by Tim Lynch
At last the long awaited letter arrived, I opened it with trembling hands. I read it; I was to report on the 15th of September 1939 to Pontefract Barracks, to the K.O.Y.L.I. I rushed to my Dad; I said ‘Dad, what sort of artillery is the K.O.Y.L.I.?’ He said sadly, ‘Son, that’s the infantry. It means The Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.’ I burst out ‘The officer said that I could go into the artillery, why is this?’ He said wryly ‘That’s the army son, you’ll learn’ and I did, a lot quicker than I thought.3
Arriving at Strensall Barracks near York for his basic training, like many other new recruits Flowers was particularly in awe of the recalled Reservists he encountered. ‘After all they were real time served soldiers, not just anybody, but more like gods.’ But even these gods had to learn. Volander ‘Val’ Thomas had first joined the regiment at the age of eighteen in 1932 and had quickly decided he would not get along with the regimental sergeant major so, together with a friend he decided to desert the KOYLI and to go to nearby Leeds and enlist in the Cameron Highlanders instead. Two months later, the pair were arrested at the Camerons’ depot and returned to the KOYLI and straight into the waiting arms of their hated RSM. Marched before their commanding officer, only Thomas’ rugby skills kept him out of the glasshouse – the men arrived back just as their company was about to play an important match – but he knew it was a near thing. After that he settled down into life in the KOYLI and after three years garrison duty on Gibraltar, was effectively made redundant by the ever worsening army cutbacks and so left in November 1935 to return to civilian life. Val and his fiancée were planning for their wedding at Christmas and already had a house marked down in his home town of Wakefield when the recall notices ordering him back to the army arrived in late August. On the morning of 2 September, the couple married before Val caught the bus to the KOYLI depot at Pontefract. After just four years away, the reorganisation of the army in the 1930s had brought changes to the familiar. Gone was the time honoured command to ‘form fours’ on parade, replaced by the forming of three ranks instead. New drill, new weapons to learn, but still the same organisation.
For the new arrivals, the term ‘organisation’ was not the first they might choose to describe what they encountered. Simply working out what unit one belonged to could be a confusing hurdle. The regimental system of the British Army had evolved over two centuries into an apparently eccentric collection of battalions with local affiliations not always immediately obvious to the outsider. The basic structure of the regiment was of two or three regular battalions with associated territorial units. The 1st Battalion would be used for overseas garrison duties and would be the first into action. The 2nd Battalion would remain in the UK and would be used to reinforce the first. A 3rd (Reserve) Battalion might also exist to provide a trained pool of men in time of war. territorial battalions would then form the 4th and subsequent battalions. The new order to ‘recruit to war establishment then double’ meant that these territorial battalions would follow a similar pattern with, for example, the 4th battalion now expanding into two duplicate versions – 1st/4th and 2nd /4th. Again, the 1/4th would take precedence and would be used for overseas service, the 2/4th would be a second line unit used to provide reinforcements as required. Being the British Army, of course, this system was too simple to be universally accepted.
The Durham Light Infantry (DLI), for example, chose instead a completely different pattern. The regiment had recruited 37 battalions during the First World War and would raise fourteen in the Second – including the 18th Battalion which served as a ‘beach brick’ charged with landing the basic base installations at Salerno and Normandy. The 18th bore the DLI name but only two officers and a very few other ranks were actually from the regiment itself; most men were from logistics units. Meanwhile, the regiment also created another 18th Battalion – this one for home defence duties – seemingly without any concerns that having two 18th battalions on the regimental books might lead to the odd administrative problem. So, in 1939, the Territorial 6th, 8th and 9th battalions of the DLI were part of 151 Brigade of 50th Division whilst the 5th and 7th had already been detached to form Searchlight Regiments as part of the TA’s anti-aircraft role. When the order to duplicate was issued, the regiment chose not to follow the 1/ and 2/ model but instead created the 10th, 11th and 12th as duplicates of the 6th, 8th and 9th respectively. These were formed as 70 Brigade of the 23rd (Northumbrian) Division. The 12th, having recruited largely from Scots living in Northumberland was then re-badged late in 1939 to become the 1st (and indeed only) Battalion of the Tyneside Scottish, a revival of the name adopted during the First World War by several New Army battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers but now unaccountably under the direction of the Black Watch.
However it was applied, the duplication model continued up to divisional level with the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, a Territorial Division first created in 1908 and recruiting almost entirely from a small area of Yorkshire’s industrial West Riding around Leeds, Bradford, Halifax and Wakefield, now being joined by a duplicate division – the 46th (North Midland and West Riding) Division – created on 2 October 1939 by reforming the North Midland Division of the First World War and incorporating elements of the West Riding units. On paper a simple and expedient exercise, duplication was not welcomed by the army. General Sherman had said of his experience of troops during the American Civil War eighty years earlier, ‘I believe that five hundred new men added to an old and experienced regiment were more valuable than a thousand men in the form of a new regiment, for the former, by association with good experienced captains, lieutenants, and non-commissioned officers, soon become veterans, whereas the latter were generally unavailable for a year.’ Now, the British Army was learning the same lesson. As duplication brought with it the need to move experienced men around, chaos reigned. ‘In each case’, wrote one unit historian, ‘in place of one keen and fairly efficient unit, two untrained, ill-equipped inefficient battalions were produced.’4
As the 46th Infantry Division formed, Brigadier John Gawthorpe was recalled from retirement and placed in charge of its 137th Infantry Brigade in a scattered command which included the 2/5th West Yorkshire Regiment with its HQ in York and companies in Tadcaster, Knaresborough, Wetherby, Ripon, Selby, and Leeds. Alongside them were the 2/6th and 2/7th battalions of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (DWR) covering Keighley, Bradford, Skipton, Huddersfield and Halifax. Gawthorpe, himself a former West Yorkshire Regiment officer, set up his new brigade Headquarters in Brighouse, near Huddersfield. Further afield, other retired officers were brought back to equally wide commands – Brigadier E.J. Grinling took the 2/4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry from Wakefield, the 6th Lincolnshire Regiment and the 6th Yorks and Lancs as 138th Infantry Brigade whilst Brigadier R.C. Chichester-Constable assumed command of 139th Brigade with its 2/5th Leicestershire Regiment and two battalions of the Sherwood Foresters. ‘These units’ Gawthorpe wrote, ‘had done only the barest part of recruit training and had not been to camp, as they were to have accompanied their parent units on Regular Army manoeuvres which were due to take place in Northern Command during September, 1939. War forestalled this, so they started practically from scratch.’5
Unable to clothe, accommodate and equip the men they already had, the TA units continued to receive more recruits to bring them up to the new establishment strength and new arrivals found themselves in for something of a culture shock. In January 1940, Arnold Straw received his call up papers and travelled to Leeds as ordered. From the city station he was marched with an assorted bunch of fellow conscripts to a nearby barracks where they were to be sorted into regiments. At eight that evening, after a ten-hour wait, he and around 20 others were again marched to the railway station and put on a train, destination unknown. About two hours later they were herded off the train at Huddersfield station:
It was bitterly cold as we marched through the darkened streets singing, with youthful enthusiasm, to our destination. This proved to be the Yorkshir
e Dragoons’ [Territorials] Drill Hall in Fitzwilliam Street, a medium sized hall with a stage at one end and a balcony at the other … We were ushered into a small side room where there was a heap of rough hessian palliasse covers: alas there was no straw left – what irony – and no more available that night. There were two dingy army blankets each, however, so Dougie and I decided to pool our resources by using the empty palliasse covers and two blankets to lie on, and two blankets to cover us, using our civilian clothes as pillows apart from our overcoats which we used as auxiliary blankets. As we were the last party to arrive the main part of the hall was pretty well covered with ‘beds’, so we made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the balcony and, as there was no sign of food or drink, decided to settle down for the night. I was in no way brimming over with contentment having left home and fiancé for an unknown and precarious future – and being hungry into the bargain!6
TA units had traditionally recruited from small geographical areas and from men who often worked together. An easy informality developed between the ranks that exasperated many of the Regular Army staff drafted in to help. Donald Edgar, serving with the 2/6th East Surreys, recalled an incident in which the captain of his unit’s intelligence section came across a group of his soldiers drinking in a local hotel and immediately joined them. All went well until the captain, still wearing his full uniform, drew his sword and jumped onto a table to demonstrate how he and his men would win the war. The evening ended peacefully enough but word reached the commanding officer and the captain was quietly moved to another company.7 Incidents like that were not unusual and now, as Straw and his comrades tried to settle down for their first night in the army, they were woken by a drunken orderly officer and two sergeants who, after asking after the new arrivals, ordered the cookhouse staff to be woken up and to produce food for them before entertaining them with an impromptu concert.
After a brief night’s sleep, the recruits were processed through the paperwork and training began almost immediately, but it would not be until March that the weather improved enough to allow the new platoon to carry out any exercises outdoors. On the few occasions that the recruits were able to venture outside to do arms drill on the street behind the drill hall they could only manage a few minutes at a time before grounding their rifles and running up and down the street slapping each other on the back to restore circulation. Morning PT was conducted at the local public baths but was accompanied by much slipping, sliding and falling down on the icy cobbles rather than any disciplined march to reach it – much to the amusement of passers-by.
Training, though, was not the first priority. On Friday 25 August 1939, the 2/4th Battalion of the KOYLI was officially embodied at Dewsbury, but as the official history records, it did not exist as an organised battalion until long after that date. As platoons formed, they were immediately sent to act as guards at locations across south Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. On that day, at 2.30 in the afternoon, a bomb produced by an IRA cell exploded inside the satchel of a tradesman’s bicycle that had been left outside a shop on Broadgate, Coventry. The explosion killed five people, injured 100 more and caused extensive damage to shops in the area. The following Monday large numbers of workers went on strike in the city protesting at having to work with Irish labour. The strikers marched in procession to the Council House, where the Mayor urged them to return to work and after they had passed a vote of confidence in the Chief Constable, the crowd dispersed but memories of German support for the IRA in the First World War were still fresh.
Across the country, TA battalions were immediately deployed to guard factories, airfields, railways and other identified Vulnerable Points from German and Irish threat. Donald Edgar had been working for a company in the City of London when he received his notice of embodiment from a sympathetic policeman one evening after work. His employers made arrangements to top up his salary and gave him a farewell party a few days later. Within hours of leaving the party, he was on duty:
Around mid-day I had been sipping champagne in a City bar in an ambience of stockbrokers, bank officials and insurance underwriters. Now here I was at midnight outside Chatham, in uniform, wearing steel helmet, carrying a rifle with five rounds of live ammunition, listening for suspicious noises which might herald the arrival of German agents or the IRA and uncomfortably aware that I was treading over thousands of tons of explosives. It was not a jolly experience!8
With more enthusiasm than experience, men took to their duties. Among the DLI, some proved more enthusiastic than others. The official history recalls the manager of a works guarded by the local TA who arrived late one night at the gates to be told, ‘If you put another foot out of the car I’ll blow your _____ head off.’ Another civilian inspector checking a viaduct had to crawl on hands and knees towards a sentry to produce his identity papers. Training even for this task had been limited and one new sentry stood demanding that anyone approaching should ‘advance and be reconciled’.9
In the area covered by Gawthorpe’s 137 Brigade, a Prisoner of War camp had optimistically been set up on York race course for the trickle of German sailors captured or interned at British ports and guards needed to be supplied. They were also needed to guard the BBC transmitter station on Moorside Edge and airfields around York. Worse, in the deep snows, the rail tunnels across the Pennines needed to be secured. The entrances to tunnels were relatively sheltered but the air shafts stood high on the moors and involved long and tiring treks to reach. Morale was still further sapped by a shortage of uniforms and especially greatcoats. In the freezing weather, men were paid an extra sixpence a day to use their own coats over the black army boiler suits they had been issued. The only outward signs that the new KOYLI men were even part of the army were their rifles and a red armband with the letters TA – the only known distinction made between the Territorial and Regular Army once war was declared.10 In the West Yorkshire Regiment ‘several months elapsed before there was sufficient battledress for the entire 2/5th battalion.’11 Such was the shortage of uniforms that debate went on at high levels about whether the length of the standard issue greatcoat should be shortened to try to save enough cloth to meet the demand.12 For battalions recruited from the woollen mills of West Yorkshire it was particularly embarrassing that they did not have a supply of the very clothing their families helped make.
The tedium of cold nights was occasionally interrupted by moments of action. In November, Private B. Pickering of the KOYLI, on guard patrol at Hemswell airfield, opened fire on an intruder and a short while later Privates Lord and Dixon challenged a running figure. Dixon fired but missed and in the excitement, Private Lord accidentally fired a round as they searched the undergrowth nearby.13 In that case the armoury doors were found to be open but often, as Donald Edgar recalled, the ‘intruders’ turned out to be members of other units enjoying a little female company and the ‘trigger happy TA bastards’ received few thanks for their diligence. Inexperience and boredom began to take its toll and Edgar also reports the death of a young private shot in barracks when a comrade was enthusiastically explaining what he would do to any German agent attempting to get in – forgetting his rifle was still loaded.14
Few doubted that the guard duties were important but they were also very boring:
No doubt it was economical in man-power to use a raw Territorial battalion for the purpose, yet it meant that the 2/4th KOYLI had a cruelly bad start to its career as a fighting unit … Duties of this type are notoriously bad for morale, for the keener a man may be on becoming a good soldier the more does he fret over the waste of time. Being scattered in platoon posts with at least a third of the men always on guard, no training could be tackled properly.15
Over the coming winter, the second line battalions of the TA would be employed on these guard duties and in helping the local authorities to cope with the worst winter storms in memory – but not on training for war. Men spent more time digging out snowdrifts for the council than in learning to dig trenches. For one West
Yorkshire Regiment recruit, it was just too much. A Militiaman who, like the rest, had registered at the local labour exchange insisted on his right to speak to his company commander. Once in the office, he leaned confidentially across the desk and explained: ‘Well, sir, I’ve done my best to get to like the army and fit myself to its conditions, but it’s no use. I don’t like it and that’s flat, so I’m afraid you’ll have to give me my cards back.’ Others took to it more willingly but one junior recruit was asked how he liked the army. ‘I like it all right, but the trouble is that everyone round here seems to be a boss but me.’16
The winter of guard duties and the arrival of newly trained conscripts in late 1939 and early 1940 meant the battalions grew in size but not in experience as the months went by. Slowly, as the initial rush slowed, the army began to settle down a little. Having recruited the men, it now began to take stock of what it had. Immediately, new problems arose. The introduction of conscription in September had been accompanied by the identification of key reserved occupations from which men should not be taken. One of the most vital of British industries at that time was the production of coal to power the armaments factories and an order was sent out that all miners were to be discharged with the exception of NCOs and specialists who, nevertheless, had to be offered the choice to return to their jobs at the pits. For the KOYLI, recruiting from the mining districts around Wakefield, this meant the immediate loss of over 200 often experienced soldiers. Worse was to come. The NCOs and specialists who agreed to stay on soon found that the difference between a miner’s wage and that of a soldier was a significant one: