British Army WW1: Definitions

Definitions of some of the terms found in documents relating to membership of the British Military forces at the time of WW1 (1914-18).

Infantry Battalion
At the outbreak of the First World War, a battalion at full War Establishment was comprised of 1,107 officers and men. Commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel, it had a Headquarters, Machine Gun section and four Companies.

The Headquarters was made up of the Commanding Officer, his Second in Command, an Adjutant (a kind of 'battalion staff officer'), the Quartermaster, plus the Orderley Room staff, Pioneers, Signallers, and Stretcher Bearers. There would also be a Medical Officer and a Padre. The Medical Officer might have some attachments from the Royal Army Medical Corps, and there would also be an Armourer from the Army Ordnance Corps. In total there were 4 officers, 1 Warrant Officer (the Regimental Sergeant Major), eight Sergeants and 61 Other Ranks; plus the Medical Officer and the Padre, and a Transport Officer if one had been appointed.

The Machine Gun Section had two Maxim Guns, probably of Boer War vintage, and was commanded by a Second Lieutenant or a Lieutenant. He had one Sergeant and sixteen men under his command.

Infantry Company
The Infantry Company was normally lettered from A to D (in some regiments this was W - Z), and was commanded by a Major or Captain. He had a Second in Command, normally a Captain. There was also a Company Sergeant Major, and a Company Quarter Master Sergeant. In total there were 227 officers and men in a Company.

The Company was split into four Platoons, each one numbered. Nos 1 - 4 always served in A Company, Nos 5 - 8 in B, Nos 9 - 12 in C, and Nos 13 - 16 in D.

Depot Battalion
For infantry (cavalry and artillery are organized differently), the recruiting and training organization is the regiment. Regiments field battalions (service battalions) and additionally maintain a cadre of experienced officers (both commissioned and warrant) and NCO's that trains replacements soldiers. This training unit is the depot battalion.

There were also depot companies - see Companies (above).
And there were also Divisional Depot Battalions during the First World War that served an essentially similar function at divisional, rather than regimental, level.

New Army
The New Army, often referred to as Kitchener's Army or, disparagingly, as Kitchener's Mob, was an (initially) all-volunteer army of the British Army formed in the United Kingdom from 1914 onwards following the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War in early August 1914 (war was declared on 4th August 1914). It originated on the recommendation of Herbert Kitchener, then the Secretary of State for War to raise 500,000 volunteers. Kitchener's original intention was that it would be formed and ready to be put into action in mid-1916, but circumstances dictated its use before then. The first use in a major action came at the Battle of Loos (September–October 1915).

(Infantry) Platoon
The composition of a Platoon was 1 officer, 8 Sergeants, 10 Corporals, 4 Drummers, 4 Batmen and 188 Privates. Each Platoon was commanded by a Second Lieutenant or a Lieutenant, with a Platoon Sergeant as his right hand man. His Platoon was made up of four Sections, of twelve men, each commanded by a Non Commission Officer (NCO) - usually a Corporal.

Pals battalion
The Pals battalions of World War I were specially constituted battalions of the British Army comprising men who had enlisted together in local recruiting drives, with the promise that they would be able to serve alongside their friends, neighbours and colleagues ("pals"), rather than being arbitrarily allocated to battalions (as was the norm).

While the majority of Pals units were infantry battalions, local initiatives resulted in the raising of forty-eight companies of engineers, forty-two batteries of field artillery and eleven ammunition columns, drawn mainly from groups with common occupational backgrounds. The relatively high skills and educational levels of many Pals battalions meant an outflow of potential officers for commissioning elsewhere, from 1915 on.

Many of these locally raised battalions suffered heavy casualties during the Somme offensives of 1916. The Battle of the Somme marked a turning point in the Pals battalion experiment. Many were disbanded or amalgamated after the scheme effectively came to an end following the summer of 1916. Others retained their titles until the end of the war but with recruitment dependent upon drafts from a common pool of conscripts rather than from those with regional or other common ties.