Royal West Kent, 6th battalion (Jan-Sept 1915).

Post date: Apr 26, 2015 4:12:7 PM

Serving in the 6th battalion of the Royal West Kent (RWK) regiment in June 1915 (see Parish magazine of June 1915 Updated Navy and Army list) were the following Wateringbury men: Lieut. Henry Francis Bingham Stevens; Pte. Henry Latter (A Company ); Pte. William Skinner (D Company). Pte. Fredrick Ernest Latter was also in the 6th Battalion and was killed on the third day of the Somme offensive but is not included in the vicar's list of June 1915.

There follows a brief extract (pp.112-115) from Captain C.T. Atkinson's 1924 book The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment , 1914-1919:

Included in General Wing's Twelfth Division was the senior Service battalion of The Queen's Own. After spending the mid-winter months at Hythe, during which period Colonel Even had left the battalion for the War Office and had been succeeded by Major Venables, on which Major Beeching became second-in-command, the 6th RWK had moved to Aldershot at the end of February. Here the remaining portion of its training had been passed, a period of hard work and of many rumours both as to the probable date of the battalion's departure for active service and still more as to its destination. Ultimately it was June 1st before the main body left Aldershot for Folkestone , whence a night passage carried it to Boulogne. It was a good augury for the 6th that the commandant of the Base Camp should have been a former C.O. of the 1st Battalion, Colonel Maunsell, who had been in command at the Depot earlier in the war. On June 3rd the battalion entrained again, finding on the train the transport company, machine-gun section and other details under Major Beeching, who had preceded the main body by one day , travelling by Southampton and Havre. A long night journey took it to its detraining station at Wizernes¹, from which a couple of marches, trying to those making their first acquaintance with french roads in very sultry weather, brought it well within the sound of the guns at Meteren² on June 6th. A fortnight in billets followed, then came a week in which the battalion was attached by platoons and companies to the 19th Brigade for instruction in trench-warfare, after which it took over reserve trenches from the Warwickshire Territorials of the Forty-Eighth Division in the famous Ploegstreet Wood. On the last day of June, the 6th moved up to relieve the 6th Bluffs and found itself actually holding part of the British front line, and with the enemy only 150 yards away.

"Plugstreet Wood" in the summer of 1915 was not a particularly active quarter. Shortage of artillery ammunition was necessarily restricting to a minimum the offensive activities of the B.E.F. and the local tactical situation presented no exceptional features. Thus the two-and-a-half months which the 6th spent in this sector, or in the one immediately South of it, were marked by few outstanding incidents. But they were far from being a time of idleness or without value as training. The maintenance and improvement of the trenches involved constant work, vigilant patrolling had to be carried on, in the course of which Captain Dawson distinguished himself by daring and successful reconnaissances, and the battalion found it no easy job to establish an ascendancy over the enemies active and enterprising snipers. By the middle of August it was noted that there had been a marked diminution of the enemy's rifle fire, and though his expenditure of trench mortar ammunition had increased no great damage had resulted. On the whole casualties; for July they amounted to 50 all told, 6 men being killed, and one officer Lieut. Heath, and 43 other ranks wounded; for August they were lower, 5 men killed, two officers, Lieut. Hodgson Smith and 2nd-Lieut. Mann and 28 men wounded, and as three drafts had joined and the sick rate had been remarkably low the battalion was well up to strength. A noticeable incident was that which won for the battalion its first D.C.M., the first indeed won by any member of any Service Battalion in the war. This occurred on the morning of July 19th, when Sergt. Cresswell went out from the trenches under very heavy rifle-fire and brought in a wounded officer and a man who had been hit while patrolling in "No Man's Land" and were lying nearly 50 yards out from the line. The usual tour of duty in trenches was six days , followed by six out, during which large working parties had constantly to be found. In these periods out of the line several inspections took place. On August 18th the battalion was inspected by Lord Kitchener and commended for its healthy appearance and hard work, while a little later the G.O.C. Second Army , General Sir H. Plumer, expressed himself highly satisfied with what he had seen, and held up to the battalion the glorious example of the 1st Battalion, declaring that he "never wished to have a better battalion under him."

September saw the 6th entrusted with with its first active enterprise. Between Monmouth House on the right and Essex farm on the left there was an awkward re-entrant in the line which it was decided to straighten out by constructing a breastwork across the chord of the arc. After dark one evening a strong covering party was pushed out in front and, thus [protected, working parties threw up during the hours of darkness a line over 100 yards in length which was connected up with the old line by a communication trench called Sevenoaks Tunnel. The work was carried out without interference from the enemy and was a very satisfactory and useful performance, greatly improving the line. One more tour of duty in these trenches followed , costing the battalion its first officer, Lieut. Bingham Stevens, killed on September 17th, a day of more than usual artillery and trench-mortar activity, and then the 6th moved away from Ploegsteert, passing Southward to the area South-East of Bethune, where on September 25th, the First Army had delivered its attack on Loos. Its apprenticeship was over³, a severe test was before it.

Notes:

1. TAB note-Wizernes about 50 km from Boulogne.

2. TAB note-Miteren another 40 km from Wizernes.

3. The 6th losses in action up to the end of September came to just 100: 1 officer and 13 other ranks killed, 4 officers and 82 other ranks wounded. It had received drafts amounting to 2 officers and 140 other ranks, and at the end of September it mustered 27 officers and 996 men, of whom 1 officer and 43 men were detached on various employments.

See also War Diary for the diary kept by the 6th battalion.