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The Oxford History of the British Army. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285333-3. Edmonds, J. E. (1993) [1932]. Military Operations France and Belgium, 1916: Sir Douglas Haig's Command to the 1st July: Battle of the Somme. History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial ...
British official historian Brigadier James Edward Edmonds, in 1925, recorded that "The British Army of 1914 was the best trained, best equipped and best organized British Army ever sent to war". [58] This was in part due to the Haldane reforms , and the Army itself recognising the need for change and training.
The only time that Volunteer Training Corps men were engaged in actual combat, was in the Easter Rising in Dublin starting on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. Some 120 members of the 1st (Dublin) Battalion, Associated Volunteer Training Corps were returning from field exercises at Ticknock , when they heard the news of the uprising.
The British Army was different. Its divisions consisted of three brigades, with each brigade having slightly over 4,000 men in four battalions, plus support troops, under the command of a brigadier general. [13] The 1914 British infantry brigade comprised a small headquarters and four infantry battalions, with two heavy machine guns per battalion.
On 6 August 1914, less than 48 hours after Britain's declaration of war, Parliament sanctioned an increase of 500,000 men for the Regular British Army, and the newly-appointed Secretary of State for War, Earl Kitchener of Khartoum issued his famous call to arms: 'Your King and Country Need You', urging the first 100,000 volunteers to come forward.
"Pals" departing from Preston railway station, August 1914. The pals battalions of World War I were specially constituted battalions of the British Army comprising men who enlisted together in local recruiting drives, with the promise that they would be able to serve alongside their friends, neighbours and colleagues, rather than being arbitrarily allocated to battalions.
162 Officer Cadet Training Unit was formed in 1939 from the Infantry Battalion of the Honourable Artillery Company; this was the Officer Training Unit of the Reconnaissance Corps. [1] In 1942, 101 RAC OCTU amalgamated with 162 Reconnaissance Corps OCTU to form 100 RAC OCTU based at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst .
The Territorial Force was a part-time volunteer component of the British Army, created in 1908 to augment British land forces without resorting to conscription.The new organisation consolidated the 19th-century Volunteer Force and yeomanry into a unified auxiliary, commanded by the War Office and administered by local county territorial associations.