HISTORY OF THE 17TH (NORTHERN) DIVISION

The 17th Division came into existence on 11 September 1914, the third in seniority of Kitchener”s Second New Army, with brigades numbered 50th, 51st and 52nd. It assembled around Wareham in Dorset, completed its final training in the Winchester area, and left for France in July 1915. It fought on the Western Front for the rest of the war, winning four VCs and suffering 40,258 casualties. Its first commander was Maj-Gen W.R.Kenyon-Slaney, late Rifle Brigade, who had retired a year earlier at the age of 62; he was replaced after four months and went back into retirement. The new man was T.D.Pilcher of the Bedfords, who had come from command of the Burma Division.The division’s first major action was at Hooge in July-August 1915 and it remained in the Salient for the next eight months, moving south to the Somme in June 1916 after a short spell in the Armentieres sector. On the opening day of the Somme offensive 50th Brigade attacked Fricourt and one of its battalions, 10th W Yorks, sustained 733 casualties of whom 307 were killed, eleven of them officers including the CO, 2IC, adjutant and two company commanders; this was the highest casualty rate for a single battalion on that day. Fricourt New Cemetery is in the Noman’s Land across which the battalion attacked, and in it lie 159 officers and men of the battalion, the CO (Dickson) and his adjutant (Shand) side by side. Pilcher was sent home and P.R.Robertson, a Cameronian, then commanding 19th Brigade, took over command for the rest of the war. The division went on to fight in the 1917 Arras offensive and in Third Ypres. It was back on the Somme battleground during the German March 1918 onslaught and in the August counter-offensive which marked the beginning of the end for Germany.This is a good, straightforward account of the division’s activities supported by numerous maps in the text, which provide a fair amount of detail. The map on page 402, which shows the advance from the Canal du Nord, has the 48th Division on the left of the 17th; this is a misprint, it shoud read 42nd Division as stated in the text.. In the fighting in Delville Wood (p 151 and 153)reference is made to making contact with 13th Division. an impossible feat since that division was in Mesopotamia. The actual division involved was the 2nd. There is an index but no staff and command lists nor list of Honours and Awards