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Four British Armies in the Great War

The British nation put four armies into the field between 1914 and 1918. These armies were not separate formations existing at the same time, but rather were formed sequentially, reflecting the profound attrition of the predecessor of each, as well as the need for new recruitment practices to make up the horrific losses.

The First World War drew ordinary British men into an army that by 1918 numbered over 5 million soldiers. Some had volunteered to serve; others had been less willing and were conscripted later in the war. Most had little contact with the military in pre-war days, and before 1914 few would have contemplated participating in war. Pre-war ideals of heroism and self-sacrifice could not sustain the soldier in the face of machine-based slaughter.

The British Army in the First World War was not only the largest the country had placed in the field but also the biggest single organisation created by the nation up to that time. Nearly 6 million men served in its ranks between August 1914 and November 1918. A remarkable 2.5 million of those who enlisted were volunteers responding to appeals issued by Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, then the Secretary of State for War. There were many in Britain in August 1914 who did not believe that armies could be conjured in this way, apparently out of nothing. In Germany there was total disbelief. Their conscript army of over four million men had trained for years, were mostly superbly equipped, with long-standing and experienced NCOs and a superior Officer Class, brought up on the expectation of war with England.

Planners had envisaged a short war. Such a short war would avoid the need for any major expansion of the army; in this scenario, the BEF would simply require replacement of casualties, which could be achieved through the usual recruitment channels.

The structure and expansion of the ‘four armies’ (regular, territorial, Kitchener and conscript) demonstrate how effectively the British army coped with this massive expansion and trained the newly formed units. The manpower policy during the Great War included the propaganda elements involved in the voluntary recruiting campaigns of 1914-16 and the British experience of conscription in 1916-18. The discipline and morale of the British army, which was the only European army of the Great War not to suffer from major problems in this area.

In August 1914 the British army encompassed three types of infantry battalion: regular, Territorial and Service. On the outbreak of war the regular units comprised the small professional army, and the Territorial Force the reserve. When the mass expansion of the army became necessary, it was undertaken in an ad hoc manner. Extra recruits were accepted in the Territorial Force, forming second- and third-line battalions by the end of 1915, but the majority of men were recruited in separate Service battalions locally raised through regular army recruiting channels or by Members of Parliament, prominent local figures and city corporations.

Upon the outbreak of war, Kitchener was appointed and he perceived what virtually everyone else failed to see: that the war would not be short and, if Britain was to have a voice at the post-war settlement, she would need to have an army fighting alongside the French of at least a comparable size.

1. In Regular Army, later known as the Old ASrmy, regimental spirit was fostered by real discipline, the realization by each officer of his own responsibility; to place the regiment before self in everything. Under the pre-war government policy, the Asquith government had planned for a small expeditionary force to help the French, the Territorials to remain in Britain as a defence against invasion and the Royal Navy to guard the Channel, and bring the German navy to battle prior to inflicting on them a crushing defeat. The shocking, unbelievable ferocity of the opening months of war, the British stand at Mons, the retreat, the battle of the Marne and First Ypres, and the appalling winter of 1914-15 in the trenches that virtually extinguished the old regular army, a process completed by the Spring and Summer offensives of this second year of the war. The scanty remnants of the "Old Contemptibles" who survived the campaign of 1914 had been wiped out at Neuve Chapelle and Loos. As the war went on our old army, the Contemptibles, were nearly wiped out. Their place was filled by Canadians, Indians and Territorials. These held the enemy until the New Army began to arrive.

   The now historic phrase originated with the Kaiser's address to the German Army issued at Aix la Chapelle on August 19th, 1914. The Kaiser's words were as follows:-" It is my Royal and Imperial com mand 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 then walk over General French's contemptible little army." The men of the Old Army, who stopped the German onset before Ypres, accepted the sneer as a title of honour, and after their practical annihilation facing the enemy, their successors of the New Army applied the name "Old Contemptibles to them in admiring memory of their heroism. There is a curious historical parallel. In the Netherlands War of Independence, in the 16th Century, Philip of Spain gave the name "the Beggars" (Gueux) in contempt to the Flemish nobles who led the revolt, and the name was adopted as a title of honour and their own name by the nobles and their followers. Apropos the Kaiser's sneer, what Bismarck once said of the British Army may be recalled. There was at the time friction over a colonial question between England and Germany, and someone suggested to Bismarck that it might be possible for the British Army to land on the German coast. "Bah!" was the reply, with a contemptuous reference to its small size, "If it did I would ring for the police and have it locked up!"

2. The Territorials were intended for Home Defence only, and prior to the war only 20,000 (or 7%) had accepted the liability of overseas service. There was a great deal of doubt if this force would be willing to serve overseas. The Regulars had had little confidence in the Territorials and - significantly - the Territorials had few friends in the military establishment. Kitchener had a deep mistrust of politicians, their wives and their mistresses. He was very reluctant to accept the Territorials as anything but ‘a town clerk’s army’ of Saturday soldiers By late August 1914, over seventy territorial battalions had volunteered to serve abroad. Initial fears of the Territorials not volunteering, or worse, absorbing recruits who would use this method as a way of avoiding front line service, were unfounded. The casualties in the French and British armies in the first months of the war necessitated employing the Territorials overseas.

3. The New Army was often referred to as Kitchener's Army or, disparagingly, as Kitchener's Mob. After around a year of training, most of these men began to see active service from late 1915 and early 1916. Kitchener chose to expand the army by creating 'New Armies' of volunteer soldiers, the men of the ‘First Hundred Thousand’ and the many Pals’ battalions that were later raised across Britain, in its industrial heartlands and leafy shires alike. This included men who had joined Pals battalions – infantry units that were made up of friends, relatives and workmates from the same communities. Kitchener's choice of using the Scottish, Irish, Northern, Eastern and Western commands (plus the raising of Light Divisions) may have worked for a time but the system had to be amended after the first two New Armies were formed due to the regional disparity of available recruits. If conscription was to be put off for as long as possible, it would be necessary to recruit as many men as possible into the army while they were willing to volunteer. Possibly for this reason, more than any other, the uncontrolled expansion of the army was allowed to take place during September 1914. Incomplete, and frequently muddy, camps held recruits who sometimes did not even have basic eating utensils. There was a chronic lack of officers.

   Some 350,000 men responded to Kitchener's call for a 'New Army' by September 1914, and within the first five months of Kitchener’s appeal 1,186,000 men had flocked to join the colours. K1 (the first 500,000), K2 (the second 500,000) were already full and K3 was being assembled. In the end there was even a K4, formed early in 1915. The casualties in the French and British armies in the first months of the war necessitated first employing the Territorials overseas, followed almost immediately by using K1 and then K2 New Army battalions, half trained and totally inexperienced as they were. Then came Second Ypres, Neuve Chapel, Festubert and Aubers Ridge and enthusiasm died away. After the catastrophe of Loos in September 1915 volunteer recruitment could not be revived. The journey to the 'Big Push' on the Somme and the tragedy of July 1916 had a huge impact on the communities these men left behind.

4. Conscription ran contrary to British liberal traditions. Kitchener appeared to be the magnet drawing in the recruits, and there was in the early weeks of the war, no danger of conscription being needed. But Kitchener and Asquith may have realised that the wave of patriotism could not be sustained indefinitely. As 1916 began, the New Army continued to grow, helped in part by the British Military Service Act which introduced conscription in January 1916. The new Territorial Force, and Lord Kitchener's New Army appeal and Lord Derby's Recruiting Scheme of 1915 having all failed to supply the numbers which were required by the most exacting of wars, by the Act of February, 1916, all male unmarried subjects between the ages of 18 and 41 were deemed as having been duly enlisted in the Regular Army, and thus a very full measure of Obligatory Military Service was established. But this proved insufficient, hence by the Act of May, 1916, married men also became liable, and by a new Act in 1918, the age limit was raised to 50, and the difficulty of obtaining exemption was increased in the same year.

   The result of all these extensions of the principle and practice of Conscription in the United Kingdom -in spite of the resistance of certain Irish, was that, exclusive of the British Army in India, and all coloured and colonial troops, the British Army at the armistice of November, 1918, numbered more than 3,400,000 men, and this although the killed and other casualties were estimated at nearly 3,500,000.

Kitchener had calculated that after three years of war the main combatants, Germany, France and Russia would have exhausted themselves in fruitless attrition. The British New Army, fully trained and equipped and ready to serve in France would then be in a position to step in and achieve a final victory, thereby allowing Britain to dominate the peace treaty and establish the new world order to its great advantage. Kitchener’s logic was faultless. A New Army would indeed step forward in the final year of the war to arbitrate and dominate the peace conference, but it was the United States, without inter-allied commitments and with its army acting independently of the Allies, that would finally dictate the settlement.