WW1: The Last Tommies - BBC4

[helpjpl]

WW1: The Last Tommies - BBC4 at 9.00pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

Three part series of reflections on the First World War from the men on the front line and the women on the home front

Tuesday - Battle of the Somme

Wednesday - Battles of 1917 and 1918

 

JP

[little bob]

Thank you for the heads up.

 

Bob

[Bart150]

Good programme.

 

One chap told how when he volunteered in 1914 he was offered a choice between three regiments, of which at least one was not local.

Anyone know how general that choice procedure was?

[clive_hughes]

In theory he should have been able to ask to join any regiment or corps that wasn't officially closed to new recruits.  For example during 1915 the Yeomanry as a whole was closed to new entrants for a period.  The recruiters in each Recruiting District were kept updated as to which were closed/open/needing a bit more in the way of new blood.

 

That has to be qualified of course: If he was, say, under 5 feet 6 inches the RGA might not have accepted him in those early days.  If he had medical/fitness issues that graded him less than A1 that might also have impacted on his choice of outfit.  The REs would prefer men with skills such as electrician, bricklayer, carpenter etc. as opposed to clerk, and so on.

 

As well as those considerations, recruiters were at times told to try to influence recruits towards certain regiments/battalions who needed men.  They also had their own prejudices - an "old sweat" type recruiter of the X regiment might try to swing the man's choice the way of his old outfit.  

 

Many men didn't realise that they could ask to join a particular regiment, and were just keen to serve, and so reliant on what the recruiter offered them.

 

Clive  

[Black Maria]

I thought it was very good and unlike ' 100 days to victory ' I didn't keep looking at the clock thinking " how much longer till the end ".

If I remember correctly the chap who hit the sergeant that had called him a bastard had just lost his mother and so no action was

taken against him. On the subject of joining regiments I recall reading about a chap from London who joined a Scottish regiment

because he had never been on a train and it gave him the longest train journey .

[Bernard_Lewis]

Recorded it...

 

Bernard

[Bart150]

@ clive_hughes

It's the concept of a man being offered a choice between a small number of specifically named regiments that was new to me.

Possibly a transitory phenomenon right at the beginning of the war in very busy offices, eg in London..