SIX

1914: The Last Stand of the Thin Red

Line

T

he ideals of Victorian heroism had been refined facing crazed Ghazis,
fanatical Dervishes, and most recently obstinate Boers. Only the last
had come close to technological parity, and even they could not hope
to match the industrial might of the aroused British Empire. As the First
World War began, Britain suddenly found itself propelled into a full-scale
continental war against one of the foremost industrial powers of Europe.
It was a conflict for which the British military establishment was scarcely
prepared.
The British Army that embarked for the front in 1914 was still very
much a colonial force. Despite the harsh lessons of the Boer experi-
ence, the only substantive changes in equipment and training were the
adoption of an improved rifle, the Lee-Enfield Mk III (along with an
emphasis on rapid, accurate musketry) for the Infantry, and new quick-
firing 13 pr and 18 pr guns for the Artillery.^1 The Haldane reforms
had established an Imperial General Staff, revamped the organization of
the Territorial and Reserve Forces, and created an Expeditionary Force,
but Haldane left the details of training and equipment to the General
Staff – which saw to the return of the lance as an active service
weapon and training manuals that included cavalry shock charges as a
viable tactical alternative. The soldiers themselves had changed little; their
officers still came from society’s elite and the men from society’s dregs.
There had been a slight demographic shift in recruitment, with a lower
percentage of Irish and a higher percentage of men with an English
or Welsh background. The economic origins of the recruits, however,
remained fairly consistent with the nineteenth-century pattern, with over
60 percent of the rank and file from the Medical Department’s ‘labourer’
category regardless of geographic origins from 1865 to the turn of the
century.^2
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