Resigning your commission

[ddycher]

All

I have an officer who resigned his commission during service in India. The reciord does not show this due to ill-health which is usually stipulated therefore implying that it was not. Was this possible ? Could an officer resign his commission during the war ? Were they not bound over for the duration.

Intrigueing - anybody else have any similar references or thoughts on the subject ?

Regards

Dave

[rflory]

My experience is that for officers this was not as uncommon as one might think. My research has revealed officers who resigned their commissions for the following reasons:

1. ill health

2. inability to perform the duties of an officer

3. to complete medical studies

4. invalided due to wounds suffered during the war

In most cases these reasons had to be approved by higher authorities before the officer was allowed to resign. I have even seen the service record of one officer who in 1917 was forced to resign his commission because he was found to be in the advanced stages of syphilis.

Regards, Dick Flory

[j-munden]

Here's another example - my great-great uncle - a doctor with the RAMC - London Gazette details show that he was:

- commissioned Lieutenant in RAMC 10 Oct 1914, commission relinquished 10 Oct 1915

- commissioned Captain 22 Nov 1915, commission relinquished on 22 November 1916

- commissioned captain again 17 July 1917, relinquished 5 Feb 1919

I can understand the last relinquished commission date (end of the War and all that) but the other dates suggested that he could opt in and out for a year at a time. Was there a 'short-service' option one could choose, for example, especially designed to ensure scarce skills were available to the Army in the Field?

Any thoughts?

James

[charlesmessenger]

James

Doctors initially signed on for just one year's service and not until the end of 1917 were those on this contract deemed to have signed on for the duration of the war.

Otherwise I agree with Dick Flory, except that I have come across a case of an officer, who had a family, finding it too expensive to serve as an officer. He was allowed to resign his commission and enlisted in the ASC(MT), which had higher rates of pay than the infantry, and then gained a commission in it.

Charles M

[PhilB]

Charles, there are occasions when I`ve read of senior officers threatening to resign. What would have been the position of, say, a general who resigned in time of war?

[Ron Clifton]

It would depend on the reasons given, and how competent he was considered to be: the reaction in some cases would have been Good Riddance. But the concept of duty and honour dies hard and I suspect very few would have been willing to face the social ostracism of having "chucked it in" during a war.

It was always open to an officer to resign his appointment, whilst keeping his commission. Officially, that is what Sir John French did in Dec 1915, although I suspect he wasn't given much option.

General Smith-Dorrien was famous for having an explosive temper and there is a story that his Chief of Staff, Brig-Gen Forestier-Walker, attempted to send in his papers after a particularly blazing row.

Ron

[woolly]

As I understand it, any officer who resigned his commission would then have been liable for comscription as a private soldier.

Woolly

[truthergw]

Assuming the ex-officer was medically fit and not in a reserved occupation. He would also have to be in the proper age range. All that being so, he would be liable for conscription.

[centurion]

I've seen a few accounts were senior officers (say colonel) having well and truly cocked it up resigned their commissions due to suddenly acquired ill health, Rheumatism of the heart seems to have been a favourite. In "A Passionate Prodigality" Chapman gives an account where having mistakenly mistaken a barrage on an adjacent part of the line as an attack on his own battalion a colonel performed in a manner that would have had Corporal Jones embarrassed and within a few weeks had resigned due to a sudden discovery that he was suffering from this illness. I suspect that if you proved a liability to those around you you would be encouraged to resign and no insuperable barriers would be put in your way.

[JulianB]

Interestingly I was looking up details an officer last week who had resigned his commission in late 1917. It turned out that his CO thought him unsuitable and unfit to command men ! Said officer appealed, father wrote letter of support, provided letters from the men - all to no avail. In other words he was forced to resign and was told he would be liable for conscription. After much searching I could find no evidence at all that he did subsequently serve as a conscripted soldier. Moreover his medals are named to his commissioned rank !

[Ron Clifton]

... resigned their commissions due to suddenly acquired ill health, Rheumatism of the heart seems to have been a favourite.

I... discovery that he was suffering from this illness. I suspect that if you proved a liability to those around you you would be encouraged to resign and no insuperable barriers would be put in your way.

Today we would call it "Combat Stress". It might well have had an effect on the heart, or that could be used as a pretext, to get rid (quietly) of an officer who was clearly a danger to his men as well as himself.

Ron

[truthergw]

Interestingly I was looking up details an officer last week who had resigned his commission in late 1917. It turned out that his CO thought him unsuitable and unfit to command men ! Said officer appealed, father wrote letter of support, provided letters from the men - all to no avail. In other words he was forced to resign and was told he would be liable for conscription. After much searching I could find no evidence at all that he did subsequently serve as a conscripted soldier. Moreover his medals are named to his commissioned rank !

Could this be an example as mentioned earlier, of an officer being forced to resign from his appointment rather than his commission. He would have returned to UK and been found work somewhere, retaining his rank but, of course , feeling very badly done by. There can be no doubt that officers were treated, on the whole, much better than O.R.s, with a large measure of benefit of doubt being allowed them. It is not hard to imagine a sympathetic MO diagnosing a fellow officer and perhaps personal friend, with a heart condition which would allow him to resign with a measure of dignity. The idea that officers were gentlemen was strictly adhered to, with its concomitant advantages and disadvantages. Just another little facet of the attitudes of society as it was then which we have to accept. We are not compelled to approve nor to disapprove.

[ddycher]

All

Seem to have led you all on a wild goose chase...

Off-line I have been given a ref that shows this particular officer resigned his commission in the Territorial Force and joined the Indian Army. This unique for me as I previously have a number of officers joining the IARO but this is the first that I have a official resignation of his commission. Was this normal ?

I have also been given an example where a TF officer resigned his commission to take up a position in the regular forces, in this case the ASC ?

Not directly relevent now but I am intrigued with the concept of "inability to perform the duties of an officer". Would love to know how would this work ? this must have been a very damning indictment on the part of any CO.

Would like to understand this better......

Regards

Dave

[Matthew B.]

All

Seem to have led you all on a wild goose chase...

Off-line I have been given a ref that shows this particular officer resigned his commission in the Territorial Force and joined the Indian Army. This unique for me as I previously have a number of officers joining the IARO but this is the first that I have a official resignation of his commission. Was this normal ?

I have also been given an example where a TF officer resigned his commission to take up a position in the regular forces, in this case the ASC ?

Not directly relevent now but I am intrigued with the concept of "inability to perform the duties of an officer". Would love to know how would this work ? this must have been a very damning indictment on the part of any CO.

Would like to understand this better......

Regards

Dave

Dave,

Some years ago I researched the career of a Canadian chap who attended the RMC in Canada just before WW1, got a comission in a British county regiment but clearly had strings pulled for him a very quickly ended up getting comissioned into a crack british cavalry regiment. He joined the regiment in the field in 1915 and NEVER got substantive promotion beyond Second Lieutenant! His Colonels comments are rather damming. At one point he blotted his copybook when, with the regiment moving between two camps in France he got the regiment lost! He was supposed to be guiding them. Another, almost his final comment was that, although he was an officer in a cavalry regiment he was more interested in cars & the internal combustion engine than horses! In late 1917 he was shunted off to a railhead ammuntion officer and never served with the regiment again. He was later transferred to India and served with the MGC (Motors) on the NWF as a Temporary Lieutenant but I bet nobody turned a hair when after the war, in 1920, he resigned his comission, having never advanced beyond Second Lieutenant even with a war on!

Matthew

[Ron Clifton]

Off-line I have been given a ref that shows this particular officer resigned his commission in the Territorial Force and joined the Indian Army. This unique for me as I previously have a number of officers joining the IARO but this is the first that I have a official resignation of his commission. Was this normal ?

Dave

It would not be unexpected for two reasons:

1. The "terms and conditions" of employment were different, particularly with regard to service abroad. Note that all officers commissioned from the ranks were formally discharged from their enlistment as soldiers (normally on the day before they were commissioned) for a similar reason.

2. There might have been conflicts over seniority when serving alongside officers under different types of commission.

Ron

[ddycher]

Ron

Sorry to have so long getting back on this one - it dropped off my top ten and I lost sight of it. Would it be correct then to assume that all of the officers transferring to the IARO or OR being commissioned into the IARO would effectively have had to resign the service and pick up new terms ? Assume then that these would have had to be at least for the duration or possibly longer - is that correct ?

Does anyone know how this actually worked ? Have heard previously that one of the citeria for getting a commission in the IARO was previous India experience but have nothing to substantiate this.

Regards

Dave

[Ron Clifton]

Hello again Dave

That is perhaps over-simplifying things a bit. Officers were commissioned until they reached the retiring age for their rank, or until their services were no longer required (most wartime commissions were "temporary" only). Unlike other ranks, they did not join up for a specified term, so "for the duration" would be meaningless although "as long as their services were required" would be roughly equivalent.

Officers were commissioned into HM's Land Forces so transfer from the British Army to the IARO would probably be no more complicated than a transfer between regiments (though I may be wrong here, as the conditions of service would be different - KR and the Army Act for British but other equivalents for India). But it would not in either case involve "resigning" from the service, in what one might call the civilian sense.

I do not know whether prior service in India was required for the IARO but in practical terms it is most likely that this would be the case. The officers would be expected to be reasonably fluet in Hindustani, at least for miliary purposes.

Ron