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The New Territorial Force Battalions

Raising the New Armies and Expanding the Territorial Force – Battalion Command 1914-

2.3 The New Territorial Force Battalions

Despite any prejudice in Kitchener’s attitude towards the TF, it was allowed to continue recruiting, and orders issued from 21 August 1914 permitted County Associations to form second-line battalions for each first-line battalion accepted for overseas service, and to

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See Chapter One, section 1.4.2

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See also Chapter One, section 1.5.

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Major-General I. Phillips.

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IWM 77/179/1Brigadier-General H. C. Rees, ‘A Personal Record of the First 7 Months of the War’, p.80

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The offending COs, who were all replaced in the month prior to going on active service, can be identified as: Lieutenant-Colonel C.E. Willes, 13th Royal Welsh Fusiliers, a Regular captain retired in 1905 who had subsequently served in the Volunteers; Lieutenant-Colonel W.A.L. Fox-Pitt 15th Royal Welsh Fusiliers, an ex-Grenadier Guards Major who had retired in 1904; Colonel T.A. Wynne-Jones, retired from the TF in 1913; Colonel E.L. Holloway, 10th Welsh Regiment, retired from the Indian Army (Pioneers) in 1913; Lieutenant-Colonel W. Watts, 13th Welsh Regiment, retired from the Special Reserve in 1910; Lieutenant- Colonel H.W. Benson, 14th Welsh Regiment, a Regular Major retired in 1903; Lieutenant M.J.G. Scobie, 15th Welsh Regiment, a retired honorary TF Colonel; Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. H.R.L. Lloyd-Mostyn, a Colonel of Militia retired in 1904; Lieutenant-Colonel H.E. Porter, 11th South Wales Borderers, an Indian Army Major retired in 1901.

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raise a third-line unit when the first-line went overseas.55 During 1914-15, 205 second and 211 third/fourth-line TF infantry battalions were raised. Of these, 97 second and seven third-line battalions saw active service, the remainder becoming reserve/home service battalions.

Of the 97 second-line battalions (see Table 2.3), one received a Regular officer as first CO.56 Twenty-eight per cent received active TF officers (14 were COs removed from the first-line battalion; 12 were Majors and two Captains, all from their first-line units). 57 Seven per cent received retired Regulars; and four per cent received retired Special Reserve/Militia officers. The remainder (60 per cent) received retired TF officers. Of this group, 29 were (mainly honorary) Colonels, 17 Lieutenant-Colonels, nine Majors and three Captains. The retired officers had an average age of 49 years eight months and had been retired on average five years two months (range 23 years 11 months58 to two months). Overall 82 per cent were, retired or otherwise, internal regimental appointments; and 88 per cent were TF or retired Volunteers.59

A strong local and Territorial character is therefore clear, although notably shunning any local Special Reserve officers, a matter unsurprising as the County Associations were

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Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, pp.45-6

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Major Cecil Fane of the 12th Lancers became CO of 2/7th Sherwood Foresters.

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Whilst one of the two Captains was from the first-line battalion, the other, Captain F.W.D. Bendall, promoted to CO 2/3rd London, was an unattached TF Captain commanding the Bridlington Grammar School OTC at the outbreak of war, where, as a Cambridge graduate, he was classics teacher. He later commanded both 1/7th & 1/8th Middlesex. After being wounded in 1917, he published a book of poetry, Front Line Lyrics (London: E. Mathews, 1918). After the war he became an Inspector of Schools, and in the Second World War served as Director of Army Education.

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Lieutenant-Colonel John E. Jameson, 2/24th London, had retired from the Worcestershire Yeomanry as a Major on 26 August 1890.

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putting forward nominations for War Office approval. As with the Service Battalions, a preference for the most senior officers available (Colonels) is obvious.

Colonel Lt-Col Major Captain Lieutenant 2nd Lieutenant

1st AS 1st AS 1st AS 1st AS 1st AS 1st AS Active Regular 0 0 0 0 1 4 2 16 0 2 0 0 Ind Army 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 SR 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 3 0 0 0 0 TF 0 0 14 2 12 11 2 13 0 1 0 0 Retired Regular 1 0 1 2 2 4 2 5 0 2 0 1 SR/Militia 1 0 2 1 0 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 TF/Vols 29 5 17 7 9 3 3 6 0 0 0 0 Empire 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

Table 2.3: Officers appointed as first COs to second-line TF Battalions and those taking battalions on active service (AS)

These battalions saw active service at different points in the war. Of the 10 that went overseas in 1915, eight were commanded by their first COs, two by their second. Of the 29 who went overseas in 1916, eight were commanded by their first COs; 15 had been commanded by one previous CO; six by two. Of the 55 who went overseas in 1917, 15 were taken by their first CO; 25 by their second; 16 by their third; and one by their fourth. Of the two who finally went overseas in 1918, one had been commanded by two previous COs, the other three.

Again, to give a flavour of the nature of these changes, command of 2/9th King’s Liverpool went first to Lieutenant-Colonel L. Watts,60 displaced from the 1/9th Battalion, on 22 December 1914. On 18 June 1915 he was replaced by Colonel R. Eccles, an ex-Regular,

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who had been removed from command of the 14th Durham Light Infantry.61 Watts returned on 1 November 1915 as Eccles died, being replaced on 8 January 1916 by Lieutenant- Colonel T.F. Parkinson, a Major from the Kent Cyclist Battalion, who was in turn replaced on 10 October 1916 by Lieutenant-Colonel A.F.S. Leggatt, a Regular Captain of the 2nd Royal Scots promoted Major, who had been in France and Flanders since 14 August 1914, and who took the battalion to war four months later. Clearly whilst some attention was being paid to suitability for command throughout, as active service approached, the issue of fitness for warfare on the Western Front came into sharper focus.62

Table 2.3 indicates that, as with the Service Battalions, there was a notable decrease in reliance on retired Colonels for active service. This trend was also noticeable for retired Lieutenant-Colonels, and only two out of 14 of the ex-first-line battalion COs eventually saw active service. There was a marked increase (as might be expected from the example of the elevation of Captain Leggatt to command 2/9th Liverpool at war) in the number of active Regular and TF Captains being the first CO to take their battalions on active service.

2.4 Dugouts

As noted at the start of this chapter, the phrase ‘dugout’ swiftly became common parlance in place of the word ‘retired’, attracting over the years a dismissive quality, redolent of the plump, pompous and irascible Colonel Blimp.63 Captain I.H. Beith described how his CO,

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Robert Eccles was a 62 year-old brevet Colonel who had retired 10 years previously from the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

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Leggatt served as CO until being wounded on 11 June 1917.

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Colonel Blimp was a cartoon character created by David Low for the London Evening Standard in the 1930s, a jingoistic British stereotype.

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Lieutenant-Colonel A.F. Mackenzie,64 10th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (K1), was “pleased to call himself a ‘dug-out’”. He noted how “a fortnight ago he was fishing in the Garry, his fighting days avowedly behind him, and only the Special Reserve between him and embonpoint”.65

Second-Lieutenant A. Thomas, 4/4th Royal West Kent, noted: “I had expected the C.O. to be a tall, lean hard-bitten man, with at least two rows of medals – terribly efficient and exacting”. Instead, Lieutenant-Colonel C.D. Disney-Roebuck was “short and plump and gave the impression of soft living … the C.O. did not in fact look like a soldier at all ... he looked like a city man and his manners had the silkiness of a financier’s”.66 Second- Lieutenant H. Macmillan, 14th King’s Royal Rifle Corps, found his battalion commanded by 56 year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Sir T.E. Milbourne-Swinnerton-Pilkington, who had retired as a Regular Major in 1898 and as an Honorary Colonel of Special Reserve in 1908: “With his white hair, rubicund complexion, and aquiline nose, he was a figure from the past … lovable and bewildered”.67

Retired COs were often easy to lampoon, their idiosyncrasies a popular subject for record. Second-Lieutenant S. Cloete, 9th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, noted how his CO,

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Alexander Francis Mackenzie was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Special Reserve of the Seaforth Highlanders and a Major in the Reserve of Officers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

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I. Hay, The First Hundred Thousand (Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1916), p.6

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A. Thomas, A Life Apart (Letchworth: Garden City Press, 1968), p.35. Claude Delevel Disney-Roebuck was an ex-Regular Captain of the Northamptonshire Regiment, who had retired nine years earlier. He commanded until 1 January 1917.

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H. Macmillan, Winds of Change (London: Macmillan, 1966), p.62. Thomas Edward Milbourne- Swinnerton-Pilkington had served with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in South Africa in 1881 and Egypt in 1882. He commanded until July 1916 and then held a Special Appointment until the Armistice.

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Lieutenant-Colonel G.L. Holland, Indian Army “sometimes, in a fit of absent mindedness, addressed his Yorkshiremen in Hindustani”.68

On what grounds would a retired officer prove adequate or inadequate as CO? Firstly, an issue which applied to all officers, retired or otherwise, was simple grounds of general attitude. Lieutenant-Colonel W.D. Villiers-Stuart, second CO of 9th Rifle Brigade, described the coup against his predecessor (and fellow Gurkha), the hard-of-hearing Colonel A. Grant, whom he had described as “a rotten soldier – apart from his pluck”. He continued:

I was ordered to report to the Brigadier. I saw at once that Champain69 had been going behind the back of the CO and making insinuations to the BM (Brigade-Major), whom he had known before. The Brigadier told me that he had heard that Colonel Grant’s officers were all agreed that they could not serve under him any longer.

Villiers-Stuart denied that this was true in his case and that Grant had been "scrupulously fair" to him, having given him "a free hand in my work and always listened to anything I have to say". Other officers were interviewed:

And then Grant went in. When he came out he told me that he had resigned his command. That I was to act for him temporarily and that he would always remember what I had done for him and how I had spoken of him to the Brigadier.70

Secondly, there was the issue of age and the linked matter of physical fitness and stamina. Colonel W.A.B. Dennys raised and commanded the K3 10th Loyal North Lancashire on the Western Front until 23 December 1915, when:

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S. Cloete, A Victorian Son (Glasgow: Collins, 1972), p.203. Guy Lushington Holland, aged 53 in 1914, was a retired Lieutenant-Colonel of the Sikh Pioneers. He never saw overseas service, being replaced after nine months on 21 June 1915, becoming CO of a Pioneer Depot and serving as a Staff Lieutenant in 1917.

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Major C.E. Bateman-Champain, another fellow Gurkha officer.

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Maxwell, Villiers-Stuart, pp.8 & 16. William Desmond Villiers-Stuart, aged 42 in August 1914, had served with the 5th Gurkha Rifles.

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Our Army Corps Commander, General Sir E. (sic) Snow … said that he didn’t consider it was fair on me that I, at the age of fifty-six, and with my experience, should have to serve under … Brigadiers, who were subalterns at the time I left India He therefore asked me if I would like to have the command of a Brigade at home, as I was too old to have one in France … I had not once gone sick.71

Reading between the lines, age was the issue.

J.F.C. Fuller quoted Baron von der Goltz:72 “Good health and a robust constitution are invaluable to a general ... In a sick body, the mind cannot possibly remain permanently fresh and clear”, continuing: “The three pillars of generalship - courage, creative intelligence and physical fitness” were “the attributes of youth rather than of middle age”.73 If true of generals, then this was even more applicable to battalion commanders.

The Barnsley Chronicle recorded the cause of the removal of Lieutenant-Colonel J. Hewitt,74 the first CO of 13th York & Lancaster, on 13 November 1915, as “inability to physically stand the strain of an overseas campaign.” Hewitt had clearly been previously marked for overseas service, having been sent on a Commanding Officers’ course in York in March 1915 and on a CO training visit to France in July 1915.75 The health of the CO of 14th York & Lancaster, Lieutenant-Colonel W.E. Raley, broke down at camp in June 1915,

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Dennys, Reminiscences, p.39. Dennys did not get a brigade in the UK on the grounds that he would be too old to take it on active service. He claimed to have been recommended for a brigade 16 times when with the 10th Loyal North Lancashire, but was turned down on age grounds on each occasion.

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Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller was a staff officer from 1916 in the HQ of the Machine Gun Corps Heavy Branch which was later to become the Tank Corps. In the post-war era he enjoyed a career as a military theorist. Baron Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz (1843-1916) was a Prussian Field- Marshall and military writer.

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J.F.C. Fuller, Generalship, Its Diseases and their Cure: A Study of the Personal Factor in Command (London: Faber & Faber, 1933), p.32

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Joseph Hewitt, a solicitor aged 47 in 1914, was a retired Volunteer of the York & Lancaster Regiment.

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J. Cooksey, Pals: the 13th & 14th Battalions, York and Lancashire Regiment (Leo Cooper: London, 1986), p.99. Hewitt’s son had been seriously wounded in France in July and there may have been a psychological element.

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and he was replaced.76 Similarly, Colonel C.V. Mainwaring, ex-Indian Army and CO 12th York and Lancaster, departed without warning from their training camp: “He had been in poor health for some time due to the lengthy spell he had spent in the Far East. He was not seen again by the battalion during the war”.77 In 16th and 18th West Yorkshire, in camp at Ripon: “There was muttering in the ranks when it was noticed that both of the Pals’ Colonels had a tendency to stay in camp during bad weather when the men were sent on route marches”.78 In contrast, Major F.P. Crozier, 9th Royal Irish Rifles, described his CO Lieutenant-Colonel G.S. Ormerod, 58 years old in 1914, as a “grand old chap … he has suffered agonies lest it should be said he was too old for war”, and once on French soil, was “younger than ever”.79

Others had carried embonpoint to a fine art. Second-Lieutenant B.H. Liddell Hart (11th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry) described Lieutenant-Colonel J.W. Stead, a retired TF CO, as “ludicrously fat”.80 Lieutenant-Colonel E.E. “Bullfrog” Wilford (who replaced Lieutenant-Colonel Hewitt in 13th York & Lancaster) was reported by Private T. Oughton

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Cooksey, Pals, p.88. Raley had no previous military service. His son had been killed in France, and hence the reasons for his breakdown in health may also have been partly psychological. He commanded the 15th (Reserve) Battalion between 6 August 1915 and 31 August 1916.

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R. Gibson & P. Oldfield, Sheffield City Battalion (Wharncliffe: Barnsley, 1988), p.66. Charles Vaughan Mainwaring, aged 52 in August 1914, was a retired Colonel who had commanded 89th Punjabis. He saw no further service in the war. His replacement, Lieutenant-Colonel J.A. Crosthwaite, a Regular who had already been on active service in France and Flanders commanding 2nd Durham Light Infantry from 5 January to 10 June 1915, was also in poor health and never saw active service with the battalion.

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D. Raw, Bradford Pals:A Comprehensive History of the 16th and 18th (Service) Battalions the Prince of

Wales' Own West Yorkshire Regiment (Pen & Sword: Barnsley, 2005), p. 96. The sedentary COs were Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Wallace Warden (16th Battalion) and Lieutenant-Colonel George Herbert Muller (18th Battalion). Warden was a 59 year-old veteran of the 1879 Zulu War with the Middlesex Regiment who had fought with the Imperial Yeomanry in South Africa. The 58 year-old Muller was the Yorkshire yarn agent for Cortaulds on the outbreak of war, having retired in 1904 after succeeding his father as CO of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion West Yorkshire.

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F. P. Cozier, A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930), p.58. George Sumner Ormerod was an ex-Regular/ex-Special Reserve Lieutenant-Colonel of the Royal Munster Fusiliers.

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B.H. Liddell Hart, The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart, Vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1965), p.12. John Walter Stead, aged 55 in 1914, was a retired Territorial Lieutenant-Colonel, and commanded 15th West Yorkshire from 1 September 1914 to 13 May 1915, and 11th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry from 13 May 1915 to 25 April 1916.

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to be “a big fellow. I don’t know how his horse carried him”.81 Wilford was an active Indian Army Major, indicating that not all active officers were free from excess weight.82

Thirdly, there was the issue of current military knowledge, which might be thought to be closely related to date of retirement. Peter Simkins states:

Many retired officers who were suddenly handed senior commands found that they could not adapt to the changes wrought in drill, tactics and equipment in the decade before the war, and particularly since the introduction of the new Field Service Regulations in 1909.83

In this he followed Captain Basil Williams, contemporary historian of the New Armies, who wrote: “Others were not up to date, and had not the capacity for making themselves so”.84 Almost certainly it was the issue of ‘capacity’ that was key.

The time points of development of revised tactics in the British Army during and following the Second Boer War, set out in the Introduction, allow certain conclusions to be drawn

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Cooksey, Barnsley Pals, p.99. Ernest Edmund Wilford, was aged 48 in August 1914. He was the son of Colonel E. P. Wilford, late Gloucestershire Regiment . He joined the East Yorkshire Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant in 1896 and transferred to the Indian Army two years later. He served as Major and Squadron Commander, 30th Lancers (Gordon's Horse) with the Indian Corps in France in 1914. He commanded 13th York & Lancaster from 11 November 1915 to 21 May 1917 when he was wounded by a shell. Wilford’s courage was not in doubt. On 1 July 1916, at Serre, Brigadier-General H.C. Rees noted: “Col Wilford, commanding the 13th Yorks and Lancs came in to say that two shelters, which he had occupied as his headquarters, had been blown in the in succession and that, on the last occasion, his adjutant had been killed. Wilford was nicknamed ‘The Swashbuckler’ and he lived up to his reputation on the 1st July. He said ‘as far as I can make out, General, I have two companies left. If you would like me to charge at their head, I shall be delighted to do so.” (Rees, ‘Personal Record’ p.93).

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Weight was not a prohibitive handicap. Lieutenant-Colonel (later Brigadier-General) E.A. Wood (6th Shropshire) was a man of “ample proportions”, who at the Battle of Langemarck, 16 August 1917, sunk so deep in mire that his release was greeted by “loud applause”. He commanded his battalion on active service for 705 days. [G. Dugdale, Langemarck and Cambrai (Uckfield: Naval & Military, 2005), p.74.] Wood commanded 6th King’s Shropshire Light Infantry from 7 October 1915 to 11 September 1917, was wounded five times, gassed twice, buried once, and recommended for the VC twice – weight never held him back from the brigade command he later achieved. He always wore a large bandanna silk handkerchief stuck out of his breast pocket, with which he gave direction in battle, (Dugdale, Langemarck, p.25). Patrick MacGill noted that embonpoint was not achieved on the same diet as the other ranks, quoting the charming rhyme about a CO: “Long may the colonel with us bide, His shadow nee’er grow thinner, (It would, though, if he ever tried some Army stew for dinner).” P. MacGill, The Amateur Army (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1916), p.21

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Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p.217

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about officers’ possession of up-to-date knowledge. Every infantry officer serving in South Africa to 1902 would have been perfectly aware of tactical development. Any Regular officer in the post-war years would have trained using the new precepts. By 1910 the auxiliaries were also using the Combined Training 1902 tactics.85 The only issue would have been whether in all units across the army the changes would have been practiced with the same vigour. Any Regular officer retiring in 1902 with experience in South Africa would have been largely tactically up-to-date, as would any regular without South African