ACI regarding Welsh & Celtic languages

[clive_hughes]

Following a row in Cabinet between Lord Kitchener and David Lloyd George on 28 October 1914 an Army Council Instruction or similar was issued stating that Welsh, Scottish and Gaelic could be spoken, but that on parade the orders would be given in English. The commander of a Reserve Welsh unit had forbidden the men to speak Welsh anywhere, including their billets, and Ellis W.Davies MP and then LG took up the cudgels.

K's proposed draft of the Order starts with "The Army Council consider..." so I assume the final result was an ACI issued shortly after the event. I know from another source that troops in the UK were wakened and paraded at night in pouring rain in order to hear this read out to them.

Does anyone have a copy of the relevant ACI they could post please?

Clive

[Joseph Kerr1]

I cant remember exactly where but I have read that a lot of men in the highland division camps at Bedford in 1914 could only speak gaelic.

J.

[IPT]

Here's a complaint regarding a similar incident in April/May 1916 - http://cymru1914.org/en/view/archive_file/4071492/3

[clive_hughes]

Thanks JosephKerr,

One of the points made by Lloyd George to Kitchener was that if a similar order had been issued to the Lovat Scouts or a Highland unit, there would have been a mutiny! As I recall, Lovats were indeed somewhere in the area - I have a picture of the grave stone of their first WW1 casualty from Huntingdon Cemetery.

IPT - yes, I had come across that letter before, though in the 1970s - it's nice to see it again (virtually). Col. Ballard was regarded by his men - even the non-Welsh speaking ones - as a "Taffy-hater". There's no record of what action if any was taken on the complaint. He was a casualty of the attack on Mametz Wood a couple of months later.

Clive

[Terry_Reeves]

I found this thread interesting as I have group of medals to

I cant remember exactly where but I have read that a lot of men in the highland division camps at Bedford in 1914 could only speak gaelic.

J.

I found this thread interesting for a couple of reasons. There was a recommendation that men recruited for quarrying companies RE, drawn from North Wales, should have officers who spoke, or at least had a knowledge of Welsh. On the other hand I have a group of medals to a regimental signaller in a highland division regiment, who, whilst in the Bedford area, transferred the RE Signal Service. On further investigation I found that this was not an uncommon occurrence whilst their formation was in the county. It begs the question, given the information above, were regimental signallers in these units chosen because they were bi-lingual?

TR