From the Green in Castlebar to the Green Fields of France

ALEXANDER Whitcroft Jnr. was born in Castlebar 130 years ago (29th October, 1889). At the time, his parents Alexander and Catherine were living on the Green in Castlebar with their other two children, writes Michael Nelson.

In 1885, Alex Snr. was the live-in schoolmaster at the Charlestown Schoolhouse, Ardee, Co. Louth, when he married Catherine Frances Nelson. Members of the Nelson family had earlier taught in Charlestown and were closely involved with the school and the adjacent church in the late 1800s.

For some reason, now lost to history, Alexander Whitcroft Snr. took up a teaching post in Muckruss School, Clonakilty, Co. Cork, soon after his marriage. Their first two children were born in Clonakilty - Nathaniel William (1886) and Isabelle (1887). Alexander Snr. was soon to move yet again, taking up a teaching post in Castlebar, where Alex Jnr. was born. Later, in the 1890s, the family moved to Poyntzpass, Co. Armagh, before finally settling in Bowness Street, Belfast, by the 1900s.

In 1907 Alex Jnr., at the age of 18, enlisted with the Royal Irish Rifles (1st Battalion). Soon after the outbreak of WWI, various overseas infantry units, including Alex Jnr’s RIR Battalion, were brought together at a temporary camp established at Hursley Park, Winchester, for the formation of the British Army’s 8th Infantry Division. This new division embarked from Southampton on 4th/5th November, 1914, and posted to Flanders, where they were assigned to General Haig’s recently formed ‘First Army’.

Alex Jnr’s first active war encounter arose when Neuve-Chapelle in Northern France, 15km S.E. of Lille, was targeted as a potential point of breakthrough of the German line on the Western Front. This was the British Army’s first large offensive of WWI, having previously played a defensive role on the Front 'during a miserable Winter in water-sodden trenches'. The taking of Neuve-Chapelle was to be a tactical operation towards achieving the more strategic capture of Aubers Ridge and village some 3.5km further east. Aubers Ridge was on slightly higher ground, where the Germans held an important commanding position in their efforts to push the Western Front towards the Straits of Dover.

The Battle for Neuve-Chapelle commenced with a bombardment of German lines at 7.30 a.m. on 10th March, 1915. After the bombardment, Alex Jnr’s infantry division were put into action, and although the lightly defended village was quickly overtaken, further British advance was frustrated with confused communications and scarce supplies. A counter offensive by the Germans the following day, and heavy losses by the British in attempting to take Aubers Ridge, saw the attack being called off on the third day of the offensive, 13th March. Although successful in taking Neuve-Chapelle, the prime objective of seizing Aubers Ridge, had failed.

On Alex Jnr’s military record the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle is succinctly noted as 'British tactical success / stalemate'; i.e., despite the tactical breakthrough, the success could not be exploited. Furthermore, one has to evaluate the ‘value’ of the nominal success relative to the cost of some 5,000 British soldiers killed or lost in action over a three-day period. Cost-benefit appraisal was a concept which appears to have been willingly suspended throughout the war.

A couple of weeks later, in March 1915, the French and British planned a further offensive to break through the German lines in the region. The British, encouraged by their irrelevant success a few weeks earlier, were to attack Aubers Ridge from their positions on the plains of Neuve-Chapelle. The French were to mount their offensive on German lines 30km further South.

The British launched their attack at 5 a.m. on the 9th of May, 1915, with a bombardment of the German front lines. By 5.30, Alex Jnr’s infantry division were deployed to cross the 100m wide no-man’s-land towards the bombarded German trenches and break through the line. But almost immediately after leaving their trenches the men came under heavy machine-gun fire from the German line.

The infantrymen were shot down as they ran towards the German lines with many caught up in the barbed wire to become ‘sitting-ducks’ for the Germans. An hour after the initial bombardment, orders were issued to stop the attack, but hundreds of men found themselves stuck in no-man's-land, unable to advance or retreat. The British front line was soon filled with the dead and wounded.

The Aubers Ridge offensive was severely compromised by poor military intelligence. Haig was of the mistaken opinion that following his perceived success at Neuve-Chapelle the German defences were weakened and Aubers Ridge and village were readily attainable. But on the contrary, the Germans had acted quickly to reinforce their manpower after their Neuve-Chapelle set-back, and also strengthened their artillery resources to ensure they maintained the salient achieved on the Western Front.

Furthermore, Haig under-estimated the severity of his losses during the early morning attack and relaunched the attack later in the day. But it was to be as disastrous as the early morning encounter. To worsen the situation, Haig’s misjudgement of munition requirements saw the soldiers running short of ammunition.

By late afternoon, Haig, realising the extent of British casualties, the less than adequate supplies of ammunition available and hence the futility of the offensive, abandoned the attack. Troops were ordered back to their defensive line positions and encampment - but Alex Whitcroft was not amongst them.

It took three days to recover the wounded at Aubers Ridge, but Alex Jnr. was not amongst them. Nor were his remains amongst the bodies recovered later.

In that single day the British Army had lost 11,000 men (dead, wounded and lost in action) which, in relative terms, was one of the highest casualty rates of the Great War. Recorded on Alex Jnr’s military record, the summation of the Aubers Ridge offensive states: '… overall German victory/British disaster.'

Alexander Whitcroft Snr. had already died before the start of WWI. In August 1915, the War Office informed Alex Jnr’s mother Catherine in Belfast that her son had been lost in action on 9th May, 1915, and presumed dead, at the Battle of Aubers Ridge.

Michael G. Brennan, in his book on author Evelyn Waugh, refers to the writer’s brother’s poem ‘Cannon Fodder’ with a comment pertinent to Alex Whitcroft Jnr.:

"(The poem) … bitterly contrasts the proliferation of severed body-parts and rotting corpses … with comforting delusions back home over the heroic nobility of a soldier’s death."

Alexander Whitcroft, Pte. 8754 Royal Irish Rifles, is commemorated in the Mayo Peace Park, Castlebar, and the Ploegsteert Memorial, Belgium. May he RIP.

 

 

Author’s note: Although Alex Whitcroft Jnr. was born 130 years ago, he was my first cousin. Alexander Whitcroft Snr. married my father’s oldest sister, Catherine Frances Nelson, in 1885, when my father was scarcely 12 months old. My father also served in Flanders during WWI, and I wonder how much (if anything) either of them knew about each other. Nevertheless, despite being lost, Alex Jnr. is not forgotten. Michael Nelson.