In July 1918 the 62nd Division was rushed to the Reims front to support the French Army. Used to the open ground of Northern France they found themselves in hilly wooded terrain. Their attack on 20 July cost them heavily as they came up against new defensive tactics that neutralised many of the methods that had brought success in trench warfare. Two days later they were able to smash through and begin an advance that would rival their record performance at Cambrai. How was it possible to turn the situation around so quickly? This talk focuses on the challenges of that 72 hours and how the officers and men of Braithwaite’s Division rose to them.
Fraser Skirrow is a former Territorial Army officer and the author of Massacre on the Marne the battalion history of the 2/5th West Yorkshire Regiment. When he is not studying the Great War and visiting battlefields he runs a specialist consulting company in the development of new medicines