Breakdown

by Taylor Downing

  In Sheffield, the initiative to form a battalion came from two university students who were attending a course of summer lectures on the war. Recruitment began in the first week of September and was specifically directed at university students, ex-public schoolboys, lawyers and clerks. On 10 September the volunteers formally attested; so many friends wanted to stay together that, as far as possible, the university students, teachers and bankers were assigned to one company, the tradesmen and mining engineers to another and the remaining clerks, teachers, accountants and professionals to two further companies. Many of the young elite of the city and its surrounding districts marched off on 15 September to start their training. The unit eventually became the 12th Battalion The York and Lancaster Regiment.13

  In Hull, the local Lord Lieutenant, Lord Nunburnholme, printed posters calling for ‘clerks and others’ to join a new battalion. This became known as the Hull Commercials. It was followed by two more battalions, the Hull Tradesmen and, later in the month, the Hull Sportsmen and Athletes. A couple of months afterwards a fourth battalion was raised in the town; for want of an alternative name, they were known simply as ‘T’others’. The four battalions were eventually designated the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th Battalions East Yorkshire Regiment.

  Several influences came together in this fever of recruiting across much of the country in late August and September 1914. The news from France suggested, within the limitations of military censorship, retreat and panic among the units fighting at Mons. Stories of glory and individual heroism were many, but it was clear to most patriots that Britain’s small army would soon be overwhelmed by the vastly greater German forces unless more men rushed to the colours. Moreover, during September came stories of terrible atrocities committed by German soldiers on Belgian civilians. There was real evidence of German violence against the civilian population, who were being encouraged to act as saboteurs behind advancing German lines. The Germans thought this civilian insurgency was a violation of the rules of war. But the genuine evidence was magnified enormously by a press that soon began to speak of the ‘wicked’ or the ‘evil’ Hun.14

  If this provided the motive for many young men to come forward so eagerly, it was the strongly competitive sense of civic pride that made them want to stay together within the military in the associations they were used to. Although the drive to form the Pals battalions came from the local mayors and city elders, eager to show that their locality was as patriotic as the next, it was all approved from above. Battalions were only recruited when they had direct War Office approval, and often this came from Kitchener himself. Aware of the need to get more men into the army as soon as possible, he had realised by the end of August that the existing mechanisms were not up to it. The formation of the Pals battalions by local groupings neatly got around this limitation, while utilising some of the same energies that had gone into the Territorial Force. But the Pals battalions were instead part of Kitchener’s New Army, to be trained and readied as he wished.

  All this frenzied activity required funding. Here again, local sources enthusiastically came up with what was needed. Not only did young men come forward to enlist but private companies and wealthy individuals provided the funds for clothing, equipping and feeding the volunteers. Often they also made offers of drill halls and open spaces for the men to begin their training. In Manchester the organising committee offered to find £15,000 but in a fortnight had raised £26,701 – the largest donation of £7,000 coming from the Gas Department of the city corporation and £1,000 having been given by a wealthy local businessman.15 In Birmingham local companies and private individuals raised £17,000 towards the cost of recruiting their local Pals battalions. In mid-September, Kitchener made it a condition that Pals battalions would only be approved if they could raise their own initial funding. These new battalions almost became private citizens’ armies. Today it seems extraordinary that so much private charity was offered to fund an official policy of military recruitment at a time of war. But this was, in effect, the last hurrah of the Victorian attitude of self-help in which people did not turn to the state but used their own resources to solve a problem. No doubt the older men were as happy in their giving as the younger men were in stepping forward to enlist. Eventually, in the summer of 1915, the War Office repaid most of the sums that had been raised locally but in some cases wealthy local figures refused to take the money – meaning they had, in effect, personally subsidised national War Office activity.

  Recruiting rallies took place across the nation during the month of September. Behind huge banners portraying slogans like ‘Duty’ and ‘Your Brothers Are Calling You’ soldiers would march and bands would play. Anthems were sung and speakers recited stories of the dreadful atrocities being committed in Belgium while invoking the nobility of Britain’s cause. Pre-war divisions were put aside. Trade union leaders and suffragettes pleaded with men to take up the good fight. Music hall stars sang songs to encourage men to go to war. Women were as eager as their men folk to see the army grow; mothers encouraged sons, sisters told brothers to join up. Indeed, it was during this month that some women started to hand out white feathers in the street to men of enlistment age who were spotted wearing civilian clothes. It might seem strange now that so many men should be so enthusiastic about heading off to the carnage of war, and that so many women should cheer to see their husbands, sons and brothers marching off to their deaths. The fact was, of course, that apart from a tiny number of visionaries who predicted the scale of the destruction that would follow, most people had no sense of what a modern European war would be like. It was assumed that huge armies would fight a couple of battles, the fleets would engage each other at sea, some ground would be occupied and then everything would quickly be over. With so little awareness of the destructive capacity of modern artillery, machine guns, aircraft and bombs, there was barely any dread of war; instead there was real enthusiasm for it, and a desire among the young to be part of it before it was all over.

  A photographic appeal appeared on the front cover of the magazine London Opinion on 5 September showing a portrait of a moustachioed and uniformed Kitchener pointing his index finger directly out at the viewer above the slogan ‘Your Country Needs You’. The image had been designed by Alfred Leete, a commercial graphic artist who had created adverts for brands like Rowntrees, Bovril and Guinness, as well as for the London Underground. Now he brought successful advertising techniques to the business of building a new army for war. In answer to thousands of requests the magazine offered postcard-sized reproductions for 1s 4d per hundred. At the end of September the design was first issued as a poster. It was soon reproduced in huge numbers and in many variations. Before long, Kitchener was staring out from thousands of hoardings, shop windows, buses, trams, railway carriages and vans all over the country. It has become one of the most famous and enduring images of the war, although by the time it appeared as a poster recruitment had already passed its peak.16

  All over Britain it was the professional and commercial classes who were the first to respond to the recruitment campaign, along with many clerks who in the early decades of the twentieth century formed a growing community of white collar, lower-middle-class workers in every office and warehouse.17 Forty per cent of those eligible joined up – perhaps representing a desire to escape from the monotonous routines of office life. Most saw war not only as a duty but also as an adventure, an opportunity for self-discovery and to attain an intensity of living that was impossible in peacetime. As Rupert Brooke put it,

  Now God be thanked who has matched us with His hour,

  And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.18

  About 30 per cent of those eligible who worked in manufacturing – including the railways and transport industries – joined up, although among this group there were also many unemployed, who were often the first to come forward. But not everyone responded with equal vigour. In rural areas the figure was much lower at about 22 per cent.19 Here there were no masses of unemploy
ed, and communities were far less eager to see their young men disappear. Who would take on their tasks of harvesting and tilling the soil? Animals would still have to be fed and cared for; dairy cattle would still need milking twice a day. Women might take over work in offices, shops and factories but did not at this stage take on heavy, physical farm labour. Also, as distance from urban conurbations increased, the pull of civic pride became less strong. In the rural areas of Devon, Somerset and Dorset, for example, the response rate as a proportion of eligible men was roughly one-quarter that in the industrial cities of northern England. Further west in Cornwall, the response rate was half of that again.20

  Scotland has traditionally provided some of the bravest soldiers and toughest regiments in the British army. In Glasgow, three new Pals battalions were formed. The first consisted almost entirely of drivers, conductors, mechanics and workers from the corporation’s tramways; the second largely from members of the city’s Boys’ Brigade; the third was organised by the Chamber of Commerce from the city’s business houses, from students at the Glasgow Technical College and from old boys of the Glasgow Academy, the ‘Glasgow Commercials’. The three battalions were later designated the 15th, 16th and 17th Highland Light Infantry. Between them they would live up to the long Scottish tradition of winning glory for the British army.

  In the north of Ireland, there existed before the war a Protestant army known as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). This was 90,000 strong, well drilled and armed. It had been formed to resist Home Rule for Ireland, what was called ‘Rome Rule’, and by the end of July 1914, civil war appeared inevitable. But the coming of war in Europe transformed the situation. Sir Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists, felt he had no option but to pledge the province’s loyalty to the union. Carson was reluctant to offer the UVF to Kitchener’s New Army until he was certain the government would drop plans for Home Rule, but as news arrived of successive defeats and disasters, in early September the Ulster Unionist Council decided to offer 35,000 volunteers to the War Office. ‘We do not seek to purchase terms by selling our patriotism,’ Carson declared at a large meeting in Belfast. And, in a great gesture of solidarity, he went on, to frantic cheers, ‘England’s difficulty is not Ulster’s opportunity; England’s difficulty is Ulster’s difficulty.’ He encouraged the Volunteers to sign up en masse, saying, ‘Go and help to save your country and to save your Empire … Go and win honour for Ulster and for Ireland.’21 Five battalions were formed from the UVF in Belfast; two in County Down; two from Antrim; one each from Tyrone and Derry; one from Donegal and Fermanagh; and one in Armagh, Monaghan and Cavan.22 They were fully equipped with uniforms and boots at the expense of the UVF and immediately began training under canvas in fields outside Belfast.23 Together, these battalions formed a single division, the 36th (Ulster) Division, one of the first in Kitchener’s New Army.

  However, much of the recruitment into the Pals battalions depended upon a local figure with a strong sense of leadership and an ability to inspire. No one fitted this bill more powerfully than Hugh Cecil Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale, one of the country’s great eccentrics. Known as ‘England’s greatest sporting gentleman’, Lowther had left Eton after only two years to concentrate on his sporting passions of hunting and horse riding. In 1882, aged only twenty-five, he suddenly inherited the earldom of Lonsdale on the death of his elder brother. Overnight, he became one of the richest men in Britain, owning two castles in Cumberland and Westmorland (today’s Cumbria), two houses in London, vast estates in the north-west and the Whitehaven collieries running out under the sea off the west Cumberland coast. Now he had the financial resources to back his hobbies, one of which was boxing. Lonsdale claimed that he had once beaten the American, John L. Sullivan, the heavyweight champion of the world, and on this basis became chairman of the Pelican Club, the aristocrats’ sports club. Under Lonsdale’s lead, the Marquess of Queensbury laid down a set of rules that became the governing regulations for the sport. Lonsdale later became the first president of the National Sporting Club and he created and provided the ‘Lonsdale Belt’ as a trophy for boxing champions.

  In September 1914 he turned to a new sport, and put up posters across his vast estate calling on men to show their patriotism. Trimmed with his racing colours of red and yellow, the posters screamed ‘Are you a Man or Are you a Mouse? Are you a man who will for ever be handed down to posterity as a Gallant Patriot … [or] as a rotter and a coward? If You Are a Man Enlist Now’. Miners and shepherds, farmers and estate workers came forward and formed their own Pals battalion, known as ‘the Lonsdales’. Two companies were recruited in Carlisle from north Cumberland, a third in Workington from west Cumberland and a fourth in Kendal from Westmorland. The noble earl equipped them with uniforms, appointed their officers and ordered ammunition at his own expense. Before long they were drilling on one of his racecourses outside Carlisle. It took some time for the War Office to catch up, and it was not until December that they were officially recognised as the 11th Battalion The Border Regiment. But they kept their nickname and were ever afterwards widely known as the Lonsdales.24

  Recruiting the 11th Borders was unusually a combined urban and rural affair. The roll of warrant officers, NCOs and other ranks who joined the battalion shows that in addition to estate workers and labourers from the Lonsdale estate, whom Lonsdale as their landlord no doubt encouraged to join, the volunteers came from a broad range of backgrounds, typical of a region which included large rural and farming communities and several busy industrial and market towns. There were dozens of colliers from Workington, steel workers from Seaton, weavers from Cumberland, farm labourers and those who listed themselves as ‘farm servants’ from every small village and hamlet in the area. There were clerks from every office and warehouse. It is difficult reading through the roll to see how the shops of the main market towns could have coped with the loss of so many drapers, hatters, grocers, butchers and bakers who responded to the call to arms. Plasterers, blacksmiths, tanners, coopers, wheelwrights, French polishers, chauffeurs, police constables and school teachers all rushed to join up. In addition there were those who listed their occupations as ‘Fish Fryer’, ‘Skin Sorter’, ‘Cycle Mechanic’ or ‘Groom’, and two volunteers who put themselves down as ‘Hotel Boots and Waiter’ – presumably local hotel employees who in addition to waiting at table also cleaned the clients’ boots.

  Carlisle itself had a famous biscuit factory, Carr’s, many of whose workers joined up, and was a town served by seven separate railway companies, each operating with its own engine sheds and engineering works. Several volunteers in the autumn of 1914 were listed as engine drivers, firemen, shunters, signalmen and porters, many proudly listing the companies for which they had worked – including the Midland Railway Company, the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Caledonian Railway. Those who joined the Lonsdales in the autumn of 1914 formed a perfect cross-section of young, male Edwardian society in a prosperous, mixed region of north-west England.25

  Pals battalions were formed from Cambridge to Grimsby, and from Accrington to Barnsley. Groups of sportsmen and old boys from the public schools formed four battalions known as the University and Public Schools Brigade, designated the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st Battalions Royal Fusiliers. By the end of September nearly 750,000 men had volunteered, including 200,000 who had joined the Territorial Force despite Kitchener’s encouragement to build his New Army. By the end of the year, 134 Pals battalions had been formed.

  The rank-and-file soldiers of the regular army in the nineteenth century did not have a good reputation. Recruits were usually from the unskilled, lowest labouring or working classes, from industrial slums or the impoverished countryside. The vast majority were unemployed who probably joined up to get decent food and lodging, along with regular if basic wages.26 Men would spend years away, abroad or on the other side of the country, with little chance of family life or of leading a ‘genteel’ existence. Soldiers were usually perceived as being rough, tough and drunk
en, and many had difficulty with writing and reading. Even Wellington described the men who had delivered him victory at Waterloo as ‘the scum of the earth’. The German ambassador described the British army in 1901 during the Boer War as ‘the dregs of the population’.27 This had certainly begun to change during the Edwardian era and the Territorial Force was far more middle class in its make-up than the regular army. But it was the men who flooded into the Pals battalions who utterly transformed the army’s image. The proportion that came from the lower middle classes was far higher than in the regular army; and the middle classes were proportionately far more numerous in the New Army than in the nation as a whole.

  Of course, the key feature of the Pals battalions was the simple but fundamental fact that they were made up of volunteers. Whether urban office clerk, rural farm worker, miner or railway employee, everyone had chosen to join Kitchener’s army. They were keen to learn, willing to obey and eager to serve. They wanted to become soldiers, get out to France and do their bit. They did not boast about what they had done, they just got on with it in an understated, British sort of way. They all had hopes and aspirations for the future: for jobs, for promotions, for friendships and love affairs – some might have been thinking of marriage or of starting a family – but all this was willingly put on hold while they went off to serve their country. Lloyd George summed up the popular view of the new armies when he wrote that they included ‘the pick of the youth of the country in physique, brain and character. In every sphere of life all that was best among the young men of the land joined the Army.’28

  Rudyard Kipling, one of the greatest writers in Edwardian Britain, toured the nation to observe these men drilling in barrack squares and training in country estates and was deeply moved by what he saw. With his own literary finesse he summed the men up: ‘Pride of city, calling, class and creed imposes standards and obligations which hold men above themselves at a pinch, and steady them through long strain. One meets it in the New Army at every turn … The more one sees of the camps the more one is filled with facts and figures of joyous significance, which will become clearer as the days lengthen; and the less one hears of the endurance, decency, self-sacrifice, and utter devotion which have made, and are hourly making, this wonderful new world. The camps take this for granted – else why should any man be there at all? He might have gone on with his business, or watched “soccer”. But having chosen to do his bit, he does it, and talks as much about his motives as he would of his religion or of his love affairs.’ Kipling foresaw a great future for these volunteers, concluding, ‘They are all now in the Year One, and the meanest of them may be an ancestor of whom regimental posterity will say “There were giants in those days!”’29