Working the land

A portrait of a member of the Women's Forestry Corps, part of the Women's Land Army, as she uses an axe to "mark for cross cuts". IWM Non-Commercial Licence © IWM (Q 30695)

Local agricultural committees had been set up in order to increase food production. There were still not enough people engaged in this work, and in January 1917, the British Board of Agriculture established a women’s branch. From this, in the March, the Women’s Land Army was created, training women and then putting them to work.

At the beginning of 1917, Germany had declared open warfare on British shipping, meaning the country needed to be ever more reliant on home grown produce.

Women doing this agricultural work faced prejudice from their male counterparts, however, they did begin to come around. In the Auckland Chronicle of 24 May 1917, one is quoted as saying he ‘saw a comely lass ploughing as straight a furrow as could any man’.

Members of the Women's Land Army operating a three-furrow plough with a tractor. IWM Non-Commercial Licence © IWM (Q 54602) 

The following week, an article appeared in the same paper, about the dairy and poultry farm school, set up for women by Eliza Maidment at Sherburn Hall. You can read the article here: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/743/

On 31 May 1918, an article appeared in the Auckland Chronicle about the progress of the Women’s Land Army, and some changes:

‘At the first meeting of the Durham Women War Agricultural Committee, under the new constitution, Lady Anne Lambton was elected president, Lady Boyne chairman, and Mrs HG Stobart vice-chairman. The Secretary (Mr JAL Robson) reported that during April, 873 girls and women were recruited for the land army, and over 200 had been passed by the selection committee. 

Mrs Frank Stobart pointed out that there were now 1115 women’s institutes in the county, and two more were likely to be established at Coxhoe and Shincliffe’.

The committee goes on to bring up an issue that they hope discharged soldiers can help with:

‘It was decided to request the Men’s Executive to take up the question of training discharged soldiers for mole catching’. 

The Women’s Land Army was disbanded in 1919, but was restarted in 1939 for the Second World War. You can read more about the Land Army here: http://www.womenslandarmy.co.uk/world-war-one/

Resistance was hopeless

The final blog post of May sees us returning to France and the German Spring Offensive for Operation Blücher-Yorck, or the Third Battle of the Aisne (27 May-6 June 1918). It was thought by General Erich Ludendorff that taking the Chemin des Dames ridge would allow easier access for the German Army to Paris. In turn, he believed that this would cause the British Army to move its troops from Flanders to Paris, giving the Germans an easier time on that front. 

The battle did not go well for the British and French armies. They both suffered extremely heavy casualties and thousands were taken prisoner of war. The Durham Light Infantry Collection at Durham County Record Office includes the diaries of two officers who were captured on the first day of the battle, Captain Percy Lyon of 6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, and Captain Henry Wilkinson of the 8th Battalion.

A German 15 cm gun mounted on a barge in action on the Aisne Canal, May 1918 © IWM (Q 54416)

Both diaries begin on the 26 May 1918, the day before the battle begun, and both talk of how quiet it was. Lyon, who was in command of a company wrote, ‘The men were happy, and I think pleasantly surprised at the quietness of the line, many of them being in the trenches for the first time, and the majority for the second or third only’.

Part way through dinner that night, a message was received to take precautionary defensive measures. At 10:30pm, Lyon received the following message:

‘Prisoner states attack coming at 4am. Bombardment probably with gas at 1am. Tanks may be used. Troops must fire at infantry and not at tanks. No fighting men to carry wounded. Issue 50 extra rounds per man, and inspect pouches to see no. is complete. All Lewis gunners over four per team to come to Company HQ at once. Destroy all maps and important documents’.

Captain Wilkinson, was second in command of a company. After they had spent the day ‘resting under a blazing sun’, it came as a shock when they received the message of the imminent attack, ‘We could not take this seriously, as the place was so exceptionally quiet, but nevertheless, all preparations were made – as a reserve company we had not much to do’.

Lyon wrote, ‘All through the night our own guns kept up a desultory and at times heavy fire on the enemy lines and communications, the Germans remain, ominously silent. I think that many of us were half ready to believe the prisoners story a fake. At 1am exactly came the beginning of the German bombardment, following the fire of our guns as a roar of applause follows a single speaker, drowning and obliterating it in a moment’.

The 151st (Durham Light Infantry) Brigade war diary states, ‘All accounts of the bombardment received agree in describing it to be the heaviest hitherto experienced’. The bombardment, which included widespread use of gas shells, took out the communication wires within an hour. 

The German attack began as expected at 4am. As a reserve, Wilkinson’s company did not know what was happening in front of them, ‘We were not long in doubt – the advance of the Boches in liberal open order told its own tale! Our four posts, of course, resisted, but were too far away for us to know with what success. At Company HQ we collected our few men, and, together with Harrison and a few remnants of the front line, attempted to delay matters. But with only one Lewis Gun, two Vickers, and our 20-25 men, we could do little, and after half an hour’s glorious scrapping, found ourselves outflanked on right and left’.

They retreated to the Battalion HQ where Wilkinson ordered his men to go on, while he checked the area. Finding it empty, he made to follow his men, but the route was now under heavy fire. He decided to head for the light railway, then follow that, but ‘…I ran headlong into a party of five boches. It was then 6.15am. Resistance was hopeless. The usual procedure was followed, and I was quickly deprived of all my kit, including pocket-book, diary, tobacco, whisky, etc., and sent back with a guard’.

In a reflection on his experience, Lyon wrote that he was expecting a pause between the barrage and the appearance of the German soldiers, but in this case, the Germans left no time for the defence to recover. ‘The air was full of their planes, which went before them and swept the trenches with machine guns. A few tanks had broken through, and were by now well behind us. The defence seems to have crumpled up completely; the intense bombardment, heavy beyond all precedent, had split the line into small isolated groups of sadly shaken men, who fell an easy prey to the first German line’.

Lyon knew their position could not be held, but to fall back meant retreating through the German barrage, ‘For the next two hours or more I was in the barrage area, and it is a miracle I was not hit, as the concentration was tremendous. My men dropped off as were hit, and by the time I had got through to our HQ I was practically alone’.

German infantry reserves advancing towards the front line during the assault on the Chemin des Dames, [1918]. © IWM (Q 55008)

Those at Battalion HQ decided to head for the Brigade HQ to see what orders or information they could get. En route, they met some 5 DLI men coming up from the reserve. Lyon volunteered to attach himself, and 20 men, and they headed for an emergency line, ‘By now the front of the company had reached the top of the hill, to find this already in the enemy’s possession. Some were killed, some captured, and the rest came helter-skelter down on top of my party in the rear. We turned with them, to find the way back as bad as the way on. Men were being hit on every side now, and an aeroplane flying low added to the hail of bullets… By now I saw Germans all round the hill, and looking up I saw half a dozen of them ten yards away, shouting and raising their rifles. The wounded men were shouting at me to surrender, and indeed I saw nothing else for it, so I just stood up, and in a minute we were prisoners’.

This is a moment that clearly stayed with Lyon, and one he gave a great deal of thought to reconciling, ‘The shame of that moment has proved ineffaceable. I suppose that every man taken in battle must feel that smart of indignation and remorse, for every such man has deliberately chosen life before freedom. And such a choice, even in the most desperate conditions, is a falling off from the ideal (so often in men’s mouths) of ‘resistance to the last shot and the last man’. For myself, I only know that it seemed inevitable, and that in similar circumstances I should almost certainly do the same again. It may be a taint of cowardice, or merely an unheroic common sense’.

Lyon was moved around several camps before reaching his final destination of Graudenz [now Grudziadz, Poland], on 17 June 1918. As it was a new camp, housing around 540 officers, a lot of organisation was still in progress.

For Wilkinson, the first camp he arrived at was Rastatt on 9 June. However, it wasn’t long before he and other prisoners were moved on. They arrived at Stralsund at 6:30am on 27 June, then by small ferry to the island of Danholm. This is where he remained for the rest of the war.

Whilst the battle was a low point for the British Army, it was not as good for the Germans as it may have seemed. At the end of the battle, the generals of the German Army were pleased with the amount of territory gained, and planned further offensives. On the ground, however, the army, like the Allies, had suffered very heavy casualties, and the remaining men were nearing exhaustion.

You can read more about Lyon and Wilkinson, and read their diaries on Durham at War:
Percy Lyon: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/story/12850/
Diary: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/657/
Henry Wilkinson: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/story/11369/
Diary: http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/504/

South Shields May 1918

D/DLI 2/3/10 Header of a map showing South Shields coast (May 1918)

Most of the First World War maps in our collection are trench maps of France and Flanders. However, we do have one that is a bit different. It shows the coast defences of the 3rd Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, in May 1918. We do not have anything else in our collection quite like it. It shows trenches, billets, stokes mortar and machine gun emplacements, bomb stores, and regimental first aid posts. 

In the first days after England declared war, Colonel Hubert Morant was in charge of getting the 3rd Battalion in order and to South Shields. He writes the following in his memoirs:

‘By 2pm [8 August 1914], the battalion (3rd) marched off and entrained for South Shields, its War Station, held during the first four days of mobilisation by the territorials and various detachments of regulars, including companies from 2nd Battalion from Litchfield.

…

The 3rd Battalion marched off some 200-300 men short, and I was left behind to bring on the stragglers – mostly drunk. All the afternoon I was hustling drunken men and marching them down to the station in parties as they were dressed.

…

At 6am next morning (Sunday), I left Newcastle for South Shields. Here chaos reigned. The battalion was finding three companies to furnish posts along the coast… Also guards at Smith’s Docks, Palmers Dock, Hawthorn, Leslie, and Jarrow, ranging from one company to a small detachment.

The remainder of the men were billeted in Westgate Road School, where men were constantly arriving… During this time, I busied myself in planning and constructing trenches for the defence of the coast. These were not up to modern standards. I had not made a trench for 25 years!'

D/DLI 2/3/10 Section of map showing the gun emplacement at Frenchman's Bay (May 1918)

'A big gun (4.7?) was on its way to its position in Frenchman’s Battery, this was being man hauled at the rate of a few yards per diem. It was not until about 15 August that it arrived at the Battery, but when it was got actually into position, I do not know’.

The 3rd Battalion map shows the gun emplacement at Frenchman’s Bay. The photograph is from Britain From Above, showing the battery in 1943.

Frenchman's Battery, 1943, https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW006041

Also shown on the map of coastal defences at South Shields, is the seaplane sheds. These were used by the Royal Naval Air Service in the First World War. Their location made them a useful spot for refuelling planes between Killingholme, Lincoln, and bases in Scotland. The crew based there were used for escorting convoys of boats and look out for suspicious activity at sea. 

In 1972, the Imperial War Museum conducted an oral history interview with Vice Air Marshal Christopher Bilney. His first posting to an operational station after he had completed his training was to South Shields seaplane station in 1917. In the interview, Bilney describes it as:

‘A small seaplane station, with, I think, three or four pilots, and the CO [commanding officer] who was a pilot, but never flew as far as I know. Our main job was escorting coastal convoys between the Farne Islands and the Tees. The actual station was situated on the Herd Sands in the harbour at the entrance to the Tyne, and we had a [corrugated] steel hangar… and a slip way… and some workshops. The harbour was generally too small for us to take off in. If there was a strong wind, sometimes you could scramble over the sea walls. So mostly we had to go outside to try and get off the water and that was usually pretty rough.’

D/DLI 2/3/10 Section showing the seaplane sheds (May 1918)

Bilney goes on to describe the impact the commanding officer had on their activities:

‘I fear that like many of the senior naval officers, he had absolutely no idea whatsoever the capabilities of aircraft, and he used to order us out in the most impossible weather… Then go outside [the harbour] and frantically taxi around, get soaked to the skin and never have a hope in hell of getting off the water. Or go out, and it was so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, so you weren’t likely to see any enemy activity even if you got airborne’.

You can read more about other men who were stationed at the seaplane base at South Shields by following the related stories links at the bottom of the page:

http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/story/11134/