On the evening of 9 August 1918 during the Battle of Amiens a German aircraft dropped a bomb in the courtyard of a farmhouse in the French town of Caix, killing or wounding 20 men of the British No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance who were using the building as an Advanced Dressing Station. One of the survivors in the courtyard was my grandfather, Tom Harold Verrinder, a 21-year old Lance-Corporal in the 9th Lancers who had been detailed at the beginning of the battle to act as galloper for the officer commanding the Ambulance. The incident took place in the midst of one of the greatest battles of the First World War, in which an artillery barrage of unprecedented ferocity – more than 2,000 guns firing simultaneously – had been followed by the advance of tens of thousands of Canadian, Australian and British infantry as well as cavalry and tanks, resulting in a greater gain of territory in the first day than for any other battle of the war and opening the way to the final ‘Hundred Days Offensive’ and the Armistice on 11 November.

More than half a century later my grandfather wrote an account of his experience in the courtyard, the only known written recollection of this incident in any detail. He described the decision of the officer commanding the Ambulance to locate the A.D.S. in the town on the second day of the advance, shortly after it had been captured by Canadian troops:

My grandfather Tom Verrinder towards the end of his five months of intense cavalry training at Tidworth in Wiltshire, shortly before his departure for France in the summer of 1916. During training he was in the 7th Reserve Regiment of Cavalry, which… — My grandfather Tom Verrinder towards the end of his five months of intense cavalry training at Tidworth in Wiltshire, shortly before his departure for France in the summer of 1916. During training he was in the 7th Reserve Regiment of Cavalry, which provided men for the 21st and the 9th Lancers and had squadrons for each regiment. In this photo he wears the cap badge of the 21st Lancers, his squadron in the Reserve Regiment prior to joining the 9th Lancers in France. As a galloper at the Battle of Amiens he would have carried the weapons seen in this photo - sword, rifle and 50-round ammunition bandolier - but not the lance, and he would have worn a steel helmet rather than a soft cap. The other standard active service equipment of a cavalryman by that stage in the war included an additional 90-round bandolier carried around the neck of the horse, several grenades (Mills bombs), a greatcoat, a groundsheet and blankets, a haversack with rations and other kit, a water bottle, a respirator in case of gas attack and food for the horse (photographer unknown, copyright © 2021 David Gibbins).

My grandfather and his older brother Edgar Walter Rollings Verrinder had enlisted together in Birmingham and been on the Western Front with the 9th Lancers since joining ‘A’ Squadron on the Somme battlefield in early September 1916. As dismounted troops they took part in the assault on the ‘Quadrilateral’ near Ginchy on 15 September, when my grandfather saw the first tank ever used in battle go into action. I have published an account of the 9th Lancers in this battle in the Regimental Journal of the Royal Lancers, the present-day successor regiment (Gibbins 2018). They were also present during the Canadian and British capture of Regina Trench beyond Courcelette in October 1916. In April 1917 my grandfather was mounted at the Battle of Arras, while his brother was with a dismounted party acting as stretcher-bearers with a Canadian unit during the taking of Vimy Ridge. My grandfather was again dismounted with a cavalry pioneer battalion during the British assault on Lens in June-July 1917, when the men of the 9th Lancers carried out a bombing attack, and during the Third Battle of Ypres in August-September 1917, when a small party of the 9th Lancers attached to a Royal Engineers unit dug strongpoints during the assault on Eagle Trench beyond Langemarck on 20 September - an experience that he described as ‘definitely my worst of the war – none of us expected to survive.’ The 9th Lancers again saw action in November of that year during the Battle of Cambrai, when they dismounted near Noyelles and engaged the enemy with machine guns, and during the March 1918 German Spring Offensive, when the dismounted battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division fought a series of costly defensive actions as the Germans pushed them back over the old Somme battlefield towards Amiens. My great uncle fought with this battalion - at one point being out of touch for many days, at a time when casualties were high and my grandfather ‘feared the worst’ - while my grandfather worked as a clerk to the commanding officer in 2nd Cavalry Brigade Headquarters, a position he had taken in December 1917 that brought with it appointment as Lance-Corporal. On 21 March 1918 at the outset of the Spring Offensive he had been in charge of evacuating the HQ in the face of the German advance, at a time when all of the officers were away with the dismounted battalion. After a period back with the regiment he resumed this position in Brigade HQ in June 1918 and was with them up to the day before the opening of the Battle of Amiens on 8 August. Meanwhile his brother trained as a scout sniper and was also appointed Lance-Corporal. Their service records do not survive - more than 60% of the service records of enlisted men in the First World War were destroyed when a German bomb struck the War Office repository in London in September 1940 - but they are recorded on the 9th Lancers Nominal Roll and their Medal Cards are in the National Archives.

The bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station, which resulted in the award of a Distinguished Conduct Medal to the senior surviving non-commissioned officer of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance, was one of the war experiences that my grandfather most often recalled in conversation in his final years before his death in 1987. When he came to write his memoir of the war in the early 1970s he tried to find out more about the incident - at one point writing to the Royal Army Medical Corps museum - but he was unable to visit London to consult the unit war diaries, which at the time could only be seen in person at the Public Record Office (he had been familiar with the 2nd Cavalry Brigade diary in 1918, when one of his jobs in Brigade HQ had been to type up the daily entries - but not for the days of the Battle of Amiens when he was a galloper). Today this type of research is greatly facilitated by the availability online of the British and Canadian war diaries as well a wealth of other primary historical material including trench maps, soldier’s Medal Cards and photographs. The trench map references in the war diaries - allowing pinpointing to within a 5 yards square - combined with the trench maps themselves and modern satellite image overlays allow movements to be traced in great detail in the present-day landscape, and buildings and other features to be identified. My grandfather himself never revisited France after the war, but the research presented here allowed my mother and I to do so in April 2018 and stand in front of the courtyard where, as he put it, ‘the Good Lord smiled on me’, and then to find the graves at Caix British Cemetery where the men killed alongside him that day are buried.

Source material: war diaries and trench maps

The war diaries were daily reports written on standardised forms by the commanding officer of the unit, or by another deputised officer. In the case of cavalry, the smallest unit for which a diary was written was the regiment (the equivalent of a battalion in the infantry), with diaries also written at Brigade, Division and Corps level, and separate diaries at the Division level by the Commanding Royal Engineer (C.R.E.), the Assistant Director Medical Services (A.D.M.S.) and the Assistant Adjutant and Quarter Master General (A.A.Q.M.G.). The Brigade diaries were normally written by the Brigade Major - usually a Captain in rank - who acted as Adjutant to the commanding officer, a Brigadier-General. Diaries were therefore not kept at squadron level - each cavalry regiment comprised three or four squadrons, the equivalent of companies in an infantry battalion - though reports from squadron commanders could be appended, and diaries were kept by independent squadron-sized units within the Brigade or Division including the Field Ambulances, attached Artillery batteries and Royal Engineers Field Squadrons.

The diaries were intended to provide daily accounts that would be the basis for official histories after the war. They could be handwritten in pencil or typed, and daily entries could vary in detail from a few lines to minute-by-minute accounts of actions, with appendices including operational reports, maps, casualty returns and copies of orders. Officers were instructed to write them in a uniform fashion, with place-names in capital letters and trench map references cited where possible. What was then termed the ‘Continental system’ of timing – the 24 hour clock – only came into use in the British Expeditionary Force from midnight on 30 September 1918 (as noted in the war diary, 1st Cavalry Division), so the times cited here are am and pm as they were recorded in the diaries for that August.

The trench map system was based on the Imperial system of measurements – miles, yards and feet – with locations pinpointed most often to within a 50 yards square, using the 1:20,000 or 1:10,000 maps produced by Ordnance Survey, though the system allowed pinpointing to within a 5 yards square. The references cited in the war diaries to the east of Amiens are on maps 62D SE and 66E NE (with the exception of the diary of the Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Cavalry Division, who for some reason cited the less precise grid references on the French 1:100,000 map (Amiens Map 17) until 10 August). An invaluable online resource is the trench map overlays published by the National Library of Scotland, which allow trench maps to be faded in and out on modern satellite images and the present-day location of references in the diaries to be pinpointed.

A page from the war diary of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade during the Battle of Amiens, showing the frequent citation of trench map references (here indicating the location of Brigade headquarters at the time for which the entry was written). The first en… — A page from the war diary of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade during the Battle of Amiens, showing the frequent citation of trench map references (here indicating the location of Brigade headquarters at the time for which the entry was written). The first entry, for the evening of 9 August, records the bombing by ‘E.A.’ (Enemy Aircraft) of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance Advanced Dressing Station at Caix, killing and wounding many men and horses. The diary for that day was written - presumably from rough notes - on 14-15 August by Captain Henry Mather-Jackson, 9th Lancers, Acting Brigade-Major after the Brigade-Major, Captain Viscount Ebrington, Royal Scots Greys, had been wounded on 9 August (see below) (The National Archives).

No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance and the 2nd Cavalry Brigade

A Field Ambulance of the 1st Cavalry Division waiting in readiness near Prémont on 8 October 1918, during the ‘Hundred Days Offensive’ that followed the Battle of Amiens. At this date the war diaries show that the Ambulance was either No. 3 or No. 9… — A Field Ambulance of the 1st Cavalry Division waiting in readiness near Prémont on 8 October 1918, during the ‘Hundred Days Offensive’ that followed the Battle of Amiens. At this date the war diaries show that the Ambulance was either No. 3 or No. 9 C.F.A. This is the only known photo of a Field Ambulance of the 1st Cavalry Division during the war, and is therefore a unique image of the mounted transport of a Cavalry Ambulance as described by my grandfather - including horse-drawn ambulances and wagons (Lieutenant John Brooke, © IWM Q 7157).

No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance (C.F.A.) - the name in the British Army for a mobile front-line medical unit - was attached to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, one of three brigades in the 1st Cavalry Division. There were two other Ambulances in the Division, No. 1 and No. 9 C.F.A, attached respectively to the two other brigades in the Division, the 1st and the 9th Cavalry Brigades. The Division was one of three forming the Cavalry Corps, which was deployed in its entirety at the Battle of Amiens. The 2nd Cavalry Brigade was made up of the 9th Lancers, the 18th Hussars and the 4th Dragoon Guards, as well as a Headquarters section of about 35 men, ‘H’ Battery Royal Horse Artillery, No. 2 Machine Gun Squadron, No 1 Mobile Veterinary Section, No. 2 Signal Troop and No 3 C.F.A. The strength of the Brigade on 15 July 1918, the date of its last muster before the Battle of Amiens, was 134 officers, 2,087 other ranks and 2,312 horses of all types, with the 9th Lancers - my grandfather’s regiment - numbering 37 officers, 520 other ranks, 485 riding horses, 56 draught horses, 25 pack horses and 4 mules (war diary, A.A.Q.M.G., 1st Cavalry Division).

The role of No. 3 C.F.A. was to provide dressings and emergency operations for the wounded of 2nd Cavalry Brigade, who were brought in to the Advanced Dressing Station by stretcher-bearers and Light Horse Ambulance (L.H.A.) wagons from the Collecting Posts and Regimental Aid Posts (manned by the Regimental Medical Officers, stretcher-bearers and orderlies). From the A.D.S. the wounded were transferred by L.H.A. wagon or motor ambulance to the Main Dressing Station (M.D.S.) and then by motor ambulance to a Casualty Clearing Station (C.C.S.) - for the Cavalry Corps and the Canadian Corps during the Battle of Amiens these were No. 5 and No. 47 C.C.S. at Crouy-Saint-Pierre, some 15 km north-west of Amiens. From there they would be evacuated to Base Hospitals and then back to the UK depending on the severity of their wounds. The arrangements for dealing with casualties during the battle are well-summarised in an account by the Deputy Director Medical Services of the Canadian Corps (Snell 1924: 1-10).

Cavalry Field Ambulances were smaller and more mobile than their infantry counterparts, designed to keep up with the more rapid advance expected for cavalry. A well-trained ambulance was able to set up a new Advanced Dressing Station in a matter of minutes – whether on open ground, under canvas or in a building. The 1913 Field Service Manual for Medical Services (updated to include the 1914 War Establishment) lists the War Establishment for a Cavalry Field Ambulance as 6 officers and 118 enlisted men, the latter comprising 70 men of the Royal Army Medical Corps (R.A.M.C.) and 48 ‘attached’ men of the Army Service Corps (A.S.C.) - mainly drivers – as well as 66 draught and 12 riding horses. The latest muster for No. 3 C.F.A. before the battle, on 15 July 1918, shows that it was close to its establishment strength, with 5 officers, 114 Other Ranks, 11 riding horses and 45 draught horses, as well as 14 horse-drawn vehicles, 4 motor ambulances and 2 motorcycles (war diary, A.A.Q.M.G., 1st Cavalry Division).

The 1914 War Establishment shows that a Cavalry Field Ambulance was divided into two sections, ‘A’ and ‘B’, with each section divided into a ‘Bearer’ subdivision of one officer and 21 R.A.M.C. men and a ‘tent’ subdivision of two officers and 16 men, as well as attached A.S.C. personnel. By July 1918 the two sections of No. 3 C.F.A. were referred to as the ‘Heavy’ and ‘Light’ sections, the latter comprising fewer vehicles and less equipment and able to set up a forward A.D.S. rapidly behind the advancing Brigade. As we shall see, the ‘unit’ described by my grandfather in Caix that day was the Light Section, including several four-horsed ambulance wagons. With the bearer subdivision being engaged in bringing in the wounded from the battlefield and several of the A.S.C. drivers transporting casualties from the A.D.S. towards the M.D.S., it is easy to see how the number of Ambulance personnel in the courtyard when the bomb dropped may have been no more than about 25-30, and how the bomb therefore ‘wiped out’ most of the unit as he described it.

Of the officers of No. 3 C.F.A. mentioned in my grandfather’s account, the ‘O.C.’ was Lieutenant Colonel Arthur John Alexander Menzies, D.S.O, R.A.M.C., who had commanded No. 3 C.F.A. since 13 February (see below). The ‘Major’ was Major F.T. Hill, M.C. and Bar, R.A.M.C., who was in Cayeux several kilometres behind Caix on the day of the bombing with the ‘Heavy’ section of the Ambulance, and assumed temporary command after Menzies’ death. ‘Major Baker’ was Captain Martyn Wilfrid Baker, R.A.M.C., who was an Acting Major when my grandfather next met him in December. Born in 1883 in Newport, Wales, he went to school at Wycliffe College, where he was President of the Literary Society, and then studied medicine at St John’s College, Cambridge, and St Thomas’ Hospital, London, becoming M.A., M.B. (Cantab) and M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., and acquiring a practice soon after qualifying in 1912. After being commissioned into the R.A.M.C. in 1915 he served first in Egypt and the Middle East and then in France with No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance from 12 February 1918, when his arrival with the unit is listed in the war diary.

The ‘Chaplain’ was either the Rev. F. Freeman or Captain the Rev. S.M. Morgan. Rev. Freeman, a Roman Catholic and Temporary Chaplain to the Forces 4th Class, had been in France since 1914 and left No. 3 C.F.A. on 13 August, when he was struck off Divisional strength on his move to XI Corps (noted in the war diary, A.A.Q.M.G., 1st Cavalry Division; he was replaced in No. 3 C.F.A. by Captain the Rev. J.F. Sharkey). Captain Morgan, Church of England, is recorded in No. 3 C.F.A. diary as having been evacuated sick on 22 August. Both men may have been present in Caix that evening as it was common to have several chaplains of different denominations at an A.D.S. during a battle.

The role of the Galloper

Men of the 9th Lancers near Prémont, 13 October 1918 (the man on the right with a bandaged head). This shows how the soldiers of the regiment would have been equipped during the Battle of Amiens two months earlier (US Official Photographer, © IWM Q … — Men of the 9th Lancers near Prémont, 13 October 1918 (the man on the right with a bandaged head). This shows how the soldiers of the regiment would have been equipped during the Battle of Amiens two months earlier (US Official Photographer, © IWM Q 72605).

The 1914 War Establishment specified the roles of the R.A.M.C. and A.S.C. men in a Cavalry Field Ambulance, including nurses, a cook, washermen, stretcher bearers and wagon orderlies, but does not include gallopers. A post-war appraisal of the medical arrangements for cavalry during the war notes that ‘two gallopers have invariably to be detached on operations, one to the A.D.M.S. and one to Brigade’, and recommends that gallopers should become part of the establishment for cavalry ambulances as otherwise they are selected from among the bearers whose strength is thus reduced’ (Humphreys 1927). Before the Battle of Amiens a decision was evidently made to find a galloper for No. 3 C.F.A. from among the cavalrymen of the Brigade, rather than from the men of the Ambulance. The open country and the rapidity of the initial advance would have favoured a mounted messenger, who would also have been able to bypass the congestion that developed on the roads - which were (and still are) very narrow rural roads.

Gallopers were often junior commissioned officers, and would normally at least have been a non-commissioned officer in order to give them an edge of authority that would have helped them to make their way and get messages through. My grandfather would have been a good choice as he was an N.C.O., an experienced horseman and on the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Headquarters staff immediately prior to the battle, so would have been well-known and trusted among the officers for whom he was meant to convey messages. All cavalrymen in the Brigade had successfully passed through one of the most intense military training regimes of the period - unchanged by the pressures of war - in which recruits went through many months of intense training in horsemanship, including galloping bare-back with lance, sword and rifle through the New Forest. One other galloper in the 2nd Cavalry Brigade during the Battle of Amiens is known, 2nd Lieutenant George Dodgson Hulbert of the 18th Hussars, who acted as galloper for the General Officer Commanding (G.O.C.) 1st Cavalry Division and then the G.O.C. 2nd Cavalry Brigade, and was killed when a shell landed on 2nd Cavalry Brigade H.Q. on the same day as the A.D.S. incident at Caix (see below).

Cavalry at the Battle of Amiens

The Battle of Amiens is sometimes regarded as the first ‘modern’ battle of the Great War, in which infantry, artillery, cavalry, tanks and aircraft acted in close co-operation, with the artillery using the latest techniques in counter-battery spotting and aircraft working with tanks to report their positions by message-dropping and to warn them of impending counter-attack by signalling. Hundreds of pages of operational orders in the war diaries attest to this level of organisation. The use of cavalry on a large scale in this scheme may seem an anachronism, but on the first day of the battle they were able to move large distances over open country in conjunction with the infantry and tanks. There was to be no cavalry breakthrough, in the sense of the German line being severed and the cavalry being able to stream out beyond, but the eight miles gained in the first day was an unprecedented Allied success and buoyed up a sense of the cavalry’s value. Major-General Sir Archibald Montgomery, Chief of Staff of 4th Army during the battle, gave this assessment (1919: 46): ‘The cavalry on August 8th did much useful work. In addition to the large numbers of prisoners taken, guns and material which it actually captured, its rapid advance and the bold manner in which it had been handled had a very marked effect on the enemy’s moral (sic). It was the first occasion on which, since the war began, the cavalry in France had been able to move rapidly across open country against a beaten enemy, and reap the fruits of a successful infantry and tank attack.’ This euphoria was expressed by some of the cavalrymen themselves: ‘The 8th of August will always be remembered by those who took part in this attack as the day on which the Cavalry, after so many years of waiting, had at last come into its own’ (Lieutenant Harold Gibb, 4th Dragoon Guards, in Gibb 1925: 56).

German prisoners, one of them wounded, taken by Canadian cavalry during the Battle of Amiens. This is a rare image on a battlefield during the war of a cavalryman with his sword drawn (Photographer unknown. Canada Department of National Defence/Libr… — German prisoners, one of them wounded, taken by Canadian cavalry during the Battle of Amiens. This is a rare image on a battlefield during the war of a cavalryman with his sword drawn (Photographer unknown. Canada Department of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada, ID 3239910).

The objective of the battle was to push the Germans back from their front line just east of Amiens towards the edge of the old 1916 Somme battlefield, beyond the bend of the river Somme to the south of Peronne. All of this territory had been taken by the Germans during the Spring Offensive only a few months before, when they had overrun the Somme battlefield and had only lost momentum at the outskirts of Amiens, in the process inflicting huge casualties on the British – including the 1st Cavalry Division, which had fought as infantry as they were forced back towards the city. On the face of it, the new German front allowed them defence in depth, with the old ‘Amiens Outer Defence Line’, dug by the French in 1916 just to the east of Caix – comprising front and support trenches as well as a thick belt of wire on the east side - providing them with a well-established trench system to fall back on some six to eight miles behind the front line. However, because the Germans in early August did not expect an Allied offensive at Amiens they had not put much effort into strengthening these defences, and the German divisions holding the line at this point had been severely weakened by their losses during the Spring Offensive, by problems of supply and reinforcement and by the Spanish influenza outbreak. Where they did have an edge during the battle was in the use of aerial bombing, which was never going to turn the battle in their favour but was able to inflict significant casualties both on the battlefield and behind the lines, as the account of this bombing incident at Caix shows.

The role of the cavalry in the battle has been evaluated extensively over the years since Montgomery published the account quoted above (Preston 1934-6; Edmonds 1947; Anglesey 1997: 220-249; Kenyon 2011: 200-214). Over the two days of their involvement, the 1st Cavalry Division took at least 1,361 prisoners, destroyed a number of machine-gun positions and routed the enemy in several places, with the three Divisions of the Cavalry Corps altogether capturing over 3,000 Germans. The cavalry continued to play a significant role in the ensuing Hundred Days offensive, particularly through their ability to advance swiftly over open country, but the Battle of Amiens revealed once again – as earlier in the war – their vulnerability against fixed positions with machine-guns, as well as the superiority of tanks for rapid advance in country broken by trenches, wire and shell-holes. On at least four occasions during the second and third days of the battle – once the Germans had consolidated and held their ground beyond the Amiens Outer Defence Line – cavalry units including ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers attempted mounted charges against machine guns, each time suffering severe casualties to men and horses. The country which had favoured cavalry during the initial advance, open and undulating with hard ground resulting from the dry summer months, abruptly ended three to four miles beyond the Amiens Outer Defence Line with ‘… a wide stretch of country which had been fought over in the 1916 Somme battles and was completely covered with shell-holes and pieces of old wire, overgrown with thistles and rank grass’ (Preston 1934-6, vol 24: 170). Those conditions were hard-going even for tanks, but the general success of the Mark V and lighter ‘Whippet’ tanks in the battle paved the way for the eventual rearmament of British cavalry regiments with tanks and armoured cars in the inter-war period.

The area of the 1918 Battle of Amiens (click to enlarge), showing the city of Amiens to the left, the river Somme snaking across the map to the right and the main area of the 1916 Battle of the Somme in the upper right corner - the site of my grandf… — The area of the 1918 Battle of Amiens (click to enlarge), showing the city of Amiens to the left, the river Somme snaking across the map to the right and the main area of the 1916 Battle of the Somme in the upper right corner - the site of my grandfather’s first experience of action on 15 September 1916 to the east of Ginchy. Prior to the opening of the German Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918 the 1st Cavalry Division had been based just to the east of Péronne where the Somme turns south (just beyond the right side of this map), and had retreated west as the Germans took much of the ground on this map until they finally halted and established a new front line near Villers-Bretonneux just to the east of Amiens. This map shows the disposition of Allied forces for the 8 August 1918 attack, with the French in the south, the Canadians and Australians in the centre and British III Corps above that, and shows the movements of the Cavalry down to Brigade level as they went forward with the infantry that morning over the German front line to a position some 8 miles east on the old ‘Amiens Outer Defence Line’ just beyond Caix, in the centre of the map (Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection CWM 19880069-784).

8 August 1918: the 2nd Cavalry Brigade

Artillery barrage plan for the first stage of the attack on 8 August, showing the jumping-off line for the infantry to the left and the first and second objectives (the ‘Green Line’ and ‘Red Line’) to the right. At Zero the 2nd Cavalry Brigade were … — Artillery barrage plan for the first stage of the attack on 8 August, showing the jumping-off line for the infantry to the left and the first and second objectives (the ‘Green Line’ and ‘Red Line’) to the right. At Zero the 2nd Cavalry Brigade were behind the jumping-off line to the upper left and rode over newly captured ground to Marcelcave and beyond the edge of the map to the right, and then down to Caix (war diary, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade).

The British 4th Army, under General Sir Henry Rawlinson – who had commanded 4th Army during the 1916 Battle of the Somme, and was now able to apply some of the lessons learned – was made up of nine infantry divisions, divided north to south into the British III Corps (supported by part of the American 33rd Division), the Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps, with the French 31st Division below that, and including the Cavalry Corps, some 530 tanks (342 Mark V and V* tanks, 72 Whippets and 120 supply tanks), 2,070 guns and 800 aircraft of the recently created Royal Air Force (formerly the Royal Flying Corps). The 1st Cavalry Division was assigned to support the Canadian Corps, with the 2nd Cavalry Brigade initially in reserve behind the 1st and 9th Cavalry Brigades but then tasked to follow the advance of the 2nd Canadian Division and veer a few kilometres south to support the 1st Canadian Division in its assault on Caix and the Amiens Outer Defence Line, where the 10th and 7th Canadian Infantry Battalions (respectively the Calgary Highlanders and the 1st British Columbia) of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade were to be in the lead. Some 24 Mark V tanks of the 6th Tank Battalion and 48 Whippet tanks of the 6th (Light) Tank Battalion were attached to the 1st Cavalry Division for the assault, with six Mark V tanks of B Company, 6th Tank Battalion coming under the command of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade as well as a section of Whippets; an aircraft from ‘A’ Flight, 8 Squadron R.A.F. provided observation. A battalion of Mark V tanks was also attached to each Canadian Division.

Following two night-marches from Orville some 30 km north of Amiens, the 2nd Cavalry Brigade arrived in the western suburbs of the city in the early morning of 7 August. The following night they made their way to the forward concentration area some 14 km east of Amiens near Cachy, just behind the ‘jumping off line’ for the 2nd and 1st Canadian Divisions and the tanks stretching south from Villers-Bretonneux. Preparations for the battle were carried out in great secrecy, and there was no preliminary bombardment. At Zero, 4.20 a.m. on 8 August, ‘as the sun rose and a heavy mist ensued’ (war diary, No. 1 C.F.A.), some 2,070 guns opened up and the infantry and tanks went into action. The 27-page ‘Report of Operations’ appended to the war diary of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade (signed by Brigadier-General – later Major-General Sir – Frederick Oscar Warren Loomis), which advanced in front of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, presents a vivid account of the moment:

‘All around there hangs that thick, white ground mist that so often presages the advent of a day brazen with heat. Ghostly objects looming through the mist – guns magnified to enormous and terrible proportions – one moment lie still, and then -- Out of the mist comes something -- hardly so much a noise as the devastating convulsion of each man’s universe. After the first titanic crash, there seems to be a momentary pause, as though the guns were gathering strength for their terrible task, and then again the long, continuous, reverberating thunder of multitudinous canon (sic).’

The Canadian infantry quickly overran the German front line and captured hundreds of prisoners. The main opposition throughout the day was machine-gun posts which had been left behind as the German infantry retreated, their crews doomed to be killed or captured and often praised in the war diaries for their courage. ‘Not a derelict machine gun but had its group of silent grey-clad figures who had fought their gun to a finish … Brave fighters, those German gunners’ (Lieutenant-Colonel W.T. Willcox, O.C., 3rd Hussars, in Willcox 1925: 272-3).

Close-up of the map above (click to enlarge) showing the Canadian sector to the east of Amiens in which the 2nd Cavalry Brigade operated during the battle, from their start-point just north-east of Cachy behind the front line prior to the battle (th… — Close-up of the map above (click to enlarge) showing the Canadian sector to the east of Amiens in which the 2nd Cavalry Brigade operated during the battle, from their start-point just north-east of Cachy behind the front line prior to the battle (the solid dark line to the left) to their final actions some 8 miles to the east near Vrély beyond the old Amiens Outer Defence Line (the dashed line to the right). Caix lies just to the west of the Amiens Outer Defence Line (Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection CWM 19880069-784).

A panoramic view looking south-east on the road from Guillaucourt to Caix, the route taken by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade on the final leg of their advance on the afternoon of 8 August 1918. The buildings of Caix can be seen just left of centre, with th… — A panoramic view looking south-east on the road from Guillaucourt to Caix, the route taken by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade on the final leg of their advance on the afternoon of 8 August 1918. The buildings of Caix can be seen just left of centre, with the Amiens Outer Defence Line - the final objective of that day’s advance - lying along the horizon beyond. The valley of the river Luce is visible in front of Caix, with Cayeux out of sight to the right of the prominent wood. Referring to the 1918 aerial image shown above, this photo was taken from the upper centre on that image looking right (David Gibbins).

The 2nd Cavalry Brigade set off at 5.45 am, taking a pre-prepared ‘cavalry track’ to Marcelcave, carrying on to Wiencourt and Guillaucourt and reaching a position some 3.2 km NNW of the centre of Caix in the late morning. The mist, ‘grown denser and evil-smelling with smoke from our bursting shells’ (war dairy, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade), had cleared by about 8.30 and the day was sunny and hot. At approximately 12.30, the 9th Lancers, who had become the leading regiment of the Brigade, were ordered forward along the road leading to Caix, followed by Brigade HQ and the remaining cavalry of the Brigade. The 9th Lancers reached the NW outskirts of Caix just after the town had been taken by the 10th Canadian Battalion, who had carried on about 800 yards beyond the eastern outskirts of the town to reach their objective for the day in the Amiens Outer Defence Line, occupying the trenches at 1.15 pm; they were joined at 2.35 pm by the 7th Canadian Battalion. The battery of the Canadian Royal Field Artillery attached to the 10th Battalion had been in action that morning to the north of Caix, firing over 13,000 rounds, but the battery attached to the 7th Battalion had not been needed and was only unlimbered and readied for action to the SE of Caix after the battalion had secured its objective. Caix had been captured in ‘what was peculiarly an infantry action. With but very little artillery support, and with aid from neither tanks or cavalry, the Infantry stormed and took CAIX by rifle and bayonet’ (ibid.). The 10th Canadian Battalion had lost only 4 men killed and 77 wounded that day, and the 7th had no casualties at all – ‘in view of the tremendous task accomplished, a record almost unique in Canadian military history’ (ibid.). The advance of these two Canadian battalions of some 14,500 yards represented a record one-day advance for the British Army in the war at that point.

Trench map overlay (click to enlarge) showing sites occupied by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade from 8-9 August 1918, with the letters sequential in time. A - The road from Guillaucourt along which the Brigade marched on the first day of the battle on 8 Aug… — Trench map overlay (click to enlarge) showing sites occupied by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade from 8-9 August 1918, with the letters sequential in time. A - The road from Guillaucourt along which the Brigade marched on the first day of the battle on 8 August, reaching this position about midday. B - The house (E.4.c.3.1) where Brigade HQ was established in Caix at 2.10 pm, shortly after the Canadian infantry had taken the town. C - The house (E.3.d.8.6) on the main square to which Brigade HQ moved in the early evening, remaining there for the night. D - The church in Cayeux where No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance set up an Advanced Dressing Station in the late afternoon and early evening of 8 August. E - The location (E.11.b.0.0) in the old Amiens Outer Defence line where Brigade HQ was established during the advance on 9 August, reaching this position by 2.20 pm and being shelled there at 2.55 pm. F - The courtyard house (E.4.c.6.1) on the eastern edge of Caix where No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance set up an Advanced Dressing Station in the early evening of 9 August, and were bombed. G - The location (W.26.b.3.1) in the valley of the river Luce to which No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance relocated during the night of 9-10 August, as part of the general withdrawal of the 1st Cavalry Division to this area. H - the location (W.26.a.9.2) of the De Luce British Cemetery at a junction of farm tracks where the dead from the shelling of the Brigade HQ and the bombing of the A.D.S. were buried. I - Caix British Cemetery, in which the bodies from the De Luce cemetery were reinterred in 1920. Distance Cayeux (D) to Caix (C) approx. 3.5 km ( (trench map of 14 March 1917) (National Library of Scotland).

The opposing German Division, the 117th, had been virtually wiped out, but snipers and machine guns continued to be active as ‘A’ and ‘C’ Squadrons of the 9th Lancers went forward through the town and the wood beyond to the line reached by the Canadian infantry only a few minutes before. The first action of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade in the battle took place when two sub-sections of the 2nd Machine Gun Squadron, which had accompanied the 9th Lancers, engaged and silenced two enemy machine guns. Meanwhile, Brigade HQ was established at 2.10 pm in a house at E.4.c.3.1 towards the eastern end of Caix only about 170 yards in from the eventual site of the No. 3 C.F.A. A.D.S. (see below). At 2.15 pm, ‘A’ Squadron, 4th Dragoon Guards was sent out beyond the front line to reconnoitre Vrèly and Rosières – the objectives of the next stage of the attack - but were held up by heavy machine gun fire, sustaining the first casualties of the Brigade in the battle. In the course of the afternoon, ‘H’ Battery Royal Horse Artillery came into action against various targets, including an enemy field gun which they silenced.

In the early evening, with the main elements of the Brigade off-saddling and bivouacking in the wooded valley immediately to the east of the town, the Brigade HQ moved back to a building in the central square of Caix at E.3.d.8.6. This building can be seen in a photo shown here taken only five days later by the official French photographer showing damage in the town. Caix was largely intact before the battle - it had been fought over briefly as the British retreated during the German Spring Offensive, and then had been used by the Germans for billeting and other purposes, including a hospital. Most of the damage that would have been seen by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade as they arrived was caused that morning by the British bombardment. That had ceased just before the Canadians took the town and was replaced by German shelling, not with the same intensity as the British bombardment but accurately targeted as the Germans had position-fixed artillery targets in the town before retreating. The eastern edge of the town was heavily shelled during the evening of the 9th and on the following morning, including gas and high explosive. The Germans would have registered the eastern exit as an artillery target, and German artillery spotter aircraft would have noted the concentrations of troops and horses in the adjacent valley behind the Amiens Outer Defence Line.

The church at Cayeux, used as an Advanced Dressing Station by No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance from the afternoon of 8 August 1918, the first day of the battle (David Gibbins).

Meanwhile, as the fighting elements of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade moved into position beyond Caix that afternoon, No. 3 C.F.A. established an A.D.S. in the church at Cayeux, some 3.5 km west of Caix on the road leading back towards Domart-sur-Luce and Amiens. The Ambulance had marched back towards Cayeux by 4 pm and had opened the A.D.S. at 6 pm, in anticipation of more casualties as the Brigade formed part of the renewed assault the following day. Cayeux was a hub for medical units of the Canadian infantry as well, as it was the next town back from the battle front on the only road in that sector from Caix to Amiens (the diary of the 3rd Canadian Field Ambulance, already in Cayeux, recorded that at 7.30 the ‘4th (sic) Cavalry Field Ambulance arrived’).

This concentration of units at Cayeux proved to be a mixed blessing, as my grandfather’s account shows. The Ambulances of the 1st Cavalry Division had already experienced problems during the initial march after Zero that morning, the ‘means of communication being very difficult as the advance was carried out across country’ (war diary, A.D.M.S. 1st Cavalry Division). Adequate watering of horses was a problem throughout that first day of rapid advance for all of the cavalry. At Cayeux there were further problems as the road became severely congested with the movement of troops and supplies forward as well as the return of wounded and large numbers of prisoners. A galloper would have been more effective than a motorcycle despatch rider in these circumstances, able to bypass the road and ride over open country. My grandfather’s main role would have been to carry messages between No. 3 C.F.A., the A.D.M.S. and HQ 2nd Cavalry Brigade, meaning that he was at the forefront of the battle as Brigade HQ followed close behind the attacking troops. The 1st Cavalry Division HQ, where the A.D.M.S. would have been based, was also located nearby, from 4 pm at W.27.c.7.9 about 800 metres north of the western exit of Caix.

9 August 1918: the 2nd Cavalry Brigade

‘Our cavalry pursue the defeated enemy through the villages’, 9 August 1918. This photo is part of a stereoscopic pair thought to show cavalry passing through Beaucort-en-Santerre - about a mile south-west of Caix - in support of the attack on Le Qu… — ‘Our cavalry pursue the defeated enemy through the villages’, 9 August 1918. This photo is part of a stereoscopic pair thought to show cavalry passing through Beaucort-en-Santerre - about a mile south-west of Caix - in support of the attack on Le Quesnel, which was eventually taken by the 4th Canadian Division. The lancers visible in this photo are likely to be the 17th Lancers (7th Cavalry Brigade, 2nd Cavalry Division), which attacked on the first day towards Cayeux and then further south. This photo is evidence that lances were taken into action during the battle (photographer unknown, National Army Museum NAM. 1972-08-67-2-184).

‘Day dawned on the morning of the 9th of August wreathed in mist’ (war diary, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade), presaging hot and dry conditions similar to the preceding day. Zero for the next phase of the advance, from the Amiens Outer Defence line to the ‘Blue Line’ some 6 km to the east – the final objective of the three-day battle – was set for 10 am, but was stalled until 1 pm to allow all of the forces to get into position. The battle to the east and south of Caix that afternoon was very different from the fighting by the 1st Canadian Division on the previous day. A fresh German division and a new complement of machine guns had been brought up during the night, and the machine guns were no longer so easily overrun. Much of the advance beyond the Amiens Outer Defence Line was on open country sloping to the east that favoured the German defences. The 2nd Canadian Division had taken over the frontage east of Caix from the 1st Canadian Division that morning, and the diary of the 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade, which had taken over from the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade immediately in front of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, describes the fighting:

‘The attacking troops were met with very heavy Machine Gun fire all the way … It was found that advancing over the open ground in face of this fire was far too costly and the posts of Machine Guns were dealt with entirely by manoeuvre. Small parties of scouts followed by Lewis guns worked up ditches, sunken roads and other dead ground until the enemy’s Machine Guns were put out of action or forced to retire by enfilade fire from a flank. When this had been accomplished a signal was given to the infantry, who meantime had remained under cover, that they could now advance.’

The casualties to the infantry that day were on a scale more familiar from earlier in the war, with the 8th Canadian Infantry Battalion (90th Winnipeg Rifles), for example, attacking just to the south of Caix, losing 14 officers and over 400 men by 4 pm. The 2nd Canadian Division as a whole lost 117 officers and 2,360 men killed or wounded during the three days of the battle, many of those as they fought their way from the Amiens Outer Defence Line beyond Caix to their final position east of Rosières and Vrély on the afternoon and evening of 9 August.

Plan for the advance east and south of Caix on 9 August (click to enlarge), showing Caix (A), Vrély (B), Méharicourt (C) and Fouquescourt (D), with the Amiens Outer Defence Line shown on the left and the hashed line of the day’s final objectives to … — Plan for the advance east and south of Caix on 9 August (click to enlarge), showing Caix (A), Vrély (B), Méharicourt (C) and Fouquescourt (D), with the Amiens Outer Defence Line shown on the left and the hashed line of the day’s final objectives to the right. The furthest action to the east on that day by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade was the charge by ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers, towards Fouquescourt. Distance from A to D approx. 9 km (war diary, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade).

Trench map overlay (click to enlarge) showing sites occupied by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Headquarters on 9 August 1918. A - The house (E.3.d.8.6) in the central square in Caix where they spent the previous night. C - The position (E.11.b.0.0) in the … — Trench map overlay (click to enlarge) showing sites occupied by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Headquarters on 9 August 1918. A - The house (E.3.d.8.6) in the central square in Caix where they spent the previous night. C - The position (E.11.b.0.0) in the old Amiens Outer Defence Line where the HQ was established by 2.15 pm and where they were shelled at 2.55 pm. D - The Position (E.12.c.5.2) to which they then moved, their furthest position forward during the battle with action taking place that afternoon immediately forward of this position to the east. This was probably the furthest forward that my grandfather would have reached as a galloper between No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance and Brigade HQ. D - The courtyard house (E.4.c.6.1) on the eastern edge of Caix occupied by No. 3 C.F.A. as an Advanced Dressing Station in the early evening of 9 August, where they were bombed. Most of the Brigade spent the night of 8-9 August in the valley under the woods in Square 10 immediately to the SE of Caix. Distance A-D approx. 2.5 km (trench map of 14 March 1917) (National Library of Scotland).

The movements of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade that day can be followed in detail in the Brigade war diary. The Brigade went forward in support of the 2nd Canadian Division in their attack east of Caix towards Vrély, with the cavalry ordered to ‘follow closely and exploit the infantry advance’. After an attempted reconnaissance at 4.45 am through the infantry lines towards Vrély by C Squadron, 18th Hussars, who found that the enemy position was too strongly held, the Brigade saddled up at 9 am at the eastern exit of Caix with the 9th Lancers leading the order of march and the 3rd C.F.A. – the Light Section – bringing up the rear. They waited there until the infantry assault began at 1 pm, when the eastern exit of Caix was subjected to shelling that wounded several men and horses of ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers. That Squadron then went forward towards Vrély in the face of machine gun fire, capturing 20 prisoners, and by 2.20 pm had reached a position just north of Vrély ahead of the first wave of Canadian infantry, some 3.2 km from their start point to the east of Caix.

During the initial advance, the Brigade Major, Captain Lord Ebrington, who had gone forward with the 9th Lancers, was wounded by a machine gun bullet. By 2.20 pm Brigade HQ had been established at E.11.b.0.0 some 800 metres to the east of Caix on the road leading to Vrély, today an open field but then among the trenches of the Amiens Outer Defence Line. At 2.55 pm they were struck by a shell:

‘The valley from CAIX to the station was being heavily shelled by 5.9s. One of these landed in the midst of Bde H.Q. killing Capt Pooley M.C. (Staff Capt.), Lieut. H. Fry (Signalling Officer) Lieut. G. Hulbert, 18th Hrs (galloper to the G.O.C.) and 2 O.R.s and wounding Major Wathen (O.C. 2nd M.G.S. (Machine Gun Squadron) & Lieut. Frere 2nd M.G.S. besides causing about 10 casualties to horses.’ (war diary, 2nd Cavalry Brigade).

Captain Charles Pooley, 5th Dragoon Guards, who was killed in the shelling of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ on the afternoon of 9 August 1918. He wears the ribbon of the Military Cross, awarded to him in early 1915, and is a Lieutenant, dating the pho… — Captain Charles Pooley, 5th Dragoon Guards, who was killed in the shelling of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ on the afternoon of 9 August 1918. He wears the ribbon of the Military Cross, awarded to him in early 1915, and is a Lieutenant, dating the photo to before his promotion to Acting Captain on 3 August 1917 (photo from the Imperial War Museum website).

Charles Pooley, aged 46, the father of six children, was born in 1872, joined the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1891 (regimental number 3354) and was a Quartermaster Sergeant by the end of the Boer War (1899-1902), for which he received the Queen’s and King’s South Africa Medals (The National Archives, WO 100/302, p. 68). A Sergeant-Major at the time of his arrival in France on 15 August 1914, he was commissioned in the field on 23 September, promoted to Lieutenant on 16 June 1915 and made an Acting Captain on 3 August 1917. He was one of the first recipients of the Military Cross after its institution in late 1914, having been Mentioned in Despatches on 8 December 1914 (sources for him include his Service Record, his Medal Card, The London Gazette and a biographical entry in the Regimental History).

Leslie Harrington Fry, aged 25, of the 19th Hussars, educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge and also in France since 1914, had been Brigade Signalling Officer since April. Sources for him include his Service Record, his Medal Card and this account of him in this history of the Clifton (Bristol) Rugby Football Club, for which he played. Both he and George Dodgson Hulbert were the subject of biographical entries reproduced here in De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour. Hulbert, aged 20, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst, had joined the 18th Hussars in October 1917 and had taken part in the retreat of the Brigade during the German Spring Offensive in March. Other sources include his Service Record, his Medal Card, family correspondence relating to his death and this account of him on the Winchester College website. He apparently had a reputation at Sandhurst for his horsemanship, and was a galloper to the General Officer Commanding the 1st Cavalry Division on 8 August. At his own request he went forward to be galloper to Brigadier-General Lawson of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade at the outset of the battle, so had only been attached to the Brigade HQ for a day at the time of his death.

The other two officers killed had been on the HQ staff for some time – Pooley since February and Fry since April – so would have been known to my grandfather from his time working in the HQ before the battle. The two wounded officers, Major Llewellyn William Dean Wathen, 8th Hussars (attached as O.C., 2nd Cavalry Machine Gun Squadron), and 2nd Lieutenant Eric Gray Frere, 2/1 Oxfordshire Yeomanry (attached 2nd Cavalry Machine Gun Squadron), had been in the HQ while the machine guns of their squadron were in action with the 4th Dragoon Guards and 9th Lancers a few hundred yards further to the east that afternoon.

Another photo of 2nd Lieutenant George Dodgson Hulbert, 18th Hussars, who was killed in the shelling of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ on the afternoon of 9 August 1918 (photo: Winchester College).

The two ‘O.R.s’ listed as having been killed by the shell may have included 4733 Private J.H. Moylan, D.C.M., 18th Hussars, killed on 9 August. The war diary of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance records one man of the 18th Hussars being killed in the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station in Caix that evening. He can be identified as 12151 Private James McEnaney, discussed below, whose remains were exhumed along with those of the other casualties of the bombing on 15 May 1920 and reburied in the same row in Caix British Cemetery, with the record of the reburial having been made on 11 June 1920. Moylan appears in a separate reburial record for Caix British Cemetery of 12 June 1920, among a list of men exhumed from various locations of which he is the only one from that place. The trench map reference given for the exhumation site, 62D W.26.b.1.1, is only a few yards from the location given at De Luce British Cemetery for McEnaney and the others - including the three officers killed by the shell - at 62D 2.26.a.9.2., so must refer to the same place. It seems most likely that his body had been brought with the others from the shelling for burial when No. 3 C.F.A. left the bombed A.D.S. at Caix and arrived at the De Luce site that night.

John Moylan, like many men in the 18th Hussars from Ireland, arrived in France on 27 January 1915 and was originally a Trumpeter. In early 1916 he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (war diary, 18th Hussars, 1 February 1916), with the citation reading ‘For conspicuous bravery and devotion. He repeatedly entered a trench and rescued men who had been wounded, and assisted to carry them to a place of safety under heavy shell fire.’ His medals, including his D.C.M. and a French Croix de Guerre with Star, have recently come up for auction. Unusually, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission record for him is incorrect, stating that he was in the 11th Hussars and died on 8 August whereas - as the original registration record shows - he was in the 18th Hussars and died on 9 August, the day of the Brigade HQ shelling.

By terrible coincidence, a shell struck the HQ of the 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade not far away at almost exactly the same time – ‘at about 3 pm’ – killing the Brigade Major and one other officer and wounding the Brigadier-General and a Staff Captain. Meanwhile, ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers reported that the road between Vrély and Rosières was being strongly held by machine guns, which were then engaged by six Whippet tanks that had been collected at the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ at 3.20 pm (the only Mark V tank to reach that point had broken down). At 4.20 pm, only 25 minutes after being shelled, the Brigade HQ moved forward about 500 metres along the Caix-Vrély road to E.12.c.5.2, immediately to the rear of the 9th Lancers. This would probably have been the furthest forward on the battlefield reached by my grandfather as galloper between No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance and Brigade H.Q., only a few hundred yards from action taking place to the east and on ground being swept by German machine gun fire.

At 5.56 pm, the officer commanding ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers, Captain E.G. Grant - who had been awarded the Military Cross after the Spring Offensive and was to receive a Bar for his actions on this day - observed the enemy withdrawing in the direction of Fouquescourt to the south-east, and decided to charge after them. The Lancers ‘were met by heavy M.G. fire from their front and later from their flanks as well as being fired at by an enemy battery firing over open sights from the outskirts of FOUQUESCOURT. An attempt was made to engage the M.G.s mounted but concealed wire prevented their reaching the guns and the squadron was forced to withdraw after suffering considerable casualties, especially to horses’ (war diary, 2nd Cavalry Brigade). More than half of the horses were hit before the survivors wheeled off, and a small German counterattack was then checked by the Hotchkiss machine guns of this squadron. As a result of this charge, the last cavalry charge ever carried out by the regiment in battle, most of the casualties to the 9th Lancers that day - 25 men and 40 horses killed or wounded - were from ‘A’ Squadron, which had also sustained casualties from shelling that morning at the Brigade concentration point just to the east of Caix.

‘H’ Battery, Royal Field Artillery came into action again at 5.45 pm, firing shrapnel against the counterattack and H.E. (high explosive) into Fouquescourt. ‘B’ Squadron, 9th Lancers was dismounted to occupy an old line of trenches between Vrély and Meharicourt, the next town immediately to the east, and the Whippet tanks were brought up in case of another counterattack. This marked the final forward action of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade in the battle. They were by now on the edge of the ‘old devastated area … broken with shell-holes, trenches and wire’, ‘bad for mounted work’ (war diary, 9th Lancers), with the Brigade G.O.C., Brigadier-General Lawson, being anxious to withdraw the Brigade because ‘the country was becoming difficult for cavalry to manoeuvre in and was covered with wire and trenches.’ In the event they held the line through the night until 4.45 am on the 10th, when the squadrons were relieved by Canadian infantry and the Brigade withdrew with the rest of the 1st Cavalry Division to a position north of the river Luce between Caix and Cayeux.

Aerial bombing

The extent of aerial activity during the battle is described vividly in the diary of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. ‘During both days, battle planes, contact planes, and bombing planes of the Royal Air Force, did excellent work, flying low and firing into the retreating enemy as well as protecting the Infantry and fighting off hostile planes.’ The contact aircraft of the 7th Canadian Infantry Battalion - shot down and its pilot and observer killed at 2.15 pm on 8 August just as the infantry were reaching the Amiens Outer Defence line – ‘and many other aeroplanes rendered valuable assistance by flying low and bringing Machine Gun Fire to bear on bodies of the enemy who appeared to be inclined to reorganise and resist our advance.’ From the night of the 8th, ‘… the enemy appeared to the casual observer behind our lines to hold a local superiority in the air. This superiority may, however, have been more apparent than real as our machines were extremely active behind his lines at the time his Squadrons were busy behind ours.’ On the following afternoon, during the renewed assault beyond Caix when the 2nd Cavalry Brigade were present,

‘… enemy planes became very active in machine gunning any concentrated body of troops or any group of buildings that seemed to be occupied by Headquarters of a Unit or Formation. As the evening progressed and the mantle of night was spread over the battlefield, enemy bombing planes, in great numbers, started to drop their bombs on the line where our foremost troops were assembled, on Brigade Headquarters, on any group of buildings and on Reserves and Cavalry bivouacked in the fields. This form of warfare was continued throughout the night and caused very considerable casualties to the horses of the Cavalry.’

The diary of No. 6 Canadian Field Ambulance, also established an A.D.S. in Caix on 9 August (see below), noted in the afternoon that ‘During the attack on Rosières a large number of German aeroplanes came over and delayed the work of the stretcher bearers by dropping bombs on the area over which they were working and machine gunning them.’ This activity on 9 August was also reported by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, which noted at 6.45 pm that ‘Two large formations of enemy’s aircraft came over the Bde and dropped a few bombs near the 9th Lancers in the trenches,’ and in the diary of ‘H’ Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, which noted at 6.15 pm that ‘As darkness fell an enemy aeroplane dropped a row of 12 bombs close to but just missing the Battery wagon lines.’ The 11th Hussars, part of the 1st Cavalry Brigade - which had been in reserve during the day but advanced towards Vrély in the afternoon - reported that just after dusk when they were ordered back for the night to the south-west of Caix ‘… an enemy aircraft came over … a number of German aeroplanes swooped down out of the gathering dusk and dropped bombs. Several bombs fell among B Squadron and Lieutenant C.H. Parr and eleven men were wounded and several horses killed and wounded’ (Lumley 1936: 377).

As this shows, the bombing of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance was not an isolated event, but was part of wave of German air attacks on the battlefield and in the area of Caix that evening. The experience of large-scale bombing by aircraft on the battlefield - a relatively new phenomenon in warfare - was well-described by an Australian officer just to the north of the Canadian sector on that day: ‘Sleep was soon interrupted by the unmistakable drone of German bombing planes. Nearer they came … and then the swish of the aerial bombs followed by the crash of their explosion … We could hear horses kicking and plunging at their tethers, some neighing, and one poor brute screaming … the near explosion of an aerial bomb of any size seemed to tie one’s intestines into knots’ (quoted in McWilliams and Steel 2007: 143).

At the outset of the battle the only bomber unit attached to the German 2nd Army on the Amiens front was Bombengeschwader (‘Bogohl’, Bomber Wing) 7, which had been equipped with the twin-engine AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft) G.IV but reverted in 1918 to the single-engine, twin-seat ‘C’ type machine for the daylight bombing of tactical targets in battle areas (Fredette 1960). Of these the most successful and prolific type was the DFW (Deutsche Flugzeug-Werke) C.5, a multi-role reconnaissance, observation and bomber aircraft that could outmanoeuvre many Allied fighters of the period, and could carry several hundred kilogrammes of bombs either as 25-kg bombs in a small internal bomb bay or 50 or even 100 kg bombs slung beneath the wings. One of these ‘C’ type aircraft, very possibly from the formations reported by 2nd Cavalry Brigade at 6.45 pm, is likely to have been the machine that dropped the bomb on the Advanced Dressing Station of No. 3 C.F.A. in Caix that evening.

The bombing of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance in Caix, 9 August 1918

Early on the morning of 9 August the Light Section of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance had been poised with the 2nd Cavalry Brigade to advance beyond Caix, with the Assistant Director Medical Services recording that ‘Light Sections C.F.A.s had moved forward into action with their Brigades’. The ‘Heavy Section’ remained in the church at Cayeux, which continued to be an Advanced Dressing Station even after the new A.D.S. had been opened that evening in Caix. The decision to open an A.D.S. closer to the front line would have been made after the infantry and cavalry advance had begun beyond Caix in the early afternoon and the scale of the casualties had become apparent. The next towns ahead, Rosières and Vrély, were too far forward for the safe establishment of an A.D.S. there, with the final objective of the advance lying just beyond that on the edge of the 1916 battlefield. Caix was sheltered to some extent in the valley of the river Luce behind the low ridge where the trenches of the old Amiens Outer Defence Line lay just to the east, the jumping off point for the renewed advance that day. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the men of the Ambulance were apprehensive about the location chosen on the eastern edge of the town, as they would have experienced the shelling of that edge of the town and the cavalry concentration area that morning recorded in the war diaries of many of the units involved.

The Light Section would have been equipped to set up a rudimentary A.D.S., but would have required more equipment and supplies from the Heavy Section based in Cayeux. That afternoon the road between Caix and Cayeux was very congested, with the wounded and prisoners being taken back and supplies, men, horses and tanks coming forward. The weather was ‘very hot and the roads in a very dusty condition’, with the dust ‘particularly bad’ that day (war diary, No. 12 Canadian Field Ambulance). There were ‘flies everywhere; evidently the Germans don’t trouble as much about sanitation as we do. German latrines at CAYEUX very poor and not fly-proof.’ (war diary, No. 3 Canadian Field Ambulance). The congestion suggested in my grandfather’s account - that it was not possible to get motor ambulances through - is also documented in the war diaries, with other units using the same narrow road including the Ambulances of the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions. The diary of the A.D.M.S., 1st Canadian Division, records that the round trip between Caix and the Divisional Main Dressing Station at ‘White Chateau’ near Domart – also the M.D.S. for the 1st Cavalry Division – took 5 to 7 hours, over a total return distance of only some 15 miles. As we shall see, the ‘tent’ section (the Canadian infantry equivalent of the Cavalry ‘light’ section) of another Ambulance, No. 6 Canadian Field Ambulance, was also making its way from Cayeux to establish an A.D.S. in Caix that afternoon.

The trench map reference for the new A.D.S. for No. 3 C.F.A. noted in the 2nd Cavalry Brigade diary, E.4.c.6.1 (‘Eastern exit of Caix’), pinpoints it as a courtyard building on the eastern edge of the town, just as described by my grandfather and close to the concentration area of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade in the wooded valley to the east that morning. The address of the courtyard today is 50 Rue Maurice Seigneurgens (named after a local Second World War resistance hero; at the time it was Rue de Rosières, named after the next town to the east). Comparing the outline of the building on the 1:20,000 map of 14 March 1917 (when the Allies still occupied Caix) to its present-day appearance indicates that the general layout has survived. On the road frontage, the stonework of the building on the right of the entrance has marks characteristic of shell or bomb damage. The large red-brick house forming the eastern side of the courtyard is also likely to be of pre-war date. Somewhere beneath these buildings should lie the cellars mentioned by my grandfather. The ‘small yard’ that he described is indeed that, no more than 10 by 10 metres across; even with the Light Section comprising fewer than 30 men, it would probably have seemed fully occupied with all of the wounded and horses also being present.

The interior of the courtyard at Caix where the bomb struck No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance on 9 August 1918 (David Gibbins).

Once the new A.D.S. was established, the Light Section – including at least three of the five medical officers of the Ambulance, Colonel Menzies, Captain Almond and Captain Baker – would have begun treating the wounded of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade brought in by stretcher from the battlefield, as well as helping with the wounded among the many casualties incurred that afternoon by the Canadian infantry and any casualties among the German prisoners taken. This carried on for only a few hours before the courtyard received a direct hit. The diary of No. 3 C.F.A. for 9 August records ‘ At night, enemy aircraft were active and a bomb fell in the yard of the A.D.S. causing casualties as under: - Killed: Lt Col. A.J.A. Menzies, D.S.O., R.A.M.C., O.C., Capt. G.H.H. Almond, R.A.M.C., 5 O.R.s R.A.M.C., 2 O.R.s A.S.C., 1 O.R. 18th Hussars, 2 L.D. horses, 2 riding horses. Wounded: 5 O.R.s R.A.M.C., 6 riding horses. Missing: 1 O.R. R.A.M.C.’. The entry was written by Major F.T. Hill, M.C., R.A.M.C., who at that point was in Cayeux and presumably had the information conveyed to him by a survivor, possibly my grandfather continuing in his role as galloper but now for the new acting O.C. of No. 3 C.F.A., Major Hill himself.

The diary of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, whose HQ at that point was beyond the old Amiens Outer Defence line in the direction of Vrély, records against ‘9.30’ for that evening: ‘During the night E.A. (enemy aircraft) were very active bombing. They obtained a direct hit on our 3rd C.F.A. Dressing Station at E.4.C.6.1 (eastern exit of CAIX) killing Lieut.-Colonel Menzies D.S.O. (O.C. 3rd C.F.A.) and Capt. G. Almond 3rd C.F.A. and 8 O.R. of the Ambulance and wounding 5 others, besides many horse casualties.’ The A.D.M.S. diary entry at 11.45 pm records ‘No. 3 C.F.A. at CAIX severely bombed with the following casualties: - Killed – Lieut. Col. A.J.A. MENZIES, DSO, RAMC Capt. C.(sic) H.H. ALMOND, RAMC. 10 Other Ranks R.A.M.C. Wounded – 1 French Interpreter attached to 2nd D.G., 8 Other Ranks, R.A.M.C. Help was obtained from the Canadian A.D.S. situated in CAIX.’

The page from the war diary of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance for the Battle of Amiens, recording the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station in Caix on the evening of 9 August. The diary was written by the second in command of the unit, Major F.T. … — The page from the war diary of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance for the Battle of Amiens, recording the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station in Caix on the evening of 9 August. The diary was written by the second in command of the unit, Major F.T. Hill, M.C. and Bar, R.A.M.C., who was in Cayeux at the time of the bombing and took over temporary command after Colonel Menzies was killed. It seems likely that my grandfather as galloper to the O.C. would have conveyed news of the bombing to Major Hill that night (The National Archives).

The page from the war diary of the Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Cavalry Division, recording the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station in Caix on the evening of 9 August 1918. The diary was written by the A.D.M.S., Colonel Richard Naso… — The page from the war diary of the Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Cavalry Division, recording the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station in Caix on the evening of 9 August 1918. The diary was written by the A.D.M.S., Colonel Richard Nason Woodley, D.S.O., R.A.M.C. (The National Archives).

A German 50 kg P.u.W. bomb that failed to explode at a hospital in Calais in 1917. This is likely to have been the size and type of bomb that fell on the courtyard in Caix (photographer and source unknown).

The bomb would most probably have been the type of high-explosive fragmentation device developed in 1916 by the P.u.W. (Prufanstalt und Werft der Fliergertruppe, ‘Test Establishment and Workshop of the Aviation Troops’), and equipping most German bombers for tactical (battlefield) use from that date. P.u.F. bombs were sleek, streamlined and made of high-grade steel, which gave better penetration than the cast-iron of previous aerial bombs. The tail fins were canted so that the bomb spun as it dropped, improving accuracy and providing centrifugal force to arm the impact fuze in the nose when the spin reached a certain rate. They were made in sizes from 12.5 to 1,000 kg, with the 12.5 kg being a thick-walled anti-personnel device that ejected some 1400 splinters on bursting, whereas the larger sizes were thinner-walled with a higher proportion of explosive to increase the pressure wave. The next size up, the 50 kg bomb, was about the same size as the high-explosive shell fired by the German ‘5.9’, the 15 cm howitzer round identified in the 2nd Cavalry Brigade war diary as the size of shell that struck Brigade HQ earlier that afternoon. The Imperial War Museum has an example of a 50 kg P.u.F. bomb, painted in black, yellow and pale blue, measuring 170 cm long (about the average height of a man of the time), 18 cm in diameter and with a fill ratio to weight of about 46% explosive, probably T.N.T. The number of casualties caused in the courtyard suggests that the bomb was of this size, or possibly 100 kg – the next size up - rather than the smaller 25 kg type.

My grandfather was dismounted in the courtyard standing next to Colonel Menzies, ready to take any messages. The bomb burst only a few feet away – to describe how close it was, he would stretch out one arm – and blew the top of Menzies’ head off. The possibility of surviving such a blast physically unscathed while those around you were killed was well known to soldiers, and is explained by the irregular pattern of fragments from a bomb or shell. In Norman Ten Hundred (1920: 46), a first-hand account of fighting with the Guernsey Light Infantry during the war, A. Stanley Blicq described how ‘… three men can be almost obliterated by an explosion while the fourth may pick himself up dazedly, white and shaken, but unscathed … any man, however courageous, who comes close enough into contact with a shell to be conscious of its hot breath on his face and to be violently thrown by its concussion, will regain his feet with shaken nerves … Some few never recover – hence the term “shell-shock”.

Distinguished Conduct Medal

As well as my grandfather and Captain Martyn Wilfrid Baker, R.A.M.C., the officer mentioned in my grandfather’s account, another survivor of the courtyard bombing whose name is known was 18890 Quartermaster Sergeant (Acting Sergeant-Major) James Moore, Royal Army Medical Corps, aged 34, from Borrowash, Derbyshire, a regular pre-war soldier and almost certainly the senior non-commissioned officer of No. 3 C.F.A. present at the time of the incident. The Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps records his promotion to Sergeant on 1 September 1910 and to Acting Sergeant-Major on 6 May 1917, and his Medal Card shows that he had disembarked in France on 17 August 1914, only 13 days after the British declaration of war. On 4 September 1918 the diary of the A.A.Q.M.G., 1st Cavalry Division, records that he had been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal – the highest award to an N.C.O. below the Victoria Cross - with the citation being published in the Supplement to the London Gazette on 29 October 1918 (issue 30983, page 1283):

For conspicuous devotion to duty when an explosion caused numerous casualties in an advanced dressing station. Though blown over by the shock, he picked himself up and quickly organised parties to attend to the wounded. This warrant officer has always set a magnificent example of devotion to duty.’

The citation and the date of the award leave no doubt that this was for the Caix incident. One other man of No. 3 C.F.A. was decorated that autumn, 21143 Private Edward Cecil, R.A.M.C., from Openshaw, Manchester, whose award of the French Medaille d’Honneur avec Glaives en Bronze was recorded by the A.A.Q.M.G. on 1 November and in the Supplement to the London Gazette on 29 January 1919 (issue 31150, page 1453). There is no citation to indicate whether or not this was for the Caix incident, but this particular medal was awarded for bravery or meritorious action not necessarily against the enemy, with other known instances including the rescue of civilians from bombed buildings. It is possible that the wounding of the French interpreter and his treatment by the survivors may have been brought to the attention of the French authorities. Medals such as this were provided by the French for distribution among the British Army, with the recipient being individually recommended or sometimes being chosen as representative of a unit involved in an action. They were relatively sparingly awarded - the Medaille d’Honneur avec Glaives en Bronze was awarded to only 698 British and Empire servicemen, all of them listed in that 1919 Supplement to the London Gazette.

The casualties

The primary source of information on the men killed in the Caix A.D.S. is the record of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (C.W.G.C.), including the Grave Registration Reports, records of reinterment and the headstone inscription records, all of which are online. By searching for the two men named in the diaries, Colonel Menzies and Captain Almond, the names of eight of the others are revealed, lying alongside each other today in Caix British Cemetery only a few hundred metres from where they were killed. Their date of death and their units – No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance, the Royal Army Medical Corps, the Army Service Corps and in one case the 18th Hussars – is consistent with the units for the casualties listed in the war diaries, and further evidence that these are the correct men is the record of their reinterment together from a small plot called De Luce British Cemetery at the site where No. 3 C.F.A. bivouacked the following day (see below). Another casualty of the bombing is commemorated on the Vis-en-Artois Memorial to the missing of the battle, and a 12th man, lying a row behind the others in Caix British Cemetery, was originally interred at Cayeux near the Advanced Dressing Station in that town where he is most likely to have died of wounds. These are all of the men of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade known to have died as a result of the bombing, but there may have been others among the wounded men lying in the courtyard – as my grandfather wrote – who could have included not only men of the 1st Cavalry Division but also Canadian infantry, British tank crewmen, airmen and German prisoners of war, some of whom could have died later in the Casualty Clearing Stations or Base Hospitals.

Extensive biographical details for the two officers are available in obituaries published at the time. For the enlisted men, information additional to the C.W.G.C. records includes their Medal Cards - records of a soldier’s eligibility for campaign medals, held in The National Archives - as well as other biographical information that can be accessed through Ancestry and Findmypast. In only one case among the enlisted men does the Service Record survive; as noted earlier, many First World War service records were destroyed by German bombing in 1940. The accounts below are not exhaustive of the biographical and military material likely to be available and further research may reveal more on the men who are recorded here only by name and rank. A full list of those killed is included at the end of this text.

Lieutenant Colonel Arthur John Alexander Menzies, D.S.O., R.A.M.C., killed in the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station at Caix on 9 August 1918 This is a clearer version of the photo below in De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour (Edinburgh University Ro… — Lieutenant Colonel Arthur John Alexander Menzies, D.S.O., R.A.M.C., killed in the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station at Caix on 9 August 1918 This is a clearer version of the photo below in *De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour* (Edinburgh University Roll of Honour).

Lieutenant Colonel Arthur John Alexander Menzies, D.S.O., R.A.M.C., aged 32, was born on 21 May 1886 in Sumatra, where his father was a rubber planter. After school at Edinburgh Academy he went to the University of Edinburgh in 1905 as a student of Arts and Medicine, receiving his M.A. in 1908 and M.B., Ch.B. in 1912. From October 1908 to November 1909 he attended the University’s Officer Training Corps (Royal Artillery). He was commissioned into the R.A.M.C. as a regular officer in January 1914 and arrived in France with the 3rd Cavalry Division on 7 October 1914. As Medical Officer of the 1st (Royal) Dragoons he was Mentioned in Despatches for his work during the 2nd Battle of Ypres on 12-14 May 1915, when the regiment suffered 136 casualties, and awarded the Distinguished Service Order (D.S.O.) following the Battle of Loos, the citation reading ‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty from September 26th to 29th, 1915, in Loos. Capt. Menzies was unremitting in his attention to the wounded of all units. He was twice seen carrying wounded on a stretcher under rifle fire, and for 55 hours he was continuously exposing himself to heavy shell fire while carrying out his duties.’ (Supplement to the London Gazette, 4 November 1915 (issue 29351, page 10888). He was Deputy Assistant Director Medical Services, 4th Cavalry Division (the renamed 1st Indian Cavalry Division) from 14 May 1917 until taking over as O.C. No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance on 14 February 1918; he was promoted to temporary Lieutenant Colonel a week later in accordance with the decision that all officers commanding Field Ambulances should hold that rank. A fellow-officer, evidently also in No. 3 C.F.A., wrote: ‘I have never worked with such a splendid Commanding Officer, and it is certain that this unit has never had his equal. He was as brave as a lion, and never asked anyone to do something which he would not do himself. He had brought the unit up to a great state of efficiency, and he was just beginning to reap the benefit of all his untiring labour and energy of the past months.’ Another wrote to his wife, Ethel Fanny Whitelock Menzies, whom he had married in February 1916, that ‘I have never known anyone commanding a unit who was more universally loved and respected than your husband’. These quotes are from an obituary that appeared in The Scotsman of 21 August 1916 and De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour, noting that he was ‘killed in action by a bomb dropped by enemy aircraft 9 Aug. 1918’ and buried at Caix. Other sources for him include his Service Record in The National Archives and an entry in the Edinburgh University Roll of Honour.

Captain George Hely Hutchinson Almond, R.A.M.C. He wears the ribbon of the Queen’s South Africa Medal (Loretto School Roll of Honour).

Captain George Hely-Hutchinson Almond, aged 41, was born on 22 February 1877 at Musselburgh, just outside Edinburgh. He was the eldest child of Hely Hutchinson Almond, M.A., LL.D (Glasgow), M.A.(Oxon), a maths teacher and athlete who bought Loretto School – Scotland’s oldest boarding school – and was its headmaster from 1862 until his death in 1903. George was educated there, at Hertford College, Oxford, and at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, graduating from Oxford with a B.A. in Natural Science in 1902 and M.A., M.B., B.Ch. in 1908, and becoming M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in 1906. In 1899 while at Oxford he had volunteered to serve in the Boer War, going to South Africa in 1900 as a private in the 20th (Fife and Forfar Light Horse) Company, 6th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry, and receiving the Queen’s South Africa Medal with clasps for active service in Cape Colony, Orange Free State and Transvaal, presented by the King on 26 July 1901 (The National Archives WO/128, WO 100/122). After working as a house physician at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and a house surgeon at the West London Hospital he went into general practice in Bath, where he was also honorary pathologist to the Royal Mineral Water Hospital , assistant pathologist to the Royal United Hospital, Medical Officer of Monckton Combe School and District Director of the Clutton Division of the Red Cross Society.

He was commissioned into the R.A.M.C. on 15 November 1915 (London Gazette) and had been a pathologist at No. 7 Stationary Hospital, Boulogne, prior to his transfer to the 1st Cavalry Division on 2 August 1918, initially being posted as medical officer to the 4th Dragoon Guards but then joining No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance on 7 August only two days before his death (war diary, 4th Dragoon Guards). He left a widow, Violet Winifred, whom he had married in 1908, and three young sons. Both of his brothers had been killed earlier in the war.

Article (click to enlarge) in the Burnley Express of 28 August 1918 on Private Albert Chippendale, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was killed in the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station at Caix on 9 August 1918. — Article (click to enlarge) in the *Burnley Express* of 28 August 1918 on Private Albert Chippendale, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was killed in the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station at Caix on 9 August 1918.

Among the enlisted men killed, Albert Chippendale, from Padiham, Lancashire, a weaver by profession, had been a member of the St John Ambulance Corps before the war and immediately offered his services, training and working for 18 months in local hospitals before going to France. An article in the Burnley Express on 28 August 1918 entitled ‘Padiham father’s bereavement’, reports that his father had received a postcard from him dated 7 August saying that he was ‘quite well.’ He was killed two days before his 23rd birthday. Sydney William Williams, from Ewyas Harold, Herefordshire, the son of a labourer, was aged only 20. Harry (Henry) Arthur Wood, aged 26, from Gravesend, Kent, had been in France since the outset of the war, his Medal Card showing that he had disembarked on 17 August 1914. William Henry Wilson, aged 26, formerly a farm labourer from Luton, attested on 11 September 1914 and had been with No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance since 1 January 1918. He is the only one of the enlisted men killed whose Service Record survives in full in The National Archives. An article in the Beds and Herts Saturday Telegraph on 31 August 1918 states that his Chaplain wrote to his widowed mother Lizzie Ann Wilson that on the night of 9 August a bomb was dropped on the dressing station where William was working, ‘killing him instantly.’ He is also the only one of the men killed with no known grave – he is listed on the Vis-en-Artois Memorial to the Missing (Stone 76A) – and it therefore seems likely that he is the ‘one O.R. R.A.M.C.’ listed as ‘missing’ in No. 3 C.F.A. casualty list for the incident, possibly because there was not enough left of him after the blast to make up an identifiable body.

The one man killed in the courtyard who was not in the Royal Army Medical Corps or the Army Service Corps, Private James McEnaney of the 18th Hussars, may have been part of a deployment recorded on 5 August in the war diary of the Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Cavalry Division, of 3 other ranks, 5 riding horses and 2 pack horses from each of the regiments of the Division to work with the Pack Mounted (i.e. Light) Sections of the Cavalry Ambulances, with the war diary for the 18th Hussars on that day recording the departure of ‘2 men and 2 horses to 3rd C.F.A. for duty.’ James McEnaney, from Yorkshire, had arrived in France in May 1915 with the Yorkshire Regiment but had transferred to the 18th Hussars, an unusual move from infantry to cavalry that would have necessitated the usual rigorous selection and five months of training in the cavalry lines at Tidworth in Wiltshire. Nothing more is known about him other than the Register of Soldiers’ Effects showing that his belongings and War Gratuity went to his aunt Margaret Healy.

Caix British Cemetery also contains the grave of another man of the 3rd Cavalry Field Ambulance, Private Thomas Henry Wilkinson, who is almost certainly one of the five men of the R.A.M.C. listed as wounded in the bombing incident; his date of death is given as 9 August (Concentration of Graves Burial Return) and 10 August (Commonwealth War Graves Commission Register; Register of Soldiers’ Effects), the last noting that he ‘died of wounds.’ The Burial Return records that his remains were exhumed on 8 July 1920 from Cayeux Chateau German Cemetery, a small plot within the German cemetery at 66E D.6.a.4.9 containing the bodies of 13 soldiers and one airman that were all removed at that date to Caix British Cemetery. Nine of the men were from the 3rd Cavalry Division, but one other, 41237 Private Mark Champkins, 2nd Cavalry Machine Gun Squadron, was from the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, probably the man recorded in the Squadron war diary for 9 August as ‘killed by a shell on Transport Lines near Cayeux.’ It seems most likely that Wilkinson was taken during the night of 9/10 August from Caix to the Advanced Dressing Station in the Church at Cayeux, and that he died there. The reinterred burials from the Cayeux cemetery are in Caix British Cemetery in the row immediately behind the men whose bodies were removed from De Luce British Cemetery (see below). Wilkinson was born in 1895 in Bradford, was a bread baker and then a tailor by trade and had a wife, Esther, aged only 22 at the time of his death, and a son Thomas Edward who had been born in 1915.

Private William Henry Wilson, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was killed in the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station at Caix on 9 August 1918 (Beds and Herts Saturday Telegraph, 31 August 1918). — Private William Henry Wilson, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was killed in the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station at Caix on 9 August 1918 (*Beds and Herts Saturday Telegraph*, 31 August 1918).

The deaths and maiming of horses in action would have been highly distressing to those who witnessed it, in particular to cavalrymen who often loved their horses and were trained to attend to them more than to themselves - something that my grandfather often recounted. He was extremely upset to remember the deaths of horses in the war and he never spoke of how the dead and wounded horses were disposed of following the A.D.S. bombing. However, a clue to the procedure is found in the Administrative Instructions of the A.A.Q.M.G. 1st Cavalry Division of 19 and 29 August, which stated respectively that ‘When possible horses which have been killed or have had to be destroyed should be opened up at once,’ and ‘If possible, the bellies of all dead horses should be slit up, and if there is time and opportunity, horses should be buried.’ The disposal of dead horses had become a matter of particular concern because more horses of the Division died that month than at any time since the first months of the war. The casualty returns in the A.A.Q.M.G. diary for August 1918 show that 398 horses of the Division were killed in action that month, 33 were destroyed and 16 died of other causes, with many of the deaths of horses in action occurring during the three days of the Battle of Amiens.

The Canadian Advanced Dressing Stations at Caix, 8-24 August 1918

As well as recording the help obtained after the bombing from a Canadian Advanced Dressing Station in Caix, the A.D.M.S., 1st Cavalry Division noted on 10 August at 10.45 am ‘All casualties cleared with the assistance of Infantry Medical Units operating in the same area.’ The Canadian units in Caix can be identified from the war diaries of the Field Ambulances involved and the A.D.M.S., 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions, as well as from an overview written after the war by Colonel A.E. Snell, C.M.G., D.S.O., B.A., M.B., C.A.M.C. (Canadian Army Medical Corps), the Deputy Director Medical Services of the Canadian Corps during the battle (Snell 1924). One of the Ambulances of the 1st Canadian Division, No. 3 Canadian Field Ambulance, attached to the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade, set up an A.D.S. in Cayeux at about 2 pm on 8 August, and then at about 4.30 pm sent men forward to Caix to establish a Collecting Post which became an A.D.S. in the late afternoon. Personnel from No. 3 Canadian Field Ambulance remained there through the night – the war diary notes at 8 pm that Caix was ‘very heavily shelled, especially around the A.D.S.’, and at 9.30 am on the 9th ‘heavy shelling and MG (machine gun) fire’ – and until 12 noon on the 9th, by which point the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade had sidestepped to the right (towards the town of Le Quesnel) and Caix was more immediately behind the frontage held by the 2nd Canadian Division.

The A.D.M.S., 2nd Canadian Division reported on 9 August ‘One tent sub-division of No. 6 Canadian Field Ambulance established A.D.S. at Caix this afternoon’, shortly after the infantry of that Division along with the cavalry had moved off for their attack beyond Caix at 1 pm that day. As was the case with the 1st Canadian Division, a single A.D.S. in Caix served the entire 2nd Canadian Division. The diary of No. 6 Canadian Field Ambulance records that Captain Parker ‘had established an A.D.S. at 3 pm with ‘C’ tent section’, and that ‘owing to the lack of motor ambulances the cases accumulated there’- a reference to the problem of motor ambulances getting up and down the congested Caix-Cayeux road also mentioned by my grandfather. The late afternoon and evening were very busy for the Canadian medical units as a result of the large numbers of casualties among infantry from the fighting beyond Caix. Despite the 2nd Canadian Division being relieved on the forenoon of 10 August by the 4th Canadian Division – who as we shall see opened their own separate A.D.S. in the town – the 2nd Canadian Division A.D.S. remained in Caix, with the Headquarters of No. 6 Canadian Field Ambulance moving there that day and the A.D.S. remaining until the Ambulance left Caix on 19 August. Diary entries for 14 and 17 August referring to this A.D.S. give its location at E.3.b.3.0, on the northern outskirts of the town some 780 m as the crow flies from the courtyard building that was the location of the No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance A.D.S. on 9 August.

A reference to the bombing of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance is found in the diary of No. 3 Canadian Field Ambulance, 1st Canadian Division, which had established their A.D.S. in Caix on the 8th but had followed that Division just to the south from midday on the 9th. Their war diary is exceptionally detailed and includes accounts by individual officers. One of those, Captain G.F. Denyes, C.A.M.C., attached to the 7th Canadian Battalion, gives a vivid account of the battlefield conditions from the point of view of a regimental medical officer. Following the rapid advance on the first morning of the battle, he records:

‘R.A.P. (Regimental Aid Post) established at hospital site (a former German hospital on the western outskirts of the town) at CAIX (E.2.c.8.2) at 1 p.m., 8th August. Cleared about 10 casualties from the Bn. and about 20 wounded Germans including 1 Bn. Commander, who strongly advised us leave our R.A.P. as they knew its location and would shell it in spite of the Red Cross Flag. They placed about 15 shells (a few gas) in the centre of the Hospital site. Reported to the A.D.S. CAIX (No. 3 Fld. Amb.) August 9th at 9 a.m.’

After that Denyes went forward with four stretcher squads and two horse-drawn ambulances on to the battlefield, to an area ‘very badly shelled and swept by cross M.G. fire … soon after the Infantry began to pass in attack formation with the Cavalry closely following. Cavalry were badly cut up at this time.’ He was only about 20 yards away when the shell exploded amongst the 5th Canadian Brigade headquarters (noted above, taking place about the same time that the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ was hit) and he cleared the wounded Brigadier and staff ‘together with 3 Cavalrymen to CAIX’ and established a post there. After dressing about 100 cases from the 2nd Canadian Division he reported to Le Quesnel, and then ‘Reported back to the A.D.S., Caix at 7 pm, Aug. 9th, and cleared 35 cases from there to LE QUESNEL. CAIX badly bombed. 3rd Cavalry Field Ambulance partly wiped out, and casualties in Officers very high.’

On the morning of 10 August, as the 1st Cavalry Division withdrew from the battlefield, the 4th Canadian Division relieved the 2nd Canadian Division from their position in the line to the east of Caix. No. 12 Canadian Field Ambulance, one of the three Ambulances of the 4th Canadian Division, took over the bombed courtyard building that had just been vacated by No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance and established their own A.D.S. there at 5 am. There is no doubt that this was the same courtyard from the diary entry for 10 August of the A.D.M.S., 4th Canadian Division: ‘The Advanced Dressing Station was moved to CAIX and established in the most Easterly house of the village on the Main Road through ROSIERES. The A.D.M.S. and D.A.D.M.S. made their Headquarters here. Many casualties were handled during the day.’ The diary of No. 4 Canadian Field Ambulance records ‘A.D.S. moved forward to village of CAIX being established at 5.00 am, many casualties of 10th and 12th Canadian Infantry Brigades … commencing at about 11 am.’ The same trench map reference cited in the 2nd Cavalry Brigade diary, E.4.c.6.1, is recorded in the history of the Canadian Army Medical Corps in the battle noted above (Snell 1924: 55); in addition, the diary of the A.D.M.S. twice cites the map reference for the building immediately adjacent to it, E.4.c.5.2, suggesting that the new A.D.S. occupied more space than had been needed for the Cavalry A.D.S. and was spread over both the easterly courtyard building and another courtyard building on the opposite side of Rue de Fontaine, the narrow road on the west side of the original A.D.S. site.

The Advanced Dressing Station for the Ambulances of the 4th Canadian Division continued to occupy this site until the Division was relieved by the 35th French Division two weeks later, on 24 August. Caix remained a target for shelling and bombing while it was within range of German artillery and was a worthwhile target for air attack, until the Allied offensive resumed on a large scale on 21 August and the Germans retreated. The diary of No. 13 Canadian Field Ambulance, which had also moved forward into Caix to the same A.D.S., noted on 10 August: ‘The A.D.S. moved early in the morning to CAIX and opened on the eastern outskirts of the town. Night clear and bombing heavy all about us’, with three enlisted men of the Ambulance being wounded. On the following day the A.D.M.S., 4th Canadian Division noted that ‘Caix was bombed during the night, and overhead shrapnel thrown over the road near Advanced Dressing Station.’ The diary of No. 12 Canadian Field Ambulance recorded on 17 August ‘several casualties admitted as a result of enemy shelling in area just forward of Dressing Station’, and on 20 August ‘Enemy shelling ‘in vicinity of dressing station’. No photographs are known of the eastern buildings of Caix at this time, but the extent of damage to the town by the time that German shelling and bombing stopped can been seen in photographs of other parts of the town taken during that month and in 1919.

The 2nd Cavalry Brigade, 10-11 August: the bombing of No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulance

In the early hours of 10 August the 2nd Cavalry Brigade along with the rest of the 1st Cavalry Division retired to a position north and north-west of Caix, bivouacking beside the marshland on the north side of the river Luce (a river in name, but in reality little more than a stream). The A.D.M.S., 1st Cavalry Division reported at 10.45 am that all Advanced Dressing Stations had closed, meaning that the ‘Heavy Section’ of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance had evacuated the Cayeux Church A.D.S. as well. The entry for the next day, 11 August, notes the location of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance at W.26.B.3.1 (the A.D.M.S. by now was conforming to usual practice by referring to the 1:20,000 trench maps), from which they withdrew with the rest of the Division in the direction of Amiens starting at 9.30 p.m. that evening.

The Commonwealth War Graves records show that Colonel Menzies and nine of the other men killed in the bombing were buried in ‘De Luce British Cemetery’ at W.26.a.9.2, at a junction between farm tracks - one of them now ploughed out - about 150 metres from the location of No. 3 C.F.A. that night. Just as my grandfather described, the bodies must have been taken by the survivors of the bombing when they evacuated the Caix A.D.S. and been buried together on their arrival at the new site. The junction between tracks would have been a sensible choice as it would have been easier to locate and access for further burials as the battlefield was cleared. They also buried the five men killed in the Brigade HQ shelling, whose bodies must have been taken to the A.D.S. after they were killed on the afternoon of 9 August and then transported that night as well to the De Luce site. Eventually the plot also included twelve other men who had been killed nearby on the first day of the battle, and whose bodies must have been brought in later – eight Canadian infantrymen, Lieutenant William Leslie Brookes, Royal Air Force, aged 19, of 209 Squadron (Sopwith Camels), and 2nd Lieutenant Henry Sutton, 6th Tank Battalion, aged 22, and his two crewmen, who were killed when their Mark V tank no. 375 received a direct hit while advancing with the 9th Cavalry Brigade to the north of Caix at W.21.c, only about 500 metres from the cemetery. Five Australians who died over the next ten days were buried there as well, making 30 burials in total.

The withdrawal of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade to the Luce Valley on the morning of 10 August marked the end of their active role in the Battle of Amiens, though they continued to sustain casualties from aerial bombing during the following two days of their withdrawal to Amiens, with ‘shell holes, wire and enemy aircraft activity’ making the march ‘most fatiguing for men and horses’ (war diary, 4th Dragoon Guards), and the warm weather of the previous two days meaning that ‘the crossing of the battlefield was made unpleasant by the stench of dead horses’ (Lumley 1936: 378). On the evening of 11 August, in a near-repeat of the Caix incident two days earlier, one of the other Ambulances of the Division, No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulance, was struck by bombs on the road near Domart-sur-la-Luce, with one of the bombs setting off an ammunition dump nearby. The bombing killed the Ambulance’s senior N.C.O., 16216 Sergeant-Major (Warrant Officer 1st Class) John William Robinson, M.C., R.A.M.C. and one other rank, fatally wounded the commanding officer of the Ambulance, Major John Proctor, R.A.M.C., wounded the chaplain, Rev. L.A. Brown, and seven enlisted men, and killed eight horses. John Proctor’s entry in De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour is shown below. L.A. Brown is almost certainly Rev. (Captain) Lewis Atkins Brown, Royal Army Chaplains Department, whose Service Record and Medal Card are in The National Archives. John William Robinson, aged 38, had been awarded the Military Cross - an officer’s award for which he was eligible as a Warrant Officer, 1st Class - for his work during the 1918 German Spring Offensive, the citation (London Gazette, Supplement 22 June 1918, p. 7427) reading:

For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. Throughout two days he worked unceasingly, organising and directing parties of stretcher bearers, visiting the advanced aid posts and supervising the work of the advanced dressing-station, which was continuously shelled. Later, his marked organising ability was made use of in the establishing of a new divisional collecting station to meet the emergency created by the absence of any clearing station within a short distance, and thanks to his skill, resource and untiring energy, several hundred wounded cases were very rapidly evacuated in comparative comfort. His courage, endurance and devotion to duty during a period of ten days’ fighting have been an inspiration to all ranks.

Page from the war diary of the Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Cavalry Division, showing the trench map location of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance on 11 August and recording the bombing of No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulance during the withdrawal … — Page from the war diary of the Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Cavalry Division, showing the trench map location of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance on 11 August and recording the bombing of No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulance during the withdrawal towards Amiens late that evening.

Entry (click to enlarge) in De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour for Major John Proctor, R.A.M.C., who died of wounds following the bombing of No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulance on 11 August 1918. — Entry (click to enlarge) in *De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour* for Major John Proctor, R.A.M.C., who died of wounds following the bombing of No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulance on 11 August 1918.

In another incident that evening, recorded at 8.45 pm in the 2nd Cavalry Brigade diary, a German aircraft just south of the Bois l’Abbe beyond Villers-Bretonneux dropped four bombs on the 18th Hussars, killing one man and wounding 21 with ‘about 30 horses killed and wounded.’ These incidents caused by aeroplane bombs or shelling behind the front line – including the Caix A.D.S. bombing and the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ shelling on 9 August - account for all but two of the officer fatalities in the 1st Cavalry Division during the three days of the battle, with the casualties for the Division being 8 officers and 39 other ranks killed, 346 men wounded and 15 missing, out of a total casualty figure for the Cavalry Corps of slightly over 1,000 men and a similar number of horses killed and wounded. The total casualties among medical personnel in the battle to all units of the 4th Army, as recorded in the Official Medical History of the War, were ‘four R.A.M.C., two C.A.M.C. (Canadian), one A.A.M.C. (Australian) and four U.S.A. medical officers killed and six wounded, seventeen other ranks killed and sixty wounded.’ (American medical officers had been attached to British Ambulances, including those of the 1st Cavalry Division, since 1917) (Macpherson 1923: 294). The loss of the commanding officers of two of the three Ambulances of the 1st Cavalry Division meant that the Division suffered the worst casualties among medical personnel of any Division in the battle.

No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance had treated most of the 107 men of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade who were wounded during the battle (the Brigade also had 20 men killed, more than half of them in the Caix A.D.S. bombing), undoubtedly saving many lives, and they may also have treated other men – including German prisoners - who could have been brought to the Caix A.D.S. while it was open during the evening of 9 August. The Main Dressing Station of the Canadian Corps at Domart, which processed many of the casualties of the 1st Cavalry Division after they had been through the Advanced Dressing Stations, treated 268 officers and 5,104 other ranks of the Canadian Corps, 35 officers and 500 other ranks of the Cavalry Corps and 24 officers and 641 other ranks of German prisoners, with prisoners being used to carry the wounded (war diary, A.D.M.S. 1st Cavalry Division). The Official History of Medical Services during the war records that over the three days of the battle from 8-11 August the Casualty Clearing Stations of 4th Army received 781 officers and 14,807 other ranks wounded, as well as 1,914 Germans (ibid., 299).

This letter (click to enlarge) was sent to the next-of-kin of 41237 Private Mark Champkins, 2nd Squadron, Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry), to explain the circumstances of the exhumation of his body from Cayeux German Cemetery and its reburial in Caix Ne… — This letter (click to enlarge) was sent to the next-of-kin of 41237 Private Mark Champkins, 2nd Squadron, Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry), to explain the circumstances of the exhumation of his body from Cayeux German Cemetery and its reburial in Caix New British Cemetery. Many thousands of these letters would have been sent when graves were being concentrated in the years after the war; this letter survives in his Service Record. Champkins was not one of those killed in the Caix A.D.S. or the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ shelling, but is almost certainly the man of this unit recorded as being killed ‘by a shell on transport lines near CAYEUX’ on 9 August (war diary, 2nd Machine Gun Squadron).

Aftermath

The casualties to No. 3 and No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulances during the Battle of Amiens were made up by reinforcements over the next couple of days, with Major Hill continuing in temporary command of No. 3 C.F.A. until a new C.O., Lieutenant Colonel A.C. Elliot, R.A.M.C., took over on 28 September. Within ten days of their retirement from the Battle of Amiens the 2nd Cavalry Brigade were again in action, to the north of the old Somme battlefield between Bapaume and Arras on 21 August - part of the advance that would see them reach Mons by the Armistice on 11 November, exactly three months after the Battle of Amiens had ended. My grandfather returned to his job in Brigade HQ following the Battle of Amiens and on 11 November had been responsible for issuing the Armistice order to the Brigade. One of his final experiences of the war was to ride through the former German Headquarters town of Spa in Belgium on 29 November at the head of the 1st Cavalry Division, an event captured in photographs and on film preserved in the Imperial War Museum. Over the course of the war, his regiment, the 9th Lancers, had sustained over 100% casualties to its establishment strength, including 324 men killed. My grandfather fell ill with pneumonia shortly after leaving Spa – almost certainly a result of Spanish flu - and was marked as a stretcher case for England by Major Baker, whom he had last seen several months before in the A.D.S. in Caix. He and his brother were demobilised into the Cavalry Reserve in early 1919 and returned to their pre-war jobs at Cadbury Bros. Ltd in Birmingham, to a period that he described as being dominated by thoughts of the war and after such a ‘hazardous existence’ being uncertain whether he would ever settle down.

The Commonwealth War Graves records show that the dead of De Luce British Cemetery were exhumed on 15 May 1920 and reburied in Caix New British Cemetery, part of the process in which small battlefield cemeteries, some of only a few burials, were concentrated into larger ones, generally close to the places where the men fell. Caix New British Cemetery (now simply known as Caix British Cemetery) lies only 380 metres from the courtyard where the men of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance had been killed and a little over a kilometre from the site of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ shelling. The headstones of the men from these two incidents now lie together in two rows, with Colonel Menzies and Captain Almond side by side. As usual for a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery it is beautifully tended, beside farmland just beyond the eastern edge of the town. The cemeteries of the 1918 Amiens battlefield are not as frequented as those of the nearby 1916 Somme battlefield, but Caix British Cemetery was in the news in May 2015 when the remains of eight Canadian soldiers discovered on the battlefield were reburied there in a ceremony attended by relatives. The cemetery now contains 373 burials, many of them men who were killed or died of wounds in the area of Caix during the three days of the Battle of Amiens.

The burials in a row (1.E.9-18) in Caix British Cemetery of ten of the men killed in the Advanced Dressing station bombing on 9 August 1918, from Edward Taylor, lower right, to Colonel Menzies, the second headstone beyond the gap; beyond Menzies lie… — The burials in a row (1.E.9-18) in Caix British Cemetery of ten of the men killed in the Advanced Dressing station bombing on 9 August 1918, from Edward Taylor, lower right, to Colonel Menzies, the second headstone beyond the gap; beyond Menzies lie the three officers killed in the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Headquarters shelling that afternoon. The insignia of the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Army Service Corps can be seen on a number of the headstones, a well as that of the 18th Hussars - the headstone of James McEnaney - second in from the right (David Gibbins).

In an article entitled ‘Bath Doctor’s Sacrifice’, the Bath Chronicle of 24 December 1921 reported on the unveiling in Bath Abbey on the previous Sunday of a memorial tablet to George Hely Hutchinson Almond, in a service addressed by the chairman of the Bath Division of the British Medical Association and attended by the mayor, many medical men from the district and his widow, sister and elder son. The address noted that he had been ‘killed by a bomb from a hostile aircraft, which fell on an ambulance and killed eight (sic) other men.’ The tablet, prominently positioned on the south wall of the Abbey and including the words ‘3rd Cavalry Field Ambulance’ and ‘Caix, France’, is one of two memorials to Almond mentioning Caix, the other being in the Chapel of Loretto School in Scotland. George Almond’s wife Violet lived until 1971. Two of their sons become doctors, John MacCormac Almond and Patrick Richard George Almond, both of whom studied at Oxford and Middlesex Hospital, London, and served as medical officers during the Second World War, the former in the R.A.M.C. like his father and the latter in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

Colonel Menzies’ wife Ethel died aged 90 in 1981. Martyn Wilfrid Baker worked for many years after the war at Riegate and Redhill Hospital, and died in 1960; his son Dudley Martyn Baker, also a doctor, was awarded the O.B.E. for services in Burma as a Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel in the R.A.M.C. in 1945, when he was O.C. of No. 5 Field Ambulance during the crossing of the Irrawaddy River. James Moore, who received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions in the Advanced Dressing Station that day in Caix, died in Derby in 1969 aged 84. Eric Gray Frere, wounded in the shelling of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ and treated by No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance that afternoon, had been born in New Zealand but moved to Canada before the war, and afterwards resumed his job in the North West Mounted Police - from 1920, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - accompanying the King and Queen on their royal tour of Canada in 1939 and retiring as an Assistant Commissioner in 1947.

My grandfather wrote that his time on the Western Front was a ‘dreadful experience’ and that he had learned ‘the utter futility of war.’ Nevertheless, he was proud to have been in an elite cavalry regiment - as his father had been, in the 6th Dragoon Guards in the 1880s - and he was admiring of many of the officers with whom he had served. He lived a full life with much enjoyment of sport, family, friendship, nature, his historical interests and his travels with his wife from their home in Herefordshire to visit their daughter and son in Canada, but his experiences in the war – in particular the bombing of the Advanced Dressing Station, and his survival in that courtyard when so many around him had died – continued to preoccupy him to the end of his life. This account has been written in his memory.

The caption for this photo, by the official British Army war photographer Lieutenant John Warwick Brooke, reads ‘Brigadier General Algernon Lawson leading the 2nd Cavalry Brigade into Spa, 29 November 1918.’ Lawson is the officer saluting at the fro… — The caption for this photo, by the official British Army war photographer Lieutenant John Warwick Brooke, reads ‘Brigadier General Algernon Lawson leading the 2nd Cavalry Brigade into Spa, 29 November 1918.’ Lawson is the officer saluting at the front; behind him on the white horse is the Brigade Major, Captain Lord Ebrington, and behind him is my grandfather, holding a lance in the middle of the first three riders at the head of the Brigade Headquarters contingent. My grandfather often spoke of riding at the very front of the British army through newly liberated Belgian towns. To the right is the flanking guard for the column comprising men of ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers, which included my grandfather’s brother, formed up with their lances on the side of the town square. Many of the soldiers in this picture had been present during the events described here at the Battle of Amiens in August: Brigadier-General Lawson and men of the HQ, who had survived the shelling of the Brigade HQ in the trenches of the old Amiens Outer Defence Line on the afternoon of 9 August; my grandfather, a survivor of the bombing of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance in Caix; and the men of ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers, who had taken part in the charge towards Fouquescourt that afternoon - the last proper charge ever carried out by the 9th Lancers, and possibly the last cavalry charge of the war - when many men and horses were cut down by machine gun fire. The order of march on this day and the role of ‘A’ Squadron, 9th Lancers, as flanking guard is detailed in the war diaries of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade and the 9th Lancers. This scene was also captured on film (Lieutenant John Warwick Brooke, © IWM Q 7186).

The twelve men who were killed or died of wounds as a result of the bombing of No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance in Caix on the evening of 9 August 1918

In the main text above I have given biographical information on several of these men, all of whom can be found by searching the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website.

Menzies, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur John Alexander, D.S.O., R.A.M.C., aged 32

Almond, Captain George Hely Hutchinson, R.A.M.C., aged 41

Chippendale, 21142 Private Albert, R.A.M.C., aged 22

Gibson, 2070 Private A., R.A.M.C., aged 29

Lamble, A/98 Driver F.W., A.S.C. attached R.A.M.C., aged 27

McEnaney, 12151 Private J., 18th Hussars, age unknown

Smith, 5991 Private George, R.A.M.C., aged 25

Taylor, T/21290 Driver Edward, A.S.C. attached R.A.M.C., aged 33

Williams, 116769 Private Sydney William, R.A.M.C., aged 20

Wilkinson, 62212 Private Thomas Henry, R.A.M.C., aged 23

Wilson, 88025 Private William Henry, R.A.M.C., aged 25

Wood, 5720 Private Henry Arthur, R.A.M.C., aged 26

Sources

The words of Tom H. Verrinder quoted in this text are from an unpublished memoir that he wrote in the early 1970s and was produced by his daughter Ann as a bound typed volume in 1974. Three copies of this book are in the possession of his family. The quotes of his words are Copyright © 2021 David Gibbins. His papers included several other accounts of his Great War experiences, both typed and handwritten. He died in 1987 when I was 25 and a research student at the University of Cambridge. I had many hours of discussion with him about his war experiences, as did his wife Martha, his daughter Ann and his son David.

This blog forms the basis for a chapter in a forthcoming book about the cavalry in the First World War, based on my grandfather’s memoir. Further information on the book and how to order it will appear on my website.

War Diaries

The convention was to refer to units of battalion (in the case of infantry) or regiment (cavalry) and above as ‘2nd’, ‘9th’ etc, and for smaller units such as Field Ambulances as ‘No. 1’, ‘No. 3’ etc (with the full stop after No. in the American English fashion, despite it being a shortening – of the Latin word numero – rather than an abbreviation). The diaries consulted for this project are listed below by Division in descending order of unit size.

The following British unit war diaries are online in The National Archives:

Deputy Director Medical Services, Cavalry Corps

1st Cavalry Division

Assistant Adjutant and Quarter Master General, 1st Cavalry Division

Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Cavalry Division

2nd Cavalry Brigade

9th Lancers

18th Hussars

4th Dragoon Guards

‘H’ Battery, Royal Horse Artillery

2nd Machine Gun Squadron

No. 1 Cavalry Field Ambulance

No. 3 Cavalry Field Ambulance

No. 9 Cavalry Field Ambulance

6th Brigade Tank Corps

6th Battalion Tank Corps

Assistant Director Medical Services, 4th Cavalry Division

1st (Royal) Dragoons

The following Canadian unit war diaries are online in the Library and Archives Canada:

1st Canadian Division

Assistant Director Medical Services, 1st Canadian Division

2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade

7th Canadian Infantry Battalion

10th Canadian Infantry Battalion

3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade

No. 1 Canadian Field Ambulance

No. 2 Canadian Field Ambulance

No. 3 Canadian Field Ambulance

2nd Canadian Division

Assistant Director Medical Services, 2nd Canadian Division

5th Canadian Infantry Brigade

6th Canadian Infantry Brigade

No. 4 Canadian Field Ambulance

No. 5 Canadian Field Ambulance

No. 6 Canadian Field Ambulance

Assistant Director Medical Services, 4th Canadian Division

No. 11 Canadian Field Ambulance

No. 12 Canadian Field Ambulance

No. 13 Canadian Field Ambulance

Other sources cited in the text

Anglesey, The Marquess of, F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S., 1997. A History of the British Cavalry 1816 to 1919. Volume 8. The Western Front, 1915-1918; Epilogue, 1919-1939. London: Leo Cooper.

Blicq, A. Stanley, 1920. Norman Ten Hundred. A record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry. Guernsey Press.

Edmonds, J.E. (ed.), 1947. History of the Great War based on Official Documents. Military Operations France and Belgium 1918. Vol. IV. 8th August-26th September. The Franco-British Offensive. London, H.M.S.O. The Naval and Military Press reprint.

Field Service Manual 1914: Field Service Manual, 1913 (1914 Reprint, including 1914 War Establishments). Army Medical Service. (Expeditionary Force). Originally issued with Army Orders dated 1 July 1913. London, Government Printers.

Fredette, R., 1960. ‘Bombers of the black cross: German bombardment aviation in World War 1. Part II: from Kagohls to Bogohls (1916-1918)’. The Air Power Historian 7.4 (October 1960): 205-15.

Gibb, Rev. (and Lieutenant) H., 1925. Record of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards in the Great War 1914-1918. Canterbury. The Naval and Military Press reprint.

Gibbins, D.J.L., 2018, The 9th Lancers and the assault on the ‘Quadrilateral’ during the Battle of the Somme, 15 September 1916. The Chapka (Regimental Journal of the Royal Lancers (Queen Elizabeth’s Own)) 4: 138-41.

Humphreys, Lieutenant Colonel H.F., M.C., R.A.M.C., 1927. The Medical Organisation for Cavalry. Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps 49 (1 December 1927): 431-9.

Kenyon, D., 2011. Horsemen in No Man’s Land. British Cavalry and Trench Warfare, 1914-18. Pen & Sword Military.

Lumley, Captain L.R., 1936. History of the Eleventh Hussars (Prince Albert’s Own), 1908-1934. London, The Royal United Service Institution.

Macpherson, Major-General Sir W.G., K.C.M.G., C.B., LL.D., 1923. History of the Great War based on Official Documents. Medical Services General History Vol. III. Medical Services during the Operations on the Western Front in 1916, 1917 and 1918; in Italy; and in Egypt and Palestine. London, H.M.S.O. The Naval and Military Press reprint.

McWilliams, J. and Steel, R.J., 2007. Amiens 1918. Tempus.

Montgomery, Major General Sir Archibald, K.C.M.G., C.B., 1919. The Story of the Fourth Army in the Battles of the Hundred Days, August 8th to November 11th 1918. London, Hodder & Stoughton.

Preston, T., 1935-6. The Cavalry in France, August-November 1918. The Cavalry Journal 24: 167-82, 338-58, 496-514; 25: 7-27, 165-86, 332-51, 489-508; and 26: 1-23, 170-83, 326-41, 483-96.

Sheppard, Major E.W., O.B.E., M.C., 1939. The Ninth Queen’s Royal Lancers 1715-1926. Aldershot, Gale & Polden.

Snell, Colonel A.E., C.M.G., D.S.O., B.A., M.B., C.A.M.C., 1924. The C.A.M.C. with the Canadian Corps during the last hundred days of the Great War. Ottawa: F.A. Acland.

Willcox, Lieutenant Colonel W.T., 1925. The 3rd (King’s Own) Hussars in the Great War (1914-1919). London.

I would welcome any comments or additional material related to this project. Please contact me via the email address on the Contacts page or on my Facebook page.