The Grenadier Guards in the Great War of 1914-1918, Vol. 1 of 3

Meanwhile the 1st Battalion Grenadiers remained at Warley until September 1914. In the middle of the month the Seventh Division was formed, and the 1st Battalion Grenadiers was...

Having completed its detrainment, the First Corps, under Sir Douglas Haig, was concentrated between St. Omer and Hazebrouck. Sir John French had now to make up his mind whether...

In September General Joffre and Sir John French agreed that a determined attempt should be made to break the strong German line. Thousands of guns were to be massed, and after a...

For a week now the Germans had been steadily retiring, and there was no apparent reason why they should stop doing so. Each time they held a position the question naturally aros...

The marshy condition of the ground and the bad weather made operations on any large scale impossible, and, with the exception of raids in various parts of the line, no serious o...

Although no large operations took place at the beginning of 1916, there was continual fighting in various parts of the line. The Germans made several attacks on the Yser Canal a...

The Battalion remained in billets at Meteren from November 22 till December 22. The casualties among the officers had been severe, and there only remained Lieut.-Colonel Smith,...

For a long time the question had been discussed whether it was humanly possible to break through a line of trenches. Owing to the great defensive power of modern weapons, the th...

Thus began that historic, terrible, splendid retreat from Mons. Long weary marches were to be the lot of the British Army for many a day, but fortunately no one realised what la...

In May the French resolved to make a determined attack on the German line in Artois, and in order to prevent the enemy moving up any reinforcements to support that part of the l...

In November 1914 the war of stagnation had already begun. The power of modern weapons in defence had made open warfare an impossibility, and the struggle in France had now assum...

To any neutral not completely blinded by German sympathies it must have been only too palpable that the last thing we were prepared for was a European war, for not only had we n...

The German General Staff at this juncture realised that a retreating army is not necessarily a beaten one. For the last ten days, with their maps spread before them, they had ha...

During the remainder of May the Battalion remained in billets at La Pugnoy and later at Vendin. On the 24th it was inspected by General Horne, and turned out looking very smart....

When the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated at Sarajevo in Serbia on June 28, 1914, it never for a moment occurred to any one in this country that the crime...

At the end of April, Hill 60 near Ypres was taken by the Second Corps under Lieut.-General Sir Charles Fergusson, and was lost again early in May when the enemy used gas. The se...

The creation of a Guards Division was not regarded without misapprehension by some of the older officers of the Guards. The reputation that had been so dearly won by the origina...