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Messages - Sheldrake

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Yorkshire (North Riding) / Re: Scarborough Pals Battery 161st Brigade RFA
« on: Saturday 19 November 22 15:40 GMT (UK)  »
Quote from: Ticker on Sunday 14 November 04 10:25 GMT (UK)
Thanks Trangy

I'll try the Imperial War Museum as you suggest.

Glad you like the photo - Here's another one of John William Tymon!  Everyone says I look very much like him - though you wouldn't know from the caricature!

There were two sorts of unit formed from the hundreds of thousands of men who answered the call for volunteers in 1914 - Kitchener's New Armies. 

Some of these were formed by the War Office as extra units.  However the sheer numbers of volunteers overwhelmed the Army which lacked the weapons, clothing or accommodation to equip clothe or the officers and NCOs to train them.  Many volunteers ended up living under canvas in the autumn and winter of 1914.

Local communities stepped in.  Town councils could not supply weapons, but they had access to buildings to accommodate soldiers and places to feed them. These units were the "X town pals."  They typically transferred to the War Office sometime later when they would receive an official designation as e.g. YZ Battalion the Loamshire Regiment.

The Scarborough artillery were originally raised as part of a whole division of Kitchener volunteers from North East England, which would eventually be numbered the 31st Division.  However, the artillery group was for some reason swapped with that of the 32nd Division raised from men recruited from west of the Pennines, so they supported the 17th (3rd Glasgow) battalion the Highland Light Infantry, the 11th (Lonsdale) Battalion the Border Regiment and the 16th Battlaion (3rd Salford Pals) Lancashire Fusiliers
 

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Yorkshire (North Riding) / Re: Scarborough Pals Battery 161st Brigade RFA
« on: Wednesday 16 November 22 00:07 GMT (UK)  »
This is a bit of an old thread, but in the interest of adding more to the tale.

161 Brigade RFA was a "Pals" Unit, raised by local communities rather than by the War Office. The other 18 pounder batteries were from  York, mainly Rountree employees. The three 18 pounder batteries would be joined by a 4.5 inch howitzer battery raised from Yorkshire miners. 

We know quite a bit about 161 Brigade on the First Day of the Somme because the Brigade commander, Lieutenant Colonel A S Cotton wrote about it in the 1930s as "Reflections and recollections" R A Journal volume LXIII No 4.  By and large the artillery barrage on the First Day of the Somme gets a bad press.  This was the day when nearly 60,000 British troops become casualties, just under 20,000 fatally.   But the 161st Brigade, reinforced by other artillery batteries supported the 97th Infantry Brigade  in one of the few successful attacks in the northern half of the British Line, capturing the Leipzig redoubt south of Thiepval. 

There were two reasons for their success.

1. The Infantry brigade commander  had been an observer to the Russo Japanese war. He had noted that the infantry needed to be very close to the artillery barrage to succeed. This his highlanders crawled withion 50 yards of the German trenches before the barrage lifted.

2. One of either Colonel Cotton or the infantry Brigade commander   noticed that the Germans were counter attacking and artillery fire was brought back from then barrage which had moved on.
 
 

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