“During
the next five days our troops followed up their advantage hotly, and in spite
of increasing resistance from the German rearguards, realised a further deep
advance. The enemy clung to his
positions…with much tenacity….and the progress of our troops was only won by
hard and determined fighting.”- Field Marshall Sir
Douglas Haig, Despatches, Describing offensive actions, late August 1918[1]
The fighting was
intense, constant and every yard hard won.
Each river crossed, village cleared or trench destroyed in the final
three months of the war was wrested from an enemy who would not concede easily
to defeat. Everywhere along the Western
Front, the war was moving more quickly than it had in the previous three
years. These last hundred days would be
a series of battles, clawing forward, relentlessly pushing the Germans back
from and beyond the ground taken during their daring Spring Offensives. Keeping constant pressure on the enemy meant
that commanders no longer had the luxury of months in which to train and
rehearse for set-piece battles such as Vimy the year before. Urgency and haste can be seen in archived
operations orders contemporary to the Hundred Days. Many are hastily handwritten in an expedient
script on small leaves of notepaper in the hours before an attack rather than
thoughtfully typed out weeks in advance in perfectly edited clerical lines.
On the evening of the
26th of August, 1918, the 18th Canadian Infantry
Battalion moved from its support position to jumping off points along the
Arras-Cambrai road. “By nightfall, as the forward troops began to approach a
trench system known as the Fresnes-Rouvroy Line, German resistance grew more
resolute…The Germans brought in fresh divisions and many additional machine
guns.”[2] The 18th Battalion had been
adequately reinforced since their last stint on the front, and although while
in support on the 26th it had taken some casualties, these were to
be considered “light” and would not have been viewed as a diminishment of
effective ability. Tomorrow was going to be worse. Tomorrow they would be at the head of the advance.
My last post, “In the Event of My Death” was very well
received, and wanting to do a similar post, I was held up by not having a ready
subject. However, through The Vimy Foundation’s Facebook page, I
found out about a community art project being done in Huron County
Ontario. With the Poppy Installation at
the Tower of London as inspiration, Huron County plans to make and display
ceramic poppies in numbers representing that County’s fallen from WWI. (more on
the project here) The Tower Installation was an awesome,
thought inspiring display, the association between the deep red of the poppies
and that of spilled blood was quite a powerful and sombre image. I love the idea of such a thing being done on
a much smaller scale; at the level of an individual community; for it was as
communities we sent our sons to war, and it was communities who suffered as one
when so many failed to return. Huron
County raised a battalion for overseas service, the 161st (Huron)
Battalion, CEF, but this unit, like many others raised from 1916 onwards would
not be deployed to the front intact but would be used to supplement existing
battalions already in the field. This
made the prospect of finding an individual to commemorate a bit tricky. As it
happens, the system of appointing regimental numbers (an individual identifier
like today’s service or serial numbers) was done in blocks, and the 161st
was authorised a block of numerals beginning with “654.”[3] A search for matching numerals in the CWGCDatabase turned up, as a first result #654805 Graham AJG, L/Cpl.
Alexander John Goggin
Graham, a farmer from Fordwich, Huron County Ontario attested to the 161st
Battalion on the 10th of May 1916 and embarked with his battalion
for England that November. Aside from
three weeks that following April in hospital with the mumps, Graham spent the
fifteen months since arriving in England at a training camp. His records show he was twice promoted, to
Lance and later full Corporal, but such must have been his desire to serve at the
front he “reverted to Private at (his) own request in order to proceed
overseas” on the 28th of February, 1918. Graham was assigned to the 18th
Battalion (4th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 2nd Canadian
Division) and joined them in the field on the 15th of March. Aside from the change in scenery, the day of
his arrival must have seemed like the routine he’d left behind in the camp at
Kent. The 18th, out of the
line in a rest area reported on that day:
“Company inspections of rifles and equipment. Serialised training as per syllabus attached.
91 OR’s (Other Ranks, including Graham) arrived from 5th Canadian
Division…as reinforcements…..Recreational training i.e. football, baseball etc.
during afternoon.”[4]
A few months later, it
was a different story altogether. The
Germans had taken a huge series of offensives throughout the spring, pushing
the Allies back a great distance, but had failed to definitively break the line
before their momentum was lost. In
response, the Allies launched a coordinated counter-offensive which, three
months after it had begun in August would conclude with the Armistice. Throughout the month of August “the Canadian
Corps was confronted by a series of formidable defence positions which the
enemy was holding in strength.”[5]
Graham, still with the
18th Battalion had just been appointed to the rank of Lance Corporal
on the 8th of August, to replace a man who had died of his wounds
the day before. On the morning of the 27th,
he was present with the men who had made it this far, some of them only recent
arrivals; waiting tensely in the trenches captured only hours previously to set
off behind a creeping barrage- a sheltering wall of steel- to assault a
subsequent defensive line along the Sensée River and the town of
Vis-en-Artois. Historian Tim Cook notes:
“The fighting since August 26th had been of the worst kind. The Canadians had excelled at plunging ahead
behind the battle winning artillery barrage and, when that failed, at employing
fire and movement infantry tactics.”[6]
With Zero hour set for ten that morning, the artillery was planned to be a
creeping barrage lifting 100 yards every four minutes, “a pause being made and
a protective barrage formed approximately 300 yards beyond the River
SENSEE. This pause will last for thirty
minutes; the barrage will then continue at the same rate as before.”[7]
A report received at 2nd
Division HQ at 11:05 was positive, the attack was going well.[8] Later, close to four that afternoon, the
Division received conflicting reports.
The first was that the attacking battalions (18th and 19th)
had taken Vis-en-Artois and were moving beyond the river. This was only half true, the latter report
corrected: “4.10 p.m. 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade advise- the 18th
Battalion was held up at SENSEE RIVER at 3 pm….Hostile opposition very heavy
from the East.”[9] The rapidity of these advances and the fluid
nature of battle tore at the ability of the artillery to cooperate and
coordinate with infantry units operating well in front of their line of
sight. The 6th Brigade,
Canadian Field Artillery, responsible for covering the 4th Canadian
Infantry Brigade on the 27th stated: “The attack was resumed on the
morning of the 27th with a barrage starting at 10.00 a.m…..The
barrage was completed about 1.00 p.m. and the batteries began to push forward.”[10]
At the tip of the
spear, though, while the first objectives had been reached by noon, helped by
the covering barrage, “At this juncture, a barrage scheduled to continue after
half and hour’s curtailment failed to materialise. Consequently an outpost line had to be
formed.”[11] Meaning that the battalion could not move
against the strong enemy positions to their front without artillery support.
When “the barrage sputtered…the German machine-gunners were able to emerge.”[12] The 18th Battalion was pinned by
this fire, well short of their main objective at the Sensée, and prepared a
hasty position in a captured German trench.
Somewhere in all of this, LCpl Graham was taken from the field with a
penetrative GSW (Gun Shot Wound) to the abdomen. He was brought to Number 42 Casualty Clearing
Station, no doubt in great pain. Nothing
could be done for him and later that same day, Alexander Graham, farmer from
Huron County, died of his wounds.[13]
Casualties had been
heavy, the 18th Battalion recording “Approximate casualties all
ranks 15 killed & 150 wounded.”[14] Altogether, the losses of the 4th Brigade
in the five days of fighting at the end of August were the equivalent to the
loss of an entire battalion, between 25-30% of effective strength.
Lance Corporal Graham
is buried at the Aubigny Cemetery Extension. “From March 1916 to the
Armistice, Aubigny was held by Commonwealth troops and burials were made in the
Extension until September 1918. The 42nd Casualty Clearing Station buried in it
during the whole period.”[15] He rests among 2,771 of his comrades. 227
French, 64 German war graves and seven burials from the Second World War are
also present at Aubigny. Lance Corporal Graham is fittingly remembered by the
inscription on his grave stone: “Gone, But Not Forgotten.”
[2] Marteinson, John “We Stand on Guard: An Illustrated
History of the Canadian Army” Ovale Publications 1992 pp 196-7
[4] War Diary Entry, 18th Canadian Infantry
Battalion, 15 March 1918 courtesy Library and Archives Canada
[5] Nicholson Col GWL “Canadian Expeditionary Force:
Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War” Roger Duhomel,
Queen’s Printer Ottawa, 1962 pg. 430
[6] Cook, Tim “Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great
War 1917-1918” Penguin Canada 2008 pg.475
[7] 2nd Canadian Division Operations Order 248, Appended to 2 Can Div. War Diary,
August 1918 Courtesy Library and Archives Canada
[8] War Diary Entry, 2nd Canadian Division dated
27 August 1918, Courtesy Library and Archives Canada
[13] Service Records 654805 Graham, L/Cpl AJG, Courtesy
Library and Archives Canada
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