| Conscription 09:28 - Feb 22 with 4351 views | Simonds92 |
Is that something that could genuinely happen? Lots of stuff on social media a bit tongue in cheek but could they ever enforce something like that in modern day? Officially we don't have it but they could bring it back. |  | | |  |
| Conscription on 16:04 - Feb 22 with 929 views | eastangliaisblue |
The day Putin stops having botox is the day i'll go to war. |  | | |
| Conscription on 16:23 - Feb 22 with 891 views | Meadowlark |
I trust this forum is not morphing into Facebook.....? |  | | |
| Conscription on 16:30 - Feb 22 with 879 views | WD19 |
| Conscription on 16:23 - Feb 22 by Meadowlark |
I trust this forum is not morphing into Facebook.....? |
I always really fancied you at school and have just got divorced. Fancy a drink? |  | | |
| Conscription on 16:50 - Feb 22 with 856 views | chicoazul |
| Conscription on 10:42 - Feb 22 by bournemouthblue |
I imagine it would be done in a pretty light way through national service? |
Lightly conscripting young working class people to fight and die at the hands of the enemy, yes. |  |
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| Conscription on 17:05 - Feb 22 with 825 views | ThisIsMyUsername |
I hope not. I really couldn't be arsed for that. |  |
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| Conscription on 17:11 - Feb 22 with 809 views | Meadowlark |
| Conscription on 16:30 - Feb 22 by WD19 |
I always really fancied you at school and have just got divorced. Fancy a drink? |
Were you the one that got off with Sharon then passed out in the bogs? | | | |
| Conscription on 17:55 - Feb 22 with 746 views | eireblue |
Easy to learn a foreign language surely? |  | | |
| Conscription on 22:15 - Feb 22 with 666 views | Churchman |
| Conscription on 11:24 - Feb 22 by Guthrum |
My grandfather volunteered in 1914, was posted to the heavy guns (Royal Garrison Artillery) and was not sent to France until the autumn of 1916.
Served at Ypres the following year, as far as i've discovered in the Polygon Wood sector. Found a newspaper cutting listing him as wounded (which none of us had ever known about). Finished the war just across the Belgian border, near Mons, then was in the occupation forces on the Rhine. Failed to get his old job back at Ipswich Corporation, so re-enlisted and was sent out to what is now Pakistan. Finally got back to Ipswich and worked at the Corporation for the rest of his life. |
Thank you for this. The Polygon Wood area was hell on earth. I’ve been there. You certainly didn’t want to be anywhere near the Salient in WW1 where the British fought a cauldron of a battle for about four years. Ypres - what a place. What a brave man and how lucky was he to survive.
My grandad survived the Somme. His Field Company (208 Norfolk) were withdrawn Aug 16 after they were bracketed at a place called Le Bazentin. He took part in the Battle of Arras in 1917 and was finally wounded in Sept 1917. He was hit in the face with shrapnel. A minor wound, but the shell shock was the end of his war.
Six months in hospital, back to work the day after discharge. No work, no pay. It’s how it was. Luckily for him, he’d done enough of his apprenticeship as a sign writer to be waived the last bit. He went on to marry and have a family (obviously) but died relatively young in the early 1950s. His mental health never truly recovered.
I’d love to have known him to say thank you. We owe all those men a debt beyond words. |  | | |
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| Conscription on 22:53 - Feb 22 with 639 views | ronnyd |
| Conscription on 15:55 - Feb 22 by WD19 |
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"I won't wear your white feather"
"I won't carry your white flag"
Marillion, Misplaced Childhood. | | | |
| Conscription on 23:32 - Feb 22 with 605 views | The_Major |
I'm at the age now that if I did get called up, I'd probably have a commanding officer called Mainwaring. |  | | |
| Conscription on 11:35 - Feb 23 with 525 views | FBI |
| Conscription on 10:44 - Feb 22 by Guthrum |
It took until 1916 for the volunteers of 1914 (the Kitchener Armies) to be introduced into the front line. Took that long to train them, particularly the more technical arms such as artillery.
That then had the effect of constraining tactics. Infantry weren't advancing steadily in lines on the Somme due to their commanders being fools, but because without long-service training and experience it was thought they couldn't handle anything more complicated. When conscription was introduced, due to recruitment numbers dropping, they were sent individually to already experienced units, rather than forming new ones as had happened at the start of the war.
In 1939, Britain began a limited call up of conscripts for training before the crisis had come to a head - four months ahead, as it turned out. |
In WW1 the authorities were shocked at how undernourished and disease-ridden many of the conscripts were. These days they'd all be too fat. |  |
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| Conscription on 11:52 - Feb 23 with 502 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| Conscription on 11:35 - Feb 23 by FBI |
In WW1 the authorities were shocked at how undernourished and disease-ridden many of the conscripts were. These days they'd all be too fat. |
I wouldn't count on it. There is plenty of real poverty in this country now with people literally choosing between eating and heating. Don't forget it would be the poorest who would be most of the foot soldiers. |  |
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| Conscription on 11:54 - Feb 23 with 498 views | EdwardStone |
| Conscription on 11:35 - Feb 23 by FBI |
In WW1 the authorities were shocked at how undernourished and disease-ridden many of the conscripts were. These days they'd all be too fat. |
" Over Nourished" please |  | | |
| Conscription on 12:23 - Feb 23 with 480 views | FBI |
| Conscription on 11:52 - Feb 23 by Nthsuffolkblue |
I wouldn't count on it. There is plenty of real poverty in this country now with people literally choosing between eating and heating. Don't forget it would be the poorest who would be most of the foot soldiers. |
Also very true. Me and Mrs FBI are involved in our local food bank and it's heartbreaking sometimes. | |
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| Conscription on 12:33 - Feb 23 with 469 views | ArnoldMoorhen |
| Conscription on 11:04 - Feb 22 by Churchman |
Interesting. My grandfather volunteered in April 1915. He joined one of the three Royal Engineers Field Companies being raised in Norwich.
His initial training finished at a place called Sutton Vesey at the end of the year and he went to France Jan 16 from Southampton with the Northumberland Fusiliers (Tyneside Scottish) to whom his lot were attached (208 Field Co Norfolk). After more training and a spell in a quiet sector, his lot saw action on 1 July at Le Boisselle.
The four Fusilier brigades plus the Grimsby Chums and the Suffolks of 34 Div took a total pasting. One of the reasons they got massacred was that the artillery and mines at YSap and Lochnagar meant to have wiped out the Germans. The British had to carry all their own kit and in the case of the Tyneside Irish a lot of stuff for the REs too to ‘turn’ the captured trenches. You cannot run with that lot even if you wanted to.
Certainly, Haig and his subordinates didn’t trust the new army as you rightly suggest. Instructions were so rigid. Sadly any gains made could not be exploited. Naive mistakes were also made, such as an officer ringing somebody the night before to wish them luck right in front of the YSap mine. The Germans evacuated the area and suffered few casualties there.
The new army did learn, but oh the terrible cost. [Post edited 22 Feb 2022 19:43]
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Sutton Vesey is an area on the south side of Sutton Coldfield which includes Sutton Park, an absolutely huge, quite wild, area of parkland. It's probably one of the most underused and least well-known urban parks in the country.
It was used for large scale training in both World War One and Two, and soldiers were stationed within the park.
Here's a link, scroll about half way down the page to "The modern era":
http://www.sp.scnhs.org.uk/history.html
And if you remember Harry Patch, the last surviving WW1 Tommy, the camp at Sutton Park gets a mention in the first half of this short piece:
https://sclhrg.org.uk/images/stories/proceedings/V12-Spring_2015-5.pdf
You may know a lot about your Grandfather's training at Sutton Park already, but if it was only a name to you then you might find this interesting, and the Park has the plaque in the link, if you ever fancied a visit. | | | |
| Conscription on 13:39 - Feb 23 with 416 views | Churchman |
| Conscription on 12:33 - Feb 23 by ArnoldMoorhen |
Sutton Vesey is an area on the south side of Sutton Coldfield which includes Sutton Park, an absolutely huge, quite wild, area of parkland. It's probably one of the most underused and least well-known urban parks in the country.
It was used for large scale training in both World War One and Two, and soldiers were stationed within the park.
Here's a link, scroll about half way down the page to "The modern era":
http://www.sp.scnhs.org.uk/history.html
And if you remember Harry Patch, the last surviving WW1 Tommy, the camp at Sutton Park gets a mention in the first half of this short piece:
https://sclhrg.org.uk/images/stories/proceedings/V12-Spring_2015-5.pdf
You may know a lot about your Grandfather's training at Sutton Park already, but if it was only a name to you then you might find this interesting, and the Park has the plaque in the link, if you ever fancied a visit. |
Thanks for this. Much appreciated. I don’t know much about Sutton Vesey and the training tbh. As you suggest, it was just a name to me. Shameful really. The Field Company record says they were there and he wrote a postcard from there, which I have along with the ‘letters from France’ (the lace ones where little but how are the roses doing is written on the back, for obvious reasons).
I am very interested to know more about their lives and what they did. The Company record tends to show where they go and what they were doing to an extent but it’s very general, very limited. A bit ‘has to be done’ about it by the officer who got the job. My mother was always very interested, but her father refused to say much about it. Just the odd anecdote and ‘you can never understand understand’. | | | |
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