First New Army division crosses to France

According to a British chronology of the war, on 9 May 1915 the 9th (Scottish) Division began crossing to France, the first of the divisions of the so-called New Armies, formed from volunteers enlisted after the outbreak of war. The crossing took several days. The artillery went first, its advance parties leaving the camp at Bordon in Hampshire as early as 8 May, and the infantry brigades left in turn from 10 May. Horses, wagons and equipment sailed from Southampton to Le Havre, and the infantry from Folkestone to Boulogne. The Long, Long Trail website dates the division’s crossing to 9–12 May, and its history published after the war states that by 15 May the whole division had concentrated in the area of Saint-Omer.

The division belonged to the First New Army, known as K1, raised in August 1914 at the call of the Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert Kitchener. Its battalions were formed by Scottish regiments. The 26th Brigade was a Highland brigade, with volunteer battalions of the Black Watch, the Seaforth, Gordon and Cameron Highlanders. The 27th and 28th Brigades were made up mainly of battalions of Lowland regiments, such as the Royal Scots and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. For eight months the recruits trained in southern England, first in camps on Salisbury Plain and from the autumn of 1914 at Bordon. For a long time they lacked uniforms, weapons and experienced instructors. From January 1915 the division was commanded by Major-General Herman Landon. On 10 May King George V bade it farewell in a message in which he wrote that its men had reached a standard “not unworthy” of his regular army.

It arrived at the front at a difficult moment. At Ypres the German offensive was still going on, and on the morning of 9 May the British First Army suffered heavy losses in a failed attack on Aubers Ridge. Field Marshal Sir John French had long been demanding new divisions from Kitchener, and the French were pressing the British to take over a longer stretch of the front. Until then Britain had sent to France regular divisions, formed from the garrisons of the Empire, the Canadians and the Territorials. Now for the first time a whole division made up of civilians, who a year earlier had not been thinking of military service, was to take its place in the trenches.

After a few days around Saint-Omer the division marched to the area of Bailleul, and from 20 May its brigades in turn learned trench routine near Armentières, attached to the experienced 6th Division. It went into battle in September 1915 at Loos, where it stormed the Hohenzollern Redoubt and suffered heavy losses. Further New Army divisions followed it to France, and three other K1 divisions sailed for Gallipoli in the summer of 1915. The following year Kitchener’s volunteer divisions already formed the backbone of the British forces on the Western Front.