Historic battlefields.

10 Essex website

I've been meaning to link to this site for ages, 10 Essex, the site of a re-enactor group representing the 10th [Service] Battalion the Essex Regiment.

More to follow.

How Essex was the 10 Battalion Essex Regiment 1914-1918?

My interest in the 10 (Service) Battalion Essex Regiment [hereafter 10 Essex] was initiated through my own Essex connections. This has lead me to wonder how many men who served with the battalion were from Essex, or at least had Essex connections.

Without access to nominal rolls I decided to use the battalion's dead to represent the whole. Using the CD version of Soldiers died in the Great War a check of the born, enlisted or residence fields would/should reveal Essex connections. Only the data on "other ranks" was examined.

A second study identified days on which more than 10 members of the battalion died, with a view to identifying the most costly periods and giving a focus to the above.

Chronologically: [fiqures are: died/Essex Connections/ Essex men as % of total]

 1 July 1916              28/17   61%

20 July 1916             59/37   63%

26 September 1916 34/26    76%

21 October 1916     22/13   59%

31 July 1917           21/9      43%

12 August 1917      13/9     69%

22 October 1917     50/27   54%

21 March 1918        34/12   35%

23 March 1918        25/16    64%

12 April 1918          20/14   70%

26 April 1918          72/21    29%

8 August 1918         66/19  27%

23 August 1918       24/3   13%

24 August 1918      18/7    39%

21 September 1918 65/11  17%

23 October 1918     21/4    19%

Excepting the fiqures of 31 July 1917 and 21 March 1918 the % indicates the majority of men having Essex connections until April 1918. The rapid dilution of this fiqure is most likely rooted in the British Armies relative manpower shortage in infantry combined with the effects of the German Spring offensives.

Notably of the 16 most "costly" days for the battalion, nine are in 1918, with five during the "100 days" offensives. Whilst 26 April 1918 [at Hangard Wood near Villers-Bretonneux] was statistically the worst with 77 deaths, 8 August 1918 [the first day of the Amiens offensive] was a close second with 67. On the latter the battalion was reduced to companies of 40 men, but was capable of being quickly reconditioned, seeing further heavy fighting as evidenced by the casualty fiqures above.

With the nature of it's "Essex" affilations watered down, the value of battalion level espirit de corps must have become more difficult to foster but conversely more important. Had the geographically imbalanced casualties of the Army's Pals battalions endangered the regimental system or was it purely the relentless turnover of manpower that created the "mongrel" flavour of a late 1918 battalion?

As always this is more in the way of thinking aloud than anything else.