Granda was awarded the second of his Military Medals during the raid on Shoddy Farm during the night of 22 July 1918. We knew very little about Shoddy Farm until Blacker’s Boys came out last year.
Trench raids were brutal affairs involving hand-to-hand fighting in the dark – this one resulted in the killing of 30 German soldiers and the capture of one for intelligence purposes. As a Lewis Gunner, Granda would likely have been providing machine gun cover for the raiding party. The raid lasted less than 1 hour.
For the final stop of our Flanders tour and using the detailed maps in Blacker’s Boys, we were able to trace the plan of the raid on Shoddy Farm and get a feeling for the terrain, distances and potential challenges. It was a surreal experience to be walking along a track where our Granda once fired a machine gun at other human beings.
View of Shoddy Farm from the approximate line of the RIF trenches. The “trenches” would likely have been isolated outposts rather than a fully developed trench system.
View from the position of the Lewis guns during the raid. Obviously during the raid it would have been dark, but there were crops in the fields.
Shoddy Farm today. As a German strongpoint, it would gave been rubble on top of cellars.