54TH(EAST ANGLIAN) DIVISIONFirst Line
In his despatch of 11th December 1915, dealing with the operations at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, Sir Ian Hamilton said: “The 54th Division, infantry only, arrived and were disembarked on August 11th and placed in reserve. On the following day, August 12th, I proposed that the 54th Division should make a night-march in order to attack, at dawn on the 13th, the heights Kavak Tepe-Teke Tepe.” “That afternoon the 163rd Brigade moved off and in spite of serious opposition established itself about the A of Anafarta in difficult and enclosed country. In the course of the fight, creditable in all respects to the 163rd Brigade, there happened a very mysterious thing. The 1/5th Norfolks were on the right of the line and found themselves for a moment less strongly opposed than the rest of the brigade, Against the yielding forces of the enemy Colonel Sir H. Beauchamp, a bold, self-confident officer, eagerly pressed forward, followed by the best part of the battalion. The fighting grew hotter, and the ground became more wooded and broken. At this stage many men were wounded or grew exhausted with thirst. These found their way back to camp during the night. But the colonel, with 16 officers and 250 men, still kept pushing on, driving the enemy before him. Amongstthese ardent souls was part of a fine company enlisted from the King’s Sandringham estates. Nothing more was ever seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight and sound. Not one of them ever came back.”
Owing to representations by the Corps Commander the night march and projected attack on the 13th were abandoned.
The 162nd Brigade of the 54th Division were in support in an attack on 15th August, and on the 21st, the “Battle of Scimitar Hill,” “the 53rd and 54th were to hold the enemy from Sulajik to Kiretch Tepe Sirt, while the 29th Division and the 11th Division stormed Ismail Oglu Tepe.” These attacks met with little success. During the ensuing four months the Suvla Force held on to the ground it had won, but with ever-increasing difficulty, as sickness and casualties had sadly thinned its ranks.
On the night of the 19th-20th December, 1915, the evacuation from Suvla and Anzac was completed.
The 54th Division sailed for Egypt and down to the close of the war remained part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Shortly after landing in Egypt part of the Division was employed as Lines of Communication troops for the column working on the western frontier. (See Sir J. G. Maxwell’s despatch of 1st March, 1916.)
When Sir A. Murray proceeded to press back the Turks in Palestine the 54th Division was employed—quotations from the despatch of 28th June, 1917, as to the action of 26th-27th March,1917, the “First Battle of Gaza,” are given under the 53rd Division.
In the despatch of 28th June, 1917, as to the “Second Battle of Gaza,” paragraph 9, Sir A. Murray stated that on 17th April, 1917, the 54th and 52nd “were to seize and occupy the line Sheik-Abbas-Mansura-Kurd Hill,” that line was taken by 7 a.m.
On the 19th these two divisions were to attack the Ali Muntar group of works south of Gaza, the 54th pivoting on the right of the 52nd; unfortunately the latter division was held up, see 52nd Division. “Meanwhile the 54th Division with the Imperial Camel Corps had advanced steadily under fire on the right of the 52nd Division. Its left brigade was in advance of the right of the rear brigade of the 52nd Division, and thus exposed to a heavy enfilade fire from the direction of Ali Muntar. At 9.30 a.m. the left of this brigade was heavily counter-attacked, but the enemy were repulsed by machine-gun fire. On the right of this brigade another brigade fought its way forward against the enemy works between Gaza and Khirbet Sihan.” These were entered by the Camel Corps. The two brigades, “in spite of most strenuous and gallant efforts to advance, were repeatedly checked by very heavy fire from this front. Towards noon the left of the right brigade was forced back by a determined counter-attack from the north-east,” but with the assistance of the third brigade it was able to regain the ground lost.
At 3 p.m.: “Reports received from the 54th Division stated that the situation was satisfactory, and that no help was required to enable the groundgained to be held until further progress by the 52nd should render practicable a renewal of the advance. I should like to state here my appreciation of the great skill with which General Hare handled his fine Division throughout the day.” A counter-attack by the Turks at 3.30 p.m. “was shattered.” The attack was not pressed further, but the ground gained was consolidated.
Sir E. Allenby took command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force at the end of June, 1917, and his first despatch, that of 16th December, 1917, shows that in the “Third Battle of Gaza” his main attack on the Gaza-Beersheba line, 27th October-7th November, was from the British right (see 53rd and 60th Divisions), but it was essential to compel the enemy to throw in his reserves at the western end of the line and, to ensure that, the 52nd and 54th Divisions on 2nd and 3rd November assaulted the positions guarding Gaza on the south and west. On the 3rd the 54th after stiff fighting captured several strongly fortified positions, notably the El Arish redoubt, taken by the 1/4th and 1/5th Norfolks, the Rafa redoubt and other posts, taken by the 1/5th and 1/6th Essex, while other battalions of the Division seized the Belah trenches and Turtle Hill. (See Dane’sBritish Campaigns in the Nearer East, Hodder and Stoughton, vol. ii. p. 91.) Very heavy counter-attacks to recapture these positions, which were of great importance, were launched by the Turks but these were repulsed with heavy loss to the enemy.
Between the 3rd and 6th the hardest fighting took place east of Gaza, and the enemy’s line wasbroken there. The despatch, paragraph 12, notes that “East Anglian troops on the left also found at dawn” (on the 7th) “that the enemy had retired during the night, and early in the morning the main force occupied the northern and eastern defences of Gaza.”
The 54th took part in the pursuit and the British advance to the line Jaffa-Jerusalem.
Sir E. Allenby’s second despatch, that of 18th September, 1918, shows that the 54th was, along with the 52nd, in the XXI. Corps to which was given the task of increasing the distance between Joppa, or Jaffa, and the enemy. This was duly accomplished on 21st and 22nd December, 1917, in what is now designated the “Battle of Jaffa” (see also 52nd Division). Paragraph 4 of the despatch states that “on the morning of 22nd December, the 54th Division on the right drove the enemy from the orchards which surround Mulebbis and captured the villages of Rantieh and Fejja. On the left the 52nd reached all their objectives.”
Paragraph 8 of the despatch shows that early in March the XXI. Corps made a further advance. The 54th captured five villages and some prisoners, and, paragraph 16, the Corps again moved forward, 9th to 11th April, when other positions were taken and held against the heavy counter-attacks in which the enemy’s losses were considerable, “over 300 of his dead being counted”.
In his last despatch, that of 31st October, 1918, Sir E. Allenby described how his infantry broke through the Turkish lines and opened the gate for the cavalry and armoured cars.
Paragraph 15: “The attack on the coastal plain on the morning of September 19th was attended with complete success. On the right, in the foothills, the French Tirailleurs and the Armenians of the Légion d’Orient advanced with great dash.” “On their left the 54th Division stormed Kefr Kasim village and wood and the foothills overlooking the railway from Ras El Ain to Jiljulieh. North of Kefr Kasim the advance was checked for a time at Sivri Tepe, but the enemy’s resistance was quickly overcome and the remaining hills south of the Wadi Kanah captured.” “The 3rd, Lahore, Division pressed on eastwards into the foothills, near Hableh, joining hands with the 54th Division north of the Wadi Kanah.” Later the 7th, Meerut, 3rd, Lahore, and 54th Divisions advanced further in an easterly direction.
After this the infantry of the XXI. Corps were never seriously opposed but they had many most severe marches during the next three weeks.
Like its neighbour in the East, the 53rd, the 54th Division lost some good battalions before it went abroad as a division. The policy pursued in 1914 and first half of 1915 of “picking the eyes out of” Territorial divisions has been severely animadverted upon, by, among others, Sir Ian Hamilton, and no one was better qualified than he was to judge of the wisdom or folly of this proceeding.
The 1st Hertfordshire Regiment, the 1st Cambridgeshire Regiment and the 4th Suffolk Regiment, originally units of the 54th Division, went early to France. The Hertfordshire battalion was mentioned in Sir John French’s despatch of 20thNovember, 1914, as among the territorial battalions which took part in the First Battle of Ypres (see 56th Division). The despatch of 2nd February 1915, paragraph 4, shows that the 4th Suffolk Regiment was part of a force making a counter-attack near Givenchy on 20th December, 1914. “About 5 p.m. a gallant attack by the 1st Manchester Regiment and one company 4th Suffolk Regiment had captured Givenchy, and had cleared the enemy out of two lines of trenches to the north-east.”
In the despatch of 15th June, 1915, as to the Second Battle of Ypres, 22nd April to 25th May, the great gas attack, the Commander-in-Chief, quoting Sir Herbert Plumer, gives some examples of “individual gallantry,” among these he mentions the visit by a patrol, two officers and one N.C.O. of the 1st Cambridgeshire to a German trench, 350 yards away. The adventurous party, with great good fortune, got safely back to their own trench. Officers and men of these units were mentioned by Sir John French.
The places of these three battalions in the 54th Division were taken by the 1/10th and 1/11th County of London Regiment from the 56th Division and the 1/8th Hampshire, a Wessex battalion.
Sir A. Conan Doyle, volume iv. p. 198, draws attention to the fine work of the 33rd Division in the Third Battle of Ypres on 26th September, 1917, and among other battalions highly spoken of is the 4th Suffolks. In the same volume, p. 146, he refers to the 1st Hertfordshire and 1st Cambridgeshire, then both in the 39th Division, in terms of praise, for their conduct in the same battle on 31st July.In volume v. p. 117, he mentions the 1st Hertfordshire, 39th Division, as retaking “in very gallant fashion,” on 22nd March, 1918, a village which had been lost, and says the battalion had greatly distinguished itself at St. Julien and elsewhere. In volume vi. he refers to the gallantry and steadiness of that battalion in connection with the action about Trescault, 18th September, 1918, and in the same volume, pp. 33, 62 and 287, he gives great credit to the 1st Cambridgeshire for fine conduct on three occasions in 1918, when serving with the 12th Division.
These words of praise mean much, as throughout the work individual battalions are not often mentioned.
The following units which had either belonged originally to the 54th or had fought with it were chosen for the Armies of Occupation: The Rhine, 1/4th Suffolk Regiment; Egypt and Palestine, 1/4th Norfolk Regiment, 1/5th Suffolk Regiment, 1/4th, 1/5th and 1/7th Essex Regiment, 1/4th Northamptonshire Regiment and 1/10th London Regiment.