Breakdown Read online

Most people were stunned by the speed of events. They had gone off on holiday to the seaside, and Europe had been at peace. Now, a few days later, Europe was at war. Most people agreed that war came like a ‘bolt from the blue’. And as one twenty-year-old later put it, ‘It seemed incredible that in our orderly, civilized world such things could happen.’1

  Since 1906, the War Office had secretly discussed operational plans with the French army to send an expeditionary force to support France in the event that the country was invaded. But it was unclear whether these talks morally committed Britain to come to France’s aid. And, in any case, the discussions had taken place in secret and were not known to either Parliament or public.2 In retrospect, however, it was the appalling lack of planning for a major war that was extraordinary. Not only were there no thoughts as to how, in such an eventuality, the British army should be enlarged, or how the resources to house, equip, feed and arm a substantially larger army would be mobilised, but there had been no thinking about how to expand the small manufacturing base on which Britain’s arms and munitions industry was reliant. Even the position of Secretary of War was vacant. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith had carried out its responsibilities for five months since the resignation of the previous secretary. This was clearly not appropriate in a time of war. Asquith wrote to his young confidante, Venetia Stanley, on the first day of war, ‘It was quite impossible for me to go on [as Secretary of War], now that war is actually in being: it requires the undivided time and thought of any man to do the job properly.’3

  The government quickly looked around to find who could fill this essential role. The influential Times military correspondent, Colonel Charles à Court Repington, spotted that Lord Kitchener was currently in London, away from his duties as British agent in Egypt, and wrote, ‘Lord Kitchener is at home, and his selection for this onerous and important post would meet with warm public approval.’4 Repington’s suggestion would meet with immense public acclaim.

  Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum was the best-known and most widely respected soldier of his generation. He had joined the Royal Engineers in 1870 and had spent much of his life in the Middle East, carrying out a military survey of Palestine in the 1870s, joining the Egyptian army in the 1880s, acting as Sirdar (commander-in-chief) of that army through much of the 1890s, and leading the successful campaign to crush the Islamic insurgents in the Sudan in 1898 which made him a national figure. During the Boer War he was first chief of staff and then commander-in-chief in South Africa and had gone on to act as military head in India from 1902 to 1909. From India he toured the Far East and Australasia, where he advised the Australian and New Zealand governments on the formation of their own armies. In 1911 he was appointed British agent and consul-general in Egypt, effectively military and political head of that nation, guarding the Suez Canal, which was seen as vital to imperial security. With his links to Egypt, India and South Africa, Kitchener was the personification of Britain’s imperial mission. With successful military campaigns behind him he was a popular hero. Despite his long absences from Britain he was widely known and his moustachioed, uniformed image was a symbol of bullish, determined imperialism.

  Kitchener’s appointment as Secretary for War two days after the declaration of war proved a massive hit with the public and inspired British people that the army was going to be under strong leadership. Asquith’s daughter later wrote that ‘Lord Kitchener was more than a national hero. He was a national institution … There was a feeling Kitchener could not fail. The psychological effect of his appointment, the tonic to public confidence, were instantaneous and overwhelming.’5

  Kitchener’s widespread popularity would have an enormous impact on events over the coming months. But several problems would arise from his appointment. Kitchener was by nature autocratic, incapable of delegating responsibility or taking advice and he had an immense suspicion of politicians and even of the War Office itself. He once remarked to a friend, ‘May God preserve me from the politicians.’6 He was not at all keen to take up the post of War Secretary but when it was presented to him as his duty he agreed as long as he was given full Cabinet status. He would prove to be a difficult figure to control. At his first Cabinet meeting he stunned his colleagues around the table by announcing that contrary to public opinion, this war was bound to be a long one, and that Britain must now prepare for a struggle lasting at least three years. He argued that wars took unexpected courses and a European conflict could not be ended by a victory at sea but only by major land battles on the continent. In order to play a part ‘on a scale proportionate to its magnitude and power’ Britain had to be prepared ‘to put armies of millions in the field and maintain them for several years’. Such was the awe and respect that Kitchener commanded that the Cabinet unanimously accepted his view in silence.7 Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, later described Kitchener as practically a ‘military dictator’ in the first months of the war and recalled that ‘The Members of the Cabinet were frankly intimidated by his presence because of his repute and his enormous influence amongst all classes of the people outside. A word from him was decisive and no one dared to challenge it in a Cabinet meeting.’8

  Kitchener’s views prevailed in that the Cabinet agreed to send an expeditionary force of four divisions supported by cavalry to take its position on the left of the French army. Within fourteen days troops were landing in France and beginning to deploy, in line with the eight years of military planning that had gone into preparing for this specific operation. Moreover, the Cabinet agreed to Kitchener’s proposal to increase the size of the army by 500,000 men. On 7 August, the newspapers reported his preliminary appeal for 100,000 men between the ages of nineteen and thirty ‘who have the safety of the Empire at heart’ to enlist. Kitchener’s initial plan was to raise six new divisions.

  In 1914, the British army was a tiny, all-volunteer professional force. At home it consisted of six regular infantry divisions supported by a cavalry division. Each infantry division also had its own artillery, engineers, signallers and field ambulance units. The core unit of the army was the regiment and each county had its own famous regiments with their own proud histories. At least one battalion from each regiment served in India or elsewhere abroad for periods of up to five years at a time. There was also the Indian Army, a separate force made up of Indian nationals, many from warrior tribes, commanded by British officers but largely financed from within the sub-continent. In addition, within Britain, there were fourteen Territorial divisions, about 250,000 men, created in the army reforms of 1908. Territorial units were made up of men who were often highly motivated and patriotic. But their training was basic, the requirement being only for a minimum of eight and a maximum of fifteen days a year in camp, supported by a few days (or evenings) of drilling in local halls. Their equipment was often old and outdated, little more than hand-me-downs from the regular army. The key feature of the Territorial Force was that it was directly under local responsibility, with county associations in charge of recruitment, equipment and organisation; they were also responsible for negotiations with employers to ensure volunteers were permitted leave of absence to carry out their duties. Professional military men were still in direct command but most of the major towns and counties of Britain took great pride in their local Territorials. The principal intention behind the recruitment of the Territorial Force (apart from its far lower cost than the regular army) was the home defence of Britain if the regular forces were sent abroad. Territorials were not required to serve overseas, although they could do so if they agreed to volunteer. Before 1914, only about 7 per cent of the Territorial Force had agreed to serve abroad, as this would clearly be far more disruptive to life and employment at home.

  Kitchener had a strong and instinctive distrust of the Territorials. He disliked the idea that they were under the county associations and not directly under the command of the War Office, and was suspicious of what he called a ‘Town Clerk’s Army’.9 He preferred men who knew nothing and could b
e trained from scratch to those who had a smattering of what he regarded as the wrong sort of training. It has often been argued that his suspicions were unfounded and betrayed the fact that, having been out of Britain for many years, he was unaware of the good work that the county associations had been doing. Certainly, they were beginning to function efficiently by 1914. But Kitchener did not believe that they were up to the task of managing the enormous expansion that he now foresaw. And Kitchener’s view also doubtless represented the suspicion often felt by the full-time professional towards the part-time amateur enthusiast. So Kitchener took a momentous decision in August 1914. He decided not to appeal for recruits to swell the ranks of the Territorial Force but for men to come forward to form a New Army. This would be recruited not locally through the county associations but centrally through the War Office and the normal recruiting mechanisms that existed within the Adjutant-General’s Department.

  The first few days of the war counter the myth that tens of thousands rushed forward to volunteer as soon as war was declared. A few hundred men turned up in London at New Scotland Yard. But very few were actually processed through the antiquated machinery of recruitment. In other cities like Birmingham, the processing of recruits was equally slow. Every recruit was required to take a bath in the one bathroom available; then to be medically examined by the single doctor present; then to be taken through the complex attestation form by the one clerk assigned to the task. In the first week, the average daily intake was only about 1,600 men across the whole country. Many were left outside queuing, but in no way did this add up to the dynamic recruitment boom that was needed to transform the size of the British army. In contrast, by mid-August 261,000 had come forward to enlist in the German army, which was already twenty-five times bigger than the British.

  Over the next couple of weeks the machinery of recruitment expanded and became more fit for purpose. New offices were given over to the handling of recruits. Sometimes town halls opened their doors, and often schools, empty of course in midsummer, were taken over. More clerks were allocated to the task, while doctors were taken on in much bigger numbers and were offered 1s 6d for every recruit they examined. During the second week of the war, the daily number of recruits being attested went up to about 6,000. But this was still very much an urban phenomenon based on the largest cities, London, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester. The response from rural areas and smaller towns was trivial by comparison.

  It was in the last week of August, when news came through of the British Expeditionary Force’s first battles at Mons and Le Cateau, that the situation began to change. All reporting from the front was subject to strict military censorship, but soon the papers were full of hints of a retreat from Mons. This aroused great concern for the fate of the nation’s army and inspired far more interest in the war than the declaration of war itself. In the last week of August, 63,000 men came forward to attest. Then, in a special edition of The Times on 30 August, its reporter, Arthur Moore, wrote openly for the first time of the ‘terrible defeat of British troops’ and of ‘broken British regiments’. In addition to describing panic and chaos at the front, Moore ended his piece with an unashamed call for volunteers to come forward: ‘Is an army of exhaustless valour to be borne down by the sheer weight of [German] numbers, while young Englishmen at home play golf and cricket? We want men and we want them now … We have to face the fact that the British Expeditionary Force … has suffered terrible losses and requires immediate and immense reinforcement. The BEF has won imperishable glory, but it needs men, men and yet more men.’10 The situation was transformed almost overnight and recruiting fever swept parts of the nation.

  Kitchener announced a new recruiting drive for a second group of 100,000 volunteers. The upper age limit was increased to thirty-five (forty-five for ex-soldiers), married men or widowers with children were accepted and new separation allowances were announced. In a single week from 30 August to 5 September the massive total of 174,901 men attested – nearly three times as many as in the previous week. In fact this proved to be the largest number recruited in any week during the war. The highest total in a single day was recorded on Thursday 3 September when 33,204 men joined up – including 3,521 in London, 2,151 in Manchester, 1,653 in Birmingham and 1,014 in Glasgow.

  The War Office could not begin to cope with such huge numbers. Kitchener had no alternative but to accept assistance from local authorities, MPs and prominent citizens who came forward to help, despite his original hostility to the county committees. At the same time, the Prime Minister created a Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, a cross-party group responsible for the organisation of recruiting meetings to mobilise young men across the nation and ‘at which the justice of our cause should be made plain and the duty of every man to do his part should be enforced.’11 Consequently a fundamental shift in the process of recruitment took place. It was taken out of the sole hands of the understaffed War Office and delegated to local communities, who could organise rallies and employ local speakers as they saw fit. The mayors and corporations of the biggest cities, along with self-appointed committees of local dignitaries, industrialists, factory owners and large landowners, all had a stake in raising local units. Recruitment became a matter of local and civic pride as well as of national need. As a consequence Kitchener’s New Army began to take on a unique character.

  Britain had become a predominantly urban country in the latter half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The 1911 census recorded that four out of every five people lived in a town or city and it counted five principal conurbations in England with well over one million inhabitants – south-east Lancashire, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Greater London (far and away the largest of all with a population of 7.256 million). For most city dwellers the principal form of government they came across was local or municipal. The Victorian city leaders built lavish town halls and prided themselves in the construction of local parks, museums, libraries and schools. In many cities there was desperate poverty concentrated in overcrowded and run-down slums, a stain on the urban landscape of what was still (just) the wealthiest empire in the world. But the glue that kept together the urban society of semi-skilled, skilled and middle-class workers was a network of organisations, clubs and societies. These ranged from trade unions to working men’s institutes; from church, chapel and Sunday School societies to football, cycling or cricket clubs; from the Boy Scouts and Boys’ Brigade to office, factory and trade associations; from old boys’ groups to craft guilds. For many Edwardian males, these societies combined local pride with national patriotism. It was hardly surprising that in the recruitment fever that swept the country in late August and September 1914, men from these local groups would want to stay together and share in wartime the companionship they had established in peace.

  So it was that the ‘Pals’ battalions came into existence. The first such battalions appeared in late August at different ends of the nation. A group of City workers from Lloyds and the Baltic Exchange in London formed what was called the Stockbrokers’ Battalion. Sixteen hundred recruits who turned up in top hats, morning coats and Norfolk jackets were inspected on 29 August and then marched off to the Tower of London, where they were sworn in. A week later, the Stockbrokers – now called the 10th Battalion Royal Fusiliers – were sent to Colchester for training. At the same time, in Liverpool, Lord Derby, a major landowner, business chief and chair of the local Territorials Association, was given permission by Kitchener to raise a battalion of men from among the business houses of that city. He made an appeal to ‘clerks and others engaged in business’ who might want to come forward if they knew ‘they would be able to serve with their friends and not be put in a battalion with unknown men as their companions’. Derby was unsure if he would succeed. But on the evening that his appeal appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post, 1,500 men turned up at the drill hall. Derby referred to the unit that was recruited as a ‘battalion of pals’, thus giving this distinctive type of
unit the name that stuck.12

  It was partly because Kitchener had decided to recruit new battalions for his New Army rather than simply expand the existing Territorial Force that the concept of the Pals battalion spread so rapidly across the industrial cities of northern and Midland Britain, for it was here that the largest reserves of manpower were available. In Liverpool, the response to Derby’s appeal was so overwhelming that he ended up raising not one but three battalions as groups of men from the Cunard offices, the Cotton Exchange, the banks and insurance companies volunteered en masse. They were eventually designated the 17th, 18th and 19th Battalions The King’s Liverpool Regiment. In Manchester, the Lord Mayor and the city dignitaries rushed to follow suit and on 1 September, 800 men were sworn in, warehousemen and office workers from the same offices being allocated to the same companies and platoons. So many Mancunians came forward that within two weeks four battalions had been raised, one of which consisted entirely of officials from the city corporation, local county and urban district councils and education committees.

  Birmingham also quickly got in on the act. Here the local paper asked volunteers to submit their names and 4,500 responded. Officials in the town hall tried to ensure that men from a single firm were asked to come to the recruiting office on the same day. After they had attested they were sent home until being called up to start training. The process was far more civilised and better organised than almost anywhere else. Three Pals battalions were raised this way. Tyneside was another area that saw a rush to join up in September. The local Chamber of Commerce started to enrol men, and the first group had attested before the receipt of War Office approval to raise new battalions. So they were sent to join the 9th Northumberland Fusiliers, who were already in training. When approval came through, two Pals battalions were immediately raised, along with a third over the next couple of months. Initially known as the Tyneside Pioneers, they were later designated the 18th and 19th Northumberland Fusiliers.