Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - 7th October 1914

 

The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade

August 1914 to March 1915

BY 

Brigadier-General COUNT GLEICHEN,

(now Major-General Lord Edward Gleichen),
K.C.V.O., C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.

Oct. 7th.

Then off at 5 A.M. next morning, ourselves for Pont Ste Maxence. Major Vandeleur of the Scottish Rifles had just arrived to take command of the Cheshires, who had had nothing but a captain to command them since Lt.-Col. Boger was taken prisoner on the 24th August. He seemed to me a first-rate sensible fellow, but we were not destined to keep him for long.

As the Brigade was still rather short of socks, I bought as many as I could here for the men, but not many were available. It was a nice little town with a blown-up stone bridge, but the French R.E. had already constructed another of wood.

The French entraining orders are that all troops have to be at the station four blessed hours before the train starts, so as to give time to load up properly. We thus arrived at 8, and did not start till 12; but the actual entraining of the Cheshires—the only battalion with Brigade Headquarters—took only one hour and a quarter,—not bad at all considering that there were no ramps or decent accessories, and all the vehicles had to be man-handled into the trucks.

There were two sorts of trains—one mostly for men, the other mostly for horses and vehicles; but although they were very long—thirty-four to forty cars if I remember right—they were not quite long enough for us, and several men and vehicles had to be left behind and brought on by other trains, resulting in slight incompleteness for a few days.

We rapidly reached Creil, where we were to get our final orders. What on earth would our destination be? Rumour had it that we should go to Calais, or even to Bruges; but we had no such journey after all, for we were only intended to go to Abbeville as it turned out—rather a disappointment, as we hoped it would be further afield.

Abbeville—a two hours' journey as a rule in peace time—was not reached till 8 P.M., although we were due there at 6.30 P.M. We halted by the way, for half an hour or more, at Amiens, where we made the acquaintance of a cheery crowd of "Fusiliers Marins," sturdy naval reservists from Normandy and Brittany, who covered themselves with glory later on amid the Belgian dunes.