Rediscovered: early WWI rifle range at Newhaven

Fig.1. (photo.: E. J.).

Fig.1. 1914 copy of bye-laws for the Newhaven rifle range (photo.: E. J.).

With the outbreak of the Great War in early August, 1914, an Expeditionary Force comprising a hundred thousand British army and territorial soldiers was rapidly deployed to the French-Belgian border. Despite it being a comparatively mobile front, the force was decimated and forced to retreat; it soon became clear that millions of newly-trained soldiers would be needed to counter the massive German imperial army.

Conscription was not yet necessary because all party quarrels were set aside as Radicals and Conservatives, Ulstermen and Irish Nationalists, all vied with each other in offering their services. Contemporary East Sussex (Newhaven) bye-laws preserved at the National Archive, Kew (Fig. 1) show that a rifle range for training purposes was officially established by December, 1914, on the west side of Newhaven Harbour which became a military supply port.

A foreshore find of numerous bullets below Newhaven Heights after stormy weather in 2008 (like this summer’s ‘Hurricane Bertha’) revealed that the old range was on the beach extending out to sea. The firing positions would have been under today’s West Beach car park and the bullets found (mainly round-nosed .303s from soldiers’ rifles) were washed out of the former butts now removed by the waves.

Fig. 2. Plan of beach rifle range and plan and section of cliff-top butt (b), Newhaven. Star (top) indicates finds’ concentration on the foreshore (i) and F, Fort Newhaven. Arrows (bottom) indicate target rods in marker’s trench; the low mound is the mantlet and high mound the stop bank (drawings: E. J.).

Fig. 2. (drawings: E. J.).

The new range moved up to the cliff top and an eroding butt (Fig. 2) is still visible near Old Nore Point: it was used for firing the newer, pointed 303s (although a WWI army surgeon’s manual still illustrates the round-noses in use as late as 1915). The beach finds also included some unexpected projectiles like flat-topped bullets (from officers’ revolvers (Fig. 3) and rod-grenade fuzes (used with privates’ rifles, Fig. 4 and see below), as well as older types of ammunition perhaps fired by reservists.

The Germans were surprised at first and then angry that Britain had entered what was a continental war and was now playing a key role in making them miss their target of occupying Paris by the autumn of 1914. Anti-British war-time propaganda was therefore generated including claims that the British army was using illegal ‘dum-dum’ bullets. This controversy went back to the turn of the century when Germany made a political and medical coup in getting this projectile banned internationally. (The bullet expanded on impact causing more bodily damage but was considered as essential ammunition by our Victorian officers when fighting hostile tribesmen).

Fig. 3. Webley bullets and pre-1915 revolver from the Newhaven and Seaford foreshores, scale lines representing half an inch (drawings: E. J.). There were large army camps at Seaford in WWI.

Fig. 3. (drawings: E. J.).

The British army was not to be beaten, however, and introduced several flat-topped bullets as an alternative to the infamous dum-dum. Nevertheless, some British soldiers in the Expeditionary Force carefully jettisoned such bullets during the retreat from Belgium from fear of reprisals if caught in possession by the Germans. The flat-tops were officially withdrawn from service before the end of 1914, but this didn’t silence the controversy from conversations recorded during the unique Christmas truce on the Western Front that year.

Rod grenades were fired like rockets from rifles planted on the ground, up and over into enemy positions, and point to more static, trench warfare as having commenced before the more exposed beach range at Newhaven was eventually abandoned. Practice trenches (link opens a PDF document)  conceivably dating from WWI can still be seen on Seaford Head Local Nature Reserve.

Fig. 4. Rod-grenade parts, Newhaven (photo: E. J.)

Fig. 4. (photo: E. J.)

References

Delorme, E. 1915. War surgery, chap. 1, fig. 1 @ http://www.vlib.us/medical/delorme/Ibullets.htm (accessed 13/09/2009)

Emden, R. van. 2013. Meeting the enemy, pp. 51, 82. Bloomsbury, London.

Jarzembowski, E. and B. 2010. A Webley under the Head. Martello Magazine, 18 (3): 10.

Jarzembowski, E. and B. 2014. A lost early World War 1 firing range. Sussex Past and Present, April: 9.

Jarzembowski, E. and B. 2014 in press. Rediscovered rifle ranges near Newhaven Sussex Archaeological Collections, 151 (for 2013): 204-209.

Figures

Fig.1. 1914 copy of bye-laws for the Newhaven rifle range (photo.: E. J.).

Fig. 2. Plan of beach rifle range and plan and section of cliff-top butt (b), Newhaven. Star (top) indicates finds’ concentration on the foreshore (i) and F, Fort Newhaven. Arrows (bottom) indicate target rods in marker’s trench; the low mound is the mantlet and high mound the stop bank (drawings: E. J.).

Fig. 3. Webley bullets and pre-1915 revolver from the Newhaven and Seaford foreshores, scale lines representing half an inch (drawings: E. J.). There were large army camps at Seaford in WWI.

Fig. 4. Rod-grenade parts, Newhaven (photo: E. J.)

This story was contributed by Ed and Biddy Jarzembowski