The World War One legacy of a Bristol soldier

Trench maps made by Clifton soldier Lieutenant Arthur Fancourt Logan, which show the British attack routes at Givenchy in Flanders during a bloody battle in WW1, have gone on show for the first time.

The National Army Museum has picked the maps, which show the trenches in remarkable detail, to feature on its commemorative website First World War in Focus.

Logan, who lived on Pembroke Road in Clifton, survived the battle in which 1,000 men perished at the hands of the Germans.

Printed on waterproof paper, the map was drawn specifically for the attack on 16 June 1915. This map, and others belonging to him, gives precise information about the attack, detailing front lines, communication trenches, and even enemy artillery and machine-gun positions.

Details about enemy trenches and the surrounding landscape came from air observation and soldiers who had raided opposition lines or taken prisoners. The Topographical Sections of the Field Survey units of the Royal Engineers used this knowledge to draw up maps, which were then printed and distributed to hundreds of thousands of men.

Dr. Peter Johnston, Collections Content Team Leader at the National Army Museum said: “Logan’s maps would have been vital to planning enemy attacks and defending the Allied Front.”

British forces were focusing on a series of smaller attacks in Flanders to break the German line while the German army concentrated on fighting Russian forces in the East. Lieutenant Logan took part in one such attack at Givenchy in 1915 as a member of 2nd Battalion The Bedfordshire Regiment, which suffered heavy losses.

The British would commonly bombard German trenches with mortar and artillery before commencing an infantry charge. However, on two consecutive advances this ‘barrage’ had proven ineffective, leaving infantry exposed to well defended German trenches, lined with barbed wire and manned by machine-gunners. 

50 men in Logan’s Battalion died that day, including five officers, with a further 72 men wounded. The 21st Brigade of which Logan’s Battalion was a part, saw over 1,000 men killed during the operation.

Logan was born in Surrey, in 1894. The eldest of four children, the family later moved to Bristol where he went to school.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Logan was on the Unattached List of the Indian Army, but he was soon commissioned to join the ill-fated 2nd Battalion The Bedfordshire Regiment.

As a member of the Bedfordshires, Logan fought during the First Battle of Ypres where 58,155 British men died, and the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, that saw the death of a further 11,200 British and Indian soldiers.

Despite being involved in these bloody battles and the failure at Givenchy, Logan was miraculously uninjured, and was later awarded the Military Cross for his services, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He died in 1973.