Review of 'Over There with O’Ryan’s Roughnecks' by Lt-Col. John Bessette (January 2008)

The US 27th Division was one of only two divisions of the US army which spent its entire active time under British Command in 1918. The 27th Division was made up of the National Guard from New York. The National Guard were a militia originating from the Indian Wars of the eighteenth century (they were involved in the Anglo-French Wars on the Canadian border, changing their name to the National Guard in honour of Lafayette when he visited New York in 1824) and were part of the US Army. In 1917 there were 127,000 regular troops spread out over the US and abroad and 180,000 National Guard based on the Canadian and Mexican borders. After the military draft was instituted in 1917, the numbers in the army grew to 4 million by 1918 (2 million of these were in Northern France).

The 27th Division contained 28,000 men spread over four brigades. Each infantry brigade contained three regiments. The 27th Division had machine gun units in place of cavalry. These machine gun units were issued with Vickers heavy machine guns.

The basic training of the Division was carried out under the supervision of British & French officers & NCOs. This included scaling objects, bayonet training and PE. During the training, the troops lived in tents as a preparation for the trenches in the front line in Northern France.

The plan originally was for 10 US divisions to be assigned to the British sector, but this changed and only two were sent, the others formed the nucleus for a new American sector.

The 27th division reached France in May 1918, they lost their field artillery to the American sector and joined 30th Division in forming the US II Corps. These two divisions were the only American troops to spend their entire time on the Western Front fighting with the British. Other divisions or corps were assigned to the Allies for short term operations.

For their initial training, the 27th Division was mentored by the 66th Division of the BEF in their Somme estuary area, and in June the Yanks (as part of the US II Corps) joined Byng’s 3rd Army.in the Ypres sector. This meant there were 50,000 Yanks assigned to XIX Corps east of Poperinge. 

August 23rd/ 27th found the 27th Division moving forward as the German army withdrew from Mount Kemmel. By the time they were relieved on September 3rd, the 27th Division had taken 1,300 casualties.

In September the 27th Division were moved to the Somme sector. They joined the 4th Army and moved into the line on September 24th. Their objective was the breaching of the Hindenburg line at the St Quentin canal. They took their highest casualties on 29th September when they became ‘stuck’ during the attack on the Outpost line. This was partly due to their failure to use artillery efficiently as part of the ‘all arms battle’. On September 30th the Australian Corps moved through them as the next stage in the attack and the 27th Division was rested.

Their next action was the Battle of the Selle River where they took casualties at St Souplet during their assault in support of the US 30th division on the Jonc de Mer ridge. The US II Corps was pulled out of the line on the 21st October, and were sent for training, along with 5,000 replacement troops, in preparation for the next action in early November. Instead, the Armistice intervened and the 27th division saw no more action.

During this intense fighting, the 27th Division suffered over 8,000 casualties: 1,829 KIA and 6,892 wounded.

At the end of John’s talk he spoke about the experiences of three soldiers, Sgt. Louis Bessette (his father), 2nd  Lieut. George Bradish & Pvt. William Clarke.

Report by Peter Palmer