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Establishment and Strength of the British Army (excluding Indian native troops stationed in India) prior to August, 1914. By the First World War, the British military forces (i.e., those raised in British territory, whether in the British Isles or colonies, and also those raised in the Channel Islands, but not the British Indian Army, the military forces of the Dominions, or those of British ...
The armed forces were greatly expanded and reorganised—the war marked the founding of the Royal Air Force. The highly controversial introduction, in January 1916, of conscription for the first time in British history followed the raising of one of the largest all-volunteer armies in history, known as Kitchener's Army, of more than 2,000,000 men.
From 1907 through 1914, the French and British armies collaborated on highly detailed plans for mobilizing a British Expeditionary Force of 100,000 combat troops to be very quickly moved to France, and sent to the front in less than two weeks. [3] Grey insisted that world peace was in the best interests of Britain and the British Empire. [4]
Some of the first clashes of the war involved British, French, and German colonial forces in Africa. On 6–7 August, French and British troops invaded the German protectorates of Togoland and Kamerun. On 10 August, German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa; sporadic and fierce fighting continued for the rest of the war.
Four of the six French divisions (46e, 47e, 64e, 65e) were to return to the Western Front in spring 1918, with the two divisions of 12th Corps remaining in Italy. The Val di Portule captured by the 48th Division, 2 November 1918. The British Expeditionary Force (Italy) came under the command of General Herbert Plumer.
World War I – major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers , [ 1 ] which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred on the Triple Entente of Britain , France and Russia ) and the Central Powers (originally centred on the Triple Alliance of ...
French infantry pushing through enemy barbed wire, 1915. During World War I, France was one of the Triple Entente powers allied against the Central Powers.Although fighting occurred worldwide, the bulk of the French Army's operations occurred in Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Alsace-Lorraine along what came to be known as the Western Front, which consisted mainly of trench warfare.
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the six divisions the British Army sent to the Western Front during the First World War. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the 1906–1912 Haldane Reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (1899–1902). [2]