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.’