Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918. Sir C. E. Callwell
on this point.
Mobilization means producing the force concerned, at its full war establishment and composed of officers and men who at least have some pretence to military training. It is, moreover, supposed to be completed at very short notice. Owing to their being territorial and to officers and other ranks living in their territorial districts, the Territorial Forces ought to have been mobilized more rapidly by some hours than the Expeditionary Force, and I believe that, in so far as collecting what personnel there was available is concerned, the Territorial Forces beat the Expeditionary Force. But the ranks of the Territorials had never filled in pre-war days, and there were practically no organized reserves. The war establishment was roughly 315,000 of all ranks; but at the beginning of August the strength was only about 270,000, and this, be it remembered, included a proportion of totally untrained individuals, as well as sick, absentees, and so forth. To have mobilized these troops properly, the number of officers and men on the books at the start and before the order came ought to have amounted to at least 350,000.
The consequence of this shortage was that, at the very moment when the Government and the country were on the first occasion for a century confronted by a really grave and complex military situation, at the very moment when there was a scare as to German projects of an immediate invasion, that category of our land forces which was especially earmarked for the defence of the British Isles was not in a position to perform its functions. The Sixth Division, properly forming part of the Expeditionary Force, had to be fetched over from Ireland to East Anglia to bolster up the Territorials, and Sir J. French was deprived of its use for six weeks at a very critical time. The ranks of the Territorial Forces filled up very rapidly after mobilization, but from the home defence point of view that was too late. We required our home defence army to be ready at once, so that the overseas army could be despatched complete to the Continent without arrière pensée. Its failure at the critical moment may have somewhat influenced Lord Kitchener in the estimates that he formed of it thenceforward. Instead of framing his plans with a view to reinforcing the Expeditionary Force as soon as possible with the existing fourteen Territorial divisions which were in some measure going concerns, by affording these special support, he preferred simply to expand the Territorial Forces as a whole. Four divisions were sent out of the country on garrison duty before the end of 1914, but although a number of individual battalions had preceded it, the first division to be sent to the front (the North Midland) did not sail from the United Kingdom till the end of February, more than six months after the outbreak of hostilities, while the two last to take the field did not leave till early in 1916. The policy may in the long run have proved the right one; but at the time it did seem a pity not to have accelerated the preparation of these existing troops for the ordeal of the field. None of us in Whitehall, however, wished the New Armies to be set up under the auspices of the Territorial Associations; that was a different question altogether.
Moreover, whatever was the cause of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the later months of 1915. This discouraging shrinkage was not manifesting itself to at all the same extent at that stage in such New Army divisions as were at the front.
A good many of us at the War Office also did not, I think, see quite eye to eye with Lord K. in connection with his piling up of New Army divisions without providing them with reserves. The tremendous drain which modern war creates in respect to personnel came as a surprise to all the belligerents; but the surprise came fairly early in the proceedings, and the Adjutant-General's department had fully grasped what this meant, and had realized the scale of the provision necessary to meet it, by the end of 1914. If I remember aright, one whole "New Army" (the Fourth, I think it was) had to be broken up in the summer of 1915, and transformed into a reservoir of reserves, because the First, Second, and Third New Armies practically had none. It had been manifest long before these armies were gradually drawn into the fight that they would suffer heavy wastage, and that they would speedily become mere skeletons unless they had ample backing from home. Had the branches of the War Office which were supposed to deal with these questions been allowed their own way in regard to them, I imagine that greater foresight would have been displayed and that some confusion might have been avoided.
The preceding paragraphs read perhaps rather like a deliberate attempt to belittle the achievements of the greatest of our War Ministers. But they only touch upon one side, the dark side so to speak, of Lord Kitchener's work as an organizer and administrator during the Great War. Little has been said hitherto as to the other and much more important side, the bright side, of that work.
The marvels that he accomplished in respect to multiplying the land forces of the nation by creating improvised armies as it were by magic, have put in the shade a feat for which Lord Kitchener has never been given sufficient credit. Prior to August 1914, no organization existed for placing any portions of our regular army in the field in a Continental theatre of war, other than the Expeditionary Force and one additional division. The additional division was to be constituted if possible on the outbreak of war out of infantry to be withdrawn from certain foreign garrisons, and spare artillery, engineer and departmental units that existed in the United Kingdom. That additional division, the Seventh, was despatched to the Western Front within two months of mobilization. But Lord Kitchener also organized four further regular divisions, the Eighth, Twenty-seventh, Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth, of which the first three were in the field within five months of mobilization, joining Sir J. French respectively in November, December and January, and the remaining one was nearly ready to take the field by the end of the six months. The Secretary of State prepared for this immediately on taking up office, by recalling practically the whole of the regulars on foreign service, with the exception of the British troops included in four mixed Indian divisions. Would any War Minister other than Lord Kitchener have had the courage to denude India of British regular troops, artillery as well as infantry, to the extent that he did? Supposing any other War Minister to have proposed such a thing, would the Government have backed him up? It was the handiwork of a very big man.
Still, this was after all a quite minor detail in the constructive labours undertaken by one of the most illustrious public servants of our time. His paramount claim to the gratitude of his countrymen rests upon his nimble perception of the nature of the task which he had been suddenly called upon to perform, and upon the speed with which he set every channel in motion to accomplish his purpose. He realized, as it seemed by instinct, that this contest was going to be a very big business indeed, an incomparably bigger business than these topmost military authorities who had been in the confidence of the Government before the blow fell had any idea of. It is no exaggeration to say that in this matter he was a giant amongst the pigmies. He grasped the truth at once that this world war was to be a protracted struggle, a struggle in which the Entente would not gain the upper hand unless a tremendous effort was to be put forward by the British Empire. He saw almost at a glance that our military system such as it was, and as previously devised with a view to war conditions, provided what represented numerically no more than an insignificant fraction of the host which would ultimately be needed to give us victory. He furthermore—and it is well to insist upon this thus early, in view of fabrications which have been put about on the subject of munitions—clearly discerned the need for a huge expansion in the country's powers of output in respect to war material; so that under his impulse existing factories and establishments were developed on generous lines, and arrangements were instantly set on foot for creating entirely new factories and establishments. The result was that, after a lean and discouraging period for the troops in the field, the needs of an army which was ten times as strong as the army which soldiers of light and leading had been contemplating before war broke out, were being adequately met within fifteen months of the British ultimatum to Germany.
Within the War Office itself he certainly made things hum. In pre-war, plain-clothes days, those messengers of distinguished presence—dignity personified in their faultlessly-fitting official frock-coats and red waistcoats—had lent a tone of respectability to the precincts, compensating for the unfortunate impression conveyed by Adjutant-Generals and such like who perambulated the corridors in grimy, abandoned-looking