Kitchener's first New Army is formed

On 21 August 1914 the British War Office issued Army Order No. 324, ordering the formation of the first of the so-called New Armies. The order announced that the King had approved the addition to the army of six infantry divisions with Army Troops, formed from volunteers who had come forward since the outbreak of war. It replaced Army Order No. 311, issued five days earlier and cancelled.

Kitchener’s vision

Before the war the British Army was a small professional army scattered across the whole empire. The British Expeditionary Force sent to France numbered about 100,000 men, roughly half regulars and half reservists, and it was the country’s only field army. The new Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert Kitchener, who had taken office on 6 August, unlike most members of the government did not believe in a short war. He predicted that it would last at least three years, cause enormous losses and drain the manpower of the warring states “to the last million”. Britain therefore had to raise an army numbered in millions.

Kitchener did not want to build it on the existing Territorial units. Many of their men had volunteered for home service only, and the minister himself distrusted such formations ever since he had seen how the French territorials performed in the war of 1870–1871. He decided to create entirely new units. On 6 August Parliament sanctioned an increase of the regular army by 500,000 men, and on 11 August a proclamation called on the first 100,000 men to enlist at once “for three years or for the duration of the war”. Posters bearing the royal arms proclaimed: “Your King and Country need you”.

The response exceeded expectations. Queues up to a mile long formed outside recruiting offices, and the authorities had to open new recruiting centres in haste. By the middle of September nearly half a million volunteers had enlisted.

The first hundred thousand

The order of 21 August gave the volunteers an organisation. The new battalions were formed as additional battalions of the existing regiments of the line infantry, with “Service” added to their title. Recruits were to be clothed and equipped at the regimental depots “if sufficient clothing and equipment existed”, and then sent to training centres, where they were formed into brigades and divisions. Originally the new divisions were numbered 8th to 13th. When a regular 8th Division was formed from overseas garrisons in September, the 8th (Light) Division was renumbered the 14th, and the First New Army, known as “K1” or “the first hundred thousand”, comprised the 9th to 14th Divisions: Scottish, Irish, Northern, Eastern, Western and Light.

Training began almost from scratch. There was a shortage of uniforms, weapons, barracks and experienced officers. Recruits often drilled in their own clothes and shoes, and some units were issued old red tunics from the stores or makeshift blue uniforms. Instead of rifles they used obsolete weapons or wooden dummies, and not a single gun had been left in the country on which the new artillery batteries could train. Further New Armies soon followed, among them the famous Pals Battalions, made up of men from a single town, workplace or sports club.

Significance

The K1 divisions went into action in 1915: some on the Gallipoli peninsula, at Suvla Bay, some in France, at Loos. The volunteer New Armies became the backbone of the British land forces in 1915–1916 and suffered enormous losses, especially in the Battle of the Somme. When the volunteers’ enthusiasm began to wane, Britain in 1916 introduced general conscription for the first time in its history.