Tour Dates: 27 - 30 September 2024
Price Per Person: £750:00 (£125:00 Single Supplement)
Hotel: Holiday Inn, Central Arras
Booking details : > Artois 1915
The tour in open to the general public and is run in association with The Western Front Association, non-members will be encouraged to join the WFA.
This, our second tour of 2024 with The WFA will study the battlefields of Artois 1915.
Dr Jack Sheldon will again be joining the team, bringing his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things German Army on the Western Front with him. Our own guide Julian Whippy will this year be working with Jack, as Julian has such strong family connections to the 1915 battles in this region, he lost two Great Uncles, at Aubers and Loos both of who have no known graves. 1915 was truly a terrible year for the BEF with little success and high casualties across all fronts.
This tour of Artois will start with a look at the March battle at Neuve Chapelle where two Indian Army Divisions fought alongside their British counterparts with only limited gains and certainly not the hoped for break in. We also then look at the Aubers Ridge battle of May 1915, as the British effort to support the French Tenth Army.Advancing across sodden, flat, bare ground against strong defences the battle was an unmitigated disaster for the British. This day includes visits to the magnificent Neuve Chapelle Indian Memorial and Le Touret Memorial to the missing.
We then turn our attention to the British Offensive at Loos, September 1915. The coal producing Artois region still has much the same landscape and scars of 1915 with pit heads and slag heaps to mark the countryside. Harnessing the use of poison gas for the first time, the British were also setting loose untried New Army units in what was the largest British attack of 1915. Despite new weapons, tactics, and techniques the assaults once again failed to gain anything other than small sections of front. Our tour will look at the Londoners and Scots battle to break into the village of Loos and the hopelessness of the regular troops at the 'Lone Tree' near Hulluch. We also see the site of the infamous Hohenzollern redoubt and the beautiful Quarry Cemetery and Dud Corner Loos Memorial.