The Bulletin of the Birmingham Branch of the WFA

Compiled by Bob Butcher

May 2009

THE REASON WHY

by J.P.Lethbridge

For my pains I am the WFA Birmingham Branch Historical Information Officer. One enquiry I have handled was why the South African Brigade joined the ₉th (Scottish) Division. I guessed that it replaced a brigade that had been so badly mauled that it had to be taken out of the line. After reading Martin Middlebrooke's excellent book Your Country Needs You—Expansion of the British Army infantry Divisions 1914-1918 I confirmed my suspicions.

The 9^th and 15^th (Scottish) Divisions fought at Loos in September 1915. They gained a reputation as good fighting divisions but suffered massive casualties. Many men from the 9^th were transferred to the 15^th to make up its losses, eight battalions being merged into four. This left a gap inthe 15^th which was plugged by inserting the newly arrived South Africans.

The South African Brigade saw much hard fighting on the Western Front, notably in 1916 at Delville Wood on the Somme where their main Western Front War Memorial is. It September 1918 it left the 9^th (Scottish) Division and joined the 66^th (East Lancashire) Division, a Second Line Territorial division shattered by the German March 1918 offensive. When it was rebuilt it contained only two surviving Lancashire units, the South Africans, some Irish and other units

South African troops also served on other fronts notably German East Africa (Tanganyika) and German South West Africa (Namibia). General Smuts rallied South Africa in the Allied cause despite

having been a leading guerrilla commander in the Boer War. However even he could not stop many Dutch South Africans disliking Britain too much to fight for her. After all, our claim to be fighting for the rights of small nations such as Belgium must have sounded like a very sick joke in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

THE LIVENS PROJECTOR By Bob Butcher

In 1915, the British started to discharge gas from cylinders in the front line trench. This system had serious disadvantages and in the following year was supplemented by the 4 inch StokesMortar (an enlarged version of the familiar 3 inch). For some time however, Captain Livens of the Royal Engineers, in collaboration with his father, had been investigating the problem of rapidly creating a strong concentration of gas by means of a simple and easily produced weapon which did not require a large number of troops to operate it. The answer, he believed, was a projector that hurled drums of gas onto the enemy,

The earlier projectors were improvised by removing the tops of steel oil drums, about 20 inches high and 12 inches in diameter and the projectiles were ordinary oil cans, Then Captain Livens found some spare 8 inch welded tubing which he adapted for the projector. The lengths of these projectors varied from 2ft 9in to 4ft 3in, the longer the tube the greater the range. Each had a steel base plate shaped like a dish.Batteries of projectors were buried in the ground behind the British front line at an appropriate angle and pointed in the right direction. They were simultaneously detonated by electricity and threw drums of gas for up to a mile. The drums burst  upon impact

 thus releasing the gas contents.

The first use of the improvised projectors was against machine gun posts near La Boiselle in July 1916 when they successfully fired drums of boiling oil. The first use of manufactured projectors was at Vimy Ridge in April 1917 when a salvo of 2000 was fired. Livens Projectors were then extensively used throughout the rest of the war and were taken into use by the French and American armies.

DID YOU KNOW

that among the types of grenades provided by the War Office before the introduction of the Mills Bomb was the'Mexican', previously supplied to the Mexican Government by a private firm;

that each new type of grenade, often of an experimental and dangerous nature, was consecutively numbered. B y the end of the war the numbering had reached forty-eight although only seventeen were currently on issue. When types were replaced by better and safer models, the surplus older ones were sold to our allies;

that the British Army used phosphorous grenades for clearing dug outs?

THE HAWTHORN MINE By Bob Butcher

The assault of VIII Corps on 1 July 1916 was a costly failure and the corps commander (Hunter-Weston) has been criticised for ordering the mine under the Hawthorn Redoubt to be detonated ten minutes before Zero Hour thus alerting the enemy.

The Redoubt, on a ridge of that name, flanked the ground over which the corps was to assault. In order to eliminate this danger, the corps commander wanted the mine under it to be detonated four hours before Zero Hour. This, he believed, would enable the resulting crater to be occupied and consolidated and the enemy to settle down again before the main attack went in.

The Inspector of Mines at GHQ said that all mines should be detonated at Zero Hour but Fourth Army ordered that they should be fired between Zero Hour and eight minutes before. As a sort of compromise permission was given for the Hawthorn mine to be detonated ten minutes before Zero Hour—insufficient time to occupy the crater but long enough to alert the enemy.