14thWorcestershires Pioneer Batt. A Company RND

Paddy Horkan WW1. Battle of Arras. By Sean Horkan

I have been asked to fill in some of the background of why we are going to France in April, the simple answer is that it is 90 years since Dad was awarded the Military Medal for bravery there in 1917, and the Horkan family should be there to mark the event.
For many years growing up we were aware that Dad took part in the Great War and had the M.M. but little more information of what happened there, we had more information of his part in the old IRA and the Civil war, but not a lot of that either.
We knew of the war-medals from both conflicts, mounted together and framed by Henry, with the WW1 Military Medal inscribed Pte. P. Horkan 30363, Gavrelle 1917, we had the letters sent home to Castle Street from Dad’s commanding officers, and later the taped interviews with Peter, Patsy and transcribed by Seamus, we had more references to his WW1 experiences, as a enlisted solder in 1915 in the 14th.Worcestershire Battalion and activity on the front lines.
In an interview with Michael Mullen Dad described the training on the Salisbury Plains, the dispatch to France in 1915, marching to the town of Albert and the action in the Battle of Arras, all in a offhanded way.
I was always intrigued by the Military Medal and the details of why it was awarded; over a numbers of years I was making inquiries.
First with the war office in London where I found that most of the WW1 records were lost in the Second World War, as a result of the London blitz.
I then tried the Worcestershire Regiment, to find that Dad served in the 14th Battalion of the 63rd. division and with no more information again on account of poor records left.
Next I tried the museum of the Worcestershire Regiment and found out, that Dad was attached to the RND, Royal Naval Division, A Company Pioneer Batt.
This came about by a lucky encounter, I had been in correspondence with the Worcestershire museum following leads, when a Captain Love (retired), a volunteer working in the museum there wrote that the War Diaries of the 14th Worcestershire, in the action around the Battle of Arras, had just been found and he sent me copies of the April days leading up to the engagement at Gavrelle where Pte. P. Horkan was in the particular action was awarded the M.M., also a copy of the War Diary for May 1917, when the awarding of the M.M. was announced to the Battalion, hence the 3 letters home to Castlebar from the Officers of the Worcestershires.
Those war diaries gave the information that enabled the particulars of the RND involvement in the Battle of Arras, and the Gravelle campaign, be recorded and the record of the pioneers of the 14th Batt. and their involvement there be included in the history of the Worcestershire Regiment.
The printing of the Tasker- Tallet book “ Gavelle Battleground Europe” was assisted by the finding of those War Diaries, great that the letters and the copies of the war diaries I received are in the safe keeping of Eamon.
Author Trevor Tasker has kept up the correspondence and last week I received from Trevor, some more details and maps of the Gravelle engagement and what is to be found there today.
In an earlier letter, in reply to some of the details I sent of Dad’s WW1 and IRA record, he stated as a military historian “ I’d love to have had a pint with that man”.
Gavrelle is a small village in the northeast of France, with a population of 800, and was totally destroyed in April 1917. In the 1914 German invasion, Gavrelle was occupied and remained so in 1915-1916, and to April 1917, all the offensives of 1915-1916 altered the front line very little; all that seemed to result was an increase in the size of the numerous military cemeteries in that area.
The winter of 1916-17, and the very cold spring was the hardest in memory, creating extreme hardship in the trenches and behind the lines.
The Royal Naval Division (RND) was a unique formation, formed in 1914 on the outbreak of the war, using surplus naval reservists when there were more men than boats, it fought in Belgium and Holland and there loosing a third of its strength.
The division was reconstructed and took part in Gallipoli campaign, and later was ordered to France where it proved its worth in the Somme campaign, at Beaumont Hamel and Beaucourt, and fought around Ancre in February.
The RND was moved down to Arras sector for the Arras offensive and ready for their date with history at Gavrelle.
Gavrelle was important because it was part of the Arleux line, a defensive line of significant importance.
The Germans wanted to hold the allied armies in this line whilst their half-finished defences behind were completed, as part of The Siegfried Line (famous in the English music-hall comic song " we'll hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line"

The Battle of Arras started on Easter Monday April 9, 1917 after a weeklong bombardment, the actions from 9-14 April are known as the First Battle of the Scarpe.
Another attack on April 23 was known as The Second Battle of the Scarpe.
The capture of the important high ground to the north of the village, giving excellent observation of practically the whole Douai plain, fell to the 63rd. Royal Naval Division and was a significant part of this unique division’s history.
In the days after the 23 April the German artillery was very active, constantly trying to blast the RND out of their gains.
On the 28 April a second British attack around Gavrelle was planned.
The WW1 records now give detailed accounts of the RND Pioneer 14th Battalion involvement on the 28-29 &30 April at Gavrelle, the war-diary account of those days are recorded in my article in the Connacht Telegraph, and now at Gavrelle we will get more on-the-ground information of this engagement, when we visit there in April.
In the Worcestershire Regiment history, in the record of Dad’s “A" company it says, “ A Company was admitted by all to have behaved splendidly (for gallantry during the day two stretcher-bearers of the Battalion, Ptes. C. Rooke and P. Horkan, were awarded the M.M.); so much so that when the remainder of the 188th Brigade was relieved during the following night (April 29th/30th.), by the troops of the 31st Division, the Worcestershire company was left to hold the north-east corner of the village during the relief and did not rejoin the remainder of the Battalion until the following night".
The Tasker-Tallett book, “Gavrell, Battleground Europe”, gives an account of the Gavrelle fighting and says; “ this action was a defining moment in the Royal Naval Division, as it was at Gavrelle that almost the last of the originals were killed off, as well as Gallipoli survivors and those who had just come back from wounds incurred at Beaucourt, Gavrell was the deathbed of the original RND.”
The losses for the Royal Marines there were, and still are the largest casualty list for one day’s fighting in its history, which amounted to 850 all ranks with a fatal to wounded ratio of almost one to one, whereas it would be normally one to three. The division was disbanded in early 1919, never to reform, and so become a wartime only formation.
Sean.