Published by the University of Manchester at THE UNIVERSITY PRESS ( H.M. McKechnie , Secretary) 12 Lime Grove, Oxford Road , MANCHESTER LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. London : 39 Paternoster Row New York : 443-449 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street Chicago : Prairie Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street Bombay : 8 Hornby Road Calcutta : 6 Old Court House Street Madras : 167 Mount Road Officers The Battalion Officers on Mobilization, August 1914 Photo: Warwick Brookes Front Row, left to right —Rev. E.T.

MANCHESTER: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. London, New York, Bombay, etc. 1918 THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH...

During the passage of this book through the press, the Author has been engaged overseas on active service, and has been unable to devote the necessary attention to the correction of the proofs, etc. Due allowance must therefore be made for such errors as have crept into the pages. The Publishers have felt obliged to delete the numbers of the Territorial Battalions mentioned in the book, a fact which accounts for occasional vagueness in terminology....

EASTWARD HO! Our Battalion of the Manchesters was typical of the old Territorial Force, whose memory has already faded in the glory of the greater Army created during the War, but whose services in the period between the retreat from Mons and the coming into action of "Kitchener's Men" claim national gratitude. Their earlier history hardly emerges from parochialism. Founded in 1859 and recruited mainly from the southerly suburbs of Manchester, the Battalion lived through the common vicissitudes

THE SUDAN The tasks allotted to the Battalion between October, 1914, and April, 1915, while garrisoning the Sudan were of great variety. With the gunners at Khartum Fort, they constituted part of the British force then in the country, of which Colonel Gresham was commander. The detachment left at Port Sudan organised its defences, ran an armoured train, and patrolled the Red Sea in the Enterprise . One group, under Captain R.V. Rylands (afterwards killed on Gallipoli), guarded the railway works

GALLIPOLI The 42nd Division was soon in the midst of hard fighting, stormy weather and much privation. Casualties began early, though the first Battalion exploit under fire was happily bloodless. On the 9th May, 80 men were told off to fill water-bottles and carry them under fire over half-a-mile of broken ground to an Australian unit. They tracked cleverly across the moor, and were met by an eager Australian with the question: "Have you brought the water, cobbers?" On the 11th, the Battalion ha

THE AUGUST BATTLES AT CAPE HELLES In the history of the expedition to the Dardanelles, the August battles in the area of Cape Helles figure as a pinning or holding attack by the British Army, designed to occupy the enemy while the Suvla Bay landing was effected. The line of communications that linked the Achi Baba position with Maidos and Gallipoli was to be cut by our forces operating from Suvla and Anzac, and the Narrows were to be opened to our fleet by the capture of Sari-Bair. The epic of t

TRENCH WARFARE ON GALLIPOLI The routine upon which the Battalion entered at this stage remained almost unchanged until the evacuation. Our Headquarters, where I slept when in command of the Battalion during Colonel Canning's various short spells as acting Brigadier, were usually in some heather-covered gorge, opening upon a deep blue sea. Essex Ravine was a frequent site. The side of this ravine which faced the north-east protruded beyond the side sheltered from the Turkish fire, and was thus fo

THE STRAIN In the second week of October, 1915, the Army at Cape Helles was reinforced by dismounted Yeomanry from East and West Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and by some Royal Fusilier Territorial units from Malta, who were lent to the Royal Naval Division. Many West Kent officers and N.C.O.'s were for a time attached to the Battalion, and proved admirable comrades. The 42nd Division received some scanty drafts on the 23rd October. These came from the 3rd line units at Codford on Salisbury Plain, an

THE LIMIT In the balmy days of late October it was still possible to enjoy life on Gallipoli. The ceaseless vigil of the trenches was cheered by contact with the bravest men I have known. The dirt and drudgery of rest bivouacs were assuaged by bathing, and by jolly "missing word competitions" and "sing-songs," as well as our courses of lectures and discussions on history, politics, the War, and the England to arise after the War. Talk gravitated again and again to the tragedy of the 4th June. I

LAST WORDS ON GALLIPOLI The last I saw of the trenches was the tangled line on Fusilier Bluff. The last I saw of Gallipoli was the fading contour of its cliffs as we sailed in the Delta for Mudros and Alexandria. When we touched at Mudros we heard the first whisper of Lord Kitchener's fateful visit to the Eastern Mediterranean. All questions relating to the initiation and conduct of the expedition are fitly left to the judgment of the Dardanelles Commission. Here have only been expressed ideas t

REVIVAL IN EGYPT A large proportion of the sick and wounded invalided from Gallipoli became familiar with one or other of the Alexandria hospitals. I spent a week at Victoria College, which had become No. 17 General Hospital, with Sister Neville, whose devotion to duty the Battalion had learnt when at Khartum, as Matron. Thence I went to No. 10 Convalescent Hospital at Ibra-himieh, once the stately house of an interned German called Lindemann but now converted into a comfortable home under the c

ON THE SUEZ CANAL During February of this year the Battalion was engaged upon an inner line of works within easy walking distance of the Canal. A semicircular outpost line, which covered these works and the Brigade camp, was occupied nightly, but there was no real danger of attack. Beyond the outpost line a distant screen of posts, whose names recalled Lancashire, were in course of construction. Life under such conditions gave no scope for ideas. The men did set tasks as fatigue work. There was

SINAI The view at Ashton is superb. Looking back on Africa, we saw on the horizon the pale contour of the Gebel Ataki beyond the silvery line of the Bitter Lakes and the Canal. On its Asiatic side, the detached posts of Oldham, Railhead, and Salford, held by other battalions of the Manchesters, glittered under a torrid sky amid the great waste of desert. Facing our front, the wilderness stretched towards Palestine in endless undulation. The sultry days spent by the Battalion at Ashton were, howe

THE TERRITORIAL IDEA The experiences of a typical unit of the Territorial Force must throw light on the vexed questions that have gathered round it. Three criticisms of the Territorial system have been made ever since its adoption in 1907. First, its establishment of 310,000 men has been regarded as totally inadequate, and before the War the country even failed to recruit numbers within sixty thousand of this modest standard. Secondly, its yearly training, which provided but a fortnight's life i

The following is an extract from a letter on the work of the Battalion sent by General Sir F.R. Wingate, G.C.B., K.C.M.G., D.S.O., High Commissioner for Egypt, to the General-Officer-in-Chief of the Division, when the Battalion left the Sudan. Governor-General's Office, Khartum. 10th April 1915. ... during the few months they [the Battalion] have been in the Sudan they have become thoroughly efficient soldiers in the strictest sense of the term. Route marches, night operations, field days, hard