On the 6th August, 1914, a letter appeared in The Times signed by Mr. Percy A. Harris, advocating the formation and training of Volunteer Corps. At the end of the month the War Office vetoed the raising of volunteer units, but gave sanction to organize Training Corps, and these sprang up all over the country and began to recruit for the oversea armies. The county was the unit of organization, and County Commandants were appointed. At the end of 1915 the revival of the Volunteer Act passed Parliament, which awarded military rank and status, and from this time on the Training Corps were termed Volunteer Corps, and if called up to repel invasion the officers and men were to become subject to military law. Only those men who were too old to serve abroad or whose indispensable business or employment absolutely prevented them doing so were enrolled.
So far as Kent was concerned Lord Harris, the County Commandant, took charge of the county force and called it “Kent Volunteer Fencibles,” but in August, 1916, the War Office, taking the matter more decidedly in hand, the several units were made into Volunteer Battalions of the county regiments.
In East Kent there were four of these:—
1st Volunteer Battalion was commanded by Br.-General W. Tylden; 2nd by Major J. C. Tattersall; 3rd Volunteer Battalion by Major-General C. F. Browne, C.B., D.S.O.; 4th Volunteer Battalion by Major H. E. T. W. Fiennes. General Brown retiring on the 16th December, the 3rd Battalion was taken over by Major H. T. Gullick, who had lost one son in the Buffs and had another still fighting with the regiment.
X. 9th Battalion
Mention has not been made yet of the very useful and important unit the 9th Battalion, because this held rather a unique position. It was not in August, when war broke out, in existence at all, and so could hardly be described as Special Reserve, though its duties were exactly similar to those of the 3rd Battalion from which it was, in fact, an off-shoot. Its history is briefly as follows: it was first of all raised as a Service Battalion, just as were the 6th, 7th and 8th, but being the junior unit its organization was delayed simply because there was so much work to do in connection with those battalions which were first for war. Early in October, 1914, instructions were issued to carry out the work of starting the new battalion, and as the number on the books of the 3rd, which was at the Citadel, Dover, was at this time far in excess of what is manageable as a single unit, some eleven officers and seven hundred men were struck off its strength, placed under the command of Major Layborn and sent into the old South Front Barracks close by, as the 9th Buffs. A few old members of the regiment had been detailed as instructors. Captain Hickman was sent to aid in starting the battalion and, until things got into good working order, Lieut. G. Dunster was quartermaster, Captain Courtney-Hood was the permanent adjutant, Reveille Sgt.-Major, Edwards, Q.M.S. and Winstanley the O.R. sergeant. Very few of the company officers had any previous military experience, but energy and zeal are valuable assets, and the 9th was rapidly preparing to take its place in war; Lt.-Colonel R. A. Reith, a former commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, was appointed to the command, and the 95th Brigade was formed from the 9th Buffs, 10th East Surrey, 14th and 15th Royal Fusiliers. Higher divisional training was expected to take place in the spring, and there seemed to be every prospect of a move across the Channel in the summer of 1915 when, in March, all hopes and ambitions were dashed to the ground by the receipt of news that the battalion’s destination was after all to be Purfleet in Essex, and that it was to be a home-keeping and draft-finding unit, exactly like the 3rd Battalion. In July the first draft went to war. Three hundred men entrained at Purfleet for London and marched from Fenchurch Street to London Bridge Station by a circuitous route to show themselves and exercise the Buffs’ old and long-established privilege of passing along the City of London streets with bayonets fixed and all honours of war. The party on this occasion was headed by the band and drums and the Lord Mayor showed himself at the Mansion House to take the salute. The London crowd gave the men a proper and, indeed, an enthusiastic send-off, and there was much cheering and waving of handkerchiefs. In September came a move to Shoreham, Sussex, whence many drafts departed, mostly to the old regular battalions; but the enormous one of forty officers and five hundred men went to the 8th Battalion to replace the terrible losses that unit suffered at Loos. There is no space to record more. The 9th did its duty like the others, the headquarters moving sometimes, once again to Dover and later to Southend, but the men, as in the case of the 3rd Battalion, constantly proceeding overseas in batches. The only marked change that came was in January, 1917, when the battalion was selected for the training of a large number of “A4 Boys”[13] called out at that time, with the result that the numbers rose to nearly three thousand, and four new companies had to be organized.
Six months afterwards most of the original officers and permanent N.C.O.’s went back to the 3rd Battalion, and the 9th Buffs became the 52nd Queen’s, in which capacity it went to France, when the dangerous days of March, 1918, had come; it ended its career as part of the army of occupation in Germany after the armistice.
The story of the 10th Battalion and of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada will be told later in the book.