Please take a moment to remember those who gave all so that we might live free.
With winter drawing near, it was becoming
apparent to either side that the defensive lines which were being established-
what would become known as the Western Front- could not, or would not, be
broken until the spring of 1915 at the very least.
Like so many immense human endeavours, time
was the most critical commodity. The
Allies and the Germans both required time to improve their standing and thus
their chances of a successful offensive campaign, but had to do so more quickly
than their opponent and before the cost of a long war would wear down the
economy and popular support. This was a
large factor in explaining the management and prosecution of the war- the idea
of having to win the war as quickly as possible balanced against taking all the
time required to achieve the most advantageous circumstances to procure that
victory. It necessitated, even in the
face of great loss, putting into battle undertrained and inadequately led
troops.
It is often considered that man for man
the British fielded the superior force in 1914.
There were just so many more Germans as to negate this professional
advantage; and after several costly battles there were far fewer left. “More than half of the one hundred and sixty
thousand men Britain had by then sent to France were dead of wounded.”[1] Fortunately,
Britain’s Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener had put into place a
system for volunteers to join the army for wartime service. By September, nearly half a million men had
joined, and had been organized into four Armies.[2]
As the battalions within the “Kitchener’s
Armies” (as they became known) were numbered and integrated with regiments of
the Regular Army, the bond, traditions and esprit de corps such a system
entails was retained. Geographic
recruitment or professional and recreational associations forming bases for volunteers
ensured a high level of camaraderie among men and a deep connection to the home
front. “All this made for tremendous
strengths: the men had shared interests…had the same friends…and were adamant
that their battalion would be better than any other.” [3]
Numbers alone do not an army make. The regulars who had taken the field, and
those who took a permanent place in the fields had years of training,
employment and practical experience behind them. These New Armies could not have the luxury of
years, and wouldn’t have much opportunity to learn directly from that
experience during their initial training.
“”There were far few trained officers and NCO’s” writes Brig. Richard
Holmes on the wartime volunteers, “there was a sprinkling of ex-regulars among
the NCO’s but most (men of the 11/East Lancashire) had no military experience.”
[4]
Though Holmes is only referring to one battalion, which was commonly referred
to as the “Accrington Pals”, their lack of experienced leadership, and likewise
depth of training is not atypical. The
sheer numbers; taking on hundreds of thousands of men in months when it was
usual practice to induct thirty thousand in a year stretched established
structure and resources to the limit. “It
was one thing to find men, quite another to provide officers and NCO’s to
command and train them.”[5]
Making enlistment criteria flexible so
as to allow the recall of retired ex-regulars, transferring men from the
Territorial Force and the Indian Army helped, but couldn’t be enough. Ironically, these very conditions were
attributed to the high losses of German recruits at Ypres- in what became known
as the Kindermord- “The volunteers
went into action two months later not just under- but improperly trained. Their
instructors had been mainly older NCOs who taught the close-order tactics
favored at the turn of the century, in which men charged in waves,
shoulder-to-shoulder, or in squares that would have done justice to a
Napoleonic battlefield. Regular officers, especially lieutenants, were in short
supply, and the few the reservists did have often led them into battle without
maps. It was hardly surprising that they occasionally blundered into enemy
lines. As a rule, the better the reserve regiments were trained--which is to
say, the smaller the proportion of raw volunteers--the less likely they were to
move forward in vulnerable tight-packed skirmish lines, or to rely on song
under stress.”[6]
Even allowing for
months of training wouldn’t be sufficient, as a soldier’s life- even a regular
soldier- is so much more than battle craft.
In a Spectator editorial for 1st September 1900, a
professional soldier wrote “How can you train men for
the field unless men and officers are all present in the ranks, prepared for a
march into suitable country? To do this you must shut up the barracks,
officers' mess, ser- geants' mess, canteen, cook-house, tailors' shop, and all other
regimental offices and institutions which absorb so large a proportion of the ‘strength’
of a battalion. Finally, if you aspire to make professional soldiers of our
three-year and five-year men you must pay them a living wage, and alter the
system of promotion for officers, substituting competition for seniority, and
rewarding industry and zeal at the expense of slackness and incapacity.”[7] Many of the New Army
formations would be sent to the front with only the most rudimentary of
military skills, some even having not fired more than fifty live rounds in
target practice before being expected to do so in earnest. As they began to reach the front in the
spring of 1915, their training and experience meant that they could not be relied
upon to undertake the complex operations which would be required of them. It was doubtful they would even have the
ability to hold a defensive line.
By 1916
there was little choice but to put the New Armies into an attack. The war had to be won, and could only be won
by breaking the German line in the main European theatre. Given more time, the results may have been better,
but that commodity was spent. In July of
1916, men who had little ability beyond very basic military understanding were
sent into battle by officers who had never commanded such large numbers or in
this type of war. The cost was devastating. In twenty-four hours Britain took as many
casualties, 60,000, as it had in the first months of the war. In Holmes’ example of the 11/East Lancashire-
“The Accringtons lost 7 officers and 139 men killed, 2 officers and 88 men
missing, believed killed, and 12 officers and 336 men wounded. The battalion…was never the same as it had
been at 7:30 on the morning of 1 July 1916.
And neither, for that matter, was Accrington which had lost too many of
its dearest and its best that day.” [8]
It was
the very nature of the close knit recruiting of the New Armies which would
have, and continue to give such a localized sense of loss. “The British, however, unlike other
participants, had no conception of the casualties likely to be caused by war on
the European scale. All that said, there
was a further major factor that influenced British perception, then and now, of
the loss of a generation. That factor
was the way in which the British raised the manpower to fight the war.”[9] The losses didn’t affect
the country at large; they struck small, insular localities suddenly and all at
once. The war and the common grief of
death visited households interconnected through family and community. Remembrance became so important because the
sacrifice was so personally felt.
[4] Holmes, Richard
“Tommy, The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914-1918” Harper Perennial,
2005, pg 83
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