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.