Captain Henry Begg
2/1ST HIGHLAND FIELD AMBULANCE, ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
TO THE NORTH-EAST OF THE Naval Division, a formation of Scottish Territorials had succeeded in capturing Beaumont Hamel on 13th November. The 51st Highland Division ‘probably included more deerstalkers, gillies, and gamekeepers – and no doubt more poachers – than any other division in the army’. These men were used to a life outdoors, and took well to being snipers and scouts. ‘Many men, too, had in civilian life been shepherds, farmhands, or forestry workers, and so were used to long hours of arduous work in the open air.’ The division recruited most of its soldiers from north of the Highland line: Caithness, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, Banff and the like. Although their catchment area was huge, the population was not and most of the communities drawn from were small, creating a family feel to the outfit. One historian claimed that ‘Scotland as a whole … had the highest mortality relative to its population of any part of the Empire, and certainly no region was harder hit than the Highlands’.
Captain Henry Begg. (University of Aberdeen)
Working with one of the division’s field ambulances to try to keep as many men alive as possible was a doctor from Druminnor in Aberdeenshire. Thirty-five-year-old Henry Begg had graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1906 and moved to London. Here, prior to the war, he was in practice in Kentish Town, was a clinical assistant at the Great Northern Hospital on Holloway Road and also at the Mount Vernon Chest Hospital in Northwood. Henry joined his division early and had done well in July, when his devotion to duty caught the eye of Haig himself.
Henry was well thought of by everyone. The men called him ‘Sir Henry’ and ‘his heroic courage whenever danger was present was known to the whole division. Any lustre this unit may have for good work under fire is largely due to his personal work and example.’ Despite his reputation though, Henry didn’t say much. ‘Quiet and unassuming, always cheerful,’ he was a strict disciplinarian too, when it came to taking his men out to hunt for the wounded on the battlefield. ‘When men were falling everywhere and the shellfire fiercest, there was Captain Begg, a tower of strength all around … He was, I think, without doubt the best leader of stretcher bearers in the division.’
Since the advent of November, the field ambulance had been operating out of Auchonvillers, to the west of Beaumont Hamel, but Henry and his bearers were becoming well acquainted with an advanced dressing station on Redan Ridge known as Tenderloin, which was frequently under fire from the German artillery. As the Highland troops went forward in pursuit of Beaumont Hamel on 13th November, Henry waited to the rear. At 7am the wounded began to trickle in, and then became a steady stream. Evacuation from the field went on relentlessly all day, and the enemy was in no mind to give the British any quarter behind the front lines. Twice a command post belonging to the field ambulance was shelled, and all the men had to be cleared from a courtyard lest they be wounded a second time, or worse. From noon, German prisoners began appearing too, and 150 that were unscathed were turned around by Henry’s unit and sent back to the battlefield bearing stretchers: ‘They worked willingly and well.’ The field ambulance had got off remarkably lightly in terms of their own casualties too, and the officers and men busied themselves checking reports, answering calls for fresh bearers and carrying up stores.
Like the Royal Naval Division, the Highlanders would attack again the following day and at 10pm their objectives were confirmed. Henry would be supporting his infantry as they assaulted Munich Trench, beyond Beaumont Hamel, which they had failed to take as part of their objectives on the opening day of the offensive, and behind that Frankfurt Trench, which should have been their final objective high on Redan Ridge.
Henry and his men worked all night. Fighting had died away, but the stream of wounded Scotsmen and others who had strayed into their path and needed evacuating seemed endless. The British artillery shattered any form of peace throughout the darkened hours by keeping up their fire on the enemy’s positions. At about 3am a rumour emerged that there were 300 wounded men lying at Y Ravine, which was to the south-west of Beaumont Hamel. Thankfully, when an officer rounded up some men from the Midlands to come up with stretchers alongside him, this turned out to be a huge exaggeration, and all those in need of assistance were steadily being moved down the line.
Stretcher-bearers on the Somme move off to bring in the wounded. (Authors’ collection)
At 6am the British gunners began relentlessly pounding Munich Trench and twenty minutes later the Highland Division’s infantry went forward. The fog began to dissipate as the morning went on. Early on another rumour arrived that there was a significant body of wounded men up at Tenderloin, the forward dressing station up on the ridge. Henry collected a party of his stretcher-bearers and together they made their way up. They found nothing to do and, instead of carrying the wounded, they carried water up towards the front lines. Anywhere on the ridge, which was pocked by endless shell holes, was an unsavoury place to linger for too long. The men were sniped at freely, and the enemy’s artillery barrage rarely ceased. Stretcher-bearers only did short stints in the area because of the conditions as it was apt to fray their nerves if they spent too long up there. Just before noon, Henry was making his way along a trench near the dressing station with his sergeant of bearers when a shell exploded nearby. The concussion killed the 35 year old instantly. ‘His loss is a very serious blow to us, for we shall never get a braver or more willing officer,’ wrote one of his comrades. Henry Begg was laid to rest at Louvencourt Military Cemetery, plot I.E.5.