ARmy Rumour SErvice

**Bouillabaisse** · 10-07-2012, 12:59

Originally Posted by bokkatankie

One of the great missing links in the WW1 compendium that Lyn Macdonald put together is the voices of the few the gallant few that held the line in 1914 / 15, they are missing because they died doing it.

I'd like to see the figures for the casualties during that period. Mainly because I suspect that the reason why fewer of them were available to be recorded is that the professional army of 1914 was made up quite largely by men with longer service careers and therefore older than the the new army of 1915/16. So by the time she came round to looking for them the survivors had died of old age. There are enough myths and misinformation about WW1, lets not perpetrate another.

By the way, I see RTFQ has come out of retirement to "like" your post. I hope you feel suitably honoured.

**polar** · 10-07-2012, 14:09

It's a topic I need to look into again...

Seems the British were quite slow in deploying forces to the front.

Germans were sending in newly trained units quite early on. Whereas we didn't send in TF (in bulk) to winter/spring 1915 and the new army summer/autumn 1915

**sunnoficarus** · 10-07-2012, 15:57

Originally Posted by Bouillabaisse

I'd like to see the figures for the casualties during that period. Mainly becuase I suspect that the reason why fewer of them were available to be recorded is that the professional army of 1914 was made up of quite largely by men with longer service careers and therefore older than the the new army of 1915/16. So by the time she came round to looking for them the survivors had died of old age. There are enough myths and misimformation about WW1, lets not perpetrate another.

By the way, I see RTFQ has come out of retirement to "like" your post. I hope you feel suitably honoured.

Yes, many of the original men were indeed older. My Great Grandfathers regiment was overwhelmingly middle aged reservists, he was 42 and his son who was killed fighting alongside him in 1915 was 24.
Thats another feature of the pre war territorial Batallions, the 'family' nature of them with fathers, sons, uncles, brothers etc often in the same batallions. By the wars end it was not at all unusual for two generations of the menfolk from an extended family to have been wiped out leaving no oral history.

**ugly** · 10-07-2012, 16:05

We would do well to remember that during the fighting withdrawal thhe Germans took the ground and were able to accurately count our dead and POW as against their own casualties. The Germans have always been very efficient and Dr Storts first work on the Mauser has a section on wounds caused by .303 rifle fire. Quite an eye opener if you pardon the pun.

**polar** · 10-07-2012, 16:06

Originally Posted by sunnoficarus

Thats another feature of the pre war territorial Batallions, the 'family' nature of them with fathers, sons, uncles, brothers etc often in the same batallions.

Less of the pre war

.... still happens, 4-5 examples in my Sqn.

**Cuddles** · 10-07-2012, 16:16

Polar - the way things have been goign over the past twenty years, pre-war is probably not an inaccurate way to think of this time.

The question, which I am massively confident those staffing the 2020 stuff have monstered and flipped around like a judo black belt, is which war...

**Stonker** · 10-07-2012, 16:17

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Hold on Stonker - the elephant in the room was not the Balkans which had died down to a glowing ember, it was the very real prospect of an Irish Civil War determined along largely sectarian lines. The "Balkan Crisis" went from flash to bang in a very few days. The BEF was mobilised and first elements on the ground in no less than three days. Compare that to any other flash to bang, including AFG, IQ or the Gulf?

Sorry, unclear in my original. My "elephant" was the Germans, who - as the naval arms race shows - had been recognised at a formal, budget-and-policy-level as a serious potential threat for some time.

**ugly** · 10-07-2012, 16:18

Did he say the last, first or next if so in which case we are always prewar!

**Stonker** · 10-07-2012, 16:23

Originally Posted by sunnoficarus

Yes, many of the original men were indeed older. My Great Grandfathers regiment was overwhelmingly middle aged reservists, he was 42 and his son who was killed fighting alongside him in 1915 was 24.
Thats another feature of the pre war territorial Batallions, the 'family' nature of them with fathers, sons, uncles, brothers etc often in the same batallions. By the wars end it was not at all unusual for two generations of the menfolk from an extended family to have been wiped out leaving no oral history.

And it is that kind of phenomenon which explains why the Great War is the punctuation mark at which the relationship between the people of this country and its infantry capbadges gets - for pretty much the first time ever - very sentimental, and very powerful, leading (ultimately) to the extraordinary fudging made public last week.

In the time of Good Queen Vic and her predecessors, battalions came and went with hardly a squeak from the man in the street, leaving the Commander in Chief free to make decisions based first and foremost on military factors.

===
Stonkernote
Am hunkered down, now, awaiting incoming from real historians eager to demonstrate that fudging the issue has been part and parcel of UK defence policy since King Billy, if not before.

Bring it on! Every day's a schoolday