The Capture of St Pierre Divion.
Vol. 5, No. 5 Published Quarterly January, 1931
AN INCIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE i6th BATTALION THE
SHERWOOD FORESTERS (CHATSWORTH RIFLES),
NOVEMBER 13TH, 1916.
By Lieut.-Colonel Roy F. Truscott, O.B.E.
[Note.The author has found it convenient, in writing of this incident in the
history of the battalion with which he served, to use throughout the first person
plural, rather than continually to refer to the Battalion." This method has many
advantages, but it has one great disadvantagethat it identifies the writer with the
incident described. The author of this article took no part in the engagement.
SHAKESPEARE, it will be remembered, finds it comparatively easy to dramatize
isolated incidents in his battles, and by means of an accommodating imagination
in his contemporaries, or by resourceful stage-management to-day, his audi
ences are, in the course of some bloody encounter transplanted to witness sections
of the action in which a militaryif not a dramaticsense seem unrelated to each
other. In a modern battle it is not easy to pick out an incident in another part
of the field which lends itself to this treatment. The activities of every unit
taking part in any attack other than a raid are for the most part inextricably
entangled in those of other units, and description by watertight compartments is
impossible.
There is, however, one achievement of the battalion with which the author
served which, owing to weather conditions, can be treated as a separate entity, and
as it has certain claims to picturesqueness as well as tactical and even strategic
importance, some account of it may be justified.
It will be recalled that the great Battle of the Somme opened on July 1st, 1916.
It ended on November 13th, and in the interval, to use a colloquialism, every
division had a cut at it." The incident to be described took place on the last day
of the long series of actions which are comprehended under that battle, and it
concluded the operations, so far as our division was concerned, in a most dramatic
manner.
The 39th Division, to which we belonged, had been on the Somme since
September 3rd, and at the beginning of November were occupying the trenches on
the south bank of the River Ancre in and about Thiepval and Thiepval Wood.
The position was on the immediate left of Thiepval, and had recently become much
