Tommy (19 page)
Authors: Richard Holmes
Officers for the cavalry, infantry, Indian army and Army Service Corps went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which had existed since 1799, though it had not trained the majority of officers until after the abolition of purchase. Entrance to Sandhurst too was by competitive examination, and its final order of merit was no less important than that at Woolwich. Officers who hoped to go to the Indian army, where they could live on their pay, had to pass out towards its top. Young Bernard Montgomery (already under a cloud for setting fire to a fellow cadet's shirt-tail) passed out too low to be admitted to the Indian army and joined the Royal Warwickshires instead. It is fashionable to decry the standards attained at Sandhurst: one scholar has observed that it was amazing what a young man did not have to know to get into the cavalry or artillery. However, anyone choosing to look at their examination papers would be struck by the fact that these were no brainless hearties.
While Woolwich trained 99 percent of artillery and engineer officers, Sandhurst trained only 67 percent of the officers destined for the infantry and cavalry. Some 2 percent were commissioned from the ranks. These were combatant commissions, whose holders would take rank and precedence alongside their comrades from public school, as opposed to the holders of quartermaster's or riding master's commissions, appointed to honorary commissions for specific jobs. Of the remainder, about half came from universities, where they had undertaken some training in the Senior Division of the Officers' Training Corps: the Junior Division â âthe Corps' â comprised contingents in public schools. Most of the others had entered the army through âthe militia back door'. Officers holding a commission in the militia or Yeomanry (or the Special Reserve or Yeomanry from 1908) could bypass Sandhurst altogether by taking a competitive examination for a direct commission. This was how Field Marshal Sir John French, who had started his career in the navy, had got into the army, and Henry Wilson, his deputy chief of staff in 1914, had followed the same route.
Rory Baynes, considering a military career, confessed that:
I much preferred the idea of sporting a militia officer's magnificent uniform than that of going to Sandhurst, where in those days I would have had to spend almost two years in what was a rather strict public school atmosphere.
He was accordingly commissioned in 1906 into the 3rd Bedfordshire Militia, a âstrange and exclusive crowd': no experience was necessary, but the personal approval of the regiment's colonel, the Duke of Bedford, certainly was. Young Baynes trained with his battalion, spent some time attached to a regular battalion of the Bedfords, and studied for the militia competitive examination with Major Heath, an army crammer in Folkestone, a distinctive character with Kaiser Bill moustaches, and duly came top in the 1907 examination. Although he was by then a full lieutenant in the militia, he had to revert to second lieutenant on joining his preferred regular regiment, the Cameronians.
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Osbert Sitwell found it all arranged for him by his forceful father:
Even Henry, who usually appeared to possess a special insight into the workings of my father's mind, could not help me â¦Â Then, one morning, I found out: for I read, suddenly turning a page of the newspaper that had just arrived, that a 2nd Lieut. F. O. S. Sitwell had just been granted a commission in the Yeomanry, and was, from the Yeomanry, attached to a famous regiment of Hussars.
Osbert duly reported at Aldershot in the foggy winter of 1911â12, and his first shock was getting in to his mess kit, then worn for dinner on weeknights: officers relaxed in the down-market black tie for dinner at weekends.
Every part of the body had to be dragged and pinched and buttoned, and the boots were so tight that one could neither pull them on nor take them off, and remained for many minutes in a kind of seal-like flipper-limbo as to the feet. Only by the kindness and perseverance of Robbins â my new servant who, as I write, some thirty-three years later, is still with me â¦Â was I able to encase myself in this unaccustomed glory.
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In November 1912 he transferred to the regular army, and joined the Grenadier Guards at the Tower of London. Here he was interviewed by the regimental lieutenant colonel who seemed to be:
the improbable realisation of an ideal; an ideal cherished by a considerable number of contemporaries, including most officers and all the best tailors and haberdashers, hosiers, shoemakers and barbers in London, indeed in England â¦Â At a single glance it might be deemed possible by the inexperienced, such was the apparent sincerity and straightforwardness of his self-presentation, to know all about him, even to write a testimonial,
strong sense of duty, hard-playing (golf, cricket, polo), generous, brave, fine shot, adequate rider, man of the world, C. of E.
He remembered the great royal review of the Brigade of Guards on 28 April 1913 as âa final salute from an old order which was to perish, and constituted for those taking part in it â and how few survived the next two years! â a sort of fanfare, heralding the war'.
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T
here were part-time soldiers in Britain long before the foundation of the regular army in 1660, and the London's Honourable Artillery Company, once the Guild of St George and then part of the London Trained Bands, can trace its origins back to 1537. By Haldane's time there were three distinct strands in the volunteer and auxiliary forces of the Crown, and the Norfolk Committee, one of the bodies which had investigated British military performance in the Boer War, had concluded that between them they were neither fitted for taking the field against regular troops nor for providing a framework of future expansion. Yet part-time forces provided relatively large numbers of inexpensive manpower at a time when the regular army was under-recruited; they had powerful political support, most notably in the House of Lords, where militia colonels were firmly entrenched; and they seemed to offer a real prospect of widening military service so as to create that âreal national army' that Haldane sought.
The militia was founded on men's common law obligation to provide home defence, and was not obliged to serve abroad. Originally selected by ballot from lists of able-bodied men maintained by parish constables, its efficiency ebbed and flowed with the danger of invasion. It had spent much of the Napoleonic period embodied, that is called up for, full-time service, but in the nineteenth century it slipped back into its old torpor, its members turning out for infrequent training. In social composition the militia looked much like the regular army. Those who did not wish to serve could hire substitutes to do so on their behalf; militia officers were chosen by Lords Lieutenant of counties from the gentlemen of the shire, and there was a steady flow of both officers and men into the regular army.
The volunteers, first formed to meet the perceived threat of revolutionary France, had been revived by the invasion scare of the 1860s. They were wholly distinct from the militia. Members of volunteer units were required to purchase their own uniforms and much of their equipment. In many companies officers were elected, and they received their commissions from Lords Lieutenant rather than the monarch. This was Mr Pooter under arms, and as such a favourite butt of
Punch's
cartoonists. In 1899 the volunteer Lieutenant Tompkins, âexcellent fellow, but poor soldier', was asked by an inspecting general:
Now, Sir, you have your battalion in quarter column facing south. How would you get it into line, in the quickest possible way, facing north-east?
Well, Sir, do you know, that's what I have always wondered.
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Victorian volunteers were wonderfully bearded, favoured baggy uniforms of French grey, and took their marksmanship very seriously, spending weekends at Bisley ranges tending their muzzle-loading Enfield and new breech-loading Snider rifles and smelling powerfully of black powder, gun oil and cheroots. Regulars doubted whether these hirsute tradesmen were really soldiers at all, and had little doubt that they would not stand the onset of French infantry. Matters were not helped by the fact that the green-ribboned Volunteer Decoration, awarded for long service, carried the post-nominal initials VD, displayed with a pride which puzzled some regular soldiers.
The Yeomanry were different yet again. The first units of âgentlemen and yeomanry' had been raised in 1794. They were volunteers who needed to own, or at least have regular access to, a horse, and this socio-economic distinction made them useful to a government which lacked a police force. Yeomanry were involved in the Peterloo Massacre of 1819: part of what went wrong that day was occasioned by the poor training of men and horses, and part by the fact that the yeomanry were middle-class men with an animus against the âmob'. The Yeomanry, like the volunteers, saw a revival as a result of the invasion scare of the 1860s, and there were thirty-eight regiments in existence in 1899. Many yeomen volunteered, as Imperial Yeomanry, to fight in the Boer War, no less than 178 companies grouped in 38 battalions, and after the war more regiments were raised, some of them from urban areas with few real links to the horse-owning farmers of yesteryear.
Yeomanry regiments had little in common with volunteer battalions. Their officers could (and so often did) fit comfortably into regular cavalry regiments, and many of their troopers were scarcely less well-heeled. They carried out their fortnight's annual training in the grounds of the great houses of the land, where things were done in proper yeoman style, as a correspondent reported of the Hertfordshire Yeomanry in camp at Woodhall Park in 1903.
The camp is pleasantly situated on sloping ground in front of the mansion, and close to the River Beane â¦Â There are go bell tents, four men to each, though the officers, of course, have one to themselves. The tents all have boarded floors and folding iron bedsteads are provided. The baths and chests-of-drawers have this year been dispensed with, and if the men want a âdip' there are the inviting waters of the Beane close by â¦Â The stables are wood and canvas structures â¦Â Messrs Lipton are again catering for the officers and Sergeant Buck and his son Trooper Buck are again supplying the regimental mess. A Morris tube shooting range has been fixed up by Mr Buck for the amusement of the men and there are also a skittle alley, reading room, ping-pong board and other forms of recreation.
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The Middlesex Yeomanry enjoyed an even more elegant camp on the very eve of war, as Trooper S. F. Hatton remembered.
Reveille about 7.00, hot coffee by specially engaged cooks, the early grooming, water and feed. A two-course breakfast in the Troopers' mess â (the damned waiters are a bit slow this morning) â then dress for parade â¦Â A morning's drill or manoeuvring on the Downs, and back to camp, grooming, watering, feeding; the regimental band in full-dress uniform playing all the time during âstables'. A wash, change into mess kit â¦Â Luncheon, beautifully served by hired mess waiters on spotless linen â¦Â In the afternoon saddlery and equipment were given over to a batman to clean for the morning â it was customary for four or five Troopers to run a âcivvy' batman between them during the camp â and then change into grey flannels for the river, lounging, sleeping or anything else Satan found us to do.
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Sir John French had served as adjutant of the Northumberland Hussars, and his foreword to the 1924 regimental history is a vignette of a vanished age.
They were commanded by the Earl of Ravensworth, than whom no better sportsman ever lived. The officers were all good sportsmen and fine horsemen, and to those who can look back fifty years such names as Crookson, Straker, Henderson and Hunter will carry conviction of the truth of what I say. Two of them were Masters of Hounds, but my most intimate friend was Charley Hunter, a born leader of cavalry, whose skill in handing £50 screws over five-barred gates I shall never forget.
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Yeomanry officers were as active in both Houses of Parliament as they were on the hunting field. Major Winston Churchill MP was in the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, and Lieutenant Colonel the Hon. H. C. Henderson MP commanded the Berkshire Yeomanry. The Hon. Walter Guinness was Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds and a major in the Suffolk Yeomanry: when war broke out B Squadron, whose command he had just relinquished, âhad recently been taken over by Frank Goldsmith, who was Member of Parliament for the Stowmarket Division'.
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B Squadron was graced by Sir Cuthbert Quilter, MP for Sudbury. Brigadier General the Earl of Longford was to die commanding a Yeomanry brigade at Gallipoli.
Haldane's reforms swept up militia, volunteers and yeomanry. They turned militia battalions into Special Reserve battalions, which trained part-time just as the militia had, but would provide drafts to reinforce the regular battalions of their regiments in the event of war. Their composition, too, mirrored that of the militia: well-to-do officers and soldiers who could have fitted easily into the regular army. Some young men used the Special Reserve as a way of testing the water. George Ashurst was born in the Lancashire village of Tontine in 1895. âWe were a poor family,' he recalled. âMy father worked in a stone quarry about a mile from the village, and his wages were rather poor. To make things worse, he kept half of his wages for himself and spent them at the village pub.'
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He became a colliery clerk on 12/6d a week, but when he lost his job his father warned him that if he took on manual work âI will break your bloody neck.'
Ashurst went to a recruiting office to sign on. He said that he wanted to sign on for seven years, but the sergeant, kinder than many, replied: âWhen you get into the army you might not like it, so I will tell you what to do. Join the Special Reserve, which means that you will do six months in the barracks and seven years on the reserve, with just a month's camp every year.' He joined the 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, The Lancashire Fusiliers, and trained at the depot at Wellington Barracks, Bury. âI got on very well as a soldier,' he recalled,