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Remembered Today:

Mutiny on the Western Front


Guest jwillia5

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Good morning,

I am considering a review of what has already been written about mutiny on the Western Front. I am interested in all armies as I would like to compare incidents, background and motives and try to establish why the British Army did not mutiny on the scale that the French did for instance. Can anyone offer me a starting point as to what is out there in the published world?

Thanks a million

Jane Williams

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Guest Ian Bowbrick

Try the Shot at dawn website - there are some useful articles there on the Mutinies in the French Army and the Foreign Labour Corps attached to the British Army.

www.shotatdawn.org.uk

Ian

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In the whole war, three times the proportion of French men were killed compared with British. This could explain in part why the French did reach the point where they were unprepared to take offensive action (only a small proportion of units actually ceased to function altogether).

Robert

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I would highly recommend Dare Call It Treason. The author looks in to French history before the war as part of the reason why the military, political, and social situation was right after the failed 1917 Nivelle offensive to lead to the mutinies. It is a very readable book, and I think lends a lot of insight in to the episode.

Andy

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I can't vouch for them personally, but Julian Putkowski has written "The Kinmel Park Camp Riots 1919" about the Canadian mutiny un 1919, and also "British Army Mutineers 1914-1922".

marc

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British Army Mutineers 1914-22 gives very little information on the background for mutiny, often massed mutiny. What it does give is a listing of the men involved, and sentences (if any) applied, plus references to papers held at the PRO.

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I recommend Leonard Smiths 'Between Mutiny & Disobedience' - a really excellent case study of the 5eme DI from the morale/discipline perspective. An interesting div with an excellent fighting record as it was Mangin's in 1914, yet had some of the worst incidences of 'collective disobedience' in the 1917 mutinies.

There is heaps in French is you read it:

Guy Pedroncini - 'Les Mutineries de 1917'

Nicholas Offenstadt - 'Les Fusilles de la grande guerre'

also John Williams 'Mutiny 1917'. (Its a long time since I saw this, but think its in similar territory to 'Dare Call it Treason'.)

Charles

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Thank you so much one and all. What a varied and interesting response! I will certainly have a good look at some of the sources mentioned. I am very grateful for your assistance - as always.

Jane

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Gloden Dallas and Douglas Gill's 1985 book 'The Unknown Army: Mutinies in the British Army in World War 1' is an esential read. It concludes very quickly that there weren't many and focuses on the many incidents short of mutinies such disturbances in the depots after the war and the collapse in morale in the Irish Divisions (especially the 16th) after Easter 1916. One explanation for the many apparently unrelated incidents is that many units, especially colonials and neo-colonials, were regarded as a 'problem' by their British officers who set in train a vicious circle of repressive authority, insubordination, low performance and repressive authority.

But since the overall picture is one of obedience the question is why were they so few outbreaks of insubordination. There are many answers to that. For example Dallas and Gill point out that the pre-1914 Regular Army avoided, as much as possible, recruiting in the large towns and cities seeing them as tainted with the newly-emerging socialism and trades unionism. They cite evidence of the occupational structure of recruits to the Regular Army, which was heavlily over-represented with agrarian trades, and bore little resemblance to that of the country as a whole. And that could be one reason why WW1 war memorials in country districts appear so big to us. It's not just a question of shifting demographics.

Also look at the much-maligned Denis Winter's book 'Death's Men'. In the last chapter he devotes some time to this question and locates his answer in the character forming properties of the Edwardian and Victorian educational and factory system which dunned blind obedience into those young people it processed with the tawse, strap, cane, starvation and humiliation. This may seem far-fetched to young people today for whom corporal punishment is unkown, but I am sure older hands like me can remember arbitary beltings being handed out for nothing and the reign of terror which accompanied them.

Just the sort of training you need to encourage you to go over the top without asking too many questions about it.

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  • 5 months later...

Don't forget the Home Front. The Kinmel Park disturbances (already mentioned earlier in this thread) were probably the most serious but as soon as news of the Armistice reached the military bases in Wiltshire, the reaction after the initial delight and relief was "how soon do I get demobbed?"

Days after the Armistice, morale among a Meteorological Section of Royal Engineers at the School of Navigation at Stonehenge Airfield plummeted when volunteers were sought for the North Russian Expeditionary Force; only one man came forward. Among those most horrifed by this prospect was Lance-Corporal Andrew Rothstein, who was one of seven who were to form a compulsory draft for Russia. Then came news of unrest among troops at Dover and Folkestone and on January 4 Australians at Larkhill ran amok. Next morning there was a wreath of smoke above the army camp. Among the buildings burnt down was the military cinema, which had long proved obnoxious to ANZAC troops because it was reserved for warrant officers and officers. Soon every aerodrome on Salisbury Plain had elected, or was preparing to elect, a protest committee. (The problem spread to airfields in the New Forest, with a deputation marching into Lymington. By the time Rothstein saw his commanding officer on the 6th the Government had heeded the swell of protest, and he was told that demobilisation would start four days later.

Many soldiers in 1919 resented the continuing military discipline. Some Australians deserted and lived rough in the woods near Fovant, west of Salisbury, and New Zealanders at Sling, near Amesbury, were put to work carving the shape of a giant kiwi (still visible) in the hillside to keep them occupied.

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." Eventually they "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.

The only disturbance officially regarded as a mutiny in Wiltshire occurred in July 1919, when men of the 3rd West Yorkshires based at Durrington Camp refused to parade with fighting equipment, leading to seventeen with the longest service being court martialled. They argued that they had joined only for the duration of the war and, as "Peace had been signed", they were not going to do any more training; they had also resented the company sergeant-major calling them "a lot of ********", though he claimed he had said "a lot of Bolshevists". The accused were sentenced to between twelve and twenty-one months' hard labour, remitted to nine months. One was acquitted of a charge of leading 200 men in an attempt to release prisoners from the guardroom, and a second from a charge of yelling for it to be burned down, the latter's defence being that having been gassed he could not shout.

I guess there must have been unrest at most military bases in the UK.

Terry Crawford

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For example Dallas and Gill point out that the pre-1914 Regular Army avoided, as much as possible, recruiting in the large towns and cities seeing them as tainted with the newly-emerging socialism and trades unionism.  They cite evidence of the occupational structure of recruits to the Regular Army, which was heavlily over-represented with agrarian trades, and bore little resemblance to that of the country as a whole. 

Do they give evidence, because that is a startling assertion to make to one who has studied the RWF, sufficiently non agrarian in 1914 to be nicknamed the Birmingham Fusiliers?

I know one example is insufficient.

In addition to the actual make-up of the army regarding town v country, do the authors back up their assertion of deliberate avoidance of recruiting in cities?

I have "The Victorian Army at Home", "The late Victorian Army" and "A Nation in Arms" and had not distilled such conclusions.

As I say, I am startled but prepared, as ever, to be educated.

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I wouldn't dispute that the pre-war regular army had a preponderance of agrarian types but this will have been a fuction of the economic disparities between town and country which made the regular meals of the Army more of an attraction to the farm labourer. It also was an army with a huge reliance on the horse.

However, without solid evidence you could not use the above as proof of positive discrimination against town dwellers . I would have thought that the army would have sought out potential recruits with a better standard of education to produce it's NCO's - accepting the fact that there would be a proportion of barrack room lawyers amongst them.

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Dallas and Gill point out that the pre-1914 Regular Army avoided, as much as possible, recruiting in the large towns and cities seeing them as tainted with the newly-emerging socialism and trades unionism.  They cite evidence of the occupational structure of recruits to the Regular Army, which was heavlily over-represented with agrarian trades, and bore little resemblance to that of the country as a whole. 

I have searched some of my references, given above.

There seems little doubt that the army preferred country boys as raw material until c. 1900 [sA War], perceived as more biddable and more healthy but less intelligent: ' not street-wise'. The changing nature of war ['the empty battlefield', 'fire and movement' etc] and the need to devolve command downwards to bright NCOs [about 1 in 6 of all soldiers] had already begun to happen by 1914. The townie had come into his own.

Whatever the preferences of the recruiters, the fact is that in the Edwardian era, agricultural labourers comprised 11% only of national recruitment [source Spiers].

The last year for which he gives complete figures is 1900, when 61.6% of recruits were labourers [town and country], 14.2 were manufacturing artisans, 13.3 mechanics, 7.0 shopmen and clerks, and 1.0% from the professions. The remaining 2.9% were boys. There is little sign here that the army was over-represented with country boys.

Fatally for the Dallas and Gill's argument, the 1860 figures of ex rural workers serving [not only those recruited that year], when rural recruitment is universally agreed to be high, it was only 15.5%.

To conclude with a quotation from AR Skelley: "Cardwell's localisation of recruitment [[1881, when regimental recruing districts were prescribed]] aimed to attract more of the agricultural population to the colours, but with a shifting population the army was concentrating its resources on a depleting resource".

Only if the countryside were totally depopulated can 15.5% representation in 1860, and 11% in about 1905, be called 'heavily over-represented'.

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Do Dallas & Gill provide any figures for recruitment into the Territorial Army?

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Better ask Hedley, its not on my bookshelves.

Recruitment into the TF was generally dire, until war broke out, when it was seen by some as a way of avoiding overseas service. I have a revealing paper on this, of a named [but currently withheld] part of the country, where this was clearly the case. Not that I blame the TF volunteers, far from it.

As the rude song begins:

"I don't want to join the army

I don't want to go to war,

I'd rather hang around Piccadilly Underground

Living off the earnings of a high-born lady ............."

I don't do Mutinies or SAD, they are too concerned with atypical minorities to hold my attention for long.

I belong, I hope, to the rational, analytical and [dare I say it] scientific school of Military History, complete with footnotes. The moment my emotions get involved, I lose the plot.

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Sorry I have not replied earlier - I have just picked up this thread again. I'll look up my copy of Dallas and Gill and get back to you.

That there was, and still is a connection, between membership of the British Army and social structure is undeniable. One only has to listen to the received English spoken by the majority of Army officers interviewed on the TV to be aware of the probablility that a high proportion did not attend the local comp. Sure there are exceptions, but in general there is a link. Understanding that is the key to unlocking many other apparent mysteries of WW1 from why there are such big war memorials in remote Scottish glens, to SAD, to a better understanding of the British Army as a 'learning organisation' - to cite a theme fashionable with the revisionists.

Scratch any social phenomena and you'll find 'class' not far below.

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Sorry I have not replied earlier - I have just picked up this thread again. I'll look up my copy of Dallas and Gill and get back to you.

Thank you in advance.

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