Winston Churchill in the Trenches

It was on Monday, 3 January 1916, that Lieutenant Colonel Winston Churchill set off from St Omer to join the men of the 6th (Service) Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. He had sent a message ahead that he wanted to meet all the officers for lunch, following which he would inspect the whole battalion. His bizarre arrival was recorded by one officer, F.G. Scott:

The tough battalion of Lowland Scots, which had suffered shocking casualties just a few months earlier at the Battle of Loos, was not impressed at having an aristocratic politician foisted upon it. Churchill’s arrival with his bath in tow only served confirm the men’s worst fears.

Things went even further downhill when Winston decided to demonstrate how he could handle his new battalion. The Assistant Adjutant, Captain (later Major) Dewar Gibb, reported that all the men were present and correct. Taking his position at their head Winston shouted out ‘Royal Scots Fusiliers! Fix Bayonets!’ Of course the men could not possibly fix bayonets with the rifles sloped on their shoulders. A few men took their rifles down and started to fix their bayonets, whilst most of the battalion simply stood mystified and immobile, unsure how they were to carry out their Colonel’s instructions.

Gibb then advised Winston to call out ‘Order Arms’ and then fix bayonets. This was an instruction the men could follow.

Winston then carried out his inspection of the ranks, following which he gave the order ‘Sections Right!’ This was a cavalry order and would have been quite familiar to the troopers of Winston’s old Territorial cavalry regiment, the Oxfordshire Hussars, but to the men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers it meant nothing; again they stood confused waiting for an instruction they could obey. At this point Winston abandoned the inspection.

In time, an instruction was received from GHQ that attention should be given to the use of the bayonet and, accordingly, Colonel Churchill instructed Captain Dewar Gibb to show the men how the bayonet should be employed.

Things soon began to improve, and the Scots began at first to admire, then even adore, their new CO, who appeared to be utterly fearless and enjoyed nothing better than creeping out into No Man’s Land, much to the consternation of the men encouraged to go with him. One officer, Lieutenant Hakewell Smith, recalled:

The frequent bombardment of his headquarters at Laurence Farm at Ploegsteert (Plugstreet to the British) to the south of the Ypres Salient did not stop Winston playing records on his gramophone or sitting and painting the scenes around him. His calm confidence inspired the men and his complete lack of pretentiousness endeared him to them.

Nothing could exemplify this more than when he invited a number of senior officers to join him for dinner. This group included the Divisional General, the Brigadier General on the General Staff of the Corps, two very distinguished flying-officers, and the Divisional General’s A.D.C. After dinner, Winston said:

The invitation was made in good faith by Winston, who imagined that all the senior officers would enjoy going into No Man’s Land. But to the Fusiliers it was, as Gibb related, ‘a first-rate joke to the jaded infantry to see them all out there tearing breeches and thumbs on the wire; wallowing in mud and cursing over clothes that had never been grovelled in before.’

As Major Andrew Dewar Gibb so prophetically wrote in his memoir, first published in the 1920s long before Winston had led his country in the Second World War: