Soldiers

by Richard Holmes

  8 Shephard Sergeant Major’s War p.74.

  9 Ronald Skirth Reluctant Tommy (London 2010) pp.90–1.

  10 David D. Chandler (ed.) John Marshall Deane: A Journal of Marlborough’s Campaigns … (London 1984) pp.7–8.

  11 Smith William Cobbett p.41.

  12 Quoted in Philip J. Haythornthwaite British Infantry of the Napoleonic Wars (London 1987) p.98.

  13 The Reluctant Tommy p.209.

  14 Shephard Sergeant Major’s War p.53.

  15 Andrew Cormack and Alan Jones (eds) The Journal of Corporal William Todd 1745–1763 (London 2001) p.136.

  16 Holmes Dusty Warriors p.333.

  17 William St Clair The Road To St Julien (Barnsley 2004) pp.186–7.

  18 Beevor British Army p.244.

  19 Richard Holmes War Walks (London 1996) p.176 from original text in Staff College Camberley’s Arras battlefield tour notes.

  20 George Hogan Oh! To be a Soldier! (Brancaster, Devon 1992) p.42. Once WO3s had disappeared completely, WO2s resumed the crown badge of rank, leaving the laurel-ringed crown for regimental quartermaster sergeants and some other warrant officers.

  21 Captain Owen Rutter The Song of Tiadatha (London 1921) p.16. Tiadatha (‘Tired Arthur’) sent up Longfellow’s Hiawatha, and was written during its author’s service in Salonika.

  22 John Jackson Private 12768: Memoir of a Tommy (London 2004) pp.50, 78.

  23 Beattie Ordinary Soldier pp.61–2.

  24 George Loy Smith A Victorian RSM (Tunbridge Wells 1987) pp.93, 152.

  25 Quoted in The Marquess of Anglesey A History of British Cavalry 8 vols (1973–1998) II p.383.

  26 ‘Extracts from General Routine Orders issued to the British Armies in France … Part 1 Adjutant General’s Branch’ 1 January 1917.

  27 Jones Companion I p.126.

  28 The National Archives WO 71/224, edited on Carole Divall’s website (caroledivall.co.uk), accessed 28 June 2009.

  29 Beattie Ordinary Soldier pp.73, 301.

  30 Anglesey Cavalry II p.367.

  31 James Churchill Dunn The War The Infantry Knew (London 1987) pp.32, 92, 183, 227, 468, 580.

  32 J. M. Bourne Who’s Who in World War One (London 2001) p.64.

  33 ‘Extracts from General Routine Orders issued to the British Armies in France … Part II Quartermaster General’s Branch’ 1 January 1917.

  34 Field Service Pocket Book 1914 (with amendments to 1916) p.25.

  Chapter 5: To Observe and Obey

  1 William Bray (ed) The Diary of John Evelyn Esq FRS (London 1890) p.400.

  2 Quoted in Barney White-Spunner Horse Guards (London 2008) p.261.

  3 White-Spunner Horse Guards p.262.

  4 Matthew Clay A Narrative of the Battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, with the Defence of Hougoumont (Bedford ND) pp.14–15.

  5 ‘Lieutenant Colonel Sir James Macdonell’ in Christopher Summerville Who Was Who at Waterloo Harlow 2007) pp.252–256. There are several spellings of Sir James’s name: Wellington called him ‘MacDonald’ in his Waterloo dispatch.

  6 I am indebted to Dr John Houlding not only for these two examples, but for so much other detail on eighteenth-century officers.

  7 Major Charles Jones The Regimental Companion 3 Vols (London 1811) I p.xxvii.

  8 Field Marshal Lord Wolseley The Story of a Soldier’s Life 2 Vols (London 1903) pp.199–200.

  9 Major H. Daly (ed.) The Memoirs of Sir Henry Dermot Daly (London 1905) p.246.

  10 Quoted in Lieutenant Colonel W. B. R. Neave-Hill ‘Brevet Rank’ in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research Vol 48 (1970) p.91.

  11 Ibid. p.92.

  12 Major J. A. Scouller The Armies of Queen Anne (Oxford 1966) p.75.

  13 Quoted in Neave-Hill ‘Brevet Rank’ p.88.

  14 Brig Gen James Edmonds Official History of the War: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1914 2 Vols (London) I p.188.

  15 Neave-Hill ‘Brevet Rank’ p.100.

  16 I am grateful to my old friend Stephen Wood for early sight of a draft journal article on Pigot.

  17 Carver Out of Step p.157.

  18 Ibid. p.252.

  19 Ibid. p.192.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Ibid. p.227.

  22 Army Rumour Service 29 December 2005, accessed 21 January 2009.

  Chapter 6: Weekend Warriors

  1 Holmes Dusty Warriors pp.346–7.

  2 Ibid. p.349.

  3 Lieutenant Colonel J. K. Dunlop The Problems and Responsibilities of the Territorial Army (London 1935).

  4 Ian F. W. Beckett Territorials: A Century of Service (London 2008) p.3.

  5 Roger B. Manning An Apprenticeship in Arms (Oxford 2006) p.126.

  6 Robert Ward Animadversions of Warre … (London 1639) p.30.

  7 ‘The Vindication of Richard Atkyns’ in Military Memoirs: The Civil War (London 1967) pp.12, 19.

  8 Manning Apprenticeship p.302.

  9 Beckett Territorials p.18.

  10 Quoted in Victor A. Hatley Northamptonshire Militia Lists 1777 (Kettering 1973) p.x.

  11 Manual of Military Law 1914 p.171.

  12 Detail from the admirable Worcestershire Regiment (29th/36th of Foot) website.

  13 Quoted in Michael Glover Wellington’s Army (Newton Abbot, Devon 1977) p.33.

  14 Peter Dennis The Territorial Army 1907–1940 (Woodbridge, Suffolk 1987) p.8.

  15 Beckett Territorials p.8.

  16 The Spectator 20 July 1711.

  17 Howard Pease The History of the Northumberland Hussars (London 1924) p.viii.

  18 W. B. and G. D. Giles Yeoman Service (Tunbridge Wells 1985). The Duke of Westminster wrote the introduction to this collection of yeomanry cartoons.

  19 Beckett Territorials pp.19–20.

  20 Les Carlyon Gallipoli (Sydney 2001) p.483.

  21 Beckett Territorials p.72.

  22 Manual of Military Law 1914 p.208.

  23 Beckett Territorials pp.122–3.

  24 David French Raising Churchill’s Army (Oxford 2001) p.53.

  25 Quoted in Beckett Territorials p.124.

  26 Statistics from Miles Jebb The Lord Lieutenants and their Deputies (Chichester 2007) passim. Jebb concludes that lord lieutenants is indeed the correct plural for these worthies, and I follow his sage advice here.

  27 Jebb Lord Lieutenants p.150.

  28 Beckett Territorials p.261.

  PART II

  Chapter 7: A National Army: 1660–1914

  1 French Churchill’s Army p.274.

  2 Quoted in Joachim Stocqueler A Personal History of the Horse Guards (London 1873) p.120.

  3 Military History of Ireland p.6.

  4 The Memoirs of Sir Lowry Cole (London 1934) p.3.

  5 Nigel Nicolson Alex (London 1973) p.12.

  6 David Fraser Alanbrooke (London 1982) p.39.

  7 B. H. Liddell Hart (ed.) The Letters of Private Wheeler 1808–1828 (Adlestrop, Gloucestershire 1951) p.64.

  8 Maj H. Daly (ed.) The Memoirs of General Sir Henry Dermot Daly (London 1905) p.276.

  9 Paul Dukes ‘The First Scottish Soldiers in Russia’ in Grant A. Simpson (ed.) The Scottish Soldier Abroad (Edinburgh 1992) p.49.

  10 Childs Army of Charles II p.31.

  11 Ibid. p.37.

  12 Ibid. p.44.

  13 Latham Pepys p.320.

  14 Alington to Lord Arlington (sic) in SP 78/137 f.142.

  15 Quoted in White-Spunner Horse Guards p.111.

  16 John Childs The British Army of William III (Manchester 1987) p.16.

  17 William Bray (ed.) The Diary of John Evelyn Esq (London 1890) p.534.

  18 Charles M. Clode The Military Forces of the Crown 2 Vols (London 1869) II p.602.

  19 James W. Hayes ‘The Social and Professional Background of the Officers of the British Army 1714–1763’ (Unpublished MA thesis, University of London, 1956) p.61.

  20 Alison McBrayne (ed.) The Letters of Captain John Orrock (London 2008) p.115.

  21 T. A. Heathcote (ed.) The Indian Mutiny Letters o
f Colonel H. P. Pearson (Leeds 2008) pp.116, 119, 122.

  22 Dr Thomas Fletcher to William Bagshawe, 7 January 1740 in Bagshawe p.35.

  23 Samuel Bagshawe to Dr Thomas Fletcher 7 February 1746 in Bagshawe p.48.

  24 Samuel Bagshawe to Brigadier General Edward Richbell 13 October 1747 in Bagshawe p.58.

  25 Captain Thomas Levett to Samuel Bagshawe 3 November 1747 in Bagshawe p.63.

  26 Lieutenant Archibald Grant to Samuel Bagshawe 4 May 1749 p.87.

  27 Samuel Bagshawe to Viscount Barrington, 5 May 1758, 5 May 1758 in Bagshawe p.185.

  28 Viscount Barrington to Samuel Bagshawe, 11 May 1758 in Bagshawe p.186.

  29 Lieutenant Francis Flood to Samuel Bagshawe, 24 January 1761, in Bagshawe pp.232–3.

  30 Captain Alexander Joass to Samuel Bagshawe, 25 August 1761, in Bagshawe pp.242–3.

  31 Lieutenant Francis Flood to Samuel Bagshawe 15 October 1761 in Bagshawe p.245.

  32 Lieutenant Francis Flood to Samuel Bagshawe 28 February 1762 in Bagshawe pp.251–2.

  33 Lieutenant Francis Flood to the Earl of Halifax, 21 May 1762, in Bagshawe pp.262–3.

  34 Barrington to Charles Gould, Judge Advocate General, for onward transmission to the Board of General Officers, 8 February 1766, in Barrington Papers pp.297–9.

  35 Orrock p.123.

  36 Quoted in Mark Frederick Odintz ‘The British Officer Corps 1754– 1783’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1988) p.137.

  37 Orrock pp.55–6.

  38 Pearson p.148.

  39 The Marquess of Anglesey (ed.) Little Hodge: Being Extracts from the Diaries of Colonel Edward Cooper Hodge … (London 1971) p.57.

  40 Pearson p.70.

  41 Orrock p.85.

  42 Quoted in James W. Hayes ‘The Social and Professional Background of the Officers of the British Army’ (Unpublished MA thesis, London University, 1956) p.42.

  43 Peebles’ American War pp.113, 220.

  44 Sir William Howe’s order-book, consulted when in the collection of the Joint Services Command and Staff College, now in the British Library.

  45 Bryan Perrett A Hawk at War: The Peninsular War Reminiscences of General Sir Thomas Brotherton (London 1986) p.28.

  46 Stephen Brumwell The Paths of Glory (London 2009) p.319.

  47 Quoted in Carl G. Slater ‘The Problem of Purchase Abolition in the British Army 1856–1862’ in The South African Military History Society’s Military History Journal Vol 4 No 6.

  48 The best account of this puzzling period is in T. A. Heathcote The Military in British India (Manchester 1995) p.168. Dr Heathcote served for many years as curator of the Sandhurst Collection.

  49 Quoted in Harries-Jenkins Victorian Army p.137.

  50 Capt Gregory Fontenot ‘The Modern Major General: Patterns in the Careers of the British Army Major Generals on the Active List at the time of the Sarajevo Assassinations’ (Unpublished MA dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1980) pp.47–8. This survey deals with the 91 general officers whose educational background could be determined.

  51 Quoted in Harries-Jenkins Victorian Army p.143.

  52 David G. Chandler (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford 1994) p.193.

  53 Franklin L. Ford Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (New York 1965) p.138.

  54 Christopher Duffy The Army of Frederick the Great (Newton Abbot 1974) p.27.

  55 Barrington Papers pp.290–2.

  56 Odintz ‘British Officer Corps’ p.182.

  57 John Seed ‘From “middling sort” to middle class in late eighteenth-and early ninetenth-century England’ in M. L. Bush (ed.) Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe since 1500 (Harlow 1992) p.115.

  58 Quoted in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffrey A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge 1996) p.7.

  59 P. E. Razzell ‘Social Origins of Officers in the Indian and British Home Army’ British Journal of Sociology XIV Sept 1963 pp.248–60.

  60 Hansard 3rd Series Vol 136 Col 1362, 8 Feb 1855.

  61 E. B. de Fonblanque Treatise on the Administration and Organisation of the British Army (London 1958) pp.236–7.

  62 My analysis of the officers of the 32nd Foot and of the 1858 Probate Index relies on Donald Breeze Mendham Huffer ‘The Infantry Officers of the Line of the British Army 1815–1868’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1995).

  63 Gywn Harries-Jenkins The Victorian Army in Society (London 1977) p.27.

  64 Wolseley to Louisa Wolseley 7 February 1874 in Wolseley and Ashanti p.391.

  65 Wolseley and Ashanti pp.39, 322.

  66 Margaret R. Hunt The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the Family in England 1680–1780 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1996) pp.51–2.

  67 Hayes ‘Social and Professional Background’ p.80.

  68 Houlding Fit for Service p.105.

  69 Hayes ‘Social and Professional Background’ p.66.

  70 Mark Urban Fusiliers: Eight Years with the Redcoats in North America (London 2007) pp.133, 137.

  71 Major General Sir John Adye Soldiers and Others I have Known (London 1925) p.15.

  72 Houlding Fit for Service p.105.

  73 Hayes ‘Social and Professional Background’ p.101.

  74 Quoted in Trevor Royle Death before Dishonour: The True Story of Fighting Mac (Edinburgh 1992) p.65.

  75 Ibid. p.103.

  76 Ibid. pp.124–6; Manual of Military Law 1914 p.395.

  77 Ibid. pp.160, 162.

  78 His biographer David Rooney argues, in Mad Mike: A Life of Brigadier Michael Calvert (Barnsley 1997), that he was convicted by false witness.

  79 Quoted in Edward Spiers The Army and Society 1815–1914 (London 1980) p.5.

  80 Private to Field Marshal pp.29–30.

  81 Quoted in Anglesey British Cavalry III p.86.

  82 Quoted in Anglesey British Cavalry IV p.473.

  83 Pearson Letters pp.123, 131.

  84 Christopher Hibbert (ed.) The Recollections of Rifleman Harris (London 1985) pp.67–8.

  85 Quoted in Huffer ‘Infantry Officers’ pp.129–30.

  86 Pearson Letters p.77.

  87 W. E. Cairns Social Life in the British Army (London 1900) pp.xvi, 14.

  88 Private to Field Marshal p.78.

  89 Ibid. pp.36, 41.

  90 Quoted in Harries-Jenkins Victorian Army p.98.

  91 Cairns Social Life p.36.

  92 Quoted in Anglesey British Cavalry p.86.

  93 Mole pp.354–5.

  94 Quoted in Anglesey British Cavalry p.86.

  95 F. H. Maitland Hussar of the Line (London 1951) p.66.

  96 Finn, Henry (Harry) (1852–1924) in Australian Dictionary of Biography – Online Edition.

  Chapter 8: Temporary Gentlemen: 1914–45

  1 Private to Field Marshal p.129.

  2 Old Wufrunians Died in World War One, accessed 20 March 2010.

  3 ‘Herbert Victor Lee 1887–1916’ privately printed booklet 2001.

  4 John Oakes and Martin Parsons Old School Ties: Educating for Empire and War (Peterborough 2001) pp.196–7.

  5 Martin and Mary Middlebrook The Somme Battlefields (London 1991) p.185.

  6 VC Citation in London Gazette 18 November 1915.

  7 John Jackson Private 12768: Memoir of a Tommy (Stroud 2004) p.48.

  8 Bernard Lewis Swansea Pals (Barnsley 2004) pp.32–42.

  9 K. W. Mitchinson and I. McInnes Cotton Town Comrades (London 1993) pp.39–40.

  10 Second Lieutenant James Mackie to his parents in Answering the Call (Eggleston, Durham 1999) p.7.

  11 Herbert Buckmaster Buck’s Book (London ND) pp.25, 117–8, 120, 122, 183.

  12 Cecil M. Slack (ed.) Grandfather’s Adventures in the Great War (Ilfracombe 1977) p.13.

  13 Robert Bridgeman Memoirs (privately printed 2007) p.31.

  14 Tonie and Valmai Holt Poets of the Great War (Barnsley 1999) p.132.

  15 John Blacker (ed.) Have You Forgotten Yet? The War Memoi
rs of C. P. Blacker (Barnsley 2000) pp.36–7.

  16 Cameron Stewart (ed.) A Very Unimportant Officer: Life and Death on the Somme and at Passchendaele (London 2008) pp.23, 24, 25–6.

  17 Very Unimportant Officer p.169.

  18 Capt J. C. Dunn The War the Infantry Knew 1914–1919 (London 1987) p.109.

  19 Quoted in Charles Messenger Call to Arms (London 2005) p.321.

  20 Bruce Rossor (ed.) A Sergeant Major’s War (Ramsbury 1987) pp.136, 138, 141.

  21 John Lucy There’s a Devil in the Drum (London 2000) pp.352–4.

  22 George Ashurst My Bit (Ramsbury 1987) pp.137, 139–40.

  23 A. Duff Cooper Old Men Forget (London 1953) pp.63–4, 66, 69.

  24 Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War 1914–1920 (London 1922) p.235.

  25 Military Effort p.707.

  26 Bridgeman Memoirs p.33.

  27 Anne Nason (ed.) For Love and Courage (London 2008) pp.106–7.

  28 Hubert Essame The Battle for Europe 1918 (London 1972) pp.12–13, 107–8, 111, 179–81.

  29 Sidney Rogerson Twelve Days (London 2006) pp.22–3.

  30 Rogerson Twelve Days pp.60–1.

  31 Love and Courage pp.349, 354–5.

  32 Desmond Young All the Best Years (New York 1961) p.62.

  33 Alan Thomas A Life Apart (London 1968) p.67.

  34 Quoted in Gary Sheffield Leadership in the Trenches (London 2000) p.103.

  35 Ibid. p.105.

  36 Ibid. p.109.

  37 The War the Infantry Knew p.309.

  38 Keir Soldier’s Eye-View pp.15, 18, 25, 131.

  39 Charles Farrell Reflections 1939–1945 (London 2000) pp.13–14.

  40 Captain J. R. Kennedy This, Our Army (London 1935) pp.38, 87, 110, 139.

  41 Bridgeman Memoirs p.119.

  42 Lt R. D. Foster ‘Promotion by Merit in the Army’ Journal of the Royal United Services Institute No 25 (1925) p.685.

  43 Mays Fall Out The Officers pp.51, 92.

  44 Quoted in French Churchill’s Army p.73.

  45 J. D. A. Stainton Memoirs (privately printed 1988) pp.98–9.

  46 Robin Schlaefli Emergency Sahib (London 1992) pp.14–15.

  47 Norman Craig The Broken Plume: A Platoon Commander’s Story (London 1982) pp.20, 4–5.

  48 Kersh Clean, Bright p.59.

  49 French Churchill’s Army pp.73–4.

  50 Kersh Clean, Bright p.76.

  51 Geoffrey Picot Accidental Warrior (London 1993) p.23.