Some soldiers who hated the ‘boss class’ as a matter of political principle were content to make an exception for their own officers. Private Mason of 2/Scottish Rifles was ‘a great gaunt Clydesider’ who had been recalled to the army as a reservist after spending several years as a miner.
There he had become involved with some men of violent Communist opinions and at times in the trenches he would tell [Lieutenant] Kennedy of what he and his friends would do to the capitalists and bosses after the War. It was blood-curdling stuff, in spite of which Mason was the most loyal and willing soldier, and went out of his way to almost mother Kennedy, and to give him cups of tea and extra rations at frequent intervals. Apparently officers of his own Regiment were exempt from the fury of class-hatred.245
But there was much more to success as a leader than simple popularity. Soldiers generally preferred a hard man who knew what he was doing to a genial incompetent. In Campbell’s artillery unit, Major John of D Battery was ‘the man most disliked and most feared in the whole brigade’ because he expected others to live up to his own high standards of courage. After John was killed, fighting an ammunition fire characteristically single-handed, Campbell wrote:
He did not love danger or glory, he despised both. But he had set himself a standard and he had to live up to it. He could not accept anything that fell below it, never for himself, hardly for anybody else. He was the greatest soldier I was ever to serve with.246
James Jack was also not an easy man: it was typical of his self-discipline that he maintained such a rigid diet to keep himself in fighting trim that he consumed too few calories and was always cold. Rogerson wrote of how: ‘In all ways he set us an example, but if asked to name his peculiar characteristic, I would say it was his determination, from which I never saw him relax, to keep up at all times and at all costs the proprieties of the old life of peace.’247 Frank Crozier also insisted on ‘proprieties’, but his were rather different. In a railway carriage he ordered two subalterns to ‘show kit’ and open up their packs.
The result is astonishing! Two pairs of girls’ garters and an odd one. Two pairs of silk stockings and a chemise, one night-dress and a string of beads. A pot of Vaseline, a candle, two boxes of matches, and an envelope full of astonishing picture postcards, completes the list. ‘Souvenirs,’ says one rascal. ‘Tout prêt’ says the other.248
There were few hard-and-fast rules about styles of command. What worked for Crozier’s Ulstermen might not have done so elsewhere. P.J. Campbell though that the commander of his Yorkshire territorial battery, Major Eric, was successful because he was a Sheffield man:
and a lot of the battery had known him before the war, they knew his family, they thought it right that he should command them, it was almost a feudal relationship; and in return the Major talked to them about their homes, he understood them, they knew that he took a personal interest in them.249
Relations between officers within the same unit battalion, and more particularly the same sub-unit, were often fraternal, and accounts often testify to the same sort of family atmosphere that was achieved in good infantry sections. Herbert Asquith, the second son of H. H. Asquith, served as an artillery officer for most of the war, and described life in his battery in 1917:
The number of officers in a battery was a major, a captain, and usually four subalterns, six in all, about the size of an average family; in marches behind the line this was a pleasant number for a mess… Our battery commander, Major MacFarlane, was a regular soldier of exceptional qualities and a most charming companion: we were to learn in open warfare in 1918 his swift instinct for choosing positions, his great powers of endurance, and his almost uncanny intuitions as to the movements of the enemy. He presided over a family which would have been extremely happy, if Fate had allowed it, but at the battle of Passchendaele such a gift could scarcely be expected: our battery like many others had serious losses and of the three subalterns I came to know in June only one was left at the end of the battle.250
What was fraternal amongst officers was often paternal from officer to man. R. B. Talbot Kelly took it a step further. As he walked round his gun-pits under heavy shelling one evening:
I felt like a mother going round her children’s bedrooms in a great thunderstorm, but in this case the thunderstorm was one of explosive and gas, and ‘mother’ was many years younger than any of her ‘children’. Metaphorically I tucked each detachment up in bed, told them they would be all right, and in due course returned to my own niche by the roadside.251
One of the most moving First World War poems, Ewart Alan Mackintosh’s In Memoriam, Private D. Sutherland, catches the full responsibility of a relationship which, in Mackintosh’s view, went even beyond paternalism.
Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the string limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
That screamed ‘Don’t leave me, sir,’
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.252
As is often the case with family life, paternalism cut two ways: sometimes an officer’s need to look brave in the eyes of the group kept him going. Vaughan was very frightened indeed before his battalion attacked at Langemarck, and had slipped into a dugout to dispel terrible images with a whisky. When the attack began:
Dully, I hauled myself out of the mud and gave the signal to advance, which was answered by every man rising and stepping unhesitatingly into the barrage. The effect was so striking that I felt no more that awful dread of the shellfire, but followed them calmly into the crashing, spitting hell.253
But with the support he gained from his men came the responsibility to share their last moments. He was following Corporal Breeze when a shell burst at his feet: ‘As I was blown backwards I saw him thrown into the air to land at my feet, a crumpled heap of torn flesh.’ Minutes later it was clear that Breeze was not dead, for:
I saw the stump of his arm move an inch or two… He was terribly mutilated, both his feet had gone and one arm, his legs and trunk were torn to ribbons and his face was dreadful. But he was conscious and as I bent over him I saw in his remaining eye a gleam of mixed recognition and terror. His feeble hand clutched my equipment, and then the light faded from his eyes.254
An officer might expect the same from his men. At Loos a Highland private carried his wounded officer out of the line, stood with him in the British front-line trench while the man clutched his ankles in his death-agony, then shook himself free, collected another bag of hand grenades, and returned, in fighting fury, to be killed in the German position.
But officers could exasperate as well as inspire. Some battalions insisted that subalterns marched with rifle and pack like the men, as Rowland Feilding discovered when he marched from Winchester to Southampton to embark: ‘it was the first time I ever carried a pack, and it felt as if it was filled with lead before we reached Harfleur’.255 Junior officers generally marched lightly laden, with their valises carried on the battalion’s transport wagons, and commanding officers, seconds in command, adjutants and company commanders were mounted – a source of much ribaldry to the files immediately behind them on the march. ‘I’m sorry about that, boys,’ was the natural response of an unwise officer when his horse relieved itself, for the inevitable response was: ‘Never mind, sir, we thought it was the horse.’ Sensible officers recognised that horses could be a communal asset on difficult marches, and during the retreat from Mons their chargers were often festooned with exhausted men and their kit. Alan Hanbury Sparrow saw his commanding officer lead 1/Royal Berkshires on foot: ‘the old man is so weary that only his courage gets him along’.256 However, the CO of 11/Royal Northumberland Fusiliers did not make himself popular by chivvying tired men from the saddle: Norman Gladden heard ‘“Come off that bloody horse… you bastard…”, muttered by men as the colonel’s well-groomed horse found the hill no obstacle’.257
W. H. A. Groom, who served in the ranks of the infantry, writing in the early 1970s in angry reaction to the beginnings of revisionist approaches to the war, maintained that ‘the objective accounts written by commissioned officers from generals to subalterns show little knowledge of the real feelings of the men’, and wrote with admiration of ‘the practically classless Commonwealth forces’. He thought that inspection by Haig was ‘a most boring day… he did not even look at us, let alone inspect us’. And he vigorously challenged James Jack’s assertion that ‘there was little grumbling and never a whine’, arguing that things would not have gone well for whiners. But he admitted that one of his company commanders was well regarded: ‘he was one of the original peace-time battalion privates who had won the DCM in 1915. He had an excellent parade voice, was good looking and popular with the rankers because he always seemed to know what he was about.’258
Because of the growing number of officers commissioned from the ranks – the likes of John Lucy and Ernest Shephard, formerly regular NCOs – officers were increasingly aware of the lives of the men they commanded. From 1916 most newly-commissioned officers had served in the ranks before attending an officer cadet battalion: the granting of direct commissions had ‘practically ceased’ from February that year. About 229,000 new commissions were granted during the war, and 107,929 of their holders had passed through officer cadet battalions after serving in the ranks.259 By 1918, the officer corps had become remarkably heterogeneous. It is beyond question that many newly-commissioned officers faced pressure to adopt traditional styles of officer leadership. However, many pre-war regulars would still have readily agreed with Alan Hanbury Sparrow that the ‘somewhat uncouth but very willing officer reinforcements’ were capable of doing a very good job, and although: ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you can make a good leather one.’260
Bravery, indeed, was the sine qua non. An officer could slurp his soup or even wear light-coloured shirts but his bravery atoned for much. Frank Richards went straight to the point. ‘We always judged a new officer by the way he conducted himself in a trench,’ he wrote, ‘and if he had guts we always respected him.’261 George Coppard agreed that: ‘We took particular notice of the behaviour of officers under fire and compared our conduct with theirs. All soldiers look for and admire a brave and intelligent leader and will even put up with abuse from him providing that at a critical moment he displays courage and leadership.’ One of his officers in particular was ‘courageous steady and companionable, and we thought a lot of him’.262 Although John Lucy was another who believed that regular officers were often out of touch with their men, he thought that they were ‘extraordinarily gallant, and their displays of valour, often uncalled for, though thought necessary by them, coupled with the respect engendered in the old army for its corps of officers, won the greatest devotion, and very often the affection of the men’.263 Edward Vaughan’s spirits, already lifted by the bravery of his men, were stiffened by the courage of his company commander, who ‘stood, eyeglass firmly fixed in his ashen face, while bullets chipped splinters from the beam beside his head’.264
Nevertheless an officer’s reputation could be blasted by a lapse. Lance Corporal Coppard was detailed to look after a new officer, but: ‘The poor devil was paralysed by fear… Not even the urge of nature would drive him out of the place [a deep dugout], and he did his business there. He lost his appetite and wouldn’t touch the tasty bits I fixed up for him.’265 The officer was finished: he reported sick and never returned to the front. Many found instances like this the cruellest of disparities between officers and men. Medical officers were far more prepared to certify terrified or exhausted officers as sick than they were men. Moran reckoned that by 1917 subalterns did not last long:
The average subaltern, if he comes out here for the first time, does no more than sample war. A few, and these are the more fortunate, were hit, happily before they showed signs of fear. And some went on leave and did not return, and some went sick, and some were dispatched to the trench mortars or in drafts to other Fusilier battalions.
The army’s chain of command, aware of the damage that could be done by irresolute or frightened officers, and of the way that such men undermined its caste system, was usually prepared to support commanding officers who gave their failures an easy way out. And there was a way out even for commanding officers who failed themselves. Moran’s own CO reported sick: ‘He looked old and troubled. In a quarter of a century he had been a soldier preparing no doubt for the real thing. It had come and this was the end.’266 Yet most officers played the role expected of them. Fred Hodges had five company commanders in the seven months to November 1918.
The first was Captain Sankey, a hard and very determined officer; he was wounded and replaced by Captain Jowett, a very much loved officer who was killed while attempting to help a wounded man who was lying out in the open between us and the Germans. Sankey returned to the battalion and was killed at Flers, and his successor was not with us long enough for me to get to know his name. He was the one who was wounded and then killed with stretcher-bearers. The next was Captain Hamilton, a natural leader, who was mortally wounded in the attack at Gouzeaucourt in September. The one who replaced him was Captain Wareham. He was wounded in our attack on Neuvilly on 12th October.267
Good officers were wholly absorbed in their commands. Lieutenant Colonel A. J. B. Addison of 9/York and Lancaster was mortally wounded on 1 July 1916, but lived, untended, in a shell hole for two or three days. He scribbled in his pocketbook: ‘Tell the Regiment I hope it did well.’268 In May 1918 Lieutenant Colonel Dean of 6/South Wales Borderers was carried into an artillery headquarters, appallingly wounded, unable to speak and obviously dying. He signalled for pen and paper, and scrawled his last order: ‘To my battalion – Stick it, Boys,’ and died within a few minutes. Regular officers, temporary officers, ex-rankers: gallant gentlemen indeed.
When the army went to war in 1914 it rewarded courage with a limited range of awards. The Victoria Cross was available to all ranks for the highest acts of valour. Officers could be appointed companions of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), instituted in 1886, for either gallantry or rendering distinguished service. The fact that the decoration could either reflect great bravery just short of that required for a VC, or a heroic struggle amongst the files and memoranda, always left it open to criticism, and during the Boer War it was so regularly bestowed on well-connected staff officers that it was said that its initials stood for Dukes’ Sons Only. Other ranks could be awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for distinguished conduct in the field, and the medal’s popularity was enhanced by the fact that recipients received a cash bounty. A bar on the medal ribbon (worn as a rosette when the ribbon was worn alone) signified a second or subsequent award. In addition, the various grades of orders of chivalry (most commonly the Bath and the St Michael and St George) could be bestowed upon officers. All ranks could be Mentioned in Dispatches, and officers could receive brevet or substantive promotion as a reward for distinguished service.
However, it soon became clear that the existing system would, like much else, not cope with a world war. The award of large numbers of DSOs and DCMs in the first six months of the war encouraged the creation, in December 1914, of the Military Cross (MC) for officers below the substantive rank of major and for warrant officers too, and in March 1916, of the Military Medal (MM), known, from its stripey ribbon, as a duckboard, for other ranks. In 1917 the Order of the British Empire was instituted, its five classes (from MBE to GBE) giving the opportunity of rewarding civil or military service across a wide range of ranks and appointments: a medal of the order (BEM) was added later. Allied nations conferred their own honours on selected British servicemen (a practice the British reciprocated), and men were allowed to wear such awards without the normal difficulty of obtaining royal permission to do so.
Old soldiers reacted disdainfully to the expansion of honours. All officers thought a lot of the DSO, and all
men thought a lot of the DCM,’ wrote Frank Richards, but they were less impressed by the new awards.
There were no grants or allowances with the Military Medal, which without a shadow of a doubt had been introduced to save awarding too many DCMs. With the DCM went a money-grant of twenty pounds, and a man in receipt of a life pension who had won the DCM was entitled to an extra sixpence a day to his pension… The old regular soldiers thought very little of the new decoration.269
An officer or soldier was decorated as the result of a citation initiated by his commanding officer or, in the case of a higher headquarters, by the formation commander. Decorations might be periodic, awarded in the New Year’s honours or the king’s birthday honours, or in the list for a specific battle. Or they might be immediate, bestowed soon after a particular act of bravery. It soon became evident that an immediate award had to be very immediate indeed if its recipient was to live to receive it, and by 1918 these awards could be issued within a week of the act which had earned them. Formal investiture with the decoration itself might, however, take some time, for the most prestigious awards were given by the king in person; divisional commanders presented the ribbon of the award, often made up with a clip so that it could be pinned on immediately. Siegfried Sassoon was recommended for an award for gallantry on a raid near Fricourt in May 1916, and his MC was announced a month later: the kindly James Dunn took the purple and white ribbon off his own tunic and sewed it to Sassoon’s. In 1917 Joseph Maclean told his parents that a brother officer had just been awarded the DSO for taking a pillbox, adding that: ‘The job was worth a Victoria Cross.’ Two nights later he came round to Maclean’s company mess to play bridge; Maclean reported ‘He has his ribbon up…’.270 John Cusack was awarded the MM for galloping through a village on 8 August 1918 and reporting it clear; he felt that he owed the award to the fact that the flamboyant act had been carried out under the eyes of his brigade commander. It was speedily presented by ‘a general, an old character with a shaky hand’.271
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