Soon after the B.E.F. landed in France in 1914 it fought its first action at the Belgian town of Mons. Just over four years later, when the war ended, it was back, after many adversities, in exactly the same place. During this time the B.E.F. had changed in nearly every respect: in size, in equipment and certainly in character. This process of change was continuous; each year of the war brought forth an army different in character from that of the year before. What sort of men were the soldiers of 1916?
Within a few days of the outbreak of war, Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener was offered, and accepted, the political appointment of Minister of War. The British Army for which he became responsible had two distinct components – the professional, full-time Regulars and the part-time Territorials.
Britain was the only major European country whose army was not based on conscription but relied upon voluntary enlistment. She had never been disposed to a large standing army on the Continental scale, preferring in her island position to make the fleet the first line of defence. Sufficient volunteers could be found to keep the army strong enough to fulfil its twin commitments – the provision of an Expeditionary Force for the French entente and the policing of the Empire.
The fighting part of the army was composed of the cavalry, the artillery and the infantry, these last being destined to bear the brunt of the action in the coming war. The standard infantry unit was the battalion, which contained about 1,000 men when at full strength. A small number of battalions were provided by such élite organizations as the Brigade of Guards and the Rifle Brigade, but the main infantry strength came from the county regiments.
In the British Army, unlike most others, the infantry regiment is not an operational unit but is the parent body of several battalions. In 1914, each regiment had its own strictly defined recruiting areas and a depot which housed its headquarters and trained the recruits. Large counties had several regiments; very small counties had to combine, one with another, to form a single regiment.
Most regiments had at least two Regular battalions (numbered 1st and 2nd) ; one battalion would be stationed abroad and the other somewhere in the United Kingdom. The overseas battalion would remain abroad for many years, its soldiers being replaced from time to time by fresh men sent out from England.
The agreement with the French, which dated from 1906, was not a binding treaty, merely a plan for common action if the two countries were engaged against Germany. On the outbreak of war the units of the B.E.F. filled up with Reservists to their full strength and were soon across the Channel and in action alongside the French.
The first of the ten men whose fortunes will be followed to the Somme was one of these pre-war soldiers. Percy Chappell was a native of Bath and was serving in the 1st Somerset Light Infantry, a typical county regiment. Chappell was twenty-eight years old in 1914 and had been a soldier for ten years, always with the Somersets. In 1914 he was a staff sergeant living with his wife at Colchester Barracks. In four hectic days the battalion took in 400 Reservists, clothed and equipped them and was ready for duty. During the next few days the Reservists were put through an intensive training course including many route marches to break in soft feet and new boots. While this was going on all the battalion trophies, silver and records were packed away for safekeeping until the end of the war. Seventeen days after the outbreak of war the Somersets had sailed from Southampton, and Percy Chappell was in France.
That part of the army not with the B.E.F. was mostly at its overseas stations. This was the heyday of the British Empire and battalions were stationed in every corner of the world. After the outbreak of war most were rushed home, as the Germans were making great strides across Belgium and France and the tiny B.E.F. was in danger of extinction. On their return these battalions were hastily formed into divisions and sent off to France.
Stationed in the lovely islands of Bermuda were the 2nd Lincolns. Compared with the hot, dusty stations of Africa and Asia, Bermuda was a perfect posting. One of the Lincolns officers was thirty-four-year-old Reginald Bastard. A Regular officer, he had been educated at Eton and joined the army just in time for the Boer War in which he had seen much action. A lieutenant at the end of that war, peace-time promotion had been slow and he was still, in 1914, only one rank higher – a captain. He was a good regimental officer, still unmarried, who took his career very seriously. On their arrival in England the Lincolns were included in a new division, the 8th, and were in France by Christmas.
As the fighting in France died down with the onset of winter, the last battalions of all were returning to Europe from the farthest outposts of the Empire. Some even saw a little action before they were brought home. The 2nd South Wales Borderers, stationed at the International Settlement at Tientsin, had been in barracks next to a German unit there and had formed many friendships. When war appeared to be imminent the Germans moved to protect their own settlement at Tsingtao and a few days later the Welshmen were ordered to join Britain’s new Allies, the Japanese, in attacking their former friends. The siege of Tsingtao was short but bitter; the weather was wet and cold and the Germans were well dug in behind barbed-wire defences. The Welshmen’s hardships were partly relieved by presents sent specially to them by the Mikado of Japan–cigarettes and little chrysanthemum-shaped cakes. The South Wales Borderers lost fourteen dead and thirty-six wounded before Tsingtao fell.
Another battalion, the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers, had been at Madras when the German raiding cruiser Emden bombarded the port, but there were no casualties amongst the Dubliners.
These last arrivals were made up into the 29th Division but the division was one battalion short. An Edinburgh Territorial battalion was added to complete the division, a rare distinction for a Territorial unit as the Regulars were jealous of their position in the army. The 29th Division stood by ready for duty – the last of the Regular Army.*
After the B.E.F. had sailed for France on the outbreak of war the only effective troops remaining in England were the Territorial Force – the part-time soldiers. The Territorials had been born at the time of the Haldane Reforms in 1908 which had completely reorganized the army in face of growing and aggressive German power. Provision had been made for fourteen infantry divisions, fourteen cavalry brigades (the Yeomanry) and all the supporting arms. In every respect it was a completely separate army, designed primarily to replace the B.E.F. in time of war and to guard the Homeland but also to reinforce the B.E.F. in the event of a prolonged war.
Like the battalions of the Regular Army, the Territorials recruited on a regional basis; in fact their local ties were even stronger than those of the Regulars. Each town had its drill hall where men would report for training in the evenings and at week-ends, and each summer they would all go off to the annual camp where they would meet the rest of the county unit for training as complete units.
Recruiting for the new force was brisk and by 1910 over a quarter of a million men had joined. The first officers and non-commissioned officers came from the old Militia and the Volunteers, the Reserve bodies which had been disbanded by the reforms, but it was not long before suitable new men were promoted to supplement these veterans and eventually take their places completely.
Territorial soldiers had certain legal rights. They could not be sent abroad, even in time of war, unless they volunteered by signing a ‘General Service Obligation’, nor could they be forcibly transferred from one unit to another until a special Act of Parliament was passed in 1916.
The recruits were of a very high standard and were, of course, all volunteers. Units soon developed their own esprit de corps, some of the city units becoming very selective. A London battalion, the London Rifle Brigade, whose drill hall was at Bunhill Row, actually charged an entrance fee of 25s. per man and restricted its membership to those from the commercial classes.
By 1914 the Territorial Force was well up to strength and, when it was ‘called out’ for full-time service on the outbreak of war, was well fitted to perform its role of Home Defence. In the event of their being required for overseas service, the Territorials had been promised a six-month training period, but the critical situation of the B.E.F. in the early months of the war called for swift help. The Territorial Force was asked to waive its six month’s training and volunteer for immediate overseas duty. All over the country the Force made its decision, almost a universal ‘Yes’; only a few individuals within the units refused and were left behind. By Christmas 1914, twenty-two Territorial battalions had joined the B.E.F. in France and, by February 1915, twenty-six more had joined them.
When Kitchener became Minister of War the popular opinion was that it would be a short war. The new minister did not agree and his forecast of a conflict lasting at least three years caused surprise and some dismay. If he were right there would need to be a much bigger army. Kitchener was faced with a difficulty that became greater as the days passed: he had no army on which to build. The Regulars had either gone to France or were being sent there as fast as they could be recalled from overseas; the Territorials were following them.
Kitchener decided on his own bold expedient to meet the crisis: he would build a completely new army. He would use the county regiment system and their depots but that would be all. The officers, staffs and non-commissioned officers he would get from where he could; the private soldiers would come from a direct appeal to the civilian population. The Regulars and the Territorials would have to hold the enemy in France until this new force could be raised and trained for active service.
This unorthodox plan met with some opposition but it had the advantage of being swift and simple. Parliament promptly passed the necessary Bill sanctioning the raising of 500,000 men to be formed into eighteen new divisions and, by the end of August, Kitchener made his famous appeal for the ‘First Hundred Thousand’. This was the birth of what officially became known as the ‘New Army’ – many called it ‘Kitchener’s Army’ and those who served it in were always proud to refer to themselves as ‘Kitchener’s Men’. All this was freely reported in the press and, when Kitchener’s plan became known in Germany, the newspapers there scoffed and forecast that the men would become ‘Kannonenfutter’ – cannon fodder.
This one appeal by Kitchener immediately caught the country’s imagination. Spurred on by the bad news of the B.E.F., now in headlong retreat and in danger of being cut off, a wave of enthusiasm swept the country. There were several reasons for this. Many of the more mature men felt a genuine patriotism. There was an intense pride in Britain and the Empire and a general dislike of the Germans. It was seriously felt by many that the future of the British Empire was at risk and that it was their duty to enlist. The younger men were almost certainly more inspired by the thoughts of adventure and travel at a time when few people had been farther than their own city or the nearest seaside resort. The miners, industrial workers and the unemployed often saw the call as a means of escape from their dismal conditions. In the years preceding the outbreak of war, the decline in the value of wages led to strikes in the mines, the docks, the railways and among the cotton-workers and boiler-makers. This was an England where a boy left school at thirteen and, if he could get work at all, went into the local factory, mill or pit to work between fifty and sixty hours a week for 5s. or less. The average wage for a man was under £2 per week and for this he had to work from 6.0 A.M. to 6.0 P.M. with thirty minutes for breakfast and an hour for lunch. Tea-breaks and the five-day week were concessions unheard of and not due to appear for nearly half a century. Although money values have changed, the lot of most labouring families was one of constant poverty.
It is not surprising that the mining and industrial areas produced the most men, even more than their actual population warranted. It was almost as if those doing the dirtiest and most depressing jobs couldn’t wait to get out into the open air and this was a heaven-sent opportunity; away from factories, mines or the street corner; away from slums and large families and into a new life, where there was fresh air, good companionship, regular meals and all the glamour of Kitchener’s Army.
This massive exodus from the factories and mines was to leave Britain’s industry short of skilled men and was a factor in the critical shortages of guns and shells in 1915 and 1916. The places of the 1914 volunteers were taken by men who had no intention of going to war and by women – a major step on the road to female emancipation.
In the country areas, men were sometimes given little choice in the matter. The local land-owner often selected men from his domestic staff or farm labourers and took them to the nearest recruiting office. The men involved accepted with few qualms.
Thousands of recruits did not fit into any of these categories; their only reason for joining was that everyone else was doing it. They scarcely stopped to ask themselves why; they simply followed their friends.
Many local authorities and prominent people took the initiative in sponsoring units of their own, even recruiting, paying and clothing the men out of their own pockets, confident that the War Office would eventually take over the new units and refund their expenses. Recruiting offices were opened at barracks, police stations and town halls, and were soon overwhelmed with crowds of men of all ages and from every class, clamouring to be accepted, many truly afraid that the war would be over before they could reach ‘The Front’.
Many men enlisted on the spur of the moment, walking out of their factories in the middle of shifts or leaving their offices before the day’s work had ended: ‘I worked for the County Council and, one morning, I left home to go to work; we were repairing the roads in Windsor Park at the time, but on the way I met a friend who was going to enlist. Instead of going on to work, I went back home, changed into my best clothes and went with him to the Recruiting Office at Reading.’ (Pte J. H. Harwood, 6th Royal Berks)*
Once the would-be soldier had managed to get inside the recruiting office his next obstacle was a medical inspection. This was usually very strict; with such an abundance of human material there was no point in accepting anything but the best. There were many rejects, the standard of physical health being very low, especially in the industrial areas. Even so, well-meaning and overworked doctors passed many who should have been failed.
‘I tried to enlist but, after waiting for two hours with crowds of others, I was examined by a doctor and was rejected. My chest only measured twenty-eight inches. I went across the Tyne on the ferry and tried the recruiting office at North Shields. I found the doctor there more easily suited and he marked my chest as thirty-eight inches. I went home and told my mother but she cried, saying I was only a boy. I was eighteen!’ (Pte B. Richardson, Newcastle Commercials)
‘I never thought of joining up but I had an old school mate, Walter, who was a very ardent patriot and, when he heard of the so-called atrocities committed in Belgium, he was so incensed that he decided to enlist and dragged me in with him. I was a big lad for my age, 16½, but Walter was of slighter build and while I passed as suitable, he was turned down because he was an inch too short. He was furious and I was staggered. He had shanghai’d me into the army, while he, who was a more willing candidate, had been turned down.
‘Then I had a brainwave. I had noticed that there were so many recruits that, when our height was measured, they just did it with our boots on, then subtracted an inch in lieu of the boots. My boots were bigger than his, so I packed them up with paper and told Walter to put them on. In he went again and this time he passed with no bother.’ (Pte G. Brownbridge, 13th Northumberland Fusiliers)
Thousands of boys below the minimum age of nineteen succeeded in joining up, often aided by unscrupulous recruiting sergeants who collected a bonus for every man they enlisted. ‘I was a member of the village cricket and football teams (the village was Mattishall) and nearly every one of their members enlisted. I was only sixteen but I tried to join up, too. The recruiting sergeant asked me my age and when I told him he said, “You had better go out, come in again, and tell me different.” I came back, told him I was nineteen and I was in.’ (Cpl J. Norton, 8th Norfolks)
‘I was only fifteen and every time I tried to join up in London it was no good, they wouldn’t have me. So I went by rail to Birmingham, on a penny platform ticket. I went into a recruiting office there and told them I was seventeen. The sergeant said, “Why don’t you go out and have something to eat? When you come back you might be a bit older.” I told him that I had no money and he gave me two bob. When I came back he spoke to me as though he had never seen me before. I said I was eighteen and, this time, I got in all right.’ (Pte A. E. Hollingshead, 2nd Middlesex)
Once accepted, the new recruits found that there was even a choice of units. Most wanted the infantry – the main fighting arm – but some settled for the cavalry or artillery, particularly city-dwellers who wished to work with horses. The unglamorous administrative units found great difficulty in attracting recruits. Nearly all chose the local battalions with their friends but some decided, for a variety of reasons, to go farther afield: ‘Both my parents were dead, I was very poor and had never had a holiday in my life. When I joined up at Nottingham, I refused the local units and asked which other battalions were open. I chose the Northumberland Fusiliers because it gave me the longest train ride’ (L/Cpl H. Fellows, 12th Northumberland Fusiliers). By such fickle choices men decided their destiny.
Some men enlisted under false names, usually to avoid being traced by their families, but one man had another reason: ‘I had run away from home when I was fifteen and joined up in Birmingham. I was very worried about my surname; I thought it sounded German. Anyway I didn’t want my family to find me as I was only fifteen. I told the sergeant I was nearly twenty and gave a false name. My first name was Charles and I had a pal whose surname was Dickens. I thought Charles Dickens sounded quite decent and I served under that name for two years.’ (Pte C. G. Barff, 1/8th Royal Warwicks)
The first rush of recruits were formed into units containing men of all types, but soon, as so many men came forward, the unofficial ‘raisers’ saw that there was an opportunity for men from a particular district or walk of life to serve together in one battalion. These battalions were formed so quickly that they had named themselves before the War Office could adopt them and give them a proper title. These informal titles were retained even after the official ones were allocated, so that some battalions went through the war with two names, their own and the army one.*
The big cities were the first to get themselves organized and produced their famous ‘City Battalions’, often known in the industrial areas of the north of England as ‘Pals Battalions’. Sometimes the Pals would all be men of a particular occupation. A typical example was the 3rd Manchester Pals, recruited from the ‘Clerks and Warehousemen of Manchester’ – a subsidiary title they were proud to bear. One of their recruits was twenty-one-year-old Paddy Kennedy, a clerk in a cotton export office (wages 25s. for a forty-four-hour week). Paddy had a military background, his father and two uncles were Irishmen serving as Regular soldiers in Irish regiments and Paddy had been born at Dover Barracks. A Catholic, young Kennedy was a member of the Manchester Company of the Irish Volunteers, a body of armed men prepared to fight against any partition of Ireland by the Home Rule Bill then being introduced. During his summer holidays in Ireland, Paddy Kennedy had actually been involved in a clash with English troops soon after rifles and ammunition from Belgium had been landed for the Irish Volunteers at Howth near Dublin. When the war with Germany broke out Kennedy would have liked to join his father’s old regiment but it was now recruiting in Protestant Ulster, so, with many of his Manchester friends, he joined the Clerks’ and Warehousemen’s Battalion.
Hull raised four battalions which were destined to serve together as the city’s own brigade. One, the Commercials, was recruited entirely from men of the business offices; a second was the Tradesmen’s Battalion and another the Sportsmen’s Battalion. For want of a better name, the last battalion became ‘T’Others’.
Glasgow raised three battalions very quickly. The first was raised by the City Tramways Department; their recruiting office opened at the Tram Depot and within sixteen hours the battalion was complete. The second was raised by the Boys’ Brigade and was composed entirely of former members. The third, the Glasgow Commercials, was the work of the city’s Chamber of Commerce.
Some towns tried to compete with the cities and succeeded in forming their Pals battalions. Accrington, the Lancashire cotton town, was one of these. The mayor, a retired army officer, formed a committee and recruiting started at a little office in the town. Within ten days there were enough men. Accrington could only supply half of these, the remainder coming in from the surrounding towns of Burnley, Chorley and Blackburn; but the battalion was always to be known as the Accrington Pals.
In Grimsby it was the headmaster of a local grammar school who took the initiative. He decided to raise a company of 250 men, all old boys of his school, and offer it to one of the local Territorial battalions. When other men from the town asked to be included, it became obvious that the 250 mark would soon be passed. The headmaster handed his company over to the town council, which decided to try for a complete battalion for the New Army. More men came in from the surrounding villages and from other Lincolnshire towns – Boston, Scunthorpe and Louth – and finally, with the help of a group of men sent from Wakefield, another battalion was ready for Kitchener – the Grimsby Chums.
The less populated country areas frequently had difficulty filling their units and often had to ask the cities for men to make up the shortage. Thus, a London recruit was persuaded to join a West Country battalion, the 9th Devons. He found that it contained so many Londoners and Lancashire men that it had been jokingly re-named the 9th London and Lancs.
In 1914 the political situation in Ireland, still part of the United Kingdom, was delicate. The larger part of the country, the Catholic South, wished to see an independent state composed of the whole country. It was this movement that Paddy Kennedy and his Irish Volunteers supported. But there was bitter resistance to this prospect from the northern province of Ulster, composed of nine counties and largely Protestant. The Irish question had bedevilled British politics for some time. There existed, in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.), composed of 80,000 men, properly armed and organized on military lines. Its members were prepared to fight anyone, English or Southern Irish, to avoid being forced into a union with the Catholics. The U.V.F. was, in theory, illegal but was so strong that the London Government had made no attempt to disarm it.
In his search for men, Kitchener asked Sir Edward Carson, the M.P. for Dublin University but leader of the Ulster politicians, if he would hand over the Force to his New Army. At first there was hesitation but, as the news from France worsened, Carson and his fellow Ulster M.P.s agreed, provided the Home Rule Bill was not implemented while the U.V.F. was away in France. Kitchener was hoping for a brigade; Carson offered him a division and the U.V.F. units became battalions of the British Army.* Another Ulster M.P., Capt. Charles Craig, immediately ordered 10,000 uniforms and his fellow M.P.s promised that Ulster money would be raised to meet the bill.
Back in Ulster, there were many who had misgivings about the action their representatives in London had taken. The U.V.F. had no direct quarrel with Germany, who had supplied the rifles for their illegal army. Moreover, it was feared that the London Government would force Ulster into the hated Home Rule with the South while their menfolk were away fighting the Germans. But the people of Ulster soon became caught up in the all-pervading enthusiasm for the new war and thousands of U.V.F. men volunteered for the new division.
One recruit was a young Belfast man, William McFadzean, known to his friends as Billy. He lived in one of the city suburbs, Cregagh, and was the eldest boy in the family. His father was a J.P. and the family were all members of the Presbyterian Church. Billy was an apprentice to a Belfast linen firm (£100 for a full five-year apprenticeship), and in his spare time he had two occupations; he was a junior player for the Collegians Rugby Club and a member of the 1st Belfast Regiment of the U.V.F. When recruiting started for the Ulster Division, Billy McFadzean immediately joined the Belfast Young Citizens’ battalion, sometimes known as the ‘Chocolate Soldiers’ because most of its men had a commercial background and came from ‘good’ families.
Those living in England who had Irish or Scottish connexions could sometimes find a place in battalions formed specially for them. The Territorials already had such units in London and Liverpool; other cities tried to form New Army battalions to copy them. In Manchester some Scots businessmen started recruiting for the Manchester Scottish, hoping that the War Office would adopt the new unit. Over 300 men enlisted but, when official recognition was refused, the disappointed men were given a choice: stay and join one of the Manchester Pals battalions or go to Edinburgh and become part of a proper Scots unit. Most of them chose Edinburgh and went there by train to be incorporated into the 1st Edinburgh City Battalion.
Tyneside was luckier. Here the raisers attempted to form both Tyneside Scottish and Tyneside Irish battalions. Recruiting was brisk and the two battalions were soon complete. The raisers then decided to go further and recruit for a brigade each. There was intense competition and the whole of Tyneside waited to see which side could find the required number of men first. It is uncertain who won; both sides claimed victory by a narrow margin.
When the recruits for the two brigades were examined more closely, it was found that both had accepted men with no Scottish or Irish connexions. Although the Tyneside Irish contained many of their large immigrant community in the North-East, at least seventy-five per cent of the Tyneside Scottish were pure Geordies who had joined for the glamour of the name. They were even hoping to be given full kilted uniform, but they were to be disappointed; they were, however, given a glengarry hat and a special cap badge.
The four counties of the Industrial North between them produced 134 New Army battalions, just over one-third of the thirty divisions eventually raised by Lord Kitchener in the whole of the United Kingdom.* Cities vied with each other to raise their Pals; Manchester appears to have held the record with fifteen battalions. There were some surprises; little Barnsley raised two, proudly named the 1st and 2nd Barnsley Pals, while nearby Sheffield – nine times her size – only raised one, named, more sedately, the Sheffield City Battalion. Sheffield preferred to support the local Territorials, the famous Hallamshires.
A typical mining recruit was Richard Richardson King, Dick to his friends. He was a Nottinghamshire man who had married a local girl, Emma, and then moved to south Yorkshire because the thicker coal seams there offered better prospects of pay. He settled in the village of Tickhill, near Doncaster, and raised his family there. In 1914 he was thirty years old with three daughters and a son. One day he was late home from work and when he did arrive, walked in with ‘Here comes Kitchener’s Army’: He had enlisted without consulting his family. Within a few days he was Pte King of the 10th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (the K.O.Y.L.I.), a new battalion forming at Pontefract.
The miners made good soldiers; they were used to hard work and dangerous conditions and they made light of digging and maintaining their trenches when they reached the Front. One south Yorkshire battalion contained so many miners that they were hard put to it to find orderly room clerks, while others, the Commercials, for example, had over 900 men sufficiently qualified for the position. A Newcastle unit contained only railwaymen and served as the Railway Pals Battalion.
At the other end of the social scale a group of raisers decided they would form a battalion so that former public schoolboys could serve together. An advertisement was placed in leading newspapers and some 1,500 applications were received. Among the volunteers were two men who came from Turkey specially to join and two retired cavalry officers (Queen’s Bays and 19th Hussars) who both joined as private soldiers. There were enough former international players in the battalion to field two full rugger teams and one soccer team.
Eventually the formation of so many units, which had taken the War Office by surprise, was formally ratified and they were taken over and given places in the county regiments. Sometimes ceremonial parades were held to mark the formal taking over of these latest additions to the British Army. The new units had no background or tradition of any kind other than that of the county regiment which took them over. The informal titles they took to themselves were never forgotten and men frequently thought of themselves as, say, a Leeds Pal or a Bradford Pal first and a West Yorkshire Regiment man second.*
Billy McFadzean’s Belfast Young Citizens became the 14th Royal Irish Rifles, the Public Schools Battalion became the 16th Middlesex and the Tyneside Scottish and Irish were taken over by the Northumberland Fusiliers. The Grimsby Chums were accepted by their county regiment and became the 10th Lincolns. Not all went smoothly; in Glasgow the Boys’ Brigade had difficulty in getting official recognition for their special battalion and threatened to offer it to the Cameronians, not traditionally a Glasgow regiment. Eventually, all was smoothed over and the three Glasgow units were taken over by the Highland Light Infantry.
In Edinburgh, the 1st City Battalion, which contained 300 Mancunians, became the 15th Royal Scots. This famous regiment had been the old First of Foot before county regiments had been formed and its long history was impressed upon the recruits, a history which went back so far that the regiment was nicknamed ‘Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard’.
Densely populated Lancashire and Yorkshire had no less than thirteen regiments between them, and battalions from every one of these were to be present on the Somme on 1 July 1916. The Manchester Pals and Liverpool Pals became battalions in the Manchester Regiment and the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment and Accrington’s Pals the 11th East Lancs. The Sheffield City Battalion and the neighbouring Barnsley Pals went into the Yorks and Lancs, a regiment that, despite its name, only recruited in south Yorkshire, and, at Hull, the ‘T’Others’ became more formal as the 13th East Yorks.
What were the Regulars and Territorials doing about getting their recruits while this huge flood of men was enlisting for Kitchener’s New Army? The Regulars had no trouble, although their battalions in France were suffering heavy casualties. The Kitchener units may have been exciting but there was still an extra aura to the Regular Army; to many men it was the real army, and they felt it was an honour to serve in it. If this was not enough, the promise that they could be at the Front more quickly with the Regulars was often sufficient to persuade recruits to join. It was quite possible to have been a civilian in September 1914 and in France with the Regulars before Christmas of the same year.
The Territorials had greater difficulty. They had to compete with the Regulars and the New Army for recruits and sometimes found themselves a poor third to their more glamorous rivals. Those units with a severe shortage solved it by unofficially lowering their medical and other standards. Many men, finding themselves too young, too short or medically unsound elsewhere, were welcomed by the Territorials; their persistence and enthusiasm usually made them good soldiers in spite of nature’s minor imperfections.*
‘My four brothers had all joined up but I was too short and felt very ashamed not to be in the army. So I went to the Territorial Drill Hall in Derby Road, Nottingham, and offered the recruiting sergeant there a 2s. postal order if he would accept me. He did so and, when it was over, we both went along to the Sir Borlace Warren [a local pub], cashed the postal order and drank the proceeds. My wife was working in the shell factory at the time and, when she came home, I told her I had joined up.’ (Pte J. Singleton, 1/7th Sherwood Foresters)*
The New Army had no such problems. Within three weeks, by the end of September, over 500,000 men had joined. Kitchener’s wildest hopes had been fulfilled; he had his men. But half a million civilians don’t become an army overnight. Where was he to get his officers and his non-commissioned officers? Who was going to train his eager battalions?
Kitchener tackled the problem of providing officers in the same direct manner that he had used when forming the New Army itself. It was discovered that some 500 British officers from the Indian Army were at home on routine leave. He arbitrarily directed them to report for duty with the new battalions. To provide junior officers, the War Office had prepared a list of 2,000 ‘young gentlemen’ (who had recently left public schools or universities) and immediate invitations were sent to these men, encouraging them to apply for commissions. One of these was twenty-one-year-old Philip Howe, a Sheffield man who had gained a law degree at Sheffield University that summer. He received a letter from the War Office on the day war was declared. His father thought that the war would be a long one and advised the young solicitor to apply early for a commission. Howe was bored with living at home and, seeing adventure in this war, rather than out of patriotism, he took his father’s advice and was directed to report for a short course at the Officers’ Training Corps at his old university. When Philip Howe arrived at the O.T.C. he was surprised to find many of his old undergraduate friends there; but after a month, he became very impatient and, hoping to see action more quickly, he and several others left the O.T.C. and joined the Sheffield City Battalion as privates.
Kitchener’s 500 Indian Army officers and 2,000 young gentlemen did not go far. The former were supplemented by many retired officers, men who had seen active service in long-forgotten wars and who were far too old for this one, but who at least had some experience and were delighted to get back into the army.
The first Kitchener battalions were the luckiest; they had the pick of the few experienced officers available. But as more and more units were formed, the supply ran out and battalions were reduced to getting their officers as best they could. When the Pals began to form they were lucky if they could get one Regular serving officer and possibly one retired officer. The remainder (and a battalion needed over thirty officers) were simply appointed from among the professional and business men who had joined.
Philip Howe found that there was no immediate prospect of action with the Sheffield City Battalion so he tried again for a commission. This time it was granted immediately and, without any training at all, he found himself a second-lieutenant in the 10th West Yorks, a battalion raised in the Leeds and Harrogate areas. The commanding officer was a retired officer who had fought in the Ashanti War of 1873, forty-one years earlier, and the adjutant, the only Regular, was in a bad temper because sickness had prevented him going to France with his own battalion.
In the Public Schools Battalion every man was a potential officer but most preferred to serve in the ranks. The officers eventually appointed to this battalion give some indication as to how wide Kitchener had cast his net, for they included representatives from the following regiments: Natal Mounted Rifles, Bombay Light Horse, Rangoon Volunteer Rifles, the Sikhs and the Westminster Dragoons.
To give some overall idea of the inexperience of the officers of Kitchener’s Army let us look at a complete division, the 2lst, part of his Third Hundred Thousand. Every one of the battalion commanders had been retired on the outbreak of war; of the other officers, only fourteen had had any experience of the army at all. The remainder, over 400, were newly commissioned and mostly without any officer training.
The shortage of non-commissioned officers was even more acute. Mobilization on the outbreak of war had brought most of the Reservists back into the Regular units, which were now in France. There were so few left for Kitchener’s New Army that battalions were lucky to get more than half a dozen each. To make up the number, there was no alternative to promoting likely looking men in the ranks. But many resisted such offers. Men had joined up in a holiday mood and their patriotism did not always prove so strong that they were prepared to accept responsibility for their friends’ lives by becoming junior N.C.O.’S. Groups of pals had joined together and made solemn pacts that they would never accept promotion or allow themselves to be split up. There was a perverse pride in being a private in Kitchener’s Army.
There were some remarkable scenes as the new battalions were formed, as witness this new arrival at Newcastle Barracks: ‘There was absolute chaos there and on the first day I was issued with one blanket, nothing else. Tea was served in a zinc bath and, as no cups were available, I went behind the cook house to find an empty tin. That evening stew was served in the same bath and we had to kneel down and scoop it out with our hands. On the first night no billets were available so we went down to the railway station and slept in some empty carriages.’ (L/Cpl H. Fellows, 12th Northumberland Fusiliers)
Some battalions were formed in a matter of minutes, or almost as an afterthought. At Lincoln, so many men had volunteered that they were lined up in fours on the parade ground and a sergeant walked down the ranks and counted out 1,000 men. When he had enough he stopped, put his hand out and said, ‘Every man this side of me turn right. You are now the 8th Lincolns.’
So quickly had the New Army been formed that the necessary uniforms, equipment and arms were not immediately available. Some of the Pals battalions even lived at home until camps were ready for them. Each day they assembled and marched off for training in the local parks and sports grounds, clad in civilian clothes and carrying dummy rifles. When uniforms did arrive, they were usually of blue serge; the New Army was last in the queue for scarce khaki.
Small wonder that many were kept at home. ‘Nobody who had anything to do with the raising of “Kitchener’s Army” will ever forget August and September, 1914, when vast hosts of men, without officers, without N.C.O.’S, without uniforms, arms, camp equipment, rations, tents, or anything except the clothes that they stood in, were assembled in open spaces called camps, and there embodied as units of the British Army.’ (Lieut-Col. R. Fife, 7th Green Howards)*
The following account is typical of the birth of a New Army battalion:
‘I was a junior lieutenant in the Regular Army and was sent to be adjutant of a new battalion, the 8th East Surreys. I stood in the station yard at Purfleet and waited for the men to arrive. All I had for battalion headquarters was in my haversack. Three trains arrived during the day, bringing 1,000 men who had been wished upon us before any attempt had been made to provide accommodation.
‘We only had two elderly retired officers and a quartermaster, and a very good sergeant major was the only N.C.O. We were given a dozen old Reservists, who we promptly made lance-corporals, much to their horror and indignation. Then the whole battalion was paraded and an appeal was made for anybody who had ever been in charge of anyone else, or who wanted to be. About forty men stepped forward; we tied white tape around their arms and made them lance-corporals too. A rough and ready system, but it worked out well and nearly all of them made good.’ (Lieut-Col. A. P. B. Irwin, 8th East Surreys)
When the 1st Manchester Pals went to camp groups of men were allotted to each tent and the likeliest looking of each group, often a former Boy Scout, was detailed as the soldier in charge of each tent. An officer was approached by an ancient private (afterwards known as ‘Father’) who made the following complaint: ‘If you please, sir, you have placed us in a bit of a predicament. We all come from the same warehouse, and him as has been made the head of the tent is the office boy, sir, and I’m the head of the department.’†
As the arms and equipment arrived, the battalions settled down to serious training but, as there were few instructors who had been to France, most of it was for open warfare. There was plenty of parade ground drill, route marching, bayonet fighting and musketry (when sufficient rifles became available). Many men were selected for training as signallers, machine-gunners or scouts. Practice attacks were made on ‘enemy-held positions’ using fire and movement tactics whereby a body of men approached to within 200 yards of the enemy in short rushes before making a general assault. Before the war the Regulars had practised these tactics ad infinitum, as one soldier records, and the New Army men endeavoured to learn in a few months what the Regulars had taken as many years to assimilate. Little was known, in England, of the nature of trench warfare. After their offices, factories and mines the men really enjoyed this new open-air life, which, together with the marvellous spirit of companionship, made this, for some, the happiest time of their lives.
Not all were satisfied, however. ‘I was approached by one of my men, a little Welshman, who asked to speak to the Colonel. I asked him what he wanted and he said, quite seriously, “Well, sir, I don’t think my trade union would permit me to work the number of hours we are working now.” I advised him to leave the Colonel alone.’ (Capt. C. F. Ashdown, 8th Norfolks)*
One battalion met action and danger sooner than they expected. The Durham Pals were in camp at West Hartlepool when the German fleet bombarded the town in December, 1914, causing much damage and heavy casualties, 119 civilians being killed. The Durhams were alerted in case there was a German landing. Their losses, five killed and eleven wounded, were almost certainly the New Army’s first casualties through enemy action.
Gradually the battalions were formed into brigades and then divisions. The Tyneside Scottish and Irish Brigades were allowed to serve together in the 34th Division. Paddy Kennedy found his battalion was part of the 30th Division; formed by Lord Derby and called ‘Lord Derby’s Own’, it contained two Manchester Brigades and a Liverpool Brigade, a real collection of Pals.
The Ulster Division was given a number but allowed to retain its own name as part of the official title – the 36th (Ulster) Division – but known to many English troops as ‘Carson’s Army’. When this division moved to England to complete its training, the Tyrone Volunteers had to be left behind; they were in quarantine with measles but soon caught up with the rest.
When war broke out the larger members of the British Empire immediately offered their troops; whole divisions came from such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India, proud and eager to fight with the mother country. Ironically, the only Empire troops destined to take part in the fighting on 1 July 1916 were not from these large countries but from two island colonies, Newfoundland and Bermuda.
In 1914 Newfoundland, nearly as large as England but thinly populated, had no army at all. On the outbreak of war, the Governor organized a committee with twenty-five members to recruit a force of 500 men for service with the British Army; so great was the enthusiasm that the committee became fifty strong and the force over 1,000, sufficient for a complete battalion. Recruits came in from all over the island and from every occupation: fishermen, sailors, schoolteachers, lumbermen, office workers and many others. Some came from remote villages and had never even attended a school.
As in England, there were no uniforms and no rifles. Some men wore khaki drill, but most had to wear their civilian clothes. There were plenty of puttees, however, and every man was issued with a blue pair, the battalion immediately becoming known as the ‘Blue Puttee Boys’. 500 rifles had been ordered privately from Canada at $28 each but delivery was slow and the battalion had to leave without them. After a very sketchy training, the battalion was named the 1st Newfoundland Regiment and declared itself ready to sail to England. The time taken to raise and organize it – one month.
The battalion sailed from St Johns to a great send-off from the islanders. A small steamer, the S.S. Florizel, had been chartered by the Newfoundland Government for the trip, the charge being $56 for each officer and $36 for each man. The 500 rifles arrived soon after the battalion had sailed and were sent on after them. ‘We sailed from St Johns on October 4th. The Florizel had been out to the seal fishery that spring and she stank like hell. We joined the convoy bringing the first contingent of Canadian troops overseas. The ship we sailed on was only about 2,000 tons and looked like a row-boat compared to the ships the Canadians were on. While waiting to disembark, our quartermaster went aboard one of the Canadian ships and managed to scrounge enough service caps and greatcoats for us all.’ (Pte J. F. Hibbs, 1st Newfoundland Regiment)
On arrival at Devonport the Newfoundlanders were kept a further week on their ship before being disembarked. One suspects that the War Office had not really expected them and were hard put to it to find them a camp. They eventually established a depot in Scotland, at Ayr race-course, which served them all through the war. The Newfoundlanders soon made friends with the English and Scots civilians and were popular because of their quiet manner. They were very anxious that they should not be known as Canadians, who sometimes got a bad name for rowdiness.
It has already been told how Reginald Bastard had been stationed at tiny Bermuda with the 2nd Lincolns. The European community there and the battalion had got on very well together, and when the Lincolns were called home on the outbreak of war the Bermudans raised a force of eighty men, the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, and sent it to England with the request that it should serve with the 2nd Lincolns. The War Office decided that the 1st Lincolns were more in need of men than the 2nd Battalion, so the Bermudans were sent out to join the 1st in France. The contingent was always kept at full strength, the island sending fresh men out to replace casualties.*
Back at home the flood of men gradually slackened off and more vigorous recruiting methods were used. The B.E.F. had suffered heavy casualties in the First Battle of Ypres and more men were still needed. The realization had come to all that the war would not be over by Christmas. A violent and unscrupulous propaganda campaign accused the Germans of terrible atrocities in the occupied areas of Belgium and France. Women were blamed for keeping their menfolk at home while other husbands were fighting. Young men walking in London streets without uniforms were stopped by society women and given white feathers – the traditional mark of cowardice.
It became very difficult for men to stay out of the army: ‘I hated war and the thought of killing anyone but I lived in a small village and, when all the others had gone, people started asking me when I would be going. I got fed up with this and joined up but was determined to be a non-combatant. I tried the R.A.M.C. but could not get in so I finished up as a stretcher-bearer in the infantry.’ (Pte F. S. Martin, Rangers)
As time passed, those who had been too young before became old enough to enlist. Bill Soar was an apprentice joiner living in the Meadows district of Nottingham who wanted to see more of the world. At the beginning of December he was only seventeen but was accepted together with two friends by the Territorials, always looking for men. The three joined the 2/7th Sherwood Foresters, known as the ‘Robin Hood Rifles’. Soar did not have to go far away from home for his training which was done at Wollaton Park, on the Trent Rifle Ranges and at Belton Park near Grantham. He was trained as a stretcher-bearer and bandsman and given the rank of Bugler, a rank only found in certain regiments.
Charles Matthews had also been too young. He was a clerk from Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, working in the offices of a brewery at Northampton. He knew that the 8th Northamptons were training men for other battalions and that they were stationed at Penzance, being known as the ‘Riviera Boys’. He decided to enlist in May 1915, and, instead of joining a Buckinghamshire battalion, chose the 8th Northamptons; if he was going to spend the summer training he preferred to do it at Penzance. After he had enlisted he was surprised not to be sent off to Cornwall but kept at the depot at Northampton, even being allowed home in his uniform – an army tunic, a policeman’s overcoat but no cap; there was none to spare.
Two weeks later he was sent to the 8th, but not to Penzance; it had been moved to Colchester. Matthews was not to get his summer by the sea. He spent three months training under some ancient N.C.O.’S, doing much ‘square bashing’, open field training and bayonet practice, but, like so many, nothing at all to prepare him for trench warfare.
Another late joiner was Albert McMillan, who lived at Islington and worked for the Great Central Railway at Marylebone Goods Yard (14s. per week). A real Cockney, McMillan had never even seen the sea. Rejected in 1914 with ‘Get a couple more inches on your chest, Joe’, by the recruiting sergeant at the Metropolitan Music Hall in Edgware Road, and sacked by the Railway for trying to join without permission, he took a job as a carter delivering salt in London. In 1915, Albert tried again to enlist and this time was accepted by the Middlesex Regiment. McMillan seemed doomed to trouble. At the end of his training at Chatham he and a friend decided to go to London although neither had a pass. Sure enough, he was picked up by the police while chatting to some girls on a street corner, returned to camp and sentenced to twenty-one days’ detention. When this was over he asked to see his c.o. and begged to be sent to France. His request was granted and he was sent out as a reinforcement.
One of the most remarkable members of the Army of 1916 must have been Henry Webber. In 1914, Webber was sixty-six years old, over twenty years past the army’s normal age limit, and his family of four sons and four daughters were all grown up. He had already lived a very full life, having been a member of the London Stock Exchange for forty-two years. He lived at Horley in Surrey and was prominent in a great variety of local affairs: a Justice of the Peace, a County Councillor since the formation of Surrey County Council, a churchwarden and president of the local Boy Scouts Association. He took part in many of the fashionable sports: cricket, shooting, hunting (as Master of the Old Surrey and Burstow Hunt). Three of his sons were army officers serving in France, and he longed to join them.
First, Webber applied to the War Office, offering to serve ‘in any capacity’, but his offer was rejected. Next, he recruited a company of ‘Roughriders’ – fellow-horsemen like himself – and offered this unit complete to the army, but again he was rejected. He never gave up and, possibly to rid themselves of this persistent old gentleman, the War Office eventually gave him a commission. After a very short training period, Henry Webber went out to France as a battalion transport officer at the ripe old age of sixty-eight, a remarkable achievement of perseverance.
As the end of their training periods approached, the battalions made their final adjustments and filled any gaps in their ranks. There were some odd moves; an Essex man, a professional musician at the Ilford Hippodrome, answered an advertisement in a theatrical magazine and became a bandsman in the 2nd Bradford Pals. A sailor in the 4th Battle Squadron, bored with lack of action, took himself off and enlisted in a Dublin battalion. This self-organized transfer took several years to sort out but, thanks to the intervention of his M.P., the ex-sailor suffered no penalty. He was to see plenty of action with the Dublin Fusiliers.
Dick King’s young brother, Frank, had joined the Yeomanry and Dick asked his own c.o. if Frank could join him in the K.O.Y.L.I. Permission was granted and the two served together, Dick as a machine-gunner and Frank as an officer’s servant. A third brother served in another unit of the same division.
Some two million men had volunteered for the army and the Territorial Force but, towards the end of 1915, the numbers of new enlistments had slowed to a trickle. Lord Derby, who had sponsored the New Army’s 30th Division in Lancashire, became Director General of Recruiting in October 1915. He immediately produced his ‘Derby Scheme’ which mentioned a word never used before in Britain – conscription. Before this was brought in (for single men to start with), in the same month a last chance to volunteer was offered and, by the end of 1915, over 200,000 took advantage of it.* Thereafter no more voluntary enlistment was allowed; men were called up as required and directed where needed. For political reasons the scheme was not applied to any part of Ireland. It was the end of the ‘Kitchener Men’ and the beginning of the ‘Derby Men’, but none of the conscripts was out in France when the Somme Battle opened. They were to become the Armies of 1917 and 1918.
As the year 1915 grew older, the New Army divisions finished their training and prepared to go to France. This was a very emotional time for them. They were desperately anxious to get to the war and prove themselves, but the casualty lists from the battles of that year and the stories of the wounded made it clear that the war was no picnic. They were leaving their families in the knowledge that some of them would never return, but the soldiers’ spirits were high nevertheless.
Among the first to go was the 21st Division. The three King brothers were, of course, all given leave and Dick took the opportunity to have his photograph taken with his wife and four children. He told Emma, his wife, that he did not expect to return and took a sad farewell of his family.
Early in 1916 it was the turn of the Tyneside Scottish to go. Two of the four battalions went on leave first, with pay and ration money for six days. When these returned the other two battalions went home but, to their anger, they were only allowed four days. As the trains took them north, the word was spread around: ‘We’re all taking six days like the others.’
Sure enough, after four days, the special leave trains left Newcastle nearly empty; only a few N.C.O.’S returned on time. Two days later the rest, nearly 2,000 of them, turned up at Newcastle Central Station looking for means of getting back to their camp near Southampton. There was utter confusion; a few of the Tynesiders had been drinking heavily and were quite incapable; wives, children and sweethearts were seeing their men off and some were in tears. There were no special trains and the men milled around in confusion. At that time, Stephenson’s original steam engine, the Rocket, was displayed at the station and a young bugler climbed up on to it and played, of all tunes, the Last Post. Every woman on the station not already crying burst into tears.
Eventually the men got back to camp, were paraded and given strong lectures by various officers, but all except a few regular troublemakers escaped punishment.
Some divisions were destined not to go directly to France. The 29th Division, containing the last of the Regulars, was standing by to go to France, but was sent to Gallipoli instead. The Edinburgh Territorial Battalion had no organization in the area to supply them with reinforcements and its numbers fell so low during the campaign that they were only at one quarter of their proper strength. The remnants were withdrawn from the division and their place taken by the Newfoundlanders. These were not well received by the 29th Division who, as Regular soldiers, objected to having another batch of ‘civilians’.
The 29th Division was away for nearly a year and earned a high reputation, becoming known as the ‘Incomparable Division’. The Newfoundlanders did not see the worst of the fighting but twice were last off the beaches when parts of the peninsula were evacuated; in fact they were the last troops of all to get away when the campaign finally closed in January 1916.
The 29th Division went next to Egypt for a few weeks. ‘At a Sunday morning drumhead service in Alexandria we heard that we would be going to France. The Padre spoke of “fresh fields and pastures new” but by the time we got there it was “pastures old”.’ (Pte H. Parker, 1st Essex)
Another division to find itself in the Middle East (or Near East as it was then known) was the 31st, containing all North Country battalions. It had been feared that Turkish troops might reach the Suez Canal and the division was sent to Egypt in great haste to defend the vital waterway. The Accrington Pals, part of this division, had a narrow escape when their troopship, which also carried sixty tons of lyddite explosive, was narrowly missed by a torpedo in the Mediterranean. The threat to the Suez Canal was averted; the 31st Division saw no action there and, like the 29th, was sent to France ready for the Somme.
Some men did not go to France with their unit. These were the late joiners who went out as reinforcements. Bill Soar was sent from the 2/7th Sherwood Foresters to the 1/7th, the pre-war Nottingham battalion, serving with the 46th (North Midland) Division, after it had lost very heavily during the storming of the Hohenzollern Redoubt at Loos in October 1915.
Charles Matthews of the Northamptons was posted to a draft for France just three months after he had enlisted. Some heartless army authority refused home leave to Matthews and the other men due for France; they were even confined to their barracks at Colchester. His mother and small sister made the tedious journey from Bletchley to say farewell to the eighteen-year-old boy but their meetings had to take place through the railings of the camp gate. This was so distressing that Matthews persuaded his mother to return home. He duly crossed to France as a reinforcement to the 6th Northamptons which was with a New Army division, the 18th (Eastern).
The veteran Lieut Henry Webber was sent to join the 7th South Lancs, another New Army battalion, in the 19th (Western) Division. He was accepted quite normally by the young officers of the battalion; he performed his duties well and not many knew his true age, although the c.o. found that his own father and Webber had rowed together at Oxford in the same year, over half a century earlier. Webber hoped that he might meet and salute his three sons who all held ranks higher than his.
Albert McMillan was released from detention and sent out to none other than the Public Schools Battalion, the 16th Middlesex. The need for officers was so great that the army could not allow this battalion to keep so many potential officers and over 1,400 were eventually persuaded to accept commissions; the gaps were being made good by ordinary recruits such as McMillan. The battalion was never to lose its distinctive title, however. It was always known as the Public Schools Battalion.
It was from such men as these, of every age from fifteen to Henry Webber’s sixty-eight, but all with the same spirit of patriotism and adventure, that the Army of 1916 was formed and went off to a destiny that was eventually to place it on the Somme on 1 July 1916.
This extract, written in the language of the period by Billy McFadzean, shows the spirit of the men at this time. ‘You people at home make me feel quite proud when you tell me “I am the Soldier Boy of the McFadzeans”. I hope to play the game and if I don’t add much lustre to it I will certainly not tarnish it.’