From the perspective of the early twenty-first century – 100 years after the First World War it can be hard to comprehend the background, motives and character of soldiers in the Great War. In Britain, the Edwardian period that preceded the outbreak of the First World War was one of stability and a clearly defined social hierarchy, and this was reflected in the character of the national armed forces.
The Territorial Force, which would fill the gap left after the destruction of the BEF and its army of career soldiers, reflected the society from which it was drawn, with officers from the squirearchy or management and soldiers from the manual labourers or factory staff. One Territorial Force (TF) formation, The Civil Service Rifles, was formed largely from the ranks of the Civil Service and The Post Office Rifles was likewise composed of Post Office employees. It is easy to understand why career officers and soldiers in the British Regular Army viewed the TF with a mixture of suspicion and contempt – however it was a Territorial formation that would hold Ypres at the outset of the fighting and one prewar TF soldier William ‘Bill’ Slim would rise to the rank of Field Marshal in the Second World War and command the Fourteenth Army in Burma.
Social cohesion and lack of mobility meant that county and city loyalties were very strong. The volunteer Kitchener armies drew on this, forming Pals, Sportsmen’s or Public School battalions. Men went to war with their mates and often with their manager and foreman as company commander and company sergeant major. Whereas, in Germany and France officers were career soldiers who had sometimes begun their military training as school age cadets. Soldiers saw themselves as something of an elite dividing German society into two classes ‘soldiers and swine’. While the French Army had its quota of aristocrats it was a more democratic force than that of Imperial Germany which had royal and titled officers. Soldiers in both armies were conscripts and could therefore include a cross-section of society, including well educated and mature men as well as simple peasants or industrial labourers.
Two things were true of almost all these soldiers. Many had deep-seated religious convictions. If you had lived a good life, repented on your death bed for sins committed and received absolution from a padre, you were destined for a happy afterlife. The trenches would test the men’s faith to the limits and many would find that it would fail under the terrible strain. Closely linked to religion was patriotism – French, British or German soldiers believed in the right of the cause for which they were fighting and were proud to be citizens and soldiers of their mother or fatherland. This led to a curious exchange on Christmas Day 1914 when British and German soldiers emerged from their trenches to mingle in no man’s land. A British officer observed the words ‘Got Mit Uns’ on the belt buckle of a German soldier and asked what it meant. The English-speaking German officer confidently replied ‘God with Us’. ‘Oh no’, came the equally confident reply, ‘He’s with us’. The British soldiers couldn’t resist punning the motto, explaining to their German counterparts that they were quite happy and their hands were warm because they had ‘Got mittens’.
The other feature that marks out the soldiers or ‘Tommies’ of the First World War is that they often came from very tough backgrounds. The lives of those drawn from the great cities were marked by overcrowding, poor sanitation and poor diet. Those from the country fared little better with agricultural labourers earning little and often dependant on their employers for housing. They entered the army with no great expectations and indeed before the war it was not the first choice of many young men.
However, men who had been conscripted changed during basic training – a regime of good food, exercise and discipline saw them build up muscle and become fitter and stronger. In barracks many had access to decent sanitation for the first time and with it enjoyed improved health. However their grim urban or rural childhoods and youth would be something of a preparation for life in the trenches. Lice and other pests and vermin were not a novelty to the rank and file – to officers the first encounter must have been repellent. In quiet times at the front men would kill off the eggs laid by the lice in the seams and folds of clothing – one method was to run the flame of a candle over the area. Since lice were known colloquially as ‘chats’ a group of men sat around talking and de-lousing their clothing were ‘chatting’. Even men from these hard backgrounds could be ground down by the stress of combat. Soldiers today would recognise what Lieutenant Colonel C.K. Burnett, the commanding officer of the 18th (Queen Mary’s Own) Hussars saw in the faces of infantry at Ypres in 1914:
'We... noticed how weary the infantry was with its incessant fighting, the men seemed to have that faraway look on their faces which betokened general inability to realise the horrors which were surrounding them... the war had left them now with just a fixed determination to go on until they dropped, without notice of other events beyond what occurred in just their immediate front; one could too plainly see that the limit of human endurance had almost been reached.'
Men broke and the punishment for military crimes was severe. The military penal code had grown to deal with an army drawn, as the Duke of Wellington observed a mere century before the First World War, from the ‘scum of the earth’. It was a harsh code and reflecting the fact that the breaking of military law could mean death or disaster for one’s comrades. Cowardice, casting away of arms in the face of the enemy, striking an officer and desertion were all death by hanging; the army executed soldiers in wartime by firing squad. These executions, the majority of them for desertion, were almost exactly 10 per cent of those actually condemned; of the just over 3,000 soldiers condemned to death between August 1914 and March 1920 the vast majority had their sentences commuted to hard labour or penal servitude. In most cases of those actually executed it was for a second or third offence. At least half of the of the 306 men executed for military offences by the British Army during the First World War were serving in the Ypres Salient. Today some of these men would be treated as psychological casualties, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, some however were guilty of criminal acts and it is a luxury to judge the conduct of the past from the secure standpoint of today. In the grim league of death by execution in the First World War, France and Italy executed the largest number at about 600 each, while New Zealand executed five. These numbers should be regarded in the context of the many millions who served, of which they make a sad, but minuscule, number. Tragic as some of these deaths may have been, after the war the British authorities still recorded the names of those executed on memorials such as the Menin Gate.
For lesser crimes there were a range of Field Punishments. If a soldier was sentenced to Number 1 he was tied to a wagon wheel spread-eagled with the hub in his back, and his ankles and wrists secured to the rim. Private W. Underwood of the 1st Canadian Division was given seven days Number 1 – he did ‘two hours up and four hours down for seven days, day and night’. And, he recalled years later ‘the cold!It was January 1915... And the only reason I was there was because I missed a roll-call’. Old soldiers regarded Field Punishment Number 1 as a mild inconvenience. Frank Richards of the Regular 2nd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers recalled that, while out of the line at Houplines, fifty-eight soldiers undergoing Field Punishment Number 1 were tied to railings when not doing fatigues. They did not mind the punishment but were outraged that French civilians could see them One of the ironies of trench warfare was that as it developed, frontline soldiers often felt a greater bond with the enemy a few hundred yards across no man’s land, than they did with the civilians and politicians at home with their ranting and angry patriotism. In 1915 Sergeant John Grahl of 1st Battalion Highland Light Infantry recalled a German shouting ‘Hang on until October and you can have the damned war’, the British would shout back ‘Come on over, Fritz you **** ***’ or ‘Gott strafe the Kaiser!’ to which the reply came ’strafe the King!’. A policy of live and let live often developed and moving fresh troops into the line prior to an offensive was in part to ensure that the attack was pressed home with aggression and drive.
Ypres was a medieval town known for its textiles; however, it became infamous during the Great War with trench warfare, poison gas and many thousands of casualties. As the German Army advanced through Belgium, it failed to take the Ypres Salient. On 13 October 1914, German troops entered Ypres. On looting the city, the Germans retreated as the British Expeditionary Force advanced. On 22 November 1914, the Germans commenced a huge artillery barrage killing many civilians. Today the battlefields of Ypres contain the resting place of thousands of German and British soldiers. Battle Story: Ypres explores the first and second battles of Ypres through narrative, eye-witness accounts and images.
Find out about the tactics at Ypres here.