The Western Front 1915 by Peter F Batchelor

Author:Peter F Batchelor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752487489
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

Battle of Festubert

After sixty hours – the longest artillery bombardment of the war to date – the battalion, having moved up to its assembly positions during the night, prepared to advance. Stockwell ensured that the boards were laid across the ditch and noted in his diary that the enemy parapet was not much damaged as many of the high-explosive shells had gone over it. He also commented on the number of ‘shorts’ from British artillery which wounded several of his men. German artillery returned fire ten minutes before zero hour, shelling both the British front line and no-man’s-land.

The first line of A Coy climbed over the British parapet at 03.16 hours (Stockwell delayed his men for one minute until the British artillery fire had lifted), followed shortly afterwards by the other half of the company. Machine-gun fire from the right, where 2nd Queen’s (Royal West Surreys) were advancing and rifle fire from in front, took its toll of the RWF but, as Stockwell recorded: ‘the remaining men went straight on to the enemy trenches, where half an hour’s strenuous hand-to-hand fighting took place in a frightful tangled system of trenches’. It was in this fighting that No. 3902, CSM Frederick Barter, won his VC.

Having crossed the 120 yards of no-man’s-land and gained entry to the German front line, Barter collected together eight men and bombed down the trench to the right forcing the surrender of the German occupants; he continued bombing until in total he cleared some 500 yards of trench. Besides being responsible for the surrender of 105 of the enemy, including three officers, Barter also discovered and cut eleven enemy mine leads. His actions considerably helped the advance of the 2nd Queen’s as well as giving great assistance to the men of his own battalion. Barter was awarded the VC for his part in the attack. When interviewed later Barter praised the eight men with him in the action, in particular Pte Thomas Hardy who, when wounded in the right shoulder 10 yards from the German line, ignored Barter’s order for him to retire, saying he was left-handed. After application of a field-dressing, Hardy, attached from 2nd Queen’s for bomb training, ran forward, bombing nearly 30 yards of trench before being killed, shot in the head.

There was confusion in the enemy trenches, men from various battalions being mixed together. Capt. Stockwell collected a party of men from four battalions and eventually reached Canadian Orchard but his force, numbering fewer than 100 men, was not strong enough to capture this position and returned late in the day to the original British line.

The battalion was relieved on 18 May after recovering the bodies of four officers and more than 100 other ranks of the RWF from the former no-man’s-land. The strength of the battalion on 16 May was 25 officers and 806 other ranks; 6 officers and 247 men came out of the battle.

Barter’s VC was gazetted on 29 June and he was presented with his medal by the King at Buckingham Palace on 12 July 1915.

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