Towards the First Stakes: Some Prolegemena for Any Possible History of Operation Goodwood

Let's keep our eyes on the prize. It's not a car. It's the Luv Bandit. And by that I mean that if a war of choice is fought, not by the army you want, but the army you have, then a war of total social mobilisation is fought, not by the army you want, but the army that society will give you. It is an army that, however imperfectly, sees the future: and that future is cruising with your buddies in the Luv Bandit.

(Or your children. Your son, anyway.)

This is a prose dump, of course, from a manuscript that at the rate I clipped it out earlier in the decade would have easily hit 2000 pages had I finished it. The point, of course, is that the British Army that went into Operation Goodwood pretty much had to look the way that it did. Next up is the manpower crisis, then the munitions crisis, and then I should be ready to talk about tanks. 

Given that I've mapped this out as seven days of writing, with, ideally, some library time on a day off, I hope you will accept the "dump the windy prose" strategy. At least it preserves the footnotes. Though why the Word and Open Office default is to lower-case Roman numerals I do not know. Some of the tables here repeat. If you're interested in the Supplementary Reserve, I am sure that you will not care. If  you aren't, you will have suffered terminal eyeglazing long before you get that far, so it's all good. 

Finance, Organisation, Troop Strengths, and Design

In 1937, the land armed forces of the United Kingdom were under the War Office, a Ministry of State of the British government that handled weapon and supply procurement, construction, maintenance, and administration of the nation’s fortifications, including naval. With the creation of the Ministry of Supply just before the outbreak of war procurement and weapon design were removed from War Office purview, although it eventually won back a significant share of design responsibility. The Indian Army answered to the India Office, some like formations to the Colonial Office. The Indian Army was largely officered by British-borne and trained officers, who were not members of the British armed forces under the War Office, although integrated with it insofar as command and discipline were concerned. A large number of British troops in garrison in India were under the War Office, but administratively subject to the India Office. The distinction is important because they were financed from the government of India’s budget and thus do not appear at the head of the Army Estimates in the Vote A heading, where misled common sense has led some to expect to find a statement of the global number of British subjects in the service of the Crown, the upshot being occasional misstatements of the land forces strength. The Indian Army normally bought its weapons and procurred its military engineers and technicians from Britain, which made it a consumer rather than a producer of military design and engineering, but there were exceptions to this rulen. The Government of  India’s budget, which changed little from year to year, fell well short of providing the necessary onetime costs of mechanisation, and ultimately an extraordinary British subsidy was required, payed in 1938 before the Indian cavalry could be (partially) mechanised.^[i]

Table 1: War Office Expenditure and Strength (£millions and 000s Personnel)^[ii]

Year	Estimate	Pay	Reserves Pay	Vote A Strength	Reserve	Suppl Reserve	Territorial Army	British Forces in India
1914	22	8.7	3.7	186.4	147	80	251	78
1920	165	88.5	5.03	525		---	---	--
1921	86	55.8	6.47	641[iii]		---	---	---
1922	50.2	29.9	7.02	210	---	---	---	---
1923	52	28.1	7.2	170	---	---	---	---
1924	45.9	24.5	7.04	161	84	---	182	71
1925	54.3	28	7.07	160	92	23[iv]	187	62
1926	54.4	14.3	5.42	159	99	23	186	62
1927	51	13.9	5.36	166[v]	96	23	186	62
1928	49.3	13.0	5.43	153	97	23	184	60
1929	49	12.7	5.47	150	109[vi]	22	184	60
1930	47.5	12.4	5.53	148	124	23	180	60
1931	46.6	12.1	5.58	148	132	23	171	60
1932	42.8	11.7	4.04	148	129	24	169	60
1933	43.9	11.8	4.78	148	126	25	172	58
1934	45.4	11.9	4.76	149	125	25	172	58
1935	49.7	12.3	5.03	152	120	25	171	58
1936	55	12.7	6.03	158	113	25	177	58
1937	89	13	7.9	168	121	25	184	58
1938	114	13.8	9.83	170	132	51	203	57
1939	161	16.4	14.1	185	143	56	203	57

The estimates show that the interwar financial history of the army was shaped by the aftershocks of WWI. The enormous size of the army in 1919 reflects above all the difficulties the army was experiencing with rapid demobilisation. Meanwhile, the budget was inflated with residual liabilities and incomplete production contracts. These fell off rapidly, even precipitously over the next two years, but other legacies of the war were less easy to buy out. The army would carry the pension debt of the officers and men whose normal careers were extended for the duration in 1914–18, though not, fortunately, for wartime recruits, whose pensions (largely disability payments) were shifted to another ministry..^[vii]

The army suffered under other exigencies that had to be reconciled with finances. India shaped it at a fundamental level, but it was sometimes difficult to see this, because of the evolutionary character of the army’s structure. For it should be borne in mind that armies are all about manpower, and large employers simply cannot change policy on a whim without considering individual careers, and in an institution where men who fought at Balaclava and El Alamein could (barely) overlap, it was difficult to manage within a politician’s notoriously short timeframe. As a result, the Secretary of State of 1914 found himself saddled with an army that was an “immediate” result of the panic inspired by the Franco-Prussian War forty years before, and mechanisation in the 30s was overshadowed by arrangements fixed after the Indian Mutiny. Two brilliant Secretaries of State for War triumphed over this reign of expediency to place permanent imprints on the army: Viscount Cardwell from 1868 to 1874; and Lord Haldane, in 1905–11. In its final working form, which was certainly not the result of Cardwell and Haldane’s reforms only, the British army, excluding the Guards, was a short service force in which men served from 5 to 7 years with the colours, and subsequently for the balance of 12 years in the Regular Army Reserve. The large reserve was intended specifically to fill out the army for operations in Europe, but as in all other armies the horse cavalry was not subject to “filling out” on call up because cavalry reservists were not considered suited for immediate action. Unlike on the continent, where the tendency was to redirect cavalry reservists to infantry formations, the War Office kept its options open so as potentially to increase very greatly the British ratio of foot to horse above that required for European warfare. The Indian garrison was fixed, as was the proportion of British units to Indian Army formations, and also the periods of rotation. This ultimately fixed British regular infantry and cavalry strength although the nominal Cardwell calculation that there would be one battalion at home in Britain for every one overseas, excluding the Guards, was rarely achieved. Infantry units at home at home were maintained at reduced peace strength precisely so that they could receive reservists upon mobilisation into a Field Force. Under Lord Haldane, there was actually only 1 British unit in India for every 3 elsewhere. This still left sufficient troops at home for prewar Foreign Secretaries to wield 6 infantry divisions and 1 cavalry division in diplomacy, and actually deploy 4 and 1 1/3 when diplomacy failed. (The Territorial army was to supply 14 infantry divisions and 14 cavalry brigades on the same basis as Continental lower readiness reserves.)The British army is sometimes described as a long service force, under both Cardwell and Haldane, enlistment was deliberately kept shorter than many soldiers preferred. This saved money on pensions while filling out the reserves. It helped address the fact that the army was persistently understrength, and was well suited to the ever-increasing scale of operations on the Northwest Frontier, where mountain warfare put a premium on youthful fitness in the ranks and junior officer corps. It was also wise and deliberate use of manpower in some respects. It would have been foolish beyond imagining to keep the Royal Army Medical Corps, or even the bakers of the service corps at wartime strength, for example, but underrecruitment was also an issue. Understrength was a continuing and serious problem. The Haldane system, so fixed and logical in its conception, for example, contained the critically illogical assumption that the army would be able to recruit no less than 35,000 men a year, a number that it never reached. 

The British regular army consisted in 1939 of 19 regiments of cavalry, 143 batteries of artillery, 135 battalions of infantry, 8 tank battalions, and 8 independent artillery companies. Indian troops included 96 infantry battalions, 18 regiments of cavalry, 18 batteries of Mountain Artillery, 4 pioneer corps, and the Indian Signals, Service, Ordnance, and Railway Corps under an officer corps of 3031 British and 697 Indian officers. By the outbreak of war, British and Indian military payroll had reached 640,000 Britons 200,000 Indians, and 8,000 colonials. British army enlistment reached 2.71 million men on 6 June 1944, and peaked at 2.9 million a few months later. The Indian army reached 2 million, a number that does not reflect the Indian population base in part because of racist policy, but also shortages of the necessary skills, notably language. This was particularly serious for the officer corps. Largely British through 1945,“Indianisation” began all-too tentatively in the 1930s, leaving the Indian army with 33,000 “white” officers and 14,000 Indian in 1945, by which time the “Africanisation” of the 3 African divisions attached to the Indian Army had scarcely begun. Tactically, the British Empire ultimately fielded 56 division equivalents, 44.5 British, 8.5 Indian, and 3 African, 12 of them armoured. It had been intended that expansion of the armoured arm be consistent throughout Empire forces, but the mechanisation of the British cavalry ran well ahead of that of the Indian.^[x]

As the ultimate expansion of the army depended heavily upon its prewar cohort, it is well to note that the ideal establishment figures cited above hide a less favourable picture so far as actual recruiting goes. While Army recruiters sometimes interviewed as many as 84,000 men a year (out of around 270,000 Britons reaching 18 each year) final intake rarely exceeded 30,000, and was usually much less, and always falling well short of the Haldane goals. In the depths of the depression the army was 5400 men understrength (and this was considered a crisis), while in 1937–8 the figures showed a shortfall of 1200 officers and 22,000 men. Although sometimes blamed on the inroads of ideological pacifism recruiting shortfalls had in fact been a permanent fixture of the British army since before the Cardwell reforms, and a comparison of British with European cavalry strengths shows that supposedly more warlike Europeans were not any more likely to volunteer than Britons before 1914. An intake even approaching 35,000 out of 270,000 candidates strikes me as an index of a highly militant society, not the reverse, and the RAF’s steady and rapid rise from 30,000 men in 1933 to over 100,000 in 1939 shows this as much as anything. The fact is that the RAF was drawing in a new demographic that would never have volunteered for the army, something that was particularly noticeable in the cavalry, which had special recruiting difficulties by the interwar years, while Tank Corps recruiting was much more successful. British youth chose "modern" services. The question was whether the infantry could ever be packaged as “modern.” It was frankly noted that the lower two-thirds of interwar officer candidates for the RASC, infantry and armour were of poor quality –although this was to some extent implicit in the army’s “up or out” policy. The problem did not extend to signals, engineering, or the artillery, fortunately.^[xi]

The peacetime “Second Line” of the British land forces consisted of, besides the Regular Army Reserve, a Special or Supplementary Reserve, and the Territorial Army. After an ad hoc employment in 1914–18 gave plenty of room for experimental trial, the War Office fixed on a postwar plan whereby the Territorials would field 12 infantry divisions and two cavalry brigades in wartime, as well as the bulk of home defence AA troops. There were standing provisions (or perhaps notions) that the Territorial Army would expand by twinning or tripling existing units along the lines of continental conscript armies, but this only became relevant in the spring of 1939 when Territorial Army recruiting finally reached and exceeded targets. The twinning of 29 March 1939 was evidently a political gesture, and not very successful in terms of fielding sufficient trained troops in May 1940, but it did establish the foundations of the British wartime army, which largely consisted of Territorial divisions formed by the spring of 1940. India’s Territorial army of 18 infantry  battalions received the output of 11 University Training Courses, probably making its most important contribution to the expansion of the Indian Army through officer training. The British and Indian regular reserves contained  enlistees were relegated post-separation, the British one being much larger because of the shorter service time in the British army. Both reserves were intended to fill out existing units to their war establishment, but additional shortfalls in the British organisation were covered by a Supplementary Reserve raised directly without reference to the Territorials. This hardly exhausts the subject of the Supplementary Reserve in Britain, which will be further considered below. There was also an Indian Supplementary Reserve that consisted exclusively of part-time soldiers of the Anglo-Indian community, but it existed largely to assuage Anglo-Indian racial paranoia, even if it became an important source of technical skills for the expansion of the Indian army.^[xii]

Among Chamberlain’s many objectives in making Leslie Hore-Belisha his Secretary of State for War, the new minister’s easy grasp of public relations, so well demonstrated in the Transport Ministry, was far from the least. Recruiting, so long as it depended on volunteers, was very much a matter of publicity, an area where the army had long been seen to lag behind the navy and now the air force. Fortunately, Hore-Belisha recognised that publicity without at least the appearance of constructive improvements was doomed to failure. The new minister quickly identified problems, such as pensions and accommodation that were within his power to improve. Chamberlain, in spite of his commitment to  contain the growth of the Army Estimates in the present, allowed Belisha to greatly expand the number of soldiers allowed to serve out the full 12 years of their enlistment in active duty and re-enlist for another 9 –in other words, to qualify for the generous pensions that long-past governments had been forced to rein in after the Crimean War. He also extended this privilege to men already in the reserve. On the one hand, as the minister was quick to note, this encouraged 3000 men to rejoin the colours in the first three months of the programme, on the other, as Winston Churchill observed, this was a partial mobilisation, and not a recruiting gain. The minister also relaxed physical standards for recruits, facilitated officer promotions, permitted older and married recruits, particularly in the technical arms, and dramatically increased pay. It was, overall, an astonishing pension giveaway.^[xiii]

 Nevertheless, there was one common-sense way of inflating voluntary recruiting –the threat of imminent conscription, as introduced in April 1939. The earlier volunteering initiative having already borne fruit to a remarkable extent, as can be seen from the rapid expansion of the Territorial Army in 1938–9, the introduction of conscription sufficed to fill the ranks of both the Territorial and Regular Army (although not yet the Supplementary Reserve) to a very satisfactory degree at the outbreak of war. Training was still weak, but there was considerable enthusiasm and a strong institutional framework in the army. Avoiding Kitchener’s error in ignoring the Territorial Army in 1914–15, Belisha directed the flow of new soldiers, volunteer up to September and conscripts beginning in July, into the established army. By the end of July 1940 the army had received 734,000 conscripts. It is not clear what kind of wastage was experienced in the process of turning the Territorials over to active status, but by the end of the year there were 1.128 million men in the army, compared with 2.5 million in the armed forces in total. This was enough to provide 30 divisions, compared with the 10 fully equipped divisions in France, plus 1 armoured, 2 British infantry, and 1 Canadian infantry division sent into France during the fighting, 4 divisions in the Middle East, and troops in India, but as we have seen, besides training shortfalls there were real problems with the Lines of Communications in France that kept the new recruits at home.^[xiv]

The cabinet was responsible for meeting industry’s needs as well as the War Office’s. For the first 8 months of the war it attempted to balance the requirements of both expediently. The blockage in France limited the outflow of army manpower, which was the main drain. The armed forces as a whole stated a target of  4.4 million men, while the War Office was aiming for 59.3 divisions by the end of 1941, including Indian and African but not Commonwealth troops. This goal was evidently modelled on the peak Imperial effort in WWI and must have seemed reasonable (as well as being diplomatically well-received in Paris), but serious consideration of the WWI situation would have revealed its lack of realism to anyone save Hore-Belisha, who was at one point aiming for a 100 division army. Winston Churchill, who had been associated with Field-Marshal Wilson’s plan to cut the Commonwealth Expeditionary Forces to 35 divisions for the 1919 campaign, referred to below, must have been aware of this, for he moved quickly after reaching office to rein the War Office in, capping army strength at 2.2 million men. Unfortunately, the early months of his premiership coincided with the summer 1940 crisis. The War Office, whose training situation had been transformed by the return of the BEF with all its potential instructors, was permitted to call up the remaining available men in draft-eligible age brackets. From this point on, the army would be confined to manpower already raised and its share of 270,000 man cohort –plus one-time gains when the draft age was cut from 18 1/2 to 18, and raised from 41 to 46, but these gains could not compensate the Home Army for the ever-increasing demands of the Middle East. The  army breached its cap and reached a new ceiling of 2.374 million in May 1942 and then was switched to a moving cap that reached  2.5 million in the course of 1943, then 2.7 million in June 1944, and finally 2.9 million in the spring of 1945 as the army prepared enormous lines of communication for a war against Japan –and the government confronted rising unemployment at home as the coastal shipping shortage bit into British industrial output.^[xv]

 Despite the ideal goal of improving on the performance of WWI, military mobilisation again collided with industrial and scientific needs. The TUC fought for skilled tradesmen, while the universities fought to broaden the base of educational deferments. The services might have a jaundiced eye on the course of study of every one of the 3% of British youth who enrolled in university, but the authorities at Cambridge and Oxford were convinced that there was not a man in their colleges who was not of more value sitting lectures than fighting at the front. Compromise was difficult, but achieved. On the trade union side, in April 1941 the Manpower Committee drew up “manpower budgets” every six months to allocate the 130,000 men of the semiannual cohort. The first of these received a report from the Technical Requirements Subcommittee of the Labour Ministry. The TRS estimated that the country could mobilise 235,000 tradespeople aged 20–5 (out of a total of 650,000) and 120,000 aged 26–40. It is amazing that 650,000 of the roughly 2.2 million Britons in this age group qualified as tradesmen, and these figures do not include the serving technicians that the armed forces trained themselves. The April 1941 labour budget was later seen to reflect a certain degree of optimism. By the fall of 1941 industry perceived a shortage of  skilled men. Firms proved unwilling to part with their apprentices as they reached drafting age. Certain industrial apprentices received deferrments as generous as any Oxbridge physicist, and the Beveridge Committee endorsed a widespread feeling that the army was hoarding skilled men. Cabinet denied the army further tradesmen and engineers until August 1942 when the Army Council finally managed to rebut the charge by laying out the human resources implications of the invasion. At the other end of the social scale, the Ministry of Labour and National Service denied university students blanket deferrments at all. Some 5500 engineer and scientist undergraduates and resident graduate students were considered in October 1939–January 1940. Five thousand were allowed to continue their studies, but only 111 relieved of future service obligation as proven researchers. The remainder were simply reserved for military service in their specialities –although in some cases this would mean research as well. The universities were also encouraged to reduce the length of courses, excepting engineers, physics, radio, and metallurgy students. In the first years of the war call-ups for university students could be deferred to age 20–1 as under the militia provisions, and this meant that even the arts students of 1939–40 graduated normally. By October 1942 this had ended, but students could still appeal to advisory committees at their universities. ^[xvi]

 The Beveridge Committee’s recommendation that the army end its technical call ups and the subsequent reversal of this policy in August 1942 deserves some special consideration. The problem of continental lines of communication has come up before, and will come up again, but it is worth looking at one of the primary corps concerned, the Royal Engineer (Transport). By August 1942 the branch was looking to the problem of invading Europe and pursuing the defeated Germans with specific reference to its WWI experience of advancing across the devastated landscapes of 1917–18. The worst case scenario had the Germans destroying all logistic facilities behind them. The Allies would have to rebuild the ports they entered through, the rail and road net they advanced along, and provide their own transport capabilities. All this would require men, and the RE (T) put forward tentative orders of battle for the work. Port construction, dredging, and repair alone would require 154 engineer-officers and 2100 tradesmen from British forces. These men would be recruited directly from the labour force, but still had to be called up in advance to be given basic infantry and in some cases diving training. Fortunately Britain had perhaps the largest population of port construction specialists in the world. Even more dramatically, as in the last war the navy’s decision to retain its personnel and the modest RN wartime expansion (most new personnel coming from Britain’s seafaring and technical labour force via the RNR and RNVR) meant that its training pipeline was soon delivering surplus manpower. This ultimately found use in the amphibious force, where the navy came to compete directly with the army. Overall, the introduction of a universal compulsory national service obligation made the most efficient possible use of British human resources, but could not stay ahead of competing manpower demands of war even before its main forces were heavily engaged. This paradoxical fact was to have great strategic and diplomatic consequences.

II. Organisation and Training of the Technical and Tactical Arms

The British army has traditionally distinguished between the “combat” and “service” arms. The former consisted of the infantry, cavalry, and artillery that fought the battles, while the latter carried up the water. Yet it would be hard to argue that the combat arms had more prestige than theone “service” corps, the Royal Engineers, usually acknowledged as the intellectual elite of the army. Officers of the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and the RE could qualify for Staff College and rise to become generals and commanders-in-chief. Through the 19^th century the engineers and artillerists tended to dominate the very highest ranks, but during and after the South African War the cavalry leaped into the lead. In the nineteenth century, the other two service corps, the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Army Service Corps (Royal Army Service Corps after 1923) were much less important within the army. The RAOC handled munitions and weapons maintenance and repair, and being more closely associated with the armouries than with the field army, could probably have cared less what the regular army thought of it, but the ASC, officered largely by commissioned warrant officers rising from the ranks, was definitely not the right sort of people. Even the higher ranks of logistical administration were more often occupied by RE officers than by RASC men. 

 The postwar era complicated matters enormously. The cavalry became the RAC, while the artillery and RE became intensely technical services. From the RE sprang  the signals personnel of the Royal Corps of Signals (RCS), who also qualified as “combatant,” while the RAOC and ASC (or RASC as it became in 1923) developed vehicle maintenance branches that merged in 1942 to become another “noncombatant” corps, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). Meanwhile, Britain had entered WWI with a small Railway Operating Department and two Railway Operating Companies intended to support the BEF as it operated a single corps on perhaps only a single railway line such as the Sinai Railway or the Karachi-Lahore spur lines. Subsequent massive expansion formed the RE (Transportation), virtually a separate corps with its own internal divisions.Taken together, the RAOC, RCS, RE, and RASC employed large numbers of engineers and tradesmen during WWI and played a critical role in ensuring that the tactical branches were actually able to fight, a lesson well learned by 1939, while the third of the classical combat branches, the RA, remained as profoundly technical as ever. Meanwhile, the infantry and RAC specialist specialist niches within their own ranks as their weapons became more complex over the years. By 1939 the technical arms were actually more numerous than the tactical arms, and several infantry regiments, having been converted to machine gun or motorised battalions formed their own small technical corps in all but name. The largest, and by implication most important branch of the army in Normandy was the Royal Artillery, with 22% of Commonwealth troops in theatre compared with only 12% infantry The Commonwealth armies actually suffered from a shortage of infantry thanks to the technical arms’ demand for human resources, while the difficulties experienced by the Indian army in finding adequate numbers of technical troops, and to a lesser extent the Dominion armies, reduced the overall Commonwealth combat strength, as British personnel had to make up the shortfall, further reducing the number available for infantry duties.^[xviii]

^x]

Table: Corps Breakdown (British Regular Army)

Corps	1938	1939	Corps	1938	1939
RAC[xx]	4777	12,541	RASC	7 510	9090
Cavalry	8077	1844	RAMC	4468	5356
RA	26,186	30,711	RAOC	4,653	5843
RE	10,143	6,457	RAPC	964	1158
RCS	6,286	6,722	Infantry	79,722	81,372

Recruiting and Skills: The Engineering Industry, The Decline of Wheat and the Supplementary Reserve

Unlike the other armed forces, armies exist by mobilising society’s existing resources. Pastoral tribes count their fighting power in terms of the number of adult males, because they make no distinction between the tools and arms of manhood. Ancient city states and medieval kingdoms required more sophisticated harness and counted their armies by the number of men of wealth enough to buy their own weapons. Early modern states had the wealth to arm every man they could call up, and eventually developed the coercive power necessary to mobilise every available horse and wagon. By Napoleonic times the modern state matched the nomad tribe in its ability to mobilise to the limits of social resources. The nation’s war strength was the measure of its population –but only because it was wealthy enough that it now ran out of draftable men before it ran out of draftable horse and wagon. Industrialisation restored the balance of man and horse and forced the European powers into horse subsidies. In spite of maintaining its manpower by volunteerism, in the larger scheme of things the British army was no different. For all that it took a smaller share of the annual cohort, it had a large second-line part-time army (through 1904 the Special Reserve, Militia, and Yeomanry; 1904–14, Special Reserve and Territorial Army; 1919–23, Territorials; 1923–39 Supplementary Reserve and Territorials) that when taken together at establishment strength doubled theoretical mobilised British manpower. These part-time citizen armies were, by their nature, inefficient and smaller than their conscript counterparts of the continent, but the lot of the horses of England was much closer to that of their continental counterparts. Every summer, on both continent and in Britain, reservists and subsidised horses alike were called to training camp, and men played at war while doing the very real work of driver and groom. Horse skills, whether those of the cavalry or the supply column, presented continuing problems –and opportunities. The total mobiliseable British reserve cavalry approached that of the European powers much more closely than did the nation’s infantry because one could not conscript cavalrymen. On the other hand, it lacked reserves of trained manpower. But the great truth of mass mobilisation in the pre-petroleum era: trains, rifle ranges, and conscription laws figured as one crucial dimension in strategic calculation, but in order to get the new model rifles and quick-firing guns to the front, men in their hundreds of thousands had to be marshalled into marching columns complete with a horse-drawn wagon for every 20 men, and every one of those horses had to be inspected, harnessed or saddled first. To a large extent this was simply taken for granted, but the South African War revealed that Britain’s resources were sifting away. The War Office soon ran out of British horses and ended by buying them around the world. In the years before 1914, Britain was subtly losing the basic requirements of a mass mobilisation infantry army.

 To understand how this change came about, it is necessary to understand the character of the army. Britain never gave up its right to conscript men, but it was understood that India could not be garrisoned by conscripts in peacetime. It followed that the British army required 35,000 volunteers each year not counting the navy, and this was thought incompatible with conscription. As already noted, these numbers were not reached, and through the long years between Cardwell and 1914 the War Office had to resort to expedients. Units, especially those under training in Britain, were often understrength. This lead to inappropriate overtraining, for the horses had to be taken care of, and the War Office supplied enough horses to move a battalion or an artillery battery whether it was at authorised strength or not. Yet in a subtle sense, this was an advantage. Tactical training suffered, but Britain still won its wars. And meanwhile, a far larger proportion of recruits were getting the opportunity to fill in as grooms, drivers, and for that matter as bricklayers and personal secretaries. In itself this made the army more attractive to young men –and increased its value to the large economy as a trainer of men.^[xxi]

Meeting the gap between the army’s very high enlistment and its even higher requirements was a serious problem, and we might even ask why it British rates of military participation were so high. Urban legend to the contrary, the boys who signed up did so with their parents’ informed consent and had to pass physical and written examinations. Far from being reluctant scum, British boys signed up eagerly, and with the promise of  7 years with the colours and 5 with the reserve, could look forward to separating from the army at 25 with six months’ separation pay , if not a pension, officers at 35 with a small pension. Although pay was good enough that a frugal soldier could save enough money to buy a business, this was not the common outcome. So from one perspective, the army’s terms were not promising. The young soldier lost 7, or 17 years, on the job market compared to his contemporaries and could easily end up with dependents and the entire burden of retirement saving ahead. It is clear that many men enlisted in the hope that they would be among the minority who were invited to extend service with the colours to 12 years, followed by an automatic option to extend for 9 years and a pension. Every time the War Office reduced service time required towards pensions or increased the number of men retained, recruiting spiked. Officers showed the same good sense, being far less likely to enter Sandhurst, the aristocratic military academy that served the infantry and cavalry than the technical school, Woolwich.^[xxii] Arguably, soldiers also wanted higher pay than the army was offering, but pay adjustments had less effect on recruiting than pension adjustments. This leaves a rather important question. Why did so many men enlist specifically in infantry and cavalry regiments before 1914, despite knowing that they were unlikely to reach pension, and why did they cease to be so enthusiastic about the infantry and cavalry after 1918 while volunteering eagerly for the RN, RTC and the RAF?^[xxiii]

 The key point, modern studies of recruiting suggest, has to lie in the other “goods” that military service offer. Among these, the lure of adventure and the social cachet of uniform and branch of service cannot be doubted, any more than the opportunity to learn a skill, but this is complicated. Men entered the pre-1945 peacetime British army in two streams, and the same may be said of officers. The first recruit stream consisted of 16 year-old boy entrants, who entered the army through the Boy’s Technical Schools and passed on after two years, mainly to the RA, RE, RCS, RAOC, and RASC. The second stream entered at 18 1/2. They largely volunteered through specific depots, going to specific cavalry and infantry units, and the RTC. Meanwhile, boys aspiring to be officers took a standard entrance exam on graduation, and were placed in either the Royal Military College Sandhurst or the Royal Military Academy Woolwich according to their grades. Woolwich had much  much higher scores than Sandhurst –higher, in fact, than Oxford or Cambridge. Tradesmen were at the top of the list for retention to pension, and their army experience (and seniority) was directly transferable to peace employment. They, and for that matter their Woolwich-trained officers could realistically expect to retire from the army at the peak of their working life with a pension already paying and a combination of training and work experience that  Woolwich-trained officers were in a similar position. Conversely, the men who entered later, or via Sandhurst were locked into infantry and cavalry careers in the British or Indian armies, with no convenient access to technical training. There were exceptions. The army recruited men in their early 20s precisely for their technical skills, or in the case of officer entrants via the older universities, even their liberal arts training. All garrisons were supposed to offer adult education, and the larger garrisons sometimes presented opportunities to extend this to technical training. Some men were able to transfer from the combat arms to the technical.^[xxiv] These aside the large mass of men entered the army were excluded from technical training, and the same was true of the Territorials and the old Special Reserve. Unfair as all of this was, it reflected society at large. The army took its apprentices at 16 because British industry did the same, and the RN already circumvented the process by taking its prospective technicians at 15 1/2. Yet neither it nor any other army could recruit  infantry and cavalry at 16. Sixteen year olds could not meet the army’s physical standards, nor, given the late age of maturation in this period, was their any guarantee that they ever would. All this said, fighting soldiers did not have to be taken at 18, nor apprentices at 16. This was simply the most convenient and economical method of arranging matters, and one that neither Cardwell nor Haldane though necessary to modify. The reason it worked, in the end, was that service in an infantry or cavalry regiment could still serve in lieu of more active career training in 1914, and its developing failure during the 30s reflects the changing relationship between the prewar infantry and cavalry regiment and the world of work.^[xxv]

A European army of the 1880s called conscripts into their regular service formations and left their training to their officers. The whole process of perfecting their military abilities could not take more than 2 years, but in practice due to generous furlough policies often took even less time. In that time their trainers had to bring them to peak physical condition, teach them weaponcraft, tactics, and a fairly complicated drill. This may seem reasonable, but in fact is not. Besides being fit and soldierly, it was taken for granted in 1914 that an infantry battalion could be turned out to forage, that it could receive its ration in the form of live animals if necessary, that it could field the men needed to drive its wagons and battalion guns. Now, men are not born with scythes or butcher’s knives in their hands, but the typical new 19^th century conscript might as well have been. He was an agricultural labourer who could, at least under supervision, butcher a calf, pitch a 10 man tent, drive a wagon, change its wagon wheel, harness a horse, fell a tree, build a road, and harvest a field. This was why nineteenth-century conscription worked, and for that matter the analagous Commonwealth Territorials and militias could function: many of the skills needed were brought to the army as a matter of course.

Lord Cardwell’s army took all this so much for granted because it was of this world. The fact that most recruits were agricultural labourers was not so much observed as taken for granted on the grounds that most 18 year old men were either agricultural labourers, or “urban” labourers who did a significant amount of agricultural labour. More than 2 million people were registered as agricultural labourers in Britain in 1870, that is, persons, largely adult males,  making their living from wages paid by farmers. And although England was the most urbanised European power, not more than fifty percent of Englishmen lived in towns by the 1870s, many of them economic migrants from the countryside who returned their happily when there was work. The landlord went to supervise the harvest, the poor to gather it, while the engineer went to survey, and the artisan to build sluices, pumps, and operate steam tractors. Within town, there were the“industrial workers who tended the draft horses that were the basis of the transport and construction industries. True urbanites went to the RA and the navy. The reason for this is apparent in the nature of the agricultural economy in which they lived. All of this, and most particularly those 2 million registered agricultural labourers, was possible and necessary because advanced capitalist agriculture succeeds by  capture fleeting efficiencies –by ploughing, sowing, reaping and harvesting at short notice when weather dictates. To achieve this, it must have a pool of unemployed labour at hand, but this unemployment is no kinder than any other form. Although buttressed by parish relief, it fell, as it always does, most heavily on the young and inexperienced, who from this perspective are caught in the classic experience trap, one made all the more severe by the fact that the work was arduously physical, so that one’s “experience” was often manifested in a broad shoulder and well-turned calf.  An institution that could offer escape from the experience trap was therefore likely to have considerable success, and not surprisingly the typical European army tended to that shape. In most countries, and even England, the best way of escaping the dead end life of the agricultural labourer was offered by the artillery and cavalry, which offered much more access to horses, which is why these volunteer-manned arms were able to keep pace, more-or-less, with the expanding conscript infantry branches on the continent, but the infantry, and particularly the British infantry, also offered these opportunities, at least in the form of the muscle built by 5 years of army food and army training. This was the nineteenth century agricultural “push and pull” logic of recruiting. It died during the English interwar.

In 1914 there were 3 million registered agricultural labourers in the United Kingdom, a robust recovery from a low of 2.3 million in 1900 thanks to the long-delayed end of the agricultural depression, but nevertheless only about 15% of the English workforce was on the land compared with 20% in Germany in 1939. The shortage of horses that emerged during the South African war might have served as a warning, however, that war was to reveal, or cause, a catastrophic and irreversible decline in labour-intensive British agriculture. Whereas the German equine population recovered from the WWI hecatomb and expanded so that it could mobilise 2.7 million horses in 1940, compared to 1.4 million horses in 1914, the number of horses in the United Kingdom, after rising modestly in 1875–1905 from 1.8 to 2.1 million, fell to only 200,000 in 1938. English farmers could no longer afford to plough even with internal combustion, much less horse and man. More and more arable land was going into pasture for fatstock and dairy, and without ploughing to absorb the labour, there were only 300,000 registered agricultural labourers in 1939.^[xxvi]

One way in which the army had traditionally dipped into the pool of agricultural labourers was with its Special Reserve. Special Reservists received six months of training –and room and board. Thereafter they only were obliged to  attend a two week summer camp, but could be called up for much more time consuming duties, up to and including tours in India. The Special Reserve was indispensable when the BEF ws called up to strength in 1914, providing slightly more than 1 infantryman for every 2.5 regulars in the United Kingdom. Yet it disappeared after the war, to be replaced by the  Supplementary Reserve, with a very different composition.

Table: Comparison of the Special Reserve (1914) with the Supplementary Reserve (1939) (Figures given Officers/Men)

Branch	1914	Attached to Territorials for Training	Attached to Regulars for Training	Not Required to Train in Peace	Total, 1939
Cavalry	1919		32/0		32/0
Armour			310/343		310/343
Artillery	957	132/4149	230/0	1000	362/5149
Engineers	1788	130/4299	173/35	69/2067	372/6401
Signals		122/3039	154/540	43/1207	319/4786
Foot Guards		104/0			104/0
Infantry	66,713		599/17,000		599/17,000
Military Police	430		0/800		0/800
Medical	1000		290/370	68/1862	358/2232
Services	9930	5/123	453/0	7/11,067	465/11,200
Ordnance	120	2/110	0/50	70/8,692	72/8852
Royal Engineer Transport Service			19/0	0/2554	281/7,129[xxvii]
Authorised Est.	80,120				67,945
Actual Est.	63,069				32,259

Aside from oddities such as the authorised 136 Supplementary Reserve officers of the Foot Guard and cavalry, these figures, which it must be emphasised, are only authorised recruiting figures, are practically a history of the changing British economy. The Special Reserve of 1914 was a cheap  infantry reserve feeding on agricultural unemployment. By contrast more than half the 1939 Supplementary Reserve consisted of potential drivers and mechanics enrolled in the RAOC and RASC, miscellaneous technicians in the RCS and RE, and potential railway troops in the RE(T), who  were not even required to train in peace. These were the men that a mechanised army would need, and which the government had to be prepared to offer any concession needful to bring them into the ranks. Needless to say, whether or not they volunteered for the Supplementary Reserve before the outbreak of war, had it not been for the  thousands of skilled mechanics that the War Office was able to extract from the economy, there could have been no question of mechanising the BEF.

The RE(T) was a different matter. It existed because of its training obligations. Railroad troops emerged in European armies during the second half of the nineteenth century in order to meet the logistical needs of mobilised armies. Railroad troops were needed in wartime, but also during the summer training period, when the national rail system had to handle the many reservists who were recalled to their units for refresher training, along with the horses and equipment required to mobilise them. The obvious approach was to form a reservist corps of railroad troops, largely out of employees in nationalised railroad companies. The British armies had been one of the first to move large numbers of troops by rail, but its domestic needs were small, even during the summer mobilisation of the Territorials, and the British railroads were private companies. The War Office did not ignore the problem. At the outbreak of war in 1914 there were 3 Railroad Operating Companies at a small training centre at Catterick. India, with real and pressing problems, had railroad troops under the Indian Army, with British officers seconded from the Royal Engineers. Commonwealth mobilisation during World War I went far beyond anything envisioned before the war, but in the end the British army carried its weight in France, raising an enormous railroad corps on the back of British volunteers from the rail industry. Looking forward to a second such war, the War Office recognised that the army would need a new reservist branch to provide the nucleus for a similar expansion. (Ironically, at the same time the efficient German and Austro-Hungarian railroad corps were disbanded because the peace treaties prohibited these countries, although not Czechoslovakia and other counties ethnic German populations, from maintaining reserves). However, there remained the difficulties of the private–public partnership to overcome. The solution was simple. The Crown would invite volunteer engineers and artisans to a six month course at the Railway Training Centre, with its six-mile railway attached to the LMS system, followed by two week refreshers every year. They would then be free to use their Crown training in private life, in turn for being liable for war service. Yet other artisans would qualify for reservist status without having to train in peacetime at all. The Supplementary Reservists of the 1939 RE(T) were recruited by precisely the same kind of incentive as the infantry reservists of 1914: the prospect of learning job skills at the Crown’s expense. Very little had changed in British demographics between 1914 and 1939. Every recruit obtained as a potential railway trooper was one lost the army as an infantryman. If we ignore the fact that neither the Special nor the Supplementary Reserve were recruited to strength, the  major difference between the BEF of 1914 and that of 1939 at this level was the loss of 2 rifle divisions of infantry in favour of railway workers, mechanics, and drivers. This change lies, quite simply, at the crux of the change in British society and, of necessity, of British strategy. 

The War Office actually took a much broader perspective on skills training and education. Parliament had long since determined that it was not going to be vulnerable when veterans begged in the streets. Unemployed discharged soldiers represented, as far as it was concerned, a serious failure on the part of the War Office, and the War Office took the point. It ran a comprehensive adult education programme, recruited apprentices for the Indian Army’s railway shops from the ranks of the British garrison, and from 1923 on, guaranteed every soldier who had not already received vocational training a seat at a Vocational Training Centre during their last six months of service upon volunteering. The VTC system was in slight flux during the early years of its mandate, when there was a dedicated agricultural training school beside the industrial school, but from 1929 they catered almost exclusively to the building trades, and their graduates were performing at much the same level as graduates of two year apprentice colleges serving the industry in the London area.  was dedicated to training men for agricultural work, but by 1930 there were two skills, both catering to the construction trades. Unfortunately, there were only 2400 seats a year for 25,000-odd separatees, but by all accounts the VTCs were too large rather than too small for the number of volunteers, who rarely exceeded 1000 a year In theory men were rotated back to the U.K. for their last year of service, but in practice overseas crises had their effect. More importantly, a large number of separating soldiers did not want to attend the VTCs. Some of them did not need their help, while others found the programme of 44 hours at the benches and a 2 hour voluntary night class too demanding, and yet others resented the fee of 5s/week. Some sad cases did not have the money to attend due to the needs of their dependents. It was even suggested that thanks to the continuing maintenance problems of some Indian stations that many men had already learned as much as the VTCs were likely to teach them. Within their limits the VTCs made a creditable contribution to the lives of veterans and the national skilled labour supply, but almost incidentally, the War Office was spending money to ensure that not less than 10% of available reservists were skilled construction workers. While there was no VTC for officers (the ultimate  solution,  requiring a university degree in all officer entrants, collided with other priorities). Here, as in many other respects, policy was working against the health of the nation’s pool of infantry.^[xxviii]

Training

TRaining covers two separate outcomes, that for soldiers, and that for officers. Commissioned officers represented about 2.5% of the personnel of the British armies for a total officer body of roughly 11,000, including over 1600 Indians. Officer turnover was heavy according to the needs of the “up or out by 40” policy. Roughly 500-600 officers joined each year, 120 Cadets via Woolwich, 320 through Sandhurst, and 100 through university degrees and the Officers Training Courses, or through the Supplementary Reserve. Many in the latter category would have been doctors and other professionals, while other rank candidates for promotion were normally sent to the academies. By 1938, the Indian Military College at Dhera Dum graduated 35 Indian officers each year, the remainder of Indian officers being “Viceroy’s Commission Officers” promoted from the ranks of more limited command privilege. The cadet colleges set entrance examinations and the British schools charged tuition of up to  £200/annum. Sandhurst and Woolwich courses lasted 18 month, Dhera Dum a more sensible 3 years. Sandhurst in particular had a well found reputation as a less than academically challenging environment, but it must be realised that it was intended to produce large numbers of small unit leaders whose physical fitness was of more immediate importance than their academic talents. Sandhurst’s cult of sport and horsemanship alienated some cadets, but was probably inescapable given just how difficult it apparently was to produce and maintain cavalrymen. The fact that so many Sandhurst graduates would have to compete for so few seats at the Staff Colleges against better prepared Woolwich and university graduates could be held against Sandhurst to the extent it is considered as an educational institution, but there were quotas for Sandhurst graduates, and there seems to have been a hard-hearted assumption that those Sandhurst enrollees who were there because of their limits rather than their lack of academic inclination had only themselves to blame for being stupid or lazy. Besides, the sons of the aristocracy went to Sandhurst as well, and here the assumption was that children of wealth should be encouraged to serve their country without placing unreasonable academic barriers in their way that could be better reserved to the Staff Colleges. Many men did rise out of Sandhurst to distinguished careers, generally vindicating the implicit policy of leaving it toe the individual to make up his lost ground.^[xxix]

To say that Woolwich was the more academic institution is not even to come close to describing this London landmark, for it was a military technical universe. Gentlemen cadets found themselves in the midst of a vital, brawling institution that found room within it for explosives plants, model research laboratories, advanced production facilities in the world, and an enormous apprentice school. The gentlemen attended lectures given by accredited university teachers, and while these were perhaps not always taken seriously, top graduates went on to the Tripos at Cambridge via the School of Military Engineering ( 19 RE officers who wrote the Tripos in 1930, 4 took Firsts, 5 Seconds, and 9 Thirds). Lower ranked Woolwich graduates went to the Royal Artillery after 5 months at the army’s Royal Military College of Science at Woolwich, although the Military College also offered many other programmes, with a  2 year full time programme that included strength of materials, thermodynamics, optics, illumination and acoustics, electrical engineering; drafting and design, manufacturing methods, hydraulics and heat engines; chemistry and metallurgy; ballistics, gunnery and gun construction, and special courses. Taken by a smaller number of selected RA and RN officers, it was in effect, a standard engineering curriculum directed at producing an ordnance designer, if a little short of mathematics courses by modern standards. The introductory 18 month course at Woolwich was more general, but this was because it was thought  more attractive to potential recruits, for “the student is better equipped, should he return to civilian life.” College training was also extended to other ranks. Some Woolwich apprentices, but not all, came in as Boy Entrants and received a technical high school-standard training before passing on to the Royal Artillery Training Battalion, a trades school, or full training at the RCS. These last, who would go to Woolwich or Sandhurst after receiving the equivalent of an undergraduate engineering degree, would have been able to contest the honour of top army technocrat with the RE’s Cambridge graduates. The RCS then ran a similar programme at the Signals School at Catterich for 18 months, sending its graduates on to university for parallel training to that received by the RE in electrical engineering.^[xxx]

Table 3: Branch of Service Opted for by Sandhurst/Woolwich Graduates and Total Officer Strength^[xxxi]

Branch	1935	1936	1938
RA	35/1738	54	52
RE	10/1125	17	18
RCS	8/399	7	8
Cavalry	15/209	12	8
Foot Guards	7	9	4
Infantry	89/2991	103	114
Indian Army	48	47	57/c. 3000
RTC	5/294	8	12 (2+10)

Along with the Military College of Science and the School of Military Engineering there were a number of other schools, such as the School of Electric Lighting near Plymouth, ostensibly a specialised programme for AA forces, that actually took much of the electrical engineering burden. Security and cipher concerns kept the School of Signals an institute apart, while the Tank Schools, although not considered part of the army’s technical training infrastructure, were obviously critically important to mechanisation. The RASC College filled a wide range of functions including a driving and mechanics school, but also including what might now be called business administration. Finally, organised corps instructional courses aside, there were a range of special-purpose courses offered by institutions such as the  RAF’s School of Army Air Cooperation, the Army School of Hygiene, and the Cookery School.

Table: Enrollment in Army Schools, 1939

School	Officers	Men and Boys	School	Officers	Men and Boys
RMA Woolwich	255		Sch. of Elec. Lighting	12	315
RMC Sandhurst	540		AA Defence Sch.	60	125
Imp. Defence College	5		Sch. of Signals	60	170
Staff College	135+85		Small Arms Sch.	114	194
Senior Officer’s Sch	57		Army Gas Sch.	60	94
Sch. of Equitation	22		Mechanics  Sch.		200
Sch. of Artillery	135		RASC Tr. Centre	66	25
Sch. of  Coast Art.	63		RAOC Tr. Centre	20	650
M. Coll. of Science	160	600+400	Phys. Train. Sch.	60	270
Sch.of  Mil Eng.	125	(450)	Music	c. 180
Railway Tr Cen	50	50	Instructor’s Centre	12	130

The second hurdle for a candidate technical officer came after completion of specialist school. He could serve well and faithfully on the basis of his education, but the army wanted good technicians, and was willing to encourage them by paying specialist bonusses to qualified technical officers, but . Surprisingly, did not attempt to judge their qualifications, leaving it instead to the various Institutes of Civil Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, and Electrical Engineers. Officers who wished to draw specalist bonuses had to qualify as members of these institutions, and it was hoped that this relationship would go beyond qualifying exams. At various times army engineers described the institutions as the  friends, brains, and second and professional homes of the Royal Engineers and the REME. Numerous papers given to the Institutes by serving and reservist officers show that some officers took this very seriously.^[xxxii]

Once set on the ladder of promotion an officer’s career would take him through a series of further training centres. Captains who hoped to attend Staff College requested a more challenging version of the qualifying exam for major’s rank that also served as a qualifying exam for the Staff Colleges. Far more eligible officers sat the entrance examinations each year than the schools could take, 450 in 1930 for example. Successful candidates would probably attend a staff college for two years. The British army operated a staff college at Camberly, the Indian Army one at Quetta in Pakistan. The navy’s school at Greenwich and  Cranwell also took some army officers. Total output was between 50 and 60 army officers each year along with RAF, RN, and Dominion students enrolled in the army colleges. Camberly was preferred to Quetta among those who placed well enough to have a choice. All the  standardised administrative training, but since much Staff College instruction had a service-oriented tactical and strategic component, the obvious implication was that the cross-trained officers would be preferred for future liaison and combined arms appointments. Certainly from the perspective of RAF or RN officers attending army staff schools, the subject of combined (that is, amphibious) operations seemed omnipresent.^[xxxiii] Plain army students at Staff College courses got generous lashings of geography, military history, and directed studies in “military science,” but the sand table Tactical Exercise Without Troops (which also included staff rides of the locales reproduced in the sand tables) were the glory of the school, with RAF squadrons and  tactics via sand table exercises. Less glamourous but perhaps as important was the college’s administrative instruction, as staff college graduates made up the larger part of service administrative staffs. After Staff College graduation, majors passed an additional 10 week higher preparatory course at the Senior Officer’s School at Sheerness. Senior Officer’s School was intended to prepare them for command of a large unit of all arms. It, too, had cross-appointed officers from the other services, a typical course in early 1931 had 34 army majors, 2 Royal Marine officers, 2 RAF officers, and 2 RN captains. Set lectures included “Discipline,” “Messing,” and “Double-Entry Book-Keeping,” as well as “Combined Operations.” Tactical instruction was by the staff method of assigning field tactical problems to syndicates of officers thrown together from various units. In this 1931 course the set problem was a mobile meeting engagement followed by a fighting retreat fought out in the country around Sheerness, and after a staff ride, set exercises included writing “orders by the Officer Commanding Divisional Royal Engineers as regards delaying the enemy pursuit by destruction of bridges, etc,” among others. Students were also set seminars to develop their ability to lead by instruction, and of the 40 seminars heard, the 1931 class found “Finding Water in the Syrian Desert,” “The Chinese Language,” “How a Regimental Depot is Run,” “Tank Tactics,” and “Soldiering in Burma,” particularly memorable. On promotion to field grade select officers, 7 per term, went on to the Imperial Defence College, where they studied strategy alongside their RAF and RN peers under the direct supervision of the Committee for Imperial Defence. Senior officers might also enroll in specialist courses at the corps schools, so that engineers such as Martel and the former RCS officer Major General E. A. Osborne, GOC commanded divisions in 1940, while infantry officers could learn the complexities of signals and logistics.^[xxxiv]

Because the War Office was an industrial as well as a purely operational institution, there were many uses for the skills it developed in its officers at such expense. The army in Britain had over 400 staff officers in the War Office, the Regional commands and Territorial Army another 2000 staff personnel. The army schools absorbed about 800 personnel as instructors and administrative and physical plant staff, above and beyond civilian employees. The industrial and technical inspection establishments required almost 900 personnel, and lesser institutions such as field bakeries and grass farms, although to all appearances impossibly boring, were vital and demanded much specialist administrative skill. Most administrative officers belonged to the RASC, although the uniformed personnel in the research and production facilities were members of the RAOC, and after 1942 the REME. The RAOC, RASC, and REME (and the accounting and medical branches) were considered noncombatant branches. Their officers could not command combat formations and did not attend the Staff Colleges. This might give the impression that these arms were staffed by second-rate personnel compared to infantry and cavalry officers, but members of the RASC could and did become Lieutenant-Generals if not Field-Marshals. Unlike their infantry and cavalry counterparts who (in the post agricultural age, anyway) added little to their value as potential businessmen as they progressed through the ranks, noncombatant officers picked up genuinely useful skills and experience, and since they were expected to leave the army by their 55th birthday, a final stint as Managing Director of some relevant firm was a more or less normal end to their career. Arguably the technocrats of the RE, RA, and RCS, who could hold field commands while monopolising technical appointments peculiar to their branches had the best of both worlds, and it is hard to escape the impression that this was intentional. The Army Council had been dominated by sappers and gunners like Kitchener and Gordon before WWI, and this tradition was re-established after a generation of cavalry dominance by the appointment of an artillerist as CIGS in 1926, Sir George Milne (CIGS 1926–33). subsequently, Sir A. A. Montgomery-Massingberd (1934–37) and Lord Alanbrooke (1942–45) extended the artillery dominance, although the infantryman Ironside came between Montgomery-Massingberd and Dill.

Table 4: Strength by Corps, 1939–1944

Corps	India, 1939	U.K., 1939	1944
RAC and Cavalry	5.6%	9.5%	6%
RA	16.4%	20%	18%
RE	0.1%	4.2%	13%
Infantry	70%	54%	14%
RAOC[xxxv]	0.4%	3.4%	much less than 10%
RASC	—	8%	15%
RCS	4.7%	4.4%	5%
REME	—	—	5%

Technical training for other ranks was largely directed at boy entrants. Eighteen-year olds were understood to have their issues with the workforce, and it was expected that talent that had somehow missed its place at 16 would be captured by the rudimentary methods of recommendation for Men’s Training Courses or as Ranker Cadets, or by accelerated promotion to NCO. Woolwich was the traditional destination of the boy entrant for either Army or Arsenal work, an admirable arrangement that ensured close informal ties between gunners and the men who built the guns, but after 1918 the new technical corps were increasingly dissatisfied with depending on Woolwich, feeling that the best boys somehow tended to end up artillerists, and new Boy’s schools were opened to meet their needs. Woolwich was the original model for Halton and had the same relative success, but despite the army’s aspiration to be as much an engineering service as the RAF, it was never a trainer on the same scale. By 1939 the army had  2000 BTS seats and produced only 700 technicians a year, including such old-fashioned trades as masonry. Fortunately, for all its informality, men’s training was carried out on a large scale, notably at the RASC Corps School that trained 18 year old entrants as both truck drivers and mechanics. The residual problem of overlooked (technical) talent lay in the infantry.

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[i].This is calculated by working out the individual portion of the vote for the maintenance of the standing army and multiplying by the number of troops on the Indian establishment; more sophisticated analyses are possible; for mechanisation efforts in India in response to the subsidies recommended by the Chatfield Committee, see for instance P. N. Khera, the Indian Armed Forces in World War Two: The Technical Services: Ordnance and IEME ([New Delhi]: [n.p.], [1962]), 5.

[ii].The first figure is the Gross estimate, that is, the army budget inclusive of appropriations-in-aid from other ministries spent on army services including the costs of operations in the Middle East as projected in the annual army estimates released in spring for the upcoming fiscal year running 1 April–30 March. “Pay” is actually the “maintenance of the standing army” vote and includes warlike stores until 1923–4. Warlike stores is the total spent on weapons and munitions and explicitly excludes fuel, clothing, and victuals. Vote A is the total authorised army strength exclusive of British troops on the Indian establishment, but inclusive of Indian troops on the British establishment. British troops on the Indian establishment includes troops in Burma and (until 1932) Aden. Colonial and Indian forces included under Vote A reached a high of 4,287 in 1927–8 and another high of 5,249 in 1939. See United Kingdom, House of Commons, Sessional Papers, “Army Estimates,” 1924–5, 17:1ff; Ibid, 1925–6, 18:1ff; Ibid, 1926–7, 14:1ff; Ibid, 1927–8, 11ff; Ibid, 1929–30, 11:19ff; Ibid, 19:1ff; Ibid, 1930–1, 15:1ff; Ibid, 1933–4, 17:1ff; Ibid, 1934–5, 17:1ff; Ibid, 1935–6, 13:1ff; Ibid, 1936–7, 17:1ff; Ibid, 1937–8, 17:1ff; 1938–9, 17:1ff; Ibid, 1939–40, 17:1ff.

[iii].This figure covers mobilisation of reserves to work as replacements during a dockers’ strike.

[iv].The Supplementary Reserve was re-established during this fiscal year.

[v].This figure covers mobilisation of 10,000 reservists to cover the needs of an expeditionary force sent to China.

[vi].This increase reflects the resumption of normal recruitment with reserve obligation after 7 years in 1920.

[vii].For one WWI-era pensioned officer’s story, see Charles Carrington, A Soldier at Bomber Command (London: L. Cooper, 1985), vii, xi, 3ff.

[viii].For the defences of Portsmouth-Southampton in WWII, see for example Colin Dobinson, AA Command: Britain’s Anti-Aircraft Defences of World War II (London: Methuen, 2001), 512–23; see also Military Engineering. Volume II, Defences (London: HMSO, 1925); for the development of the Inland Water Branch under Brigadier White, see C. W. White and S. G. Stark, “Nos. 1 and 2 Military Ports,” CEW 2: 6ff.

[ix].Postan, Jay, and Scott, 237–39, 305ff; George Macleod Ross, The Business of Tanks, 137, 155–67; Martel and Davidson in the BEF, see Blaxland, Destination Dunkirk (NB incomplete reference, one work not bibliographically reference –Ross); Hart, 370–8.

[x].A. P. Halton, “Recruiting Problems for the Future,” Army Quarterly 22, 1 (April 1931): 155–8; R. L. Sherbrooke, “Recruiting for the Regular Army, Army Quarterly, 22, 2 (July, 1931): 321 [NB these sources not in bibliography]; F. W. Perry, The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organisation in Two World Wars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 98–119; Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army: Its Officers and Men (London: J. Cape), 465–6, 467, 512.

[xi].Editor’s comments on the Secretary of State’s Reports on the Army and RAF in Army Quarterly 26, 1 (April 1933): 156–7; Army Quarterly 34, 1 (April 1937): 9–10; and Army Quarterly 36, 1 (April 1938): 9–10; recruiting differential between armour and cavalry, see Lord Carver, Britain’s Army in the Twentieth Century (London: Macmillan in Association with the Imperial War Museum, 1998), 159.

[xii].Minney,  87; Various estimates, plus G. M. Orr, “The Military Forces in India,” Army Quarterly 18, 2 (July 1929): 384–95. NB not in bibliography.

[xiii].Perry, 59–60; Minney, 70–110.

[xiv].Flynn, 90.

[xv].Flynn, 50–1.

[xvi].Perry, [NB –also Beveridge committee]; Flynn, 122–4.

[xvii].Perry, 115, 138–41, 144, 146–7, 169, 171–2; Blaxland, Alexander’s Generals, 25, 246–7.

[xviii].On the origins of the RE (Transportation), see, for now, W. J. K. Davies, Light Railways of the First World War: A History of Tactical Rail Communications on the British Fronts, 1914–18 (Newton Abbot, Surrey, U.K..: David and Charles, 1967), 15–20; and Ian Brown, British Logistics on the Western Front, 1914–1919 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998).

[xix].OB information, Forty, 345–9; even within the infantry battalion about 5% of personnel were attached from the RCS, REME, RASC, and RAOC, or Indian equivalents; the downside of the Indian Army’s “martial race” policy is more forcefully put by an opponent of Indian self determination, Audrey O’Brien, “A Democratic Army for India’s Democracy,” Army Quarterly, 19, 1 (October 1929): 132–3.

[xx].The Royal Armoured Corps replaced the Royal Tank Corps (RTC) in April 1939, by which time a large proportion of the cavalry had already been absorbed .

[xxi].The 1938–39 Army Appropriation Accounts show that the army was understrength by 29,500 on 1 April 1937 during the height of the manufacturing boon, it had fallen to 26,600 by September, 23,300 by 1 December 1938, and 19,696 in February 1938, the final prewar figure released. As the economy began to recover later in the year, and recruiting targets rose, the shortfall probably rose; for training problems see for example M. Beckwith-Smith, “Battalion Organisation in Time of Peace,” Army Quarterly 8 (1924): 372; O. T. Frith, “Reacting to Mechanization,” Army Quarterly 23, 2 (January 1932): 351–7; Lord Robertson, born in 1860, entered 16th Lancers as a trooper in 1877. In 1888 he received his Queen’s Commission in the 3rd Dragoon Guards, and embarking on a career “on the intellectual side of war,” was seconded to the Intelligence Branch, Simla. In 1896 he passed the staff college course at Camberly, and was in South Africa as Staff Captain, Intelligence in 1900 before returning to Whitehall in 1901 to work in the Intelligence Branch. Staff appointments in a cavalry brigade, a posting as Commandant, Camberly, as Director of Military Training, and Quartermaster General of the BEF preceded his 1915 appointment as CIGS, from which he resigned on point of principle in 1918, after which he was employed until retirement as General Officer Commanding Eastern Command (see Army Quarterly 26, 1 (April, 19330: 12–15, and appreciation by Brigadier-General Sir James Edmond, Ibid, 16–21).

[xxii].One officer claimed that after stoppages private soldiers earned 15–24 shillings/week “pocket money,” and that an unmarried private soldier could expect to save £350 by the end of his 6 years of service (£750 if he made sergeant), “enough to start a business and marry his girl,” not bad for a 25 year old who was guaranteed access to free vocational training and 5–6 further years of part-time employment in the Reserve in the bargain (“Battalion Commander,” “An Experiment in Thrift in the Army,” Army Quarterly 4 (April 1922): 339.

[xxiii].Minney, 131.

[xxiv].An anonymous writer in the Army Quarterly actually recommended university entry over the service schools, and the resulting controversy in the correspondence pages did not challenge this aspect of the article (“The Mother of Four Officers,” “How to Succeed in the Army,” Army Quarterly 29, 2 (July 1932): 359. “Mother” excepts candidates for the RE, who in any case would do a year of university training at army expense, and notes that the 18 month antedate in seniority more than made up for the time apparently wasted.

[xxv].See James R. Hosek and Christine E. Paterson, “Enlistment Decisions of Young Men,” in Army Manpower Economics ed. Curttis L. Gilroy (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1986): 7–9, 26–30; Lawrence Goldberg and Peter Granston, “Economic Analysis of Army Enlistments: Policy Implications,” in Gilroy, ed., 70, 79; and Thomas V. Deula and D. Alton Smith, “Recruiting Goals, Enlistment Supply, and Enlistments in the U. S. Army,” in Gilroy, ed., 112.

[xxvi].Mason, Matter of Honour, 469; Richard Perren , Agriculture in Depression, 1870-1940, a volume in the New Studies in Economic and Social History series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 48–50; Richard Moore-Colyer, Aspects of Horse Breeding and the Supply of Horses in Victorian Britain,”  Journal of British Studies 43, Part 1 (1995), 58.

[xxvii].The Royal Engineer Transport Service Supplementary Reserve included an establishment of 262 officers and 4605 men in a unique mobilisation category additional to the totals on this table.

[xxviii].”The Army Vocational Training Centre,” The Engineer, 5 January 1937, 72. The quotations are from the article, but have the feeling of being lifted from an official source.

[xxix].For entry statistiscs and a surprisingly frank assessment of Sandhurst’s intellectual limitations, see C. Bonham-Carter, “Recent Developments in Education in the Army,” Army Quarterly, 21, 2 (January 1931): 264. (NB: not in bibliography); for details of Dhera Dum, see Mason, Matter of Honour, 465–6. Major-General Bonham-Carter was then Director of Staff Duties at the War Office.

[xxx].On Woolwich life between the wars, see Bidwell and Graham, 152, 156–60; statistics see Bonham-Carter, 267–8; Military College of Science, see “The Military College of Science, Woolwich,” Engineering, 22 April, 1938, 459-60, citation see 460.

[xxxi].Figures from The London Gazette and the 1926 Estimates. “Foot Guard” and “Infantry” total officers category is inclusive. In addition there were 582 officers in the RASC, 1019 in the RAMC and ADC, 258 in the RAOC, 137 in the RAVC, 169 in the Royal Army Pay Corps, 105 in the Corps of Military Accountants, and 148 in the Army Educational Corps.

[xxxii].Sayer, 3–4.

[xxxiii].See “A Naval Visit to Quetta,” Naval Review 23 (1935): 71–4; and ”Some Impressions of the S. O. S.,” Naval Review 20 (1932): 698–704.

[xxxiv].”Some Impressions of the S. O. S.,” Naval Review 20 (1932): 698–704; Gregory Blaxland, Dunkirk: The Story of Gort’s Army ( London: W. Kimber, 1973), 57.

[xxxv].In 1939 the RAOC included the army electrical maintenance units, the RAOC(E). In 1942 the RAOC(E) was split off from its parent corps and combined with the mechanical maintenance units of the RASC to form the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME).