Demobilisation

[Ken Wayman]

During the writing a recent book on my local war memorial, in the epilogue I touched upon when local soldiers were demobilised. It has since occurred to me that the process of how the men were demobilised must have been very complicated and thus contributed to the relative slowness of demobilisation. Does anyone know how battalions had their regulars, territorials and 'war service' men separated and how the battalions were brought up to complement for post-war duty in Germany and around the Empire? It must have been a bureaucratic and logistical nightmare.

Ken

[ian turner]

Ken,

I cannot answer your question comprehensively - just to mention that in the case of my grandfather's division (9th Scottish) that once demobilisation started, when the division was established on occupation duty at Cologne, there was at first a lot of discontent amongst the men. It seemed that fresh intakes, who had not seen action, were being demobbed before the older hands who had been through the fighting. Eventually a fairer system was devised, taking into account the duration of a man's service and, I think, his marital status.

If I am not mistaken, after WW2 there was a formua devised for demob turn based on army numbers and length of service. However I appreciate that this is vague advice!

Ian

[Terry_Reeves]

The demoblization procedure was indeed complex and was being considered as early as January 1915 when the Secretary of the Board of Trade, Sir H Llewelyn Smith and Sir Reginald Brade prepared a Cabinet paper on the subject. At that stage of course, nobody was able to predict the length of the war, and how many men and women were likely to be involved. Later in the war, number of committees were set up, to consider how best to demobilize large numbers of servicemen.

In essence, at the cessation of hostilities, consideration had to be given of how to discharge over 5 million men and women to civilian life, no easy task. A number of things had to be considered, principal amongst which was a change from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy and how best to get the country back on its feet and ex-servicemen back into employment. To this end, men were discharged in industrial groups, that is, those who were were considered crucial to the economy, such as agricultural workers and miners as a priority. Not all discharge groups were wholly comprised of these men however; some priority was also given to men who had pre-war employment waiting for them, the so-called "slip men", those who had been employed before August 4th, 1914 and whose employers had been invited to complete a form saying that his job was still open to him. Women serving in the QMACC, WRNS, WRAF and other organisations under the control of the War Office, were represented by the Women's War Workers Resettlement Committtee.

This is, as I am sure you are aware, is a very much simplified version of events, but given the complexities, it is hardly suprising that there were some perceived inequities.

One final point. There was also some discontent amongst servicemen about the speed of discharge in the aftermath of WW2. In the far east for instance, a number of RAF personell refused to carry out orders because of the slowness of their discharge.

Terry Reeves

[Ken Wayman]

During the writing a recent book on my local war memorial, in the epilogue I touched upon when local soldiers were demobilised. It has since occurred to me that the process of how the men were demobilised must have been very complicated and thus contributed to the relative slowness of demobilisation. Does anyone know how battalions had their regulars, territorials and 'war service' men separated and how the battalions were brought up to complement for post-war duty in Germany and around the Empire? It must have been a bureaucratic and logistical nightmare.

Ken

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ian

Many thanks for the info - it's really good to hear about an actual example as in your grandfather's case

ken

[Ken Wayman]

Terry

This is really helpful and goes a long way to explaining some of the perceived inequalities in the demob of men from my village - especially as the principal occupation in 1914 was mining (65% of volunteers!) and agricultural was also important.

Many thanks for your kind help.

Ken

[Moonraker]

I hope this account complements that of Terry Reeves:

At first British soldiers were to be demobilised according to the strategic importance of their skills, not length of service. A further complication was that men enlisted under the Derby Scheme (voluntary registration on the understanding they would be called up only when needed, single men first) could not be retained longer than six months after the end of hostilities. Then Winston Churchill, the new Secretary of State for War, whilst agreeing that men belonging to vital industries be released quickly, ordered the army to let go the oldest soldiers, those who had enlisted early on and those who had suffered the most. Nevertheless, in September 1919 a million men remained in uniform and the following February 125,000 still awaited their return to civilian life.

There are probably files in the National Archives - I haven't checked - but I came across one, "Scheme of demobliization" drawn up in 1917 : AIR1/1190/204/5/2596.

(Am I glad that nowadays you can click on the file number in the on-line catalogue to ask to see the original. I never knew how to type in the multi-part AIR1 numbers in the three boxes, and most of the staff didn't either.)

There was a lot of dissatisfaction, impatience and unrest among servicemen of all nationalities in the UK in 1919; they were anxious to get home and back to civvy street, but had to put with army discipline. Some Australians deserted and lived rough in the woods near Fovant, and New Zealanders at Sling were put to work carving the shape of a giant kiwi in the hillside to keep them occupied. There was also a mutiny, leading to courts martial, among the 3rd West Yorkshires at Durrington Camp. Fovant and Chisledon camps were among the seventeen demobilisation camps in Britain which had a target of processing 40,000 discharges a day, a figure some thought would be difficult to attain. Lord Dunalley devoted a chapter of his autobiographical "Khaki and Rifle Green" to his time in command of the demobilisation unit at Chisledon Camp: "Arriving there I found a scene of indescribable confusion. About a hundred men had turned up [as part of his unit] and a pretty rotten lot they were, all of considerable age and none of them had been overseas". For guidance, he was supplied with a demobilisation book from Japan (hopefully translated into English) as that was the only country to have disbanded a more or less civilian army after its war with Russia in 1904.

Dunalley's teams worked from 6am to midnight and once discharged 10,000 men in a day with time to spare, compared with a War Office estimate of 3,000. High-placed visitors never quite believed that men reaching the camp by 10am would be out by 4pm and insisted on going through the process for themselves. Steel helmets were popular souvenirs, though one visitor thought the men would like to retain their tattered great-coats as mementos, but there were no takers. The reason emerged when civilians complained that men arriving by train had left "a lot of little things behind them", resulting in a delousing station being set up.

Then Dunalley's own "home servicemen", composed of fathers and grandfathers, mutinied, wanting priority in the return to civilian life. He had a word with the major commanding the camp's machine-gun school:

"Then I went out onto the porch of the orderly-room. About a thousand men were howling: 'We're going to be demobbed first.' A note on the bugle and then a dead silence till I took up the tale. 'There are Lewis guns in position commanding every street. My signal on the telephone and they open fire. Ten seconds to get to your huts.' The allowance of time was over-generous. In 5 seconds every home Serviceman was under his cot. I walked around with my staff and made the necessary arrests. Those who had yelled the loudest in front of the orderly-room.

As a precaution Dunalley arranged for a squadron of Reserve cavalry to come up from Tidworth, followed next morning by a trainload of armed riflemen.

One day Dunalley heard from Horatio Bottomley, editor of the pro-soldier magazine "John Bull", who had received a complaint from a Labour Member of Parliament relating to a constituent who had been demobbed at Chisledon. It was claimed that the man had been kept waiting in snow and sleet for eight hours, had been jammed for the night into a leaking tent with twenty others, had not been fed, had stood about next day until he was turned out of camp at nightfall without food or railway ticket, and on finally reaching home had died from pneumonia. Dunalley replied that there had been no snow and no tent, as the men were in huts, the private had spent two hours in camp, half of the time being spent consuming a large hot meal, before departing with ticket and gratuity, but he had taken three and a half days to find his way the sixty miles to home. Bottomley, who had known Dunalley before the war, accepted this version.

The process of demobilisation continued well into 1920. By the end of April all warrant officers, NCOs and other ranks who had enlisted for the war's duration or who had been called up under the Military Service Acts were back in civilian life (except for those who had volunteered to stay in the Army).

[Ken Wayman]

Hi Moonraker

This is excellent stuff! Very much appreciated.

Sorry for the late acknowldgement but I've been on holiday!

Ken

[Moonraker]

You're welcome. Found a bit more for you:

Guidance on demobilisation of New Zealand soldiers: Glutha Mackenzie, editor,"Chronicles of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force", December 20, 1918, p261. (These chronicles were a magazine edited in London giving news, mostly of a non-military nature, from the NZ depots in the UK.)

Details of New Zealanders' disaffection are given by Christopher Pugsley, "On the Fringe of Hell" (Hodder & Stoughton, Auckland 1991). At Larkhill on Salisbury Plain in February 1919 twenty or thirty members of the Maori Pioneer Battalion, some with pistols, broke into the canteen and stole a 36-gallon cask of ale and rolled it down Amesbury Road. At Sling on March 14-15, South Islanders angered at the shipping delays raided messes, stealing cigarettes, beer and food, and destroying furniture and furnishings. Four sergeants and various privates were court-martialled for "endeavouring to persuade persons to mutiny" and "in joining in a mutiny". Three of the four sergeants were reduced to private and sentenced to up to six months' imprisonment and hard labour; privates received up to 100 days.

In July 1919 British newspapers carried warnings that all NZ NCOs and other ranks should report to Headquarters "A" Group, Sling Camp on or before July 31 or be struck off the strength of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, forfeiting passage home, war gratuity and any other privileges granted to NZEF soldiers.

[Moonraker]

Just looked back to your original query (sometimes strings wander away from what was asked initially). On March 6, 1919 Winston Churchill, then Secretary of War, replied to an MP's question about units at Chisledon, near Swindon, by saying that seven Regular battalions (six from Wiltshire and neighbouring counties) were being reformed for foreign service at Chisledon; he conceded that this was not ideal but explained that the number of Regular battalions being reformed exceeded the permanent barrack accommodation, and 20 per cent had to be accommodated in temporary hutments.

(Chisledon Camp was built in 1914-15 and much of it was demolished in the 1920s though it was (presumably) developed for WWII and there was still a camp there in the 1960s. Today only the concrete roads and WWI camp platform remain.)