Captain John Brine (parish records have Brien) Mitchell, MC, of the 8th Battalion, London Regiment (Post Office Rifles), British Expeditionary Force, is interred in Caterpillar Valley, Longueval – Grave reference XVI.G.15.

By 1911, it appears that John Brine Mitchell was a student at Oxford. In November of that year he returned home to Newfoundland via Montreal, the passenger list recording him as a student travelling from England to Newfoundland. However there seems to be no further trace of him for two years until November of the year 1914 at which time he was in British Columbia.

(Right above: The image of the cap badge of the 1/8th Battalion of the London Regiment is from the Great War Forum web-site.)

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The military career of John Brine Mitchell began on November 8 in the Canadian city of Vancouver when he presented himself for medical examination, then for enlistment and attestation. His occupation prior to this is documented as being that of a forest engineer – but unaccompanied by any details of what that may have entailed at the time.

On the same November 8 he was taken on strength by the Second Divisional Train of the Canadian Army Service Corps and was assigned the number 667. However, the formalities of Private Mitchell’s enlistment drew to a conclusion only on January 7 of the following year, 1915, when the officer presiding declared – on paper – that… having been finally approved and inspected by me this day…I certify that I am satisfied with the correctness of this Attestation.

The number 2103 was assigned to him by the unit to replace his original one of 667, and he was thereupon attached to the Number 8 Company.

It was on April 18 of 1915 that Private Mitchell left Canada for overseas service, having travelled across the country to Halifax by train. His Majesty’s Transport Grampian on which he and the 2nd Divisional Train embarked on the same April 18, was providing passage as well to the 7th, 8th and 9th Depot Units of Supply of the Canadian Army Service Corps, to the Field Butchery and the 18th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry.

(Right above: The image of the Allan Lines steamship Grampian is from the Old Ship Picture Galleries.)

Grampian appears to have made the passage in eleven days, a relatively long time for a ship not in convoy, perhaps suggesting a rough passage. The vessel docked on April 29 at Avonmouth, Bristol, on the western side of England from where Private Mitchell’s unit was immediately transported by train to the large Canadian military complex of Shorncliffe. This at the time was being established on the opposite side of the country, on the Dover Straits in the county of Kent, adjacent to the town and harbour of Folkestone.

(Right above: A view of the coastal town of Folkestone almost a century later as seen from the top of the white cliffs of nearby Dover – photograph from 2009)

Just after five o’clock of that April 29, the personnel of the Second Divisional Train were on the march from the local railway station to their billets in huts at the subsidiary camp of West Sandling.

Shorncliffe was to be a busy place for the succeeding months: the entire Canadian Second Division, some twenty-thousand strong, was itself in the process of organization and formation before its despatch to the Continent in the middle of the upcoming September and much of the intervening period was in training by some, logistics by others and likely a great deal of planning and bureaucracy by others again.

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(Right below: Little remains of Shorncliffe Military Camp today apart from a barracks occupied by Gurkha troops. The Military Cemetery almost alone serves as a reminder of the events of a century ago. – photograph from 2016)

However, it would seem that Private Mitchell already had other things in mind, although no other information than what is to be included here appears to be among his personal files. In a Supplement of the London Gazette dated September 5, 1915, among literally thousands of appointments of personnel being made at the time, is to be found the following entry: London Regiment – Private John Brine Mitchell from Canadian Army Service Corps, to be Second Lieutenant.

At the same time, his Canadian military records, submitted by the lieutenant colonel commanding Private Mitchell’s CASC unit, note that: Struck off Strength (from the CASC) 4/9/15…Discharged from CEF (Canadian Expeditionary Force) having been appointed to a temporary commission in the Imperial Army.

*The Canadians referred to the British as Imperials.

It appears that the Canadian Army was determined to make the most of Private Mitchell while he was still in its grasp: there was to be no period of leave granted before he joined the British unit; on September 13 he was reported as having been taken on strength by Base Details at the Canadian Army Service Corps Training Depot, also at Shorncliffe.

It was on that September 13 that the majority of the 2nd Divisional Train personnel, horses and equipment left its quarters at Shorncliffe and boarded trains which were to carry them to the English south-coast port of Southampton for embarkation to the Continent. Four days later the unit was reported as stationed and billeted in the vicinity of the northern French town of St-Omer.

(Right above: While the caption reads that the troops of this…convoy crossing a river on a bridge of boats…are ‘English’, this could mean any unit in British uniform – including Empire (Commonwealth) units. This is early in the war as there is no sign of a steel helmet. – from a vintage post-card)

Second Lieutenant Mitchell, now of the 8th Battalion (Post Office Rifles), London Regiment, had been left behind at Shorncliffe.

* * * * *

The London Regiment was a unit of the Territorial Army, this somewhat akin to the Canadian with one important difference: whereas the Militia could not legally be despatched for service outside Canada*, when a recruit joined the British Territorial Army, he specified whether or not he was willing to be despatched for service elsewhere than in the and Ireland**.

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*This did not prevent the Militia regiments recruiting on behalf of the newly-forming Overseas Battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, nor the transformation of a small number of those same regiments directly into units destined for service overseas.

**Those who chose home service, when the ‘call-up’ came were placed in home defence and reserve units. Conscription, of course, when it came into force in February of 1916 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, settled the issue.

The London Regiment, as may be imagined given the size of the city and its surrounds, attracted a large number of recruits. Its headquarters were in The City* itself, but those who joined up were from everywhere, by the end of the War having formed eighty-eight battalions. The Regiment itself did not move to the various theatres of war as a single entity; the battalions were individually despatched to the infantry brigades of the , these Brigades in turn attached to the various divisions**. Thus the 8th Battalion (Post Office Rifles) of the London Regiment, became a component of the 140th Brigade, itself an element of the 47th Division.

*The City of London – known simply as The City - is a single square mile on the north bank of the Thames and in the area of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

**At this time of the Great War, four battalions served in a single infantry brigade, and three brigades in a division. When all its other components were added to it, a British division numbered some twenty-thousand personnel.

The 8th Battalion of the London Regiment came to be known as the Post Office Rifles. It was to be so well supported that the single 8th Battalion became several Battalions, all of them Post Office Rifles which were numbered thus: 1/8th, 2/8th, 3/8th and so on. Exactly how many recruits it attracted may be judged by the number of casualties that the battalions of the Post Office Rifles were to incur during the Great War: one-thousand eight-hundred dead and some four-thousand five-hundred wounded.

In the case of Lieutenant Mitchell it has been impossible to find anything to suggest that he served in any other formation than the 1/8th Battalion. It also has proved difficult to establish at which time he was to report to duty with his new unit.

* * * * *

It had been on March 17 of 1915 that the 8th Battalion (Post Office Rifles) – as were to be many other units of the 47th Division during that month - was to be transferred to the Continent, the unit landing in the French port-city of Le Havre. Some three weeks later, the entire Division had been concentrated in the area of the northern town of Béthune.

(Right above: The French port-city of Le Havre at or about the time of the Great War – from a vintage post-card)

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There it was to remain until July of the following year, 1916, in the sector which was being taken over at the time from the French Army, a part of the front stretching from Béthune itself southward to the vicinity of Cabaret Rouge, perhaps twenty kilometres distant.

(Right: Cabaret Rouge – at the time of the Great War a red- brick café to be found in the vicinity of the village of Souchez – is better known today as the British Military Cemetery of that name, the last resting-place of seven-thousand, six-hundred fifty dead of the Great War, more than half of them unidentified. It was from here that Canada’s Unknown Soldier began his final journey home on May 16 in the year 2000. – photograph from 2016)

At or about this time the Allied intelligence services had noticed the German forces diminishing in front of them, these troops being withdrawn to serve on the Eastern Front against the Russians. Perceiving this to be an opportunity to attack a weakened enemy, the French planned a major offensive to the south of the new British sector and importuned the British to deliver supportive attacks.

The British High Command acceded to their ally’s request and there was to follow during the summer and early autumn of that 1915, a succession of offensives which was to destroy what remained of the pre-War professional British Army. The confrontations of 1916 and afterwards would be fought by the newly-arriving Territorial Army units and by those formed from the volunteers of 1914 and 1915: the New Army (also known as Kitchener’s Army).

Of all the engagements of the spring, summer and autumn of 1915, the 8th Battalion (Post Office Rifles) fought in four: the Battle of Ridge; Festubert; Loos; and the action at the . Of these, Festubert and Loos were to become battle honours.

The confrontation at Aubers Ridge took place on May 9 of that spring, two months after the 8th Battalion arrived in the sector. It had, as its objective, to break through the German lines which would allow the awaiting cavalry to pass through and then to take the enemy from the rear, thus forcing him to either retire or risk the destruction of his forces.

(Right: German trenches captured by the French at Notre-Dame- de-Lorette at the time of the fighting during the spring of 1915 – from Illustration)

The break-through was never to happen, not even during the final offensives of 1918 when the Germans fell back before the onslaughts of the Allies and Associated forces. And it most surely did not take place at the Aubers Ridge.

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The British, firstly, were not in possession of the artillery forces necessary for the tasks envisaged: they had neither guns of the number – or the calibres – needed to cut the enemy wire which for the most part remained unscathed, or to destroy his first-line defences which were better constructed and sited than those of the British or French. What was more, there was a shortage of artillery shells and many of those delivered to the guns were defective, not just a few falling amongst the advancing British and Indian* troops and some even as far back as in the British front lines.

*Troops from the Indian sub-continent were to be used in these early stages of the War before they were transferred, for the most part to the Middle East.

(Right: A one-time officer who served in the Indian Army during the Second World War, pays his respects to those who fell; he is pictured at the Indian Memorial at Neuve-Chapelle. – photograph from 2010(?))

Unfortunately for the attackers, information about the undestroyed wire and about the quality and depth of the German defences was either unavailable or – as was to later happen time after time – it was ignored. The tactics ordered to be employed by the infantry were comparably just as inept: the frontal charge over open ground in broad daylight.

British and Indian casualties for that May 9 amounted to eleven thousand. The British had gained no ground, the few areas temporarily gained were relinquished to the enemy as the evening progressed. Further plans for attack in the area were abandoned although they were to resume six days later a few kilometres away in the vicinity of the village of Festubert.

The Post Office Rifles had not played a major role at the Aubers Ridge; in fact the entire 47th Division suffered fewer than one-hundred casualties. The case was to be otherwise during the eleven-day battle – May 15-25 – at Festubert.

This battle was fought for the same reasons as had been the previous one at the Aubers Ridge: to support the French and also still in the hope of achieving the elusive break- through. The same tactics were employed despite the existence of the same deficiencies, particularly, perhaps, those of the artillery.

Several small advances were made with territory taken and held over the course of the battle. On this occasion the British – by this time including the Canadian Division - were to incur some sixteen-thousand casualties all told. The French whom they were supporting fared hardly any better, perhaps worse, making small gains in exchange for over one-hundred thousand casualties.

(Right above: The Post Office Rifles’ Cemetery at Festubert: Some four-hundred dead lie within its bounds, two-hundred sixty of whom are unidentified. – photograph from 2010)

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The Germans, as it may be surmised, lost well under half the total number of killed, wounded and missing that was recorded by the Allies.

The 47th Division had officially suffered losses of two-thousand three-hundred fifty-five all told by the end of the battle. Lieutenant Mitchell’s 8th Battalion, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had, since its arrival on the Continent until the conclusion of Festubert, incurred some six-hundred killed and wounded out of its initial battalion strength of nine-hundred personnel.

The action at Loos was to be the largest offensive operation to be undertaken by the British up until that point in the Great War. The number of infantry by that time available had significantly increased since the 8th Battalion (Post Office Rifles) had fought at Festubert four months earlier. However, the same problems of a lack of guns, particularly of heavies, and the same dearth of ammunition – particularly high explosive – for cutting wire, had still by then not been remedied.

And so it was decided by the British High Command to compensate by resorting to chemical warfare. The Germans had first used chlorine gas on April 22 of 1915 in their attack against the French and Canadian troops defending the north-eastern sectors of the , *. The British were now to use it also.

(Right: The very first protection against gas was to urinate on a handkerchief which was then held over the nose and mouth. However, all the armies were soon producing gas- masks, some of the first of which are seen here being tested by Scottish troops. – from either Illustration or Le Miroir)

*There is a very detailed and complete account of the available on the Long, Long Trail web-site.

Loos is one of a collection of villages to the north of the larger centre and city of Lens. At the time it was a busy coal-mining area, thus important strategically to both sides during the Great War. Once again, attacks by the French and British* were envisaged as about to achieve the breakthrough(s) which would be the precursor of the German retreat leading to an Allied victory.

(Right above: The caption translated from the French reads: …view of Souchez, taken by our troops after two days of fighting (September 25-26)… - from Le Miroir)

*It was a battle which the British High Command was not prepared for and which it did not really wish to fight – not until the spring of 1916 at the earliest. However, refusal to aid the French was simply not politically possible; the British were still very much the junior partner in the alliance, although growing in strength rapidly by this time. Thus, perhaps against his better judgement, Sir John French was left with no choice other than to follow the lead set by Joffre, his French counterpart.

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The confrontation was fought from September 25 until October 15 (inclusive) although there was little concerted activity by either side between September 28 and October 13. Thirteen British and Indian divisions were eventually to be engaged on some or on all of these dates, and other units were to take part in diversionary supporting exercises.

There appears to be little information available as to the role played by the 8th Battalion during the Battle. The Long, Long Trail web-site does, however, record that the 140th Infantry Brigade was involved in the attack and capture of the community of Loos – already reduced to rubble from earlier fighting – and in particular, in the taking and the consolidation against counter-attack of the Double Crassier, the huge slag heap at the pit head* and also the second line of German trenches to the north.

(Right above: The mining village of Loos-en-Gohelle at the time of its capture by the British: The pit-head is underneath the structure baptized by the troops as Tower-Bridge and the Double Cassier is directly behind it. – from Le Miroir)

*In an area which is flat, these mountainous tips, even though there is no longer any mining in the region, dominate the surrounding country-side. They were for this reason, of great importance to both sides during the period of some four years during which the area was fought over.

The final actions of the Battle of Loos were to be fought in the area of the strong German defensive system known as the Hohenzollern Redoubt. It appears to have been a final attempt to salvage something from what until that time had been a disappointing campaign: many objectives had not been realized and the cost had proved prohibitively costly.

These last attacks followed the pattern of what had passed before: few gains and heavy losses. Apparently the 140th Brigade was to act in support of the 142nd Brigade in the ordered capture of the village of Hulloch. However, that order to do so was countermanded due to the failure of the 1st Division to achieve prerequisite objectives, thus bringing the 8th Battalion’s Battle of Loos to its conclusion.

These actions, during the first day and the final ones at Loos, appear to be the only references to the Post Office Rifles entered by the Long, Long Trail historian into his narrative or to be found in the Forces War Records web-site files. It is finally documented that the 8th Battalion sustained fewer than three-hundred casualties during this entire period of fighting – there were fifty-two such units that reported more than that number, the greatest toll having been the six-hundred eighty-seven of the 7th Battalion of the Cameron Highlanders.

The whole affair had bled the British Army of sixty-one thousand casualties.

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The final months of the autumn of 1915 and those of the succeeding winter appear to have spent in relative calm, any infantry activity being of a local nature. Most losses during this period were due to the enemy’s artillery and to his snipers.

Thus for some seven months, the 8th Battalion (Post Office Rifles) was to spend its days and nights occupied with the rigours, routines – and perils - of *.

*During the Great War, British and Empire (later Commonwealth) battalions had their time more or less equally divided into three postings: in theory a week was to be spent in the front lines, at times little more than a few metres separating them from the enemy forward positions; a second week was then served in support positions, perhaps a hundred metres or so behind the front. The unit was then withdrawn into reserve – either Brigade, Divisional or Corps Reserve, the former nearest to the forward area, the latter the furthest away.

Of course, things were never as neat and tidy as set out in the preceding format and troops could find themselves in a certain position at times for weeks on end.

(Right above: A photograph of Canadian troops in support positions somewhere on the Somme in the autumn of 1916, only months earlier having been equipped with those steel helmets and, less visible, British Short Lee-Enfield Mark III Rifles – from Illustration)

* * * * *

Close scrutiny of the War Diary of the period from September of 1915 – apart from those pages missing for much of May and all of June - until August of 1916 – at which time the records for September to December (inclusive) cease to be available – fails to divulge the date of Lieutenant Mitchell’s arrival to duty with the 8th Battalion.

There appears to be only a single mention of him in the Battalion War Diary: it appears during the month of July, 1916 – perhaps July 21 - when his name appears upon an order – and his initials on another - as the Commanding Officer of Number 1 Company and he is… to go into the trenches with the Battalion. The only other information to be gleaned from this incomplete file is that at the time he was still a second lieutenant.

By this time Lieutenant Mitchell had been decorated.

His name was to be once more to be found in a Supplement of the London Gazette, on Page 6299 of Supplement Number 29637, dated 24/6/16. On this occasion it announced the awarding of a decoration: the Military Cross.

His Majesty, the KING, has been graciously pleased to confer the Military Cross on the undermentioned Officers and Warrant Officers* in recognition of their gallantry and devotion to duty in the field.

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2nd Lt. John Brine Mitchell, 8th Bn., London R., T.F.

For conspicuous gallantry. After the battalion bombing officer had been wounded he rallied the bombers, led forward a patrol, attacked the enemy, and held them back till our line was consolidated.

(Preceding page: The Military Cross is granted in recognition of… an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land… and was awarded to junior officers of the rank of captain or below. It was authorized on December 28, 1914.)

*As is suggested, a large number of such decorations was to be awarded on this particular occasion.

Given the date of the announcement of his decoration in the Gazette – there is no date or any other mention of the engagement for which it was earned - it is altogether possible that it was awarded for his actions on or about the time of the successful German attack on Vimy Ridge on May 21 of that 1916. However, that conclusion is speculative.

On July 1 of 1916 the British and French attacked further to the south, in the area which was to lend its name to the battle itself – the Somme. Such was the number of casualties that re-enforcements were continually necessary. At the end of July it was the turn of the 8th Battalion, London Regiment (Post Office Rifles) to play its role.

Captain(?) – there seems to be no documentation a propos the dates of his further promotion – Mitchell’s unit was – during that month of August - to march to the Somme: it walked from Estrées to Mofflers, from there to Naours, from Naours to Beaucourt, and finally to Franvillers - just to the west of the provincial town of Albert.

Nothing more is recorded by the War Diary.

The first major action involving the 47th Division and Captain Mitchell was to take place in the middle of September.

(Right above: High Wood almost a century later – Such is the quantity of unexploded ordnance lying within its bounds that all entrance is still forbidden. – photograph from 2010)

(Right: the 47th Division Memorial which stands in the fringes of High Wood – photograph from 2009(?))

On September 15, the British, the New Zealanders and the newly-arrived Canadian Corps undertook a further large-scale general offensive to be remembered as Flers-Courcelette. The 8th Battalion (Post Office Rifles) of the 47th Division, as part of III Corps, was involved in the fighting in and about High Wood* which was finally, after several attempts, cleared of the enemy on that day.

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*The area was still closed to the public in 1915 due the quantity of unexploded ordnance believed yet to be lying within its bounds. (On a more personal note, it was at High Wood, at the end of July, 1916, that one of the author’s grandfathers was wounded.)

The son of John Brien Mitchell, Commission Merchant, and of Anna Mitchell (née Barnes), active in the Suffragette Movement, of 1, Devon Row, St. John's, he was also brother to Harold* and to Marguerite.

Captain Mitchell was reported as having been killed in action on that September 15, 1916 – the circumstances of his death appear not to have been recorded. He died at the age of twenty-seven years: date of birth in St. John’s, Newfoundland, June 16, 1889. Contradictory to some sources, he was not born in .

*Harold Mitchell (Sergeant, Regimental Number 828) was wounded at Gallipoli but survived the conflict and later became a successful politician.

Captain John Brine (Brien*) Mitchell MC was entitled to the British War Medal (left) and to the Victory Medal (Inter-Allied War Medal).

*From Presbyterian Church records

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