The West Riding Territorials in the Great War

by Laurie Magnus

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.