THE WRITINGS of BRITISH CONSCRIPT SOLDIERS, 1916-1918 Ilana Ruth Bet-El Submitted for the Degree of Ph

EXPERIENCE INTO IDENTITY: THE WRITINGS OF BRITISH CONSCRIPT SOLDIERS, 1916-1918 Ilana Ruth Bet-El Submitted for the degree of PhD University College London AB STRACT Between January 1916 and March 1919 2,504,183 men were conscripted into the British army -- representing as such over half the wartime enlistments. Yet to date, the conscripts and their contribution to the Great War have not been acknowledged or studied. This is mainly due to the image of the war in England, which is focused upon the heroic plight of the volunteer soldiers on the Western Front. Historiography, literary studies and popular culture all evoke this image, which is based largely upon the volumes of poems and memoirs written by young volunteer officers, of middle and upper class background, such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. But the British wartime army was not a society of poets and authors who knew how to distil experience into words; nor, as mentioned, were all the soldiers volunteers. This dissertation therefore attempts to explore the cultural identity of this unknown population through a collection of diaries, letters and unpublished accounts of some conscripts; and to do so with the aid of a novel methodological approach. In Part I the concept of this research is explained, as a qualitative examination of all the chosen writings, with emphasis upon eliciting the attitudes of the writers to the factual events they recount. Each text -- e.g. letter or diary -- was read literally, and also in light of the entire collection, thus allowing for the emergence of personal and collective narratives concurrently. In Part lithe results of this method of research were used to create an extended account of the human experiences of these conscript soldiers -- from enlistment through to daily life on the Western Front. The narrative is constructed out of their words, and written from their perspective, as a subjective account of their wartime existence. The result of this synthesis of attitude and experience is an explanation of these conscripts' cultural identity, as a conclusion to Part II. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Part I: CONCEPT Chapter 1: Methods 17 Chapter 2: Conscription in Britain, 1901-1918 37 Chapter 3: Conscripting in Britain, 1916-1918 48 Part II: EXPERIENCE INTO IDENTITY A. Civilian into Soldier Chapter 4: Enlistment 58 Chapter 5: Basic Training 79 Chapter 6: To France 117 B. Actualities of War Chapter 7: Mud and War 151 Chapter 8: The Institution and War 225 C. Identity and War Chapter 9: Organization and War 268 Chapter 10: Conclusion -- The Identity of Conscripts 283 Appendices 289 Bibliography 297 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation originated from my deep admiration for the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg, and the startling images it depicted. I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Professor James Jo!!, who first listened to my thoughts on the subject, and was kind enough to do so on a number of times, after wisely directing me to the Department of Documents in the Imperial War Museum. My supervisor, Professor Martin Daunton, greatly assisted me in the process of developing ideas into the written word. He both listened and advised with a great measure of interest, and for all this I am truly grateful. Dr Avner Offer, Mr Keith Simpson and Professor David Trotter all assisted me greatly by reading large sections of the manuscript. I wish to thank them all for their insight and advice. I am equally indebted to Professor Ron Barkai, whose work and friendship have always been a great inspiration. Professor Zvi Razi first explained the mysteries of methodology to me, and has shown a great interest in this thesis throughout its development. As a true friend and mentor, I cannot thank him enough. The staff of the Imperial War Museum, and especially Mr Nigel Steel, were exceedingly patient and helpful throughout the year I spent in the Department of Documents. Mr Alan Deacon of the University College Computing Centre called upon large reserves of humour and kindness in face of my computer illiteracy. I wish to express my thanks to them all. This dissertation was written with the support of the Avi Foundation in Switzerland. To this body, and to Professor Gabi Cohen who assisted me greatly in this matter, I am very grateful. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance I received from the Council of Overseas Research Studentships, and the Centre de Recherche de l'Historial de la Grande Guerre in Peronne. I could not have written this thesis without the aid of my father, Mr Dov Bet-El, and my godfather, Mr Albert Feldmann. To them both I owe a great debt of love and gratitude. Rae and Sandy Russell taught me a lot about heroism and comradeship -- both invaluable aids for the study of the Great War; but mostly they were just the best of friends. Much the same is true of Tali and Alex Stein, Clare Hunter and David Ireland. But none of this would have been possible without the constant love and support I received from Ophra, Meira, Mike, Noa and Omer -- my family. To the memory of my mother Lila Bet-El "The First World War did not have much reality." (W.B. Yeats) Introduction This dissertation is about reality and its many versions and interpretations. The overall framework of reality is that of the Great War; the distinct version presented here is that of British conscripts; and the interpretation offered concerns the effects of both upon the cultural identity of the conscripts. From the distance of seventy years, nothing about the First World War appears real, and yet for those who lived through it there was no other reality. Every book about the British experience or presentation of the war offers another version of this reality -- often purporting to be "objective" or collective in its approach, in that it deals with the majority of the participants, or the majority of the sources. This present study makes no such claim: it is avowedly subjective in its approach, for both methodological and qualitative reasons, seeking to present the war experiences of some British conscripts from their unique stance and in their own words. For this research is an attempt to answer one central question: what was the identity of these men, who were conscripted into the British army between 1916 and 1918? And the search for an identity is not in the events, but rather in their perception. The Great War ended over seventy years ago, yet in many ways it still stands out as a unique and incomprehensible phenomenon. Atrocities had occurred before and certainly since, but the shattering realities of this war still render it in a class of its own. Indeed, judging by the perpetual flow of scholarship, popular books and films, the passage of time seems only to have enhanced both the importance of the war and the questions posed by it. Yet the salient 1 facts were as clear then as they are now: a generation of men was mutilated, alongside many cultural and social concepts carefully constructed in the Western world throughout the preceding century. Indeed, the cognizance of cultural destruction was apparent even in its creation. As early as 1915 Freud wrote of "The Disillusionment of War" claiming it "tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way, as though there were to be no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come." It was destruction, whether through death or diminishment, which became the central cultural image of the war. The events themselves created memory, which was then transcribed into history, and from the combination of both evolved mythology. This is especially true of the trenches in Flanders, which, correctly or not, currently symbolize the Great War in the minds of most: mental images of long lines of trenches in a totally desecrated landscape; of much shooting and shelling; of patriotic men volunteering to fight for King and Country; of gallant poets donning uniform and entering battle. And in actual fact, these brave men of letters assisted most in the creation of the mythology of the Western Front. However, the British army was not a society of poets and authors who could distill experience into poetic imagery; nor only of courageous volunteers. Rather, it was composed of an anonymous mass of men from all walks of life, whom we still perceive as no more than the "Unknown Soldier" -- a term coined in the Great War -- of war memorials. Yet still so little is known of these men or of the realities trench warfare imposed upon them. And what has been discovered both through literature and Freud, Sigmund, "Thoughts for the Time on War and Death (1915)," in Civilization, Society and Religion, (The Pelican Freud Library, Vol.12, Penguin, 1985), p.65. 2 research, does not refer to an immense population of over two million: the men who were conscripted into the army after 1916. The conscripts were not a minority population within the wartime British army. Between August 1914 and December 1915 2,466,719 men volunteered; but from January 1916 to the end of the war 2,504,183 men were conscripted into the army, thus 50.3 per cent of all wartime enlistments were conscripts. 2 Indeed, by the Allied summer advance of 1918 a majority of the men fighting in the BEF were conscripts, and it was this force which won the war.

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