by Tim Lynch
In the absence of any immediate German moves against the borders, the Allies began to settle in for what most envisaged would be another protracted, static war in which waves of advancing Germans would be broken against a solid line of defensive fortifications. At Churchill’s insistence, heavy siege guns were moved to France and placed in specially constructed bunkers. These were not weapons for a modern, mobile war – their emplacements needed a dedicated light railway track to carry ammunition supplies to the guns. Along the Franco-Belgian border, the BEF prepared an elaborate line of pillboxes and trenches and settled down to wait.
Behind the front lines, the Lines of Communication (L of C) set out by Brigadier Hawes and his staff were growing in complexity to the extent that Lord Gort has been criticised on the grounds that his ‘failure to curb what amounted to over-enthusiasm on the part of the supply services in demanding the construction of larger and larger depots and equivalent services meant that the “tail” was beginning to “wag the dog”.’4
The BEF anticipated a repeat of the previous war and trained extensively in trench fighting throughout the ‘Phoney War’.
Troops on exercise in France.
The British had forgotten the late successes of the Stosstruppen of the Great War; the Germans had not. Blitzkrieg was imminent.
Although Hore-Belisha had spoken of 25,000 vehicles being delivered to France, pre-war cutbacks had reduced the Royal Army Service Corps, responsible for the army’s transport, to just 2,000 vehicles spread across the empire and the transport shortfall had, until now, been made up by hiring vehicles from specialist local civilian contractors such as the Artillery Transport Company based in York.5 Hastily requisitioned civilian vehicles were now being repainted and sent out to France with the result that Montgomery’s divisional transport had been held up at Falmouth for days by movements officers who refused to accept that a spearhead Regular Army infantry division needed quite so many laundry vans.6 In the cash starved economy of the 1930s, competition within the army for resources had been so fierce that no money was available to support units that would only become useful in time of war. As a result, the army’s tiny logistical service was now expanding out of all expectation.
With supply lines stretching up to 500 miles from the Atlantic seaboard ports to reach the BEF along the Belgian border, and ammunition dumps around Rouen alone covering some 36 square miles, maintaining security and moving supplies forward became a major problem. Theft from ships and supply dumps was so endemic that on the recommendation of Detective Chief Inspector George Hatherill 20 Scotland Yard detectives were specially enlisted into the Corps of Military Police to form the new Special Investigations Branch under the command of Detective Superintendent Clarence Campion, formerly head of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Record Office and granted an automatic commission as a Major.7 The continuing trickle of thefts also served to highlight the vulnerability of the L of C to the added threat of fifth column spies and saboteurs. It was clear that the Ordnance and Service Corps troops working at these depots could not be expected to maintain a twenty-four-hour a day presence and complete their tasks and that more troops were needed.
British and French troops enjoy a drink together during the ‘Phoney War’.
With the expectation being that the army would only be involved in policing small scale tribal wars, little thought had been given to the need to expand logistical services beyond the hiring of cheap local labour on arrival in the theatre of operations. France, however, had no cheap local labour available for hire. Its mobilisation process had been so sweeping and thorough that arms production fell in the first few months of the war and manufacturers frantically lobbied the government and military for the release from service of the key workers needed to keep the factories running. Nevertheless, thousands of tons of food, fuel and ammunition needed to maintain the BEF sat on docksides waiting to be moved.
In response to the growing need for a labour force, the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps (AMPC) was hastily created on 17 October 1939 and direct enlistment into the Corps began the same day. The Corps formed around a nucleus of men recalled from the reserve but considered too old or unfit for frontline duties along with some civilian volunteers including ‘enemy aliens’ – many of them of German, Austrian and Italian descent – and a smattering of conscripts.8 They were immediately put to work but it was not a happy corps. The reservists were often bitter about not being allowed back to their old regiments, the conscripts complained that if they were forced to be soldiers, they’d rather be ‘proper’ soldiers, the ‘enemy aliens’ were treated with suspicion and the civilian volunteers were frequently men who were not registered as conscientious objectors but who had no interest in the military or its aims. As a cost cutting measure, they were issued with only one set of uniform for both work and parade and consequently soon earned a reputation for scruffiness. With only a small number of elderly officers to manage large groups of men on often widely dispersed sites, discipline was also a constant problem. To add insult to the reservists’ injury, 75 per cent of the rifles issued to the AMPC were then withdrawn to be given to combatant troops.9 By the end of 1939, the AMPC had 18,600 largely unarmed men working as navvies in France.10
To help with guard duties, garrison battalions were also formed from the ranks of returning ex-servicemen and fed into the L of C. The 9th (Overseas Defence) Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment was one such unit, sent to Arras and deployed on airfield guard duties. By any definition a veteran unit, the battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Luxmore-Ball, was now on his third war and among his men was Private Gordon Smith who, at the age of 34, had been considered old by infantry standards when he won the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1918. Now, at the age of 55, Private Smith would again be called upon to fight over country he had first seen a generation before.11 Widely scattered at designated Vulnerable Points around supply dumps and airfields across France, veterans’ battalions like the West Yorkshires and the 12th Royal Warwicks were at least made up of trained and experienced soldiers, albeit frequently unarmed, carrying only sticks as deterrents to intruders. Other units began to arrive totally unprepared for what lay ahead as the Army Council turned to the deployment of the Territorial Army.
The formation of the AMPC was given a positive spin to hide the desperate lack of manpower among the BEF.
In 1914, General Sir John French’s ‘contemptible little army’12 of four infantry divisions, one of cavalry and a single independent brigade was small even by comparison with that fielded by the ‘plucky little Belgium’ it had come to defend. Even added to the 62 infantry and 10 cavalry divisions of the French, the Allies were outnumbered by Germany’s 100 infantry and 22 cavalry divisions and when the Germans pushed forward into Belgium and northern France, were soon in headlong retreat.13 In August alone, the BEF lost 1,382 men killed; September saw the loss of another 2,717 and by the end of the year 16,915 men were dead – well over 10 per cent of the original force – with many more wounded or missing.14 At one point, with losses mounting at a rate far outstripping his ability to replace them, General French was even thought to be considering the need to evacuate the British force via the channel ports for use in defending Britain rather than have them wasted in a defence of Paris, an option that made military sense but which convinced the French High Command for an entire generation that British strategy would always be to run for the ports at the first opportunity.15 With Regular Army manpower dwindling, the British government looked to its Territorial Force for reinforcements.
The Territorial Force had been created by the Haldane Reforms of 1907 and had come into being the following year to restructure the various strands of Britain’s part-time armies. Since medieval times, able-bodied men aged between 16 and 60 had a common law duty to protect their county and to do this the Shire Reeve – or Sheriff – of a county had held the power to conscript a local force as and when necessary under the principle of Posse Comitatus.16 Fearing a spread of rebellion in the wake of the Fre
nch Revolution, Britain passed the Defence of the Realm Act in 1798 which required the constables of every parish in the country to list the names and occupations of all able-bodied men (excluding peers and clergymen) between the ages of 15 and 60 not already engaged in military activities who could act as a Home Guard were the French to invade, or who could be used as a force which the High Sheriff could raise to suppress a riot or call upon for any other emergency. These later evolved into local militias who remained actively embodied during the Napoleonic invasion scares of the early nineteenth century. Alongside them were the Volunteers – men who were not full time soldiers and who even had to buy their own uniforms and equipment – keen amateurs who joined in large numbers when another French invasion scare swept the country in the 1860s.
A third element – created even earlier in 1794 – was the Yeomanry. Recruited from the ranks of men who, by the requirement that they own a horse, were almost entirely of the middle and upper classes, the Yeomanry were seen as an important safeguard against rebellion amongst the lower orders and it was they who would be sent to quell demonstrations and strikes – most notably at the infamous Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Unlike their Militia and Volunteer counterparts, the Yeomanry fitted in well with their Regular Army counterparts and enjoyed far greater political support in both Houses of Parliament through the influence of Yeoman officers like the young Winston Churchill and the Earl of Longford.
The Haldane Reforms set out to create a single Territorial Force (TF) by merging these existing units into a more streamlined second line army able to work closely with the Regulars. The Militia, being the best trained, would now become Special Reserve battalions of the Regular Army to supply reinforcements in time of war and the others would be formed into 14 mounted brigades, each of 3 regiments of Yeomanry, 14 infantry divisions with 12 battalions per division and the whole supported by its own artillery, engineers, transport and medical services to provide a self contained home army. With the main threat still seen as the invasion of the United Kingdom’s mainland, they would be used primarily for home defence, freeing up the Regular Army to serve overseas, but Haldane also hoped that with additional training, they might be deployed overseas as reinforcements six months after general mobilisation had been declared.
Militia registration.
However, the reforms were a compromise. The early years of the twentieth century had seen growing demands for the introduction of conscription after the Boer War had highlighted the weaknesses of the standing army and the growing need to police the empire. Groups like the National Service League saw the new force as little more than a gimmick to avoid having to make the politically awkward decision to overturn Britain’s longstanding opposition to enforced military service. Equally, since TF soldiers were to be paid only for the time they spent in uniform whilst conscripts would have to be employed full time, the decision to reform the force could be seen as an attempt to save money by training a second rate army on a part time basis. The long term effect could be the same, but with a set number of training sessions per year and an annual camp being the whole requirement for the TF it would take a Territorial soldier several years to acquire the experience a militiaman could gain in six months intensive service. Politically, though, the introduction of peacetime conscription was unacceptable.
Instead, Territorial Forces would form as additional battalions of the Regular Army and on paper at least, would be given the same training and equipment to allow them to work alongside their regular colleagues. At the same time, Haldane recognised that in the economic climate of the time, the Regular Army would be likely to maintain its own strength by drawing resources away from those allocated to the amateur ‘Saturday Night Soldiers’ and so created County Territorial Associations to manage the buildings and equipment of their local units. As a result, training and equipment varied from area to area with many battalions using obsolete weapons whilst others, in wealthier areas, having facilities that would be the envy of regular troops.
As an incentive to join, volunteers would enlist for a period of four years and would not be liable for foreign service unless they volunteered to sign the Imperial Service Obligation, but with BEF losses mounting, the Territorial Force was seen as being the logical source of reinforcement once the primary requirements for home defence had been met. Many among the Territorials saw this as unreasonable and complained about being asked to go against the terms of their enlistment. They had joined to defend their country and were willing to do so, but they did not see how serving overseas would serve that purpose. In some cases, officers were even reported to have urged their men not to give in to government blackmail and advised against signing the Obligation papers. Feelings ran high that the government had no right to pressure the Territorials into fighting a foreign war. W.N. Nicholson, a Regular officer serving with a Highland Territorial division, recalled a conversation with one of the Territorial officers: ‘The Territorial Force was a last resort, in his opinion; it was not meant to come into the war until all the Regulars had been killed; a regular was not playing the game if he let a Territorial come and fight alongside him so early in the war as this.’17 In some units acceptance of the Imperial Service Obligation was unanimous, some even agreed before the war broke out. Others were less enthusiastic. When the request was put to a parade of the 4th Battalion of the Northamptons, the commanding officer and brigade commander both explained that no-one would be forced to volunteer to serve overseas. Of 950 men, just 200 agreed to sign the papers.18 A battalion was deemed available for foreign service if 80 per cent of its men volunteered. By the end of 1914, the requirement had dropped to just 50 per cent yet still there were problems recruiting enough men willing to go overseas.
Even in those units willing to serve overseas, differences in recruiting created still further problems. The Territorial Force allowed recruitment at the age of seventeen but the law required that a soldier was nineteen before he was allowed to serve overseas.19 The presence of underage troops among the TF drafts leaving for France had prompted a sharp rebuke from the War Office, who insisted that no Territorial was to be sent to join the BEF ‘unless he is medically fit, fully trained and is nineteen years of age or older’.
Kitchener, himself a critic of the Territorial Force, had already launched his campaign to create a ‘New Army’ in order to bypass them altogether so that by 1915 there were, in effect, three British armies – the ‘old’ pre-war regulars, the ‘New Army’ men who had responded to Kitchener’s call and the ‘borrowed’ men of the TF. By 1916, a fourth group had been added when conscription swept up all those who had not yet enlisted (including the TF men who had not volunteered for foreign service), creating yet another class of soldier.20 Whilst promotion could be rapid with men who had joined the New Army as privates commanding battalions by the end of the war, promotion above the rank of brigadier was strictly for Regular Army officers only and there was a clear hierarchical distinction made between ‘real’ officers and the ‘temporary gentlemen’ they had been forced to endure.
Letter requesting the recruitment of home defence battalions.
The return to peacetime soldiering brought with it a parting of the ways as the various constituents of the British Army reverted to their old roles and competition began again for the ever scarcer funding available to equip and train men. Reconstituted on 7 February 1920, the Territorial Force began recruiting again on the same terms as before – a four year enlistment with a requirement to attend a set number of training sessions and an annual camp in order to qualify for a bounty payment. Renamed the Territorial Army (TA) in October of that year it almost immediately fell victim to the ‘Geddes axe’ with the size and scale of equipment slashed to the minimum needed to perform its task. In 1922, two Air Defence Brigades were established to provide anti-aircraft cover for London and by 1935 it had been decided that the TA should assume responsibility for all anti-aircraft cover for the UK. In January 1936, the first anti-aircraft division had been formed and by 1939 the esta
blishment of air defence units had been set at 96,000 TA troops. A Territorial Field Force establishment of 170,000 men was also created as a second line intended to follow the Regular Army into battle within six months of mobilisation.
In the wake of the Munich Crisis, recruitment for the forces was stepped up and the TA in particular began to actively campaign across the country to bring it up to strength. Typical of those the campaign targeted was eighteen-year-old Don Clark, a former member of the Army Cadet Force at Dewsbury Grammar School who, with his friends, was impressed when a squadron of the new, tracked Bren gun carriers drove into Dewsbury market place as part of a TA recruitment drive in late 1938. ‘We virile teenagers were bowled over by the sight of them, their power and speed and our minds filled with dreams that we were actually driving them! It was no contest, we would definitely join up and get a baby tank!’21 The campaign was very successful, but there was still a need for more men than the current establishment allowed for. Then, in late March 1939, and seemingly on a whim, Hore-Belisha suddenly decreed that the TA would recruit to wartime establishment and then double its size to create a total of 26 divisions for the proposed Territorial Field Force. The Daily Telegraph of 30 March reported: