I—THE NORTHERN RIDGES 138
II—BETWEEN THE BATTLES 143
III—BATTLE OF CAMBRAI (1ST PHASE) 146
IV—BATTLE OF CAMBRAI (2ND PHASE) 156
BOOK III—WAR’S END.
CHAPTER XI
FATEFUL DAYS IN 1918 163
CHAPTER XII
WITH THE 62ND AT BUCQUOY 172
CHAPTER XIII
WITH THE 49TH IN THE VALLEY OF THE LYS 180
CHAPTER XIV
THE YEOMANRY 195
CHAPTER XV
THE LAST HUNDRED DAYS
I—SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE 203
II—THE FINAL OFFENSIVE 211
APPENDIX I
WEST RIDING COUNTY ASSOCIATION MEMBERS AND
OFFICIALS: 1908-1920 222
APPENDIX II
A—HONOURS AND AWARDS, 49TH DIVISION 227
B—HONOURS AND AWARDS, 62ND DIVISION 274
APPENDIX III
HONOURS AND AWARDS OBTAINED BY WEST RIDING
TERRITORIAL TROOPS NOT SERVING WITH THE
49TH AND 62ND DIVISIONS 322
APPENDIX IV
CASUALTIES 323
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MAJOR-GENERAL T. S. BALDOCK, C.B. _Frontispiece_
MERVILLE CHURCH _Face page 4_
CASUALTY CLEARING STATION _Face page 34_
MAP: COLOGNE TO CALAIS _Page 47_
MAP: ABOUT YPRES _Page 47_
MAP: LILLE-LENS-DOUAI _Page 49_
PLAN: RUINED BUILDINGS _Page 52_
‘MODERN WOODEN HORSE’ _Face page 54_
PLAN: AWKWARD ANGLE _Page 58_
LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR W. P. BRAITHWAITE, K.C.B.
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR R. D. WHIGHAM, K.C.B.
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR J. K. TROTTER, K.C.B.
MAJOR-GENERAL E. M. PERCEVAL, C.B.
MAJOR-GENERAL N. J. G. CAMERON, C.B. _Face page 64_
TOWER OF CLOTH HALL, YPRES _Face page 68_
PELICAN WITH FOOT RAISED _Page 76_
MAP: DOUAI-ARRAS-BAPAUME _Page 90_
MAP: SOMME FRONT _Page 92_
MAP: THIEPVAL DEFENCES _Face page 104_
MAP: AMIENS-CAMBRAI-DOUAI-DOULLENS _Page 116_
‘GOOD-NIGHT, TOMMY’ _Page 118_
MAP: LENS-DOUAI-ARRAS-BAPAUME _Page 124_
MAP: DROCOURT-QUÉANT SWITCH-LINE _Page 133_
HENDECOURT FROM THE AIR _Face page 134_
COLISEUM (GERMAN CRATER) _Face page 136_
HAVRINCOURT—
CANAL DU NORD BRIDGE
IN THE PARK _Face page 150_
CHRISTMAS CARD, 1917 _Page 159_
MAP: MARCH 21ST, 1918 _Page 168_
BUCQUOY CHURCH _Face page 174_
BUCQUOY
A STREET
MARKET PLACE _Face page 178_
YPRES: IN THE RAMPARTS _Face page 182_
MAP: APRIL 11TH, 1918 _Page 183_
METEREN AND BAILLEUL _Face page 188_
MAP: APRIL 25TH, 1918 _Page 190_
MAP: JULY 20TH, 1918 _Page 205_
MAP: HINDENBURG LINE _Page 214_
RHONELLE: RIVER CROSSING _Face page 218_
DOUAI: THE BELFRY _Face page 220_
MAP: WAR’S END _Page 220_
PELICAN WITH FOOT DOWN _Tailpiece_
FOREWORD
When all Divisions, Regular, Territorial and New Army, from whatever
part of Great Britain or quarter of the Empire they were drawn, have
rendered such splendid service, it is difficult to refer particularly to
individual units or formations.
The pages of this book, however, furnish in detail an account of the
exploits of two gallant Territorial Divisions, to one of which, the
62nd, it fell to carry out an operation of outstanding brilliance on the
occasion of the Cambrai attack on the 20th November, 1917.
Moreover, the history of both Divisions helps to emphasize the greatness
of the debt due to the Territorial Force as a whole. The value to the
State of the Territorial Force organisation at the outbreak of the war
was immense. By volunteering freely for overseas service, the pre-war
Territorials enabled the necessary reinforcements for the Army in
the field to be maintained while the New Army was in the making. The
gallantry of their subsequent performances should not be allowed to
obscure the service they then rendered.
HAIG,
_Field-Marshal_.
PREFACE
While this book has been at press, the Territorial Force has passed into
the Territorial Army, thus closing another chapter in the history of the
British citizen-soldier. That closed chapter has still to be written, as
a complete history of the Territorial Force, called into being by Mr.
(Lord) Haldane, when Secretary of State for War, in 1907, struggling
against adverse circumstances for existence and recognition from 1908 to
1914, and approving itself from 1914 to 1919, by the testimony of Mr.
Secretary Churchill and Field-Marshals Earl Haig and Viscount French, as
a saviour of the Empire in the Great War.
The present volume may supply material for one chapter of that history.
In Book I, I try to trace the early annals of the Force within the
confines of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in Books II and III, I
follow the Troops which were raised in that Riding to their war-stations
overseas. As far as possible, I have observed the limits set by the scope
of my narrative. General history before the war has been subordinated to
the experience of the West Riding Territorial Force Association, and the
history of the war has been told in relation to the part of the 49th and
62nd (West Riding) Infantry Divisions, which went to France in 1915 and
1917.
Principally, then, this book is concerned with the work of the Infantry.
A brief account of the experience of the Yeomanry is given in Chapter
XIV, and one or two other units (notably, a Company of the R.E., which
served with the 29th in the Dardanelles, and a Casualty Clearing Station
in France) are included in the main narrative. Another volume might well
be filled with the doings of West Riding Territorials attached to other
units during the war, but these records seem to belong to the units
concerned more appropriately than to the present narrative. The story of
the 2nd and 3rd Northern General Hospitals is likely to be fully told
in the Medical History of the war, and will be found to reflect the
utmost credit on the responsible authorities. These Hospitals were freely
used by wounded men of all units from the front, and became the radiant
centres of a large number of War Hospitals in the county. From the
parent institutions in Leeds and Sheffield, Auxiliary Hospitals sprang
up throughout the West Riding of Yorkshire, as many as 6,500 beds being
affiliated to the 2nd Northern General Hospital alone. From August, 1914,
till late in 1919, this splendid work, of which the foundations were laid
in peace-time, was in full swing, and should form an important chapter in
a complete history of the Territorial Force.
Special mention is also due to the uniformly brilliant record of the
West Riding Divisional Artillery, which was employed throughout the war
in all parts of the field. It has not proved possible in this volume to
select its Brigades and Batteries for special treatment: the effect would
have been too much disjointed; but, wherever they covered the Infantry,
their work always won the highest praise, and their skill under arduous
conditions is one of the marvels of the war. Something, too, should be
said about Mechanical Transport, re-organized, like so much else, at
the hour of trial in March, 1918, and of other Arms of the Service,
subordinate to the Infantry Divisions. I must be content, however, with
this passing reference to their exploits, and with such tributes to them
as occur in the course of the main narrative.
My own connection with my subject is very slender. It happened that,
in 1917, I was lent to the War Office by the Royal Defence Corps in
order to do some special work in a branch then known as T.V.I. (in the
Territorial and Volunteer Forces Directorate). The Director-General,
Major-General the Earl of Scarbrough, had been Chairman from the start
of the Territorial Force Association of the West Riding; and it happened
again, in 1919, when the History Committee of his Association had
been disappointed of the services of Professor G. S. Gordon, of Leeds
University, a Captain in the 6th West Yorkshire Regiment, 62nd Division,
and now Official Military Historian of the war, that Lord Scarbrough
recommended me to write this local history in his stead. In the earlier
chapters of the book, I had the advantage of Professor Gordon’s
assistance, and I gladly take this opportunity of thanking him for his
valuable help. My work is also much indebted to the care of several of
the General Officers Commanding the two Divisions; particularly, of
Major-General Sir James Trotter in connection with Chapter VI, and of
Lieut.-General Sir Walter Braithwaite, in connection with the important
period of his Command of the 62nd in France. Lord Scarbrough’s personal
interest in all that concerns his Association has been extended, with
great benefit, to this book in all its stages, and I have also to thank
Brig.-General Mends, Secretary of the Association, and Captain Mildren,
his assistant, for their unremitting trouble. The list of Officers from
the Riding, who have placed at my disposal diaries, photographs, letters,
notes, and valuable advice, is too long to enumerate. I should like
specially to thank Major E. P. Chambers, Captains Tom Goodall, R. M.
Robinson and J. C. Scott; but I will ask all, comprehensively, to accept
the expression of my gratitude, and of my hope that I have not altogether
failed to do justice to the praises which they have united in bestowing
on the men whom they led.
For this, when all is said and done, is the beginning and the end of
any instalment of a history of the Territorial Force. ‘This wonderful
force,’ as Lord French has called it in his book, _1914_, was founded on
the ‘patriotic spirit which has always been the soul of the Volunteers.
It was reserved for Lord Haldane,’ adds the Field-Marshal, ‘to devise
the scheme which was to make the fullest use of the Volunteers and bring
them to the zenith of their reputation.’ How high in military ardour and
achievement that zenith proved during the Great War, may be judged, I
hope, from this record, however incomplete and at second-hand, of the
Territorial Troops from the West Riding, which it has been my privilege
to compile.
L.M.
LONDON, _March 23rd, 1920_.
BOOK I
BEFORE WAR
CHAPTER I
THE WEST RIDING ASSOCIATION
At half-past five in the afternoon, on Monday, April 12th, 1915, the
first detachment of troops in the West Riding (1st Line) Territorial
Division left England for France. Their going, like all English goings
and most English home-comings, was quiet and unobserved: the War Diary
of the Division merely states that thus ‘the move to France commenced’;
further, that Divisional Headquarters left Doncaster the next day,
embarked at Folkestone on the _Invicta_, and reached Boulogne 9-50 p.m.;
that the General Officer Commanding the Division, accompanied by five
Staff Officers, travelled by motor-car on April 14th through St. Omer and
Hazebroucke to Merville, where Divisional Headquarters were established
in the Mayor’s house, 40 rue des Capucines; and that a telegram was
received by the General from H.M. the King, and a loyal reply was
despatched. So, the time of preparation was over, the time of action had
begun.
The new adventure, which was to prove so searching, was founded securely
in the past, and this latent sense of tradition explains, or helps
to explain, why over 30,000 recruits were taken by the West Riding
Territorial Force Association between the date of the outbreak of war
and April 14th, 1915; why the strength of the County units had reached
three-quarters of the pre-war establishment[1] fully as early as that
date, and why the expedition to France proceeded in the ordinary course
of duty. For the spirit of adventure was not new, though overlaid by many
years of ease. Deep in the consciousness of Yorkshiremen, as of men ‘from
every shire’s end of England’, were echoes of long-ago wars in defence of
their country on foreign soil, under Wellington, under Marlborough, under
the Houses of York and Lancaster, and away back to the Plantagenet kings,
when the first ‘verray parfit gentil knight,’ with his squire, ‘as fresh
as in the month of May’, led his troops to fight for the right,
‘In Flaundres, in Artoyes and Picardye.’
Thus Lord Haldane wrote correctly, in December, 1908: ‘The organization
of the Territorial Force, ... novel as in material respects it is, ... is
the outcome of a process of development, the beginnings of which lie far
back in the past.’[2]
Some account of that ‘organization’ in the West Riding, remembering
its roots in the past, is necessary in advance of a history of what
the troops wrought in the field. They did not spring fully armed from
the head of Mars. On the contrary, their martial equipment was a
long and complicated affair, mixed up with questions of finance and
administration, which were left, in the worst years of military ardour,
to the public spirit of a few local men. The menace of foreign aggression
in the consulship of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith was
not a popular subject, and the Haldane Act, 1907, ‘to provide for the
reorganization of His Majesty’s military forces, and for that purpose to
authorize the establishment of County Associations, and the raising and
maintenance of a Territorial Force,’ was let loose on the counties of
the United Kingdom at a time when, twice in one year, a general election
was to be held on domestic issues unconnected with peace and war. There
was worse than public apathy to contend with. Public apathy might retard
enlistment under Section IX. of the Act, but a part of the opposition to
the new measure was founded on more positive grounds. Speakers who went
up and down the Riding to explain and recommend the scheme had to lay the
spectre of ‘compulsion’: in those days of tumbling privileges the one
unanswerable argument before which even duty was dumb. Thus, there is a
report of a speech at Malton by Mr. (the late Colonel Sir) Mark Sykes on
May 4th, 1908, in which,
‘Surveying the present conditions of England in case of an
attack, he said they had nothing to fall back upon but members
of Rifle Clubs and Cadets. Should this Army scheme fail, they
would have to look to conscription.’
There was a meeting at York on the same day, at which the elders of the
Council discussed a recommendation of the Finance Committee ‘to encourage
corporation employees to join the Territorial Army.’ On that occasion one
councillor was of opinion, that
‘there appeared to be a movement on foot throughout the country
to induce large companies to close down their works and simply
compel men to enlist in the Territorial Force, or be idle and
have no wages at all.’
Another councillor considered that ‘this was an attempt to establish
municipal conscription.’ Another gravely pointed out that ‘to encourage’
did not necessarily mean ‘to force,’ but might be stretched as much as to
mean ‘persuade.’
[Illustration: Merville Church
49TH DIVISION, APRIL, 1915.]
We shall not attach names to these dead controversies. They have buried
their dead to-day, and the graves of Flanders and Gallipoli bear mute
but eloquent witness to the sudden glory of patriotism which dissolved
‘encouragement,’ ‘force,’ ‘persuasion,’ ‘compulsion,’ and ‘conscription’
in the single light of national defence. But this perception was not yet,
and the passive and active resistance which sections of opinion in the
country, not excluding the West Riding, presented to Lord Haldane’s Act
was recognized by its author himself. Speaking at Leicester in the same
week as the elders of York met in council, the Secretary for War declared—
‘We are not militarists.... All we want is to feel secure in
our hearths and homes, and to have the feeling that labour
and commerce are alike adequately protected.... He was against
conscription and compulsion.... He wanted to make the Army a
people’s Army’;
and when a man at the back of the hall shouted that the scheme would lead
to compulsory service, ‘he was caught hold of by half a dozen police,
and flung out’—to join the suffragettes. We cannot neglect these facts,
old echoes though they be to-day. Nor shall we pause to ask if a bolder
policy might not have been more successful, and if the appeal should have
been directed to the real menace of German aggression. The whole tendency
of the times was against emphasizing that aspect, and the pacific
instinct of the nation was fostered rather than rebuked by the voices of
responsible authority. It was not a healthy atmosphere for the New Act,
and the Roman author of the maxim, _si vis pacem, para bellum_, never
explained how to do it if a Government cried peace, and the Government
was the people.
Still, the Act was launched, and the counties had to make the
preparations.
There were two difficulties inherent from the start, and it is probably
correct to associate them with the public apathy towards the scheme.
For one thing, the burden of preparation fell a little obviously on
a class, which, in the years before the war, lay under a cloud of
misrepresentation. That it was a simulated and a temporary cloud, at
least in its chief manifestations, the war itself was to prove; but it
was spread fast enough and thick enough at the time to darken initiative
and counsel. Not the best Government imaginable could contrive to have
things both ways. If they chose to load certain classes in the community
with the reproach of obstructing the ‘people’s will,’ it was unseemly to
rely on individuals from those classes to popularize a branch of their
legislation. Thus, the recommendation of a ‘people’s budget’ by abusive
ridicule of landowners, and the promotion of a reform of the Second
Chamber as the cause of ‘people _versus_ peers,’ however expedient as
a means of affixing a stigma for abuses, would prove impolitic, to say
the least of it, when members of those orders were invited to take a
leading part in recruiting for a ‘people’s army.’ The same ‘people’ might
not see the point of leading and following at the same time. Yet the
Territorial and Reserve Forces Act constituted ‘the Lieutenant of the
County.. . president of the Association,’ and the Lieutenant, thus placed
in power, was, almost without exception, either a peer or a landowner or
both. Next, it assigned to the Association the duty of ‘recruiting for
the Territorial Force both in peace and in war,’ and we have seen that
this duty was liable to be misconstrued as legalized conscription. The
risk of such misconstruction was certainly not diminished by the obloquy
which was poured, for other purposes of the legislature, on the order
to which the presidents and some other of the more leisured members
of the recruiting Associations belonged. Secondly, these political
conditions reacted on the Government to some extent. For good or ill,
the success of their plans for social betterment and domestic reform
was a little obscurely involved with the maintenance of the open door
to foreign imports, the rejection of commercial preference within the
Empire, and, as a necessary corollary, with the doctrine that ‘free
trade’ would keep the peace. This avoidance, on the highest principles,
of any action likely to seem provocative abroad, so firmly upheld at the
Foreign Office till the sixtieth minute of the eleventh hour, made us
rig Dreadnoughts with apologies and raise recruits with muffled drums.
It followed from all these causes-the preoccupation of Ministers, the
social status of county leaders, the talking peace to ensure peace—that,
once the Territorial Act was launched, no member of the Government except
Lord Haldane appeared openly anxious to make it go. The early annals of
Territorial Force Associations, as they came into being under the Act,
are plaintively and miserably punctuated by what Sir William Clegg, in
the West Riding, used to call the ‘pin-pricks of the Army Council,’
and a large part of their work of initiation, which is always the most
difficult part, was achieved by personal effort against alternate or
simultaneous doses of public indifference and official neglect.
Still, the Territorial Force grew. Its foundations were well and truly
laid on that old inexpugnable spirit which, as we saw above, was already
alive in Chaucer’s England, and which, when the new summons came, flared
up through disappointment to success. The six and a half years’ record
of the West Riding Territorial Force Association, from its inaugural
meeting on January 17th, 1908, till the outbreak of war in 1914 is
typical of the experience of other counties, alike in the obstacles which
were encountered and in the resolution which partially overcame them. It
derives special interest from the fact that the population of the West
Riding is much more than twice as large as that of any county outside
London, except only Lancashire; but the chief interest of the record lies
in the after-history of the Association. The achievement of its units
in the field is a final, triumphant vindication of the confidence of
those who helped to raise them, a complete reward for the courage they
displayed, and a proof, if proof were wanted, that the nation’s need is
the measure of the nation’s power. Hence, if we dwell more particularly
on some of the difficulties which confronted that Association during the
epoch of preparation, the true merits of the Territorial Army scheme,
when tried by the supreme test of action, will be more abundantly
manifest.
First, as to _personnel_, H.M. Lieutenant for the Riding since 1904 had
been Colonel the Earl of Harewood, A.D.C., of the Yorkshire Hussars,
and formerly of the Grenadier Guards, who, accordingly, became first
president of the Association. With him were united as chairman and
vice-chairman, respectively, Colonel the Earl of Scarbrough, A.D.C.,
commanding the Yorkshire Mounted Brigade, and formerly of the 7th
Hussars, and Sir William Clegg, J.P., sometime Lord Mayor of Sheffield.
These formed a powerful triumvirate, and ‘had done their best,’ as Lord
Harewood remarked on January 17th, 1908, ‘to set matters on a preliminary
footing.’ The president and chairman were still in office in 1920, but
in February, 1917, Lord Scarbrough had received the appointment of
Director-General of the Territorial and Volunteer Forces at the War
Office, with the temporary rank of Major-General, and was thereafter
compelled to interrupt his closer supervision at the Association. ‘Our
loss,’ the president said at the next quarterly meeting, ‘is a great
gain to the country,’ and the compliment paid to Lord Scarbrough by this
appointment was appreciated by the Association as a whole. Sir William
Clegg continued in office till the end of 1915, when, to his colleagues’
great regret, his election as chairman of the Appeal Committee under Lord
Derby’s scheme and the pressure of other duties caused his necessary
resignation. He was succeeded as vice-chairman of the Association by
Brig.-General (Sir) R. C. A. B. Bewicke-Copley, (K.B.E.), C.B., in April,
1916.
It will be no derogation from the importance of the military members
of the Association appointed by the Army Council, of the representative
members similarly appointed on the recommendation of the West Riding
County Council, the County boroughs of Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield,
Leeds, Rotherham, Sheffield and York, and the Universities of Leeds and
Sheffield, and of the members co-opted by the Association to complete
its statutory establishment,[3] if we turn next to the person of the
secretary. The right choice of a candidate for this post was properly
regarded as an essential condition of success, and at the inaugural
meeting of the Association (January 17th, 1908), no other name was
proposed but that of Brig.-General Horatio Mends, C.B., formerly of the
60th Rifles, at that time Brigadier General-in-charge of Administration,
Northern Command. To the immense benefit of the Association, General
Mends’ term of office as secretary, except for a short interruption due
to ill-health in 1909, continued right through the twelve years under
review, and, alike in peace and in war, he has amply and fully sustained
the confident belief expressed at the time of his appointment, that ‘he
combined every requisite which Mr. Haldane had laid down as essential for
the secretary of an Association.’ His assistants came and went according
to the claims of other duties. They have included Captain J. U. M.
Ingilby, Captain M. L. Porter, Major A. B. Boyd-Carpenter (later, Deputy
Assistant-Director under Lord Scarbrough at the War Office, and, since
December, 1918, M.P. for East Bradford), Major H. C. E. Smithett and
Captain W. Mildren, M.B.E., of the T.F. Reserve, formerly Staff Q.M.S. in
the Army Pay Corps, York, who was appointed superintending clerk at the
beginning, and who has rendered admirable service.
Second only in importance to a secretary was a place of meeting for the
Association. It would need the powers of an epic poet to invoke the muse
to sing the rival claims of Leeds and Sheffield as headquarters of the
West Riding, and the historian who is not a Yorkshireman must be content
to set the fact on record that York was finally selected for reasons
which seemed sufficient to the high contracting parties. Once in York,
there was no hesitation in approving premises at 9, St. Leonard’s as a
permanent local habitation.
We need not set out in detail the obvious necessary business of the
appointment of committees, the distribution of duties, the drafting of
regulations, and so forth. It was new work, and not very easy work, but
the Association commanded the services of men of experience and affairs,
and some spade work had been done in advance. One point particularly
occurs to a reader of the Association archives: the concentration on the
magical word, _Mobilization_. This event governed the deliberations of
all concerned: not as a shadowy abstraction, which superior authority set
them to work at in the dark, still less as a haunting terror, created by
a jingoistic press, but as a real, present and an urgent duty, and as the
test of validity for all their acts. This idea so constantly before them
lent actuality to their proceedings. They spent no time in discussing
if and when a state of war might arise. Their practical function was to
assume the war and to prepare for it.
Apart from the recruiting problem proper, the provision, that is
to say, of the full number of officers and other ranks required to
complete the establishment of the units to be raised in the West Riding,
there was an immense amount of work to be done, military as well as
administrative, before the Association could say to the War Office: press
the button, and the troops will march out. The Haldane Act had created
the machinery, and the Association had been formed to make it work; and,
since, at any moment from that date, the crisis of 1914 might have been
precipitated, the new local authorities were well advised in aiming
at instant readiness. But if we project ourselves back into the chaos
of 1908, out of which Lord Harewood and his colleagues were entrusted
with the task of evoking order, if we sympathize with their sense of
responsibility, and recognize how gravely it was increased by lack of
knowing when the crisis would occur; in other words, if we look at the
problem through the spectacles of the West Riding Association, we must
be equally just to other aspects. The Haldane Act set up ninety-four
Associations: ninety-four engines wanting fuel, ninety-four skeleton
organisms awaiting breath and articulation, ninety-four committees hard
at work as if each was solely responsible for building the Territorial
Force. Translate this conception into the terms familiar to official
routine in the placid years before the war. Imagine the accumulation of
papers, the multiplication of minutes, and the comparative unexpectedness
of the call to decide a series of questions which lengthened with the
life of the Associations. True, a Central Council of Associations was
formed at an early date,[4] which served as a kind of clearing-house
between the counties and Whitehall, and which, while it did not preclude
the independent access of Associations, submitted as many as thirty-two
recommendations from November, 1908, to July, 1909. A few of these
topics are worth recalling. On November 9th, 1908, the Central Council
recommended ‘that travelling grants be given to individuals coming to
Section, Company and Battalion drills over a distance of two miles.’ A
deputation waited on the Secretary of State on the following February
27th. In May, an intimation was sent that a circular Memorandum might be
issued on the subject. In July, the matter was raised again, and another
deputation was received on the 23rd of that month. On August 7th, the
War Office decided not to make any grant for the payment of men in towns
coming to drill. ‘In rural corps, in which the companies, etc., are
recruited over a scattered area, the War Office will consider an extra
grant based on the cost of bringing in men of outlying sections for
Company drill two or three times a year, and will shortly issue a letter
asking for the necessary information on which a grant should be based.’
That letter was issued on September 9th. On the 13th of the next month,
the Central Council expressed the opinion that, ‘if the Territorial Force
is to be made of real value, ... this can only be done ... by giving
financial assistance to men to enable them to come into drill.’ On March
16th, 1910, a War Office letter was issued, granting a small allowance
towards the cost of bringing in outlying sections to enable them to carry
out squadron, battery or company training, but refusing to authorize as a
charge on Association public funds, any expenses incurred by individual
officers or men in travelling from their homes to their local troop or
section headquarters to carry out their ordinary drills. A wise decision,
no doubt; certainly, a carefully considered one; but, perhaps, a little
disheartening in its extreme regard for the public purse and in the
consumption of sixteen months during which voluntary recruits were not
told what their patriotism would cost them. Sometimes the decisions came
more quickly, but then they were usually in the negative. A proposal in
February, 1909, ‘that boots other than lace-up be supplied for wear by
mounted men with overalls when walking out’ was refused in the following
May. A recommendation during that May ‘that a special grant of 6d. a head
be allowed to Associations for provision of refreshments to men who are
detained on parade, or on actual military duty, for not less than four
consecutive hours,’ was turned down on August 7th.
The general tendency should be clear from these examples. At the one
end, in Yorkshire and elsewhere, throughout the ninety-four headquarters,
were brand-new Associations, eager to sweep clean and to sweep swiftly.
At the other end, in Whitehall, were the War Office and the Treasury,
fast bound by the traditions of their code, and tied particularly by a
Government committed to retrenchment on Army estimates. We hardly know
which to pity more, the Minister responsible to the House of Commons or
the Territorial Force Associations which his Act had called into being.
Meanwhile, for historical purposes, it is essential to remember that,
during this period of preparation, the Territorial Force was the
Associations. It depended on them for recruits, premises, ranges,
arms, equipment, clothing (even to ‘boots other than lace-up for wear
by mounted men with overalls when walking out’), everything that
makes an Army; and they depended in turn, far more closely than they
had anticipated, on the decisions of a harassed Army Council and the
resources of a depleted Treasury. Happily, this period was protracted by
the repeated postponement of war. In 1908 and, again, in 1911, the threat
of war was averted, as we are now aware. Time was given, accordingly, if
not for the complete fulfilment, at least for the partial satisfaction of
the means devised for the fulfilment of the chief object of the Haldane
Act. This was, as we saw,
‘To provide for the reorganization of His Majesty’s military
forces, and for that purpose to authorize the establishment
of County Associations, and the raising and maintenance of a
Territorial Force.’
No time limit was laid down for the period of incubation in the
Associations, and it is difficult to estimate what would have been our
degree of unpreparedness if the accidents of European politics had
allowed less than the six and a half years from 1908 to 1914.
A rough estimate can be formed, and it is worth computing in the present
context, and in the security of peace after war, by reference to an open
letter, dated February 26th, 1913, which was addressed by the Committee
of the National Defence Association to Mr. Asquith, as President of the
Committee of Imperial Defence.[5] The signatories included the Duke of
Bedford, Lord Fortescue, Lord Glenconner, Lord Scarbrough and Sir Richard
Temple (who were all connected with County Associations), Lord Lovat,
Mr. Walter Long, Lord Methuen, Lord Peel, Sir Samuel Scott and other men
of weight. While drawing attention to their consistent support of the
Territorial Force scheme, they felt bound to point out ‘that neither
the Territorial Associations, nor the Territorial Force have yet taken
sufficiently deep root as national institutions.’ They stated ‘with the
utmost emphasis’ that ‘no remedy involving extra financial assistance to
the Territorial Force at the expense of the Navy or Regular Army would
receive their support,’ but they did not conceal their conviction that,
‘if such a situation as existed in the autumn of 1911 recurred’, ‘the
present training, equipment and numbers of the Territorial Force are
inadequate for the task that would only too probably be laid upon it.’
‘It has come to the knowledge of this Association,’ they remarked in
another paragraph of the letter, ‘that a large proportion of Officers
responsible for the training and administration of the Force now hold the
view that it is incapable under present conditions of carrying out the
duties allotted to it in any sudden emergency. We desire most strongly to
support and emphasize this opinion.’
The warning was too grave to be ignored. The Territorial Act had been on
trial for five years, and the war, which actually arrived in the summer
of the following year, might break out at any moment.
Urgent action was taken, accordingly, by the Council of Territorial
Associations, and it is particularly interesting to the present record
to note that the basis of their action was a scheme submitted by the
Earl of Scarbrough on behalf of the West Riding Association. After
passing a strong resolution in April, 1913, pointing out the ‘continued
inefficiency’ in the establishment of Territorial units, and even stating
that the success of the Force on a voluntary basis could be achieved
‘only by a considerable improvement in the terms and conditions of
service,’ they lost no time in circulating the West Riding scheme through
other Associations. So, at the October meeting of the Central Council,
when replies and comments had come in, they were ready to ask the Prime
Minister to receive a deputation, with a view to considering the whole
matter.
This important interview took place on November 26th, 1913. On the one
side were Mr. Asquith and General Seely, then Secretary of State for
War; on the other were Lord Dartmouth (Chairman), Lord Fortescue and
Sir Hugh Shaw-Stewart, Bt. (Vice-Chairmen), and the following Members
of the Council of the County Territorial Associations: Lord Scarbrough,
Sir Richard Temple, Bt., Sir Hugh Bell, Bt., Lord Cheylesmore, Sir
Edward Elles, Sir Arthur Anstice, Mr. Tonman Mosley, Lord Glenconner,
Mr. Dalgleish, Mr. Adeane, Colonel Colvin, Colonel Lambert White,
General Tyler, Lord Denbigh, General Mends, and the Secretary of the
Council, Major Godman. The deputation represented eighty-one out of the
ninety-four Associations, and was recognized by the Prime Minister as
‘authoritative.’
It is well to recall at this point the essential dates in the situation.
The Territorial and Reserve Forces Act ‘for the reorganization of His
Majesty’s military forces’ became law in 1907. Early in 1908 the West
Riding Territorial Force Association was brought into being under the
Act, and set to work in a practical way to raise, clothe, train and
otherwise prepare its troops for the day of mobilization. They had worked
hard for six years, with the shadow of coming war across their path. Yet
at the end of 1913, when the substance behind the shadow was apparent
to all who knew, the chairman of the West Riding Association, one of
the most populous County areas, administered by men of public spirit,
and possessing in General Mends an untiring and a highly efficient
secretary, came to the Prime Minister to say: Our proper establishment
of troops is little more than 18,000; we fall short by 52 officers and
2,724 other ranks; and ‘that is roughly typical of the general shortage,
which, with a few exceptions, exists throughout the Counties.’ The
failure was deplorable: ‘It is the fact that the strength to-day is less
than it was in the last year under the old Volunteer system.’ But even
more deplorable was the danger: ‘In spite of all the efforts which have
been made in these six years, it would appear that the high-water mark
of voluntary effort in normal years and under present conditions falls
greatly below the minimum laid down by the General Staff as necessary for
National Defence’.
November 26th, 1913: This was the date of the interview, and it was too
late then to remedy the scheme. The total shortage of 1,400 officers and
66,000 other ranks; the 40,000 members of the Force under nineteen years
of age and ‘only fit to be in a Cadet corps’; the absence from the annual
camp of 1,362 officers and 33,350 other ranks, including 37 officers and
6,019 men ‘absent without leave’: these facts and figures might be cured
by personal allowances to officers, efficiency bounties to other ranks,
income-tax relief to employers for each qualified Territorial officer
or soldier in their employ, grants to Associations for social purposes
and for the provision of boots, shirts and socks, and by the rest of the
moderate, wise and carefully devised recommendations which the Council
of County Associations felt bound to propose to the Government, as ‘the
minimum improvement in the terms and conditions of service that we think
would be effective in attracting the right class of men in sufficient
numbers.’ Public apathy, official discouragement, and the burden of
other calls on the Exchequer might be purged of their worst effects by
thorough changes of this kind. Even the evils pointed out by Sir H.
Shaw-Stewart, that, ‘owing to the exigencies of political combat, these
same classes that I speak of (_i.e._, landowners and employers) are just
now being held up to the public as parasites, oppressors and robbers of
the poor,’ and that, ‘except for Lord Haldane and his successor at the
War Office, not one Cabinet Minister has ever had a good word to say for
the work we are doing or, indeed, for the system we are endeavouring
to carry out,’ might at last prove capable of adjustment. But time was
essential for such experiments, and the sands of time were running out.
Mr. Asquith, indeed, in his reply to the deputation, affected to believe
it all remediable. There were the proper compliments to ‘the value of the
work that has been and is being done.’ There were other aspects of the
numbers and the training, and certain ‘encouraging features’ to be dwelt
upon. There was a general undertaking that the Council’s recommendations
‘will be not only considered, and not lightly dismissed, but considered
in a thoroughly sympathetic spirit.’ There was the final valediction, as
suave as it was impenetrable: ‘We shall endeavour to produce as great
an impression as we can on the Chancellor of the Exchequer consistently
with his other requirements to meet your legitimate demands.’[6] And the
Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated, June 28th, 1914.
These, briefly, are the facts on which an estimate may be formed of
the degree of preparedness reached by the Territorial Force more than
six years after it came into being. Very happily, as we said above,
this period was thus protracted. The defects were serious enough, but,
had the crisis come earlier, Associations would have missed what the
evidence of results proved to be valuable, that varied experience of
organization, that knowledge of their own weak points, that sense of
contact with officers and men, as well in their civilian relations as
in their military capacity, and, generally, that power, essential to
the satisfactory working of ‘a highly complex structure o’ various an’
conflictin’ strains,’ which Mr. Kipling has illustrated in his story of
_The Ship that Found Herself_. The consolation administered by the Prime
Minister to the deputation of November, 1913, though a commonplace, or
because it was a commonplace, was justified in the succeeding years of
war:
‘While we do not say that the present organization is in all
respects satisfactory, we do believe that it is based on sound
lines, and, so long as the same spirit which has existed from
the beginning continues to animate officers and men, that the
Force will increase every year in efficiency and capacity for
the special functions which are assigned to it in our scheme of
defence.’
The vista of years was contracted to less than one, our ‘scheme of
defence’ was unrecognizably extended, but the animating spirit did not
fail.
How fortunate for the country it was that time was given to Associations
to find themselves may be judged from the growing tension between the
West Riding Association and the War Office. Sir William Clegg, speaking
from the Chair on February 7th, 1910, complained of ‘a kind of attempt on
the part of the Army Council to treat the Association as a mere adjunct
of the Army Council, and not as a free and independent body. If their
deliberations and resolutions were to be treated in such a high-handed
manner, he for one was not prepared to devote his time to the duties
of the Association.’ A few months later, on the motion of Alderman F.
M. Lupton, of Leeds, seconded by Mr. A. J. Hobson, of Sheffield, a
resolution was passed urging His Majesty’s Government ‘to give further
effect to their own policy of placing the Territorial army under the
control of the County Associations, and to permit these Associations,
without undue interference, to perform their duty of providing a properly
equipped Force on the grants allotted to them.’ Relations became a little
less strained after a personal interview between Lord Harewood and the
Secretary of State, when a conciliatory reply was sent to the Association
by the War Office. But in 1912 the situation had grown acute again, and
Lord Harewood did not hesitate to describe it as a ‘tension which had
existed for a long time between the Army Council and that Association,
especially the Finance Committee of the Association.’ Sir William Clegg
repeated his former protest, which was supported by Colonel Hughes
and other members, while Lord Scarbrough referred to the case of the
Association against the Army Council as, in fact, ‘unassailable.’ We
shall not further recall the features of this dispute, which turned on a
question of accountancy. It was not the details but the principle which
mattered, and the principle which governed the deliberations of members
of the West Riding Association was amply vindicated in their resolution,
carried on July 1st, 1912:
‘That the Association welcomes the reply of the Secretary of
State, as indicating complete satisfaction with the financial
position of the Association, and notes with pleasure that, as a
result of the protest made, there is now every reason to hope
that the relations between the Army Council and the Association
will be cordial and harmonious in future.’
So, the Association ‘found itself’ at last. But the reconciliation
came too late to make a prosperous new beginning. If war had still been
postponed, opportunity might have been given to build up the Territorial
Force on more generous and sympathetic lines, as suggested in the scheme
of the West Riding, and to repair the disappointment of Associations.
But, though Sir William Clegg spoke of ‘a clean slate,’ and Lord
Scarbrough wrote more hopefully to General Bethune,[7] there was no time
to take advantage of the change. The long threatened war was upon them,
and, meanwhile, they had to encounter what Mr. Asquith, in November,
1913, called ‘the abstraction, whatever Government is in power, who has
the public purse under his immediate control.’ This ‘abstraction’ proved
a very real obstruction.
CHAPTER II
THE WEST RIDING TROOPS
The civilian effort before the war to create a ‘people’s army’ under the
provisions of the Territorial Force Act, was a fine national exploit,
whether in the West Riding or elsewhere. Equally fine, if not finer,
though no basis of comparison can be fixed, was the response of the men,
including officers and other ranks, to whom the appeal was made.
It is essential to see this clearly. Parliament might pass the best
Act which ever adorned the legislature. The Secretary of State for War
and His Majesty’s other Ministers might use all the eloquence at their
command to popularize the Act in the country. The Territorial Force
Associations, which were called into being under the Act, might attract
the best brains in every county to crown the scheme with success.
Throughout the complex organization, avoidable mistakes might be avoided,
unavoidable obstacles might be overcome, and a kind of conspiracy of good
luck might have surrounded the enterprise from its initiation. And yet,
in the ultimate resort, one first condition must be satisfied: the men
must be willing to come forward. For the Act spoke, as we have seen, of a
‘reorganization of His Majesty’s military forces’; and no power on earth,
certainly no political power in England, could organize a voluntary force
which was unwilling. If the troops out of whom the Territorial army was
to be made were not willing to enrol in that army, and to bring to it
the loyalty and devotion which had characterized voluntary service in
the past, legislation would prove a dead letter. With or without the
conditions which we have enumerated above (and some were lacking, as we
are aware) the primary factor was the personal one; conversely, if the
heart of the nation was sound, no weakness in the Army Council or at the
Treasury could wreck the scheme beyond repair.
Accordingly, it is useful at this point to look at events before the
war from a different angle of vision. Men in high places, ‘dressed
in a little, brief authority,’ have always this consolation, when
they contemplate their shortcomings, whether within or without their
own control, that the near view is fuller than the distant. If every
Territorial soldier in the West Riding had been privy to Lord Harewood’s
difficulties, if every unit awaiting a headquarters had been admitted to
the heart-breaking negotiations which preceded each grant of an eighth
of an acre of ground, if every recruit grumbling at his boots had known
how many pairs of boots were included in General Mends’ requisitions, no
progress at all would have been made with the raising of the Force or its
equipment. But the men who were raised and equipped were spared these
disappointments and dubieties. They took their troubles in single spies,
not battalions; and the single troubles which they encountered—too much
rain, too few blankets, insufficient transport, and so forth—were counted
as part of a day’s work, not as items in a quarterly return. They did not
multiply their grievances by the calculus familiar to an Association;
and it is precisely this restricted point of view which is valuable as
a contrast and a corrective to Associational experience. For the final
triumph of the Territorial scheme, as proved in the searching test of
war, was a triumph achieved by individuals within the limits of their
personal capacity.
It is well to recapture the spirit in which this triumph was achieved;
and, fortunately for that purpose, we can refer to a West Riding unit,
whose records go back from its War Diary of 1914 to the date of its
original inception in 1859. A happy feature of this possession, unique
and valuable in itself, is that the unit in question became in the
fulness of time the same 4th Battalion of the West Riding Regiment,
whose transport left England for France first of the 49th Division[8];
and, with the added interest of that coincidence, its faded pages may be
searched for evidence to the men’s point of view. It was Lord Haldane who
wrote (December, 1908), in a passage referred to above[9]:
‘The abstract and dry language of Statutes and Army Orders may
command our rational assent, but what Cardinal Newman was fond
of speaking of as real assent it will never command unless it
is interpreted in the light which the historical method throws
on it.’
Such a light is thrown by this record on the history of the previous
half-century.
It began on May 25th, 1859, when Major-General Jonathan Peel, a brother
of the great Sir Robert, and a predecessor of Lord Haldane’s at the
War Office, issued a circular to authorize the formation of Volunteer
corps. Two days later, a requisition was addressed to the Worshipful
the Mayor of Halifax by a hundred and twenty-five inhabitants of the
borough and its neighbourhood, praying him to convene a public meeting
in order to consider ‘the propriety of forming a Volunteer Rifle Corps
for this district.’ The propriety was duly considered on the following
Friday, June 3rd, in the Town Hall at Halifax, when and where a hundred
and twenty good citizens, with Mr. Edward Akroyd[10] at their head,
professed themselves willing to enrol as members of a Volunteer Rifle
Corps for this Town and District, ‘provided the cost of uniform, arms
and accoutrements does not exceed £9 per annum.’ The crest selected was
the Borough Arms; the head-dress, familiar in caricature, was ‘shako
and plume’; the uniform a dark-green tunic; the arms, a short Enfield
muzzle-loader, and bayonet; and the title of the corps was the 4th West
Yorks Rifle Volunteers. Seldom have small beginnings been more amply
fulfilled by noble ends.
The Rifle Corps grew and prospered. Colours, with crest and title, were
worked by the ladies of Halifax and presented in September, 1860,[11] and
Captain Akroyd had the satisfaction in that month of parading 455 men at
a Review in York, and of publishing in Orders the next day, that ‘the
4th West Yorks Rifle Volunteers, by their soldier-like bearing, their
excellent discipline, and the steadiness of their movements, have earned
for the Corps a high reputation among the Riding and County Battalions.’
On March 10th, 1863, they paraded at the marriage of the Prince of Wales.
They furnished a Guard of Honour, and guards and sentinel for the night,
when His Royal Highness, on the following August 3rd, visited Halifax to
open the Town Hall. In the same year, a capitation grant of 20/- for each
efficient man was authorized for issue by the Government, thus relieving
all ranks of a part of their voluntary expenditure; and it is observed in
the same context, though its precise bearing escapes us to-day, that the
Government ‘also repeated the gracious permission accorded by George II.
of wearing hair-powder untaxed.’ A drill-hall, designed by an assistant
to Sir Gilbert Scott, and intended to serve both as the head quarters of
the corps and as a public hall and concert-room, was started in 1868 and
available in 1870. In 1874, the busby head-dress was adopted; the tunic
was altered to scarlet with dark-blue facings, and the long Enfield was
substituted for the short. At the same time, the maximum establishment
was fixed at 600 all ranks. The next year saw the first Camp, in tents
on Castle Hill, Scarborough. In 1880, the Battalion was armed with the
Snider breech-loader and bayonet, and the common helmet replaced the
busby. In July, 1881, the Battalion, 480 strong, represented the county
of Yorkshire at a Royal Review of Volunteers in Windsor Great Park.
In 1883, a step forward was taken in the direction completed by the
Territorial Act of 1907: the 4th, 6th and 9th West Riding of Yorkshire
Volunteer Corps were renamed the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Volunteer Battalions of
the West Riding Regiment (Duke of Wellington’s); the old Arms of Halifax
were replaced by the badges of the West Riding Regiments; and in 1887 the
Battalion was re-clothed in a manner similar to the Line Battalions with
which it had been affiliated, but with silver lace, buttons and badges.
Ten years later, in 1897, a detachment of the Battalion was bivouacked in
the ditch of the Tower of London, and did duty on London Bridge, on the
occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. A more serious call was to
follow. On December 19th, 1899, after the so-called ‘black week’ in the
Transvaal, it was announced that ‘Her Majesty’s Government have decided
to accept offers of service in South Africa from the Volunteers.... The
terms of enlistment for officers and men will be for one year, or for not
less than the period of the War.’ Three days later, on December 22nd,
Major W. H. Land, commanding the 1st Volunteer Battalion, West Riding
Regiment (our old friend, the 4th Rifle Volunteers), was prepared to
place the Battalion at the disposal of the Government, and an Active
Service Company of Volunteers, with Lieut. H. S. Atkinson at their head,
was complete for embarkation early in 1900, when they were entertained at
a farewell banquet in Halifax. The occasion, historically so inspiring,
has several features of present interest. Colonel (later, Sir) E. Hildred
Carlile, remarked on the sense of ‘promotion,’ and the ‘feeling that
more would be required,’ in the call to Volunteers to take a place side
by side with Regulars in Line Battalions. Colonel Le Mottee discussed
the ‘spirit of militarism,’ drawing a clear distinction between its fair
and evil aspects; and other speakers who followed referred with gravity
and emphasis to the future needs of national defence. The draft sailed
on February 17th, reaching Table Bay on March 14th, and, exactly a year
later (March 16th, 1901), the Relief Company of the Battalion left
Halifax for the same destination. Needless to say, their fighting record
in South Africa was worthy of their regiment and Riding. They contributed
to the final victory of British arms; and, when the first members of
the first Service Company returned to Halifax in the following May,
they received the welcome which they deserved. A presentation of medals
took place later in 1901, and inspired a prophetic speech by Colonel Le
Mottee, which is well worth recalling to-day:
‘The Volunteer movement,’ he said, ‘never stood higher in the
estimation of the military authorities than it did now. The
behaviour of the Volunteers showed that the spirit of the
nation was as high as it ever was, and the question was how to
utilize this fine material to the best advantage. Conscription
was out of the question at present, and the only alternative
was the extension of the Volunteer movement for the securing of
efficiency for all who joined.’
This perception carries us a long way from 1859 and the Halifax Rifle
Corps. We reach in the new century and the new reign, and in the brief
peace after the South African War, the problem, or series of problems,
which were honestly attacked, if not, as we have seen, fully solved, by
the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act of 1907. But note the continuity
of the history, and the secure foundation of that Act on material already
existing. The Territorial scheme, like the British Constitution, grew up
and developed by its own strength; it was never imposed from without.
Herein lay the secret of such measure of success as it achieved. The war
in South Africa had revealed grave defects in military resources and in
the means of national defence. ‘Conscription was out of the question at
present,’ but the war of 1914 found the counties of Great Britain at
least organized for an emergency which surpassed in its demands and its
extent the most serious anticipations of the most foresightful. And the
organization (this is the important point) was based on a tradition which
could not fail. Everywhere in England, not in Halifax alone, had been
men of public spirit, like Edward Akroyd, to petition their worshipful
mayor on behalf of the Volunteer movement. Everywhere in England, for
fifty years, the Volunteers had drilled and camped, had exchanged their
shakoes for busbies, and their muzzle-loaders for breech-loaders,
and had converted public ridicule into tolerance, and tolerance into
appreciation, and appreciation at last into heartfelt gratitude to the
‘people’s army’ which sprang from English soil. We turn the old pages
of _Punch_, and smile at John Leech’s pictures of ‘The Brook-Green
Volunteers’ and others; but behind our laughter is the sense that these
long-ago, long-whiskered men were the true makers and only begetters of
the Territorial Army in the Great War, and that Edward Akroyd and the
hundred and nineteen who signed the resolution of enrolment at the public
meeting in Halifax Town Hall on June 3rd, 1859, showed the way to the
fighting men of the West Riding who helped Marshal Foch and Earl Haig to
turn the tide of German advance in the summer of 1918.
This historic sense deepens as we approach the period immediately before
the war. In May, 1902, the honorary rank of Lieutenant in the Army was
granted to Captain H. S. Atkinson, with an award of the Queen’s Medal
with three clasps, in recognition of his services in South Africa.
So, the Volunteer and the Regular had coalesced. In the following
December, Lord Savile accepted the honorary Colonelcy of the Battalion,
in succession, after a long interval, to its virtual founder, Colonel
Akroyd, and testimony was borne to the fact that the troops were ‘working
on lines which lead to real efficiency of mobilization for home defence.’
In 1905, the writing on the wall was conspicuous for all to read. Colonel
Land observed, at the annual prize-giving, that the choice for the future
now lay between ‘the more effective training of the Volunteer forces,
or compulsion. It rested entirely with the authorities and employers
of labour to decide which alternative to adopt. One or the other was
inevitable.’ In 1907, the inevitable occurred, and early in 1908, when
the Territorial Act was on the Statute-book, the Secretary of State for
War addressed a stirring appeal to the male youth of Great Britain:
‘The foundation of a Territorial Force or Army for home
defence,’ he wrote, ‘is no light matter. The appeal which I am
making to the nation is that its manhood should recognize the
duty of taking part, in an organized form, in providing for
the defence of the United Kingdom. The science of war is, like
other sciences, making rapid strides, and if we would not be
left behind and placed in jeopardy, we must advance. That is
why it was necessary that the old Volunteer and Yeomanry forces
should pass, by a process of evolution, into the organization
of the new Territorial or Home Defence Army.’
Our survey of the progress of a single unit from 1859 to 1908 should
enable us better to understand the precise bearing of Lord Haldane’s
language. What is true of a unit is true of the whole; and we shall see,
in the further annals of this corps of old Rifle Volunteers, who now bore
‘South Africa’ upon their Colours, and counted a Regular officer among
their Captains, how gallantly the Yeomanry and Volunteers responded to
the call of tradition, and how fully ‘a process of evolution’ describes
the action which they took.
For they ‘passed into’ the Territorial Army. As Colonel Land said to his
men on a day in 1908: ‘The word “conscription” appears to be repulsive
to the vast majority of Englishmen.’ He did not share that repulsion,
but for those who shared it ‘What was the alternative? Mr. Haldane
thought the alternative was to enlarge and make effective use of the
present auxiliary forces by reorganization.’ So be it. A ‘voluntary
Territorial force stood between the country and conscription.’ But in
certain districts of England the Volunteer law was current among men, as
the Scout law is, or should be, among boys: ‘The Army Council was only
asking all Volunteers to do what they in Halifax had done for years’;
and, when only two alternatives were presented for selection, either to
attest under the new Act, or to retire from the auxiliary forces and
unwrite a chapter of local history which had been opened in 1859, ‘they
in Halifax’ were never in doubt. The 4th West Yorks Rifle Volunteers had
changed their name in 1883, when they became the 1st Volunteer Battalion
of the West Riding (Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment. On April 1st, 1908,
they consented to change their name again. The 1st West Riding Volunteers
became now the 4th Battalion of the West Riding Regiment, with their
uniform similar to the Line Battalion’s, and scarlet facings for white
and gold lace, gilt ornaments for silver and white, and the letter ‘T’
to indicate Territorial. _Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose_; the
‘process of evolution’ was complete.
We come back from the part to the whole, from Halifax to the West Riding.
Our choice of Halifax has not been due to any exceptional conditions
in that borough. In some respects, indeed, it lagged behind. Its city
fathers contained at least their full proportion of anti-‘militarists’
and anti-‘conscriptionists,’ and its recruiting record was never the
best in the Riding. It has been clearer and more convenient, however, to
illustrate the movement from start to finish, or, at least, from 1859 to
1908, by means of a concrete example, than to deal vaguely with the mass.
When the mass-problem was approached by Lord Harewood, as Lieutenant
of the Riding, and his colleagues in the County Association, they found
that the old Volunteer and Yeomanry forces were required to ‘pass into’
the new Territorial Army to the number of about 18,300 of all ranks.
On March 31st, 1908, the actual strength of those old forces was 414
officers and 9,683 other ranks; so that, roughly, 8,000 in all had to
be found additionally in the West Riding: eight more for every ten on
the strength. The quota allotted to the Riding were a whole Division, a
Mounted Brigade, and Army Troops.
We have already viewed this problem through the eyes of the West Riding
Association, when we saw that the full numbers were never reached, and
that a big new scheme was devised, and brought to the notice of the
Prime Minister, in order to render the terms of service more attractive.
We propose to look at the problem here through the eyes of the men
themselves: not of those who did not enrol, but of the personnel which
actually joined up. It is important to emphasize this aspect. A sermon
preached at absent congregants always hits the regular church-goers; and
the repinings of Associations at a deficiency in establishment are apt to
distract attention from the merits of the men on the strength. Thus, the
keen inheritors of the tradition of the 4th West Yorks Rifle Volunteers
were not less but, rather, more praiseworthy because their strength as a
Territorial unit, after April, 1908, was always below establishment. Take
the three last returns before the war:—
4th BATTALION, WEST RIDING REGIMENT, HALIFAX.
-----------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------
| Establishment. | Total Strength. | Deficiency.
Date. +-----------+--------+-----------+--------+-----------+-------
| Officers. | Other | Officers. | Other | Officers. | Other
| | Ranks. | | Ranks. | | Ranks.
-----------+-----------+--------+-----------+--------+-----------+-------
31-12-1912 | 29 | 985 | 20 | 747 | 9 | 238
31-12-1913 | 28 | 978 | 21 | 596 | 7 | 382
31-5-1914 | 28 | 978 | 20 | 613 | 8 | 365
-----------+-----------+--------+-----------+--------+-----------+-------
This was the kind of disheartenment which General Wright,[12] Commanding
the Division, had to face at the outset of his task; and, since it was
the function of the Association to rebuke the absent 37 per cent., let us
praise the present sixty-three. When three or four men in ten abstain,
the virtue of the assentients is more conspicuous.
Certainly, it was easier not to join. We are not referring now to what
we may call the permanent handicap: the passive resistance of some
employers, the active dislike of others: the wave of pacific sentiment,
fanned by hot blasts from Labour circles, and the acute suspicion of
the hidden hand of compulsion. Nor are we referring now to merely local
conditions, such as points of precedence and procedure, and minor
grievances and jealousies, almost inevitable at the start of a novel and
complex organization in an area as wide as the West Riding. These things
loom large in the beginning, but the incidents of the quarrels disappear
when the decisions shine in their results, and the wisest course is to
believe that every honest conflict of interests is inspired by generous
emulation. This, at least, is how we shall recall the discussion in 1908
whether the West Riding Horse Artillery, which was to form part of the
Yorkshire Mounted Brigade, should be raised by the borough of Sheffield
or by Earl Fitzwilliam, with its headquarters at Wentworth Woodhouse,
and the ultimate acceptance of the latter offer in the public spirit in
which it was made. No: the task set to General Wright and his colleagues,
the purely military task, that is to say, was formidable enough, without
attempting to weigh the imponderable. His record of service shows that
he was least of all likely to be satisfied with a hollow or an illusory
success. On July 7th, 1908, for instance, on the occasion of a visit to
Leeds by their Majesties King Edward and Queen Alexandra, Regular and
Territorial Troops were paraded to line the streets and to furnish Guards
of Honour; and the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Northern Command,
in publishing the King’s gracious message, expressed his personal
‘gratification, that, on this the first occasion on which
a portion of the recently-formed Territorial Troops of the
Northern Command has paraded before the Sovereign, they should
have merited the Royal approbation.’
The fact was gratifying, no doubt, but the responsible military
authorities were probably much more concerned with the further facts
that, at the same date, no equipment had been received for the Horse
Artillery, only part equipment for the Royal Field Artillery and the
Royal Engineers, and that the Infantry equipment had to be reported as
‘generally bad, of obsolete pattern, and useless for active service.’ It
was not to earn Royal compliments on parade, but to have the Troops ready
for mobilization, that these authorities were primarily concerned.
We are constrained to dwell upon this feature, because of its obvious
connection with future deficiencies in numbers. Take the first Annual
Training in Camp of the West Riding Division in the summer of 1908.
Over 97 per cent. of other Ranks attended, of whom 72 per cent. were in
attendance for the fifteen days: a very commendable record. The results
on the whole were good. The Redcar Urban District Council expressed ‘high
appreciation of the gentlemanly conduct’ of the Troops, and hoped to
welcome them again. There was not a single case tried for drunkenness,
and discipline and bearing were notably improved. But, when we turn to
the Report of the Divisional Commander, what do we gather as to his
views, and what can we read between the lines?
‘As regards the equipment necessary,’ he wrote, ‘this is very
far from being complete, and I hope, before many months pass,
steps will be taken to remedy this great and dangerous defect.
The Artillery were deficient of guns and wagons, and the
harness is unsuitable for issue to Territorial Troops.... The
Engineers were deficient in necessary equipment, consequently
all ranks suffered as regards instruction and training.’
Danger and suffering are strong words, which General Wright would not
have used without good cause. In the previous chapter we attempted to
translate these grievances into the language of War Office routine, and
after multiplying them by the ninety-four Associations, we were able to
find some excuse for official hesitation in removing them. Here it is
appropriate to translate them into the language of the rank and file,
and to imagine, by no great effort, how, when the Camp was broken up,
drivers of teams ‘unsuitably’ harnessed and victims of even worse defects
would deter, unconsciously, it might be, their brothers and friends from
joining up.
It may be urged that 1908 was the first summer in the life of the Force.
Let us turn to the following year. At the Divisional Camp in 1909, the
attendance of all ranks below officers reached 94 per cent., of whom 71
per cent. attended for fifteen days. But the Chairman’s October report
stated, with reference to an Army Council Order as to the purchase of
boots: ‘Under present conditions, should the Force be mobilized, it
would be found to be incapable of marching.’ Moreover, there were sundry
deficiencies of guns, limbers, wagons, etc., and it is significantly
observed:
‘The Officer Commanding 2nd West Riding Brigade, R.F.A., has
had a set of harness (six horses) converted from neck-collar
to breast, at a cost of £9 10s. 5d. The Army Council has been
asked to sanction and provide funds for the conversion of the
remainder.’
Here, perhaps, we may interpolate a note, that in January, 1910,
instructions were issued from the War Office,[13] authorizing County
Associations, ‘in view of the great influence and local knowledge’
at their disposal, to add to their existing heavy duties by making
arrangements for the provision of the vehicles and animals required on
mobilization for the Regular Army as well as for the Territorial Force.
The West Riding Association, acknowledging this letter, remarked drily,
that, while it was not aware that the provision of horses for the Regular
Army on mobilization formed any part of its statutory duties, ‘it is
quite willing to undertake the work, subject to a clear understanding
that adequate funds will be provided, sufficient, in its judgment, to
carry out the work effectively.’ And, if any reader is inclined to cavil
at the tautology in the last phrase, he may be recommended to study the
experience of the West Riding Association as to the Army Council’s view
of the meaning of ‘adequate funds.’
General Bullock[14] succeeded General Wright as Officer Commanding the
Division in January, 1910. His first Camp was held partly in the Isle
of Man, where, unfortunately, the weather was very bad. The attendance
was 93 per cent. of other ranks, of whom 69 per cent. trained for
fifteen days. ‘No change’ was reported in the condition of the supply
of guns, wagons, and saddlery; most of the units were still deficient
of binoculars; ‘the supply of horses was, on the whole, satisfactory,’
and the provision of machine-guns in all units was complete. His second
Camp (1911) showed a further fall in the percentages: 89 per cent. of
other Ranks attended, of whom 58 per cent. trained for fifteen days.
The Troops were encamped in various places, including Salisbury Plain,
Ripon, Scarborough, Marske, Skegness and Aldershot. A Review of the
Ripon Camp was witnessed by Major-General (Sir) John Cowans, afterwards
Quartermaster-General, and at that time Director-General of the
Territorial Force.
Sir George Bullock’s command of the Division coincided with the pressure
of three problems: the provision of horses on mobilization, to which
reference was made above; the formation of the Territorial and Veteran
Reserves, with which progress proved very slow; and the formation
of Voluntary Aid Detachments, which it was decided to raise in the
West Riding in accordance with the scheme of the St. John’s Ambulance
Association under the provisional name of County Companies (men’s and
women’s). The first work of getting these companies afoot devolved
upon General Mends, who, with customary zeal, doubled the duties of
Association Secretary with those of County Director. In the Autumn of
1912, the designation of County Company was changed to Voluntary Aid
Detachment, and shortly afterwards, when General Mends resigned the
direction to Major G. D. Symonds,[15] he was able to hand over to his
successor as many as fifty Voluntary Aid Detachments (16 men’s, 34
women’s), and at the same time to state his confident belief that the
initial stages were safely passed and the movement was firmly established.
But these, after all, were side-shows, and, whatever success they
achieved, or whatever labour they involved, they must not deflect
attention from the main military business, which was always present
to the minds of the Commanding Officers, and of non-Commissioned
officers as well. It was their business to train for mobilization the
Territorial troops of the Riding. The more keen and conscientious they
were, the more they were haunted in their dreams by the shadow which
took substantial shape on August 4th, 1914, and which grew so rapidly to
dimensions undreamed of even by Lord Roberts. Yet this urgent business
was performed, like the tasks of the Israelites in Egypt, without the
necessary materials. Mr. Churchill, Secretary of State for War, at a
meeting of representatives of Associations held in London on April 1st,
1919, in announcing his preliminary plans for the reconstitution of the
Territorial Force, was moved to speak as follows:—
‘I hope we shall always look forward rather than look back,
so far as difficulties are concerned. The grievances of the
Territorial Force in the years immediately preceding the war
... are well known to most of those who are gathered here
to-day; and we should bear them in mind for the purpose of
making sure that, so far as possible, a repetition of these
hardships is avoided in the future.’
And the Minister went on to point out that—
‘We have two great advantages which we have never enjoyed
before.... The days are past when the Territorial Force will
have to put up with second- and third-rate weapons, and when
every item of equipment and supply which it needed had to be
obtained on painfully limited Army Estimates.... But, still
more important than this, we have at the present time enormous
numbers of war-trained veteran soldiers fresh from victorious
fields,’
on whom to draw for the reconstituted Force. A happy state of things
indeed: ‘immense supplies, even immense surplus supplies of the very
finest equipment in the world,’ and numberless recruits ‘versed in
every aspect of war, who have the records of their achievements and
of their experience vividly in their minds.’ How many members of
Associations, remembering the days that were past, must have listened
to Mr. Churchill’s words with more sorrow than anger in their hearts.
The anger had faded and died in the fiercer emotions of the war, in
part-preparation for which an earlier Secretary of State, just eleven
years before, had reconstituted the old Yeomanry and Volunteers into
the new Territorial Force. Now the new Territorial Force (after all,
it was only eleven years of age) was to be reconstituted in another
peace-time out of its own ‘war-trained veteran soldiers’. It had sent,
as Mr. Churchill stated, 1,045,000 men to fight against the best troops
of Germany and Turkey. Six thousand five hundred of its officers and a
hundred and five thousand other ranks had laid down their lives in that
fight, out of a total casualty list of nearly 600,000 throughout the
Force. Twenty-nine of its officers and forty-two of its men in other
ranks had won the supreme honour of the Victoria Cross; and there might
well be sorrow in the hearts of many present at that meeting, not only
for the dead, the missing, and the maimed, but for the ‘painfully limited
Army Estimates’ from 1908 to 1914; for the ‘second- and third-rate
weapons,’ or no weapons at all, with which Territorial troops had been
armed; for the standing order to train for mobilization and the recurring
refusal to provide the means, for all the unrecognized sacrifices of
officers, N.C.O.’s and men, badly clothed, badly housed, badly equipped,
and for the contrast between the generous recognition of what the
Territorial Force had done and the ungenerous treatment meted out to it
in its years of preparation for the doing. If Mr. Churchill’s audience
that day agreed with him not to look back upon past grievances, at least
they might welcome his praise of
‘The vital part which the Territorial Force played at the
beginning of the war.... Had its organization been used to
build up the War Army,’ he remarked, ‘as was originally
intended and conceived by Lord Haldane, to whom we owe a great
debt, we should have avoided many of the difficulties that
confronted us at the outset, and we should have put a larger
efficient force in the field at an earlier stage.’
Our account of the West Riding Troops in the period before the war were
best concluded on this note. Up to the measure of their achievement,
they are entitled to their share of the praise, and no useful purpose
would be served by recounting in terms of drill-hall and barrack-room
accommodation the same tale of official procrastination and delay, some
features of which we have noted in relation to equipment and arms.
In September, 1911, General Baldock[16] succeeded Sir George Bullock
as General Officer Commanding the Division, and his term of service
extended into the war epoch. His summer camp in 1912 trained partly on
Salisbury Plain (where the Mounted Brigade encamped for the first time
outside Yorkshire), partly at Ad Fines, Buddon, Skegness, and other
places, with the 2nd and 3rd General Hospitals at Netley. The weather
was uniformly bad, so much so that a letter was addressed by the Army
Council to Northern Command, expressing ‘their appreciation, and that
of the Secretary of State for War, for the excellent spirit which was
shown by the Territorial Troops in Camp this year. The weather has been
most inclement, and the soldierly spirit in which the Troops bore their
discomfort was most praiseworthy.’ The attendance of ranks below officers
reached 85 per cent. of strength, of whom 60 per cent. trained for
fifteen days. The corresponding percentages for 1913, when the weather
was remarkably fine, rose to 88 and 66 respectively. Full arrangements
were made for an Annual Camp in 1914, at dates between May 21st and
August 16th, and many units, as we shall see, were in training when the
summons came to mobilize.
We may note, for historical completeness, some of the activities of
the Command which were interrupted by that sudden summons. The whole
machine was working steadily and regularly, but with slightly diminished
velocity, and a certain sense, which is developed in fine machinery, of
insufficient encouragement from above. Probably, from the point of view
of the rank and file, the call seemed likely never to arrive. Even the
keener officers and more intelligent N.C.O.’s might not unreasonably
have begun to believe that the leisurely methods of the War Office still
corresponded, as politicians certified, to a clear sky in Europe and a
firm friendship with all foreign Powers, so that they, too, might pick
their way slowly. Such pressure as was exerted, at any rate, came from
within, not from without. As late as April, 1914, the new Headquarters
at Halifax for the 2nd West Riding Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, and
at Ripon for the Detachment of the West Riding Regiment, still awaited
inspection by the Army Council. These were the last of a long series of
premises, the acquisition and building of which had given endless trouble
to the Association, not without serious detriment to the efficiency
of the Troops. At the end of May, 68 Voluntary Aid Detachments (19
men’s, 49 women’s) had been recognized by the War Office, covering the
following districts: Settle (1), Skipton (1), Ripon (1), Harrogate (12),
York (5), Otley (7), Leeds (4), Aberfordia (9), Halifax (1), Wakefield
(9), Osgoldcross (9), Huddersfield (3), Doncaster (2), Sheffield (2),
Rotherham (2). The number of National Reservists had reached a total of
10,853, including 2,404 not classified in respect to their service-value.
But of all the statistics available, the most interesting, finally,
are numbers. On May 31st, 1914, the Establishment of the West Riding
Territorial Force was 574 officers and 17,680 other ranks, 18,254 in all.
Its total strength on that date was 537 officers and 14,699 other ranks,
showing a shortage of 37 officers and 2,981 other ranks. In real numbers,
the shortage amounted to 58 and 3,082 respectively, the discrepancy in
figures being due to occasional surpluses in certain units.
Finally, we reproduce below a tabulated statement of the designations
and peace-stations of the Corps which formed the Territorial Force of the
West Riding shortly after the outbreak of war, and in the third column
of that table we add the names of their then Commanding Officers. This,
in fine, was the outcome of the six and a half years’ work of the Lord
Lieutenant and his colleagues in the Association. These Corps of gallant
officers and other ranks were the open and visible sign of the response
of the West Riding to the appeal of 1908. The Association might not have
succeeded in discharging fully the duties numbered from (_a_) to (_l_)
in Section II., Sub-section (2) of the Territorial and Reserve Forces
Act. They might not have provided all the necessary buildings, nor have
arranged with all employers of labour as to holidays for training, nor
have supplied all the requisites on mobilization, nor have done half a
dozen more things which they tried to do in the face of obstruction,
and would have liked to do if they had been allowed. Their shortcomings
were their misfortune, not their fault, and they have served since as a
warning to the Army Council to prevent their repetition in the future.
But in the spirit of the officers and men who were on the strength of the
units in 1914, the West Riding had given overrunning measure. ‘Any part
of the Territorial Force,’ it is written in Section XIII. (1) of the Act,
‘shall be liable to serve in any part of the United Kingdom, but no part
of the Territorial Force shall be carried or ordered to go out of the
United Kingdom.’ The Act of Parliament limited the liability; we shall
see how the action of West Yorkshiremen broke those limits, when the day
came.
WEST RIDING TERRITORIAL FORCE AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE GREAT WAR.
-----------------------------+----------------+--------------------------
Unit. | Peace Station. | Commanding Officer.
-----------------------------+----------------+--------------------------
YORKSHIRE MOUNTED BRIGADE. | |
Yorkshire Hussars (less |York |L.-Col. E. W. Stanyforth,
1 North Riding Squad.) | | D.L., T.D.
Yorkshire Dragoons |Doncaster |Lt.-Col. W. Mackenzie
| | Smith, T.D.
W.R. Roy. Horse Artillery |Wentworth |Capt. H. Walker.
| Woodhouse, |
| Rotherham |
MOUNTED BRIGADE. | |
T. and S. Column |York |Capt. J. Brown, I.S.O.
Field Ambulance |Wakefield |Lt.-Col. W. K. Clayton.
| |
DIVISIONAL AND ARMY TROOPS. | |
1st W.R. Brigade, R.F.A. |Leeds |Lt.-Col. E. A. Hirst.
2nd ” |Bradford |Lt.-Col. E. N. Whitley.
3rd ” |Sheffield |Lt.-Col. C. Clifford,
| | V.D.
4th ” |Otley (Howitzer)|Lt.-Col. W. S. Dawson,
| | T.D.
W.R. Div. R.G.A. |York (Heavy |Major W. Graham.
| Battery) |
W.R. Div. R.E. and |Sheffield |Lt.-Col. A. E. Bingham,
Telegraph Cos. | | V.D.
5th Bn. W. Yorks. Regt. |York |Lt.-Col. C. E. Wood, V.D.
6th ” ” |Bradford |Lt.-Col. H. O. Wade.
7th } | { |Lt.-Col. A. E. Kirk, V.D.
8th } (Leeds Rifles) |Leeds { |Lt.-Col. E. Kitson Clark,
} | { | T.D.
4th Bn. W.R. Regt. |Halifax |Lt.-Col. H. S. Atkinson,
| | T.D.
5th ” |Huddersfield |Lt.-Col. W. Cooper. V.D.
6th ” |Skipton |Lt.-Col. J. Birkbeck.
7th ” |Milnsbridge |Col. G. W. Treble, C.M.G.
4th Bn. K.O. Yorks. L.I. |Wakefield |Lt.-Col. H. J. Haslegrave,
| | T.D.
5th ” |Doncaster |Lt.-Col. C. C. Moxon, T.D.
4th Bn. York & Lancs. Regt.|Sheffield |Lt.-Col. B. Firth, V.D.
5th ” |Rotherham |Lt.-Col. C. Fox, T.D.
R.A.M.C., 1st F.A. |Leeds |Major A. D. Sharp.
” 2nd |Leeds |Lt.-Col. W. Macgregor
| | Young, M.D.
” 3rd |Sheffield |Lt.-Col. J. W. Stokes.
Div. T. and S. Column |Leeds |Lt.-Col. J. C. Chambers,
| | V.D.
Northern Signal Cos. |Leeds |Lt.-Col. J. W. H. Brown,
| | T.D.
2nd Northern Gen. Hospital |Leeds |Major J. F. Dobson, M.B.,
| | F.R.C.S.
3rd ” |Sheffield |Lt.-Col. A. M. Connell,
| | F.R.C.S.
W.R. Div. Clearing Hospital|Leeds |Lt.-Col. A. E. L. Wear.
-----------------------------+----------------+--------------------------
CHAPTER III
MOBILIZATION
No one in the present generation is likely to forget Tuesday, August 4th,
1914. A greater complexity of emotions was crowded into the twenty-four
hours which ended at 11 p.m. (midnight by mid-European time) that day
than was known before or has been known since. We moved from war to
peace in 1918-19 through a gradual series of experiences: relief from
fear, even from anxiety, growing hope, moral certainty, real conviction,
the armistice, the surrender of ships, the peace conference, civil
unrest, the return of troops, and so forth. We moved from peace to war
in the space of a single night’s experience. Who slept in the night of
August 4th awoke the next morning to war. The more sanguine might hug
the dream of a quick walk-over for the Allied Armies; of France, with
England’s assistance, fighting victoriously on the West, while Russia,
the ‘steam-roller’ as they called her, crushed the soil of the enemy on
his Eastern frontier. But not even the most credulous was immune from
that sense of something new and unexpected which all the circumstances
of the hour conspired to create. The extended holiday, the swollen
bank-rate, the moratorium, the sessions of the Cabinet, the balance of
responsibility which made Sir Edward Grey’s least utterance an oracle;
the contrast between the dead tissue of domestic politics—Ireland,
the House of Lords, the Welsh Church—and the living body of Belgium,
already shaking at the thunder of German guns; the quickened interest in
foreign history, foreign policy, foreign naval and military resources;
the strange names of Treitschke, Nietzsche, and the vision of Professor
Cramb; above all, the sudden, overwhelming rush on respectable,
commonplace minds of new, strange facts and ideas, and the haunting
fancies which they evoked, in the midst of that August procession of
harvest, foliage and heat, combined to produce an effect of change which
no effort of ‘reconstruction’ can unmake.
It fell least heavily on the Royal Navy and the Regular Army, which
proceeded to or were found at their appointed stations, in calm reliance
on the traditions behind them and without fear of the ordeal in front;
and next only to the service-men, who turned from peace to war as from
one day’s work to another, and changed their habits of life as quickly
as a man might change his clothes, were the citizen-soldiers of the
Territorial Force: landowners and tillers of the soil, doctors, lawyers
and business-men, clerks, warehousemen and factory-hands, all the
components of a great country’s complex mechanism, united by the Haldane
scheme to serve side by side in a ‘people’s army.’
The evidence may be sought from many quarters, but it is the source not
the stream which varies. Take, summarily, General Bethune’s tribute to
the Force which he directed from 1912 to 1917[17];
‘A few days after mobilization, the Territorial Force were
asked by telegraph the number that would volunteer for foreign
service. Ninety-two per cent. responded within a few weeks, and
the complete total, I think, rose to ninety-six per cent....
Before the end of September, we had doubled the Territorial
Force, and were proceeding to form 3rd Lines.... Recruits from
August 4th, 1914, to January 19th, 1916, amounted in round
numbers to 732,000.... The Territorial Force Associations,
composed, as they are, of representatives of every class in
a County, were eminently adapted for the work which they
undertook and carried out so well.... They relieved the War
Office of an enormous amount of work which would not have been
done in any other way.’
We shall have occasion to return to this official document.
Take, summarily, again, Lord French’s tribute to the Territorial Force,
based on his experience in Command at the front, in his book, _1914_
(pages 293-94):—
‘It is true that by the terms of their engagement, Territorial
Soldiers were only available for Home Defence;... The response
to the call which was subsequently made upon them shows quite
clearly that, had they been asked at first, they would have
come forward almost to a man.
‘However, as it turned out, they were ignored.... Officers
and men alike naturally made up their minds that they were
not wanted and would never be used for any other purpose than
that for which they had originally taken service, namely, the
defence of the United Kingdom.
‘But the time for the employment of troops other than the
Regulars of the Old Army arrived with drastic and unexpected
speed.... It was then that the Country in her need turned to
the despised Territorials.
‘The call came upon them like a bolt from the blue. No warning
had been given. Fathers and sons, husbands and brothers left
their families, homes, the work and business of their lives,
almost at an hour’s notice to go on Active Service abroad.
‘It seems to me we have never realized what it was these men
were asked to do. They were quite different to professional
soldiers, who are kept and paid through years of peace for this
particular purpose of war; who spend their lives practising
their profession and gaining promotion and distinction; and
who, on being confronted with the enemy, fulfil the great
ambition of their lives.
‘Equally distinct were the Territorials also from what has been
called the New Army, whose Officers and men had ample time
to prepare themselves for what they were required to do. I
wonder sometimes if the eyes of the country will ever be opened
to what these Territorial soldiers of ours have done. I say
without the slightest hesitation that, without the assistance
which the Territorials afforded between October, 1914, and
June, 1915, it would have been impossible to have held the line
in France and Belgium, or to have prevented the enemy from
reaching his goal, the Channel seaboard.’
Take, in detail, the War Diaries of Officers Commanding Territorial
Force units in the West Riding; and first, for the sake of completing
the record followed in the last chapter, that of the 4th Battalion, Duke
of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment. On July 26th, we read, they left
Halifax for their Annual Training at Marske-by-the-Sea:
‘The times were very unsettled, there were rumours of war, and
it was thought that at any moment the order for mobilization
would come. The training proceeded amidst intense excitement,
and finally word came that Germany and Austria had declared war
on England, France and Russia. The Special Service Section of
the Battalion, consisting of two officers, Captain R. E. Sugden
and Lieut. H. N. Waller, and 100 men were at once despatched to
Grimsby. On August 3rd, the Battalion was ordered to return to
Halifax, and at 7 p.m. on August 4th the order to mobilize was
received.... At about 1-30 p.m. on August 5th, the Battalion
marched down Horton Street to the station, and took train to
Hull, their allotted station, where the men were billeted.’
Among the officers who left Halifax with the Battalion were Lieut.-Col.
H. Atkinson (the Lieutenant Atkinson of South Africa days[18]) and Major
E. P. Chambers.[19] A few days were spent in making ready, and
‘On August 13th, the Battalion marched to Great Coates, where
the men were billeted in the village. The training was now
commenced, and the days were spent in route-marching, Company
and Battalion training, special attention being paid to
musketry. The weather during the whole stay at Great Coates was
absolutely perfect, glorious sunshine day after day.’
So the news reached Headquarters at Halifax.
Take the evidence of the 6th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment.
On August 5th, at 6 p.m., there were present at Headquarters in Bradford
575 members out of a total strength of 589. Before the close of that day
215 men had re-engaged and re-enlisted. On August 8th the Commanding
Officer was in a position to telegraph to York that his Battalion was up
to War Establishment; 29 officers, 979 other ranks, 57 horses and the
necessary transport: not bad going in August, 1914, for a unit of the
Force, which, through its administrative council, had waited on the Prime
Minister as recently as November, 1913, to discuss grave deficiencies in
its numbers.
It is worth while to piece together this Unit’s record, which may fairly
be taken to typify that of the Territorial Force as a whole, within the
West Riding or beyond, in these early weeks of the Great War. There is
the detail of the horses, for example, insignificant, of course, in the
perspective of a history of the Great War, but significant as an item of
preparation in the sum of the country’s enormous effort. The 57 horses
were all purchased locally, 10 for officers, 16 pack, and 31 draught;
‘the latter being a good, heavy stamp from carters’ wagons.’ There is
evidence of foresight in that touch. On August 11th the Battalion went
by rail to its war-station at Selby, where Captain Anderton, billeting
officer, had been making arrangements since the 9th. Ten men were
discharged as undesirable, and it is observed that the enlisting was
done at such high speed during mobilization, ‘that it was impossible to
inquire into the characters of many of the men.’ About a hundred National
Reservists, Class II, had been enlisted into the Battalion on August
8th, who proved ‘a boon to the Battalion,’ and repaid the hard work of
General Mends and his assistants in this department. As old soldiers they
served, despite their age, to steady the recruits. Recruit-training had
to be started at once, in view of the many enlistments, and a special
staff was organized for this purpose in order that the main business
of training might be interrupted as little as possible. A welcome move
from billets to camp (near Selby) was made on August 19th, and on the
24th they moved by rail and road to the Knavesmire Common, York, where
Brigade Orders were received that the Battalion had been selected as the
Service Battalion of the 1st West Riding Infantry Brigade: on the whole,
a cheerful account of twenty days’ experience of war conditions.
The newly selected Service Battalion was formed into complete Companies,
which consisted entirely of personnel volunteering for service overseas,
and in which the men from each Company were kept as far as practicable
together. The remaining Companies were made up from Units, kept together
in the same way, provided by the 5th, 7th and 8th Battalions of the West
Yorkshire Regiment. After some practice in night-entraining and other
exercises, the Battalion moved on August 31st, and marched with 1st
Line Transport to take its place in the Brigade: ‘a great change for
the better,’ it is added. Next day, the Brigadier-General addressed the
Territorial troops of the Brigade on the subject of voluntary active
service abroad, and by September 15th the Battalion mustered 800 strong
for overseas. Some strenuous weeks of training followed. On November
3rd, when the men were back in York, sounds of heavy firing in the North
Sea raised a temporary alarm of German Dreadnoughts and Cruisers working
North. ‘In two hours,’ we are told, ‘the Battalion was ready to move off
with transport loaded’; so, down South, we might sleep o’ nights. At this
date, too, we read of an ‘enormous improvement in the general behaviour
of the N.C.O.’s and men. Conduct excellent in the town.’
We come to November 22nd, 1914. Half the Battalion moved to Redcar,
complete with transport, ammunition and tools, on trench-digging duty.
Their place was taken by five Home Service Companies, who arrived, it
is observed, without greatcoats or equipment. On December 2nd, the
Machine-Guns with their detachments were ordered to Redcar, and proceeded
under Captain R. G. Fell. On the 10th, an exchange was effected between
the four Reserve Companies and the half-battalion at Redcar, which
returned accordingly to York. A new programme of training was arranged,
which lasted through January, 1915, and on February 1st came a welcome
leave for twenty per cent. of officers and other ranks. At the end
of February, the Battalion moved to Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire,
to relieve the 4th Battalion K.O.Y.L.I., and were billeted on the
inhabitants, four men in each dwellinghouse, ‘a change for the better’,
remarks the diarist, ‘after being a platoon in a hired empty house at
York’. The Battalion remained at Gainsborough till April 15th, when they
proceeded in two trains to Folkestone, reaching Boulogne at 10-45 that
night. Their transport and machine-guns, which had left Gainsborough the
day before, and which travelled via Southampton and Havre, joined them
at Boulogne. There for the present we may leave them to spend the night
of the 15th in a Rest Camp, eight months and ten days after the order to
mobilize had been received at Bradford.
Take the evidence of a unit in a different arm. Colonel A. E. L.
Wear,[20] C.M.G., of the Army Medical Service, was in camp at Scarborough
on August 4th, 1914, with the cadre of the 1/1st West Riding Casualty
Clearing Station, later the 7th C.C. Station. The unit returned at once
to its Headquarters at Leeds, where mobilization to war strength was
completed, with the exception of the full complement of officers. Great
care was taken to select men for the sake of their skill in special
trades: joiners, tailors, boot-repairers, First-Aid experts, and so
forth; and the wisdom of this foresight was fully justified by events.
Intensive training was started forthwith, in the French language, the
duties of cooks and orderlies, field work by means of week-end bivouacs,
and other practical departments, with the result that Colonel Wear was
able to inform the War Office as early as October that his unit was
ready for overseas. Orders were received to proceed to France, and the
officers scheduled on a waiting-list were enrolled, clothed and equipped.
On November 1st, the passage was made to Boulogne, and on the 6th a
detachment was employed in dealing at Poperinghe with the wounded from
the first Battle of Ypres.
As this Medical unit from the West Riding preceded the Divisions to
France, it will be convenient in this place to follow its fortunes a
little further. Towards the end of November, 1914, it took over the
Monastery of St. Joseph, which is situated just North of Merville, and
which had been used in turn by German, French, English and Indian troops.
A Casualty Clearing Station needs quiet and cleanliness, among the major
virtues, and a perfect economy of minor details in order to ensure them.
Colonel Wear proved equal to these demands. He apportioned the building
into wards, stores, operating-theatre, dispensary, offices, etc.,
cleaned it all up and made it ready, and, after a little discussion with
the Church authorities, turned the roomy main chapel of the Monastery
into a serious case ward. Members of the unit (observe here the C.O.’s
foresight in his selection of personnel) installed the heating-stoves,
and concreted the paths, and built a large destructor to hold a
400-gallon iron tank, which supplied hot water to a bath-hut. They also
did the washing for some time, but, later, arrangements were made for
French female labour, and a regular laundry was fitted up. This feature
was novel and successful. The work, seldom light, came in rushes, when
day and night shifts (at times, even four-hour shifts) were organized,
so as to carry on with the minimum of fatigue by means of a limited
personnel. The unit numbered at full strength eight Medical Officers, a
Quartermaster, a Dentist, two Chaplains, seven Nurses, eighty-four rank
and file, nine A.S.C. and seventeen P.B. men. Perhaps its own simple
statement gives its record in the most effective language: ‘No man
ever left the station without having his wound examined and dressed,
and receiving a meal and a smoke.’ From frost-bite, La Bassée, Neuve
Chapelle, Aubers and Festubert, came the first streams of clients to this
station.
[Illustration: A CASUALTY CLEARING STATION.]
We return to the centre of war activity at the Territorial Headquarters
in York.
In a little book, written chiefly for America and published early in
1918, Major Basil Williams, later employed under Colonel Lord Gorell
on educational Staff Duties, described in adequate terms the _Raising
and Training the New Armies_[21]. We are not immediately concerned with
the decision which called those Armies into being. Lord Kitchener was
Secretary of State for War, and on August 8th, 1914, he called for that
‘first hundred thousand’ whose spirit was so brilliantly conveyed in
Mr. Ian Hay’s volume of that name. He got them over and over again, and
it is no part of our purpose to discuss the Parliamentary Recruiting
Committee’s output of speeches, posters and ‘literature,’ by which,
partly, under the grace of England’s effort, the result was obtained.
Nor shall we examine the evidence on which Mr. Churchill, as Secretary
of State for War, based his expression of opinion, already quoted above,
that, had the Territorial Force organization ‘been used to build up
the War Army, as originally intended and conceived by Lord Haldane, we
should have avoided many of the difficulties that confronted us at the
outset, and we should have put a larger efficient force in the field
at an earlier stage.’ What Lord Haldane intended in 1908 and what Lord
Kitchener demanded in 1914 might well be corrected in the light of
what Mr. Churchill knew in 1919. But even without the wisdom which is
garnered after the event, we are entitled to quote one sentence from
Major Williams’ account of the New Armies. Towards the close of his
review of ‘the great awakening of the nation by the recruiting campaign,’
1914-1915, he wrote:
‘All this time the Territorial Force, the original home defence
force, nearly the whole of which had originally volunteered
for service overseas, had been quietly raising recruits for
itself, supplementary to the recruits raised by these different
methods’.
‘All this time’ and ‘quietly’ are the _mots justes_. The ‘time’ as we
have observed, dated back through the Volunteer movement of 1859 to the
immemorial tradition of shire-loyalty; the ‘quiet’ was that of boroughs
and countryside, of mayors’ parlours and manorial halls, of town-marts
and village-greens in England—
‘Grave mother of majestic works,
From her isle-altar gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown.’
Her possession of the trident was first definitely challenged[22] since
Trafalgar on August 4th, 1914, and in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as
elsewhere, the means of defence were swiftly organized.
Swift forethought in County areas, it should be noted, did not
invariably lead to sound action at the executive centre. A trivial
example will suffice. Three weeks after the outbreak of war, a letter was
written to the Army Council suggesting that the West Riding Association
should make provision for cardigan jackets, warm drawers, and other
articles of clothing, which the troops would require in the winter
months. The Army Council sent a dignified reply, thanking the Association
for their offer, but stating that these articles would be provided by the
Army Council itself. Later, on October 9th, the Army Council intimated
its inability to supply cardigan jackets, warm drawers, and other
articles of winter clothing for the Troops, and requested the Association
to make provision. So far the experience was merely funny, but the
sequel had a Gilbertian touch. When the Association made inquiry at the
contractors, they were informed that all manufacturers of the articles
in question had been forbidden by the Army Council to supply anyone else
than the War Office. ‘These facts are brought before the Association’,
remarked the Chairman in his quarterly report, ‘in order that members may
know that everything possible was done to anticipate the requirements of
the Troops, and that any failure in this respect is due to causes beyond
its control.’ It was well and temperately said.
The heavy increase of work in the secretariat was fairly met by the
voluntary help of the Hon. G. N. de Yarburgh-Bateson, Mr. Talbot Rice,
Mr. Peter Green, some eighteen or twenty volunteers from the close of
their day’s work till late at night, two clerks from the North Eastern
Railway Company, a clerk from the York Probate Office, twenty-six
additional full-time clerks, Boy Scouts and other useful helpers. The
County Director was assisted by Col. Sir Thomas Pilkington, Bt.,[23]
and Lieut.-Col. Husband, whom the G.O.C. had appointed as officers
superintending the Lines of Communication and the arrangements for the
care of the sick and wounded. Advisory Boards were formed for the 2nd
and 3rd Northern General Hospitals at Leeds (Training College, Beckett’s
Park) and Sheffield (Collegiate Hall) respectively, which as early as the
end of August had already many patients from France and Belgium. These
Boards, consisting, at Leeds, of the Lord Mayor, Alderman F. Kinder,
Lt.-Col. Shann and the Matron of the Infirmary; and, at Sheffield, of
the Lord Mayor, Lord Wharncliffe, Col. Hughes, Lt.-Col. Sinclair White
and the Matron of the Infirmary, were intended to relieve the Commanding
Officers of the Hospitals of some portion of their administrative
functions, leaving them freer for professional work and discipline.
We omit the long figures and many Army Forms with which General
Mends and his Staff had to wrestle. The 5,000 blankets and 2,000 sets
of saddlery, the 32,887 complete suits of service-dress, the 16,803
water-bottles and 4,242 bandoliers; these requisitions and the rest
of them are as tiresome and uninteresting in retrospect as they were
absorbing and urgent at the time. There is one feature of their work,
however, familiar by the mystic letters S/A, which cannot be passed over
without notice, for it imposed a very severe strain on the Association’s
capacity for expansion. S/A stands for separation allowance, and the
regular issue of this grant to the wives and dependents of serving
soldiers had been assigned by the Act of Parliament as part of an
Association’s duty. It was by no means an easy task. Allowance has to be
made for an inconvenient distribution of functions. A soldier, whether
Regular or Territorial, drew his pay from his Commanding Officer out of
the monies supplied on vouchers presented to the Regimental Paymaster. In
the Regular Army the same Paymaster kept the soldier’s domestic account
with his wife and children or other dependents; and, though errors
inevitably occurred even when the accounts were thus linked, they could
be checked and more readily adjusted, inasmuch as all the information
was available in the same office. For the domestic account, it should
be observed, was extremely sensitive to variations in the soldier’s
rate of pay, and was affected by the soldier’s ‘casualties,’ whether
major ones of death or desertion, or minor ones of leave, punishment
and so forth. In the Territorial Force, however, the soldier’s domestic
account was kept by his County Association, presumably owing to the
fact that they were more likely to be in touch with the personnel of
the units which they administered. In peace-time this worked very well.
When a Territorial soldier went into camp for a week or fortnight in the
summer, it was comparatively a simple matter for the local Territorial
Force Association to pay the corresponding days’ allowances to those
whom he left at home. But the immense expansion of the Force in 1914,
and the extraordinarily complicated system of accountancy, added to
the distribution of pay-duties between the Regimental Paymaster for
the man and the County Association for his dependent, overtook these
heavily burdened bodies at a time when they were least well qualified
to discharge the work effectively. They did not understand it. It was
difficult to engage clerks. The Army Pay Department of the War Office
could not spare sufficient trained instructors; and, generally, the
urgent problems of the mobilization, equipment and (as we shall see) the
duplication of the Force, tended to postpone attention to what seemed
less pressing domestic matters. The early war annals of the West Riding
Association are full of evidence to these conditions:
‘The duty devolving on the Association of paying Separation
Allowances and Allotments of Pay to the wives and families
of the Territorial Troops entails very heavy work and
responsibility.... The first payment was due to be made on the
9th August, and consisted of Separation Allowance only up to
the 31st of the month. The September payment was duly made on
the 31st August. The number of Money Orders sent out up to and
for that date was 13,328, and on 3rd September, orders were
received to also pay a compulsory Allotment of Pay for each
married soldier.’
Though they split an infinitive in doing so, this payment, too, was duly
made on September 11th; but it involved a further 5,430 Money Orders with
the corresponding, inevitable Army Forms.
It is no part of our present purpose to enquire into the possibilities
of simplifying Army Pay; least of all, to suggest the simplest method of
a flat rate like the wage of a civilian. But it is within our province
to point out the almost infinite possibilities of mistakes (even of the
fraud which is so elaborately excluded) in the family register for each
soldier of the number, sex and age of his children, in the paraphernalia
of coupons, Postal Draft-books and Money-Orders, in the calculation and
readjustment of rates owing to information advised from the soldier’s
unit or to domestic changes reported or detected, in the grading of
‘unofficial wives’ and other official relationships, and, summarily,
in the invention of a system which seems expressly designed to squeeze
out of the officers administering it the last drop of the milk of human
kindness without any compensating gain in the civil virtues of economy
and efficiency.
In January, 1915, nearly 15,000 books of Postal Drafts, representing
approximately £210,000, were issued to Postmasters by a directing
staff at York, which consisted entirely of voluntary workers. In the
following April, steps were taken to regularize the position of these
gentlemen, in anticipation of the approval of the Army Council, in which
connection notice was drawn to the ‘unjustifiable system of differential
treatment as between the clerical staff in Regular and Territorial Pay
Offices,’ clerks in the former being engaged at 35s. a week and in the
latter being offered only 23s. In June, the number of cases in pay and
in action for payment amounted to 36,538, while the Pay Department was
working with 41 per cent. below the equivalent establishment of the
Regimental Paymaster’s Office. At last, on August 18th, 1915, more than
a year after the outbreak of war, the War Office appointed an expert
Paymaster to take charge of this heroic band of amateurs, a Government
audit was instituted, and the Association was thankful to report that the
department ‘is now working in as satisfactory a manner as the complicated
and constantly changing regulations will permit.’ We shall leave the
present branch of our subject on this note of moderate transport. That
the Association had carried on so well is a proof of the continuity of
function which won through to quicker results in other branches of its
manifold activity.
We followed one or two units from the sudden hour of mobilization to
the sea-ports of France and beyond. We may now look at this achievement,
‘quietly’ performed, as we are aware, in the midst of the recruiting for
the New Army, through the spectacles of the County Association. Thus,
the Chairman’s Progress Report, dated August 14th, 1914, referred to
the confusion which was caused by the Division being in Camp when the
fateful hour struck, but added that the task of mobilization ‘may be
considered as satisfactorily carried out.’ A month later, he reported,
in view of ‘the present grave emergency,’ that every West Riding unit in
the Mounted Brigade, the Division and the Army Troops had qualified as
a ‘General Service’ unit, which meant service overseas. Consequently,
the Association became responsible—this gives us a glimpse through
its spectacles—for raising Reserve units in each case, which meant a
duplication of the Force, or, roughly, another 18,000 of all ranks.
Note here the ‘which meant’ in each context. The plain meaning of the
situation within a few weeks of the outbreak of hostilities, was that
the pre-war units would be sent to France at full Establishment, and
that the West Riding would have to supply equivalent units in their
home-stations. The rapid march of events soon caused names to be given
to these facts. In January, 1915, the Chairman stated in his Report that
‘the first Reserve units are about to be organized as a Division,’ and
that ‘as soon as the Imperial Service Division leaves for abroad, the
first Reserve Division will take its place and a second Reserve Division
will be raised. Orders have now been received to commence recruiting for
the latter up to 30 per cent. of its Establishment.’ Meanwhile, more than
7,000 National Reservists had rejoined the Colours in the West Riding, of
whom about 2,000 had been mobilized for duty on Lines of Communication
and in Prisoners of War Camps. This force was organized by Colonel G. E.
Wilkinson, D.S.O., and ‘the clothing and equipment,’ it is added, ‘have
been provided by the Association.’ In other directions, too, the energies
of the Association were fully engaged. The 2nd Northern General Hospital
at Leeds and the 3rd at Sheffield had treated over 4,000 and 3,000 cases
respectively; twenty-eight Auxiliary Hospitals had been approved, of
which seventeen had been mobilized up to date, the whole of the staffs,
except professional Trained Nurses, being provided free by the Voluntary
Aid Detachments, whose beginnings we read of in the last chapter.
Further, the West Riding Branch of Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild had sent
91,866 articles for the use of the Troops abroad and at home.
And still the war went on. We are to imagine this machine, invented
in an epoch of peace to raise 18,000 men for mobilized service at
home, stretched now to more than twice its capacity and creaking under
unexpected burdens, operated by a shifting personnel of recalled
officers, part-time clerks, and inexperienced, however enthusiastic,
voluntary workers, overwhelmed with Army Forms and Returns and the
necessary business of accountancy, storing trousers by tens of thousands
in a space provided for a quarter of the supply, yet vexed that ‘certain
articles, such as greatcoats, still come in very slowly, and boots,
puttees, and gloves are extremely difficult to get,’ and always overtaken
by the demands of the inexorable German advance, which did not wait upon
decisions by the Army Council. The essential letter was issued by the War
Office, from the Adjutant-General’s branch, on February 24th, 1915. It
was numbered 9/Gen. No./4747, and it directed that the Imperial Service,
first Reserve and second Reserve Units of the Territorial Force should
be designated respectively, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Line. The organization of
the West Riding Territorial Troops was altered, accordingly, to the West
Riding Division, 1st Line; the West Riding Division, 2nd Line; and a 3rd
Line on a Depot basis, with a strength temporarily limited to two-thirds
of War Establishment. The Yorkshire Mounted Brigade was similarly
re-organized. The 3rd Line was eventually to furnish drafts for the 1st
and 2nd Lines, and until it should be in a position to do so the 2nd Line
was to provide drafts for the 1st, which went overseas, April, 1915.
So, we reach along another route the same point to which we followed
certain units through their months of training at home. Many details
have necessarily been omitted: that the Association’s extra expenditure
‘due entirely to the war’ between August 4th, 1914, and April 17th,
1915, amounted to £349,902; that 551 men of the 2nd Line Units responded
to an appeal for volunteers to transfer to the Reserve of the Regular
Battalions of the West Yorkshire, West Riding, K.O. Yorkshire L.I., and
York and Lancaster Regiments; that a Sanitary Section was added as a new
unit to each 1st and 2nd Line; that Territorial Depots were henceforth
to be known as Administrative Centres, and to be manned by Home Service
members of the Territorial Force[24]; that up to March 31st, 1915, nearly
2,000 patients had been admitted to the Auxiliary Hospitals in the West
Riding; and so on, and so forth. For the local machine had many wheels,
and every wheel was kept moving all the time. It revolved as smoothly as
it might, but the motive force was not in York, nor in London, but, in
the German Headquarters on the Western Front, and in the hate, which,
reversing Dante’s cosmogony, seemed, through those fateful months, ‘to
move the sun and other stars.’
Only one more change need be recorded before we follow General Baldock
abroad. In May, 1915, his Division was re-entitled the 49th (West Riding)
Division. At the same time its Infantry Brigades (the 1/1st, 1/2nd
and 1/3rd) were re-named the 146th, 147th and 148th Infantry Brigades
respectively.[25] A few months later, the 2nd Line Division, which was
still in training at home, and to some features in whose early history
we shall come back, was re-entitled the 62nd (West Riding) Division.[26]
Under these names they won renown in the Great War.
BOOK II
WAR
CHAPTER IV
‘MALBROUCK S’EN VA-T’EN GUERRE’
Once more the point of view changes. We have seen the 49th Division
nursed by its ministering Association into the semblance of a military
force. We have noted its cheerful submission to the discipline of drill
and camp, and its fine-strung spirit of renouncement when the vague
thought of active service at a remote date broke on the urgent call
of the country’s immediate need. Either aspect has been encouraging.
Whether viewed individually or in the mass, this Territorial Division,
one of many, which took the Imperial Service obligation and joined the
Expeditionary Force in the spring of 1915, fills the spectator of so much
courage and the narrator of so much effort with high hope for the Force
as a whole.
Henceforth, we are to see the Division under a new aspect. Certain
units from the West Riding were already in the field. We have visited a
Casualty Clearing Station near Merville, and presently we shall come to
the fine record of the 1st Field Company, West Riding Royal Engineers,
which served in Gallipoli with the ‘incomparable’ 29th Division. But,
except for these isolated units, the war so far had passed it by. In
its organic, military capacity, it had merely guessed at the course of
the war from signs and tokens vouchsafed by the Army Council, from the
duplication and triplication of its units, from the extreme difficulties
of equipment, and from a general sense of haste without method. From this
time forward, for four years and more, it was to learn warfare at first
hand. It was to forget its separate existence as the sheltered nursling
of a County Association, and to become a part, however small a part, of
the British Expeditionary Force.
The B.E.F., France, at this date (April, 1915), needed all the
reinforcements it could muster, and Sir John French[27] had already borne
witness in his Fifth Despatch (February 2nd, 1915), to his hopes from the
Territorial Force:
‘The Lords Lieutenant of the Counties and the Associations
which worked under them bestowed a vast amount of labour and
energy on the organization of the Territorial Force; and I
trust it may be some recompense to them to know that I, and
the principal Commanders serving under me, consider that the
Territorial Force has far more than justified the most sanguine
hopes that any of us ventured to entertain of their value and
use in the field. Army Corps Commanders are loud in their
praise of the Territorial Battalions which form part of nearly
all the brigades at the front in the first line.’
And he had written again, as recently as April 5th:
‘Up till lately, the troops of the Territorial Forces in this
country were only employed by Battalions, but for some weeks
past I have seen formed Divisions working together, and I have
every hope that their employment in the larger units will prove
as successful as in the smaller.’
Territorial soldiers had made good, and Major-General Baldock, Commanding
the Division, as a complete unit from the West Riding, found his
confident welcome assured.
He arrived at a critical time. It was the spring of 1915. At home, public
opinion was to be convinced of the thoroughness of German methods by the
sinking of the ‘Lusitania’ on May 7th. A reconstruction of the Cabinet by
Coalition was announced on May 19th, and a Ministry of Munitions, with
Mr. Lloyd George at its head, took shape on June 16th. This innovation
was due to several causes, the ultimate origin of which is to be sought
at a date a long way back from the outbreak of war. Accordingly, we may
be absolved from any attempt to adjudicate between a Prime Minister, a
Field Marshal, and a Secretary of State for War, as to the responsibility
for the shortage of munitions which was revealed after war broke out.
They did fall short of requirements, and high explosive shells had been
postponed to shrapnel; and, as far as public opinion could judge, the
decision to repair these deficiencies (the political decision, that is to
say) was expedited to some extent by the immediate effect of one sentence
in a speech by Mr. Asquith, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, on April 20th. He was
speaking, as he has since stated, to British workmen, with the object
of speeding-up their output, but not without a proper regard to the
cocked ears of the German Military Command; and, partly in reliance on
the expert information which he had sought, he said in the course of his
speech:
‘I saw a statement the other day that the operations, not only
of our own Army, but of our Allies, were being crippled, or
at any rate hampered, by our failure to provide the necessary
ammunition. There is no truth in that statement.’
The assurance seemed to contradict the experience of gunners at the
front. In his Seventh Despatch of June 15th, 1915, Sir John French
affirmed quite clearly that,
‘Throughout the whole period since the first break of the line
on the night of April 22nd, all the troops in this area had
been constantly subjected to violent artillery bombardment from
a large mass of guns with an unlimited supply of ammunition.
It proved impossible, whilst under so vastly superior a fire
of artillery, to dig efficient trenches, or properly to
re-organize the line.’
Indeed, on the very night when Mr. Asquith was speaking at Newcastle,
a Territorial Force Officer (2/Lieutenant Geoffrey Woolley, of the 9th
London Regiment) was earning his Victoria Cross for defending a position
on Hill 60 against overwhelming enemy cannonade.
Hill 60, which was not a hill at all, but merely a hummock of railway
earthwork, was in any case not visible from the Tyne, but the general
disquietude at home at the time of the formation of the Coalition
Cabinet reflected accurately enough the conditions which marked the
place and time of General Baldock’s arrival in France, with which we are
immediately concerned. One word more will complete this impression:
‘I much regret,’ wrote Sir John French in the same Despatch,
‘that during the period under report the fighting has been
characterized on the enemy’s side by a cynical and barbarous
disregard of the well-known usages of civilized war and a
flagrant defiance of the Hague Convention. All the scientific
resources of Germany have, apparently, been brought into play
to produce a gas of so virulent and poisonous a nature that any
human being brought into contact with it is first paralysed and
then meets with a lingering and agonizing death.’
The first such gas attack was launched at Ypres, on Thursday, April 22nd.
On the previous Thursday night (the 15th), we left a West Yorkshire
Battalion spending its first night in France at a Rest Camp, near
Boulogne.
So the 49th went to the war on the eve of the Second Battle of Ypres, at
a time of an outrage of gas and a shortage of shells.
They went in eighty-four trains and on five days between April 12th and
16th, embarking at Southampton Docks, Avonmouth and Folkestone for Havre,
Rouen and Boulogne respectively, and they joined the 4th Corps of the 1st
Army, commanded by Lieut.-General Sir Henry Rawlinson. Corps Headquarters
were posted at Merville, and there the Divisional Commander reported with
five of his Staff Officers, and established, as we saw[28], Divisional
Headquarters in the mayor’s house, 40 rue des Capucines. On April 18th,
the following message was received from His Majesty the King:
‘I much regret not to have been able to inspect the Division
under your Command before its departure to the Front. Please
convey to all ranks my best wishes for success, and tell them
that I shall follow with pride the progress of the West Riding
Division.’
A loyal reply was dispatched by General Baldock, and on the same day
parties of Officers and N.C.O.’s, followed on the 19th by complete
platoons, from the Battalions of the 2nd and 3rd West Riding (147th and
148th) Infantry Brigades were attached to units of the 23rd and 25th
Brigades, 8th Division, for instructional duty in the trenches. On the
22nd, the 1st (146th) Brigade moved from Merville to Estaires, and was
attached to the 7th Division, and placed under their orders. Sir Douglas
Haig visited units of the Division on the following day. Divisional
Headquarters were moved on the 27th to two houses and a farm in Bac St.
Maur, and at 6 a.m. on the 28th, the Division took over a front of its
own at Fleurbaix, covering sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the IV Corps sector.
We may fill in a few details in this outline. After all, it was a
wonderful fortnight in the experience of the men from the West Riding.
A war on the Western front had been waged for more than eight months,
but it was all strange to new arrivals. Take, for instance, the 1/6th
Battalion of the West Riding (Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment, which slept
at S. Martin’s Rest Camp, about three miles out of Boulogne, on the night
of April 14th. The next day, which was fine and warm, they marched nine
miles to Hesdigneul, and waited two hours at the railway station before
entraining for Merville. The entraining of a thousand and fifteen men
presented no difficulty to troops which had long since become expert in
such drill. It was carried out in batches of eight-and-forty, with a
frontage of six men, eight deep. At a given signal three men entered the
truck; the centre man took the rifles of the rest, whom the two flank
men helped in. Merville was reached at 10-45 p.m. and the Battalion,
preceded by its Billeting party in a motor-car, marched four miles to
their billets at Neuf Berquin, turning in after 3 a.m.: a long and tiring
day’s work. The 16th and 17th were spent quietly. On the 18th there was
Church Parade, and in the afternoon motor-’buses were provided for a
party of fifty officers and N.C.O.’s to proceed to Fleurbaix, where they
were attached to the 13th Kensingtons for twenty-four hours’ instruction
in the trenches. Even instruction had its perils, and this trench-party
returned one casualty; Sgt. T. Richardson, ‘slightly wounded.’ On the
20th, the motor-’bus came again for a party of twenty-six in all,
and next day a platoon from each Company in the Battalion studied
trench-warfare as pupils of the 25th Brigade. This instruction, which
included bomb-throwing, was continued till April 26th, when the Battalion
paraded at 4-45 p.m. and marched to new billets at Fleurbaix, reaching
Rue de Quesne at 8 o’clock. The next night at 11 p.m. Pte. J. Walsh was
killed by rifle fire, and on Thursday, April 29th, Fleurbaix was shelled
by heavy guns, which found the billets occupied by this Battalion. A
single shell killed two privates and wounded a third: ‘the dead were
buried where the shell fell, owing to Pte. Pickles being so mutilated. No
service: Chaplain not available.’
This unhouselled grave may be taken as the initiation of the Division
into war, rumours of which, set flying in the Second Battle of Ypres,
reached units of the Division in their billets.[29] Their turn was to
come a little later, but the fighting throughout April and May was so
much of one piece and with one object that we may start, as the battle
started, on April 17th.
[Illustration]
A straight line, 260 miles long, drawn from a point on the Rhine midway
between Cologne and Bonn, and terminating at the French coast about six
miles north of Boulogne, will pass through Brussels and Ypres. That
heroic town, in other words, the ‘great nerve-ganglion,’ as it has been
called,[30] was not merely the symbol and shrine of Belgium’s resistance
to the invader; it was also a necessary stage in the German attempt at
the Channel ports. They battered the line up and down, in the hope of
breaking a way through, but their worst and heaviest blows were levelled
at Ypres itself, which they wrecked but they did not capture. The second
of these desperate assaults opened as we saw, at Hill 60, two and a
half miles to the south-east of Ypres, where it flared into the horror
of poison-gas on April 22nd. A week of heroism and endurance brought
this episode to a close by the withdrawal of the defence to a depth of
about two miles on a semi-circular front of nearly eight. An intensified
fierceness of attack marked the renewal of the battle in May. The hottest
days were the 13th and 24th, between which there was a kind of lull; and
thereafter the centre of fighting sagged away a few miles to the south,
where the 49th Division was in waiting. The assault on Ypres had failed.
Exhaustion-point had been reached on either side, but the defenders
had paid an awful price. Their casualties numbered tens of thousands,
and thousands had died in choking agony. The salient or semi-circle of
troops, Belgian, French, Indian, Canadian and English, which had never
stretched more than five miles out from its diameter on the Yser Canal,
was flattened in even at the furthest to as little as two or three.
Langemarck, the pivot of the first episode, which had lain on the rim of
the salient, now lay more than two miles outside it; Bellewaarde Lake,
the pivot of the second, which had lain two miles inside the rim, was now
on the edge of it or without. If the last stronghold of Belgium was to be
saved, and the gate to the Channel ports kept locked, at least an equal
power of resistance was required from the defenders in the next phase.
[Illustration]
Moreover, we must look at a bigger map. Behind the actual fighting line
lay Lille and Douai, railway-junctions of cardinal importance for the
communication and supplies of the German armies. To strike at these towns
through Lens, at the south-west corner of the triangle of which Lille
formed the apex and Douai the heel, was an object desirable on its own
account and full of promise for the succour of Ypres. If these plans,
concerted with high hopes between General Foch and Sir John French,
succeeded in threatening the railway-system behind, they were bound to
react unfavourably on the German occupation of Belgium. And even if these
larger plans failed, partly in consequence of the indentation of the
semi-circle of troops guarding Ypres, there might still be a sufficient
gain of ground and a sufficient slaughter of the enemy to affect his
distribution of forces between the Western and the Eastern fronts. For
the situation in Russia was already causing anxiety to her Allies.
Hostilities were opened on May 9th by an intense attack of French
artillery to the south-west of Lens on the road from Arras to Béthune,
between La Targette and Carency. ‘That bombardment,’ says a graphic
writer,[31] ‘was the most wonderful yet seen in Western Europe. It
simply ate up the countryside for miles.’ Unfortunately, the mileage
was not wide enough to open the way to Lens, and day by day the French
advance was held up, pressed forward and held again, in a series of
almost Homeric combats, which were measured by yards, even by feet, and
in which the conspicuous names were White Works, Notre Dame de Lorette,
Ablain, the Sugar Refinery, Souchez, the cemetery at Neuville St. Vaast,
and a terrible labyrinth of underground fortifications. The whole area,
working up from the River Scarpe, was on a frontage of about seven miles,
with Lens about six miles to the north-east. Each obstacle had to be
surmounted not once only, but in many instances several times, and when,
at the end of May, the German salient from the Lille-Douai road was
flattened back at its southern extremity to the outskirts of Lens, which
did not fall, the French success in the three weeks’ fighting seemed
hardly commensurate with the cost. We shall be in a position to estimate
it more precisely when we have taken into account the results which were
attained further north.
[Illustration]
The French advance towards Lens from the south-west was supported by
a British attack on a front facing east-south-east and aimed through
Festubert and Aubers towards La Bassée and Lille. We noted just now the
triangle which is formed with Lille at the apex, Douai at the eastern
and Lens at the western foot. On the Lille-Lens line of that triangle,
another and smaller triangle will be found, of which La Bassée forms
the westernmost angle. The French, we are aware, came up on a front
converging on Lens from Arras and the valley of the Scarpe. The British
advanced from the north-west with a view to investing La Bassée, and
if Lens and La Bassée had both fallen, as the issue of these heroic
endeavours, the double triangle, or kite, would have been rolled up to
its apex at Lille.