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Mitchell, John Brine 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.) (continued) 1 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. 2 (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 Militia 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 United Kingdom and Ireland**. 3 *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 British Army, 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) (continued) 4 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.
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