Royal Field Artillery - A Short Summary.

On the 1st July 1899 The Royal Artillery was divided into Garrison and Field Artillery. The Royal Field Artillery was then divided into: Horse batteries, Field batteries and Mountain batteries.

The field batteries were numbered 1-103 and had their depot at Woolwich. A battery was commanded by a major with a captain as 2nd in command. It was divided into 2 or 3 sections each commanded by a lieutenant and consisting of a detachment of two guns.

The field batteries were stationed around Britain, 2 or 3 being garrisoned together under a lieutenant-colonel. In a war situation 3 batteries would form a brigade division and added to an infantry division.

There were ten Mountain batteries (numbered 1-10) and they served in India. Their uniform was the same as that of the Field Artillery except for their lace boots and gaiters which were brown instead of black.

At the outbreak of the First World War, a typical Battery was made up of four units. named "A" battery, "B" battery, "C" battery and "D" battery. A, B and C batteries consisted of six guns to each battery. These guns were 18 pounders. The fourth Battery “D” usually consisted of Howitzers.

An 18 Pounder field gun fired 3.3inch (84mm) caliber shells, which weighed 18.5lb (8.4kg) each. There were four types of shells, High explosive, Shrapnel, Smoke and Gas. A well trained crew could fire 30 rounds a minute.

Each field gun had a crew of ten men. Six of these operated it in action. The limber is drawn by a team of six horses with a driver on one side of each pair, each of the artillerymen on the gun would have a number:-

No.1 in command, (usually a Sergeant)
No.2 Operates breech mechanism.
No.3 Limbers and unlimbers (with no.2) and fires the gun.
No.4 Limbers up and unlimbers ammunition wagon (with 5 and 6).
No.5 and 6 Hook in and unhook ammunition team
No.6 operates the fuse indicator.
No.7 and 8 are Reserves at the wagon line and assists with ammunition and replacing any casualties on the gun.
No.10 "Coverer" takes over in the event of an injury to number 1, but looks after wagon teams in the mean time.

5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery - Horses & Guns

The Afghanistan War - May 1919.

The 5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery, were involved in the month long Afghanistan War, which started on 3rd May 1919 and ended with an armistice on 3rd June 1919.

On 3rd May 1919, Amanullah, the new ruler of Afghanistan, suddenly attacked the British. Amanullah knew how fragile the British positions were on the Afgan border. Together with growing unrest in India, a feeling of British fatigue after the First World War, he tried to strike home a blow that he hoped would consolidate his power at home.

Amanullah gave the British ample warning of his intentions. He wrote to the viceroy clearing stating that he rejected the control Britain had over his foreign policy and announced that Afghanistan was fully independent.

At the start of the war, the British and Indian forces, not including frontier militia, totalled eight divisions, as well as five independent brigades of infantry and three of cavalry. But whilst they had this large force in existence, it was needed elsewhere as well, and at least initially, within the immediate North-West Frontier area, the resources that the British could use were limited to two horse-mounted cavalry brigades, two infantry divisions, and three frontier brigades as well as a number of frontier militia and irregular corps. Artillery was also in short supply, and the two divisions on the frontier each had only eight 18-pdrs, four 4.5-inch howitzers, and eight 2.75-inch mountain guns. The cavalry brigades were each equipped with four 13-pound guns that were crewed by the Royal Horse Artillery. Machine guns, at least on the Khyber front, were old .303 Maxims.

The British gained a command and control advantage with their use of motor transport and wireless communications while armoured cars and RAF detachments increased their firepower and reach, the latter being demonstrated to the Afghans by a bombing raid on Kabul itself.
But the main problem for the British was manpower. The troops in India were no longer of the standard that they might otherwise have been at another time. Coming just after the end of a very costly war in Europe, the British will to fight and military-industrial capability to fight another war was very low. The Indian Army had been heavily committed to the First World War and had endured a large number of casualties. Many of its units still had not returned from overseas, and those that had begun a process of demobilisation and as such many regiments had lost almost all their most experienced men.

Likewise, the British Army in India had been gutted. Prior to 1914 there had been sixty-one British regiments serving in India. However, of these all but ten (two cavalry and eight infantry) had been withdrawn in order to fight in Europe or the Middle East. In their place, units of the Territorial Army, part time soldiers usually only intended for home defence but who had volunteered for overseas service, had been sent in order to release regular units for the fighting in France. After four years of mundane garrison duty, away from their families and disaffected, most of these men were understandably really only interested in demobilisation and returning to Britain to get on with their lives. They were in no way prepared for a hard fought campaign on the Indian frontier.

The Afghan forces achieved some success in the early days of the war as Pashtun tribesmen from both sides of the border joined forces with them. The military skirmishes soon ended in stalemate as the British recovered from their initial surprise. The war did not last long, it had started on 3rd May 1919 and the armistice was signed on 3rd June 1919, however, because both sides were soon ready to sue for peace; the Afghans were unwilling to sustain continued British air attacks on Kabul and Jalalabad, and the British were unwilling to take on an Afghan land war so soon after the bloodletting of World War I. The month long war resulted in about 1,000 Afghan dead and 2,000 British and colonial deaths. What the Afghans did not gain in battle they gained ultimately at the negotiating table.

The British virtually dictated the terms of the 1919 Rawalpindi Agreement, a temporary armistice agreement that did provide-somewhat ambiguously-for Afghan autonomy in foreign affairs. Before signing the final document with the British, the Afghans concluded a treaty of friendship with the new Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union; Afghanistan thereby became one of the first nations to recognize the Soviet government, and a "special relationship" evolved between the two governments.

For more information and a timescale : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Afghan_War

5TH Sussex (Reserve) Battery - Record of Service.

In a pocket New Testament given to him on joining, Edward Midmore kept his own personal record of the places he was posted.

Starting in September 1914 at his enlistment in Eastbourne it lists the places up until his involvement in the Afghanistan War of 1919.

1914
September 28th – Eastbourne
October 5th – St. Leonards
November 20th – Slough
November 22nd – Windsor.
December 5th – Stoke Poges

1915
June 4th – Brasted
Redhill
Maidstone
December 22nd – llyd.

1916
Sundridge
Sailsbury Plain
Patrixbourne
Canterbury
Ramsgate
Margate
Herne Bay
Canterbury (2nd Time)
Salisbury Plain (2nd Time)

On Active Service

Left England on 12th October 1917.

France
Le Harve
Marseilles

Malta

Egypt
Port Said
Port Suez
Suez Canal

Mesopotamia - November 1917
Magil
Qurnah
Ezras Jamals
Aalaf Sabel
Amarah
Kut
Baghdad
Samara
Tekrit
Bagre
Fattah
Sharqat

India
Karachi
Ouetta
Charriam

Afghanistan 1919
Spin Boldak (Capture of).

Scilly
Corsica.

5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery - In Action.

The 5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery photo's of the Battery in action.

5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery - The Men Part II.

More orginal pictures from 1915 by Gunner Edward Midmore.

5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery - The Men - Part I.

The following original photographs have been supplied to me by my good friend Brian Midmore.

His Grandfather Edward Midmore was a gunner with the 5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery RFA..
No. 896 he signed up on 28th September 1914 and was active until 27th December 1919.

He stayed in reserve in England until 11th October 1917 when he was sent to Mesopotamia and the subsequently to India.

The Men of the 5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery - Part I.

5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery, RFA - Men Needed.

In September 1914 the Eastbourne Gazette published the following appeal for new soldiers.

The 4th Sussex Battery (2nd Home Counties) was allocated to the 44th Division and would in November 1914 head for India.

The 5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery was formed on the South Coast and would spend its time in England until October 1917 when it would join the Indian Division in Mesopotamia


5th Sussex (Reserve) Battery R.F.A.

Eastbourne recruits needed

Colonel Astley Roberts commanding 2nd H.C. Brigade RFA is strongly desirous that the new battery now being formed should complete its establishment at an early date. Recruiting is proceeding briskly in St. Leonards, Bexhill and Hastings, but it is hoped that Eastbourne and district will be well represented in the new unit.

All men between the ages of 17 and 40 who are thinking of joining are urged to do so at once. Recuits can be enrolled any Monday and Wednesday or Friday evenings at 8 at the drill hall, the Goffs,

Artificers, such as shoeing smiths, saddlers and wheelers, are especially required. Pay and allowances, at Army rates, will be issued to all ranks.

If desired, an interchange with other batteries of the brigade will be arranged subsequently, so that members may be with their friends.

West Firle War Memorial, Sussex.

The War Memorial is in the centre of Firle village near to St. Peters Church.

Firle has a special place with my family, my Grandfather grew up there, in the Railway Cottages with his parents. He moved to Pevensey after the First World War.

Detailed names on the Memorial, more infomation can be found at The Roll of Honour

The small list of honour inside St. Peters Church

St. Peters Church

For more information on the village of West Firle please go to http://www.westfirle.com/interest.htm

The Work of the Censor.

This article from ‘The Times’ dated 12th May 1915, gives an amusing anecdote with regard to the work of the censors.

You have to admire the soldiers pluck trying his luck with a variety of women!

A Soldiers Love Letters.

"Describing the work of the Church Army among our troops at a meeting in Queens Hall, the Matron said that though 450 men had passed through the war hospital in Northern France in the last nine months there had been only three deaths.

One of the chaplains said that as the men got free stationery and postage they wrote to everybody they knew. The speaker acted as censor and 1,600 letters came to him in one day. He found that one soldier had written to four different girls, all in the same strain, using the same endearing adjectives and only varying the name at the beginning. The censors work was made more awkward as there was the need to put back the letters in the right envelopes.

Bishop Taylor-Smith, Chaplain General to the forces, who presided, said that as he went from place to place in the homeland and on the other side of the Channel he found everywhere promise for the good work of the Church Army. There was no need which the Government could not supply in regard to huts or recreation rooms and tents that was not supplied by the Army."

Letter Arrived Too Late.

This article comes from the fantastic book “Mud and Khaki Sketches from Flanders and France” by Vernon Bartlett.

This part of the book describes a night in a trench, when Barlett as an officer looks on his men.

Carrying on the theme of letters to the soldiers he describes the ‘buzz’ as the letters arrive and how the letter from home to ‘Denham’ arrives too late.

"I wander on my rounds to see that all the sentries are on the alert, and, suddenly, nearly fall over a man lying face downwards along the bottom of the trench. "Here, you can't sleep here, you know; you give no one a chance to pass," I say, and, for answer, I am told to "shut up," while a suppressed but still audible giggle from Private Harris warns me that the situation is not as I had imagined. The figure in the mud gets up and proves to be an officer of the Engineers, listening for sounds of mining underneath us. "I think they're at it again, but I'm not certain yet," he says cheerfully as he goes off to his own dug-out. I, in turn, lie down in the mud with my ear pressed to the ground, and I seem to hear, far beneath me, the rumble of the trolleys and the sound of the pick, so that I am left for the rest of the night in the uncomfortable expectation of flying heavenwards at any moment.

A buzz of voices which reaches me as I return from a visit to a working party informs me that the one great event of the night has taken place—the rations and the mail have arrived and have been "dumped" by the carrying party in a little side trench. Before I reach the spot a man comes hurrying up to me, "Please, sir," he says, "young Denham has been hit by a rifle grenade. 'E's got it very bad." Just as I pass the side trench, I hear the sergeant who is issuing the letters call: "Denham. A letter for young Denham," and someone says, "I'll take it to him, Sergeant, 'e's in my section."

But the letter has arrived too late, for when I reach the other end of the trench Denham is dead, and a corporal, is carefully searching his pockets for his letters and money to hand over to the platoon commander. They have carried him close to the brazier for light, and the flames find reflection on the white skin of his throat where his tunic has been torn open, and there is an ugly black stain on the bandage that has been roughly tied round him. Only one man in millions, it is true, but one more letter sent home with that awful "Killed" written across it, and one more mother mourning for her only child.

And so the night draws on. Now there is a lull, and the sentries, standing on the fire platforms, allow their heavy lids to fall in a moment's sleep; now a sudden burst of intense fire runs along the line, and everyone springs to his rifle, while star shells go up by dozens; now a huge rumble from the distance tells that a mine has been fired, and we wonder dully who fired it, and how many have been killed—dully only, for death has long since ceased to mean anything to us, and our powers of realisation and pity, thank God! have been blunted until the only things that matter are food and sleep."

(Charles Vernon Oldfield Bartlett CBE (30 April 1894, Westbury, Wiltshire - January 18, 1983) was an English journalist and politician.

After education at Blundell's School Bartlett was invalided out of the Army in World War I. As a journalist he worked for the Daily Mail, and was a foreign correspondent for The Times. In 1922 he was appointed director of the London office of the League of Nations. In 1933 he joined the News Chronicle, and was its diplomatic correspondent for 20 years).

Letters from the Wounded.

This moving artcle comes from the book On the King's Service Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms by Innes Logan.

Innes Logan was Chaplin to the Forces from September 1914 to May 1916. In the aftermath of the Battle of Loos in September 1915, he worked at a Casualty Clearing Station. Here he describes the wounded soldiers writing home to their loved ones.

“Every wounded man has a letter to write or to have written for him, and it was essential that since the people at home knew there was heavy fighting going on all messages should be sent off at once. This is one of the chaplain's voluntary tasks, and we were kept close to it every afternoon for some weeks after the offensive began. For some time the number of letters was about four hundred every day.

A number of men had written farewell letters—very moving they seemed, but I did not think it part of my duty to look too closely at these. They had addressed them and then put them in their pockets, hoping that if they were killed they might be discovered. Some had been finished just before the order to go over the parapet. But the curious thing was that these were sent home, with a few words in a covering note saying they were alive and well, as a sort of keepsake.

In those written after arrival in hospital a sense of gratitude to God was very frequent, and a great longing for home and the children. Some strange phrases were used: a mother would be addressed as 'Dear old face,' or simply 'Old face.' But poets used to write verses to their mistresses' eyebrows, and why not a letter to a mother's face?”

How Letters Reach Our Soldiers in the Field.

This article comes from ‘The Great War in a Different Light’.

The Army's Monster Mail by Basil Clarke was originally published in ‘the War Illustrated’ 1st September, 1917.

It gave the families at home a good indication of what happened to their letters and parcels. Written in the language of the time it certainly is an interesting article.

How Letters Reach Our Soldiers in the Field

The soldier without his letters from home is less good a soldier.

So thoroughly has this been proved in wars, both ancient and modern, that it is now a military axiom ; and the Army Postal Service is included in Field Service Regulations (Part II) as one of the departments, of the Army without which the fighting troops cannot "be maintained in a state of efficiency."

Letters from home are as essential in their way to a soldier in the field as food and supplies; for just as food is needed to keep him in fighting trim so is news of relatives and friends to keep him in good spirits and in fighting mood. It is evidence of the importance attached to the postal service in the war that more than 4,000 men are occupied in the Army Postal Service, dealing exclusively with letters and parcels for soldiers. They handle no fewer than twelve million letters a week and not far short of a million parcels. Those letters, if stacked one above another in a pile, would be about twenty miles high.

Apart from the handling of letters immediately after they are posted in local post-offices, the whole of the work of carrying them to the armies in the field is done by the Army postmen. These men are a special section of the Royal Engineers. They have their own colonels and other commissioned officers and non-commissioned ranks, representing all grades of the civilian postal service. Nearly all the men, in fact, were postal servants in civil life and now carry on in khaki for the Army the work they did for civilians in years gone by.

"Initial" Difficulties

The Expeditionary Forces have their own post-office in London — an immense place quite separate from the ordinary post-office, and staffed by many hundreds of men. To this office are sent from all parts of the country all letters bearing the magic address B.E-F. Every post-office of any size has its special B.E.F. bag or bags for London ; and all hours of the day and night trains are arriving in London with their loads of B.E.F. bags for our soldiers in the field in France, Egypt, Greece, or elsewhere.

In London the great work of sorting begins. Sorters in khaki, standing before shelves of innumerable pigeon-holes, are now experts in numbers and initials where formerly they dealt in names of towns and streets.

The soldier's habit of putting merely the number and initials of his unit on the top of his letters home has led to the very general adoption of this practice on the part of people answering the letters, and the Army weakness for initialing things, people, and units is seen at its height on the letters reaching the London sorting office.

All the regiments must "be known by their initials to the sorter. All the different ranks and appointments, some of which are expressible only in seven or eight initials, he must have at his finger ends. Thus "A.D.A.D.A.M.S." Stands for "Acting. Deputy.. Assistant Director of Army Medical Service" ; "M.T. 50. Sub. Am. P.. AH.B.5." means, "Motor Transport, 50. Sub Ammunition Part, Attached Heavy Battery Section."

When you consider the thousands of queer duties held by men in so huge an Army, and remember that each duty may be expressed in initials, you can realise the enormous task before, letter sorters. One sorter the other day racked his brain for several minutes over a letter addressed to a private, "Care of O.C.P." It was not till he had examined the key list that he discovered its meaning: "Officer Commanding Pigeons."

Postal Base in France

From London the letters, daily sorted into units and stationary post-offices, are dispatched to the postal bases of our different Expeditionary Forces in the field. Those to France, where the greatest proportion of the mail goes are landed at the main postal base, the port of ———. A few other bags of mails addressed to G.H.O. and different Army headquarters may go to other ports, but the great bulk of letters to the Army go to ——— which though not the principal base in France, is nevertheless the principal one so far as the postal service is concerned.

From the central post-office all letters not for local distribution or for special distribution are forwarded to points in the field by rail. They go in the "supply trains" which travel every day with one day's rations to different "railheads." Each division in the field draws its supplies day by day from a "railhead," and with the motor transport column that goes to fetch these supplies are included special motor-lorries for the carrying of mails. These lorries have a small postal staff attached to them, as have also the special postal wagons of the "supply trains" that travel up from the base. The letters thus never leave the charge of Army postmen. Earlier in the war the Army Postal Service control of mails ceased at the "railhead," and men of the divisional .supply columns (Army Service Corps) then became responsible for them. This proved to be a success,

On the Way to the Front

Nowadays the postal lorries of the Motor Transport supply column run through with mails right from "rail-head" to "refilling" point — a point some little distance behind the front lines to which every unit sends its own horse transport for supplies and mails. There is a post-office here, a big affair, and while some wagons of the horse "trains are filling up with food and supplies others go off to the post-office and collect sacks of mails for their units.

Up they go towards the front lines, and are delivered at the field post-offices. To picture a field post-office, shut out all ideas of what a post-office may be like. The only sure way to recognise a field post-office when you see one is by the little oblong flag, half white, half red, that flies over it. The post-office may be a barn, sadly knocked about by shell, with holes in wall or roof, or both. It may be a little bell tent in a corner of a field and the postman, when you call may be melting his sealing wax for out-going mailbags over a fire of broken boxes or smashed-up furniture. Or it may be a dug-out, or a cellar deep down under the earth.

I spent half an hour in a dug-out post-office once in the valley of the Somme. You climbed down to it by twenty muddy steps made of plants. A stove chimney-pipe ran to the upper air by way of the strips, and in feeling your way down in the dark you invariably touched the stove-pipe and burnt your fingers. At the bottom the place looked more like some pirates' or smugglers’ den than a post-office.

A sergeant postman was in charge and along with him were two corporals as assistant postmasters. They were opening the mail bags, newly arrived and before long were sorting the letters into companies and platoons. Soon fatigue parties and orderlies from the units in the line began to come down for their letters, and each man took back a little wad for his own unit.
The scene, all enacted by the light of two candles and a smoky paraffin lamp amid narrow walls of clay supported by timber balks was singularly picturesque. The sound of the guns and dropping shells not far away lent a curious unreality to it all. To see a soldier in shirt-sleeves, struggling patiently to read a badly-written name and address while guns were booming not many yards, away, was unlike any preconceived notion of a post-office.

A Hint to Friends at Home

It was in trenches and dug-outs of the front lines that one saw the consummation of all the splendid work done to assure our men getting their letters. As the orderly arrived from the post office it seemed as though letters were more important than food, tobacco, ammunition, or anything else.
Men swarmed round him bubbling with eagerness. "Anything for me, Puggy?" "Anything for me? "the shout came from all sides and the orderly carrying the letters had to stave off hands which would have seized his pile of letters had they only been able. "Now wait a minute, all of yer, and I'll tell yer'."

He climbed on a hummock of clay and sat down. Then, slipping the string off his bundle of letters, he picked them as one by one, shouting the names of the addressees.
It went something like this: "Hubert Smith"; he looked up and threw the letter towards a hand eagerly extended for it. "Will Jones, Charles Pearce, Hubert Smith (you must owe money, Hubert!), Henry Hall, Bert Morris, Hubert Smith (how she must love yer '), Henry James," and so on right to the end of his pile.

The joy of the receivers of letters was only equalled by the glumness of those who had received none. Some grumbled openly: "Five brothers, three sisters, twenty-two cousins, and not one of them written.” Others said nothing, but returned sadly to their tasks. And if friends at home only realised how sadly, they would not omit to write to their soldiers.

(Sir Basil Clarke, KBE (12 August 1879 - 12 December 1947) was an early pioneer of public relations and British government wartime propaganda expert. He also acted as a war correspondent in the First World War, later writing a book of his experiences entitled My Round of the War.

At the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent as a clandestine war correspondent to France. Journalists were not allowed in the war zone at this time, but Clarke managed to evade the authorities longer than any other reporter to roam the front lines. Years later, war correspondents had become greatly respectable and he travelled to almost every theatre of war reporting for the Daily Mail).