October 17, 2025 • 35 mins
In this latest QnA episode, we tackle a fresh set of listener questions about the First World War, ranging from battlefield geography to the realities of supply and discipline at the front. We start with how hills and features were numbered along the front line—was there really only one “Hill 80”? Then we turn to the huge challenge of logistics, exploring how both sides managed to feed, arm, and move millions of men across the Western Front, and the massive impact this had on wartime economies. Next, we look at the organisation of the British Army, explaining how regiments could field multiple battalions fighting in different battles and theatres at the same time. Finally, we examine the controversial subject of discipline in action, asking who the so-called “whippers-in” were, whether men were ever shot for retreating, and what the consequences were for those who faltered under fire.
The BBC Documentary about Loos: On The Front Line.
To understand more about British Battalions in WW1: From Training to Trenches and What Is A Division?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
The Lou's anniversary featured in the news
at the end of September with thereburial of several soldiers
from the nineteen fifteenfighting at Lewes British
Cemetery in the new extensionthere, and these were men who'd
been found on the Lend Hospitalsite close to the slopes of Hill
70.
Two of the soldiers had beenidentified, and their stories
(00:32):
were featured in a BBC Newsdocumentary that featured the
MOD war detectives and the workthat they'd done to help
identify these soldiers, and italso featured quite extensive
interviews with the families ofthose soldiers too.
It was a really well madeprogramme and it's available on
(00:53):
iPlayer, and I'll put a link toit in the show notes for this
episode.
And the whole incident crossesover nicely really with the
podcast episode on the MOD team.
But also once more it shows howthe pages of Great War History
never stop turning, and that initself never ceases to amaze me.
(01:18):
But let's get on to this week'squestions.
Question one comes from PaulBurns on Patreon.
Patreon is a means by which youcan support the podcast, and
we've built quite a nice littleGreat War old frontline
community there, and quite a fewunique things are offered to
those who support us via thatmethod.
(01:39):
And you'll find details of thaton the podcast website.
Paul asks, I am a newlyintrigued person into the
history of the Great War, andyour podcast has opened up so
much to me.
Thanks for that, Paul.
He says, My question willprobably reflect that, but how
did Hills get their numbersalong the front line?
And was that number only usedonce in the whole of the line,
(02:02):
i.e.
hill eighty near Epe means therecould not be another Hill eighty
anywhere else?
Well, first of all, let's goback to maps in nineteen
fourteen when the BritishExpeditionary Force, the BF,
came across to France at thevery beginning of the Great War.
It had maps, maps that had beenprepared by the War Office and
(02:24):
using data provided by theOrdnance Survey, which is the
big mapping organisation inGreat Britain.
They in themselves had boughtmap data from other countries
because they couldn't go andsurvey so many places right
across the world, not justwithin Europe.
So they bought that map data andused it to create their own
(02:45):
maps.
And these maps were fairly basicthings, often in quite a large
scale, so they covered quite abig area, and they didn't always
include every detail that wasactually on that landscape
because those kind of maps itwas thought were not really
useful.
That's what you have sketch mapsfor.
And if you look at a lot of theearly war diaries for the First
(03:07):
World War for that 1914campaign, you'll see tons of
sketch maps in them becauseofficers were trained to make
those kind of maps, and thoseare the maps that they used in
the field.
And once the front went static,it was found that the map data
that was on a lot of the mapsthat the British Army was using
was simply incorrect.
(03:29):
So when it showed the contoursof the ground, and because it
was based on European mappingdata, those contours were in
metres, not feet.
It showed contours that were 60meters above sea level, for
example, and the guns would becalibrated if you were an
artillery unit, you had to fireover that hill that was 60
(03:51):
meters high and fire at an enemyposition beyond.
So you calibrated your guns, youfired them over the hill, and in
fact the hill was 65 or 68meters high, and the shells
whack into the side of it, andthe whole thing doesn't work
properly.
So it was realized fairly earlyon that while these maps were
(04:16):
useful, they were not usefulonce the war focused on a
particular area because a lot ofthe information, the data on the
maps, was just simply wrong.
Things were spelt wrong, roadswere laid out wrong, woods were
not quite the definition thatthey were marked as on the map,
and all kinds of things likethis.
(04:36):
So the Royal Engineers werebrought in, and survey units
then began to survey thebattlefield, producing some of
the very first trench maps.
And we have discussed trenchmaps on and off on the podcast,
and there's been a couple ofepisodes relating to them, but
it's about time I think that wehad a proper podcast episode
(04:58):
looking at the history of thismapping.
So that's something that willcome.
But coming back to this story,that is when these trench maps
in that period of 1914 on into1915, and once the front
stabilized and the Britishsector of the Western Front
began to expand, the need, thenecessity for maps grew and
(05:19):
grew.
The Royal Engineers producedthem and features were marked on
them.
And it was important to markfeatures so that those features
could be mentioned in messagesand war diaries and combat
reports and all kinds of thingslike that.
And when it came to hills,that's how these hills suddenly
became numbered because,particularly in places like
(05:39):
Flanders, which was a big chunkof the British front in that
early phase of the war, on aflat landscape, any rise of
ground will afford you anadvantage.
So the hills took on a muchgreater symbolism and importance
when it came to fighting overthat kind of ground, and the
hills got their names.
Sometimes we inherited thosenames from the French, and when
(06:02):
the number was used, it wasagain relating to metres above
sea level, so hill 60, 60 metresabove sea level, hill 80, 80
metres above sea level, and soon.
But those numbered names I wouldadd a proviso to that, in that
remember, many of them weregiven in the early period when
(06:23):
the early maps were used, so thenumber might not be entirely
accurate to the actual meterageabove sea level of those
promontories.
So Hill 60 is a good example.
It's not 60 meters above sealevel, it's something like 46
metres, something along thosekind of lines.
So this is something we have toremember when it comes to these
(06:45):
names.
But your question goes a littlebit further in this, Paul, in
that you ask, were these numbersrepeated?
And I think when the Britishsector was relatively small, so
it 1914-15 it ran fromSaint-Loire down to the La Basse
Canal, they could kind of getaway with it because there were
probably several rises in groundthat were around 60 metres above
(07:08):
sea level, and what you see thembegin to use are names that are
slightly different numbers.
So there's a hill 62 and there'sa hill 63, and like you say,
there's a hill 80 nearWicharter.
But what's interesting is thatthe numbered hills on the
British front tend to berestricted to that area in
(07:29):
Flanders.
So all kinds of numbered hillseventually became part of that
landscape which the British Armyfought over during four years of
war in Flanders in the GreatWar.
But when you come down to placeslike Arras and the Somme, hills
tend to be given names ratherthan numbers.
You see less of that.
(07:49):
Orange Hill and Infantry Hill atMontchy-lepre near Arras being a
very good example of that.
But some names were repeated, sothere were two Hill 60s, for
example, but not both on theWestern Front.
One, the famous one just outsideYape in Flanders, but a Hill 60
in Gallipoli as well.
(08:10):
And it's interesting to go thereand see that the fighting at
that Hill 60 was taking placepretty much at the same time as
some of the fighting at the Hill60 in Flanders, and both were
reported in the news with thosenames, so I'm sure it caused
quite a lot of confusion.
And when you move on to theFrench part of the Western
Front, you see this manner ofnaming hills with numbers far
(08:34):
more commonplace.
So I wonder whether in the earlyphase we adopted a lot of
numbered hill names simplybecause we took over those
positions from the French, andthat was what they'd marked on
their maps that we then usedwhen we first took over those
sectors.
So there's an incrediblyinteresting history behind the
development of these sectors andwith it the naming of parts of
(08:57):
these sectors as the frontgradually expands.
Again, all part of thatfascinating element of the Great
War, layer of the Great War,which is the landscape and the
study of that landscape.
So thank you, Paul, for thatexcellent question.
Question number two comes fromSurid Sonsma on email and he
(09:20):
asks my question is aboutlogistics.
The amount of soldiers from bothsides meant that there must have
been an absolute astonishingamount of supply of food,
munitions, water, petrol andeverything else.
The Germans had exactly the sameproblem and they even occupied
much of the French countrysidewhere coal was mined.
(09:43):
How was this possible and whateffects on the economy were
there to make this possible?
Well, as we've said in quite afew episodes of the Old
Frontline podcast, logisticssupply is a really important
element of our understanding theFirst World War.
It's not as sexy as the bombs,bullets and baynets and the
fighting on the battlefield, butit's absolutely essential in our
(10:07):
understanding of how the front,no matter what front it is,
whether it's the Western Front,Salonica, Gallipoli,
Mesopotamia, Palestine, it'sabsolutely essential in our
understanding of how thosefronts were maintained, because
soldiers couldn't fight thosebattles without all of the kinds
of supplies that you'vementioned in your question
(10:28):
there.
And in terms of the Britishapproach to this, the British
Army invested in infrastructure,as I've said many times, from
the very beginning of the war.
The first units that went acrossas part of the British
Expeditionary Force were notinfantry, not cavalry, not
gunners, they were support unitslike the Royal Engineers and the
Army Service Corps being sentacross to set up the base
(10:51):
depots, the logistics trail, andthe beginning of that supply
route that would take suppliesbeing brought over from ship,
from port to port, from Britainto France, and then being moved
up to wherever the British Armywould go and fight its battles.
And as the war progressed andthe suddenly the war of movement
became a static war, and therewas a front that the British
(11:13):
Army was holding, and to keepthe men on that front, fighting
on that front, everything had tobe sent to them, and more and
more infrastructure was put inplace, more and more support
units and personnel within thosesupport units were brought over
and helped that happen, made ithappen.
(11:34):
And as the war grew and grew,and the size of the British
Expeditionary Force grew andgrew, more and more of those
people working in the logisticsand supply were needed, and
manpower was needed to moveeverything around.
So by 1917, with it being atruly global war, and from a
British perspective, with theempire now the Commonwealth, a
(11:57):
huge amount of labour wasbrought in from all of those
empire nations to work behindthe front, men from the British
West Indies, from Egypt to workat the ports, from South Africa,
the South African Native LabourCorps, and so many others, but
even that was not enough.
More labour was required.
So over a hundred thousand menfrom China were recruited to
(12:18):
come and work for the BritishArmy behind the Western Front.
Now that's one example from aBritish perspective.
But if you look at othernations, they're doing very
similar.
The French do something verysimilar to maintain their vast
army because, again, if we lookat the early period of the war,
only a very small part of thefront was manned by British
(12:39):
troops.
The bulk of the front was theFrench army, millions of men in
uniform, which required a hugeamount of infrastructure of
supply to keep those men there,to keep them fed and supplied
and everything else.
And the French too eventuallyadopted the idea of using a
native labour source of men tocome over and work, and they
(12:59):
recruited those from Indochina,but they also recruited
additional personnel from Chinajust like the British.
So all of this was going on, andit was the only way to keep this
vast engine of war moving.
And as you suggest, the Germanson the other side of No Man's
Land, holding all of that 450miles of the Western Front, they
(13:22):
had exactly the same kind ofproblems of supply, bringing
their logistics, their supply,their war material a much
greater distance in many waysfrom Germany into Belgium and
France, and then up to thefronts.
They used, of course, railwaysto do that on a massive scale,
that whole idea of war bytimetable and railways being so
(13:46):
important to the movement of menand supplies and everything
else.
But what Germany didn't have toback up this logistics trail was
an empire to fall back on.
No resources from empire and nomen or material from empire that
they could bring over, inparticular manpower.
(14:06):
So while they had a very smallcolonial footprint, it wasn't
big enough to really bring overvast numbers of men to work
behind the front in the same waythat the British and the French
had done that through theirempires, and I think the Germans
were reluctant to do that anywaybecause they did not like the
use of black soldiers on aEuropean battlefield.
(14:31):
But more than that, it wasindustrial mites, this huge
industry behind Britain,industry within France.
Germany had a massive armamentsindustry, but was it geared up
for a long conflict?
That's the thing.
And I I've read quite a fewhistorians of both the first and
the second world war who believethat Germany was doomed to lose
(14:54):
both those conflicts becausethey were unable to end the war
quickly.
Their economy, their industrywas geared up for a short fight,
a rapid war, and if that warwent on more than a year or so
into a mired conflict, which theFirst World War was, and a
protracted conflict like theSecond World War, then in many
(15:16):
respects it was doomed tofailure because the economy
could not keep up with thedemand that was needed to fight
a war on that scale.
So coming back to your questionabout economy, it affected, of
course, the war affected theeconomies of all nations.
In the end, Britain had toborrow huge amounts of money to
(15:36):
keep the war effort going.
You see public subscriptionbeing called upon to give money
to governments through warbonds, for example, to help fund
this whole industrial process offeeding the war, because
industrial output was one thingthat you could not cut back on.
(15:56):
If you cut back on output,whether that's armaments or the
food required to feed your armyin the field or whatever it was,
then you were going to end uplosing this conflict.
And that was something, as Isay, the British from the very
beginning putting in this wholeinvestment in infrastructure,
you see that much more clearlyin the British approach to
(16:18):
fighting than you do with theGermans, who perhaps, like so
many people in 1914, thought thewar would be over quickly.
In Britain the phrase was homeby Christmas, the war would be
over by Christmas.
In Germany it was home beforethe leaves fall, and none of
that, of course, was going to betrue.
That this war, the peculiarcircumstances that led to this
(16:41):
war, the changes in technologyand everything else would pretty
much guarantee exactly whathappened in 1914, that a mobile
war would go static and commithuge volumes of men to a massive
area of terrain and require thismassive industrial might to feed
(17:02):
that engine of war and keep itturning.
Now I'm not an economichistorian, but it is important
to I think understand theseelements, these layers of the
first world war.
So thank you, Seud, for yourquestion on this subject.
Question number three comes froman unknown listener from Toronto
(17:22):
on FanMail.
Now fan mail is a way that youcan contact the podcast through
the podcast provider,BuzzSprout, and you kind of send
a text message to the podcast.
I don't see your phone number,and unless you add your name, I
don't know who you are, and Ican't respond to those messages
(17:43):
either.
But it is a way that you cansend questions in, but do
remember to put your name on.
So if you are that unknownlistener from Toronto whose
question this is, do get intouch via the other methods and
let me know who you are.
So the question is, what awonderful show, Paul.
Thank you.
Well, thank you for thosecomments.
He goes on to say, I have aquestion regarding the number of
(18:05):
a battalion affiliated withBritish regiments.
Often I would read about the 5thBattalion of a regiment that
fought on the Somme or otherbattles.
Were there regiments withmultiple battalions serving at
the same time in the WesternFront or maybe in other theatres
of war?
Well, there is a podcast, one ofour earlier ones, called What is
(18:27):
a Battalion, where we outlinewhat a battalion is and how that
fits into the wider structure ofthe army, and I'll put a link to
that in the show notes and alsoon the podcast website.
But when Britain went to war in1914, its army was comprised of
regiments, largely countyregiments, most of which
recruited in a kind of localizedarea, not quite in the same way
(18:50):
as POWs, but there was aregional area that those
regiments generally recruitedfrom.
So I've always been interestedin the Royal Sussex Regiment,
and that generally recruitedpeople from the Sussex area.
I mean, it had when you look atthe men who died in the retreat
from Mons or on the Marne andthe Ain with the Second Royal
(19:10):
Sussex, they come from quite awidespread area, but generally
most of them are born or livedin Sussex, and that was true for
a lot of different regiments.
Now I knew veterans whodeliberately joined a regiment
that had no connection to wherethey came from because they
wanted to get away from wherethey came from for all kinds of
(19:32):
reasons.
So it's not a kind of setprocess that if you are from
Sussex, you will definitely bein the Sussex Regiment because
there were regulars who werekilled in 1914 in the Munster
Fusiliers, in the Duke ofCornwall's on Infantry, and
loads of other regiments, menwho were born in Sussex towns
and had no connection with thosecounties or places like Ireland,
(19:54):
but yet served with thoseregiments.
But the army was essentiallymade up of these different
regiments, and they did notfight as regiments per se.
So they were split intoindividual battalions, and
normally for a regiment beforethe war it would have a 1st and
a 2nd battalion.
One of those would be on dutywithin the British Empire, the
(20:15):
other one would be in Britain,and then at some point they
would swap over.
There would be a 3rd battalionas well, which was a reserve
battalion and trainingbattalion, and it would often
supply reinforcements forwhichever battalion was overseas
at that time.
That was a common thing, andthat was normally based at the
regimental depot.
So for the Royal SussexRegiment, the 3rd Battalion was
(20:38):
at Chichester when the war brokeout in 1914, because that's
where the Regimental Depot ofthe Royal Sussex was located.
On top of that, most countyregiments had territorial
battalions.
Territorial Army after the war,these were part-time soldiers in
units that again recruitedlocally.
(21:00):
These were made up of eightindividual companies before the
war, of about 120 men, and theyhad their own drill hall located
in a specific location, and thenit recruited in that area.
So the 1st 5th, the 5thBattalion Royal Sussex Regiment,
which is a territorialbattalion, recruited in the
eastern part of the county ofSussex, and it had drill halls
(21:22):
in some small little villageslike Wadhurst and in towns like
Rye on the coast or Hastings,and it recruited men from those
areas, and they would have anannual camp where all of those
companies came together and thenregular drill hall sessions.
The men carried out their normalcivilian jobs and were part-time
soldiers, only being broughtinto the army as a whole, as it
(21:43):
were, if there was a conflictlike the Great War or for one of
these annual camps.
Now, when the war broke out, allof these units, particularly
with the formation of the newarmy, Kitchener's Army as it
became known, Lord Kitchener,called for those hundred
thousand volunteers, and againacross Britain all of these
regiments began to form servicebattalions, which were the new
(22:06):
army, Kitchener's Armybattalions that would be needed
to continue the war by bringingin a huge amount of manpower
because Britain had no historyof conscription, and everyone at
this stage of the conflict was avolunteer.
And in some places these servicebattalions became POWs
battalions or chums battalions,like the Accrington POWs or the
(22:29):
Grimsby Chums.
In Sussex there was the SouthDowns battalions, there was a
Wandsworth Battalion.
I mean, you know, we'vediscussed these on so many
occasions.
And having formed theseindividual battalions, what did
the army do with them next?
Well they then put them into thebigger formation, which was the
brigade and the division, and ineach brigade there were four
(22:50):
battalions, and in each divisionthere were three brigades, so
essentially every division ofthe British Army would have
twelve infantry fightingbattalions, one pioneer
battalion, and then the divisionwas the basic formation by which
the British Army fought itsbattles.
So in terms of regiments havingmultiple battalions serving on
(23:11):
the Western Front or in specificbattles, yes, indeed that
happened.
And even within individualbrigades and divisions, the same
regiment could have multiplebattalions.
So if we look at the 34thDivision that went over the top
on the first day of the Battleof the Somme in the attack on La
Boiselle, Lochnagar, Minecrater,came over the high ground of the
(23:32):
Tyre, Usner Hills, somethingwe've spoken about previously on
this podcast.
It had two brigades of its threein that division, made up of
battalions of the NorthumberlandFusiliers, who were known as the
Tyne Side Irish and the TyneSide Scottish.
And you see this quite a lot inmany other formations,
(23:52):
territorial divisions and alsonew army ones as well.
So it meant that if you took atypical regiment, and the Royal
Sussex is a very good example ofthat, having studied that
regiment has given me a verygood insight into how the
British Army was structured,maintained, run, and how the
whole kind of sequence of unitsfrom battalion to brigade to
(24:14):
division actually functioned.
When you look at something likethe Royal Sussex, by 1915,
they've got battalions on theWestern Front, they've got a
battalion at Gallipoli, and asthe war progresses, they have
battalions in Egypt andPalestine and eventually Russia
as well.
And other regiments would havehad multiple battalions on the
(24:34):
Western Front and then perhapsat Salonica or in Mesopotamia.
So it meant that the BritishArmy and these individual
regiments could serve in anumber of theatres of war
simultaneously, and thatfunctioned because the regiment
didn't process and maintainthose individual battalions as
such.
(24:55):
It was the formations in whichthey served, the brigades and
the divisions.
The regiment's function duringthe war was to maintain these
individual battalions on paper,maintain them actually, some of
them the ones that were on homeservice only, and then use those
to facilitate the recruitmentand training and processing of
(25:16):
men that would then be sent onas reinforcements to battalions
on active service.
So whereas before the war, withjust two battalions potentially
on overseas service and onereserve battalion, you could
keep that going easily as thewar grew.
Then these regiments would needmore battalions to train men up
to replace the losses on thebattlefield.
(25:38):
And what it meant by wars endingis that your typical regiment,
even a small county regimentlike the Sussex or the
Dorsetshire Regiment or whateverit was, could actually have an
incredible number of battlehonours that were granted
because of where its individualbattalions had served, and not
just the big ones on the WesternFront like the Somme and Epe and
(26:01):
New Chapelle and all those kindof things, but these other
places where the war had becometruly global, from Gallipoli to
Salonica, Palestine,Mesopotamia, and all of the
other places that we'vementioned.
So it's complex and unique inmany ways.
The way the British Armyoperated, was formed, and was
structured, was unique comparedto other nations.
(26:23):
The French army had numberedregiments which were broken up
into smaller subunits.
The American army does a verysimilar kind of thing.
The Germans recruited moreregionally because of the way
Germany had come into existenceby the unification of
German-speaking states.
The army was still reflectedthose states with Bavarian
(26:46):
troops and Prussian Wurttembergsand Hanovarians.
But the British army kept thisidentity, this regional identity
with these kind of countyregiments.
But as the war moved on, menfrom a particular county, even
from a particular regiment,could find themselves being
forcibly transferred by the armyinto other regiments that needed
(27:10):
them.
So for example, if you joinedthe Royal Sussex Regiment in
1917 as a conscript, you didyour training, you were sent to
the infantry base depot at theTarplar, and often you get there
to an infantry base depot, andthey would require replacements
for a particular regiment up thefront, and they would say, and
one veteran that I interviewedtold me this story.
(27:32):
The sergeant major steppedforward and said, Every other
man, one pace forward, and theysuddenly found themselves in the
Manchester Regiment, forexample.
So that's kind of how itoperated, and I hope that makes
sense to you.
But do go back and have a listento that What is a Battalion
podcast?
Because that is a kind of longerexplanation of what I've just
described, and I'm sure this issomething that we will come back
(27:56):
to again and again because justlike logistics, it's an
essential part of ourunderstanding of the Great War.
So let's move on to questionnumber four, and this one comes
from James also on Patreon.
James asks, I'm just readingFrank Lindley's account of the
attack on Sayer on the first ofJuly 1916.
(28:17):
He mentions whippers in withpistols, who I'm assuming were
men appointed to stop menretreating.
I haven't heard of theexpression before.
Were these men present for everyattack?
How were they chosen?
Do you know of any accounts ofmen being shot, retreating from
an attack, or were men generallyreprimanded and then faced a
(28:38):
general court martial?
Would you be listed as killed inaction if you were killed in
such circumstances?
Well this is a really greatquestion, James, and something
that I often heard fromveterans, these kind of stories
of men being killed in the heatof battle, whether that was
under circumstances like youdescribe, so there are men in a
(28:59):
trench, and their job is to makesure everyone's gone over the
top, and this particular soldierwouldn't do it, refused all
orders, so to stop panic amongstthe other men who were also
about to go over the top, he isthen shot dead.
There's also stories ofunpopular NCOs or officers being
shot as well.
Now many of these are what Iwould describe as stamina
(29:22):
stories, where soldiers sitthere, have a few drinks, start
talking about the war, and theremight be a tiny inkling of truth
in some of this, but it getsblown out of all proportion.
And in terms of verifying it, Imean you ask, would they be
listed as killed in action?
If men were shot under thesecircumstances, then that would
(29:43):
probably almost certainly not berecorded.
So we will never really know.
Now there are some publishedaccounts where men say that they
did things like this.
Frank Percy Crozier, BrigadierGeneral Crozier, claims that he
did it in No Man's.
Land on the Somme on the 1st ofJuly 1916.
Then there's Hutchie, GrahamSeaton Hutchison, who says he
(30:06):
did it during the Battle of theLease in April 1918.
There are less examples of whatyou described, the whippers in
with pistols, and that is aphrase I haven't seen myself,
where there are men hangingback.
But it is true that there weremen in the trenches to ensure
that everybody did go overbecause a momentum had to be
(30:30):
maintained, so you couldn't havemen hanging back because the
whole momentum would break down.
And what they would use for thisis the regimental police.
So in an infantry battalion,there is a group of men who are
not part of the core of militarypolice, the military foot police
or the military mounted policeas it was in the Great War.
They are part of that battalion,but they are part of the
(30:51):
battalion or regimental policeas it's called, and they wear a
coloured armband around theirtunic sleeve with RP on it
indicating they're part of theregimental police.
Very often those men would berequired to do this kind of
work.
Now they were armed, they mightbe carrying their own rifles.
You see photographs of them, andthey often have side arms, so
they have pistols.
(31:11):
Whether they actually shotanyone, I mean is difficult to
say, but let's think about theseunits that were at Sair on the
first day of the Somme.
These were POWs battalions,northern Powers Battalions,
recruited in places likeAccrington and Barnsley and
Leeds and Bradford andSheffield, they had a very, very
high Espirit de Corpscomradeship.
(31:35):
They were bound by where they'dcome from and what they'd been
through.
And although some men did letthe side down during that early
phase of the Battle of theSomme, and we've got some well
documented examples of that thatended up in field general court
martials, I think those kinds ofmen, those type of men would
have pushed back, would havebeen unhappy about the idea of
(31:59):
having whippers in in thetrenches to make sure they went
over, because this is whatthey'd all trained for.
This is what they'd all come tothis point to do, to face an
enemy, to go into battle andtake that enemy on.
So in many respects thediscussion of a subject like
this is speculation because wedon't have very many, if any,
(32:25):
truly verified accounts of anamed soldier being shot under
these circumstances.
We have the estaminae stories,we have the whispers that kind
of drift down the century, butmore than that, it's very hard
to pin it down to a name on agrave or a soldier in a casualty
(32:46):
list or whatever it is.
But the reality of war of coursetells us that not everyone could
give a good account ofthemselves when that hour came
for them to go into battle, andthat men broke down, couldn't do
it, couldn't face the reality ofthat is well documented in the
(33:07):
cases of those who were shot byfiring squad who was shot at
dawn following a field generalcourt martial.
And remember that only a smallpercentage of them that were
sentenced to death for thosecrimes were actually executed.
There were thousands more whohad done very similar things,
but we've only got their namesin ledgers, in books, rather
(33:31):
than having their case files tosee how widespread this kind of
thing was, because sadly all ofthose case files of the men who
were not executed were destroyedsome years ago.
But this whole subject ofmilitary discipline and the way
it was dealt with is afascinating subject, and one
(33:52):
that I will be returning to atsome point because there is some
absolutely fascinating materialon it in the National Archives
at Q.
So that's something to come downthe line, yet another podcast
promised.
But a great question, James, andthank you for that, and thank
you to all of those whosubmitted questions for this
(34:13):
episode.
As usual, you can send them inthrough the easy routes of email
and on the Discord server, orvia fan mail, and indeed one or
two other sources besides.
But keep those questions comingin, they're always fascinating
to read, fascinating for me toanswer, and I hope you find this
of interest, and until we meetagain to discuss some more QA's
(34:37):
on the old frontline.
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Frontline
with me, military historian PaulReed.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcor, you can follow the
podcast at OldFrontline Pod.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
(34:59):
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
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buymea coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsites.
(35:21):
Thanks for listening, and we'llsee you again soon.
The Lou's anniversary featured in the news
at the end of September with thereburial of several soldiers
from the nineteen fifteenfighting at Lewes British
Cemetery in the new extensionthere, and these were men who'd
been found on the Lend Hospitalsite close to the slopes of Hill
70.
Two of the soldiers had beenidentified, and their stories
(00:32):
were featured in a BBC Newsdocumentary that featured the
MOD war detectives and the workthat they'd done to help
identify these soldiers, and italso featured quite extensive
interviews with the families ofthose soldiers too.
It was a really well madeprogramme and it's available on
(00:53):
iPlayer, and I'll put a link toit in the show notes for this
episode.
And the whole incident crossesover nicely really with the
podcast episode on the MOD team.
But also once more it shows howthe pages of Great War History
never stop turning, and that initself never ceases to amaze me.
(01:18):
But let's get on to this week'squestions.
Question one comes from PaulBurns on Patreon.
Patreon is a means by which youcan support the podcast, and
we've built quite a nice littleGreat War old frontline
community there, and quite a fewunique things are offered to
those who support us via thatmethod.
(01:39):
And you'll find details of thaton the podcast website.
Paul asks, I am a newlyintrigued person into the
history of the Great War, andyour podcast has opened up so
much to me.
Thanks for that, Paul.
He says, My question willprobably reflect that, but how
did Hills get their numbersalong the front line?
And was that number only usedonce in the whole of the line,
(02:02):
i.e.
hill eighty near Epe means therecould not be another Hill eighty
anywhere else?
Well, first of all, let's goback to maps in nineteen
fourteen when the BritishExpeditionary Force, the BF,
came across to France at thevery beginning of the Great War.
It had maps, maps that had beenprepared by the War Office and
(02:24):
using data provided by theOrdnance Survey, which is the
big mapping organisation inGreat Britain.
They in themselves had boughtmap data from other countries
because they couldn't go andsurvey so many places right
across the world, not justwithin Europe.
So they bought that map data andused it to create their own
(02:45):
maps.
And these maps were fairly basicthings, often in quite a large
scale, so they covered quite abig area, and they didn't always
include every detail that wasactually on that landscape
because those kind of maps itwas thought were not really
useful.
That's what you have sketch mapsfor.
And if you look at a lot of theearly war diaries for the First
(03:07):
World War for that 1914campaign, you'll see tons of
sketch maps in them becauseofficers were trained to make
those kind of maps, and thoseare the maps that they used in
the field.
And once the front went static,it was found that the map data
that was on a lot of the mapsthat the British Army was using
was simply incorrect.
(03:29):
So when it showed the contoursof the ground, and because it
was based on European mappingdata, those contours were in
metres, not feet.
It showed contours that were 60meters above sea level, for
example, and the guns would becalibrated if you were an
artillery unit, you had to fireover that hill that was 60
(03:51):
meters high and fire at an enemyposition beyond.
So you calibrated your guns, youfired them over the hill, and in
fact the hill was 65 or 68meters high, and the shells
whack into the side of it, andthe whole thing doesn't work
properly.
So it was realized fairly earlyon that while these maps were
(04:16):
useful, they were not usefulonce the war focused on a
particular area because a lot ofthe information, the data on the
maps, was just simply wrong.
Things were spelt wrong, roadswere laid out wrong, woods were
not quite the definition thatthey were marked as on the map,
and all kinds of things likethis.
(04:36):
So the Royal Engineers werebrought in, and survey units
then began to survey thebattlefield, producing some of
the very first trench maps.
And we have discussed trenchmaps on and off on the podcast,
and there's been a couple ofepisodes relating to them, but
it's about time I think that wehad a proper podcast episode
(04:58):
looking at the history of thismapping.
So that's something that willcome.
But coming back to this story,that is when these trench maps
in that period of 1914 on into1915, and once the front
stabilized and the Britishsector of the Western Front
began to expand, the need, thenecessity for maps grew and
(05:19):
grew.
The Royal Engineers producedthem and features were marked on
them.
And it was important to markfeatures so that those features
could be mentioned in messagesand war diaries and combat
reports and all kinds of thingslike that.
And when it came to hills,that's how these hills suddenly
became numbered because,particularly in places like
(05:39):
Flanders, which was a big chunkof the British front in that
early phase of the war, on aflat landscape, any rise of
ground will afford you anadvantage.
So the hills took on a muchgreater symbolism and importance
when it came to fighting overthat kind of ground, and the
hills got their names.
Sometimes we inherited thosenames from the French, and when
(06:02):
the number was used, it wasagain relating to metres above
sea level, so hill 60, 60 metresabove sea level, hill 80, 80
metres above sea level, and soon.
But those numbered names I wouldadd a proviso to that, in that
remember, many of them weregiven in the early period when
(06:23):
the early maps were used, so thenumber might not be entirely
accurate to the actual meterageabove sea level of those
promontories.
So Hill 60 is a good example.
It's not 60 meters above sealevel, it's something like 46
metres, something along thosekind of lines.
So this is something we have toremember when it comes to these
(06:45):
names.
But your question goes a littlebit further in this, Paul, in
that you ask, were these numbersrepeated?
And I think when the Britishsector was relatively small, so
it 1914-15 it ran fromSaint-Loire down to the La Basse
Canal, they could kind of getaway with it because there were
probably several rises in groundthat were around 60 metres above
(07:08):
sea level, and what you see thembegin to use are names that are
slightly different numbers.
So there's a hill 62 and there'sa hill 63, and like you say,
there's a hill 80 nearWicharter.
But what's interesting is thatthe numbered hills on the
British front tend to berestricted to that area in
(07:29):
Flanders.
So all kinds of numbered hillseventually became part of that
landscape which the British Armyfought over during four years of
war in Flanders in the GreatWar.
But when you come down to placeslike Arras and the Somme, hills
tend to be given names ratherthan numbers.
You see less of that.
(07:49):
Orange Hill and Infantry Hill atMontchy-lepre near Arras being a
very good example of that.
But some names were repeated, sothere were two Hill 60s, for
example, but not both on theWestern Front.
One, the famous one just outsideYape in Flanders, but a Hill 60
in Gallipoli as well.
(08:10):
And it's interesting to go thereand see that the fighting at
that Hill 60 was taking placepretty much at the same time as
some of the fighting at the Hill60 in Flanders, and both were
reported in the news with thosenames, so I'm sure it caused
quite a lot of confusion.
And when you move on to theFrench part of the Western
Front, you see this manner ofnaming hills with numbers far
(08:34):
more commonplace.
So I wonder whether in the earlyphase we adopted a lot of
numbered hill names simplybecause we took over those
positions from the French, andthat was what they'd marked on
their maps that we then usedwhen we first took over those
sectors.
So there's an incrediblyinteresting history behind the
development of these sectors andwith it the naming of parts of
(08:57):
these sectors as the frontgradually expands.
Again, all part of thatfascinating element of the Great
War, layer of the Great War,which is the landscape and the
study of that landscape.
So thank you, Paul, for thatexcellent question.
Question number two comes fromSurid Sonsma on email and he
(09:20):
asks my question is aboutlogistics.
The amount of soldiers from bothsides meant that there must have
been an absolute astonishingamount of supply of food,
munitions, water, petrol andeverything else.
The Germans had exactly the sameproblem and they even occupied
much of the French countrysidewhere coal was mined.
(09:43):
How was this possible and whateffects on the economy were
there to make this possible?
Well, as we've said in quite afew episodes of the Old
Frontline podcast, logisticssupply is a really important
element of our understanding theFirst World War.
It's not as sexy as the bombs,bullets and baynets and the
fighting on the battlefield, butit's absolutely essential in our
(10:07):
understanding of how the front,no matter what front it is,
whether it's the Western Front,Salonica, Gallipoli,
Mesopotamia, Palestine, it'sabsolutely essential in our
understanding of how thosefronts were maintained, because
soldiers couldn't fight thosebattles without all of the kinds
of supplies that you'vementioned in your question
(10:28):
there.
And in terms of the Britishapproach to this, the British
Army invested in infrastructure,as I've said many times, from
the very beginning of the war.
The first units that went acrossas part of the British
Expeditionary Force were notinfantry, not cavalry, not
gunners, they were support unitslike the Royal Engineers and the
Army Service Corps being sentacross to set up the base
(10:51):
depots, the logistics trail, andthe beginning of that supply
route that would take suppliesbeing brought over from ship,
from port to port, from Britainto France, and then being moved
up to wherever the British Armywould go and fight its battles.
And as the war progressed andthe suddenly the war of movement
became a static war, and therewas a front that the British
(11:13):
Army was holding, and to keepthe men on that front, fighting
on that front, everything had tobe sent to them, and more and
more infrastructure was put inplace, more and more support
units and personnel within thosesupport units were brought over
and helped that happen, made ithappen.
(11:34):
And as the war grew and grew,and the size of the British
Expeditionary Force grew andgrew, more and more of those
people working in the logisticsand supply were needed, and
manpower was needed to moveeverything around.
So by 1917, with it being atruly global war, and from a
British perspective, with theempire now the Commonwealth, a
(11:57):
huge amount of labour wasbrought in from all of those
empire nations to work behindthe front, men from the British
West Indies, from Egypt to workat the ports, from South Africa,
the South African Native LabourCorps, and so many others, but
even that was not enough.
More labour was required.
So over a hundred thousand menfrom China were recruited to
(12:18):
come and work for the BritishArmy behind the Western Front.
Now that's one example from aBritish perspective.
But if you look at othernations, they're doing very
similar.
The French do something verysimilar to maintain their vast
army because, again, if we lookat the early period of the war,
only a very small part of thefront was manned by British
(12:39):
troops.
The bulk of the front was theFrench army, millions of men in
uniform, which required a hugeamount of infrastructure of
supply to keep those men there,to keep them fed and supplied
and everything else.
And the French too eventuallyadopted the idea of using a
native labour source of men tocome over and work, and they
(12:59):
recruited those from Indochina,but they also recruited
additional personnel from Chinajust like the British.
So all of this was going on, andit was the only way to keep this
vast engine of war moving.
And as you suggest, the Germanson the other side of No Man's
Land, holding all of that 450miles of the Western Front, they
(13:22):
had exactly the same kind ofproblems of supply, bringing
their logistics, their supply,their war material a much
greater distance in many waysfrom Germany into Belgium and
France, and then up to thefronts.
They used, of course, railwaysto do that on a massive scale,
that whole idea of war bytimetable and railways being so
(13:46):
important to the movement of menand supplies and everything
else.
But what Germany didn't have toback up this logistics trail was
an empire to fall back on.
No resources from empire and nomen or material from empire that
they could bring over, inparticular manpower.
(14:06):
So while they had a very smallcolonial footprint, it wasn't
big enough to really bring overvast numbers of men to work
behind the front in the same waythat the British and the French
had done that through theirempires, and I think the Germans
were reluctant to do that anywaybecause they did not like the
use of black soldiers on aEuropean battlefield.
(14:31):
But more than that, it wasindustrial mites, this huge
industry behind Britain,industry within France.
Germany had a massive armamentsindustry, but was it geared up
for a long conflict?
That's the thing.
And I I've read quite a fewhistorians of both the first and
the second world war who believethat Germany was doomed to lose
(14:54):
both those conflicts becausethey were unable to end the war
quickly.
Their economy, their industrywas geared up for a short fight,
a rapid war, and if that warwent on more than a year or so
into a mired conflict, which theFirst World War was, and a
protracted conflict like theSecond World War, then in many
(15:16):
respects it was doomed tofailure because the economy
could not keep up with thedemand that was needed to fight
a war on that scale.
So coming back to your questionabout economy, it affected, of
course, the war affected theeconomies of all nations.
In the end, Britain had toborrow huge amounts of money to
(15:36):
keep the war effort going.
You see public subscriptionbeing called upon to give money
to governments through warbonds, for example, to help fund
this whole industrial process offeeding the war, because
industrial output was one thingthat you could not cut back on.
(15:56):
If you cut back on output,whether that's armaments or the
food required to feed your armyin the field or whatever it was,
then you were going to end uplosing this conflict.
And that was something, as Isay, the British from the very
beginning putting in this wholeinvestment in infrastructure,
you see that much more clearlyin the British approach to
(16:18):
fighting than you do with theGermans, who perhaps, like so
many people in 1914, thought thewar would be over quickly.
In Britain the phrase was homeby Christmas, the war would be
over by Christmas.
In Germany it was home beforethe leaves fall, and none of
that, of course, was going to betrue.
That this war, the peculiarcircumstances that led to this
(16:41):
war, the changes in technologyand everything else would pretty
much guarantee exactly whathappened in 1914, that a mobile
war would go static and commithuge volumes of men to a massive
area of terrain and require thismassive industrial might to feed
(17:02):
that engine of war and keep itturning.
Now I'm not an economichistorian, but it is important
to I think understand theseelements, these layers of the
first world war.
So thank you, Seud, for yourquestion on this subject.
Question number three comes froman unknown listener from Toronto
(17:22):
on FanMail.
Now fan mail is a way that youcan contact the podcast through
the podcast provider,BuzzSprout, and you kind of send
a text message to the podcast.
I don't see your phone number,and unless you add your name, I
don't know who you are, and Ican't respond to those messages
(17:43):
either.
But it is a way that you cansend questions in, but do
remember to put your name on.
So if you are that unknownlistener from Toronto whose
question this is, do get intouch via the other methods and
let me know who you are.
So the question is, what awonderful show, Paul.
Thank you.
Well, thank you for thosecomments.
He goes on to say, I have aquestion regarding the number of
(18:05):
a battalion affiliated withBritish regiments.
Often I would read about the 5thBattalion of a regiment that
fought on the Somme or otherbattles.
Were there regiments withmultiple battalions serving at
the same time in the WesternFront or maybe in other theatres
of war?
Well, there is a podcast, one ofour earlier ones, called What is
(18:27):
a Battalion, where we outlinewhat a battalion is and how that
fits into the wider structure ofthe army, and I'll put a link to
that in the show notes and alsoon the podcast website.
But when Britain went to war in1914, its army was comprised of
regiments, largely countyregiments, most of which
recruited in a kind of localizedarea, not quite in the same way
(18:50):
as POWs, but there was aregional area that those
regiments generally recruitedfrom.
So I've always been interestedin the Royal Sussex Regiment,
and that generally recruitedpeople from the Sussex area.
I mean, it had when you look atthe men who died in the retreat
from Mons or on the Marne andthe Ain with the Second Royal
(19:10):
Sussex, they come from quite awidespread area, but generally
most of them are born or livedin Sussex, and that was true for
a lot of different regiments.
Now I knew veterans whodeliberately joined a regiment
that had no connection to wherethey came from because they
wanted to get away from wherethey came from for all kinds of
(19:32):
reasons.
So it's not a kind of setprocess that if you are from
Sussex, you will definitely bein the Sussex Regiment because
there were regulars who werekilled in 1914 in the Munster
Fusiliers, in the Duke ofCornwall's on Infantry, and
loads of other regiments, menwho were born in Sussex towns
and had no connection with thosecounties or places like Ireland,
(19:54):
but yet served with thoseregiments.
But the army was essentiallymade up of these different
regiments, and they did notfight as regiments per se.
So they were split intoindividual battalions, and
normally for a regiment beforethe war it would have a 1st and
a 2nd battalion.
One of those would be on dutywithin the British Empire, the
(20:15):
other one would be in Britain,and then at some point they
would swap over.
There would be a 3rd battalionas well, which was a reserve
battalion and trainingbattalion, and it would often
supply reinforcements forwhichever battalion was overseas
at that time.
That was a common thing, andthat was normally based at the
regimental depot.
So for the Royal SussexRegiment, the 3rd Battalion was
(20:38):
at Chichester when the war brokeout in 1914, because that's
where the Regimental Depot ofthe Royal Sussex was located.
On top of that, most countyregiments had territorial
battalions.
Territorial Army after the war,these were part-time soldiers in
units that again recruitedlocally.
(21:00):
These were made up of eightindividual companies before the
war, of about 120 men, and theyhad their own drill hall located
in a specific location, and thenit recruited in that area.
So the 1st 5th, the 5thBattalion Royal Sussex Regiment,
which is a territorialbattalion, recruited in the
eastern part of the county ofSussex, and it had drill halls
(21:22):
in some small little villageslike Wadhurst and in towns like
Rye on the coast or Hastings,and it recruited men from those
areas, and they would have anannual camp where all of those
companies came together and thenregular drill hall sessions.
The men carried out their normalcivilian jobs and were part-time
soldiers, only being broughtinto the army as a whole, as it
(21:43):
were, if there was a conflictlike the Great War or for one of
these annual camps.
Now, when the war broke out, allof these units, particularly
with the formation of the newarmy, Kitchener's Army as it
became known, Lord Kitchener,called for those hundred
thousand volunteers, and againacross Britain all of these
regiments began to form servicebattalions, which were the new
(22:06):
army, Kitchener's Armybattalions that would be needed
to continue the war by bringingin a huge amount of manpower
because Britain had no historyof conscription, and everyone at
this stage of the conflict was avolunteer.
And in some places these servicebattalions became POWs
battalions or chums battalions,like the Accrington POWs or the
(22:29):
Grimsby Chums.
In Sussex there was the SouthDowns battalions, there was a
Wandsworth Battalion.
I mean, you know, we'vediscussed these on so many
occasions.
And having formed theseindividual battalions, what did
the army do with them next?
Well they then put them into thebigger formation, which was the
brigade and the division, and ineach brigade there were four
(22:50):
battalions, and in each divisionthere were three brigades, so
essentially every division ofthe British Army would have
twelve infantry fightingbattalions, one pioneer
battalion, and then the divisionwas the basic formation by which
the British Army fought itsbattles.
So in terms of regiments havingmultiple battalions serving on
(23:11):
the Western Front or in specificbattles, yes, indeed that
happened.
And even within individualbrigades and divisions, the same
regiment could have multiplebattalions.
So if we look at the 34thDivision that went over the top
on the first day of the Battleof the Somme in the attack on La
Boiselle, Lochnagar, Minecrater,came over the high ground of the
(23:32):
Tyre, Usner Hills, somethingwe've spoken about previously on
this podcast.
It had two brigades of its threein that division, made up of
battalions of the NorthumberlandFusiliers, who were known as the
Tyne Side Irish and the TyneSide Scottish.
And you see this quite a lot inmany other formations,
(23:52):
territorial divisions and alsonew army ones as well.
So it meant that if you took atypical regiment, and the Royal
Sussex is a very good example ofthat, having studied that
regiment has given me a verygood insight into how the
British Army was structured,maintained, run, and how the
whole kind of sequence of unitsfrom battalion to brigade to
(24:14):
division actually functioned.
When you look at something likethe Royal Sussex, by 1915,
they've got battalions on theWestern Front, they've got a
battalion at Gallipoli, and asthe war progresses, they have
battalions in Egypt andPalestine and eventually Russia
as well.
And other regiments would havehad multiple battalions on the
(24:34):
Western Front and then perhapsat Salonica or in Mesopotamia.
So it meant that the BritishArmy and these individual
regiments could serve in anumber of theatres of war
simultaneously, and thatfunctioned because the regiment
didn't process and maintainthose individual battalions as
such.
(24:55):
It was the formations in whichthey served, the brigades and
the divisions.
The regiment's function duringthe war was to maintain these
individual battalions on paper,maintain them actually, some of
them the ones that were on homeservice only, and then use those
to facilitate the recruitmentand training and processing of
(25:16):
men that would then be sent onas reinforcements to battalions
on active service.
So whereas before the war, withjust two battalions potentially
on overseas service and onereserve battalion, you could
keep that going easily as thewar grew.
Then these regiments would needmore battalions to train men up
to replace the losses on thebattlefield.
(25:38):
And what it meant by wars endingis that your typical regiment,
even a small county regimentlike the Sussex or the
Dorsetshire Regiment or whateverit was, could actually have an
incredible number of battlehonours that were granted
because of where its individualbattalions had served, and not
just the big ones on the WesternFront like the Somme and Epe and
(26:01):
New Chapelle and all those kindof things, but these other
places where the war had becometruly global, from Gallipoli to
Salonica, Palestine,Mesopotamia, and all of the
other places that we'vementioned.
So it's complex and unique inmany ways.
The way the British Armyoperated, was formed, and was
structured, was unique comparedto other nations.
(26:23):
The French army had numberedregiments which were broken up
into smaller subunits.
The American army does a verysimilar kind of thing.
The Germans recruited moreregionally because of the way
Germany had come into existenceby the unification of
German-speaking states.
The army was still reflectedthose states with Bavarian
(26:46):
troops and Prussian Wurttembergsand Hanovarians.
But the British army kept thisidentity, this regional identity
with these kind of countyregiments.
But as the war moved on, menfrom a particular county, even
from a particular regiment,could find themselves being
forcibly transferred by the armyinto other regiments that needed
(27:10):
them.
So for example, if you joinedthe Royal Sussex Regiment in
1917 as a conscript, you didyour training, you were sent to
the infantry base depot at theTarplar, and often you get there
to an infantry base depot, andthey would require replacements
for a particular regiment up thefront, and they would say, and
one veteran that I interviewedtold me this story.
(27:32):
The sergeant major steppedforward and said, Every other
man, one pace forward, and theysuddenly found themselves in the
Manchester Regiment, forexample.
So that's kind of how itoperated, and I hope that makes
sense to you.
But do go back and have a listento that What is a Battalion
podcast?
Because that is a kind of longerexplanation of what I've just
described, and I'm sure this issomething that we will come back
(27:56):
to again and again because justlike logistics, it's an
essential part of ourunderstanding of the Great War.
So let's move on to questionnumber four, and this one comes
from James also on Patreon.
James asks, I'm just readingFrank Lindley's account of the
attack on Sayer on the first ofJuly 1916.
(28:17):
He mentions whippers in withpistols, who I'm assuming were
men appointed to stop menretreating.
I haven't heard of theexpression before.
Were these men present for everyattack?
How were they chosen?
Do you know of any accounts ofmen being shot, retreating from
an attack, or were men generallyreprimanded and then faced a
(28:38):
general court martial?
Would you be listed as killed inaction if you were killed in
such circumstances?
Well this is a really greatquestion, James, and something
that I often heard fromveterans, these kind of stories
of men being killed in the heatof battle, whether that was
under circumstances like youdescribe, so there are men in a
(28:59):
trench, and their job is to makesure everyone's gone over the
top, and this particular soldierwouldn't do it, refused all
orders, so to stop panic amongstthe other men who were also
about to go over the top, he isthen shot dead.
There's also stories ofunpopular NCOs or officers being
shot as well.
Now many of these are what Iwould describe as stamina
(29:22):
stories, where soldiers sitthere, have a few drinks, start
talking about the war, and theremight be a tiny inkling of truth
in some of this, but it getsblown out of all proportion.
And in terms of verifying it, Imean you ask, would they be
listed as killed in action?
If men were shot under thesecircumstances, then that would
(29:43):
probably almost certainly not berecorded.
So we will never really know.
Now there are some publishedaccounts where men say that they
did things like this.
Frank Percy Crozier, BrigadierGeneral Crozier, claims that he
did it in No Man's.
Land on the Somme on the 1st ofJuly 1916.
Then there's Hutchie, GrahamSeaton Hutchison, who says he
(30:06):
did it during the Battle of theLease in April 1918.
There are less examples of whatyou described, the whippers in
with pistols, and that is aphrase I haven't seen myself,
where there are men hangingback.
But it is true that there weremen in the trenches to ensure
that everybody did go overbecause a momentum had to be
(30:30):
maintained, so you couldn't havemen hanging back because the
whole momentum would break down.
And what they would use for thisis the regimental police.
So in an infantry battalion,there is a group of men who are
not part of the core of militarypolice, the military foot police
or the military mounted policeas it was in the Great War.
They are part of that battalion,but they are part of the
(30:51):
battalion or regimental policeas it's called, and they wear a
coloured armband around theirtunic sleeve with RP on it
indicating they're part of theregimental police.
Very often those men would berequired to do this kind of
work.
Now they were armed, they mightbe carrying their own rifles.
You see photographs of them, andthey often have side arms, so
they have pistols.
(31:11):
Whether they actually shotanyone, I mean is difficult to
say, but let's think about theseunits that were at Sair on the
first day of the Somme.
These were POWs battalions,northern Powers Battalions,
recruited in places likeAccrington and Barnsley and
Leeds and Bradford andSheffield, they had a very, very
high Espirit de Corpscomradeship.
(31:35):
They were bound by where they'dcome from and what they'd been
through.
And although some men did letthe side down during that early
phase of the Battle of theSomme, and we've got some well
documented examples of that thatended up in field general court
martials, I think those kinds ofmen, those type of men would
have pushed back, would havebeen unhappy about the idea of
(31:59):
having whippers in in thetrenches to make sure they went
over, because this is whatthey'd all trained for.
This is what they'd all come tothis point to do, to face an
enemy, to go into battle andtake that enemy on.
So in many respects thediscussion of a subject like
this is speculation because wedon't have very many, if any,
(32:25):
truly verified accounts of anamed soldier being shot under
these circumstances.
We have the estaminae stories,we have the whispers that kind
of drift down the century, butmore than that, it's very hard
to pin it down to a name on agrave or a soldier in a casualty
(32:46):
list or whatever it is.
But the reality of war of coursetells us that not everyone could
give a good account ofthemselves when that hour came
for them to go into battle, andthat men broke down, couldn't do
it, couldn't face the reality ofthat is well documented in the
(33:07):
cases of those who were shot byfiring squad who was shot at
dawn following a field generalcourt martial.
And remember that only a smallpercentage of them that were
sentenced to death for thosecrimes were actually executed.
There were thousands more whohad done very similar things,
but we've only got their namesin ledgers, in books, rather
(33:31):
than having their case files tosee how widespread this kind of
thing was, because sadly all ofthose case files of the men who
were not executed were destroyedsome years ago.
But this whole subject ofmilitary discipline and the way
it was dealt with is afascinating subject, and one
(33:52):
that I will be returning to atsome point because there is some
absolutely fascinating materialon it in the National Archives
at Q.
So that's something to come downthe line, yet another podcast
promised.
But a great question, James, andthank you for that, and thank
you to all of those whosubmitted questions for this
(34:13):
episode.
As usual, you can send them inthrough the easy routes of email
and on the Discord server, orvia fan mail, and indeed one or
two other sources besides.
But keep those questions comingin, they're always fascinating
to read, fascinating for me toanswer, and I hope you find this
of interest, and until we meetagain to discuss some more QA's
(34:37):
on the old frontline.
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Frontline
with me, military historian PaulReed.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcor, you can follow the
podcast at OldFrontline Pod.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
(34:59):
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline, or support us on
buymea coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsites.
(35:21):
Thanks for listening, and we'llsee you again soon.
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