Enlisting

[Guest lingarde]

Does anyone know how long it would be after enlisting, for a man to leave his family for training? Was it instant, days or weeks?

And how long would they train for before going to France?

Cheers

Emma

[delta]

Emma - as is often said - it all depends.

Many of those who volunteered in 1914 did not leave home for several weeks; training took several months and they did not always deploy straight to France - some went to Ireland; some to Egypt, soem stayed in England.

By Autumn 1916, some called up were in France with less than 6 weeks training.

Sorry to be so vague but there was no standard time- it varied during the war

Stephen

[Desmond7]

Do you have a battalion/Division in mind?

Further info on that front would enable forum to find out more I think.

Des

[Petroc]

Emma,

as indicated, this is a very, very complicated area! To give some idea, it was by no means impossible for three men from the same town who joined the Army in the same week in 1914 to have totally different military experiences; one, joining a Kitchener unit, may have been sent home straight away, to await 'recall' when needed a few weeks later; another, after rapid training, may have found himself in the firing line alongside seasoned Regulars within a very short time; another, with, perhaps, minor rifle-club experience and a grammar school education, could have been commissioned in a Territorial unit immediately; hypothetical, admittedly, but there you have it. There are too many examples of the various permutations to give a definitive response to your query; new recruits for the Wessex Division in 1914, for example, could have found themeselves in uniform and in India within a couple of months, and some of the earliest Royal Engineers Tunnellers were plucked straight from the mines and sent to the Western Front without even knowing how to salute properly. After the introduction of conscription, it could be argued that the system became more organised, directly controlled as it was by central government. Even here, however, it is possible to see how the best laid plans can go awry due to unforseen circumstances or dramatic battlefield events; witness the large-scale drafting of only partially-trained young conscripts in the wake of Germany's 1918 Spring offensives...