CONSCIENCE AND SERVICE IN RAMC

[Guest]

   Could any GWF member assist on this- bit of a black hole surrounded by huge amounts of information just off subject.  We know- folk memory, etc- that many men of principle served in the RAMC during the Great War. RAMC has a couple of databases that give a fair amount of information about doctors (Most helpful). We know also the stories of many conscientious objectors during the war and service in RAMC and other non-front line bodies as an alternative to the fighting lines, thanks to the excellent and interesting sites put up by peace groups in the centennial years.

     Is there anything out there that might indicate whether a man was serving in RAMC as a matter of conscience.- say, short of being a conscientious objection to war in toto but not willing to serve in the firing line????  It strikes me that conscientious objectors hog the market in terms of the historical spotlight and-of course, their actions of objection are predominantly after the introduction of the Military Service Acts-where coercion and conscience met head on. But from August 1914 to the MSA???  Could a man volunteer specifically for RAMC specifically as a matter of conscience? Of course, early on in the war, many local choices of regimental or corps service could be catered for at the recruiting office.

    Is there any scheme or info. (ACI for example) on how to deal with VOLUNTEERS for RAMC but not wishing to serve in any other unit. It looks to me that RAMC was not "combed" much in the latter stages of the war to scrape for front-line manpower, suggesting-to me at least-that men of conscience serving in RAMC were left in place..

 

     I ask with reference to 2 of "my" local casualties for Wanstead in the east of London. One, Percy Henry Chidgey, was in RAMC from the start until commissioned up in the Royal Engineers in 1917. His family background was civil engineering and I have a suspicion that strong religious motives (Congregationalist) may have caused him to volunteer but then to serve in RAMC. To be a RAMC OR and be commissioned up into another corps is,I think, unusual.

   The second casualty, Sidney Harry Hockheimer, was killed as a Sergeant, RAMC in November 1917 at Arras with 47th Field Ambulance. Hockheimer is such an unusual name that his is the only family I have traced with that name- but I have just turned up a casual reference to another Hockheimer-this one R., survived the war-his medal group was sold at Dix,Noonan and Webb a couple of years back. Now,with such an unusual name, 2 of them both RAMC suggests a deliberate choice.S.H.Hockheimer had a pre-war job that gives a slight clue- he worked as a warehouse clerk for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews-suggesting-possibly-some strong Christian outlook by him.

    Just a thought. COs have a lot of attention-but there seem to have been plenty who volunteered specifically for RAMC- our long-running thread "Who is This?" has recently had the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, who did 2 years as an OR in RAMC-as a volunteer (turning down Viceroy of India as well-a strongly individual career path)

 

 

[Bernard_Lewis]

Forum member Magnumbellum will know but some folk joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit before the advent of conscription.

 

Bernard

[BarbaraG]

A great deal of information, researched by Maggie Brown, can be found at.....

 

Subject to Copyright 

 

http://www.redbridgefirstworldwar.org.uk/the-war-dead/percy-henry-or-harold-chidgey

Edited 20 July , 2017 by BarbaraG

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, BarbaraG said:

'Percy's father was patriotic and involved in many recruitment drives..'

 

The Commanding Officer of 200th Field Company described him as being '...utterly inflexible in his devotion to duty. He hated all thought of war, and while he shrank from taking another man's life he was never backward in risking his own...'

 

Copyright http://www.redbridgefirstworldwar.org.uk/the-war-dead/percy-henry-or-harold-chidgey

 

     Thanks Barbara-it will cheer up our local Museum and Local History director that soemone nowhere near redbridge has picked up what is quite a decent site from a local council during the centennial years- Chidgey was written up by a local church historian, Maggies Brown, of Wanstead URC- it's 15 casualties are very well researched by her in a little A4 booklet, paid for from a Heritage grant called "Our Fifteen".  I think Chidgey was a good example of a non-CO who had strong Christian/pacifist morals against the war- but the "conchies" have stolen all the limelight.  Thus far.

    I had fogotten the Commanding Officer's comment about Chidgey-which goes some way to illustrating the point

[BarbaraG]

Just amended my comment as not sure about copyright.

 

My grandfather served with the R.A.M.C. He was an active member of the St John's Ambulance Brigade too.

Edited 20 July , 2017 by BarbaraG

[kenf48]

Leaving aside the TF units, who made a major contribution, but were specifically excluded from an Army Order published on 8 August for Special Enlistment in various units.  Special Enlistment Recruits for the RAMC were required to provide evidence of qualification, e.g. Pharmacists, or, in the case of 'Hospital subordinates' evidence such as certificate of nursing or first aid qualification from a recognised institution with the catch all that they should satisfy the medical officer examining them they possess ' a fair knowledge of nursing and ambulance duties'.  There were many 'institutions' and voluntary ambulance and bearer reserves.  No specific mention of conscience but that said there are anecdotal accounts of clergymen offering themselves for service as 'privates' in the RAMC.  Can't find the reference at the moment.

 

I don't think the 'New Army' was too fussy about experience according to recruitment appeals.

 

Ken

 

 

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, BarbaraG said:

Just amended my comment as not sure about copyright.

 

 

   You are OK-  Geard Greene, the officer responsible for the website would welcome it as fair use- Maggie Brown (whom I have never met) is a nice person and has done the work to make the URC 15 known better, not repressed. All she would ask is an acknowledgement.

[Magnumbellum]

A number of separate points need to be teased out of the general issue raised.

 

A question was asked early in WW2 as to whether there was any unit in the British Army of which members could be guaranteed not to be required to enter combat. The answer was only one unit - The Corps of Chaplains. The RAMC was specifically discounted for the purpose of the question because, although it does not regularly engage in combat, its members can be required, under international law on the status of military medical personnel, to bear and use arms in self-defence and in defence of patients. Moreover, in a situation in which the most senior surviving officer or NCO is a member of the RAMC that officer or NCO is deemed by military law to be responsible for the whole group, including directing any military action considered appropriate. Those aspects are often overlooked in general dicussions about the RAMC.

 

With regard to WW1 volunteers for the RAMC in the period August 1914 to the imposition of conscription, motivations doubtless varied over a range from perceptions of it being less dangerous than the front line and possibly more congenial, via humanitarian aspirations, to making use of existing nursing, paramedical or medical skills or experience. That range definitely included some whose conscience forbade them to volunteer for combat service, but felt conscientiously able to serve in a humanitarian capacity. As Bernard Lewis has pointed out, a further group, primarily Quakers, conscientiously founded in 1914 and served in the Friends' Ambulance Unit, many carrying out paramedic duties in France.

 

The Military Service Act 1916, in providing for conscientious objectors, created the possibility of non-combatant service in the Army, This encouraged some objectors to request service in the RAMC on that basis, and it also encouraged Military Service Tribunals to "recommend" certain COs for call-up to the RAMC. However,,it was not appreciated that the sole decision lay with the Army as to whether a man exempted only from combatant service was called up to the RAMC or to the specially created Non-Combatant Corps (NCC), and in the overwhelming majority of cases call-up was to the NCC.

 

If challenged on the latter point, the Army would probably have argued that it had more men asking for the RAMC than it needed,This was apparently borne out in 1918 when there was indeed a 'comb out' in the RAMC, and a number of men who had volunteered pre-conscription were arbirarily and summarily transferred to combat units. Their argument that they had volunteered precisely on humnitarian grounds and could not in conscience serve in a combat unit was wholly ignored, on the basis that any enlistment was, in law, to the Army, not to any particular unit, and it was a matter wholly for the Army to dispose its personnel as it saw fit. When the compulsorily transferred men conscientiously disobeyed orders they were court-martialled and imprisoned. Bizarrely, a group of men who had enlisted in the RAMC in an arrangement with particucular Welsh recruiting officer were allowed to remain without compulsory transfer.

 

 

 

 

 

[kenf48]

From the Birmingham Daily Post October 9 1914:-

 

"It is interesting to note that a number of clergy of the city and district are anxious to assist the country in this national emergency by serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps.  About 200 have expressed their intention of joining the unit, and 15 have already been submitted to the headquarters of the unit at Great Brook Street.  These gentlemen will be medically examined in the course of a few days and afterwards accepted for service.  It should be pointed out that the clergymen will be accepted only as privates, and that they will have no additional status in the unit."

 

The 'unit' referred to was probably the South Midland Brigade 1st and 2nd Field Ambulance (TF) who were based at Brook Street.

 

Ken