1/6th Londons under shellfire at Souchez, 26-27 April 1916

This page has been developed from my report on Rifleman 1538 Elijah French, which I completed for a private client in 2017. French enlisted into the battalion in 1913 and went to France with it in 1915. He was taken as a prisoner of war at Cambrai on 30 November 1917, but he had already suffered from shell shock resulting from his experiences at Souchez. The 1/6th (City of London) Battalion (Rifles) was also known as the “Cast Iron Sixth” and was under command of the 140th Infantry Brigade of 47th (London) Division at the time described.

The division’s first major engagement came when it took part in the Battle of Loos (September-October 1915). On the opening day of this offensive, the infantry of the division fought in the village of Loos-en-Gohelle itself and for the slag heaps of the coal mines in the vicinity. It spent the next months in the same area, before moving south a few miles to the western slopes of Vimy Ridge.

A present-day map for general orientation. On 25 April 1916 the battalion was out of the line and resting in a hutted camp at Bouvigny Wood. The wood is not marked on this map. Next day, it moved to nearby Carency and Villers-au-Bois, with half of the battalion going to billets in each of them. They can be seen in the centre of this image, just west of the town of Souchez. The front line lay to the east, on the lower slopes of Vimy Ridge. One of the summits of the ridge is marked by a red star, indicating the major Canadian memorial. (The Canadians captured the ridge in 1917).

Although the line on Vimy Ridge was static at this time and no major action had taken place for many months, it was always most hostile, with an ever-present danger from shellfire, mine explosions and trench raids. A major feature of the fighting in the area was underground mine warfare, with both sides seeking to undermine the other and to blow them up from below. Gradually, the British got the upper hand and German plans were made for an attack that would drive them far enough away from the ridge for this manner of warfare to be rendered irrelevant. This eventually took place in late May 1916. It was during the phase of the battalion’s operations before the German attack that Elijah French was affected by shell-shock.

This map dates to the period when the 47^th (London) Division held this part of the line. The war diary of 140^th Infantry Brigade reports that the division held the front between grid locations S.2.d.3.5 and S.15.1.3.2. I have marked them on this map using red flags (using Linesman). The blue lines shown are British-held trenches, and on the right in red are the German trenches. It can be seen that this sector lies just east of Souchez. The division divided its front into Left, Centre and Right Sectors (from top to bottom on the map). The 1/6th Battalion was moved quickly into the Centre Section on 26 April 1916 when the enemy exploded a mine under the 1/19^th Battalion on the left

I have overlaid the division’s front line (blue, with the red flags at the two ends) onto a present-day map. The town is now much larger than it had been when war came here in 1914, and the area has been greatly changed by the building of a motorway. The front line ran just to the east of where the motorway now runs. It is of interest to see that the right-hand extremity of the division’s front is exactly where the Givenchy Canadian Cemetery was later constructed (it is a different Givenchy to that held by the division at earlier dates). *Please note the location of the text “Tf” in Souchez. A road goes south from it and soon crosses a magenta-coloured line. I refer to it below*

Thanks to Google Maps we are standing at the spot where the road meets the magenta line. We are looking directly across north-eastwards towards the location of the division’s “Centre Section” of its front line. The motorway is out of sight in a dip in the ground, and the trenches were on the upwards slope in the distance beyond the dip. It was in the area shown that the 1/6^th Londons came under heavy German artillery shellfire on 26-27 April 1916.

The battalion’s war diary provides a graphic account of events on 26-27 April 1916 when it came under heavy German shellfire in the front line, and a large German underground mine was exploded. Casualties were relatively few considering the violence of this activity. An officer and four men were killed and five others wounded.

From the battalion’s war diary. National Archives WO95/2792. Crown Copyright.

Casualties

Killed in action. Dates shown are those given by the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In brackets are the plot.row.grave of each man, all within Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery which lies south of Souchez.

26 April 1916:
Second Lieutenant Walter Edwards (III.H.16)
Company Sergeant Major 678 Charles William Diggins (III.H.14)
Sergeant 3024 Henry Hosier (III.F.20)
27 April 1916:
Rfmn 2614 Charles Schefel, A Company (III.H.9)
Rfmn 3501 James William Sear (III.H.11)

Casualty list from the “Times” of Monday 15 May 1916 included the four men in the “killed in action” section.

Elijah French and ten other men of the regiment were classified as shell-shocked in the “Times” list of Tuesday 16 May 1916. They were not all of the 1/6th Battalion; some were from the 1/7th and 1/19th Battalions.

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