In anticipation of Remembrance Week, "If Ye Break Faith" presents a two part series looking at the very nature of Britain's citizen army and how that has impacted on the resonance of the First World War. Your comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome. You can follow this column through Facebook and Twitter
By autumn of 1914, the state of affairs
for the British army in the field was very dire indeed. Three months of battle had smashed its core
of professional soldiers. Of the nearly
120,000 men put into the field by the end of October 1914, a total of 29,562
had been killed, wounded or been declared missing.[1]
These regulars without question had performed with great élan against odds
which were at times 12:1,[2]
but the supply of such seasoned men was finite and quickly reaching its
limit. “This defence of Ypres is in a
dual sense the supreme memorial to the British Regular Army, for here its
officers and men showed the inestimable value of the disciplined morale and
unique standard of musketry which were the fruit of long training.”[3]
For Britain to stay active in the war, it would have to do something never done
on such a scale- and in doing so would create the reason why the First World
War remains in the public consciousness: the entire country would
mobilize. In a broad sense this would
reflect the efforts of the population in economics, agriculture and manufacture
but the reason why it seems the war touched so many ordinary lives was that
Britain was beginning to make soldiers of ordinary men.
Mid November of 1914 bore witness to the
final acts in the opening stages of war.
Along the Western Front the hasty
Defence had been a mutual
necessity. The Allies and the Germans in
the beginning war of encounter and manoeuvre had proven too evenly matched for
one side to dominate the other. Germany
had always had numerical advantage, but couldn’t press this as being so far
from bases of supply required time to build logistics, and the looming shadow
of Russia in the East was drawing attention there. Neither France nor Britain could continue
offensively until suitable reinforcements could reach the front.
A vast pool of manpower was readily
available to both; that of the native contingents of their colonial
forces. Both the Lahore and Meerut
Divisions of the British Indian Army had begun to arrive- the Lahore Division
proving instrumental in holding the line during the First Battle of Ypres. These troops, like their British
counterparts, were professional soldiers and could be relied upon the instant
they were available. “Eventually
contributing over one million troops, the British Indian Army would become the
largest source of volunteers from the Empire.”[4]
Forces from the rest of the Empire were underway as well, but as they had been
raised through militias and wartime volunteers their deployment would be
delayed while they underwent training.
These deficiencies were due in part to very few in positions of power
having foreseen- or even believed- a protracted continental war possible. Mobilisation, deployment and campaign plans
on both sides had been made around the assumption of a quick victory.
Britain’s initial plan upon involving in
a European conflict reflected this. Prior to the war, Richard Haldane (Secretary
of State for War 1905-1912) had initiated striking reforms in the organisation
of the British Army which would be of inestimable value, including a training
corps for officers and a general staff[5]. Haldane is also credited as the creative mind
behind the notion of an Expeditionary Force.
“Without the certainty of a European war,
Haldane had to plan for any number of possible scenarios; this limited his
ability to make plans for the future role of the army on the continent and plan
for its reinforcement.”[6] Eventually it was determined that the BEF would be
constituted of seven divisions, only four being initially sent to France in
August. As the threat of a German
invasion of Britain dissipated, the remaining three divisions were dispatched
to the front. The Territorial Force
(another Haldane brainchild) was composed of part-time soldiers and ex-regulars
whose purpose of home defence would release more Regular units to be sent to
the front. To further increase numbers
of available men, the Territorials were encouraged to volunteer for overseas
service which the terms of their enlistment did not oblige them to do.
One day after declaring war on Germany,
Parliament appointed Field Marshall the Lord Kitchener, a popular military
hero, as Secretary of State for War.
Kitchener did not feel the plans Haldane had laid out, which relied
heavily on the Territorial Force could be relied upon. This had mainly to do with his own opinion
that the Territorial Force itself could not be relied upon. A long serving professional officer, he
disdained “Saturday-night soldiers” and held the view that most Territorial
outfits were little more than private drinking clubs. The kind of numbers he felt would be required
in the conflict just joined was beyond what was available either through the
Regular Force or the Territorials. While
Haldane had posited that the Territorials had the foundation in existence for
rapid and measured expansion through intakes of war-time volunteers, Kitchener
wanted to attach these volunteers to existing Regular Force units; essentially
creating a mass army based upon the professionalism he himself espoused. “Kitchener had grasped, in contrast to
Governments and General Staffs alike, the probable duration of the struggle....
(He) took the view that Britain could only exercise a decisive influence
through the creation of mass armies.”[7]
Parliament sanctioned an increase in
army establishment of 500,000 men on the 6th of August, the first
appeals for volunteers was made public on the 7th. Between the beginning of the war and the 12th
of September, 478,893 men joined; 33,204 having volunteered on the 3rd
of September alone, the largest daily total of the entire war and more than the
average annual intake. (14-18) “Apart from a bedrock of patriotism and a widespread
collective sense of duty to King and Empire, two factors, in particular, helped
to generate this boom in enlistment. One was the formation on 31 August of the
These measures ensured a rapid expansion
of Britain’s army, and structuring them as subsequent components of regular
regiments, along with the geographical recruitment of these “Pals” battalions instilled
the appropriate esprit de corps while keeping men with established personal
bonds together. Taking a name from a
line regiment was one thing, though.
Expecting these “New Armies” as they became known to perform to the
standard of the regulars was another.
[1] The
War Office, “Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the
Great War” HM Stationary Office, 1922 pg 253
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