FIELD GUNS IN FRANCE

This book consists of a collection of letters written to his father by an artillery officer in France between November 1915 and August 1918, and the batteries he writes about were ‘D’ in 151 Brigade RFA, in 1915/16, and ‘A’ in 150 Brigade RFA in 1917, both were batteries in the 30th Division (raised by the Earl of Derby), until early 1917 when the 150th Brigade left the division and became an Army Field Artillery (AFA) Brigade. Both were equipped with 4.5-inch howitzers. There are 53 letters in all and each is numbered and forms a chapter, headed with the letter number, date and place. Place names and names of units, omitted at the time of writing, have been added subsequently. In order to present a fairly coherent whole the letters have been grouped according to the operations they describe. Thus in the contents you find the group heading “Third Battle of Ypres, July – October 1917” and under that heading the numbers of the letters describing the operations, in this case letters 43 to 48. Or “The Somme, July-November 1916” with letters numbered 17 to 32. He certainly gives a lively and action-packed account of the various operations in which his batteries took part.
One fact is clear from the beginning, and that is that Tytler enjoyed killing Huns and often expresses sheer joy and satisfaction when his guns do so. The enemy is always referred to as the Hun and killing Huns is a game to him; At the end of his preface, for example, he writes: I owe my thanks for the stout-hearted men I had the honour to command, and the good partners I had in the game of killing the Hun. On another page: We had a gorgeous killing yesterday (20 casualties inflicted); and again:But once the range was right I had glorious sniping, picking off the nests of Huns esconced in the shell holes. This attitude is taken to the extreme in a page at the end of the book entitled GAMEBOOK OF GERMAN CASUALTIES FROM PERSONAL OBSERVATION and on this page are listed, rather like an index, those pages which contain references to enemy casualties together with the number inflicted – a score card.