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.’

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.

Date.	Establishment.		Total Strength.		Deficiency.
Date.	Officers.	Other Ranks.	Officers.	Other Ranks.	Officers.	Other 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 1 North Riding Squad.)		York	L.-Col. E. W. Stanyforth, D.L., T.D.
Yorkshire Dragoons		Doncaster	Lt.-Col. W. Mackenzie Smith, T.D.
W.R. Roy. Horse Artillery		Wentworth Woodhouse, Rotherham	Capt. H. Walker.
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 Battery)	Major W. Graham.
W.R. Div. R.E. and Telegraph Cos.		Sheffield	Lt.-Col. A. E. Bingham, V.D.
5th Bn. W. Yorks. Regt.		York	Lt.-Col. C. E. Wood, V.D.
6th ”		Bradford	Lt.-Col. H. O. Wade.
7th	} (Leeds Rifles)	Leeds	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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The British assault, like the French, opened on Sunday, May 9th. The task of the IV Corps in the battle was assigned to the 7th and 8th Divisions, while the 49th Division took over the greater part of the trench-line held by the Corps. Their first object was to gain Fromelles, but their main and ultimate objective was the Aubers Ridge. The general scope of the attack was disclosed confidentially to the troops about to be engaged. It was ‘not a local effort for the capture merely of Fromelles and Aubers villages,’ but was ‘part of a much larger operation designed to break the enemy’s line on a wide front.’ The importance of the forces employed was also emphasized. ‘Not only is the offensive being undertaken by the First Army’, we read, but a force of ‘the best French troops, amounting to 300,000 or 400,000 men, is likewise advancing to the attack north of Arras.’ The disposition of the British troops made their objective quite clear. They faced the Lille-La Bassée road, curving round La Bassée at the extreme right. Their line was extended on the left to cover about half the road to Lille. The furthest point of that line from Le Bridoux to Cordonnerie Farm was held by the 49th (West Riding[32]) Division, and two of its Infantry Brigades, the 147th and 148th, were detailed to occupy the German trenches which the 8th Division, followed by the 7th, and thus supported by the 49th, was to compel the enemy to vacate[33]. Unfortunately, the whole plan miscarried. The first artillery attack could not be sustained in sufficient strength to wipe out the barbed-wire entanglements and free the way for the Infantry. It followed that the 8th Division could not press its heroic advance home, and the West Riding Infantry Brigades were never called upon to discharge their allotted task. The first day’s programme was thrown out from the start. Its features on the British front bore a tragic and curious resemblance to those of the later days further south, when the advantage won by the French bombardment had been neutralized by German local fire. The advance was broken, that is to say, into little pockets and blood-spots of fighting, which sank into the soil where they occurred. If the courage displayed in these encounters had been combined for the united effort which was intended, no troops born of woman could have withstood it. The record of every fighting unit tells the same tale of desperate valour; of a few exhausted and staggering survivors hardly able to remember their own exploits, of endurance strained to the limit of capacity, and of unwilling admiration extorted even from a grudging foe. But the net result on May 9th was failure; it was necessary to retire and to repair, and the part of the West Riding units, to their own deep disappointment, was confined to occasional supporting fire, to relief-duty in the trenches, marked by little more than its normal dangers, and, on the whole, to a comparatively quiet day.

This battle of Fromelles, or of Aubers Ridge, which had the indirect success of engaging sufficient German forces to assist the French advance to Carency, was renewed a week later at Festubert, and was not broken off till May 26th. ‘I had now reason,’ wrote Sir John French in his Seventh Dispatch, ‘to consider that the battle, which was commenced by the First Army on the 9th May and renewed on the 16th, having attained for the moment the immediate object I had in view, should not be further actively proceeded with; and I gave orders to Sir Douglas Haig to curtail his artillery attack and to strengthen and consolidate the ground he had won ... on a front of four miles to an average depth of 600 yards.’ We may add that, if Lille was not taken, Ypres, too, with its narrower front, still stood with its back to the wall; and behind that wall lay the Channel ports. Moreover, the southern approach had been partially blocked by the reduction of the German salient from Lens, and the fighting quality of our troops was such as to deter the enemy from attempting a break-through on one line without adequate resources on the rest. In other words, a see-saw movement was the chief obvious conclusion from the six weeks’ spurts of battle-fury to the east and south-east of Ypres. A new direct frontal attack would mean a new risk to Lens and on to Lille; a new attempt to throw out the Lens salient would mean a protrusion of the British salient from the Yser Canal. The third or middle course was to accept stalemate; and to the limited but useful extent of forcing this decision on the enemy, the heroes of the Second Battle of Ypres, of the French pocket-battles in the Artois, and of the British struggles round Aubers and Festubert are entitled to the full measure of their renown. Moreover, taking a wider survey, the stalemate suited the combatants on other accounts besides exhaustion. Germany was waging war on two fronts. Having pushed her western pieces into positions, in which, save for minor attacks, they might be left undisturbed for a time, she was anxious to concentrate on the east. England, too, had another foe, whom it might be too late to overtake unless she set about the work at once. It became known as shortage of shells, and Mr. Lloyd George, as we saw, was appointed in June to devise rapid measures for its defeat.

Turning back to the 49th Division, we note that on May 16th it occupied, again with the 8th Division, the extreme left of the British line. On the 22nd, orders were received for the 148th Brigade (the 4th and 5th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and the 4th and 5th York and Lancasters) to throw forward the line to two ruined houses on the Bois Grenier-Le Bridoux road. (A panorama sketch of the site is given opposite). This meant the laying-out and preparation of a new front-line trench astride the road, and the necessary tools, sandbags, stakes, barbed-wire, and other paraphernalia were collected during the day of the 22nd and the early part of that night. Work was started about 11 p.m., when two Companies of the K.O.Y.L.I. under Major P. T. Chadwick and Captain Critchley, traced out and began digging the new trench. The two ruined houses, situated about half way between the British and the German lines, were found to be occupied by the enemy, who brought heavy rifle fire into play and considerably worried the working parties. In this encounter, Lieut. R. T. S. Gwynne was wounded, and died the next day. On the 23rd the same Companies went out again in order to strengthen the work commenced on the previous night. Heavy fire was drawn from the ruined buildings, but the enemy was forced to retire. Work was continued till daylight with satisfactory results, the cover being much improved and the communication-trench up to the new line being practically completed. By this means, certain operations which had been ordered by the Corps Commander on May 20th were enabled to be carried out. On the 24th these were opened by a bombardment from the ninety-six guns in the line at short intervals between 8 and 9 p.m. At 8-50 two Companies of the same 4th K.O.Y.L.I., under Captain A. C. Chadwick and Captain L. M. Taylor crossed the parapet of No. 6 trench and advanced up to the new trench prepared on the preceding nights: a journey of about seventy yards. The German machine-gun and rifle fire was exactly one second too late to find this party. The Companies quickly took position, and dug themselves in, and the ruined houses were put in a state of defence by a section working under Captain Creswick. Next morning, two Companies from the 5th K.O.Y.L.I. relieved their comrades of the 4th, and continued operations. From the 26th of May onwards for some days the Germans left them no peace, and a number of casualties ensued. But the operation had been carried out, and Sir Henry Rawlinson, Commanding the IVth Army Corps, desired that his high appreciation should be conveyed to the officers and other ranks of the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry for the ‘gallantry and precision’ which had been displayed.

Further compliments followed. On June 12th, a message was received from the Adjutant-General at General Headquarters:

‘The Commander-in-Chief notices with gratification the record of the 49th (West Riding) Division for the month of May, which shows that no single conviction by Court-Martial has occurred, a condition which does not obtain in any other Division of the Armies. He desires that his appreciation of this fact be duly conveyed to the 49th Division.’

And Major-General Baldock, commanding the Division, was informed by the General Officer Commanding the First Army, to which the Division had been transferred at the end of May:

‘Sir Douglas Haig wishes to add an expression of his great satisfaction at the state of discipline in the 49th (W.R.) Division, and also desires to congratulate the Division on its soldier-like bearing and efficiency.’

A month later, the Division was re-transferred from the First Army, Indian Corps, to the Second Army, VIth Corps, commanded by Major-General Sir John Keir, when it moved to Proven, north-west of Poperinghe, and the surrounding villages in Belgium. The weather after May 23rd had become very hot, and there was one case of sun-stroke in the trenches.

We shall return to the fortunes of the Division in the alternating periods of trench-life and billets which succeeded the intenser fighting of May. The whole Western front settled down to what seems like a phase of inactivity, but what was really a broken succession of diverse minor experiences, the monotony of which, like the sea’s, was always movement, more apparent at close quarters than afar. Meanwhile, it will be appropriate to pick up the record of that isolated unit of West Riding Divisional Engineers, which, as we mentioned above, preceded the Division overseas. They, too, reached the scene of war in April, 1915. They fought in a different field, and were even more heavily engaged, but they earned by conspicuous gallantry not less honour than their comrades in France.

This unit, the 1/1st Field Company of West Riding Royal Engineers, under the command of Major Dodworth, formed one of three Companies which served under Lt.-Col. G. B. Hingston, C.R.E., in the 29th Division. Their original destination was France, but in February, 1915, it was decided to ship the Division with all possible speed to the Dardanelles, and, had this decision been carried out, the fate of British arms in the Peninsula might have been brought to a different conclusion. As a fact, owing to causes which have been made public, its departure was postponed till March, and, after a troublesome delay at Alexandria, the Field Company, with a strength of 6 officers, 201 other ranks, 62 horses and mules, and 12 vehicles, reached Tenedos on April 24th. At midnight on the same day they were selected, much to their delight, to sail with the covering force on the ‘River Clyde’ to the South Point of the Peninsula, and there, below Sedd-el-Bahr, the modern model of the Trojan wooden horse was beached at 7 a.m. on April 25th.

The events of that day of death and glory have been sung, and painted, and told, and require but brief reference here. ‘No army in history,’ says the poet who wrote a prose-epic called Gallipoli[34], ‘has been set such a task. No other troops in the world would have made good those beaches,’ and it is heartening to recall that troops from the West Riding of Yorkshire were included in this unique band.

“MODERN MODEL OF TROJAN WOODEN HORSE.”

For five months, from April till September, our Field Company of Royal Engineers remained on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The roads, the water-supply, the trenches, the night-wiring, the bridges, the jetties: every kind of engineering job came their way. They even manufactured hand-grenades, and gave practical lessons in the use of them, and they took their bellyful of fighting and of experience of Turkish shells. In June, for example, two of their sappers, A. Jennett and G. Packard, were awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for their gallant rescue of Captain Todd, of the Argyll Mountain Battery, who was lying with a leg blown off under heavy fire on the other side of a barbed-wire entanglement; and the same decoration was bestowed on Lance-Corporal W. B. Owen, who snatched another wounded Officer out of a trench in actual enemy occupation, and carried him to a dressing-station two miles off, for the most part under fire. On September 22nd came a welcome fortnight’s rest. They were back again early in October, and had a terrible spell of work after the great gale of November 26th, which helped to confirm the decision for evacuation. For the end of the adventure was approaching, and our Engineers remained till the end. After helping to clear Suvla and Anzac, they moved in January, 1916, to Helles, where they cut steps down the cliff to W. Beach. Thence they sailed at last in two parties reaching Suez, January 16th.

The rest of their story belongs to the Division in which they became absorbed. But the praise of their famous work in Gallipoli, to which they went straight from home, redounds to the credit of the West Riding, and may be added to the praises which we have quoted from Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir Douglas Haig and Sir John French:

‘The 1/1st West Riding Field Company Royal Engineers, which forms part of the “incomparable” 29th Division,’ wrote Lieut.-General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, Commanding that Division, ‘did grand service on the Gallipoli Peninsula.... Engineers have always the post of honour in war, having to make entanglements, to mine, to sap and to carry out many dangerous jobs in the very forefront of the fray. Of all this work the 1/1st West Riding Field Company Royal Engineers had its full and more than its full share, and right well did all ranks rise to the occasion.... The casualties among them have been heavy ... but the results achieved by them have more than counterbalanced the loss incurred. They have covered themselves, their Unit, and the rest of the West Riding Divisional Royal Engineers with glory.’

This passage occurs in a letter written by Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston on September 9th, 1915, and published with the next Quarterly Report of the West Riding County Association. In that Report, Lord Scarbrough included an account of a visit paid to Flanders by himself, as Chairman of the Association, and by Brig.-General Mends, the Secretary. Their ‘object was to ascertain in what ways the Association might best provide for the needs and comfort of the troops, and to study the conditions under which they have to work’; and it will not be out of place to examine Lord Scarbrough’s conclusions in those respects in anticipation of what we shall find in the ensuing chapter.

He recalled to the memory of local patriots that the 49th Division was composed of Field and Heavy Artillery raised from Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Otley and York; of Engineers from Sheffield; of three Infantry Brigades from the West Yorkshire, West Riding, Yorkshire Light Infantry, and York and Lancaster Regimental Districts; of Army Service Corps from Leeds and York; and Field Ambulances from Leeds and Sheffield. They had left for France in April, and had been ‘continuously in the fighting line ever since.’ It would stimulate local patriotism to know that a Staff Officer wrote of the Division:

‘I am very proud to have been connected with it. They are a real good lot, and I don’t think there is a better Division in the country.’

To the ‘amenities of war,’ as likewise to the ‘other side of the picture’, we shall presently come back: such facts may be recovered from written evidence; but what Lord Scarbrough and General Mends saw in the ‘smiling faces’, the ‘spirit of cheerfulness’ and the ‘sense of mastery over the enemy,’ is contained in no formal War Diary, and is the more valuable and vivid on that account. It brought comfort and encouragement to the West Riding in the dark days of the autumn of 1915; not merely to members of the Association, struggling, as we know, against the flood, but also to many wives and mothers, realizing that, ‘in a campaign like this,’ as the Report stated, ‘casualties come fast,’ and, lastly, to the various committees, Parliamentary Recruiting, Trades Union, and so on, which based their appeal for fresh efforts, in the last stages of voluntary enlistment, on the valorous record of the ‘boys’ who had already gone to the front. Alike in Flanders and in Gallipoli, that record was worthy of the West Riding.

CHAPTER V
THE DAY’S WORK

During January, 1916, the 49th Division was ‘in rest’: the first period of complete rest which the Division as a whole had enjoyed since the previous April, when it first entered the field.

Even before this complete rest the Division could look back on some months of comparative military inactivity. It had not been called upon to take part in the severe fighting at Loos in September, 1915; and no other big operations, on the scale of the warfare in May and June, had occurred since the Battle of Festubert. Yet there had been fighting every day. Every day of the intervening weeks and months between the close of the spring campaign and the order to rest in January had brought difficulties and dangers here and there, up and down the line of trenches in the neighbourhood of Ypres and the Canal, in which the 49th was engaged, and which it was essential to maintain as a barrier between the invader and the sea.

It is not easy to write the history of those days, when the Division was neither ‘in rest’ nor in action. We might review them in numerical sequence, long day after long day, when according to the Battalion chroniclers, ‘nothing of importance happened,’ or one unit relieved another, or there was an inspection by the Corps or Army Commander, or there was a ‘bombardment of the whole line, varying in severity throughout the day and night.’ These entries, and entries like these recur again and again in the Diary of every unit in the Division. Or, again, when autumn arrived, the weather compelled attention. ‘Rained. Trenches very bad; practically no work could be done. Heavy bombardment all day from 4 a.m.,’ is a typical entry in October; and we are left to read between the lines the accumulated miseries of that day’s work, in which the worst hardship of all was that ‘practically no work could be done,’ in evil trenches sodden with rain and shaken by continuous fire. Minor miseries, perhaps, and less epical in retrospect than the Homeric combats of the spring, or the campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula; yet real and serious enough in their hourly call on a man’s endurance to warrant an attempt at narration.

We are told, for instance, that Sir Herbert Plumer was pleased if the Second Army casualties did not exceed two hundred a day in ordinary trench work, and a division of this figure into the Army total will yield a quotient from which we may deduce the average chance of danger in a quiet time. Or we may observe that the British first line trenches were distant from the line of German trenches by about 80 to 150 yards, but that where the line bent back on the north to the bank of the Yser Canal the distance from the German line was only 30 yards, with a very nasty corner at the bend. We may note, too, the lack of rest at night: the constant flare of Very Lights across the trenches, and the incessant contest of wit (and luck) between the men repairing trenches or bringing up rations or ammunition and the snipers watching their opportunity.

Certain days at any rate may be selected for somewhat more detailed description, not because they differed essentially from the days that went before and that came after, but because, in the cycle of days, as in a cycle of numbers at a gaming-table, they are marked with adventitious interest.

Take, for instance, July 29th (we are writing of 1915 throughout) in the story of the 7th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. They were in dug-outs on the Canal, having completed a turn in the trenches just before midnight on the 25th. On the 26th, 27th and 28th, nothing of importance happened. On the 29th from half-past eight till noon, there was a heavy shelling of the dam at the rate of two shells every five minutes; this rate was reduced by a half from noon till an hour after midnight, when the shelling ceased. The dam was untouched, but the adjoining bridge was damaged in three places. One officer was killed and ten men were wounded. Even so, the story is not exceptional, despite the 230 odd shells falling in sixteen hours. But there is a sequel to the story, which is told in the following words: The Military Cross was awarded to 2nd Lieut. A. R. Glazebrook ‘for conspicuous and gallant conduct, on the 29th July, in helping to dig out, at great personal risk, an officer and ten men whose dug-outs had been blown in, thus saving nine lives,’ and Riflemen J. Bentley and H. Garrity received the Distinguished Conduct Medal ‘for working with Lieut. Glazebrook.’

Take July 16th. On the 15th the Germans had shelled the Canal bank, and had fired three salvoes of shells into Divisional Headquarters at the Château des Trois Tours. Advanced Headquarters remained there, including the G.O.C. himself, the General Staff Officers, 1st and 2nd Grade, the Brigade Major of the Royal Artillery, and the Signal Company. The rest moved back to St. Sixte. On the 16th, at 4-30 p.m., the grounds of the Château were shelled again, and the grave difference between this day and that, otherwise so alike in experience, was the inclusion of the General’s name in the casualty list. He was just crossing a bridge which connected the Château with the mainland when he heard the shell coming, and, though he doubled back to cover, he did not reach it in time, and suffered a severe wound in the head. It was the only casualty at the time, though the house was riddled with shrapnel, and as soon as the shelling had ceased, the gallant Officer was taken to Poperinghe, where Sir Thomas Bowlby attended him. Advanced Headquarters were withdrawn to Hospital Farm. The retirement was completed on July 18th, on which day the grounds of the Château were once more heavily shelled soon after the General Staff had left.

The loss of Major-General Baldock’s services was deeply regretted by the Division, which he had commanded since September, 1911. He had accompanied it from peace to war and commanded with conspicuous success during the heavy fighting of May and June, and ‘the whole Division loved him’, it has been written. Happily, he recovered from his wound, though he was not able to resume command, and on July 17th, 1915, Major-General E. M. Perceval[35], C.B., was appointed in his place.

Take the events of July 15th, in the new line of trenches occupied by the 146th Infantry Brigade. The 8th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, had relieved the 7th at midnight on the 13th, and came in for some desultory shelling the next day. On the 15th, the usual patrol went on tour in front of the trenches. It was composed of Lieut. E. F. Wilkinson, and two Riflemen, Mudd and Clough. By bad luck, Mudd was shot through the chest, and his cries of pain attracted the German fire. It was a very ordinary little scene, but it is appropriate to imagine the sudden call on two lonely men’s courage and resourcefulness. They carried the wounded man back from in front of the German parapet under the heavy fire, and were pulled up by their own barbed-wire mesh. Clough went in to find cutters, and Lieut. Wilkinson stayed out with Mudd. The tool was brought, the wire was cut, and the patrol came back with two candidates for decoration. Lieutenant Wilkinson was awarded the Military Cross and Rifleman Clough the Distinguished Conduct Medal for their cool and gallant action in this exploit. Next day, as war’s tricky fortune had it, Lieut. C. Hartnell, of the same Battalion was killed by a shell in the front-line trench: the first officer casualty in that unit.

Take a few incidents in the trench life of the 4th and 5th Battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment. On July 11th, the 4th relieved the 5th in an advanced trench on the East side of the Yser Canal, where the German and English lines met at an angle, with the French on the other side of the Canal, and were separated, as we saw, by a distance of only 30 yards. It was a recent capture from the enemy, and the trenches, we read, were ‘in an awful state with both English and German dead. No work could be done on them because of shell fire.’ Again, quite an ordinary experience, as trench life went in those days, but full of horror to its participants, and exacting to endure. On July 13th, the day was ‘much quieter’—plainly a comparative term—till in the evening about half-past seven a heavy bombardment was opened all along the line, punctuated by explosions of gas shells, and followed by rapid rifle-fire. There was just a breath of wind blowing, but not enough to disperse the poisonous fumes, and for some hours the corner was unhealthy. The total casualties for the two days were 13 officers wounded, 17 other ranks killed and 55 wounded, and at 10 o’clock next night the 5th Battalion again relieved the 4th. Meanwhile, Sergt. W. Hutchinson and Ptes. J. W. Biggin and J. Cowlishaw were awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal,

‘for holding the flank of an advanced trench, which was partially demolished for 24 hours on the 13th July, in an isolated position, extricating themselves and the gun after they had been buried, and keeping the gun in action.’

Eighty-five casualties and three D.C.M.’s for two days’ turn in the trenches: the period of standstill had its chances.

Take the worse experience of the 5th Battalion on July 10th, when they first took over these newly captured trenches. All day long the incessant German batteries poured their hail and thunder on the line, and not a single quiet hour was given for cleaning, clearing or repairing. The casualties mounted fast. Twenty-seven men were killed, and the list of wounded and missing included one Officer and 129 other ranks. Next day the following telegram was received: ‘Army Commander desires to commend prompt action of troops 49th Division when attacked last night’; and the severity of the ordeal may be judged from the records of Lance-Corporals J. Yates and A. Calvert and of Pte. A. Gwynette, who were all awarded the D.C.M.: Yates,

‘for attending with great gallantry, on the 10th July, under heavy fire and in full view of the German lines, to two wounded men who were cut off from the rest of the Platoon’;

Calvert,

‘for assisting the Platoon Commander in steadying the men and keeping up their spirits, on the 10th July, when many other N.C.O.’s had been killed or wounded’;

and Gwynette,

‘for attending to about twenty wounded men on the 10th July, during the heaviest part of the bombardment, and for keeping up the spirits of the men by his general bearing and conduct under heavy fire.’

These, surely, are the tests that tell. In these typical examples, selected almost at random from the day’s work, we see in the making, as it were, that ‘sense of mastery over the enemy,’ which the Chairman and Secretary of the Association had observed on their visit to the front, and which was ultimately to dictate the terms of the Peace of Paris. On the East bank of the Yser Canal in the Summer of 1915, in stinking trenches filled with human wreckage, and exposed to a pitiless bombardment, the prospect of ‘ease after war’ might well seem too remote for realization. It might seem, too, an idle thing, and below the fever-point of warfare, to respond in such dismal surroundings and with so dull a hope of martial glory to the constant, recurrent calls on a courage screwed to the sticking-place or a sense of duty as its own reward. Yet, somehow, in justice to the heroic dead, and to those who earned as well as to those who received decorations, the perception must be aroused that the war was won in the last resort by the private soldier, whether Regular, Territorial or New Army. In our Military Headquarters calculus he is not Kanonenfutter, food for guns: he is always, potentially, the wearer of a medal for the distinguished conduct, which he always seizes an opportunity to display; and a period of comparative inactivity may provide more memorable opportunities of this kind than the stress and press of a big battle, precisely because the velocity of effort is measured by the daily round of marching from billets to trenches or of carrying out a normal patrol.

The word ‘always,’ though a big word, is appropriate, because this display of distinguished conduct is found to become a man’s second nature and not to depend on a sudden impulse. Take the records, for example, of Drummer F. Thickett, of the 4th York and Lancasters, and Lance-Cpl. T. Best, of the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. On that night of the 13th-14th July, when the new trench was so heavily attacked, Thickett succeeded in wading through the Canal in order to carry a message from the firing-line to Headquarters, although the bridges had been broken and the telephone wires had been cut[36]. He did it again on the night of 8th-9th August. Under heavy shell and rifle fire, and when all mechanical communication had broken down, he crossed the Canal on a single plank, and took the necessary message to its destination. Best’s record is in the same kind. On July 20th and again on August 5th, a part of the trench where he was posted was blown in by enemy fire. On each occasion he kept his men in hand, and started digging-out and rebuilding at once, with the utmost pluck and coolness, and without regard to German rifles and trench-mortars. Best and Thickett were both awarded the D.C.M., which it will be agreed that they thoroughly deserved; and we see in this habit of duty, acquired in daily experience and when no big forward movement set the pace, the ultimate secret of the success of British arms.

One more sample from these records may be selected.

On November 15th, the 6th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, relieved the 8th Battalion in a line of trenches about two miles north-north-east of Ypres. The weather was frosty, and the evil condition of the trenches was not improved by the fall of about a hundred ‘whiz-bangs’[37] and thirty ‘heavies’ between 9-0 a.m. and 3-30 p.m. on the 16th. On the 17th, the shelling continued, with a regular reply by our Howitzers, and there was the ‘usual sniping’. On the 18th, as on the 17th. On the 19th, the chronicler says: ‘One of our Companies heavily shelled by enemy, six being killed and seven wounded.... Battalion relieved by 1/5th West Yorks. Regt., and went into Divisional Reserve near Poperinghe.’ So far, the day’s work was not exceptional, but there was to be a notable sequel to the day’s story. ‘For most conspicuous bravery near the Yser Canal, on November 19th, 1915,’ the supreme decoration of the Victoria Cross was awarded to Corporal Samuel Meekosha, of the 6th Battalion, in the following circumstances:

‘He was with a Platoon of about twenty Non-commissioned Officers and men who were holding an isolated trench. During a very heavy bombardment by the enemy six of the Platoon were killed and seven wounded, while all the remainder were more or less buried. When the senior N.C.O.’s had been either killed or wounded, Cpl. Meekosha at once took command, sent a runner for assistance, and, in spite of no less than ten more big shells falling within twenty yards of him, continued to dig out the wounded and buried men in full view of the enemy and at close range from the German trenches. By his promptness and magnificent courage and determination he saved at least four lives’.

It was the first V.C. in the 49th Division, and Captain Meekosha, who rose to Commissioned rank, reflected credit on the Riding which had raised it.

Three hundred and seventy-six Honours in all, including 178 Mentions in Despatches, fell to the share of the Division during its first year’s service in the field. Of these, the Victoria Cross, 16 Military Crosses and 71 Distinguished Conduct Medals were Immediate Awards for specific acts of gallantry. A few of those gallant acts have been brought back to memory here, not because they differed in kind from others for which awards were made (or, indeed, from many others for which, from lack of evidence or other causes, no recommendation was forthcoming), but rather to illustrate a catalogue which might prove wearisome in extenso. Thus on one day, December 19th, as many as ten M.C.’s and twenty-nine D.C.M.’s were won by Officers and Other Ranks, as the reward of valorous deeds on the occasion of a sudden gas-attack, which opened at 5-15 a.m. and continued for forty or fifty minutes. The fumes, reaching the support trenches, found many men still asleep, and these were gassed before they could be roused. The gas-attack preceded intense shelling, which went on, with a slacker daylight interval, until three o’clock the following morning. ‘It was the most awful yet magnificent sight that I have ever seen,’ writes a R.F.A. Officer: ‘The whole country shaking with the explosion of shells, mostly big; and a church near my Headquarters was hit with a 17-in. shell and blown to bits. The sky was one great glow like a vast electric light, and the atmosphere was laden with a choking and sickly heaviness. Our men are splendid,’ he added. The total casualties of the day mounted up to:

	OFFICERS.		OTHER RANKS.
Killed	4	[38]	46
Wounded	2		106
Gassed	8		191
	14		343

The decorations were presented by General Sir Herbert Plumer, Commanding the Second Army, on the following January 23rd; and a week later the same Army Commander once more paraded the Division, in order to present awards for good service brought to notice in Dispatches. On the latter occasion he told the Division:

‘This is a very pleasant ceremony to me, and I hope to you, with which to finish, for the time being, my connection, and that of the Second Army, with this Division. I have had the pleasure on two occasions lately; one some weeks ago when you came out of the Line, and one the other day, when I gave ribbons representing decorations to Officers, N.C.O.’s and men of the Division after the recent gas-attack; and on those two occasions I expressed briefly, but I hope quite distinctly, my appreciation of the way in which the 49th Division has carried out the duties entrusted to it during the last few months. But now that it is settled for the time being that the 49th Division is to leave the Second Army, and go into another area, while I have nothing to add as regards appreciation of the work you have done, I should like to say to you how sorry I am that you are leaving the Second Army.... I cannot expect you to share my regret. No one so far as I know, has felt any deep regret at quitting the Ypres salient; but, while you will not regret your change of scene, when you look back at the time you have spent up here, notwithstanding the arduous time you have gone through, notwithstanding the losses of your comrades, whom we all deplore, you will, ... I know, have some pleasant memories to carry away with you of your comrades of the Second Army. We, I can assure you, will follow your doings with the deepest interest, ... and shall always feel a kind of reflected glory when we hear of the gallant deeds which I am quite sure you are going to accomplish both individually and as a Unit.’—

Stirring words, and a fine farewell, after what Major-General Perceval has described as ‘nearly six months’ continuous duty in the worst trenches of the Allied lines. During the whole of this period, runs the statement of the Divisional Commander, the men ‘had unflinchingly sustained an unrelaxing bombardment,’ and had borne ‘with unfailing cheerfulness the most trying conditions of weather in permanently flooded trenches.’

So much for this aspect of siege warfare.

Before following the 49th Division from its well-earned period in Rest Billets to its next area of activity, we shall pick up some threads in the history of the 62nd Division (the West Riding 2nd Line, it will be remembered) from February, 1915, when Major-General Sir James Trotter assumed Command. But, first, in order to complete the present picture, brief reference is due to what Lord Scarbrough, after his visit to the front, described as ‘the amenities of warfare.’ For these, too, were a part of the day’s work, just as the hours of recreation are a part of a schoolboy’s day.

The following are the relevant dates and facts:

July 28th. Divisional Baths opened at Steenje.

Aug. 5th. Divisional Armourer’s Shop opened at Steenje.

Aug. 22nd. ‘The Tykes’ Entertainment Troupe gave their opening performance at Peselhœk, near Poperinghe.

Aug. 23rd. Divisional Technical School of Instruction opened near Hospital Farm.

Sept. 10th. Divisional Farrier’s Shop opened.

Sept. 15th. Divisional Band’s first performance.

Oct. 11th. Divisional Horse Show held.

Oct. 15th. Divisional Grocery, Canteen and Coffee Bar opened.

Nov. 9th. Divisional Shop for repair of Gum Boots opened.

Dec. 6th. Divisional Tailor’s Shop opened.

There was also the Divisional Dump, where 6,000 rifles, for example, were salvaged in four months; and, more definitely among amenities, there was the Buzzer, published as the organ of the Divisional Signal Company, which enjoyed a wide circulation and scattered enjoyment as it circulated.

The gracious visit of His Majesty the King on October 27th, when all Arms of the 49th Division were represented at an inspection of contingents from the Second Army, belongs to a different category, but it is gratifying to recall His Majesty’s comment to General Perceval on the appearance and bearing of his men.

Lt.-Gen. Sir W. P. Braithwaite, K.C.B.	Maj.-Gen. E. M. Perceval, C.B.
Maj.-Gen. Sir R. D. Whigham, K.C.B.	Maj.-Gen. N. J. G. Cameron, C.B., C.M.G.
Maj.-Gen. Sir J. K. Trotter, K.C.B., C.M.G.

Plainly, the items in the above list owe their invention and inclusion to a common aim at recreation. This aim might be simple and direct, as in the construction of a Dump for restoring derelict war material; it might be a little less direct, as in the foundation of the Baths[39], which served partly for refreshment, and partly, taken in connection with their laundry, drying-sheds, etc., for the prevention of ‘trench feet’ and kindred ills; it might be purely recreative, again, as in the programmes of the Buzzer and ‘The Tykes’; or it might be recreative-utilitarian, in the Gladstonian sense of a change of occupation, as in the establishment of workshops and schools; and, in referring to any of these aspects, we should always keep clearly in mind the sharp contrast which they presented to the constant experience in the trenches, to and from which the men went and came.

Consider, first, this question of ‘trench-feet.’ It was the fate of the 49th Division to occupy during this winter the most water-logged trenches of the line. They were ‘permanently flooded,’ as General Perceval said. Yet he had the satisfaction of reporting that the number of cases of ‘trench-feet’ was among the lowest in any Division. The total number was 760; the average number was six a day. We have to add this feature to the day’s work, but, with it, we add the measures that were taken to counteract the evil. Not merely the three or four pairs of socks which each man took with him into the trenches, the arrangements for washing and drying them, and the provision of anti-frostbite grease and oil; but also the care of the inner man; soup-kitchens, hot cocoa and chocolate, supplies of Oxo and pea-soup, and the stress laid by the Divisional Commander on the importance of keeping the men’s vitality high. Nor should the gifts of the Association at home be forgotten in this context; they sent the portable bath-house with oil-pumping engine and piping complete; they sent 5,000 tins of ‘Tinned Heat’ (which sounds like an import straight from Hades); 10,000 small tins for anti-frostbite grease, 15,000 small cans for whale-oil, 4,885 short gum-boots, 722 thigh gum-boots, 7,000 mittens, 9,300 socks, oilskin-jackets, oilskins and sou’-westers, besides other contributions in kind. There were still six cases every day, but the day’s work was mollified by these means.

Another gift which reached the Division from the West Riding Association was the furniture and accessories for the theatre of ‘The Tykes.’ This capable troupe of entertainers had begun in a very modest way on improvised platforms in the open air. Perhaps they did not know, or were indifferent to the fact, that European drama, consummated in Shakespeare, had precisely similar beginnings. Though ‘The Tykes’ did not produce a Shakespeare, they hardly fell short of his success in the pleasure which they afforded to their own audiences. Historically, they were fourth on the list of Divisional Concert Parties, and it was on Christmas Day, 1915, that they definitely started on their career as a theatrical company. In January, 1916, and again in the December of that year, they went home to the West Riding, where they played at the Empire Palace, Leeds, the Opera House, Harrogate, and the Empire Palace, Sheffield, exhibiting to enthusiastic houses the simple joys of the men at the front. They performed in all in about fifty places, in improvised barns or converted stables, or very rarely in genuine halls, and they had the honour to be the first company to appear on the boards at Arras and Cambrai after their capture in 1918. Even more impressive and gratifying is the fact that over 80,000 francs was handed by ‘The Tykes’ to the Institutes’ of the Division between 1916 and 1919, for the provision of additional comforts, sports, etc., to its units. The original ‘Tyke’ was Lieut. J. P. Barker, A.S.C., who was evacuated sick to England in September, 1918. He really started and made them, and, if other names may be mentioned, we would refer to Lance-Cpl. A. Coates, of the Army Service Corps, and Pte. H. Marsden, formerly R.E., of the 243rd Employment Company, who were members of the troupe right through from August 22nd, 1915, to February 2nd, 1919. A Divisional cinema, we may add, was established in March, 1917, and, after narrowly escaping destruction in the German advance at Berthen, April 9th, 1918, it survived to hand over a profit of 27,900 francs for the worthy objects of the Institutes’ Fund.

Turning next to the facilities for education which were gradually developed in this period, we note the technical character of the instruction provided. Thus, a Drainage Section was organized in the Ypres Salient, which laid down nearly 9,000 yards of main and subsidiary drains, with valuable results in the trenches. Mining Sections were also formed to help Tunnelling Companies, and did excellent work while they lasted. A Divisional Gas School gave lessons in the use and care of anti-gas appliances, and doubtless contributed to keep down the list of casualties on December 19th. There were always Ambulance courses, and local opportunities for instruction in Sniping, Scouting, Signalling, Bombing and other special branches. The Divisional Technical School taught the use of Trench Warfare appliances, keeping parties of newly-arrived troops for twenty-four hours in mimic trenches, with the enemy trenches opposite also faithfully reproduced; and a Divisional Training School was established to give both practical and theoretical instruction to junior Officers and N.C.O.’s of Infantry.

The workshops of the Royal Engineers turned out a quantity of stuff which was really remarkable in the circumstances. All the made-up material for use in the trenches was prepared there, as well as the work in connection with the accommodation of men in the Rest Area. When we read of one and three-quarter million sandbags, or of fifteen miles of road maintained and drained by civilian labour under the supervision of the R.E., or of seventeen bridges kept up and seven constructed by this Arm, or of four thousand tons of bricks drawn from ruined houses for horse-standings, or of thirty miles of trench-gridding[40] laid and fifteen miles of trenches maintained, we are able to form some idea of the unremitting toil and admirable skill displayed by the Divisional Engineers.

Reference, too, should be made to the fact that the grave defects in Field Artillery, which that Arm of the Division was so well aware of, and which it so particularly and gallantly endured, were to some extent corrected by the issue on October 29th of 18-pounder Quick-Firer Field Guns, instead of the existing 15-pounders, and on January 30th in the next year of 4.5-inch Howitzers instead of the 5-inch Howitzers in possession.

One more item of statistics may be mentioned. In a year’s constant journeys on bad roads for long distances, amounting in all to a total mileage of 900,000 miles, no lorry had to be replaced: an extremely creditable record for the Divisional Supply Column.

But these details are carrying us too far. Our purpose in the present chapter has been to preserve an impression of the daily experience of the 49th Division from the end of June to the end of December, 1915. The same things happened every day, though they might happen with a difference. The day was fine, or the day was wet; the patrol got back, or the patrol was wounded; a shell exploded, or a shell fell ‘dud’; distinguished conduct found a grave, or distinguished conduct won a medal: but always it was relieving or being relieved, throughout this long tour of duty under the exhausting conditions of the Ypres Salient. We have sought to illustrate the life by selecting certain days for description, and we have sought, too, to set off that description by an account, however inadequate, of the other side of the picture: of the means provided from home or improvised on the spot, and alike approved by the Divisional Commander, to bring touches of warmth and colour into the chilling monotony of trench-warfare. How far such aim has been accomplished, even how far it is capable of accomplishment at this distance from 1915 and the bank of the Yser Canal, where the general gloom of the outlook was almost as difficult to banish as the mud on the physical horizon, cannot be predicated with any certainty. What is clear to the present writer, however, and what he should have made clear to his readers, is that no opportunity was let go of doing a full day’s work every day. They all pulled together all the time. The result was that, though the long strain told on the physique of the Division, it did not tell on their spirits or their resolution, and, inasmuch as their appointed day’s work was essential to the conduct of the war, and to the maintenance of equilibrium on the Western front, the 49th (West Riding) Division deserved well of their King and country in the last six months of the year 1915.

Tower of the Cloth Hall Ypres

CHAPTER VI
SERVING IN RESERVE

The intensive training of a 2nd Line Division, which was to take a conspicuous part in the battles of 1917 and 1918, is the subject of the present chapter.

The military confusion at home during the period prior to the passing of the first National Service Act, and prolonged to some extent through 1916, though it never affected the keenness and enthusiasm of the 2nd Line troops themselves, has yet to be taken into account in any impression which may be given of the conditions under which training was carried out. Reference to this factor will be found in the Memorandum on the Territorial Force written by General Bethune at the War Office, of which mention has been made before.[41] The then Director-General remarked: ‘Great difficulty was experienced in training, as, with so many new Armies to be formed, the majority of capable instructors went to them, and our 2nd Line Territorial Force had to train themselves as best they could. The result,’ he added, ‘was extraordinarily good and surprised anyone who had anything to do with it.’ We shall reach the element of surprise in due course. Here, for the moment, we are concerned with the ‘great difficulty’ which was encountered, and more particularly with those aspects of the difficulty which lay outside the cognizance of the Territorial Force personnel, or, at any rate, outside their control.

Let us go back to first principles. The idea of a voluntary Army, despite the wastage of war and the unequal distribution of patriotic sentiment, or of the capacity to respond to it, was still, late in 1914, a sacred article of British faith. Another accepted article, if not of faith, at least of British practice, was the enlistment of that voluntary Army on a County basis. This procedure, which was laid down in Section IX. (I.) (a) of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act, followed a similar provision in the Militia Act of 1882, and, tracing it back to that source, we discover that its primary cause was ‘to estimate the extent of the County’s liability in the event of the ballot being enforced.’[42] The tradition survived the ballot, and the rule of County enlistment was incorporated, as we have seen, in the organization of the Territorial Force. This rule worked well enough in peace-time, and might conceivably have continued to work well if it had been the only rule to be applied when war broke out on a scale not dreamed of by the authors of the Act of 1907.[43] But, historically speaking, and without attempting to judge the issue, it was decided very early in the war to vary that rule, and to raise recruits for the new Armies on a system which crossed the method handed down to the Territorial Force by the old Militia and Volunteers. The Counties were reaped of their best men by a Secretary of State who knew not Lord Haldane. The first hundred thousand disappeared into the vast abyss of war from every town and village in the country. Members of Parliament came down to recruit for Kitchener’s Army, and forgot, or were not reminded by the Mayor, of the claims of Haldane’s Force. Bonds of brotherhood in arms, by trades, professions, even by height or religion (e.g., ‘Bantams,’ ‘Jewish’ Regiment, etc.) drove their wedges through the County bond; and under these new and distracting conditions, the old rule of enlistment by Counties became to a large extent a pious memory of peace, and enlistment by hook and crook, by picture-posters, white feathers, and worse devices, became the feverish rule of war.

This was the 2nd Line problem viewed through the spectacles of Territorial Force County Associations. The men themselves did not see it from the same angle. Their great desire, with insignificant exceptions, was to prepare themselves for service overseas with the utmost possible expedition. In their camps or billets or drill-halls, they were probably as unconscious of as they were indifferent to the serious administrative difficulties created for their County chiefs by the constant changes of policy on the part of the Army Council. Nor is the Army Council unduly to be blamed. The pace of the war itself was quicker than anyone had anticipated, and social and industrial conditions at home did not readily adapt themselves to its imperious needs. If we refer to these forgotten problems, out of which the successive National Service Acts were forged, as a partial solution, we shall be understood to refer to them solely in explanation of the ‘great difficulty’ which was experienced, and not in the least in derogation of the great zeal with which that difficulty was surmounted to the ‘surprise’ of everyone concerned.

We have further authority as to the difficulties. In a Memorandum kindly prepared by Major-General Sir James K. Trotter, K.C.B., who was appointed to command the West Riding 2nd Line Division[44] in February, 1915, he writes as follows of the early days of his Command:

‘The difficulties affecting training were at this stage very serious. The troops were not all provided with uniform. They were without equipment; the Infantry had no arms, except a few d.p. rifles; the Artillery no guns; the Mounted Troops, Artillery and Engineers no horses, and the Transport nothing but a few hired carts. But the want most sorely felt was that of the young, active, trained N.C.O. to instruct and to give life to the movements of the young soldiers. Competent instructors were not to be had. Every available N.C.O. was taken up by the 1st Line Territorials and the New Service Army units, and this Division was at this time left to its own very limited resources. The Regimental Officers were in the main new and untrained, and though the Command Schools of Instruction gave short courses to as many as possible, it was very remarkable to observe the time necessary to convert the raw recruit into a trained soldier under these conditions.... What was lacking was the atmosphere. Nevertheless, some real progress in elementary training was made in the early Spring (1915), and some young officers displayed considerable energy and initiative.’

Lack of atmosphere is the burden of this complaint, and a brief map of the conflicting winds which were blown across the path of Territorial Force organization may account, in part, at least, for these disturbed atmospheric conditions. Summarily, the war policy of the Army Council in regard to the Territorial Force may be marked by the following five steps: (1) They decided to raise Reserve or 2nd Line units behind the Imperial Service Units of the original or 1st Line. The practical distinction between the two was based on their state of preparedness to fulfil the overseas obligation. Thus, the distinction was always fluid. It varied, that is to say, according to the degree of training reached by the individual personnel, and there were always frequent exchanges between the 2nd and 1st Lines. The only constant element in the Reserve units were the men, who, owing to age or health or other conditions, would never be fit for Imperial Service. Divisional and other military organization was the same in both Lines, but the 1st was composed of Officers and other Ranks ready for service abroad, the 2nd was composed partly of surplus Imperial Service personnel, partly of troops prepared, so far, only up to Home Service, which still formed the statutory function of the Territorial Force. (2) The next stage occurred when the 1st Line units went overseas. Then a 3rd Line, or 2nd Reserve, was authorized for formation, behind the Home Service units composed partly, as we have seen, of men ready, in a military sense, to go overseas, and this 3rd Line was presently constituted into a series of (3) Draft-producing Depots, with establishments varying from time to time according as their corresponding 1st Line units were stationed at home, or on garrison duty abroad, or with an Expeditionary Force. A little later (4) steps were taken to weed out the Home Service personnel still remaining with the 2nd Line units and to distribute them into newly-constituted Home Service units, and finally (5) the National Reservists were formed into Supernumerary Territorial Force Companies, with a fixed establishment of about 120 all Ranks, for the protection of Lines of Communication and Vulnerable Points at home. To complete a brief account of a long process which was not worked out with a very clever perception of its intention from the start, we may add that these Supernumerary Companies were transformed by Royal Warrant, in 1916, into the Royal Defence Corps, when they passed out of the County administration. But all through 1915 the position was extraordinarily complex from an administrative point of view. Territorial Force Associations were responsible for maintaining their 1st Line units overseas, their 2nd Line units at home, their 3rd Line Draft-producing Depots, their Provisional Home Service units and their Supernumerary Territorial Force Companies.

In justice to the West Riding Association, which was hard put to it to keep an even keel in this welter of conflicting currents, we may examine the policy which they pursued, in somewhat more detail. From the first they declined to be hustled. As early as October, 1914, the Chairman, Lord Scarbrough, remarked in his Quarterly Report to members of the Association, that ‘In consequence of the great difficulty of obtaining supplies of clothing, boots, necessaries, etc., and the lack of Officers and qualified Instructors, it was considered best not to push recruiting for the Reserve units, but to endeavour to raise them very gradually as Instructors and clothing and equipment could be provided. By so doing,’ he pointed out, ‘the efficiency of these units is not likely to be retarded, and the waste of time and discouragement entailed by collecting large numbers of men without Officers, Instructors, arms, uniform, boots, or any provision for their well-being, has been to a large extent avoided.’ But his policy, however sound at the outset, could not be indefinitely maintained. The time came, and it came more quickly than some even of the shrewdest of observers had foreseen, when the Reserve, or 2nd Line, units had to be allowed to recruit up to full establishment, despite those deficiencies in equipment which so seriously embarrassed their Commanding Officers, in the urgent work of training them for service overseas. So the ‘large numbers’ continued to come forward, and might not be refused. As early as November, 1914, for example, the 2/6th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment had a strength of over 1,400, and this splendid record was not unique in the 2nd Line Division. The real problem faced by General Trotter in the Spring of 1915 was not shortness of numbers, though this, too, became a source of some anxiety at County Headquarters, when the new Armies were competing with the Territorial Force; it was still less lack of keenness for foreign service, but it was always the old problem of Israel in Egypt—how to make bricks without straw. We quoted just now the General’s own account of the problems which he had to face in this regard. We may quote here his further account, by no means too rosy in certain aspects, of the progress in elementary training which was made in the early Spring of 1915. It will be remembered that the 1/1st West Riding (49th) Division went abroad in the middle of April. The 62nd Division was then appointed to take over its duties. The Infantry, it is reassuring to find, were now in possession of rifles, which had been obtained from Japan, and the Artillery, about the same time, received an armament of French guns, made in 1878, and ‘evidently discarded,’ writes General Trotter, ‘for many years. The tangent scales were graduated in metres, and the shells were provided with a graduated time-fuze. But no one could be found to connect the graduation with the range scales, and no book of instructions existed.... No ammunition was available for practice, and the whole time this weapon was in the hands of the Artillery, i.e., till December, 1915, it was only used for training purposes, and then only to a limited extent, the breech action and sights being of obsolete pattern. If,’ adds the General, ‘the Artillery had, according to the plans in force, been called upon to take part in the defence of the coast, the casualties it would have caused would have been at the breech-end of the guns’. There were other interruptions to training, as seen from a Commanding Officer’s point of view. The competition in recruiting, to which so frequent reference is necessarily made at this period, produced, in places, almost humorous results. Thus, a Divisional Commander of the Territorial Force units would be pressed in some places by the local authorities to supply bands for recruiting-meetings held for the purpose of enlisting men in units of the New Armies. Again, industrial conditions created unforeseen anomalies. It often happened that the first men to enlist were the key-men in their respective factories, and these men, after having been put through a course of military training, and having become efficient soldiers in the comparatively shorter time corresponding to their superior capacity, had eventually to be returned to the works from which they came, or to other works engaged in producing war-materials. Another increasing source of embarrassment to the Divisional Commander and his subordinate Officers lay in the calls which were made on the 62nd Division, during 1915, to supply drafts for service overseas. Even the extraction from 2nd Line units of the men fit only for Home Service upset the composition of those units, and interrupted the continuity of training and the growth of an esprit de corps. Take, merely as an example, the experience of the 2/8th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. On March 8th, 1915, ten of their men were drafted to the 1/8th. Sundry other exchanges of personnel between the 2/8th and 1/8th, before the latter went to France, in April, resulted in a numerical loss to the unit remaining at home. On May 17th, 4 Officers and 188 other Ranks were transferred to the 26th Provisional Battalion for coast defence, and were followed at subsequent dates by a further 17 men. On August 15th, 54 men went out to the 1/8th Battalion. On the 27th came the gratifying news that Lieut. E. F. Wilkinson, formerly of the 2/8th Battalion, had been awarded the Military Cross in France: sic vos, non vobis. In October, orders arrived that the Battalion was to be reduced to 600 all ranks, that unfit men were to be posted to the 26th Provisional Battalion, and the remaining surplus over the new establishment, to the 3/8th Battalion West Yorkshires. It is obvious that changes of this kind, which may be paralleled in any other unit, were no light drawback. The success of the training of the Division during the period, May to October, 1915, when it was in camp in Sherwood Forest, might have been even more seriously affected except for the loyal co-operation of Officers, N.C.O.s and men in carrying out the programmes arranged for them. They were moved by an increasing resolve to prepare themselves for the call for embarkation, the hope of which, though renewed from time to time, seemed always so slow to materialize.[45] Meanwhile, work was carried on with this object always in view. Particular attention was devoted to the duties of the Platoon Officers and Company Commanders, and General Trotter bears witness that ‘during the summer and autumn months, the Division made remarkable progress in training, administrative work and discipline.’ In October, they left their encampments, and were stationed, at the end of November, in the Northern Command, with Headquarters at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where the Brigades were allotted to the Tyne defences, and the units were occupied in making and improving the trenches. About this time the Artillery at last had received a serviceable weapon; 18-pounder, breech-loader guns were issued to three Brigades, and 5″ Howitzers to the fourth. In December, news arrived that the Division had been selected as the first of the 2nd Line Territorials Divisions for service in France, and orders were issued to move to Salisbury Plain. Sir James Trotter, whose organizing ability had so well and truly laid the foundations of the military efficiency of the Division, was succeeded in its Command, on December 24th, by Major-General Walter Braithwaite, C.B.,[46] who took over the Division at Newcastle.

It is interesting to dovetail the accounts of the retiring and succeeding Divisional Commanders. General Braithwaite notes that ‘the Battalions were commanded mostly by Territorial Force Officers of a certain age and standing, with personal knowledge of the men in their units, and with experience, in many cases, of Territorial Force conditions as they existed before the war, but, naturally, with no experience of war as it was being waged. The material was excellent, and all that was lacking was to adapt it to the conditions obtaining at the Front.’ Accordingly, at Lark Hill Camp on Salisbury Plain, where the Division arrived in January, 1916, application was at once made to the War Office for men with fighting experience to fill posts on the Divisional Staff, and for the appointment of Brigade Majors of the Infantry Brigades in order to set to work to make the Division completely war-worthy. The response was prompt and satisfactory, and perhaps the most satisfactory feature from the Divisional Commander’s point of view was the loyal readiness of individual Officers who felt themselves and were too old for the strain of active service to make way for younger men, who had either been wounded or invalided from France. An ideal General Staff Officer, 1st Grade, was found in Lieut.-Colonel the Hon A. G. A. Hore-Ruthven, V.C. Lieut.-Colonel R. M. Foot, to the great benefit of the Division, was appointed Q.M.G.; Brig.-General A. T. Anderson arrived from France to take command of the Divisional Artillery, with Capt. W. J. Lindsell as his Brigade Major, and these Officers, with Lieut.-Colonel Gillam in command of the Royal Engineers, made, we are assured, ‘an excellent beginning.’ Mention is also due to the arrival at this date of the Rev. C. M. Chavasse as S.C.F., and we may add here that he served with the 62nd Division for the whole period of its active service, with the exception of a very short time when he was promoted to be Senior Chaplain of the Corps. The Brigadiers of the 185th, 186th and 187th Infantry Brigades, respectively, who were also appointed about this time, were Generals V. W. de Falbe, who had commanded a Battalion in France; F. F. Hill, who had been invalided from Gallipoli, and R. O’B. Taylor, who happened to be home from leave in Egypt, and who had also been in Gallipoli. These arrivals, as might be expected, added immensely to the strength of the Division. Its efficiency, from February onwards, increased by leaps and bounds, and the Division was fortunate, too, in receiving from time to time the latest ‘tips’ from Officers serving in or invalided home from France, and anxious to place their experience at the disposal of those about to proceed there.

Still, it was not all smooth sailing. In May, 1916, after service rifles had been issued, and when training was in full swing, orders were suddenly received for the Division to find a draft of over 4,000 men for France, and it looked as if the Division was to be turned into a mere draft-producing unit, and its fighting efficiency to be impaired accordingly. Happily, this order, like so many others, was cancelled. A further and more actual disappointment ensued a month or so later, when the Division was sent to the East Coast to be employed in reserve for the defences, with the intimation that it was likely to stay there. We are left to imagine the consternation of the troops, already straining at the leash, and the difficulty of the Divisional Commander and his subordinate Officers in accommodating their programmes and policy to these shifting counsels from above. Certainly, the East Coast was not as convenient for training, and did not provide the same facilities as were available on Salisbury Plain. The Brigades were separated by some distance: the Headquarters of one Brigade and the bulk of the Artillery being round about Bungay, another group being at Henham Hall (Lord Stradbroke), and a third at Somerleyton (Lord Somerleyton, formerly Sir Savile Crossley), near Lowestoft. But once more the prospects changed. Fresh orders presently arrived, stating that the Division was selected for service in France. On July 26th, the King came down to inspect the Division prior to embarkation, and His Majesty expressed himself extremely satisfied with all that he saw.

Time went on, however, and no embarkation orders came. Drafts for Service units abroad and for Service units definitely allotted to home duties continued to be called for throughout this Summer and Autumn, and still the Division was in doubt as to its ultimate use and destination. Still the Divisional Pelican waited to put his foot down on German soil. The men now enjoyed opportunities, of which they gladly availed themselves, of working on training instructions which had been received direct from the front. Trench-digging, air-raid duty, rifle-practice with Charger-Loading Lee Enfields, gas-drill, concentration-marches, musketry and Lewis-gun courses, assaults-at-arms, aquatic sports, and other martial exercises and recreations, were all included in the preparation for battle. The whole life of the soldier in France was, so far as was possible, copied as faithfully as it could be during this strenuous period. Officers on light duty in England, who had been wounded, were sent down in batches and distributed among the Battalions, which were eager, as we saw above, to take advantage of the benefit of their experience. Young Officers, with a war record behind them, were appointed to command Battalions, Batteries and Companies. Sketches of the latest types of trenches were received and re-produced in practice; and, briefly, except for the actual atmosphere of active service, the Division became during these months a living organism capable of assimilating all the lessons which experience could teach it, and likely, with its splendid material, to give a good account of itself at the Front.

And, at last, the summons arrived. In October, 1916, orders were received to proceed to Bedford and Wellingborough in order to complete the Division with all necessary stores, and to hold itself in readiness to go overseas. The actual order for the move was still postponed till the last days of December, and the final scenes may be quoted from the War Diary of one of the West Riding Battalions:—

‘January 4th, 1917.—Order of the Day issued by Major-General Braithwaite, containing farewell message from His Majesty the King to 62nd Division, on the eve of their departure overseas.

‘January 4th, 1917, 9 a.m.—Farewell service of Holy Communion at St. Paul’s Church, Bedford, before proceeding on Active Service.

‘January 11th, 1917.—Left Bedford for France. Right half Battalion left the Ballast Pit Sidings, Bedford, at 3-25 a.m. Left half Battalion left at 5 a.m.’

‘I do not think,’ writes General Sir Walter Braithwaite, at the conclusion of the Notes with which he has been kind enough to supply the present writer, ‘a more happy and contented Division, or one better found and equipped, ever left the shores of England, and I think it was as well trained as a Division could be, thanks to all the help I received from the Staff and Commanding Officers, and to all the kind friends in France, who kept us supplied with the latest training instructions.[47] I cannot close this short sketch of our training period without alluding to the great help we received throughout the period from Lord Scarbrough and Brig.-General Mends. They were “father and mother” to the Division; made several visits to us; took endless trouble to help us, and, in fact, made all the rough places smooth. Also, I cannot but acknowledge the patriotism of those Commanding Officers who, feeling themselves too old for active service, made way for young up-to-date Commanders.’

It will be interesting to conclude this account with a conspectus of the Order of Battle of the 62nd Division from February, 1917, when it first entered the field, during the 22 months of its brilliant fighting record, till February, 1919, when demobilization was in active course. The purpose of this information, which is arranged for convenience in tabular form, is to show, in the first column, the units which composed the Division when it first landed in France; in the second column, the units which joined the Division between that date and February, 1919; in the third column, remarks explanatory of the information in columns one and two; and in column four the names of the respective Commanding Officers at the time of the embarkation of the Division. It will be observed that certain Battalions of the 1st and 2nd Lines were amalgamated during 1918, and these tables should be referred to, accordingly, in cases where any consequent changes in nomenclature may puzzle the reader of later chapters.

ORDER OF BATTLE OF 62nd (WEST RIDING) DIVISION between February, 1917, and February, 1919.

Landed with Division, Jan.-Feb., 1917.	Joined Division between Feb., 1917, and Feb., 1919.	Remarks.	Commanding Officer (Jan., 1917).
Divisional F.A.
310th Brigade, R.F.A.		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. G. R. V. Kinsman, D.S.O., R.A.
311th Brigade, R.F.A.		Became Army Brigade early 1917.	Lt.-Col. A. Gadie
312th Brigade, R.F.A.		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. E. P. Bedwell, R.A.
62nd Div. Ammunition Col.		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. F. Mitchell
62nd T.M. Batteries		Remained throughout.
	14th Bde. R.H.A. & B.A.C.	Joined November, 1918.
Divisional Engineers.
457th Field Company, R.E.		Remained throughout.	Major W. A. Seaman
460th Field Company, R.E.		Remained throughout.	Major L. St. J. Colley
461st Field Company, R.E.		Remained throughout.	Major E. J. Walthew
Signal Company.		Remained throughout.	Capt. R. V. Montgomery (Som. L.I.)
185th Infantry Brigade.
2/5th West Yorks. Regt.		Amalgamated with 8th W. Yorks., August, 1918.	Lt.-Col. J. Josselyn
2/6th West Yorks. Regt.		Amalgamated with 6th W. Yorks, to 49th Div., Feb., 1918.	Lt.-Col. J. H. Hastings
2/7th West Yorks. Regt.		Disbanded June, 1918.	Lt.-Col. Hon. F. S. Jackson
2/8th West Yorks. Regt.		Amalgamated with 1/8th W. Yorks, Feb., 1918.	Lt.-Col. W. Hepworth, V.D.
185th T.M. Battery.		Remained throughout.
	1/8th Bn. W. Yorks, from 49th Div.	Amalgamated with 2/8th W. Yorks., Feb., 1918.
	1/5th Bn. Devon Regt.	Joined June, 1918, from Egypt.
	2/20th Bn. London Regt.	Joined August, 1918, from Egypt.
186th Infantry Brigade.
2/4th Bn. West Riding Regt.		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. H. E. P. Nash (R. Scots)
2/5th Bn. West Riding Regt.		Amalgamated with 1/5th Bn., Feb., 1918.	Lt.-Col. T. A. D. Best, D.S.O., (R. Innis. Fus.)
2/6th Bn. West Riding Regt.		To 49th Div. for amalgamation with 1/6th, Feb., 1918.	Lt.-Col. J. Mackillop
2/7th Bn. West Riding Regt.		Disbanded June, 1918.	Lt.-Col. Clifford, D.S.O. (North. Fus.)
186th T.M. Battery		Remained throughout.
	1/5th Bn. West Riding Regt.	From 49th Div. Amalgamated with 2/5th, Feb., 1918.
	2/4th Hants. Regt.	From Egypt, June, 1918.
187th Infantry Brigade.
2/4th Bn. K.O.Y.L.I.		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. E. Hind, V.D.
2/5th Bn. K.O.Y.L.I.		Amalgamated with 1/5th Bn., Feb., 1918.	Lt.-Col. W. Watson (Som. L.I.)
2/4th Bn. Yorks. & Lancs. Regt.		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. F. St. J. Blacker
2/5th Bn. Yorks. & Lancs. Regt.		Disbanded Feb., 1918.	Lt.-Col. P. Prince (Shrops. L.I.)
187th T.M. Battery		Remained throughout.
	1/5th Bn. K.O.Y.L.I.	From 49th Div. Amalgamated with 2/5th, Feb., 1918.
Pioneer Battalion	9th Bn. Durham Light Inf.	From 50th Division, Feb., 1918.
Divisional Train.
62nd Divisional Train		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. H. H. Wilberforce
525 Company, R.A.S.C.		Remained throughout.	Major A. P. Wright
526 Company, R.A.S.C.		Remained throughout.	Lt. S. G. Shaw
527 Company, R.A.S.C.		Remained throughout.	Lt. W. N. Roberts
528 Company, R.A.S.C.		Remained throughout.	Capt. H. P. Peacock
Divisional R.A.M.C.
2/1st (W.R.) Field Ambulance		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. W. Lister
2/2nd (W.R.) Field Ambulance		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. C. W. Eames
2/3rd (W.R.) Field Ambulance		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. W. S. Keer
62nd Divl. Sanitary Section		Remained throughout.	Capt. Moss-Blundell, C.B.
2/1st Northn. Cas. Clearing Stn.		Remained throughout.	Lt.-Col. W. A. Wetwan
	33rd Sanitary Section.	Joined after Armistice.
Divisional Machine Gun Bn.
	201st M.G. Company.	Joined 1917 }	Formed into 62nd Bn. Machine-Gun Corps, Feb., 1918
	208th M.G. Company.	Joined 1917 }
	212th M.G. Company.	Joined 1917 }
	213th M.G. Company.	Joined 1917 }
Divisional M.T. Company.
62nd Div. M.T. Company		Remained throughout.	Major H. J. C. Hawkins
Mobile Veterinary Section.
2/1st (W.R.) Mob. Vet. Sect.		Remained throughout.	Capt. P. Abson, A.V.C.
Divisional Employment Co.
	252nd Employment Co.	Joined June, 1917, and remained throughout.

The Staff Officers in January, 1917, were as follows:—

G.O.C.	Major-(Lieut.-) General (Sir) W. P. Braithwaite, (K.) C.B.
A.D.C.	Lieut. G. H. Roberts.
A.D.C.	Sec.-Lieut. J. C. Newman.
G.S.O. (I.)	Lieut.-Col. Hon. A. G. A. Hore-Ruthven, V.C., D.S.O., Welsh Guards.
G.S.O. (II.)	Major W. G. Charles, Essex.
G.S.O. (III.)	Capt. J. A. Batten Pooll, 5th Lancers.
A.A. and Q.M.G.	Lieut.-Col. T. M. Foot, C.M.G., R.L., late R. Innis. Fus.
D.A.A. and Q.M.G.	Major H. F. Lea, R.L., late Yorks. Regt.
D.A.Q.M.G.	Capt. F. J. Langdon, R.L., late The King’s.
A.D.M.S.	Col. de B. Birch, C.B., R.A.M.C. (T).
D.A.D.M.S.	Major T. C. Lucas, R.A.M.C.
D.A.D.O.S.	Lieut. R. M. Holland.
A.D.V.S.	Major F. J. Taylor.
A.P.M.	Major G. D’Urban Rodwell.
C.R.A.	Brig.-Gen. A. T. Anderson, R.A.
A.D.C.	Lieut. Anderson, R.A.
Bde. Major	Capt. W. G. Lindsell, R.A.
S./Capt.	Capt. A. J. Elston.
C.R.E.	Lieut.-Col. F. Gillam, R.E.
Adjt.	Capt. G. D. Aspland.
185th Inf. Bde.
G.O.C.	Brig.-Gen. V. W. de Falbe, C.M.G., D.S.O.
Bde. Major	Major R. E. Power, The Buffs.
S./Capt.	Capt. W. A. C. Lloyd.
186th Inf. Bde.
G.O.C.	Brig.-Gen. F. F. Hill, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.
Bde. Major	Major C. A. H. Palairet, The Fusileers.
S./Capt.	Capt. W. O. Wright.
187th Inf. Bde.
G.O.C.	Brig.-Gen. R. O’B. Taylor, C.I.E.
Bde. Major	Major R. B. Bergne, Leinster Regt.
S./Capt.	Capt. F. M. Lassetter.

PREFACE

BOOK IBEFORE WAR

CHAPTER ITHE WEST RIDING ASSOCIATION

CHAPTER IITHE WEST RIDING TROOPS

CHAPTER IIIMOBILIZATION

BOOK IIWAR

CHAPTER IV‘MALBROUCK S’EN VA-T’EN GUERRE’

CHAPTER VTHE DAY’S WORK

CHAPTER VISERVING IN RESERVE