The reasons behind Sydney Williams Military Medal

The beginning of July marks the end of the time for which Sydney Williams carried out the actions that later earned him a Military Medal. He was granted the medal on 21 September 1916, and the citation says:

This Sergeant has been with the Artillery since the beginning of their campaign. He has been with the Trench Mortar since these Batteries were formed and has at all times shown great courage and bravery.

In the operations of June 3rd - July 1st when his late commanding Officer and 4 other ranks were wounded, he took command and had all the Mortars returned from the front line and assisted the rest of the night in the evacuation of the wounded from the trenches. He has always put duty first having refused leave of absence on two occasions so that he might be with his Battery during bombardments.

I cannot find any reference in the official history nor other writings to more specific details about the operations referred to above.

I only came across this citation last year, and cried when I read it - perhaps because I was coming to know my grandfather a little more; perhaps recognition of a bravery in him which I feel I lack; or perhaps a bravery I do have, but have not been yet been called upon so clearly to exercise.

A friend quoted to me years ago, from Mark Twain I believe: "Courage is acting despite the fear".

*

Coincidentally, I learn only today that on this day in Belgium (3 July 2016), the first official New Zealand remembrance ceremony will be held at the war cemetery at Armentières, "to commemorate the sacrifice of the New Zealand Soldiers in the start of the Battle of the Somme", already underway elsewhere on the Western Front at this time 100 years ago - and which the New Zealand Division would soon be joining.

The Armentières cemetery holds the biggest concentration of identified New Zealand graves from World War I in one single place.

My grandfather's commanding officer is killed in action

Today, reading New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18, I learn that my grandfather's commanding officer was the New Zealand battery commander to lose his life in the war. It happened within two months of the New Zealanders at Armentières. The 1st Battalion of the Otago Regiment staged a raid on 13 July but it failed due to"the totally unexpected and withering fire which the enemy brought to bear on the party". The New Zealanders' heavy guns were unable to neutralize it, despite all three groups of artillery being used. They were unable to do much damage to over twenty enemy batteries.

The guns of the 4th (Howitzer) Battery  of the 3rd Brigade (my grandfather's) "had been dragged from the pits into the open in order to obtain the necessary switch, and during the height of the firing the enemy sprayed the position with shrapnel." It was in this encounter that commanding officer Captain J. L. H. Turner, M.C. lost his life, and command passed to Captain D. E. Gardner.

Harassing the enemy amid "peaceful agrarian industry"

The New Zealand Division finally moved into position on the frontlines at Armentières between the 16th and 19th of May 2016, and command of the artillery passed to New Zealand Divisional Artillery Headquarters at 10 a.m. on May 19th, according to New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18.

It was a very different scenario to Gallipoli - in landscape and population. Says the official history:

the first thing that might be said, so far at least as the artillery were concerned, is that they in no sense approximated to anything that had been expected or imagined. All preconceived notions relative to the place and the people under the existing conditions of war were dispelled on a first introduction to the new environment. After the active preliminaries of taking over the positions had been completed, attention was at once held by the calm, philosophic, but yet active and businesslike attitude of mind with which the people had accepted the conditions that suddenly confronted them. Nothing in the experiences of active warfare afforded a study so impressive and in many respects so interesting. The mind does not readily associate peaceful agrarian industry with the activities of war; but here in the open country, day by day, entirely regardless, or perhaps utterly oblivious, of danger, were the peasantry, men and boys too old or too young for war service, and even women, engaged in the labour of the fields in front of the British gun positions, and within close range of the guns of a merciless enemy.

Armentières was a busy manufacturing town of about thirty thousand, "drab and uninteresting in many ways, and wearing an air of industry rather than of affluence. ... In leisure times at Armentieres the soldier could go shopping, though the selection was limited and prices were high, and before returning to the guns or the billet enjoy afternoon tea, or sit in one of the numberless little estaminets [small cafes] and drink the pale beer or vin ordinaire which formed their stock-in-trade."

Yet despite this seeming peaceful, almost benign, atmosphere:

The first duty of battery commanders on taking over their new positions was to register the enemy front line and all salient points within their group zone, and also an S.O.S. line on which a barrage could be laid down at any point on the Divisional front threatened by the enemy. Measures of defence having thus been decided on, a policy of active shooting was at once adopted. Exercises in concerted shooting were carried out with the dual purpose of obtaining proficiency in their execution and of harassing the enemy. 

Moving into position at Armentières

Armentières sector 1916. (Source http://www.nzhistory.net.nz)

Delving into the official history, New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18, I learn that:

about the middle of May orders were received to move up to Armentieres .... Artillery units made a two days' trek of the journey from the billeting area to Armentieres, and experienced fair enough weather, although it was still somewhat cold. Batteries had previously sent forward by motor 'bus small advance parties, who had quartered for a week with the outgoing batteries, and whose business it had been to familiarise themselves with the area covered by the guns of the battery they were to relieve, with the location of its observation posts, the system of communications, and all else that was essential.

According to New Zealand History online, the New Zealand troops arrived in Armentières on 13 May, where they began learning about the trench warfare techniques developed by the British over the previous 18 months. It goes on:

The New Zealand soldier’s experience in Armentières was dominated by the tedium of trench warfare – training, work parties and trudging along the network of communication trenches. Thanks to a complicated system of scheduled rotations, a soldier typically spent only a few days each month in a front-line trench.

You can read about someone else's following of their grandfather's footsteps, and who will be visiting Armentières itself from 13 May,  at: "Following in Pop's Footsteps".

Preparations at Armentières

On the 1st of May, 2016, Sydney Williams was transferred to the Trench Mortar Battery of the 3rd Brigade, stationed at Le Ciseaux - one of the villages referred to in my previous post. According to New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18, the Brigade commanding officer was Lt-Colonel Ivon Standish, DSO, mentioned in this Stuff article, Veterans of three wars, excerpted below:

Having served in the second Boer War, Standish went on to be a highly regarded artillery officer in WWI, receiving a Distinguished Service Order for extinguishing a fire in the ammunition pit under a maelstrom of bullets. ... 

... men like Standish would not have seen much action, if any, in South Africa as many would have arrived after the war was over. But their arrival at the front during WWI was a rude awakening. 

"South African war veterans talking about Gallipoli said how they'd seen more shells and more bullets in one day than they had in a year in South Africa."

Of Armentières, where the New Zealand Division were about to go into battle later in May, New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18, says it:

... had for long been a quiet sector, undisturbed by any of the fierce contests which had raged along other parts of the long battle front. It was a good breaking-in ground for a Division which had seen no previous fighting, and it was a suitable place in which to "spell" a Division which had been heavily engaged. 

The New Zealand Division, fully reinforced and rested and strengthened after its hard but splendid service on Gallipoli, came to France confident in its strength and vigour, and eager to prove its quality in the new arena; but there was yet much to be learned of the complexities of a system of warfare which, new in itself, was subject to changes almost every day. Without this necessarily accurate knowledge and the perfection and thoroughness of organisation insistently demanded as a primary condition of success, valour and endurance would avail but little.

Sydney Williams: Egypt to France

After a lull paralleled by my grandfather’s “monotony of existence in a camp ... more or less isolated in the desert”, I have returned to the history of his Division (New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18) in the transition time between the Anzac evacuation and embarkation for France. My grandfather, Sydney Williams, was stationed at Moascar, near Ismailia on the banks of the Suez Canal.

These few months saw a complete reorganisation of the Australian and New Zealand forces, and “the formation of a self-contained, complete New Zealand Division”. There was extensive training, but also games of football (read ‘rugby’?) in the evening and on Saturdays, as well as swimming in Lake Timsah.

But the men, according to the official history, were “growing weary of inaction, and confident of their fitness to take the field again”. They began to talk of France, and “to look forward eagerly to the day when they would enter the lists against the most formidable of their enemies. ... The syllabus of training which had been mapped out had hardly been completed when orders appeared announcing that the Division would shortly embark for France.”

In Moascar, my grandfather had been promoted to Artillery Sergeant on 11 March 2016. When he embarked for France on 7 April, he was with the 13 Battery under Captain T Farr, part of the 2nd Brigade commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel F B Sykes. The troops arrived in Marseilles:

Everyone was eager for his first glimpse of France, and the ship's rails were lined and every vantage point on deck was crowded as the transports made their way up the picturesque harbour and proceeded to their berth at the wharves. ... as units came ashore they were packed into long troop trains, and set off on their journey northwards through the heart of Southern France. The countryside was clad in the fresh and tender verdure of spring, and looked fair indeed to eyes that for long had gazed upon nothing more attractive than the scarred slopes of Gallipoli, the bare hills of Lemnos, and the parched and boundless spaces of the Egyptian desert. Marseilles and the sea were quickly left behind, and soon the way lay through the Rhone Valley, with its blossoming orchards and orderly vineyards, its quaint little clustering villages, and its busy towns. ... The beauties of the countryside, the sense of change, and the novelty of the surroundings left no room for dull thoughts or weariness of mind.

The troops arrived in Le Havre after a journey of about fifty hours. After camping out on a cold hillside for a few days, the artillerymen were billeted out near Hazebrouck:

in and about small villages, such as Lynde, Le Ciseaux, and Blaringhem, small places with a poor estaminet [small cafe] or two, and little else of note beyond the church with its spire standing up above the clustering thatched roofs. The old barns and disused stables, which served as billets, were made comfortable enough with the aid of straw bedding, even if they were not overclean ...

The New Zealand Division was due to go into service at Armentieres, but before that the Artillery were tested on their shooting abilities.

Each Brigade in turn was required to send a party of gunners from each of its batteries to Calais, where they carried out live shell practice on ranges on the sea-front. ... the affair was very simple, but it served to demonstrate the discipline and smartness of the gun-crews. In congratulating the men of one battery on their shooting, which had been but typical of that of all the brigades, an English staff officer explained that all batteries were being so tested prior to going into the line in France since, on occasions, one or two batteries had inflicted as much damage on their own infantry as on the enemy!

Today, it’s euphemistically called ‘friendly fire’.

In my bones: No hero's death for Katherine Mansfield's brother

I visited Katherine Mansfield's family home in Thorndon, Wellington a few weeks ago - to see the exhibition "In my very bones - Katherine Mansfield's War" about the relationship between her and her brother Leslie Heron Beauchamp, and how much of her writing about New Zealand was triggered by his death in World War I.

Leslie's death was no noble sacrifice, no valiant death - it was an accident, as many military deaths are. He was a bombing officer in the South Lancashire Regiment, and while demonstrating the use of a hand grenade to another officer, the grenade went off prematurely. Both officers were killed, Leslie surviving by about three quarters of an hour before dying of his wounds at the site. From the exhibition record:

In late September 1915, Beauchamp’s battalion departed for the Western Front. Soon after landing he wrote his last letter to his sister, Katherine:

“Dearest Katie, no time for a letter am frightfully fit and full of beans! The trenches are beastly wet owing to the big bombardment going on. So far have remained scathless so that’s all right!”

This would be his last letter. The following day, on the 6^th of October, Beauchamp was killed during a training accident in Ploegsteert Wood, Belgium. He was conducting a grenade-throwing demonstration when the ‘bomb’ he was holding exploded prematurely, mortally wounding him.