CHAPTER 2

The People of Britain and their Army

“The English Infantry is the most formidable in Europe, but fortunately there is not much of it.”

Thomas Robert Bugeaud, 1784—1849, Marshal of France.

Armies are the instrument by which the state defends its territorial integrity, its citizens and its natural resources from armed incursion. The state also exploits the use of force, or the threat of force by their armies to pursue needs for the control of resources and territorial expansion. The arrangement of a population, however small, into a unified force under a single commander to achieve these goals is one of the very earliest ways in which man sought to organise his way of life to a common end.

Armies are machines whose principle components, people, are glued together by a command system, in pursuit of the common goal of war. (Statement of the blindingly obvious.)

And, before we get too hung up on aggression and war, let us recall that there is more than a little evidence that early tribes of the ‘hunter gatherer’ period of human development combined together to stampede herds of the wild animals, that roamed the territories in which early tribal man was living, into killing grounds where their primitive weapons could be used effectively to slaughter their prey. By this means providing food for the tribe for days or weeks and, as a bonus, some nice new skins to wear. That seems to me just as much the act of an army, as warfare was conducted in the twentieth century. Threats were reduced and resources secured to feed and clothe the population. The difference in the species harassed, hairy quadruped versus bi pedal ‘homo erectus’ or some similar ancestor, is a matter of detail not principle.

Localised activity of the type suggested above is not historically the common form or purpose of armies. Since the time nation states had a recognised existence armies have been one of the defining features. China, Babylon, Persia, Egypt, ancient Greece, Rome, the Moghul Empire in the Indian sub continent to name but a few, all had armies sharing organisational features and objectives with modern equivalents. Additionally the roving horsemen of the Steppes organised by Ghengis Khan, although not the product of a nation state, was nevertheless a mercenary army available for hire as well as spending more than a little time on self interested missions of plunder, pillage and rape.

The objectives of these armies were as outlined in the earlier paragraph, with the emphasis in almost all cases on the old fashioned sports of plunder and conquest. Reading of these past events there is a common thread to the objectives of national leaders and their commanders: “Take over the shop next door anyway you like, make sure there is plenty of booty and not too many extra mouths to feed”. The common theme of naked aggression is too obvious to miss in all the accounts, including those in a biblical context, such as Judas Maccabaeus.

The reason for restating these fundamentals is to emphasise that armies, when committed to war, are aggressive and have a single objective, winning the military confrontation. This is the bit the ‘politicians’ are unable to reconcile with their instinct. Wars and battles are about winning, not ‘reaching an understanding’ or ‘compromise’. There is no room for ‘political accommodations’ and negotiations. The purpose and duty of soldiers and armies is to win battles and wars. One officer with more than a little cynicism commenting on political attitudes to matters military observed, “Dead soldiers don’t vote”.

In the later part of the nineteenth century Britain liked its army, principally because most of it was out of sight overseas and that part that was based in the United Kingdom (this included at this time the part of Ireland now known as Eire, the Republic of Ireland) was represented by the band usually to be found on a Sunday afternoon in the fine weather playing the well liked tunes by Sir Arthur Sullivan, of G&S fame, to appreciative audiences of respectable citizen tax payers. The idea of Tommy Atkins being needed to straighten out the mistakes of other people in continental Europe was not an idea worth consideration. Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary and gentleman to boot, would see to that!

The issue then becomes, in this appraisal of the events leading to the Great War, who was Thomas Atkins, his corporals, his sergeants, his sergeant majors and his officers. The professional army decimated in the first six months of the conflict, that nevertheless, picked up the challenge and rescued Europe from the near certainty of German hegemony, eventually leading the advance against the German Army to the defeat and the armistice of 1918.

The eighteenth century had established in the perception of the British public a sense of an island nation with a place in the affairs of the world. ‘Britannia Rule the Waves’ was a popular song as an expression of national sentiment in much the same way that Shakespeare had appealed to the Elizabethans with the lines from Richard II, “This happy breed of men, this little world/ This precious stone set in a silver sea”. Odd that, such a stirring speech was put into the mouth of an unsatisfactory and eventually deposed monarch.

Britain’s identity and influence in contemporary affairs was defined for the populations by a history that ensured that separation from neighbouring continental countries by the sea encouraged independence. This identity had become a feature of the nation as internal conflicts disappeared. The Battle at Bosworth Field in 1485, the death of Richard III, the accession of Henry Tudor as Henry VII followed by his son Henry VIII, made what had been an amalgamation of self interested fiefdoms into a governed nation of sufficient authority and wealth to cause resentment amongst other rulers and attract some, less well protected or affluent to join the party. The Crown and Parliament settled their respective spheres of responsibility with the civil and parliamentary wars and the restoration of the monarchy. (The monarch reigns, Parliament rules.) Scotland provided England and Wales with a new King on the death of Elizabeth I; James I of England and Wales, VI of Scotland. In due course Scotland began to run short of money, big country small population, and by the Act of Union of 1707 came the United Kingdom. At the same time there remained tribal, but non violent, rivalries, not just between, for example, Scotland and England but also between the people from neighbouring counties, such as Lancashire and Yorkshire. This was the cement of the nation, the confidence to be different within a nation state.

Now we should take a look at the changes to the nation’s population that preceded the Great War in the hundred years or so prior to the events of 1914, to focus on the men and women who went to war. Fortunately Britain began to count and classify its population from 1801 and this means a sound base of information to lend some authority to this rag bag of opinions and historically convenient detail.

Beginning with the population of the nation in the first year a national census was taken. The statistics are for Britain (England, Wales and Scotland). Ireland was not included in the 1801 census and subsequent information has not shown details for occupational groups, although this may be available from a more sophisticated source. The importance of this information is to emphasise the fundamental change the Industrial Revolution wrought on the structure of British society in fifty years, in the first half of the nineteenth century. The population increased by more than four million and the manufacturing businesses of the nation absorbed three quarters of this total, over three million souls found work in the factories of the nation. Meanwhile the numbers in military service remained virtually unchanged.

1801 Numbers employed by selected occupational census groups.
AgricultureTrade/Man’fArmy/Militia.R’gd ship’g.Total
Totals2,078,8852,136,786198,3512144,5584,558,550
as % of pop’n:12.713.11.20.927.9
Population of Britain (total)16,345,646

Fifty years later the return gave the following figures:

1851AgricultureTrade/Man’fArmy/Militia.R’gd ship’g.Total
Totals2,472,3565,285,31085,818NR7,757,666
as % of pop’n:11.925.40.41
Population of Britain (total)20,816,351

(By the time of the 1911 census the population of Britain was 45,370,530, an increase of more than 275% since 1801.)

The military situation for Britain in 1801 as the revolutionary phase of the war with France dawdled its inconclusive way towards the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, remained dangerous. The army was too small, badly organised and poorly lead. The Napoleonic phase of these French wars recommenced in 1804. The army and home service militia amounted to 1.2% of the eligible male population. In 1914 the strength of the regular army and reserves was 525,000, approx 0.15% of the population. Additionally there were 245,800 (Sept 1913 return) of the reformed Territorial Force (TF) (subsequently re-titled Territorial Army) together the total available for service amounted to 770,800. No more than 0.21% of the population, about 0.5% of the nation’s men. Times were different but such a disparity in the strengths of land forces available for national defence is outrageous. The price for the misjudgements and prejudices of the previous 250 years were to be called in as a national debt against the men of the nation, 1914 Term. The price for past errors would be laid, in the myths of the ‘chattering classes’, on the shoulders of the professional soldiers who were, and still are, disliked and resented by the political oligarchy of the nation.

In the years to 1914 the population had increased to 45,750,000 and the emphasis moved even further towards the manufacturing sector of the economy for employment. Not included in the census returns for Britain were a very significant ‘expatriate’ community colonial administrators in all four corners of the globe, railway engineers in Argentina, tea planters in Assam, rubber planters in Malaya; doctors, teachers, missionaries and assorted farmers, traders, bankers, etcetera, wherever you looked. Additionally there were many more born in Britain during the years covered by the censuses who emigrated voluntarily to the colonial territories, as well as the United States of America.

The German population in 1914 was over sixty million and in France, thirty nine million. Germany was however in alliance with the Austro Hungarian Empire/Kingdom forming the majority of the armies of the Central Powers with additional resources of manpower. Britain also was able to call upon additional manpower resources from its overseas territories. Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa as well as the smaller countries that made up the British Empire.

India was the source of the most immediate significant reinforcement of Britain’s Army. The Indian Army equipped for war, was embodied and trained to be compatible with European/British procedures. Additionally, and strangely in the perceptions of today, soldiers of the Indian Army were loyal to the British Crown and the military ethic of the British Empire. That was the first piece of good luck for the Western Allies. To the credit of the soldiers of all ranks, the units of the Indian Army fulfilled their obligations as the King’s Soldiers and served with distinction, strengthening the remains of the army Britain could deploy during the crucial months from November 1914 onwards until the new armies could be trained and deployed.

There is no easy comparison of the relative population strengths of the Allied powers and the enemy Central Powers. On first examination Britain and France were outnumbered but the comments above are an indication that the comparison is not that simple. Then, the Allied powers included Russia with a population probably equal numerically to the combined strengths of all the other nations with the exception of India, whose population has to be taken into account when considering the numbers theoretically available to Britain. I told you didn’t I, the bare essentials of information are complicated enough before anyone has fired a single shot.

The second piece of good fortune for Britain and France, the Western Allies, was that Russia had not the means, the ability or the inclination to get mixed up in Franco/Belgium/British operations. There were no viable means by which the ramshackle army of the Tsar of all Russia could integrate their command and operational procedures with those of the Western Allies. Better by far that Russia was left to do its own thing in the East, worry the Kaiser and the Emperor Franz Joseph with the weight of numbers and crumble into revolutionary disorder in 1917. Russia’s contribution to the fray was to divide the attention and armies of the Central Powers and force the German High Command to divert forces to the Eastern Front. Had this diversion of effort to the East not taken place, in all probability the Allied armies in France would have been overwhelmed by the German attack through Belgium and the whole event would have been a re-run of 1871 with Britain implicated in the defeat as well.

That takes us some way from the population and people of Britain who were to fight the war. The difficulty is that with an amateur in charge of this project, separation of politics, strategy, tactics and military objectives, from the real people whose efforts were needed to complete the task are too easily confused. One consequence of this situation is repeated by more experienced commentators, as I read the accepted versions of events. There is a generalised assumption, it appears, that the professionals of the armed forces and the British Army in particular, who went about their tasks, were somehow not people. Automata were conjured from some distant, abstract place to undertake tasks others would not carry out. The actuality was that the professionals of all ranks, suddenly faced with an aggressive enemy and hundreds of thousands of volunteers, had no option but to build the new armies as the mirror image of the regular forces. The time had long past for planning and introducing a new model; war had been declared and the shooting had begun. The enthusiastic recruits and the later conscripts had no option but to fit, very uncomfortably, into the system the army already had in place. A system that had never considered the implications of combining the vast range of abilities, education, physique and achievement deployed by the population at large into the regular army.

The automata model of the British Army is misconceived, the army as a volunteer force serving in dispersed locations worldwide had to be careful of its soldiers, there was no endless supply of recruits coming through on the next draft. The planners and organisers3 of the British Army were and remain, regimental officers, or from a corps such as Engineers, carrying out a tour of staff duties usually for three years in peacetime. There was an understanding that whilst the enemy must be defeated, casualties must be minimised. As a contrast, the German Army of the day had the elite ‘General Staff’ with distinctive, and envied, double carmine red stripes on the side seam of their trousers or breeches. They also alternated with regimental duties but took with them the aura and the stripped trousers of the elite. They also took field command responsibilities with their military ideology conditioned by the knowledge that the conscription system would replace losses. This subtle distinction meant there was always in the mind of the British planners the consequences of asking too much of their regimental fighting colleagues. That is not to say that there were not, during the Great War, many times when too much was required of the fighting units. Nevertheless the function of the ‘Staff’, who, despite all reports to the contrary, were real people; trained soldiers, mindful of the consequences for their friends in the firing line, was to produce, against the odds, a winning formulae. Our friend Murphy then had numerous opportunities to demonstrate the application of his well known law. Plans, ideas and orders are of no consequence until somebody does something in war situations or indeed in any other aspect of practical affairs. Then however, people, in particular the enemy, all make their contribution and before very long the whole idea has changed radically. Moral: when up to your waist in a swamp with crocodiles snapping at your backside it is difficult to remember that the job is to drain said swamp. In the context of war you have to accept that the enemy will use his best efforts to defeat your plans. Especially if the enemy is the German Army; defeat was not within the schedule of options of the German nation, even as late as the spring of 1918.

Nothing is as it appears for this conflict. This was the very first time total war was fought in ways that affected the lives of virtually the whole world and in its outcome changed the government of nations great and small. It was indeed a Great War, the first industrial war! This was the very first time that the entire population of Britain had been committed to wage war. One hundred years or so after Napoleon introduced the idea to the French. From that we need to consider the strengths and weaknesses of British society and the preparations, or lack of them, that preceded the decision to join, sustain and lead the Allied forces to the defeat of the preeminent European army in November 1918.

Whatever else is disputed about the Great War, or any other war, victors or vanquished; people are the casualties: killed, maimed, dispossessed, widowed, orphaned. The lives of generations of Europeans were lost or damaged by the conflict of 1914—18, all at the behest of a vainglorious charlatan and his military sycophants.

The incomplete table of population details on pages 34 and 35 of this section gives a small and selective insight into the extent to which Britain and its population changed in a century and a decade. Population expanded almost three fold, converted from a largely rural agricultural society to a dynamic, world class, manufacturing economy, dominating some sectors of economic activity, backed by banking and commercial sectors, such as insurance of unrivalled global consequence and with the benefit of a merchant shipping fleet beyond comparison.

The drama of the epoch was the Industrial Revolution, spinning Britain to a position of international significance. This change has within it a curious contradiction. Unlike the Florentine Renaissance that flourished on the genius and talent of a relatively small number of gifted artists and bankers under the patronage of the Medici family, Britain and its population took opportunity by the throat and fashioned success on the contribution of the entire community. That is not to say that there were not hardships, deprivation and poverty but there were counterbalancing opportunities for improvement and wealth open to society as never before. Here was the moment in the national history when the enthusiasm and enterprise allowed the development of a counterbalance to the established order of political power through the wealth of the landed gentry and political patronage. Nothing in a nation speaks louder than wealth and within a generation there were sufficient ‘new men’ of money and no allegiance to the establishment, to alter the balance of political and social perceptions and power. The Liberal reform acts of the 1830s and Sir Robert Peel’s repeal (no pun intended) of the Corn Laws were such signs of the times!

The blunt speaking people from Lancashire quickly summed up the way things could change with the wry observation that the self-made ‘went from clogs to clogs in three generations’. It was the opportunity of personal improvement in Britain that probably contributed to the dilution of revolutionary zeal that ran riot in continental Europe in the nineteenth century. This factor was paralleled by the effect of Charles Wesley and other evangelical nonconforming Christian churches that so influenced the lives of the new working class, particularly in England and Wales. That was the second aspect of the social change wrought by the Industrial Revolution, the creation of social mobility. Very quickly the ability of people to carve out their own prosperity improved dramatically. This opportunity was enthusiastically adopted by the expanding industrial workers of all degrees. No yeoman farmer, however diligent and talented, could expect to own, in one generation, the wealth accumulated by the men of enterprise who drove the industrialisation of Britain.

The unanswered questions concerns how and who became the ‘drivers’, I hesitate to use the word ‘managers’, of these burgeoning enterprises. For example Matthew Boulton and James Watt went into business making steam engines, moving in 1795 to Soho Foundry, Aston, at that date next door neighbour to burgeoning Birmingham. Very successful they were too, so much so that it was quite impractical for them to supervise every detail of their business. Based as it was in the centre of England they could not give personal attention to the installation of their machinery in Cornwall, Yorkshire and numerous other locations whilst, at the same time, managing the daily affairs in the Soho Foundry. This is a lone example but it must have been replicated in every successful enterprise in the land. Suddenly the nation had a need for designers, organisers, engineers, clerks, accountants, draughtsmen, and a legion of other specialists. Such people had to be competent, independent, commercially adept and technically effective. There is no easily found explanation for this development; but happen it did, to the credit of the people of the day.

The equation’s solution is in part due to the expansion of the population, the ‘X’ factor, but the second part of the conundrum is the ‘Y’ factor, where did the population acquire this knowledge? In 1801 reading and writing were, to the bulk of the people, a dark art, the population was largely illiterate and yet by 1851, railways were being built during railway mania. In 1825 there was about thirty miles of railway track for steam trains in Britain. By 1850 there was more than 7,000 miles and still growing. Iron steam ships from Britain were trading the world, pottery, textiles and numerous other manufactured goods for use in the domestic economy of Britain and abroad; wherever the flag went trade was bound to follow. All this in addition to the huge commercial and financial operations of the City of London, and, businesses and the economy went on growing. Where did the resources of a competent, trained professional, commercial and technical class of ‘tradesmen’ (women were as yet outside the reckoning) originate and acquire their expertise? Yes I know, I have repeated the question, but in my defence to emphasise the point.

The huge discrepancy between the near threefold increase of the population in general and the increase in the number of soldiers referred to above disguised many associated problems. Not least the issue of senior commanders. Whilst industry and commerce was breeding managers and specialists of any and every description to run and promote businesses of great influence, the army, though reformed, was operating on ‘cadre’4 establishment. These circumstances ensured that only the very minimum of officers could progress to the higher levels of command and gain the experience of planning and deploying significant land forces in a war situation. In 1914 the French found more than sixty general officers wanting in the discharge of their professional duties and relieved them of their commands. I would very much doubt that the British Army had many more than sixty generals of all ranks on the active list in 1914. Britain had no option but to use all its generals plus others recalled from retirement, good and otherwise, it was all that was available. Perversely this situation protected Haig and Robertson in 1917 when Lloyd George was actively working for their removal. He then found to his horror that there was no alternative to the team in place. No one else was of the stature or experience, able to command the respect of subordinates and deal with the French competently. That comment is not intended to detract from the achievements of such men as Plummer and Maxse. These and other officers were competent above their rank, their most effective contribution was to continue in their appointments and set an example of excellence for the remainder of the army.

A retrospective view suggests very strongly that Britain in common with the rest of Europe had not paid too much attention to education. Three universities, Oxford, Cambridge and London in England, a clutch of grammar schools, in particular those founded and endowed in various parts of the country by Edward VI, plus establishments we now recognise as major public schools, founded in Victorian times, provided for the education of the sons of the merchants, landed gentry and aristocracy. The recognised professions were essentially those of the law, the Church, the army, the navy and medicine, as a physician. Surgeons, ‘sawbones’ were yet to become respectable. These needs could be fulfilled from the established resources and provide for the higher education of those needed for administering colonial affairs, all in the classical tradition as widespread education in ‘natural sciences’ was something for the future.

Inheritance law in Britain had always required that the eldest son acquired both title and land on the death of a father. Money could be willed to other children, sons and daughters, but land, the estate, was the right of the heir. The nurture and expectations of the sons in a family with title and estate paid close attention to their potential inheritance. The eldest son and, often if available, the second son were not expected to put themselves at too much risk. Heir and spare was the policy of numerous families; at a time when even the most privileged were equally at risk from the diseases of the day. These were the children whose education through the schools and universities of the day were to maintain the family inheritance. If the elder brother survived into adult life, by no means a certainty, the younger of the two sometimes found his way in to political affairs. Sons of lesser significance, numbers three, four etc., were a different matter. They had to make do as best they could; the Church was secure, comfortable if supplemented by a modest private income and preferment was possible, perhaps to the bench of Bishops. The law had similar attractions; medicine, unless for the fashionable portion of society, was not of high standing or great attraction; the army and navy, risky, but with the potential for significant rewards to the successful. Hence the armed forces of the Crown drew many of its officers from the younger sons of the aristocracy and landed gentry. The Duke of Wellington when he joined the army was the Hon. Arthur Wellesley younger son of the Earl of Mornington. His career in the army was not only successful in military terms it produced an addition to the wealthy, landed dynasty. Whilst this was a comfortable arrangement that suited the needs of the time for Britain’s volunteer army, it was not a system to support a military caste in the style of Prussia. Yet the outcome of the army’s campaigns bore favourable comparison with the other European nations, most of whom paid much more attention to the cultivation of the military elite in their societies.

Education was not a high priority in the perception of many who exercised influence in affairs of the nation. Schools provided an understanding of the classical civilisation and their language, history, divinity, mathematics, geometry in particular, were the core of most school learning. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw the foundation of the Royal Military Academy (RMA), eventually Sandhurst, to educate young men in military matters and to place these aspirant officers in suitable regiments. Between 50% and 60% of the officers who joined the regiments of the line did so by purchasing their commissions. The remainder came to appointment as an officer by promotion from the ranks or by a peculiarly English arrangement. A young man hopeful of making a career in the army could, if his family had suitable contacts, join a regiment in an unpaid capacity, known quaintly as a ‘volunteer’, and serve in the ranks whilst living with the other officers when off duty. By this means a commission could be secured without purchase, when a vacancy became available as an ensign, cornet in the cavalry, the ranker would take his chance and apply to be appointed to the vacancy. The mess toast to a “short war and a bloody one” defined with precision the prevailing promotion opportunities.

That was the system, as Napoleon made his mark on history. Over the next hundred years, Britain refined and developed a procedure that eliminated the purchase of commissions, advanced the status of military education for young men at the RMA, Sandhurst, and also introduced specialist training for Artillery and Engineers officers at Woolwich. The responsibilities of the Secretary for War, the Horse Guards and the Board of Ordnance were combined, the appointment of Commander in Chief abolished, a Staff College founded to develop the abilities of officers for senior appointments and so on. The army of 1914 was a very different organisation from that which defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1815.

Britain did not ‘do’ revolution, by a narrow margin the upheavals experienced by other nations of continental Europe were avoided. Changes came by argument, necessity and the influence of social progress in the nation as a whole; the need for reform was agreed, however reluctantly, and the army also moved gradually to became a modernised fighting organisation. The British Army had, since the restoration of the Monarchy in 1661, reflected the national conditions of the day, unlike other nations the military did not set the agenda for the nation, rather it adapted the aspirations of the country to the exigencies of military service.

Insofar as education was concerned, by the 1870s governments of the day were finding the resources, support and leadership needed to improve the education of the population at large. First Gladstone then Disraeli introduced legislation to establish an entitlement for the education of children. Initially this was for children up to the age of thirteen, twelve for those who could read and complete simple arithmetic tests. But it was a fundamental change, the state for the first time passed legislation insisting that part of the population must undertake an obligation, funded by taxation to improve individual and social standards; one of the earliest examples of social engineering. More importantly legislation at about the same time introduced the concept of formal education for apprentices additional to the master’s responsibilities under the terms of the indentures. ‘Mechanics Institutes’ were established to provide formal instruction in technical subjects for the apprentices under indentured service, particularly those in the engineering trades. The institutes were organised at the initiative of local towns and cities which were empowered to finance the facility by levying a local tax on the sale of spirits to the amount of one penny a bottle. The colleges were sometimes known colloquially as ‘whisky colleges’. This is an unusual example in Britain of a ‘hypothecated’ tax at local level for a national scheme. Amongst the first, if not the first, to open under these provisions was the Mechanic’s Institute in Whitehead Road, Aston, now a suburb of Birmingham, then an independent borough. The building was still in use as part of a Technical College with the legend over the portico ‘Mechanics Institute’ as recently as 1965. Education for the people had arrived. I don’t think there was any consultation with the army or the navy on the purpose or content of this monumental social change.

Hindsight enables us to see one of the errors inherent in this failure. The armed forces, army and navy, had been gradually isolated from the mainstream of general life as society changed during the nineteenth century. As a proportion of the population, as each year passed, the army represented a smaller and smaller percentage of the total; the armed forces were marginalised by the birth rate. The obligations of defence and colonial control required by the state were undertaken by volunteer professionals as discussed above. The government saw no purpose in seeking the opinion of the professional soldier or sailor on matters that concerned the education of John Citizen, neither for their part did the armed forces, army or navy, show any interest in the matter. This omission further increased the gap in the perceptions of the professional thinking of the command structure of both the army and the navy and their appreciation of the changed social structure of the nation. Eventually, when there was a need to mobilise a citizen army, the discrepancies between the recruits of the past, and the expectations of service life of the 1914 volunteers with the enthusiasms and opinions of a literate society, took the army by surprise. There was a gulf between the perceptions of the citizens who joined to fight a war against the Kaiser and the professional army who delivered success their way using long term regular service as the bedrock of its thinking and training. This gulf in all probability helped provide the seeds which when cultivated in academic hothouses gave rise to the ‘Butchers and Bunglers’ school of military criticism.

Germany and France with their conscription of young men for army service had already addressed this issue and arranged their affairs to combine both sources of manpower. Britain had, for reasons previously described, abstained from conscription even in time of war. There was also another good reason for the government to steer clear of such a radical change. The legal system of the nation included the concept of common law, an element quite unknown in continental Europe. The awkward truth was that conscription into the army might be found illegal at common law if tested in the courts. Only those who of their own freewill volunteered to submit to the additional legal commitments of military law should be accepted for the sovereign’s service was the argument. A concept not always scrupulously observed by the recruiting sergeants of some periods of our history.

Now to cut to the chase and look at Thomas Atkins and his like, of whom the Duke of Wellington observed “I don’t know what effect these men have on the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me”. Earlier in the text the trite observation was made that armies are people within a command structure. What was the source traditionally of young men who made the army their life and what was the comparison with those who in 1914 set aside their previous plans and enlisted, initially as volunteers and later in the war by conscription? Make no mistake, soldiering is for the younger man. Capt Dunn, M.O. of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers makes the point well in his diaries of the Western Front war (Chap XVII), that infantry soldiers over forty years of age need particular attention if they are to be effective. Attention that is not necessarily available when enemy shot, shell and other ‘nasties’ of fighting a war are being exchanged to some purpose.

Typically for 250 years the army recruited for the rank and file those left over from the annual hiring fairs for agricultural workers, the prisons, fugitives from family responsibilities or debt and boy soldiers from the foundling hospitals for orphans. There was another small elite group, the sons of soldiers, serving, discharged or dead. Regiments were responsible for finding their men, when and where they could and the opportunity to enlist a young man into a regiment who was already familiar with army life was a bonus. In particular if the father of the recruit had served with distinction. August 1914 found the army dealing with recruits from every portion of society and adaptation had to be the order of the day.

The description frequently applied to the other ranks of the British Army, as the ‘crude and licentious’ soldiery was probably accurate. The description however brings those who use it face to face with this uncomfortable issue: what was the alternative? If you demean any assembly, use the individuals badly, pay them poorly, allow their exploitation and yet expect them to serve in dangerous conditions in an occupation you are not prepared to undertake yourself, disillusion will surely follow. The expectation has to be that several outcomes will result, additional that is, to the crudity and licence mentioned above. These include introversion and contempt for those who use them badly. That however was, and remains the perception of soldiers by society at large. Read Kipling’s Tommy and reflect. Occasionally though from the army’s other ranks appeared a man of note, William Cobbett who obtained his discharge from the army in the rank of sergeant major was such a one, progressing to a notable political career becoming the Member of Parliament for Oldham.

Yet, with this unlikely foundation of haphazard officer recruitment and other ranks from the ‘also rans’ of society, an army was fashioned that fought on its own, and in coalitions, to beat the best in Europe, eject the French from Canada and India, see Napoleon sent packing from Egypt, Spain and Portugal, win in the Crimea against Russia despite the appalling mistakes of the commanders and get the best of most of the sovereign’s enemies, with whom numerous governments took issue. The army did badly against the citizen army of the United States and made other mistakes in the Low Countries at the end of the eighteenth century and South America at the beginning of the nineteenth, on balance though the ledger showed a very creditable balance in favour of success. How, by what process of alchemy, was it feasible to produce an all purpose, go anywhere, winning team generation on generation? No other contemporary nation achieved such success, even Frederick the Great and the Prussians served and succeeded only in Europe. In 1914 when the Great War began, the army of Rome seems to be the only previous example of a military organisation, soldiering on so many frontiers with a comparable record of success over at least 250 years.

The secret of the British Army was to produce the regimental family that took for its other ranks; the dispossessed, the fugitive and the orphan absorbing each into a community that valued them for what they did, their endurance and discipline, not their morality or paternal influence. The system provided certainty of rations, clothing, food and accommodation. The provisions were both mean and mean spirited, but were consistent and bore favourable comparison with the expectations of an agricultural labourer or a mill hand in Lancashire. In return for the protection of the regimental family the discipline was draconian, the conditions anywhere uncomfortable and risks awesome. The alternatives were also seriously unattractive.

This was the system through the nineteenth century, until in 1881 the reforming Mr Cardwell as the responsible minister set about making the uncertain amalgam of individual interests into an effective, modern army, using the best features as a firm foundation for this achievement. The inheritor of Mr Cardwel’s initiatives was Sir Edward Haldane, in 1908 his reforms concentrated upon the militia and Territorial Force as reserves and a home defence force. They knew they had opportunities to use the army’s traditions to create an organisation that would be able to defend the realm when it was needed. Neither of the reformers took the opportunity to widen the social basis of the army’s recruits. That was a serious mistake as the nation’s population was achieving great things personally, socially and economically but the army was isolated from the effects of these changes. Generals of the Napoleonic era would have recognised officers and men of the regular army of 1914, the same Napoleonic Generals would have been astonished at the scope and achievements of the society outside the army. Cardwell and Haldane were also uncompromising believers in the advantages of the British way. A very Victorian attribute and the Achilles heel of the British Army in 1914.

Underlying the result of the reorganisation the army itself remained steadfast in maintaining the precept ‘officers will lead and the men will follow’. Of the French Army it was said ‘if the men will follow the officers will lead’, not the same thing at all.

The raw material of the organisation envisaged by Cardwell and Haldane would still be, so far as they could see, the men recruited from the margins of society. Going for a soldier, never was and never will be a comfortable option. The changes they put into place were to ensure that those who made the choice to serve in the army before the emergency of 1914 should be treated reasonably, accommodated healthily, fed, clothed and equipped according to the demands of the soldiers’ trade. August 1914 changed everything. Under peacetime conditions the army dealt with about 30,000 recruits annually. The first ten days of August 1914 brought 100,000 recruits, the second half of the month another 100,000 and by the middle of September a further 100,000. Britain had no experience of such frenzied military activity. For the army it was, ‘make it up as you go along’ time.

They built better than they knew, for when the time came the British Army, regulars and volunteers, created on the achievements and the regiments of the past, fell in, marched to the sound of the guns, halted on the command, formed line, dressed by the right, held its fire until the whites of the enemies eyes were visible, then fought with such ferocious intensity that the ambitions of Kaiser Wilhelm II were thwarted and the long march to the defeat of Germany’s military ambitions began; a tragedy to be played in two acts and not completed until 1945.

For the first time in the history of the nation the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, as well as the clerk, the draughtsman and the solicitor rubbed shoulders with the professional army and, together, as the British have always done, made things work. Given the conditions and danger it was a monumental achievement.