Ill Met By Moonlight: British and German raiders clash in the outpost war | Fraser Skirrow

This talk by Fraser Skirrow is the story of a couple of raids, one British (by the 2/6th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment) one German. These took place in the area of "The Apex" near Bullecourt on the nights of 11 and 13 September 1917.

What is unusual is that we have the story from the contemporary British account, the results of prisoner interviews and detailed accounts from the German raiders and defenders. Comparing and contrasting these stories gives us a vivid and personal insight into two violent nights in the outpost war, and the circumstances surrounding the deaths of individual soldiers on both sides.

The British raid on the 11th a complex but highly successful raid on the German 71 RIR at Reincourt. On the 13th the 84 RIR replied with what has been thought to be a quick retaliation but was in truth a carefully planned operation that went badly wrong but still despite caused many British casualties.

What is special about this talk is that we know the names of the men who met in the outpost that night so it is much more personal than a clash between anonymous soldiers.

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[JHamList]

such a fascinating presentation, really gives a good feel for what trench raiding was like and how ridiculously brave the men who undertook them were..

[NoMoreCrumbs]

I love these kinds of stories because it shows how the big war can be broken into millions of little daily dramas. It's very humanising to the soldiers who participated

[kidmohair]

Thank you Mr Skirrow.
this is the sort of historifying (not a word but...) that makes the events of this war more human.
rather than taking the big picture view and rehashing the Somme, or Artois, or any of the other "big pushes",
it brings this war down to its most basic constituents,
the men in the trench,
facing other men in that other trench,
just over there.

[danbernstein]

My grandfather was from Jerusalem when he was drafted into the Ottoman Army and later transferred to the German Army and ended up fighting he French in the Champange region in 1918. He used to tell me about the trench raids across no mans land. He described the French trenches and how different they were from the German trenches, although at that point they were field, not prepared trenches. But by summer 1918 they all knew the war was lost.

[MackinOz]

Now - this is what modern military history should be all about "We're here, because we're here... What are we going to do about it?" Trench raiding is part of my national DNA. The Australian trench raiders of Tobruk went out there to show the Germans it was no one-sided thing. The Australian fighting infantry were made up of country boys who learned to shoot growing up and who could wrestle any number of farm animals to the ground (for whatever purpose) by sheer physical strength. I'm not a country boy but in the Army cadets I shot against them and it was pretty obvious they were all pretty lethal. Time for the geriatrics to stop trying to justify the war and for smarter people to record the experience of this awful war for history.

[georgegordonmeade]

Skirrow my favorite. Want me some moe!