The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division. Cyril Falls
154th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
172nd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
173rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
Divisional Ammunition Column, Royal
Field Artillery.
Royal Engineers.
121st Field Company, Royal Engineers.
122nd Field Company, Royal Engineers.
150th Field Company, Royal Engineers.
107th Infantry Brigade.
(Brigadier-General G. H. H. Couchman, C.B.)
8th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (East Belfast Volunteers).
9th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (West Belfast Volunteers).
10th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (South Belfast Volunteers).
15th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (North Belfast Volunteers).
108th Infantry Brigade.
(Brigadier-General G. Hacket Pain, C.B.)[13]
11th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (South Antrim Volunteers).
12th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (Central Antrim Volunteers).
13th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (1st Co. Down Volunteers).
9th Battn. Royal Irish Fusiliers (Armagh, Monaghan, and
Cavan Volunteers).
109th Infantry Brigade.
(Brigadier-General T. E. Hickman, C.B., D.S.O.)
9th Battn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Tyrone Volunteers).
10th Battn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Derry Volunteers).
11th Battn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Donegal and Fermanagh Volunteers). 14th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (Young Citizen Volunteers of Belfast).
Pioneer Battalion.
16th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (2nd Co. Down Volunteers).
Divisional Troops.
Service Squadron, Royal Inniskilling Dragoons.
36th Divisional Signal Company, Royal Engineers.
Divisional Cyclist Company.
Royal Army Medical Corps.
108th Field Ambulance.
109th Field Ambulance.
110th Field Ambulance.
76th Sanitary Section, R.A.M.C.
Divisional Train, R.A.S.C.
48th Mobile Veterinary Section.
The present is perhaps the most suitable moment for mention of the reserve battalions, of which six were formed in 1915: the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th Royal Irish Rifles, 12th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and 10th Royal Irish Fusiliers. The 36th was the sole Irish Division to have its own reserve formations. In addition to the provision of drafts, these battalions had important tasks in the disturbed period following the rebellion of Easter Week, 1916. A detachment from the 18th Royal Irish Rifles, which battalion was commanded by Colonel R. G. Sharman Crawford, C.B.E., took part in the capture of "Liberty Hall."
Training was in full swing by the end of September, 1914, the 107th Brigade being at Ballykinlar, the 108th at Clandeboye and Newtownards, and the 109th at Finner; where the accommodation consisted at this early date almost entirely of tents. By good chance the weather of the first three weeks of October was fine and mild, but thereafter, and before the hutting was completed, a very wet and severe winter set in. The U.V.F. training was a great advantage. It was easy to handle bodies of men, the most ignorant of whom could at least number, form fours, march in step, and keep alignment from the first. And the old organization held till it could be replaced by the new. As one Commanding Officer writes: "The U.V.F. officers and N.C.O.'s kept the men in order till we straightened out into the regular army formation." The enthusiasm of the men of those days of 1914 is something that no officer who served with them can ever forget; something perhaps, also, that none but those officers who began their training in the first six months of the war ever witnessed. There is a slow-burning flame in the Ulster blood that keeps her sons, once raised to the passion of great endeavour, at a high and steady pitch of resolution. They took their work with extraordinary seriousness. They were all anxiety to learn. They made their platoon commanders, beginners for the most part like themselves, struggle to keep ahead of them in the art that both were acquiring. How many of the junior officers must remember those "conferences" of sergeants and section leaders after parade hours and the circle of keen heads bent inward toward them; how many the "parades" on the mess table, matches for sections, inked on one side so that after many manœuvres the front rank might remain the front!
The Infantry of the 36th Division was formed on perhaps the most strictly territorial basis of any Division of the New Armies; the general rule being that battalions were drawn from the larger regimental areas of the U.V.F., companies from the smaller, and platoons from battalion areas. This had the great advantage that it engendered a natural companionship and spirit of pride in the units. The company, the platoon, was a close community, an enlarged family. In after days, in the trenches and in billets behind the lines, the talk, not only of men from Belfast and the larger towns, but of those from the country villages, would be of streets and, in the latter case, of farms and lanes of which those present had known every detail from childhood. The old clan-names of the Northumbrian and Scottish Borders were clustered thick together. A platoon would have five Armstrongs or Wilsons or Elliots, a company half a dozen Irvines or Johnstons, a battalion half a score of Morrows or Hannas. To be set against that great accretion of moral force which springs from such a survival of the clan was the minor disadvantage that the non-commissioned officers for the most part, and certainly all the juniors amongst them, were the brothers and cousins and close companions of the men they commanded. It was not that their orders were disobeyed; it was rather that there was at first a diffidence about the orders, which sometimes appeared to be rather in the nature of persuasive requests. In a few units the non-commissioned officers were changed about, so that they came in contact with men with whom they were less familiar. But the problem was never a serious one, and it finally disappeared. The only other disciplinary problem was that of week-end leave. The great bulk of the men of the 107th and 108th Brigades and most of the Divisional Troops were training near their homes. They could not understand why they should be kept in camp doing nothing on Sundays when they might have been visiting them. Though leave was given generously enough, this remained a sore point till the Division moved to England. Apart from "absence without leave" there was no crime to speak of. Such occasional blackguards as were found in the ranks were swiftly disposed of, a sentence of "discharged as incorrigible and worthless," which was, as a fact, quite illegal in time of war, being their fate.
The Divisional Commander was a firm believer in marching, not only as a preparation for that feature of military life, but as a creator of toughness and endurance to meet the varied strain of war. By the early months of 1915 one brigade route march of from twenty to twenty-five miles, and shorter battalion marches each week, had become the general rule. Equipment being slow in making its appearance, General Powell had rucksacks, of the Alpine pattern, made in Belfast, to be carried, fully loaded, on the march instead of the pack, and bolts from the shipyards to take the place of small-arm ammunition in the pouches. There was, as might be expected, some grumbling at what appeared to be a needless imposition, but the troops benefited by the experience, and Sir Archibald Murray, when they marched past him the following summer, remarked how easily they carried their packs. Numerous recruiting marches were also carried out, which provided further training in marching and march-discipline, and at the same time exhibited detachments of the units from the countryside to the remotest villages in their area. Everywhere they were received with the greatest pride and enthusiasm.
For the rest, the training was that of all the New Armies. The Infantry had "D.P." rifles, the R.E. for a long time no material save what was bought for them. Little musketry