The West Riding Territorials in the Great War

by Laurie Magnus

‘You know that at first the Regiment was split up and its squadrons distributed among various Divisions. In the early part of 1916 it was decided to take away from Divisions their Cavalry Squadrons, and to have a Cavalry Regiment at the headquarters of every Army Corps. The three squadrons of the Yorkshire Dragoons were thus brought together and formed into a Regiment again, and in May, 1916, became the Cavalry Regiment of the IInd Corps. It was in that month, too, that I took over command of the IInd Corps.

‘From the time the Yorkshire Dragoons came to the IInd Corps till hostilities ceased on the 11th November, 1918, their work has been excellent all through. They have had strenuous times, but have always shown themselves equal to the occasion.

‘Yorkshire has given many thousands of splendid soldiers to the British Army, and I place the Yeoman of the Yorkshire Dragoons high up in the list. They have responded to every call made on them, and have fought magnificently.

‘In October, 1917, the regiment was taken away from the IInd Corps for work with the Cavalry Corps. Later on, owing to the shortage of horses in the army, it was decided to dismount the Yeomanry Regiments and to turn them into machine-gun or cyclist units. The Yorkshire Dragoons were formed into a Cyclist Regiment, and came back to the IInd Corps as such. It was naturally a disappointment to them to be dismounted, but they accepted the situation in the right spirit and very soon became the best cyclist unit in the British Army.

‘I cannot speak too highly of their work in the final phase of the war, when they took part in the attack from Ypres in September, 1918, and when the Germans were driven clean out of Belgium.

‘The Regiment has been fortunate in its Officers. They were first of all commanded by Lieut.-Col. Mackenzie Smith, D.S.O., up to the time they were dismounted. Since then they have been commanded by Lieut.-Colonel R. Thompson, D.S.O. Both these officers have been first-class, and I cannot speak too highly of the latter. Lieut.-Colonel Thompson is a first-rate leader, and he has been backed up by an excellent lot of junior officers.

‘I regret very much to have to part with the Regiment, but their turn for demobilisation has come round. They have earned the gratitude of their country and county in the way they have worked and fought all through the war, and have made a name for themselves which will never be forgotten.’

General Jacob’s letter (May 27th, 1919) epitomizes clearly, six months after the Armistice, the successive stages of organization through which the Mounted Troops had passed. Between the lines of the various decisions therein recorded (‘to take away from the Divisions their Cavalry Squadrons,’ to take away the Cavalry Regiments from the Corps, ‘to dismount the Yeomanry Regiments and to turn them into machine-gun or cyclist units’), we may read the meaning of some remarks occurring in earlier letters: ‘They have frequently been called upon to do work which was quite outside of what Cavalry are trained to perform’ (General Stuart-Wortley); ‘No matter what the work has been, it has always been carried out in accordance with the best traditions of the Regiment and the Service’ (General Fergusson), and ‘their chief claim to credit lies in the fact, that, whatever work they were given to do, they carried out to the best of their ability’ (Col. Mackenzie Smith). The time never quite came to employ the Cavalry. They never really came into their own. But it was not till a late period in the war, when the shortage of horses in the Army and the shrinkage of man-power and shipping at home compelled the authorities to drastic action, that the repeatedly disappointed hope of employing them at last in their right capacity was finally abandoned. Accordingly, their history in the Great War is a history of partially fulfilled renown, in relation to their pre-war training and to their anticipations on mobilization. ‘It must be admitted,’ we read, ‘that the Yorkshire Dragoons never felt either pride or affection for their bicycles. The one thing to be said for them was that they were more easily cleaned than horses, and never had to be exercised or fed.’ In this sense, ‘their chief claim to credit,’ in the words of Lieut.-Col. Mackenzie Smith,[123] may be stated in the highest terms as a claim to the credit of subordinating their own desires, and the ambition appropriate to their Arm of Service, to the needs of the Army and the Empire as a whole.

We may follow these changes more precisely.

Originally, both Yeomanry Regiments, after coast defence and other work at home, went out to France as Divisional Cavalry. The Hussars arrived at Havre in April, 1915, and were posted as follows: