Newbattle at War a history of the Parish at war   

By 1915 more than a third of a million men had answered Lord Kitchener’s call to arms to defend their country.

The Kitchener Battalions of the New Army were nearing the end of their training and in May, 1915 the first of these, the 9^th Scottish Division, the first to be formed, was sent to France.

In it’s ranks were literally hundreds of Midlothian men, volunteers to a man and keen to get into a fight. They arrived around May of 1915 and settled into life in trenches. Joining them later on were the men of the 15^th Scottish Division who arrived in August of 1915. They were green and unused to combat, a factor that would cost them dear.

Tucked away up in North East France is the coal mining area of Lens and Loos, very similar in appearance to parts of the Lothians with it’s Pit Heads, bings and miner’s rows. And it was around the small town of Loos that one of the bloodiest events in Scottish Military history occurred.

A major push was planned, with the attack going in on 25^th September over what had been described as ‘most unfavourable ground’. Spearheading the attack would be the newly arrived volunteers, some barely off the boat in the case of 15^th Scottish Division.

It was planned to make use of a new weapon at Loos, poison gas, first used by the Germans at Ypres but now used by all.

The Scots had been set tough objective, in the North 9^th Scottish were to attack the Hohenzollern Redoubt, in the South 15^th Scottish were to take Loos itself.

What followed was a disaster without parallel in the Great War for Scotland. On the opening day of Loos over 8,000 men were killed, staggeringly due to the high percentage of Scots engaged, around 4,500 lost their lives. The heaviest losses on the field since the Battle of Flodden 4 centuries before.

From the big cities to the tiniest of hamlets, everywhere felt the sting of battle.

Even the staggering losses sustained on the Somme were less, from a purely Scottish point of view.

A century on we remember those who fell.