A Ladies’ night in a modern mess shows just how things have changed. There is still a uniformed mess sergeant but most services are provided by civilian contractors for whom the lustre of King Joseph’s chamber-pot is not a matter of family pride. Some messes, often still managed by the team that ran them before contractorisation, make an extra effort to show off the place at its very best. But running a mess is a financial venture with a bottom line, its entertainments often hamstrung by the fact that many members would rather be at home with their families. By not appearing at an event that they know the mess committee has put such effort into organising they may themselves make it less of a success. Can the commanding officer himself fail to appear? But can his wife bear another duty dinner where even the most inspired placement will see her revolving in a confined constellation? All these factors – the increased age at which officers join the army, the backdated seniority that whisks them on to early captaincies, the challenge of becoming adjutant of a regular battalion, of getting on the right career courses and off on the right operational tours – tends to threaten Jack getting all work and no play, emerging as a dull boy. Can the most loving husband always steer the conversation away from the next tour in Afghanistan? How do wives – their husbands commissioned into the regiment the same day and who have soldiered together for twenty years – adjust to the fact that only one of them can command it?
Across the centuries, the problems confronting officers’ wives have been wholly eclipsed by those facing the wives of soldiers. Earlier we followed the orderly sergeant into a fetid barrack room, urging the orderly to open the window as soon as he could. At the far end of the room, given the slimmest modicum of privacy by blankets draped around beds, was the accommodation allocated to married soldiers, whose wives and children lived in the barrack room, taking in washing to earn a penny here and there: trying to dry a wash in barracks with small, smoky fires or stoves and no issued clothes-horses must have tried the patience of a saint. When William Lucas joined the Inniskilling Dragoons in 1846 his barrack room contained 18 bachelors, two married men and their wives, with seven or eight children. Nine years later Colonel Richard Gilpin told the House of Commons that he had just seen a barrack room with fifty men and one wife, the only concession to privacy being ‘a sort of curtain’ between two beds.
From 1685 a man was required to ask permission in order to marry at all. A fortunate soldier might be allowed to marry ‘on the strength’, with his wife allowed to live in barracks and draw a ration – she received one-half a soldier’s ration and a child one-quarter. Regulations varied as to the proportion of women that a regiment might carry ‘on the strength’. For much of the nineteenth century most sergeants and about 7 per cent of corporals and privates were married, with another 7 per cent or so wed, but not officially on their regiment’s married roll, and in consequence not entitled to rations or accommodation. Being married on the strength was narrowly tolerable, especially (and we can scarcely overstate the case) when working-class accommodation outside the army was so appalling. But being married ‘off the strength’ was infinitely worse, with a husband trying to arrange accommodation for his wife when the regiment was on the move, even within the United Kingdom. Even James Wolfe, capable of showing such a regard for the soldier, thought that any man who did such a thing should be proceeded against ‘with the utmost rigour’.
Even if a woman was married on the strength, there was no guarantee that she would be allowed to accompany the regiment if it went abroad. At the start of a campaign the authorities decided how many women could be taken: in 1758 ten women per company, for regiments sent to the West Indies. In 1801 the 95th was allowed only six women for every hundred men, sergeants’ wives included, and no woman with more than two children would be considered. Selection of wives who were to sail with their men was generally made at the point of embarkation by some simple form of ballot, and few issues aroused greater grief and fury than to see a couple separated, probably forever, at the quayside, with the women and any children trying to find their way, usually on foot and in all weathers, to the parish of her birth in the hope that she might receive some sort of relief. Private Buck Adams of the 7th Dragoon Guards called scenes liked this ‘a disgrace to the name of England’, and many agreed with him. Indeed, Wellington himself averred that ‘Nothing can be more disagreeable to the service than allowing the wives of soldiers to become chargeable to the parish.’3
Women were often smuggled aboard departing ships, and regimental authorities, painfully aware of the anguish of it all, were often not over-zealous in their search for stowaways. Indeed, there is clear evidence that the regiment regarded its regimental women as part of its moral responsibility, whatever the rules or regulations might say. A widow would remain ‘on the strength’ for up to three months after her husband’s death, and a regiment that could not find her a suitable replacement within that time was failing in its duty. Some women kept a discreet list of potential husbands to hand, with suitors moving up the roll (this was, after all, an organisation that set great store by seniority and patronage) as blade or bullet struck. Of course sex was involved. But a reliable washerwoman, good cook, honest stepmother or brave nurse had much to recommend her, and many Victorian soldiers would have understood Kipling’s warning that sometimes ‘love ain’t enough for a soldier.’ Sensible commanding officers knew that, in an army whose ancilliary services were still poorly developed, well-conducted women could make a real difference to the practical everyday life and, indeed, the whole character of a regiment.
There was a similar emphasis on ensuring that regimental orphans were not turned away, although accounts of teenage girls being swept off by rubicund old NCOs are less than edifying. George Waterfield of the 32nd tells us that when Colour Sergeant Blackford and his wife died in India the regiment brought up their daughter until she was 16, when she was married off to a 34-year-old colour sergeant. Waterfield thought that she had ‘always shown a preference for a smart young man in the band,’ but ‘I really think that some women in the army would marry the devil himself if he had a scarlet jacket with three stripes on the sleeve.’4 George Loy Smith, who was later to charge with the light brigade at Balaklava as a sergeant major, had just arrived in India as a young private and was taken off by a chum to Lady Moira’s orphanage, where he was ‘admitted to a large room containing a dozen soldiers’ orphans: “One or two of them were Europeans, the remainder half-caste, and so on, in fact there was every shade from white to nearly black.”’ Having obtained leave to marry, a soldier could simply make his choice. We conversed with them for a short time,’ wrote Smith, ‘and then left.’5
By the 1850s there were repeated complaints in both professional journals and the liberal press that the situation was wholly intolerable. One line was familiar: barrack life was dehumanising. A man ‘who is lodged with hundreds of his comrades in a barrack … has no family to provide for, is not in any sense his own master, is housed, clothed, fed and attended in sickness, under regulations over which he has no control’ could not be expected to have any sense of self-respect. How could he, in such circumstances, hope to become a respectable husband and father? Next, given the ‘inconvenience and distress’ inevitably arising when troops were sent abroad, proper accommodation had to be made for wives at home and in overseas garrisons: a man would fight harder if he knew that his family was safe.6 Until 1867 regiments were given a free hand as to the size of the married establishment at home, but thereafter this was defined centrally. By 1871, 33.5 per cent of officers were married, as opposed to 13.19 per cent of soldiers. At the same time 23.03 per cent of male civilians were married. In 1881, at the time of the short-service enlistment crisis, marriage regulations were made liberal in an effort to encourage privates to sign on in the hope of becoming NCOs, and NCOs to extend their service. All warrant officers, staff sergeants and colour sergeants, half of all sergeants over 24, and 12 per cent of rank and file over the age of 26 could now marry on the strength.
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bsp; Simply changing the regulations, of course, made no difference unless married quarters were actually provided. In 1852 a group of guards officers clubbed together to built a hostel for regimental families, and from 1860 the first married quarters were built. Thereafter, although there were all the familiar problems with sub-standard accommodation and the depredations of barrack-wardens, there was at least a clear recognition that looking after the soldier meant looking after his family too. From 1871 the wives of NCOs and men were given ‘separation allowance’, if they could not serve with their menfolk, and although this amounted to just 6d. a day for a wife and 2d. for each child under 14 it was another leap forward. There were repeated attempts to improve the quality of regimental and garrison schools. All sorts of employment could be found within barracks, usually carefully graduated so that a husband’s rank was roughly aligned with his wife’s job: the colour sergeant’s wife would happily see to the captain’s shirts, but it would not be right for her to contend with a private soldier’s flannel drawers. However, the fundamental niggle remained, as a soldier’s wife complained in 1870, ‘we can’t help marrying soldiers,’ she said, ‘but it is very hard indeed to be made to work for nothing. A labourer’s wife can go to church on Sunday, but the wives of a crack line regiment must go twice on a Sunday to clean barrack rooms.’7
AFTERWORD
AS WITH ALL the pictures from military life described in this book, the frame portraying the predicament of wives and families embraces huge changes during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Woven through this history are those features of army service that never change. Soldiers are still deployed on operations for long periods and, though they seem like mere interludes compared to the years of separation experienced during the two world wars, with such a small army another tour often looms on the horizon amidst the joys of homecoming. Soldiers still yearn for letters and parcels, even in these days of email, iPhones, and Skype, and what one soldier described in his diary during the First World War as the ‘dumb agony’ of goodbyes continues. As does the constant threat of bad news from the theatre of operations, and the consequent importance of a community spirit amongst those left behind, fostered through social and recreational activities. Paradoxically, these can be much more difficult to generate in a largely home-based army where spouses may no longer be following the drum, but pursuing careers as important to them as the soldiers’, and sometimes more lucrative, too.
We have come a long way from 1907, for example, when the funeral of a Royal Artillery captain, who died from tetanus poisoning after coming off his bicycle on a Blackheath road, could be reported in tedious detail by the Kent Argus without a single reference to the deceased soldier’s wife and three young sons. After the First World War, the Royal British Legion (RBL) was founded under the patronage of Field Marshal Earl Haig, in recognition of the enormous challenges involved in helping struggling ex-service families who had fallen on hard times. That the Legion and its fundraising is thriving in 2011 is a remarkable tribute to its founder, as well as reflecting the continuing need for such support in an era of Treasury parsimony – another striking thread of continuity, one might observe. These days, the ever generous British public could be excused for becoming frustrated by the seeming plethora of service fundraising organisations, all doing important work but sometimes needing more effective co-ordination. The Army Benevolent Fund, now retitled the Soldiers’ Charity, like the RBL raises money for people rather than for buildings or facilities, as does the Sailors, Soldiers and Air Force Association (SSAFA). With other charities, like Combat Stress and the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen’s Association (BLESMA), filling more specialist niches in the market, the achievements of new charities such as Help for Heroes – raising many millions of pounds to provide facilities for seriously wounded servicemen – are especially striking. Initially launched to raise funds for a swimming pool at Headley Court Rehabilitation Centre near Epsom, it is now financing further centres around the country to support wounded servicemen and women as they face the difficult process of changing direction in their lives.
Another major advance – which started in the 1980S with some government funding underpinning it – was the introduction of the Home Start concept to army garrisons. This professional support for young families relieves wives of regimental commanding officers and company/squadron/battery commanders of the sometimes awkward task of providing such advice. A young soldier or his wife is generally much more willing to approach a genuinely independent agency than to ‘wash dirty linen in public’ within the regimental family; the latter recourse sometimes even perceived as potentially ‘career threatening’. Allied to this development has been the growth in importance of the Army Families Federation, an organisation that does excellent work, lobbying both government and the chain of military command on behalf of families. Their influence over matters such as the provision and quality of garrison quartering, for example, has been significant. It is interesting to recall that when Brigadier and Mrs Gaffney were invited to study this whole subject in the mid-1980s, they found that those regiments most vociferously opposed to change – defending the traditional ‘regimental’ approach to these sensitive matters – were also amongst those with the worst track-record of family welfare problems.
It would not be fair to claim that the Government and Treasury have been entirely sitting on their hands in these endeavours, but it might be reasonable to judge that without voluntary and charitable work, the casualties of modern wars would feel not unlike those returning from the trenches in 1919 to the ‘land fit for heroes’. Richard’s rides on his beloved charger, Thatch, raised many thousands of pounds for the Soldiers’ Charity, so let him have the final word on this timeless topic, taken from his study of the British soldier on the Western Front, Tommy:
T. P. Marks remembered his train journey home with veterans ‘almost all of whom hoped to start a life of which they had dreamt in the trenches …’ The blighting of these aspirations struck many veterans as the cruellest aspect of their service. Many of those who came to look upon the war as waste and sham did so, not at the time of the armistice, but through the lens of penury and disillusionment that characterised the post-war years for all too many of them.
Today’s soldiers are professionally trained volunteers who engage in sometimes controversial wars, not volunteers or conscripts involved in wars of national survival. But a duty of care on the part of the government of the day remains unarguable. The covenant between the soldier and the nation must surely be sustained.
HEW PIKE
PICTURE SECTION
Three sons of Queen Victoria in full military dress: (from left) the Duke of Saxe Coburg, the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, and the Duke of Connaught. Though his own military service was not a success, Edward VII took a serious interest in military reform.
© Popperfoto/Getty Images
The young Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) in the garden of the chateau that was his base during the First World War. He was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards and had hoped to see action, which was, of course, out of the question, though he made strenuous efforts to get to the front.
© Mary Evans Picture Library
Clement Attlee, Labour politician and prime minister, in uniform. Major Attlee saw action at Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and France in the First World War.
© Illustrated London News Ltd./Mary Evans Picture Library
Writer, pamphleteer and soldier William Cobbett. After his discharge from the army in 1791 he set about prosecuting his former officers for corruption.
© Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Sir Redvers Henry Buller: soldier MP and commander-in-chief in the Second Boer War, 1900. Noted for his bombastic attitudes, he was awarded the VC in 1879.
© Hulton Archive/Getty Images
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, ‘the most illustrious British soldier of his age’. He successfully commanded coalition forces in the War of Spanish Succession – an early exa
mple of the soldier diplomat.
© Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Major John André, adjutant general in the British army during the American War of Independence.
Presented by the Trustees of the Estate of Miss Evelyn Syme. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, CA, USA © Bridgeman Art Library
Major André was caught and executed by the Americans as a spy. Though George Washington refused to allow him to be shot rather than hanged, he died bravely and became a popular hero.
© Peter Newark Military Pictures/ Bridgeman Art
Lieut. Gen. Sir Travers E. Clarke (front row, fourth from right) with H.R.H. Duke of York (centre) and officers at an inspection of RAOC Headquarters, in 1922. Clarke was promoted to quartermaster general in 1917. He was an extraordinary administrator who coped with the haemorrhaging of resources after the 1918 German offensive – the ‘Carnot of Haig’s armies’.
The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London (HU8 1798)
Lieutenant General Sir John Cowans (right) talking with a fellow officer. Cowans was QMG throughout the First World War – ‘the best quartermaster since Moses’. He had the capacity to think big and his ‘penchant for other men’s wives’ may have endeared him to Lloyd George.
National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (119) L.718
Field Marshal Sir William ‘Wully’ Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1916 to 1918. Robertson was the only man in British military history to rise through the ranks from private to field marshal.
Soldiers Page 72