War in the Age of Technology: Myriad Faces of Modern Armed Conflict

4. The Morale of the British Army on the Western Front, 1914–18: A Case Study in the Importance of the “Human Factor” in Twentieth-Century Total War

chapter 4 ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ The Morale of the British Army on the Western Front, 1914–18 A Case Study in the Importance of the “Human Factor” in Twentieth-Century Total War G. D. Sheffield Armed with powerful weapons produced by modern industrialized economies, the armies of 1914–18 waged war of unprecedented destructiveness. The Western Front in particular has come to exemplify a form of warfare in which the individual combatant was helpless in the face of high explosives, machinegun bullets, and poison gas. The fearsome weapons created by modern industry and technology seemingly had replaced the sinews and strength of the fighting man. Yet the “human factor” remained important , even if it has not always received the attention it deserved. The aim of this chapter is to examine one aspect of the human factor, the morale of British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front, relating its “peaks and troughs” to success and failure on the battle- field. Using a broad range of sources, it seeks to build on and amplify the pioneering work of other scholars in the field, particularly two Canadian historians, J. B. Wilson and S. P. MacKenzie.1 Between August 1914 and November 1918, the British army evolved from a small regular force into a mass army. The original BEF of August 1914 consisted of professional soldiers supplemented by regular reservists recalled to the colors. By the end of 1914, the BEF’s 105 order of battle also included elements of the Territorial Force (TF), a part-time body of amateur soldiers originally intended for home defense . The Territorials were followed by the first New Army (or “Kitchener’s army”) units, which arrived in France in the spring of 1915. The New Armies were a mass volunteer force that by 1916 had transformed the nature of the BEF. No longer was it a small, elite, professional body; it was now a citizen army, the military manifestation of the British “nation in arms.” The final act in the evolution of the British army was the introduction of conscription in 1916, conscripts being posted to existing units—regular, Territorial, and Kitchener. The extent of the evolution of the BEF over four years can be gauged by comparing its composition in August 1914 and November 1918. The original BEF consisted of one cavalry and four infantry divisions, all regular. At the Armistice, the BEF had sixty-one infantry and three cavalry divisions, including four Canadian, five Australian, and one New Zealand division; and the vast majority of British Empire officers and soldiers on the Western Front in 1918 were essentially civilians in uniform enlisted “for the duration.”2 Morale, one of the most common terms in the modern military lexicon, is an imprecise term. A number of definitions have been attempted , ranging from the simplistic to the complex. One of the most useful that links the morale of the individual with the morale of the group is that of Irvin L. Child: “morale pertains to [the individual ’s] efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the group in accomplishing the task in hand.”3 The relationship between individual and collective morale can be described as follows: unless the individual is reasonably content, he will not willingly contribute to the unit. He might desert or mutiny but is more likely simply to refuse to work wholeheartedly toward the goals of the group. High group morale, or cohesion, is the product in large part of a good morale experienced by the members of that unit; and the state of morale of a larger formation, such as an army, is the product of the cohesion of the units that compose that army. The possession of individual morale sufficiently high that a soldier is willing to engage in combat might be described as “fighting spirit.” g. d. sheffield 106 The work of Carl von Clausewitz gives valuable insights into the nature of collective military morale, and especially that of the BEF of 1914–18. He differentiated between professional armies, who possess such attributes as discipline, experience, and skill, and nonprofessional armies that have “bravery, adaptability, stamina and enthusiasm.” Clausewitz divided morale into two components, “mood” and “spirit,” and warned that one should never confuse the two. The mood of an army is a transient thing, which can change quickly; but an army with “true military spirit” keeps “its cohesion under the most murderous fire” and in defeat resists fears, both real...