Kitchener's Army - Origins

Origins

Contrary to the popular belief that the war would be over by Christmas 1914, Kitchener predicted a long and brutal war. He believed that arrival in Europe of an overwhelming force of new, well-trained and well-led divisions would prove a decisive blow against the Central Powers. Kitchener fought off opposition to his plan, and attempts to weaken or water down its potential, including piece-meal dispersal of the New Army battalions into existing regular or Territorial Force divisions (the view of the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, Field Marshal French). Kitchener declined to use the existing Territorial Force (which, ironically, had been set up by Haldane and Douglas Haig as part of the Army reforms of the Edwardian period) as the basis for the New Army, as many of its members had volunteered for "Home Service" only, and because he was suspicious of the poor performance of French "territorials" in the war of 1870-1. In the early days of the war, the Territorial Force could not reinforce the regular army, as it lacked modern equipment, particularly artillery. In addition, it took time to form First-Line units composed only of men who had volunteered for "General Service."

Those recruited into the New Army were used to form complete Battalions under existing British Army Regiments. These new battalions had titles of the form "xxth (Service) Battalion, ". The first New Army divisions were used at the Battle of Loos in the autumn of 1915, and they were sorely tested in the Battle of the Somme. The initial BEF - a single army of 5 regular divisions in August 1914, two armies comprising 16 divisions by the end of the 1914 when the Territorials had been deployed - had grown to five armies totalling around 60 divisions in strength by the summer of 1916, approximately 2 million men of whom around half were infantry (the rest were gun crews, supply and logistics men etc.).