Talk:55th (West Lancashire) Infantry Division

message: Did a cheeky little ce, added several citations, auto edded, checked for dupe wikilinks, alpha sorted and tidied citations. Are we allowed to put sections (OOB) into a roll up section? Keith-264 (talk) 08:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  CE 

message: Miles 1948 [1991] OH 1917 III Appendix 22 p. 382 Casualties 20 Nov to 8 Dec 55th (West Lancashire) Division.
Killed: Officers =15, Other Ranks = 134; Wounded: O = 56, OR = 870; Missing: O = 78, OR = 2,106; Total: O = 149, OR = 3,110. Keith-264 (talk) 22:05, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Much appreciated Keith!EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 00:09, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cambrai 1917 casualties 

message: There are a couple of areas where I am being a bit bold regarding cutting back what I consider unnecessary detail. I am only the copy editor, so if you don't like it, please revert. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:31, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Boldness

message: : Shouldn't the recently added material be more appropriate on the Liverpool Scottish page, since the division was briefly disbanded during this period? Or, as a note?EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 12:40, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: *I wanted to show that not all of the division personnel demobilized at the same time, but I'll add it to the Liverpool Scottish page. Kges1901 (talk) 19:46, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Liverpool Scottish in epilogue 

message: (2005). Defending Albion: Britain's Home Army 1908–1919. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781403938251.
* "By 1911, most of the home defence schemes necessarily revised by the creation of the Territorial Force and Special Reserve were in place." (p. 45) "...the East and West Lancashire Divisions were to proceed direct to Irish Command." (p. 48)
* "One of the many mobilization problems was the need swiftly and efficiently to collect sufficient horses and wagons for the transport sections...vehicles and animals had to be impressed locally...registers of companies which owned horses were kept...but at the time when many firms were switching from horse to motor transport, many registers were years out of date. In contrast, the Liverpool Scottish in the West Lancashire Division acquired so many good beasts that a Regular battalion nearby immediately commandeered the entire collection and the Scottish had to begin all over again." (p. 56)
* "Brigades of the East and West Lancashire Divisions were scheduled to travel directly and independently to Ireland. Billeting parties had indeed left for Limerick and elsewhere as soon as the mobilization telegrams arrived late on 4 August, but in mid August, Kitchener announced that he would not send Territorial units to that troubled province. Relying on the Irish Reserve and Specia Reserve battalions to maintain order once the Regular units had been withdrawn, he wanted the Lancashire Divisions to be deployed more effectively. The Liverpool Brigade was despatched to join the Central Force's Second Army at Canterbury and the South Lancashire Brigade went north to augment the Forth defences. The two battalions of the Border Regiment attached to the division went to their war stations at Barrow, and in October left for France and India." (p. 58)
 
(2008). England's Last Hope: The Territorial Force, 1908–1914. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230574540.
* "With the exception of only a few units, particularly those of the Highland battalions, there was widespread concern about the physique of the men...While a large proportion of the troops in the West Lancashire, East Anglian and Home Counties Divisions were judged to be incapable of carrying their own kit, and physical training to remedy the neglects of a sedentary life was considered a prerequisite for improved efficiency, many associations as we have seen, were reluctant to spend money on gym equipment." (p. 167)
* "Two northern divisions, the West and East Lancashire, were tasked to travel to Ireland to replace the 6th Division and 3rd Cavalry Brigade. Their proximity to the port of Liverpool and the geographical ease with which they could be concentrated probably decided their depoyment but there was concern among the authorities that some of the King's Liverpool battalions might have rather too much sympathy with potentially rebellious sections of Irish society. There were also fears that given their very acute mobilization schedule the troops might arrive in Ireland half clad, each with only one pair of part worn boots, no transport, only 100 rounds and no reserve rations. The haste was necessary because Regular troops were required to leave Ireland between the fifth and eleventh days to join the BEF; in order not to leave the province denuded of troops, and the possible political crisis such an absence might induce, the Lancashire infantry brigades were supposed to arrive by the fifth day of mobilization. After protests and a staff tour, the War Office accepted that to expect all the infantry to arrive as promptly as that was nothing short of impossible. The largely single lines and limited rolling stock of the Irish railway network were incapable of simultaneously transporting the Regulars to the coast and the arriving TF inland to the Regulars' peace stations let alone to the positions they would need to occupy in case of a raid. Moreover, as the various Lancashire brigades would arrive without transport, it was 'courting disaster' to expect inexperienced TF troops to requisition civilian vehicles from a potentially hostile population. Even if Territorials did manage to reach their allotted war stations, the AOD announced it would be unable to issue them with camp equipment and stores. There was talk of erecting temporary wooden huts as emergency accommodation but that would take time and there would have again have to be a reliance on the inadequate railway links. The two divisions had no cyclist battalions, their signallers were poorly trained, there were no divisional ammunition columns and the province had no stored ammunition or spares for the TF's 15-pdr guns. Furthermore, there was no establishment for lines of communications, no no system for evacuating sick and wounded from from field ambulance to base hospitals and, as there was no National Reserve in Ireland whose members could be used as collecting officers, there was no established organization by which horses could be requisitioned. To avoid overly congesting Ireland's larger ports the War Office wanted the first two Lancashire brigades to arrive in a procession of small ships and at the lesser ports on the third day, the remaining four on the fourth, the artillery by the eighth and the Welsh Mounted Brigade by the ninth. Finally, if the units were not in possession of their full clothing quota at their departure date, they were to travel as they were." (pp. 183-184)
* "The decision not to send the two Lancashire divisions [to Ireland] must have been made on 5 August but it was not until Monday 10th that Asquith announced that the Government would rely on the 'willingness and patriotism' of the Irish (namely the Special Reserve and Extra Reserve Battalions) to defend their shores." (p. 202 - Mitchinson then repeats the deployment of the two W.Lancs brigades to Canterbury and the Forth defences)
* "Almost inevitably there were fistfights between Highlanders and the Lancastrians thei division had been forced to adopt..." (pp. 212-213)
* "Hamilton acknowledged the 'immense' divisional esprit he observed, particularly in the two Midland, Welsh and Highland Divisions, and argued that it would collapse if the divisions were dismembered for drafting. He perceived that loyalty to battalion and brigade rather than to division was more of a feature in the East Anglian and West Lancashire Divisions but still compared the formations favourably with the esprit, or lack of it, which he presumed existed in New Army formations." (p. 214)
* "Since it had been decided not to send the division to Ireland, the East Lancashire units had remained training and languishing in several muddy camps in their recruitment areas. Recruits had arrived but on 31 August Western Command was instructed to bring the division up to strength by transferring troops from West Lancashire units which were by then dispersed in a multitude of locations between the Forth defences, Oxfordshire and Kent." (p. 214)
* "Once it was agreed to send certain virtually complete TF divisions to the Empire, it was probably an easy decision to allocate the East Lancashire Division to Egypt. Its sister division, the West Lancashire, was not particularly highly rated and had been 2,900 below establishment in July." (p. 217)
(2014). The Territorial Force at War, 1914–1916. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137451590.
* "Training for several battalions of the London and West Lancashire Divisions was also severely disrupted by their deployment to guard sections of railway line. Platoons were spread out along the tracks to guard bridges and tunnels and rarely saw each other. In such circumstances, training was impossible." (p. 67 - This refers to the period after mobilisation, when the division was allocated to home defence and before its brigades were dispersed to other divisions)
* "When several battalions of the West Lancashire Division began to arrive in February, the time between disembarkation and posting to a brigade for some dropped substantially. Five of them had only between two and four days to become accustomed to France, but three others of the same division, all of which arrived at about the same time, were allowed either 11 or 16 days before being posted. The unusually short period of acclimatization allotted to 5/LNL, 5/South Lancashire and 5/, 6/ and 7/King's is suprising in view of the fact that Hamilton had noted in December that the West Lancashire Division was 'fully 20% behind the rest' in efficiency and training." (p. 79)
* "Although it may have regained its original infantry units, only a small proportion of the individuals arriving at 55th Division's assembly area were those serving when the battalions were first detached from the division months before. Five TF battalions of the King's Liverpool Regiment had sustained an average of 107 other rank fatalities since the outbreak of the war, with the 10th Battalion having suffered 239. Drafts had been received during 1915 and when the King's battalions arrived at Hallencourt they had an average of 27 officers and 663 other ranks. The last of the King's units to arrive, 6th Battalion, did not march in until 27th January, three days after 2/1st West Lancashire Field Company had left for attachment elsewhere. Jeudwine, the GOC Division, stressed the additional challenges facing the division as it trained and re-established its identity. Because the units had not yet built up support and liaison systems and the staff were still ignorant of the 'particular needs' of the formation, Jeudwine was content for the time being to lay down general principles and allow COs to interpret their spirit as they thought best. They were to encourage and develop the confidence of officers and men in themselves, their weapons, their comrades and commanders and put emphasis on the need for them to dominate the enemy. The training programme was gradually to work upwards from section, through platoon and company to battalion level. For those units just out of the trenches, the emphasis was on close order drill, care of arms and general smartening up. In order to improve all-arms efficiency, infantry brigades were paired with RFA brigades to practise liaison and cooperation. Although the weather was particularly unkind, the training areas offered few facilities and the division spent much of the period holding the line, the claim that 'very little training' was reported as having been undertaken by 9/King's during its five-month stint at Wailly is probably rather harsh. Despite the division's considerable reorganization, however, in March its infantry were reported as still being 3,000 under establishment." (p. 189)
* "...the rationalized [drafting] system and certain other means meant that the division managed to remain very much composed of men from Lancashire until the end of the war." (p. 192)
* "55th Division began to take heavy casualties immediately after its arrival on the Somme. One brigade submitted qa casualty return for for its attack on Guillemont in August of 51 officers and 537 ORs killed or wounded, and with the remarkable total of another 661 missing, over 500 of which were reported as 8/King's. Large drafts of more than 200 a time joined at least two battalions and within days the division was again in serious action. Its dead for September amounted to 804, with all but 8% of them born or resident in West Lancashire. Drafts had arrived from the East Lancashire and Manchester Regiments in August, with the result that all but a tiny percentage of the 8% were not from within Lancashire's boundary. The policy of posting local men whenever possible continued into 1917 where the division's losses during 3rd Ypres and Cambrai show that although there were men, especially in 165 Brigade, from Staffordshire, Surrey and Suffolk, the great majority of non-West Lancashire soldiers came from Cumberland or East Lancashire." (p. 203)
N.B. The erosion of the territorial identity after 1916 and the fact that the West Lancashire Division did not suffer this are important details that maybe warrant a sentence (see Territorial_Force#Erosion_of_the_territorial_identity for more info as it relates to the TF in general).
* "Some battalions of 55th (West Lancashire) Division virtually disappeared east of Epehy in what could be seen as questionable circumstances in late 1917 but, rebuilt, had sufficient guile, skill and determination to fight a magnificent defence of Givenchy only a few months later." (p. 217)
Hope the above helps. It's basically a dump of every meaningful mention Mitchinson makes of the 55th. It's primarily for info, and perhaps as a check against some of the older, near-primary sources currently used. I'm in no way suggesting that every detail be accommodated in the article, and leave it to editors' discretion what, if any, to use. Factotem (talk) 11:54, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  K.W. Mitchinson on the division 

message: G'day , earlier this year, this article was nominated at FAC and not approved due to its length and some flaws in the coverage of the First World War period. Since then, the article has been split and the two articles have been progressing through assessment. It passed GAN before the split and GAR after the split, which is why there are two GAN/GAR pages. Cheers, Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 22:48, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two GAN/GARs