Captain George Robert Hitchin
2/1ST WEST LANCASHIRE FIELD AMBULANCE, ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
GEORGE HITCHIN WAS A BURNLEY native who volunteered to contribute to the war effort straight away in 1914. Educated locally and at Manchester University, as soon as George came forward to offer his particular expertise as a doctor, his local territorial division in Lancashire was clamouring to give the 37 year old a commission. Unmarried and well known in the Wetherby district, George had acted previously an assistant to a local practitioner before he eventually journeyed to the Western Front to see active service.
A dressing station under fire at the southern end of the Somme battlefield. (Authors’ collection)
The West Lancashire division to which he was assigned had carried out the failed attack on Guillemont on the right of the Footballer’s Battalion on 8th August. George had joined it just beforehand to replace an officer going off to work at a hospital to the rear and he began work at one of the divisional field ambulances. The main dressing station set further forward was situated on the western outskirts of Maricourt on the way to Peronne and there the medical personnel worked twelve-hour shifts, 6 until 6, with two officers leading each. Both shifts also had a warrant officer who controlled the cars coming in from the advanced dressing stations even closer to the lines, a messing sergeant with a staff of orderlies, a dispenser, two clerks and cooks for making hot tea and drinks for those passing through or remaining under treatment.
The Fourth Army would carry on assaulting Guillemont in an attempt to wrestle this critical objective from German hands, noting in particular that the major issues affecting their ability to seize this prize were how to maintain communications and how to manoeuvre around the crippling enemy machine guns that were hidden in shell holes and amongst the rubble.
On 10th August rain hampered any attempts to continue offensive action and the next attempt on the village was postponed until the 12th. A preliminary bombardment led up to zero hour at 5:15pm, whereafter troops made it to their objective in half an hour. Unfortunately for George Hitchin’s division though, the French on their right, with whom they were attacking, failed to secure Maurepas Ravine in their sector to the south. This meant that the British troops were left isolated, enfiladed from the right by enemy fire. Their new position was clearly untenable and the men had to be withdrawn after nightfall.
George’s field ambulance had an advanced dressing station up in Dublin Trench, to the south-east of Montauban and facing Bernafay Wood, where he was put to work during the battle, assisting the wounded as they came in and evacuating them back to the main dressing station if necessary. Throughout the 12th and in the days following, it was filled with the wounded brought in from three collection points even closer to the fighting or from the regimental aid posts that belonged to each unit and were also situated nearer to the front lines.
It was dangerous work for the men of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Since their arrival and throughout the failed attack on Guillemont that began on the 8th, George’s field ambulance had lost eleven men who were hurt as they brought in injured soldiers. On the 14th George was continuing to treat the wounded troops brought before him when a shell struck the dressing station at 6:30pm and tore it apart, killing him as he worked.
In its division’s spell at Guillemont, the 2/1st West Lancashire Field Ambulance had treated seventy officers and 986 men, 821 of those during the two main failed attacks on the village. Most of their patients had been passed further to the rear for more comprehensive treatment. Nineteen had died with them. The line had advanced, but still Guillemont had not fallen. Fighting on the Somme was proving a battle of attrition with artillery pounding away and ill-conceived strategy seemingly failed to take advantage of any weakness that the enemy might suffer as a result of the shelling. Captain Hitchin was laid to rest at Dive Copse British Cemetery, plot II.F.25.