A “Kitchener Division” at War

English-language divisional histories run a gamut from pamphlets to five-volume in-depth narratives. Most were written soon after the conflict they describe or, at the very least, while there were veterans available for interviews. But even now, divisional histories are still appearing for both world wars.

The first-ever history of the 21^st Division, this book examines the combat development of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in 1915-18 through an examination of one infantry division. The operations and capabilities of the British Army in 1915-18 have been subject to much writing and historical revision and counter-revision in the decades since the war. While not understudied, there is much that is not yet understood. A divisional history provides a case study of these larger questions while looking at an organization that changed over time while its most significant members – the fighting men in the line companies – were subject to terrible attrition.

This book looks at how the 21^st Division developed from its creation as a “Kitchener’s Army” formation of volunteers in the opening months of the war. Arriving in France in 1915, the division was hastily thrown into the second day of fighting at the disastrous Battle of Loos and fought until Armistice Day. This book looks at how the division evolved, reflecting both the changes that shaped the British Army – doctrine, training, manpower, weaponry – in its tactical operations and those affecting its German opponents and the unforgiving battlefield environment. The British Army’s “learning curve” was never a direct process, but, as well as often having two steps forward for one back, often differed significantly in how it was applied in different formations. The 21^st was fortunate in having the same, effective commanding general, “Soarer” Campbell, throughout much of the war and, certainly by 1918, also had good leadership and staffs at the brigade level.

The author largely succeeds in showing how the division’s strengths and shortcomings largely represent those of the BEF as a whole. This is a divisional history that will be of interest to the generalist. The book’s major sources are the war diaries of the division and its organic brigades and battalions, which are held by the UK’s National Archives at Kew, near London (providing free copies of them for download over the Internet). Supplementing these are the official history, unit histories, the secondary literature and the memoirs, published and unpublished, by members of the division.

The title sets out that this is an operational history. It concentrates on fighting and not service support activities such as logistics or casualty evacuation. The real war was often distant from divisional headquarters. Soldiers that went to battalion headquarters, the furthest-forward echelon to keep war diaries, were reckoned by their comrades to be basically finished with the war, as the poet David Jones observed in his In Parenthesis. But they were hardly out of the line of fire. During the 1918 German offensives, battalion-level war diaries often had to be reconstructed after the event, as happened when most of the 21^st Division’s infantry were overrun on the Aisne. The dates of the war diary pages and the signatures of officers recently arrived as replacements are signals to the researcher that this has taken place.

The historian has to play the hand that has been dealt in the form of existing sources. War diaries normally do not record other ranks – and what they did – by their names. The challenge to the historian is to understand and convey the realities of the war that these documents leave out. That would create a larger, and hence more expensive, book. What is not in the war diaries or memoirs tends not to get into print, such as post-Armistice rioting by 21^st Division units upset with the slow pace of demobilization.

There are additional sources that the author could have used to provide these details, even though he has obviously effectively used what he has to provide the thrust of the narrative. These include citations for decorations (which can point out gaps in the war diaries’ accounts), officers’ service records in the UK National Archives (officers captured were expected to provide written explanations) and newspaper accounts.

The physical presentation of the book is a strong point, with no less than 48 color maps. These are not reprints of contemporary maps (too-often not reproduced clearly) but rather are designed to fit on the book’s six-by-nine inch page format with sufficient detail to explain events in the narrative. Some 90 black and white photographs – reproduced on the high-quality paper used throughout – are mainly portraits of divisional personnel or, in their unavoidable absence, their gravesites. The book’s extensive footnotes (rather than endnotes) are a plus.

This work was of interest to me because, in the spring of 2023, I followed the advance of one of the battalions of the 21^st Division from September 1918 through to the Armistice. I installed myself in Montcouvez farm, a brigade headquarters on 8 October 1918 and the first undestroyed buildings liberated in the 21^st Division’s advance and currently a comfortable bed and breakfast. The sources for my trip included the same war diaries and memoirs as the author used for this book. I had the benefit of a Linesman, a GPS-enabled computer tablet loaded with British Great War tactical maps.

Having walked some of the battlefields the author has written about (and mapped) in this book, I found his treatment of them accurately portrayed according to what his – and my – sources told him and was consistent with on-the-ground realities over a century after the events. I walked to the site – in grid square 31d – on the Canal l’ Escaut where, on 5 October, the first patrol crossed over and sent back – under sniper fire – the lead company commander’s message that would have been unthinkable just days before: the Hindenburg Line had been abandoned. I found the site of Meath Post, captured, lost in a counterattack and recaptured during the 21^st Division’s attack on 18 September. Once a concrete blockhouse, its site is now indistinguishable from any other farmer’s field, with only two nearby cemeteries indicating that this was once a battlefield. My more limited focus on a specific unit gave me details – the sniper fire on 5 October (which the war diary’s omission of casualty figures for that day informed me did not hit anyone) – that are not in this book or its sources, but I came away with the same overall picture that the author presents here.

My battlefield visits and this book raised questions. How and why did the 21^st Division, rendered combat-ineffective by the attacking Germans in a single day on the Aisne, prove to be an effective offensive force by September? The 21^st Division, in 1918, included both prewar regular and wartime Kitchener battalions. Was there any effective difference in their capabilities or resilience? The 1918 offensive included innovations such as RAF squadrons flying in direct support of the division and the use of wireless at infantry battalion headquarters. How did these work out? What did the RAF have to say about their support to the division’s attacks, such as that of 18 September? What, if anything, in French (fighting alongside the division at Mont Kemmel and the Aisne) and German official and unit histories shows their perception of the 21^st Division? To answer questions such as these is why there is still a need for unit histories.

To Do the Work of Men, volume number 29 in the University of Wolverhampton Military Studies Series, provides a worthwhile example of how Great War divisional history can – and should – still be done.

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