Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front. Richard Holmes

of the marked social changes in the army of the nineteenth century was that noblemen, once scattered widely across the army, had tended to concentrate in the Foot Guards and Household Cavalry. Of course there were exceptions. Major Christopher de Sausmarez, a peer’s nephew, commanded 108th Heavy Battery Royal Garrison Artillery in 1914, and a baronet led one of his sections of two 60-pounder guns. The RGA had many distinctions but social exclusivity was not one of them, and a heavy battery gun-line was unfamiliar earth for sprigs of nobility. In 1914 the Grenadiers’ officers included Lieutenant Colonel Lord Brabazon, Major the Hon. Hubert Crichton, Captain Lord Guernsey, and Captain Lord Francis Montagu-Douglas-Scott. It was as understandable that Raymond Asquith, the prime minister’s son who would die on the Somme, should join the Grenadiers as it was that the Prince of Wales should do the same. The officers

      all knew one another well; many, like Lord Bernard Gordon-Lennox, had married the sister of a brother officer (in this case Lord Loch); and many, like George Cecil, had succeeded their father in the regiment or, like Eben Pike or Bernard Gordon-Lennox again, were succeeded by their sons and grandsons.⁵

      These ripples widened across the Household Division as a whole, as Rowland Feilding, then a captain in the Coldstream, discovered when he did his first tour of trench duty in May 1915.

      On either side of me I found relations. On my immediate left Percy Clive [a cousin] commanded a company of Grenadiers, and the Coldstream company on my right was commanded by Rollo [another cousin]. I visited Percy at 4.30 on the morning after our arrival. The last time I had seen him was at dinner in the House of Commons, and I was very glad to meet him again. While I was shaving, Rollo brought Henry Feilding [yet another cousin] to see me. He is with a squadron of King Edward’s Horse, which is acting as Divisional Cavalry to a Territorial Division near here, and was paying a visit to Rollo in the trenches.

      Rollo (later Lieutenant Colonel Viscount Feilding) survived the war. Captain Percy Clive MP was killed on 5 April 1918, and Captain the Hon. Henry Feilding died of wounds on 11 October 1917.⁶

      Nor was this sense of identity confined to the officers. There were Grenadier families amongst the rank and file, and the warrant officers’ and sergeants’ mess was held together by bonds no less powerful than those which linked members of the officers’ mess. It might take a guardsman two years to get his first promotion, and he would be lucky to make sergeant in less than ten. A regimental sergeant major’s tour of duty was five years, and it was not unknown for Guards RSMs to ask for extensions, arguing that there was still more to be done with the battalion.⁷

      The Grenadiers had a tangible quality, even to its rivals. Its soldiers were nicknamed Bill-Browns, as opposed to the Coalies, Jocks, Micks and Taffs of the other foot guards regiments. Private Stephen Graham, an educated man serving in the ranks of the Scots Guards, saw the Grenadiers assault stoutly-held German defences at the very end of the war.

      There were heavy losses suffered there by the attackers, especially by the Bill-Browns, whose discipline, courage and fame committed them then, as ever, to doing the impossible in human heroism and endurance. I lost a whole series of comrades or friends wounded or killed. C—, who had filled up a blank file with me in Little Sparta, was killed; S—, recruited from the S.E. Railway, a jolly, happy middle-aged man, who always hailed me as Steve and had a cheery word, was killed. H—, the American boy who used to dance all night at New York was wounded.⁸

      In contrast, 4/Queen’s was a territorial battalion of the Queen’s Regiment, with a regular adjutant, regimental sergeant major and small permanent staff of regular NCOs: its other members were civilians, who soldiered in their spare time. It originated in a company of rifle volunteers formed at Croydon in 1859 in response to the threat of French invasion which had Tennyson earnestly declaiming ‘Form, riflemen: riflemen, form …’. A second company was added in 1860 to form the 1st Surrey Administrative Battalion; this became the 2nd Surrey Rifle Volunteers seven years later and the 1st Volunteer Battalion the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment in 1881. It sent a company of five officers and 200 men to the Boer War, and in 1908 it was swept up in R. B. Haldane’s creation of the Territorial Force to become 4th (Territorial) Battalion The Queen’s Regiment, swapping its rifle-green uniforms for the scarlet of the line. Its historian suggested that it was the first territorial battalion to receive colours, presented by Lady Eldridge and Mrs Frank Watney, the wife of the commanding officer – a prominent local brewer when not engaged in his military duties.

      Its men trained on weekday drill nights, one weekend each month and at a fortnight’s annual camp. There were perennial problems in ensuring that employers gave men time off for camp, and compromises between day job and military identity meant that in the battalion’s first year, 22 officers and 418 men attended the first week of camp at Brighton but only 13 officers and 241 men the second. In 1914 it found itself at camp, marching from Bordon to Salisbury Plain as part of a large territorial exercise, when war broke out. Mobilised on 5 August, it was sent to Chattenden, near Chatham. Like other territorial battalions it split, forming a first-line battalion, 1/4th, which rapidly departed for India, where it spent the whole war, seeing active service on the North-West Frontier. A second line, 2/4th, which included some men from the 1st Battalion who had not volunteered for foreign service and some wartime volunteers, eventually fought on the Western Front in 1918.

      The third-line, 3/4th Queen’s, containing officers and men from the other two battalions as well as wartime recruits, spent much of its war in southern England. In December 1914, D Company was billeted on the premises of Caleys, the court dressmakers, in Windsor High Street when a fire broke out: the lights failed, but men of the company escorted the seamstresses out of the dark and smoke-filled building, earning a fulsome letter of thanks from Mr Hugh Caley, the managing director, and less formal expressions of gratitude from the ladies. The battalion always had an easy style. When it was billeted in Reigate in January 1916 an earnest (though wisely anonymous) well-wisher told his commanding officer that:

      Refering (sic) to the health and cleanliness of this Battalion which has been very well kept up in the past, I must add that a certain Company are allowed to get dirty owing to the inconveniences of Local Baths going wrong. This Company has a bath room and are not allowed to use it. Trusting that this will soon be remedied.

      I remain

       Yours obediently⁹

      Private Richard Whatley persuaded his brother, a driver in the Army Service Corps, to apply to join the battalion, whether because of a genuine desire for life in the infantry or because he was in France and 3/4th was in Reigate it is impossible to say. Driver Whatley’s letter was written in pencil and sent in a green official envelope which meant that it was not subject to censorship within his unit – a wise precaution as its contents might not have been regarded as a vote of confidence in his current management.

      5/6/16

      Dear Sir

      I, Driver J. Whatley (T/94354) No 1 Company 4th Divisional Train A.S.C. British Expeditionary Force, France, take the great liberty of writing these lines to you in reference of my brother Private Richard Whatley (23729) B Company of your most noble regiment. I take the liberty of asking you if you could transfer me to the same regiment as that of what my brother belongs & also to the Same Company as I wish to soldier with him if it is at all possible as I think that it would be to our own advantage as well as that of the most noble Country we are fighting for. My enlistment age is 25 7/12 years but my proper age is 18 7/12 years. I enlisted in May 1915, & my height about 5:6 or 7 inches & chest measurement just over 30 inches. Any more details I would be very pleased to send you, & hoping that I am not trespassing on your valuable time I close my short letter & remain

      Your Umble Servant

      Driver J Whatley¹⁰

      The battalion at last went to the Western Front in 1917. It fought its one major battle at Zonnebeke in the Ypres salient