The British Army during the First World War fought the largest and most costly war in its long history. Unlike the French and German Armies, the British Army was made up exclusively of volunteers, as opposed to conscripts, at the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, the British Army was considerably smaller than its French and German counterparts. During the First World War, there were four distinct British armies. The first comprised approximately 247,000 soldiers of the regular army, over half of whom were posted overseas to garrison the British Empire, supported by some 210,000 reserves and a potential 60,000 additional reserves.
This component formed the backbone of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which was formed for service in France and became known as the Old Contemptibles. The second army was provided by the approximately 246,000-strong Territorial Force, initially allocated to home defence but used to reinforce the BEF after the regular army suffered heavy losses in the opening battles of the war. The third army was Kitchener's Army, which was composed of men who answered Lord Kitchener's call for volunteers in 19141915 and went into action at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The fourth army was the reinforcement of existing formations with conscripts after the introduction of compulsory service in January 1916.
By the end of 1918, the British Army had reached its maximum strength of 3,820,000 men and could field over 70 divisions, this included about 1,500,000 from the British Indian Army. The vast majority of the British Army fought in the main theatre of war on the Western Front in France and Belgium against the German Empire. Some units were engaged in Italy and Salonika against Austria-Hungary and the Bulgarian Army, while other units fought in the Middle East, Africa and Mesopotamia, mainly against the Ottoman Empire, and one battalion fought alongside the Japanese Army in China during the Siege of Tsingtao.
The war also posed problems for the army commanders, given that, prior to 1914, the largest formation any serving general in the BEF had commanded on operations was a division. The expansion of the British Army saw some officers promoted from brigade to corps commander in less than a year. Army commanders also had to cope with the new tactics and weapons that were developed. With the move from manoeuvre to trench warfare, both the infantry and the artillery had to learn how to work together. During an offensive, and when in defence, they learned how to combine forces to defend the front line. Later in the war, when the Machine Gun Corps and the Tank Corps were added to the order of battle, they were also included in the new tactical doctrine.
The men at the front had to struggle with supply problemsthere was a shortage of food and disease was rife in the damp, rat-infested conditions. Along with enemy action, many soldiers had to contend with new diseases: trench foot, trench fever and trench nephritis. When the war ended in November 1918, British Army casualties, as the result of enemy action and disease, were recorded as 673,375 killed and missing, with another 1,643,469 wounded. The rush to demobilise at the end of the conflict substantially decreased the strength of the British Army, from its peak strength of 3,820,000 men in 1918 to 370,000 men by 1920.
Organization
By the First World War, the British military forces (i.e., those raised in British territory, whether in the British Isles or colonies, and also those raised in the Channel Islands, but not the British Indian Army, the military forces of the Dominions, or those of British protectorates) was still a complex of organisations, and not strictly a single force under a single administration. What is connoted by the term "British Army", consequently, is subject to the context, although in its narrowest, official definition it referred only to those military corps which were wholly or partly-funded out of Army Funds by the War Office.
The British Army during World War I could trace its organisation to the increasing demands of imperial expansion. The framework was the voluntary system of recruitment and the regimental system, which had been defined by the Cardwell and Childers Reforms of the late 19th century. The British Army had been prepared and primarily called upon for Empire matters and the ensuing colonial wars.In the last years of the 19th century, the Army was involved in a major conflict, the Second Boer War (1899–1902), which highlighted shortcomings in its tactics, leadership and administration. The 1904 Esher Report recommended radical reform, such as the creation of an Army Council, a General Staff, the abolition of the office of Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, and the creation of a Chief of the General Staff.
The Haldane Reforms of 1907 formally created an Expeditionary Force of seven divisions (one cavalry, six infantry), reorganised the yeomanry and volunteers forces into a new Territorial Force of fourteen cavalry brigades and fourteen infantry divisions, and changed the old militia into the Special Reserve to reinforce the expeditionary force. At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, the British regular army was a small professional force. It consisted of 247,432 regular troops organised in four regiments of Foot Guards (Grenadier, with 3 Battalions; Coldstream, with 3 Battalions; Scots, with 2 Battalions; Irish with 1 Battalion), 68 regiments of the line and the Rifle Brigade (despite its name, this was an infantry regiment), 31 cavalry regiments (including the Household Cavalry, or Horse Guards), artillery and other support arms.
Most of the line infantry regiments had two regular battalions, one of which served at home and provided drafts and replacements to the other which was stationed overseas, while also being prepared to be part of the Expeditionary Force. The Royal Fusiliers, Worcestershire Regiment, Middlesex Regiment, King's Royal Rifle Corps and the Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own) had four regular battalions, two of which served overseas. Almost half of the regular army (74 of the 157 infantry battalions and 12 of the 31 cavalry regiments), was stationed overseas in garrisons throughout the British Empire. The Royal Flying Corps was part of the British Army until 1918. At the outbreak of the war, it consisted of 84 aircraft.
The regular army was supported by the Territorial Force, which numbered some 246,000 men in September 1913 and, on the outbreak of war, was deployed in home defence. In August 1914, there were three forms of reserves. The Army Reserve comprised soldiers who had completed their colour service, and had joined the reserve upon returning to civilian life; it was 145,347 strong. They were paid 3 shillings and 6 pence a week (17.5 pence) worth about £70 per week in 2013 terms and had to attend 12 training days per year. The Special Reserve had another 64,000 men and was a form of part-time soldiering, similar to the Territorial Force.
A Special Reservist had an initial six months full-time training and was paid the same as a regular soldier during this period; they had three or four weeks training per year thereafter. The National Reserve had some 215,000 men, who were on a register that was maintained by Territorial Force County Associations. These men had military experience, but no other reserve obligation and only some 60,000 were classified as willing or able to serve an active role at home or abroad.
The regulars and reserves, at least on paper, totalled a mobilised force of almost 700,000 men, although only 150,000 men were immediately available to be formed into the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that was sent to the continent. This consisted of six infantry divisions and one of cavalry. By contrast, the French Army in 1914 mobilised 1,650,000 troops and 62 infantry divisions, while the German Army mobilised 1,850,000 troops and 87 infantry divisions. Britain, therefore, began the war with six regular and fourteen territorial infantry divisions. During the war, a further six regular, 14 territorial, 36 Kitchener's Army and six other divisions, including the Naval Division from the Royal Navy were formed.
Divisions
In 1914, each British infantry division consisted of three infantry brigades, each of four battalions, with two machine guns per battalion (24 in the division). They also had three field artillery brigades with fifty-four 18-pounder guns, one field howitzer brigade with eighteen howitzers, one heavy artillery battery with four 60-pounder guns, two engineer field companies, one royal engineer signals company, one cavalry squadron, one cyclist company, three field ambulances, four Army Service Corps horse-drawn transport companies, and divisional headquarters support detachmentsMessenger (2005), pp. 25–26
A British infantry battalion had 4 companies and a machine-gun section with two guns. In August 1914 it included 30 officers and 977 other ranks. It had 25 carts and wagons, including 4 field kitchens.The Structure of a British Infantry Battalion during World War One The single cavalry division assigned to the BEF in 1914 consisted of 15 cavalry regiments in five brigades. They were armed with rifles, unlike their French and German counterparts, who were only armed with the shorter range carbine.
The cavalry division also had a high allocation of artillery compared to foreign cavalry divisions, with 24 13-pounder guns organised into two brigades and two machine guns for each regiment. When dismounted, the cavalry division was the equivalent of two weakened infantry brigades with less artillery than the infantry division. By 1916, there were five cavalry divisions, each of three brigades, serving in France, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd divisions in the Cavalry Corps and the 1st and 2nd Indian Cavalry Divisions in the Indian Cavalry Corps, each brigade in the Indian cavalry corps contained a British cavalry regiment.
Over the course of the war, the composition of the infantry division gradually changed, and there was an increased emphasis on providing the infantry divisions with organic fire support. By 1918, a British division consisted of three infantry brigades, each of three battalions. Each of these battalions had 36 Lewis machine guns, making a total of 324 such weapons in the division. Additionally, there was a divisional machine gun battalion, equipped with 64 Vickers machine guns in four companies of 16 guns. Each brigade in the division also had a mortar battery with eight Stokes Mortars.
The artillery also changed the composition of its batteries. At the start of the war, there were three batteries with six guns per brigade. This changed to four batteries with four guns per brigade and finally, in 1917, to four batteries with six guns per brigade to economise on battery commanders. In this way, the army would change drastically over the course of the war, reacting to the various developments, from the mobile war fought in the opening weeks to the static trench warfare of 1916 and 1917. The cavalry of the BEF represented 9.28% of the army, but by July 1918 it would only represent 1.65%. The infantry would decrease from 64.64% in 1914 to 51.25% of the army in 1918, while the Royal Engineers would increase from 5.91% to 11.24% in 1918.
British Expeditionary Force