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quintinshill rail disaster
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C . R . TRA I N REG I STER
On 11 August the ‘merger’ ceased with the arrival of a new CO and
other Officers for 1/4RS. 1/7RS, however, were still only at a strength of
nine Officers and 159 Other Ranks, formed into two small companies
each of two, very understrength, platoons. Ten Officers arrived that day,
however, followed, two days later, by a further 13 Officers and 440 Other
Ranks from 2/7 RS.
Included among the latter, as mentioned above, were many of those
who had been injured in the Quintinshill crash but had now recovered.
The Battalion was reorganised into four companies each with an
‘old’ platoon,A Company with the Quintinshill survivors, B Company
with the 2/7 reinforcements and C and D Companies with the earlier,
pre-deployment, 8HLI reinforcements.
Fighting on the Peninsula, although still referred to as ‘trench
warfare’was very different from that in France. The advance, after the
initial landing at the southern tip,never extendedmore than three to five
miles up the Peninsula, with a front-line length of four miles running
diagonally across it from south-east to north-west, giving a total area,
occupied by tens of thousands of allied troops at any one time,of some 16
square miles. Trenches were generally much closer than in France and,
with much less in the way of wire obstacles in ‘no man’s land’ between
them, even greater alertness was required to prevent sudden attacks.