Q Did the formation of ill-prepared ‘pals battalions’ contribute to the heavy British losses during the battle of the Somme?
At the outbreak of the First World A
War, the British secretary of state for war, Lord Kitchener, issued a call for volunteers – made famous by the iconic ‘Your Country Needs You’ recruiting poster – which produced astonishing results. He had hoped for 500,000 men, but more than 2.5 million had volunteered by 1916. These men became known as the ‘New Army’. They included the famous ‘pals battalions’, in which men were encouraged to enlist alongside friends, colleagues, relatives and others from their local community.
Unfortunately the vast number of volunteers created problems, as there was no infrastructure for such a huge force, leading to a chronic shortage of officers and instructors. As a result, New Army training was primitive, and some soldiers went into action having never fired live rounds.
At the battle of the Somme, commanders feared that New Army soldiers were incapable of the complex fire-and-movement tactics used by the prewar army, and instructed them to advance at walking pace to maintain cohesion and prevent panic. Not all units followed these directions, but those that did suffered terribly as they were mown down by German fire. The price of inadequate training was indeed paid in blood in 1916. Spencer Jones is the author of At All Costs: The British Army on the Western Front, 1916 (Helion & Co, 2018)