The King S Own Royal Regiment in the Great War

Fact sheet

The King’s Own Royal Regiment in the Great War

This fact sheet has three main purposes:

· To give an overview of the activities of the Regiment during the Great War.

· To explain the structure of a British regiment from the period 1914-18.

· To give teachers sufficient background information to enable them to confidently deal with pupil’s enquiries during the museum visit and the ICT sessions.

On the 4th of August 1914 the King’s Own Royal Regiment consisted of two Regular Battalions, two Territorial Battalions and one Special Reserve Battalion. Each battalion would have comprised approximately 900 officers & men.

The 1st battalion was mobilised on the 4th August 1914. It was made up to strength with recalled reservists and on the 22nd August set sail for France. They arrived in Boulogne the next day and were to spend the entire war on the Western Front. Like all Regular battalions it was heavily used & suffered the highest losses of any of the battalions of the Regiment.

The other regular battalion in the Regiment, the 2nd Battalion, was in India when the war broke out. It sailed home and arrived back in Britain in late 1914. In January 1915 it sailed for France. It stayed on the Western Front until October when it was transferred to Salonika. The men remained there, fighting for very little gain, until the end of the war. Of all the British troops who died in Salonika half were killed by disease.

The 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion was mobilised in August 1914 and during the war processed thousands of trained men for the Regular and Service Battalions overseas. This included men returning to the front after recovering from wounds. By the middle of 1915 the 3rd Battalion was based near Plymouth, where it stayed until the end of the war.

The 4th and 5th (Territorial Force) Battalions were also mobilised in August. Initially, they fulfilled the role of ‘home defence’ (see poster1 from lesson 5). However, the majority of the officers and men volunteered for overseas service when asked to do so. The two Battalions left, separately, for France in 1915. They were reunited in the 55th (West Lancashire) Division in 1916.

In time of war the Territorial Force was capable of being rapidly expanded. Consequently, second and third line Battalions were raised. When this happened, the original Battalions were renumbered the 1/4th and the 1/5th. The new battalions were numbered 2/4th, 3/4th, 2/5th and 3/5th. Of these only the 2/5th Battalion fought in France. The other three battalions were amalgamated to from the 4th (Reserve) Battalion. This unit trained men for service overseas in the battalions on active service.

As a result of Lord Kitchener’s appeal for 100,000 men, the Regiment rapidly formed four Battalions for the New Army. These were the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Battalions. Initially raised in Lancaster, they were quickly dispersed to the south and south-west of England to be trained.

The 6th (Service) Battalion sailed for Gallipoli in June 1915. It was transferred to Mesopotamia and fought there until the end of the war.

The 7th (Service) Battalion served on the Western Front from July 1915. After the terrible losses suffered in the 3rd Battle of Ypres the 7th Battalion was one of several units disbanded in February 1918. The men were transferred to other battalions to make them up to strength.

The 8th (Service) Battalion fought in France from September 1915 until the end of the war.

The 9th (Service) Battalion fought, briefly, in France before being transferred to the Salonika front.

In June 1915 the Regiment raised its last Battalion for active service. This was a ‘Bantam’ battalion, formed from men who in peacetime would have been too short for the Army. Many of the men were Lancashire miners. The battalion was little used & disbanded in early 1918.

During the Great War over 4,000 officers and 41,000 other ranks served in the various battalions of the regiment. Out of these totals 298 officers and 6,143 other ranks were ‘killed in action’, ‘died of wounds’ or ‘died’ of other causes.

The men of the Regiment received many awards for gallantry during the war. Amongst these were eight Victoria Crosses, three of which were awarded posthumously.

Fact sheet

The BEF in the Great War

This fact sheet has two main purposes

· To give staffs sufficient background information to enable them to confidently deal and the ICT sessions.

· To give an overview of the activities of the British Army during the Great War.

At the outbreak of the Great War the British Government sent its army to fight in France in accordance with the conditions of the ‘Entente Cordiale’. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) consisted of six infantry divisions, each of 10,000 men, and a cavalry division. By continental standards it was a tiny army. The German Army in the west had 72 divisions and the French Army slightly fewer with 68.

This fact had several consequences

· The Army would have to expand enormously, recruiting large numbers of men.

· The British would not be able to mount a major offensive for several years, until those men were trained. Kitchener predicted that the army would not attain its full potential until the third year of the war.

· The small size of the pre war army meant that the Generals, and their staffs, who would command the new army lacked experience. As a consequence the ‘learning curve’ for the BEF would be a bloody one.

The British Army of 1914 consisted of two types of soldiers, Regulars & Territorials. In the CWGC register those men who were already soldiers in 1914, can be identified by their four figure regimental numbers. Regular soldiers were liable for service overseas and because their units were under strength, many Reservists (men who had served in the army in the past) were recalled in 1914. The Territorial Army was, in theory, for ‘home defence’. However, soon after the outbreak of war these men were asked to volunteer for service abroad and the majority did so.

Kitchener, as the Secretary of State for War, foresaw that the war would be a long one and that the British Army would have to grow rapidly. In theory the Territorial force was capable of expanding to meet the need. However, Kitchener did not trust the ‘part time’ soldiers of the Territorial Army and so he appealed for volunteers to form his New Armies. The response was staggering, over 1.1million men by the end of 1914. These men were talented, highly motivated & often middle class. These men were formed into

units, variously called ‘Kitchener’s’, the ‘New Army’ or ‘Service’ Battalions. Offshoots of Kitchener’s appeal were the various units formed by local civic committees and offered to the War Office. These were the ‘Pal’s Battalions’.

In 1915 the depleted British Army hung on in France. It was reinforced by the Territorial Force & by the first of the new Service Battalions. The BEF undertook limited attacks such as Loos & Aubers Ridge. Unknowingly, at Neuve Chapelle in March it had hit upon what would prove to be the winning formula for breaking into the German lines. However, it was on the Somme in 1916 that the BEF undertook its first offensive. It is important to look beyond the first day to understand what happened to the BEF on the Somme. The BEF gradually gained expertise; it learnt lessons and showed itself to be flexible & innovative.

Sadly, at 3rd Ypres in 1917 the BEF’s skills counted for little in the face of the worst weather in Flanders in living memory. On the few dry days British attacks showed that the German Army was struggling to cope with the BEF’s tactical expertise. However, failures of political control meant that the British troops suffered appalling losses.

As a result of those losses, early 1918 saw the initiative pass to the Germans who sought to use their clear numerical superiority to destroy the BEF. By the end of ‘Operation Michael’ they had gained no strategic advantage. With the exception of a few specialist units, they displayed tactical naiveté in the attack & suffered crippling losses that undermined their morale.

From August onwards the Allies began a series of ‘concentric’ attacks on the German Army. The BEF & Dominion forces were in the forefront of these attacks. To these attacks the German Army could make no effective response. Facing collapse the German Army had no alternative but to ask for an armistice.