Wakefield in the Great War, page 8
If the food was good, the sheer scale of the effort of creating a New Army from scratch meant that recruits spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for things to happen. Restrictions on pub opening times around military buildings were strictly enforced and so, with nothing much to do and nowhere to entertain themselves when off-duty, bored soldiers began to desert in order to enlist in other regiments where the prospects of action seemed better. Others simply tagged on to drafts of men being sent off to training camps around the country and hoped no-one would notice the extra bodies. Wakefield men began to turn up in regiments that seemed odd choices for Yorkshiremen. Posted from Tralee in Ireland to Pontefract Barracks, Captain Godfrey Drage of the Royal Munster Fusiliers decided to use the chaos there to his own regiment’s advantage:
I realised that I had very little idea how many men the Munsters could possibly absorb. However, a thousand seemed a good round number and so I announced, ‘I’m only authorised to take a thousand of you’. Then I made them strip to the waist and walked down the ranks feeling each man’s biceps and asking what he was in civil life. If he said ‘I’m a miner’ I took him without more ado. So far I’d got away with everything but, by the time I’d got 500 lined up the Adjutant of the depot heard about my goings on and came running up – ‘Here I say Captain Drage, you can’t do that! You’re taking all my best men’. I thought I’d better not ride my luck too far and so I saluted very subserviently and replied, ‘Yes sir, certainly sir, would you like to choose the rest yourself sir?’ He did so and you can imagine what the next 500 were like. Anyway, I’d got my draft and thought I’d better be off while the going was good.
More were persuaded to join the Connaught Rangers, whilst 500 more who had signed up for the KOYLI or the York and Lancasters had served only a week before they allowed themselves to be talked out of the army altogether and poached to serve as infantry in the newly formed Royal Naval Division, marching proudly out of Pontefract led by the Church Boys’ Brigade band. Gradually, though, the system began to work itself out. As more and more battalions of the KOYLI and York and Lancasters were formed, drafts of around 300 men each were put together and sent on their way to camps scattered around the country.
With the existing battalions full, the War Office began to create new ‘Service’ battalions that would be added to the strength of regiments for the duration of the war. From just five battalions in 1914, the KOYLI would eventually be responsible for twenty-two, a growth dwarfed by the City of London Regiment, which grew from seven to forty-nine battalions in less than two years. In many towns, especially across the industrial north, local authorities sponsored their own units, paying for food, accommodation and training until the War Office could accept them as soldiers. These ‘Pals’ battalions encouraged men to enlist so they could serve alongside others from their home town and neighbouring cities competed to produce the best soldiers.
Pontefract Barracks.
Among the groups attempting to raise their own battalion were the West Yorkshire Coal Owners Association (WYCOA), who put aside £22,000 for the purpose and began recruiting at pits across Yorkshire, but struggled to find enough men willing to join what was already being referred to as the ‘Pontefract Battalion’. Many miners had already enlisted but many more fell foul of the new regulations raising the minimum height requirement from 5ft 2ins to 5ft 6ins. Given the difficulties, the WYCOA considered simply donating £10,000 to the War Office instead, but when they approached them, the War Office agreed to waive the rules and to draft in extra numbers from among the other KOYLI volunteers, provided they would be treated the same as their miner comrades. It also offered to provide £7-5s per man for equipment and 2s a day for food. Thus encouraged, the WYCOA went back to recruiting what was now being referred to as the 12th (Service) Battalion (Yorkshire Miner’s) of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry or, more simply, 12 KOYLI. By the end of the year, a full battalion was in training at Farnley Park near Leeds.
But if thousands came forward to volunteer and were accepted into the army, many thousands more did not. There were many reasons: some with families simply could not afford the pay cut to the shilling a day that a soldier received; some were running small businesses and would lose everything if they enlisted; some had elderly or sick family members who needed to be looked after. Increased height and medical standards had been put in place to try to slow the flood of recruits and eager volunteers discovered that even a stammer or bad teeth could be cause for rejection. It was estimated that a typical working-class 15-year-old was up to 4 inches (10cm) shorter than his middle-class counterpart, and malnutrition in poorer areas meant that a high percentage of those coming forward had some form of physical problem that would affect their ability to serve. As a result, enlistment for some meant perseverance, sometimes travelling from town to town in search of a recruiter willing to take them on. In March 1915, the Sheffield Independent newspaper reported on a letter from a soldier at the Voluntary Aid Detachment hospital in Wakefield describing a fellow patient. In amongst the men recovering from wounds received in France was a local civilian, 43-year-old father of six Henry ‘Harry’ Kirby of Berners Street. Harry had lied about his age (he was over maximum age for volunteers) when he attempted to enlist, only to be rejected at the medical. The doctor advised him that an operation would make him fit for service and so he duly went off to undergo two operations and recover at the VAD hospital so that he could, as he told his fellow patients ‘have a pop at the Germans’ and, according to the letter writer, the wounded men around him ‘are all proud of him as we think he is made of the right stuff’. Harry got his wish, arriving in France in November 1915 with the Royal Field Artillery. Both Harry and his eldest son Alan, a sailor in the Royal Navy, survived the war.
European armies had relied for generations on conscription to fill their ranks. A young man would be required to complete military training and serve for a period as a soldier. Once he had completed his service, he would remain a Reservist, liable for recall in times of national emergency, and later for recall to a reserve or home defence unit. That meant that those countries not only had a standing army ready immediately in times of war, but that they also had a huge pool of trained men available for call up at short notice who would not need to be trained and could be sent immediately to the front. For over a century, British generals and politicians had argued the need for a similar system but without success and now it was too late. The heady rush of recruits in August and September 1914 could not be maintained and the goal set by Kitchener of an army of seventy divisions would not be met by relying on volunteers alone. That would have required 92,000 new recruits per month at a time when recruiting figures were dropping. The obvious answer was conscription but the government was unwilling to introduce such an unpopular step. The problems of recruitment for the Boer War had brought the conscription debate back to the surface and the years leading up to the outbreak of war saw an outpouring of books, reports and other propaganda foretelling of the consequences of failing to keep the army strong. No government, though, was willing to even consider imposing conscription in peacetime and even in a state of emergency, the risks were high. Around 40 per cent of males over the age of 21 were not eligible to vote and would not tolerate being ordered to fight for a government they had no say in choosing.
Sheffield Independent, 13 March 1915.
To counter the arguments of trade unions and others, workers had to be convinced that if there were too few volunteers to meet the need, Britain would lose the war and the country would be forced to accept German rule. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the voluntary system was breaking down and, as one observer noted, by mid 1915 ‘the average recruiting speech became a mixture of abuse, cajolery and threats … the men secured by pressure of this kind could hardly be described as volunteers … the whole business has become manifestly unfair … men were induced to join whose business and family obligations ought to have secured them a respite, while insensitive people with no such responsibilities smiled and sat tight’. On the one hand, the government needed to ensure that essential industries carried on and that men with specialist skills remained at home. Calling up every man would dilute the workforce and the impact on business would risk leaving Britain bankrupt. On the other, men at the front complained bitterly about having to shoulder a heavy burden whilst ‘shirkers’ stayed safely at home. By then it was increasingly clear that something needed to be done.
With both military and industrial needs in mind, a new proposal was put forward to ensure that the government was able to make best use of the skills and talents of its population by ordering that every individual’s suitability for undertaking war work must be registered. Despite widespread acceptance that this was just a step away from conscription, the National Registration Act passed its third reading with only token opposition in July. Sunday, 15 August 1915, was designated as Registration Day when all citizens, male or female, between the ages of 15 and 65 were required, under penalty of law, to report to canvassers their names, occupations, details of current employment, family circumstances and any skills useful to war work. The information gathered from male respondents between the ages of 18 and 41 was copied onto pink forms (white forms were used for females and blue denoted males not of military age or fitness), with the cards of men employed in necessary occupations marked with black stars and subsequently referred to as ‘starred’ occupations.
With conscription about to be introduced, specialist war workers had to prove that they were of more use in a factory than in France.
For the benefit of trade union leaders, a list of ‘starred’ occupations was published in the papers. Unless it could be shown that they could not be replaced by women or men ineligible for military service, builders involved in the construction of munitions works or other military buildings, textile workers working on military contracts, munitions workers, railwaymen and other transport staff and a variety of other trades including bootmakers, saddlers, tent-makers, horse breeders and motor vehicle makers were all exempt. By the end of October, the information gathered had been analysed and revealed that there were 5,158,211 men recorded on pink forms, with only 1,519,432 of them starred. Further reducing the number available by the accepted average of 25 per cent for medical rejection, this left a manpower pool of about 2.7 million available for the military.
Now armed with concrete evidence, Lloyd George and the Munitions Ministry could show that the country could not afford to lose any more skilled men to voluntary enlistment, but that there was a significant pool of available manpower that could be used to reinforce the army. The main problem was one of how to introduce the scheme against opposition from powerful trade unions who had already shown themselves willing to take strike action that harmed the war effort and widespread hostility from the general public. The response, made public on 19 October, was the compromise ‘Derby Scheme’. Under the control of Lord Derby, the newly appointed head of the Joint Recruiting Committee of the War Office, all those listed by the National Registration Act as being between the ages of 19 to 41 in England, Wales and Scotland were banded into one of forty-six age classifications, twenty-three each for married and unmarried men. Each was to be offered the chance either to enlist directly or to attest their willingness to serve in the army when called at a later date, in a kind of ‘fall or be pushed’ final opportunity to join up as a volunteer. The scheme stressed that workers in relevant trades deemed to be of national importance would be attested but would not actually be called up as long as they carried on working in those trades and that unmarried men would be called up first. All men who attested, regardless of skills, received 2s-6d and a special armband signifying their new status to provide protection against the growing hostility towards shirkers. Skilled men in key trades also received special armbands declaring their work to be a special contribution to the war effort. Tribunals would be set up to hear individual appeals for exemption or deferment.
In Wakefield, rooms in schools were set aside for use by the organisers of the Derby Scheme and the West Riding Education Committee agreed that teachers and attendance officers could be used to assist in administration, although the committee was not able to agree to release teachers if called up. By November, the Yorkshire Post was able to claim that Wakefield was doing well and that ‘in a very short time there will not be a single young fellow in the city who can say if “unstarred” that he has not been personally asked to give his services in this crisis’. Figures for Wakefield itself, were not available, but Dewsbury had reported fewer than sixty responses in the previous week and returns across the larger towns and cities were steady but far below the numbers needed. Potential recruits in Leeds were required to produce their identity papers after the authorities became aware that men were coming forward several times to collect the day’s pay offered to every recruit coming forward.
Although presented as a success, few people saw the scheme as anything but a stepping stone to wide-scale compulsory military service and the results were disappointing. Married men, assured they would not be called until after the single men, attested in greater numbers but even then only around half came forward. It was the proof the government needed that it could no longer rely on voluntary enlistment and even as Lord Derby worked hard to oversee the last stage of voluntary enlistment, a Military Service Act introducing conscription was already working its way through Parliament. The first draft of the new act went before the Cabinet on 1 January 1916, just two weeks after the closing date for registration under the Derby Scheme, and on 27 January 1916 compulsory military service was introduced for every male who ‘on 15 August 1915 was ordinarily resident in Great Britain and who had attained the age of 19 but was not yet 41 and – on 2 November 1915 was unmarried or a widower without dependent children’.
Under the terms of the ‘Bachelor’s Bill’, as it became known, unless they met certain exceptions or had reached the age of 41 before the appointed date, from 2 March 1916 all unmarried men in the country were deemed to have enlisted for general service with the colours or in the reserve and were, for the time being, regarded as being in the reserve. Each man was allocated into a class relating to the year of his birth, ranging from Class 1 (1896) to Class 23 (1875), and would be called forward according to that class, with the youngest not expected to be called until they reached their 19th birthday. A public proclamation would be posted announcing the call up of each class and each man would receive an individual call-up notice. Those with a preference for service in the navy could state it and would be offered to the Admiralty. Tribunals would be put in place to hear appeals or requests for exemptions and deferments where service would cause severe hardship to a family or business or where a man had a conscientious objection to the military. By March 1916, Sir William Robertson, Britain’s senior soldier, complained that of ‘the 193,891 men called up under the Military Service Act, no fewer than 57,146 have failed to appear’.
In order to allow for those special cases where a man had strong religious grounds for not wanting to serve or where a family would suffer severe hardship by having someone taken by the army, around 1,800 tribunals were set up around the country where local union representatives, shopkeepers, magistrates and other members of the community sat in long sessions listening to appeals for exemption, sometimes for the flimsiest of reasons. Wakefield Council’s General Purposes Committee met on 9 February 1916 and appointed the ageing Alderman William H. Kingswell, who was the proprietor of a large store in the centre of town specialising in ladies’ clothing, furs and curtaining, and whose solicitor son would often represent applicants. Alongside Kingswell would be Alderman George A. Moor-house, Councillor Benjamin Hale, Henry Chalker (the clerk to the Wakefield magistrates who would act as Chairman) and Thomas B. Sugden, the Registrar at the West Riding Registry of Deeds. These five would form the core of the tribunal for the rest of the war. Representing the military would be the local recruiting officer, Major L.J.P. Watson and later J.B. Cooke (described as the National Service representative), who would put the case for calling up. After the war all records were destroyed and local newspaper reports rarely named individuals, but a picture of the sort of applicants coming to the tribunals can be gained from regular accounts in the Wakefield Express and other newspapers.
A War Service badge issued to essential workers.
The Wakefield Tribunal began work and its first three applicants were all young men who claimed to be supporting their widowed mothers. One worked at a maltkiln and gave his mother 27s a week of the 31s he earned. Another was a colliery clerk giving his mother 28s. The third, a colliery banksman, told the tribunal that he provided his mother with £1 a week. All claimed that if they were called up or even worse killed, their mothers would be dependent on charity. They were told that the army would provide an allowance for dependants and they must accept the call-up. The number of appeals from the sons of local businessmen needing exemptions to allow them to take over the family firms from frail fathers, led one Lancashire observer to note drily that ‘senile decay sets in at a very early age in Preston’ and separating genuine cases of potential hardship from those simply finding excuses to avoid service was a thankless task. The work was made even more difficult by the letters they received from disgruntled wives asking for their menfolk to be taken away on the grounds that they were sick of them being at home and felt a spell in the army would be good for them, or from angry neighbours demanding that a nearby ‘shirker’ be taken.
The tribunal was in place to weigh up the pros and cons of each individual case against the need for men at the front. They were very much aware that for each man appearing before them saying that he was needed by his family at home, there were mothers and fathers with sons already serving and the question was one of deciding why all men shouldn’t be expected to be treated equally by the army. There was also a need to examine whether the cases were concerned more with self interest than the national good. The first employers to come before the Tribunal, for example, were brothers who ran an 11-acre business as florists, seedsmen and market gardeners. Three of their men had already joined up and they were seeking exemption for one of the other two. Arguing that he could not be replaced, under questioning they admitted that they had not even tried advertising for anyone to replace him. They were given three months to find someone over military age. Other cases were brought on behalf of individuals by their employers but in March Chairman Mr T. Norton angrily told them to stop claiming they had ‘given’ or ‘sent’ men to the army because the fact was that the army had taken them. It was ridiculous, he said, for employers to suggest they had been generous enough already as part of their case for retaining a particular employee. In many cases, the tribunal argued, these were jobs that did not need a fit, healthy military age man but could be done equally well by older men or by women.
