survive the war.

 

On 6th August the 13th Royal Scots had their first casualties: Corporal Irvine of D Company who had his elbow blown away by a shell fragment and Private McGhee, killed by a piece of shell striking him in the stomach.  By the 14th August the number of casualties would increase further and the war diarist would record, “2 died of wounds, 1 accidentally killed, 8 wounded.”

 

On 18th August, the battalion was relieved by the 8th Seaforth Highlanders and moved into Divisional reserve at Noeux-Les-Mines where it took part in the bombing courses now being organised throughout the division.  Arthur Reeve and Lieutenant Herbertson would be there shortly themselves and throughout the division as a whole, there was an air of expectancy and organisation in preparation for the coming offensive.  The diarist of the 13th Scots wrote:

 

“The battalion is now organised so that each platoon in each company has its four sections trained, one for wiring, one for bombing, one as machine gunners and one for mining.  This organisation answers its purpose extremely well, the officers in each company gradually being trained to be experts at least two and as time goes on, more of these subjects.”

 

On the 23rd September, the 8th KOSB war diarist noted that bombers were paraded for inspection by The Brigade Bombing Officer and the battalion supply of bombs was drawn.  Lieutenant Herbertson had rejoined the battalion from brigade bombing school a week earlier and had resumed duty as bombing instructor to the battalion, assisted by Sergeant Reeve.  It was now generally understood that an attack on the German Position was intended for Saturday morning, the 25th and the day was spent in General preparation.  On the 24th, the Mairie at Mazingarbe was set aside for storing the kits and packs of Officers, NCOs and men.  By 10am it had all been done.