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Remembering Tommy
The British Soldier in the First World War
By Peter Doyle, Chris Foster The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Peter Doyle & Chris Foster
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9748-8
CHAPTER 1
REMEMBERING TOMMY
Tommy Atkins was the name first given to the British soldier by Wellington, but which stuck with him through two world wars. It had common currency on both sides of the line, 'Tommy' of the popular press becoming 'Tommee' shouted from the German lines. First appearing in official literature in 1815 (when it was used in War Office Orders and Regulations), the name also had a place a century later in the soldier's pay book of the Great War. Though the British soldier of 1914–18 saw himself as a member of 'Fred Karno's Army', an army of largely amateur soldiers more often than not muddling through the war, it is the name 'Tommy' that stuck. This familiar title became much more than a shorthand for the British soldier; it became imbued with concepts of unremitting stoicism, of phlegm and grim humour in the face of the extreme conditions of warfare. In more cynical times, these concepts might be fairly challenged, but the written word of the time, the letters, diaries and memoirs, all attest to its validity. And with the conditions of trench warfare so trying, it is now difficult for us to comprehend how they managed it. With all former combatants of that terrible war now gone, seeking out a means of understanding what it was like to serve requires us to delve into archives, to trawl through letters and diaries, and to listen to the recorded words, fortunately captured by the nation's museums before it was too late.
And then there are the numerous artefacts, mostly everyday objects that might have been carried in the pack or pocket, or that might have sat on the table, draped an armchair or carried into the frontline. Often these were retained by a soldier because of an association with a time or place – a piece of trench art, a lighter used regularly, a uniform jacket hung in a wardrobe, a pay book kept as evidence of service – or sometimes they were preserved by chance, sat in a drawer or gathered in a forgotten corner. Each one has a hidden story, and each one provides the key to interpreting just a little of what was going on around the men and women of that war. And if each object has a story, then assembling them in context might assist us in our quest to understand just a bit more of what it was like to serve in this most significant period of history. As such, this book is a remembrance of Tommy Atkins, using the objects he might have carried, used and lived with throughout the four years of war. Soldiers are mostly absent from our pictures; the grouping of the artefacts and the situations they are placed in are there to stimulate the mind of the observer.
Our focus is both life at home and on the Western Front. Arguably, the Western Front was the most significant theatre of war, as it was here that the principal foe, Germany, would have to be beaten. Though at the time generals and politicians – divided into opposing camps of 'westerners' and 'easterners' – argued about the wisdom of either committing more men to the fields of northern Europe or opening and sustaining fronts (the so-called 'sideshows') in the Middle East and Balkans, it was France and Flanders that saw most of the British soldier.
On the Western Front, the British soldier expended prodigious efforts facing a determined enemy – an enemy equally determined to sit on the defensive in positions that represented the westernmost extent of a Greater Germany. Strong, and getting stronger, these entrenched positions were an inevitable consequence of the power of modern warfare, with artillery and the machine gun exacting a terrible price from attacking troops. The term 'Western Front' was borrowed from the Germans, who were fighting a war in both the east and west. It was here that a war of position developed in the winter of 1914, when the options for turning the flanks of the German armies advancing across France and Belgium like a 'swinging door' had been exhausted. From the moment that trenches had been dug it was inevitable that the war would descend into a war of trench lines and subterranean battles (as it had done in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904). Stretching from the Swiss frontier to the North Sea, these lines were inhabited by Allies from France, the British Empire and Belgium (ultimately joined in 1917–18 by the USA and the Portuguese). Though the British Army would take up a fraction of the whole line, its positions were an essential part of the Allied frontline throughout the war, with an increasing burden of responsibility as the war progressed. In the west, the Allied lines would be stretched in the face of offensives, yet they remained intact until 1918, when first the Germans, and then the Allies, were to break out of their positions, finally resuming open warfare in August 1918.
This book, then, takes a journey from the joining of the soldier through his tours of the trenches to his visits home – where domestic life on the home front carried on in the face of growing shortages and the threat of aerial attack. For space, it focuses on the period that encompasses the height of trench warfare, from early 1915 to late 1917, when life for the British soldier was dominated by a cycle of 'in the line–in reserves–in rest', each part composed of four to eight days on average. It is the infantryman who appears most in this book, as it was the infantryman who most experienced trench warfare during the war. But we cannot forget the large numbers of men who served the guns, who engineered the battlefield, and who supported the frontline soldiers. As such, the men of the artillery, engineers, Army Service Corps (ASC) and Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) also appear. In illustrating life at the front, we can only hint at the filth and degradation of the trenches, and cannot demonstrate fear, pain and suffering and loss – but the purpose of our book is to capture something of the atmosphere of the period. With objects mute witnesses to the events of wartime, placing them back in to context provides a key, unlocking just a fraction of the past. Our focus is on the routine of daily life; the unremarkable rather than the dramatic. The images allow observers to draw their own conclusions, and to conjure their own memories of family stories, of personal memoirs, of books read. In spirit, Remembering Tommy follows the rhythm illustrated by Pte Fergus Mackain, who, in a series of postcards, gave one of the most accurate depictions of the life of the average Tommy in existence.
Mackain had a deftness of touch in his charming and understated colour-washed cards. His cards, entitled Sketches of Tommy's Life, were published in France in four separate series of nine cards each (Imprimérie P. Gaulthier, Boulogne and Visé, Paris). The Sketches themselves fall into four chapters of Tommy's Life: In Training; At the Base; Up the Line; and Out on Rest. Humorous aspects are present, of course, but underlying the cards is a deep understanding of what it was like to be a soldier on the Western Front. The soldier's kit is reproduced with minute detail: trench periscopes, bully beef tins, clasp knives, rifle pull-throughs, washing kit holdalls, webbing packs and helmets; these essential yet seemingly mundane items are reproduced in the background of the cards, and reward detailed inspection. Situations are apt, too – the seemingly endless issue of kit items; housey-housey at the base; issue of the rum ration and scanning the sky for trench mortars, whistle in hand in the trenches; ablutions in the reserve trenches – all are handled with an intimate understanding derived from direct experience.
This is understandable, after all: 4249 Private Fergus H.E. Mackain served with the 23rd (1st Sportsman's) Battalion Royal Fusiliers on the Western Front. The Sportsman's Battalion was raised in the autumn of 1914 by Mrs Cunliffe-Owen, a society lady sufficiently well connected to be able to telegraph Lord Kitchener with the question 'Will you accept complete battalion of upper and middle class men, physically fit, able to shoot and ride, up to the age of 45?' She was to receive the answer 'Lord Kitchener gratefully accepts complete battalion.' Finally handed over to the army in April 1915, the 23rd Battalion was to serve in the 99th Brigade throughout the war, with 4,987 officers and men serving, and 3,241 as casualties – killed, wounded and missing. Mackain survived the war, serving with the battalion as a private and transferring to the Army Service Corps later in the war – as was usual with men who had suffered wounds and illness.
Mackain's story is not unusual, and his life as a private soldier undistinguished, but his cards are unique not simply because they illustrate the life of the average 'Tommy' in extraordinary detail. His cards often have Field Post Office stamps, and messages that draw attention to the similarities between the soldiers depicted on the cards, and the soldier sending the cards home. In this way, Mackain's cards act as windows on what life must have been like for the average soldier at the front, and are authentic documents of life in the Great War.
The British Empire fielded almost 9 million men, serving in all arms during the war. Of these, some 900,000 were killed – 10 per cent of the total – but a further 2 million were wounded, and almost 200,000 more were prisoners, or were reported missing. This means that over a third of the total were casualties in some form or other. For those who returned, many would put their memories behind them, others would proudly attend reunions and take an active part in remembrance. Very many would want to forget, and others, discharged as unfit, would live with the vestiges of war for the rest of their lives – all too short for some. This book is in remembrance of all those men who served with 'Fred Karno's Army'.
CHAPTER 2
JOINING
Then the first war broke out and the early news of the invaders terrorising the women made me feel that must not happen here so I decided to enlist.
Pte Humphrey Mason, 6th Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
GONE TO BE A SOLDIER
In the early stages of the war, within hours of its declaration, there was a flurry of activity in military circles. Regular soldiers were recalled from leave; reservists recalled to duty; Territorials called to the colours; and the ordinary civilian inspired by the spirit of the nation to join his country's forces. But the Great War was also to be the last hurrah for Britain's volunteer army. Prior to the conflict it had not been the 'British way' to maintain a mass standing army; instead, Britain's emphasis was on the recruitment of volunteers in times of crisis. Volunteers had been part of the army's structure since the mid part of the nineteenth century, with a clutch of rifle volunteers raised in 1859 in order to face the threats from the continent, France the persistent menace. These new battalions would outlive the threat from Napoleon III to form the backbone of the newly constructed Territorial Force, a direct outcome of the Haldane reforms of 1908. But battle experience would have to await the Boer War of 1899–1902, which provided some mettle, and some battle honours, to Britain's volunteer corps, with infantry and yeomanry cavalry battalions committed to the veldt. These now seasoned volunteer battalions would become integrated into the army's regimental system in 1908. The 'Saturday night soldiers' of the Territorial volunteers, signed on with the commitment to regular parades at the local drill hall and a summer field camp, were to be Britain's home defence, becoming linked as battalions of the local county regiments – they would have no overseas obligation. That is, until war darkened the horizon.
So it was that when the Great War commenced, the infantry regiments each consisted of at least two regular battalions and two further Territorials in the United Kingdom. With Imperial commitments and Home Defence duties, and with the expectation that the Royal Navy would be the bulwark of the nation, Britain could only commit six divisions to the field in support of France and its obligations towards the defence of Belgium. These professional soldiers became known as the 'Old Contemptibles', a term derived from an Imperial order issued by Kaiser Wilhelm II on 9 August: 'It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate your energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over General French's contemptible little army.' These men, hard pressed in the battles of 1914, would take the name on board with some pride. With the first of Britain's field armies comprising troops from regular battalions, and the second from those men of the Territorial battalions who volunteered for overseas service, Britain would have to consider its commitments.
With his breadth of experience in the Victorian 'small wars' and his actions in South Africa, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener was an obvious choice as a war leader. With Field Marshal Sir John French commander-in-chief in the field, Kitchener was summoned to the War Office to take on the direction of the war and to take a seat in the Cabinet. With little political experience, and a strong-minded personality, Kitchener was difficult to influence, and more often than not unwilling to give up even the most trifling of actions to his staff. But he had foresight at this stage of the war that was not shared by any other: this new European War would be costly in manpower, and would last at least three years. It would not be over by Christmas. Impatient with the current recruiting system, and in the knowledge that maintaining an adequate flow of soldiers to the front would be of great importance, the Secretary of State for War made a direct appeal to the public for more men. The first appeal was for 100,000 men, a campaign that would be driven by his own image pasted up on bill-boards and recruiting offices.
To assist Kitchener in his work, the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC) was formed in August 1914, a cross-party body administered by officers of the major political parties. Senior representatives of the Liberal and Unionist parties worked hard at developing means of persuading their fellow men to join the colours. With public meetings and a flurry of posters (though not strictly involving the issue of Kitchener's famous pointing finger), the PRC became an active body that would ensure that Britain was united in sending its men as quickly to the front as possible.
The 'First Hundred Thousand' (K1) were recruited within days of Kitchener's appeal, and the War Minister was to issue four further appeals through the late summer and early autumn of 1914. Recruiting offices sprang up across the country, with local municipal buildings and mobile recruiting offices pressed into service, usually bedecked with banners and posters. Would-be soldiers were given the briefest of medicals before being formally 'attested' as Soldiers of the King. Queues formed outside well-founded or hastily contrived recruiting offices up and down the country, with a crush of men waiting to 'sign on' and receive their first symbolic wages, the King's Shilling binding them to military service.
The government recognised that married men of recruiting age might need financial inducement to leave their families: separation allowances for an average married private were paid at a weekly rate of 12s 6d for a wife alone, 17s 6d for a wife and one child, 21s for a wife and two children, and so on. But this took into account a compulsory 'allotment' of money from the soldier's own wages – of 6d a day (half the basic shilling a day earned by privates without other enhancements). Those soldiers with other 'dependants' – that is, 'any person who is found as a fact to have been dependant on the soldier ... to whom the soldier is bound by some natural tie' – would also need help. In such cases, the government pledged to make up the amount lost to the dependant by the soldier having joined the army – after the appropriate deductions, of course. How important these factors were in influencing soldiers to join up is a moot point. For many middle-class men, further enticement might be the opportunity to return to a good job with a decent employer after the war. Some employers went out of their way to support their employee recruits: not only would their positions be held open, but they would also receive other benefits such as support of the family in some way, or the periodic sending of 'comforts' to the frontline.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Remembering Tommy by Peter Doyle, Chris Foster. Copyright © 2013 Peter Doyle & Chris Foster. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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