Rideout This Rememberance Sunday

I'm planning on making the Ring of Red meet and Remembrance at Toddington Services. Probably ride round as far as Thurrock, maybe Clackett Lane if the weather stays fine. In particular remembering our lads who made the gruelling and futile frontal assault on Pip Ridge in the second battle of Doiran, 18/19 September 1918. My Granddad was an acting Serjeant Major in 1/11 Cameronians and had to lead his men up the 2000 ft escarpment in the face of well entrenched Bulgarian machine guns, on the second day, climbing over the bodies of hundreds of dead and dying from the day before in the full knowledge that the assault the previous day had been repulsed with 65% casualties including most officers. No change to the plan, just more of the same, hundreds of other ranks and officers to the slaughter. The Cameronians got off 'lightly' suffering only 50% casualties. My granddad, Serjeant Andrew, used to lead the Corby Remembrance Day parades until one year he broke down in tears, and from then on according to my mum was a wreck every Remembrance Sunday. He'd run away from home in Kettering as a 14-yr old in 1902* and joined 2 Scottish Rifles (the old Perthshire Light Infantry) as a bugle boy, came out after his 7 years 'under the colours' to get married cuz Gran refused to be an army wife (ironically he left just after he reached the legal age to join up). Granddad missed the army life and went on the Reserve List, and so was in Flanders the second day of the BEF landings 6th August 1914 with 1SR (Cameronians), finally coming home again in 1919. His Battalion saw some action in Flanders, mainly skirmishing and rear guard events, but not sure how much if any involved his company at the sharp end before he transferred in 1915 as an experienced NCO to 1/11 SR, one of the new wartime service battalions. He went to Salonika with them and rose to Serjeant, acting CSM. There was much less action in Salonika than on the Western Front where my Gran and Granddad lost cousins and best friends, but that assault on Pip Ridge makes quite harrowing reading, as bad if not worse than anything you hear about in Flanders and France.

As I say, thankfully Granddad survived the futile assault (he never spoke of it), but 228 of his Cameronian comrades did not, nor did more than another 3,600 British lads. The assault on Pip Ridge is described here about a third of the way down. According to the 'Unprofessional Soldier' who had been an eye witness and writing later as a Staff Officer, '... in singularity of horror and in tragedy of defeated heroism, it is unique among the records of British arms. http://www.1914-1918.net/salonika.htm
* You can imagine the recruiting Serjeant saying ' 14 ye say. Well laddie why don't ye tak a walk roond tha' block an' see if yair no 19 when ye get back'.

Going by the three overseas service stripes on his cuff the right hand photo is from 1918, but before August 6th, after which he would have worn a fourth (overseas service stripes were authorised 20/12/17 for 1918 Orders), so before the assault on Pip Ridge.

Also remembering a great uncle on my dad's side who, as an engineering Petty Officer, went overboard when his ship went down during the Gallipoli evacuations, was pulled aboard a rescue ship, which was also torpedoed and went down. Rescued again he was transported to hospital in the UK but did not survive his injuries. Also mum's cousin whose bomber crashed in 1942, another cousin who was a 'blue on blue' casualty training for 'D' Day and my ex's Uncle a sapper who lost his life at Monte Casino.

 

Me too. I didn't respond straight away because I wasn't sure of the right thing to say

Some families gave so much.

 

Been at the shape end my self a couple of times in hot dry sandy places, not nice but hey ho.
I'll be doing my bit on Sunday like I always do for the guys, gals and their families who didn't get home safe sound with all their bits in place like I did and, more importantly, for the families of those whose journey back took them through Wotton Basset.

Rest easy, your job is done.

 

Hi DD, sadly the psychology then as now is you followed those orders because that was what you are trained to do and moreover because you don't want to let your mates down. General Milne who was responsible for the tactics in that second battle of Doiran came home a war hero - nobody thought to question the bloody callousness of throwing so many men to certain slaughter. My granddad was mentally scarred for life - but at least he made it home. And it's because of scarring memories like those of Pip Ridge that British senior officers in WWII, many the surviving junior officers of WWI, were always reluctant to throw men at a problem, preferring instead to throw tons of munitions even if it meant slower progress - an attitude displayed by Montgomery for instance which so infuriated our American allies who had not suffered the same scale of losses as we had in the battles of Flanders, France and Mesopotamia.