The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War
	Mons Upon the declaration of war on 4 August, 1914, the regular British Army was ordered to the continent to reinforce the French and Belgian armies.  A mobilization scheme had been devised in the years prior to the war which saw all regular battalions in the United Kingdom organized into brigades and divisions within a British Expeditionary Force.  This Force deployed and first saw action outside Mons in Belgium on 23 August. The first and fourth battalions of the Royal Fusiliers were part of the British Expeditionary Force from the beginning.    The first battalion had been stationed at Kinsale in Ireland and deployed as part of the 17th Brigade of the 6th Division.   The fourth battalion had been stationed at Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight and became part of the 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division, where it remained for the rest of the war.  The second and third battalions were stationed in Ireland and, within a few months of the beginning of the war, were transferred to the 29th Division and the 28th Division, respectively. The British Expeditionary Force formed the extreme left wing of the Franco-British armies at the beginning of the war, with most of the German offensive being directed at it and at the adjacent French formations.  The BEF outfought its German counterparts from the beginning, suffering heavy casualties but badly mauling the attacking German forces.   Nonetheless, with the French armies on its right retreating towards Paris, the BEF was in danger of being isolated and was compelled to withdraw.  The retreat from Mons became an epic of endurance and tenacity.   The Royal Fusiliers were in the forefront of this epic, with two Fusiliers winning Victoria Crosses literally on the first day of the British Army's war.  Lieutenant Maurice Dease was serving with the fourth battalion at Mons on 23 August, 1914 when he was killed while gallantly defending a bridge crossing from German attack.  He was posthumously awarded the first Victoria Cross of the Great War.  In the same engagement, Private Sidney Godley of the fourth battalion assumed command of a machine gun defending the same bridge crossing moments after Lieutenant Dease was killed.  For two hours and despite multiple wounds, he stoically covered the withdrawl of the rest of his company.  Once his comrades had escaped, he destroyed the machine gun and surrendered to the Germans.  He was awarded the second Victoria Cross of the Great War, but did not receive it until after being repatriated from a German prisoner-of-war camp after the war. The Western Front After the German invasion of France was stopped at the Battle of the Marne in September, 1914, both sides began a process of fortifying the entire front from the English Channel coast to the Swiss frontier.  The trench network which resulted occupied a narrow band, several hundred miles in length, which was very difficult to attack but which required large numbers of infantrymen to defend.  Over the course of the 1915, 1916 and 1917, both sides attempted to breach the other side's defences and break out into the open country beyond.  In 1915, German attacks against the British Army centred on the City of Ypres in Belgium.  In 1916, the British Army mainly attacked the German defences on the River Somme east of Amiens while the German Army mainly attacked the French defences around the City of Verdun.   In the spring of 1917, the British attacked near Arras.  In the autumn, the attack was resumed near Ypres in what has become infamous as the Battle of Passchendaele.  None of these attacks succeeded in breaking through the defences, and it became obvious to objective observers that the defence enjoyed a new primacy on the battleground. The Royal Fusiliers, whether regular battalions, territorial battalions, or "new army" reserve battalions, participated in all of these offensives and it would be impossible to detail all of the Regiment's exploits on the Western Front.  It is sufficient to say that - on the Western Front alone - one Victoria Cross was won by a Fusilier in 1916, and a further six were won in 1917.  A total of 79 battle honours were awarded for the Regiment's service on the Western Front. Other Campaigns While the British Army's main war effort took place on the Western Front, other campaigns were undertaken in the Near and Middle East and even in Russia. The Dardanelles Campaign was launched in the spring of 1915, and among the Royal Fusiliers battalions which participated was the regular second Battalion.  After the abandonment of the Gallipoli Peninsula later in 1915, the second battalion was transferred to the Western Front and served their for the duration of the war.  The Regiment was granted six battle honours for service in the Dardanelles. The regular third battalion took part in a campaign in Macedonia in the Balkans as part of the 28th Division from November, 1915 until it was transferred to the Western Front in 1918. Perhaps the most famous of the reserve battalions were the Frontiersmen of the 25th Battalion.  This battalion was composed of British expatriates who had lived in Africa, game hunters, explorers, and other adventurers who came to London at the beginning of the War to volunteer for military service.  In May, 1915, they sailed from London for Mombassa in modern Kenya, and were the only British Army battalion to ever be deployed into combat without any formal training.  They spent the rest of the war campaigning in East Africa against the German colonial army of Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck, a German officer who commanded mixed levies of European irregular soldiers and African askari in a guerrilla campaign of genius.   Undefeated to the very end, Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered his forces after hearing by radio that Germany had agreed to an armistice in November, 1918.  By then, the battalion had been withdrawn to London and disbanded, but the Regiment was granted four battle honours for service in Africa and one Fusilier, Private Wilbur Dartnell, was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry under fire in Kenya in 1915. Other famous reserve battalions were the 38th, 39th and 40th Battalions, which were formed in January, 1918 of Jewish volunteers and sent to Egypt to campaign against the Ottoman Turks in the Near East.  The modern Israeli Hagganah, or army, considers these battalions to be honoured ancestors of the Israeli Defence Force. One of the most unusual campaigns of the Great War took place in Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.  In June, 1918, a British expeditionary force arrived in the northern Russian port of Murmansk and occupied the City.  On 2 August, a British and French force called the North Russia Relief Force occupied the Port of Archangel.   This force included the 45th and 46th service battalions of the Royal Fusiliers.  It engaged in open warfare with the Bolsheviks while supporting White Russian forces.  The force was withdrawn on 27 September, 1919, but not before two members of the 45th Battalion had won Victoria Crosses, Private Samuel Pearse and Corporal Arthur Sullivan.  In addition, the Regiment was subsequently awarded the very unusual battle honour of Archangel 1919. In summary, the Royal Fusiliers made an outstanding contribution to the British Empire's war effort during the Great War.  Fusiliers fought in actions from Archangel in the North to Rhodesia in the South, and fielded a large number of regular, territorial, and service battalions.  A total of 13 Victoria Crosses were awarded to members of the Regiment, from literally the first of the war to almost the last, and the Crown subsequently granted the Regiment a total of 99 battle honours.  Few regiments of the British Army or, for that matter, any nation's army, can match this accomplishment.                                                                               Continue