Gudmundsson_Doctoral Thesis

Learning from the Front: Tactical Innovation in
France and Flanders, 1914-1918
Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson
Wolfson College
University of Oxford
Presented for the D.Phil. in Modern History
©2007

Abstract
The organizational frameworks of the three great armies that fought on the Western
Front during the first year of the First World War were, to a large extent, the products
of a series of deliberate reforms carried out in the preceding two decades. These
reforms, in turn, were the products of many debates, both professional and political,
about size, structure, equipment, and composition of the French, German, and British
armies. Once the fighting began, the public debates ended, new phenomena emerged,
and the deliberate reforms of the pre-war era gave way to hurried improvisation. In
many cases, however, the particular form of these ad hoc measures owed much to
opinions formed and, to a somewhat lesser extent, agendas laid down, in the long
years of armed peace leading up to 1914. That is to say, while there was some
‘learning from the front’, many of the changes that took place in the armies of the
Western Front were the creatures of forces other than the pressing need to adapt to the
new realities of position warfare.
Learning from the Front is divided into three sections, each of which looks at
the way a particular type of organization within the British, French, and German
armies changed during the period in question. The first section deals with infantry
divisions, the second with army corps, and the third with the heavy artillery. Each of
the three ‘thematic’ sections is divided into three ‘national’ chapters. While the focus
of each of these chapters is on decisions taken in the year following the outbreak of
war, many pay considerable attention to the evolution of the organizations in question
in the years before 1914.

i
Preface
The present work was originally conceived as a conventional contribution to the
literature on the subject of military innovation. More specifically, it was to be an
exploration of the ways in which the armies that fought on the Western Front during
the first twelve months of World War I managed the great paradigm shift of that year,
the transition from a fast-moving, highly-mobile war of grand manoeuvres to siege
operations on a gargantuan scale. As is often the case with such things, the initial
plan for this project did not survive contact with the main body of the relevant
evidence. In particular, in the course of collecting background information on the
organisation and armament of the armies in question, I encountered a number of
anomalies. My attempts to resolve these conundra eventually led me to the realisation
that adaptation to the new reality of position warfare could not explain most, let alone
all, of the developments I was observing. I therefore decided to change the focus of
the project, turning an investigation of a single event into a broad-based exploration
of the way that the armies of the Western Front had evolved over the course of the
first year of the war
The strategy for this expedition was brutally simple. Rather than attempting to
answer a particular question, I planned to trace the evolution of the armies of the
Western Front by comparing the way that three types of organisations that were
common to all of them (infantry divisions, army corps, and heavy artillery parks) had
changed during the period in question. Though I was far from sure what this dragnet
might find, the anomalies I had encountered in the early stages of this project
suggested that there was much to be discovered in the long neglected world of unit
establishments and orders of battle.

ii
Acknowledgements
The series of events that culminated in this work began in 1994, with a conversation
between Hew Strachan and Robert Foley. Seven years (and many adventures) later,
the seed that these gentlemen had planted finally took root and, thanks to their help, as
well as that of Elihu Rose, Dennis Showalter and a number of very friendly university
administrators, I found myself as a graduate student at the University of Glasgow. In
2002, I followed Professor Strachan south of Hadrian’s Wall and installed myself at
Oxford University. I would therefore like to thank all of the aforementioned people
for the effort and good will that made it possible for me to realise my long-postponed
dream of a proper postgraduate education.
While writing is necessarily a solitary activity, the discovery of sources is a
highly social undertaking. I would therefore like to thank all of those who helped me
locate the far-flung books, journals and documents that made this thesis possible.
William Schneck took great pains to provide sources that I would otherwise have
certainly missed, as did Phillip Shiman and Nicholas Murray. All three of these
gentlemen also did much to educate me in the curious ways of military engineers.
Helen Durea of the National Archives of Canada helped me greatly when I made a
rare visit to Ottawa, while Mitchell Yockelson and Robin Cookson of the U.S.
National Archives were of great assistance during my frequent visits to College Park.
Members of the staff of the Liddell-Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s
College, London were delightfully proactive in their quest to help me find what I was
looking for in their collection, as were their counterparts at the Imperial War Museum
and the British National Archives. The archivists of the Service Historique de
l’Armée de Terre at the Château de Vincennes and their counterparts at the

iii
Hauptstaatsarchiv in Stuttgart were similarly accommodating. Fiona Wilkes of
Wolfson College and Paul Evans of the Royal Artillery Institution at Woolwich
proved unfailingly helpful practitioner’s of the librarian’s art, anticipating many of
my needs and suggesting a number of wonderfully dusty resources that I might
otherwise have overlooked.
In addition to the scholars, librarians and archivists who helped me with this
work, I would like to thank the many enthusiasts who took the time to answer the
many detailed questions that I posted on internet discussion forums dealing with
various aspects of World War I, as well as the many volunteer typists who made
electronic copies of French regimental histories. These people, whom I have only met
through the medium of a computer terminal, saved me an enormous amount of time,
trouble and expense.
Finally, I would like to thank Damien O’Connell, Paul Hederer, Kevin
McCarthy and the aforementioned William Schneck, all of whom were kind enough
to read drafts of this work, catching many mistakes and offering a great deal of
valuable advice.

iv
Note on Organisational Terminology
One of the great challenges facing those who would compare the structure of two or
more armies is that of organisational nomenclature. A regiment, brigade or division
in one army may be very different, in both size and composition, from a regiment,
brigade, or division in another. In an attempt to mitigate this problem, I have adopted
a number of conventions. Most of these reflect the contemporary usage of the armies
being studied. Those that do not were chosen in the hope that they might be
congenial to present-day readers of modern military history.
Military organisations that contain more than one arm and are normally
commanded by general officers (divisions, army corps, army detachments and armies)
are referred to as ‘formations’. This term corresponds with the contemporary French
term grandes unités and its German equivalent, Großverbände. Smaller organisations
(regiments, battalions, squadrons, batteries, and companies) are called ‘units’.
Whether a brigade is a ‘formation’ or a ‘unit’ depends upon its composition. A
brigade composed entirely of units belonging to a single arm is a ‘unit’. A brigade
with significant components from two or more arms is a ‘formation.’ (In August
1914, for example, the British Army fielded two types of cavalry brigades. One type,
which consisted chiefly of three cavalry regiments, would be here styled a ‘unit.’ The
other, which consisted of three cavalry regiments and a battery of horse artillery,
would qualify as a ‘formation’.)
For infantry, the standard unit of account is the ‘battalion’. This was,
throughout the period dealt with in this work, a similar sort of organisation in every
European army. It consisted of approximately 1,000 men, was usually divided into
four large companies, and was normally commanded by an officer with the rank of

v
major or lieutenant colonel. Battalions of elite light infantry, the French chasseurs
and the German Jäger, were sometimes larger than ordinary infantry battalions of the
day. These larger battalions, however, were relatively rare and thus do little to
diminish the usefulness of using the number of battalions as a quick means of
conveying the size of a given amount of infantry.
In Continental armies of the era of World War I, there was usually an echelon
of command that stood between the brigade and the infantry battalion. In most cases,
this intermediate echelon formed a permanently constituted unit known as a
‘regiment’. A few, however, were ad hoc organisations formed to coordinate the
actions of otherwise autonomous battalions. Whether improvised or permanent, the
vast majority of Continental regiments consisted of three component infantry
battalions, but a few took the field with two or four battalions.

vi
Note on Artillery Terminology
Many of the arguments in this work hinge upon the technical characteristics of
artillery pieces. Thus, great care has been taken to come up with a scheme for
describing such weapons that is both internally consistent, accessible to readers and,
insofar as is possible, in harmony with the terminology used by soldiers of the early
twentieth century. While complicated by the changes in military nomenclature that
took place in the middle years of the twentieth century, the tendency for some
categories to overlap, and the fact that some terms had both generic and specific
meanings, this scheme is relatively straightforward.
The term ‘gun’ will not be used as a synonym for the generic term ‘artillery
piece’. Instead, it will be used exclusively for artillery pieces with long barrels.
Likewise, ‘mortar’ will be reserved for artillery pieces with very short barrels and
‘howitzer’ for artillery pieces with barrels of intermediate length. Reduced to
numbers, a ‘gun’ is an artillery piece with a barrel that is more than twenty calibres
long. A ‘mortar’ is an artillery piece with a barrel that is less than ten calibres long.
A ‘howitzer’ is an artillery piece whose barrel is between ten and twenty calibres in
length. (A ‘calibre’ is a measure of the diameter of the bore of an artillery piece.
Thus, a weapon with a bore of ten centimetres would be a ‘mortar’ if its barrel was
less than one metre long, a ‘gun’ if its barrel was more than two metres long, and a
‘howitzer’ if the length of its barrel was somewhere between one and two metres.)
The aforementioned taxonomy is derived from the system in force in the
French Army in 1914. While also consistent with contemporary British usage, it
conflicts at the margins with German practice. The 210mm
medium siege howitzer,

vii
for example, had a barrel that was twelve calibres long. Nonetheless, it was officially
designated as a ‘mortar’ (Mörser).
Distinguishing different types of guns (as defined using the aforementioned
system) is both simple and in keeping with the practices of the armies in question.
Guns with calibres below 95mm
are ‘field guns’ while those with calibres greater than
95mm
are ‘heavy guns’. Distinguishing different types of howitzers is complicated by
the use of two overlapping systems, one for fully mobile howitzers (which were
designed to be fired from their travelling carriages in the manner of field guns) and
the other of which applied to siege howitzers (which were originally fired from
special firing platforms).
For light and medium field howitzers, as well as medium and heavy siege
howitzers, the co-existence of these two systems presents no particular problems.
Both heavy field howitzers and light siege howitzers, however, occupied the same
rung on the hierarchy of calibres. Indeed, there were many cases where the same
artillery piece was mounted one way for service as a light siege howitzer and another
way for use as a heavy field howitzer. To further complicate matters, the
development of on-carriage recoil mechanisms, which allowed light siege howitzers
to be fired without special firing platforms, had begun to permit the construction of
weapons that could fulfil both roles without the need to switch from one sort of
mounting to another.
Classification of Howitzers
95mm
- 115mm
115mm
- 130mm
130mm
- 160mm
160mm
- 220mm
220mm
- 280mm
Light Field Medium Field Heavy Field
Light Siege Medium Siege Heavy Siege

viii
The term ‘quick-firing’ will be used to describe any artillery piece that has
been provided with a mechanism that absorbs the force of recoil so completely that its
carriage remains still (or nearly so) when the piece is fired. This definition is in
keeping with the way the term was usually used in the British military press during
the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is, however, somewhat at odds with
the official designations of British artillery pieces, which used the term ‘quick-firing’
(‘QF’) to describe artillery pieces designed to use propellent charges contained in
metal cylinders rather than cloth bags.

1
Introduction
In the years leading up to World War I, the men who shaped the military policies of
the United Kingdom, France and Germany were profoundly interested in issues of
organisation and armament. Whether soldiers or statesmen, these officials paid a
great deal of attention to matters that present-day historians are inclined to dismiss as
technicalities: the establishments of units, the orders of battle of formations and the
performance characteristics of weapons. Those who doubt this need only spend an
hour or two with the back issues of a military periodical published during this period
or the parliamentary records dealing with military matters. What was true for the pre-
war era was also true for the war itself. If the minutes of executive bodies, the
correspondence between headquarters and the memoirs of leaders are any guide,
issues of organisation and armament continued to receive as much high-level attention
after 1 August 1914 as before.
In sharp contrast to the aforementioned primary sources, recent scholarly
works on the events surrounding World War I devote little direct attention to matters
of organisation and armament. While perusing this literature, it is relatively easy to
locate statements about how the French Army underestimated the potential of reserve
formations or how the German Army was better supplied with heavy artillery than the
British Expeditionary Force. It is much more difficult to find adequate descriptions of
these phenomena, let alone satisfying explanations. This is true, not only in cases
where issues of organisation and armament were peripheral to the subject at hand, but
also in works where they play a central role in the main argument.

2
The most obvious benefit of paying attention to matters of organisation and
armament is avoiding the unwitting repetition of errors of transcription - slips of the
pen or keyboard that, once in print, take on a life of their own. In the official history
of the British Expeditionary Force, for example, we find the statement that, in
October of 1914, the War Office sent out ‘eighty 6-inch howitzers of the old pattern,
in addition to the twenty-four already despatched to the Western Front’.1
As this
claim appears in an otherwise accurate list of ordnance provided to British forces in
France and Belgium during that month, it does not, by itself, arouse suspicion. An
attempt to link these weapons to the artillery order of battle of the British
Expeditionary Force, however, quickly uncovers an anomaly. As it turns out, there
were places in units for most of the artillery pieces that appeared in the list, including
the twenty-four 6-inch howitzers ‘already despatched’, but there was no
organisational accommodation for the eighty additional weapons of that type.
Moreover, subsequent discussions of these weapons make frequent mention of the
twenty-four 6-inch howitzers of the ‘already despatched’ units, but none at all the
eighty additional pieces of that type. A bit of digging in the papers of the officer who
did the order of battle research for the official history project provides a clue to the
origin of the ‘homeless’ howitzers in the official history. The ‘eighty’ howitzers, it
seems, had originally been eight howitzers that, having crossed over to the Continent
during the last two days of September of 1914, were mistakenly counted twice – the
first time as ‘eight’ and the second time as ‘eighty’. 2
1
The erroneous statement, which expanded the despatch of eight 6-inch howitzers
with the sending out of eighty such weapons, appears in James E. Edmonds, ed.,
Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, (London: HMSO, 1925), II, p. 25.
2
Papers of Archibald F. Becke, Library of the Royal Artillery Institution, Box 1.

3
Despatch of 6-Inch Howitzers to the British Expeditionary Force3
August 1914 – December 1914
Battery Number of Howitzers Date Despatched
No. 1 Siege Battery 4 19 September 1914
Total 24
Some will argue that counting howitzers is the business of antiquarians, not
historians. In some cases, that might be true. In this case, however, the number of 6-
inch howitzers serving with British forces on the Western Front played a significant
role in the fall, on 25 May 1915, of the Liberal government of Herbert Asquith. That
is to say, because the 6-inch howitzer was the only weapon in the artillery park of the
British Expeditionary Force that possessed both the accuracy and the power to
reliably destroy German trenches of the type employed on the Western Front in the
winter of 1915, the number of such weapons on hand set the outside limits for the
attacks carried out by British forces at the battle of Neuve Chapelle (10–13 March
1915). Moreover, as the restricted scale of these attacks impeded the exploitation of
the initial success enjoyed by the British forces, it set the stage for a second offensive
in the same sector, the operation that became the battle of Aubers Ridge (9 May
1915). This second operation, which was based on the false premise that artillery
pieces of other sorts could serve as substitutes for absent 6-inch howitzers, failed
miserably. This fiasco, in turn, led directly to the ‘shell scandal’, the storm of
criticism in both Parliament and the press that did so much to push the government in
question out of office.
3
Untitled list of heavy and siege batteries despatched to France in 1914 and 1915,
Papers of Archibald F. Becke, Box 1, checked against relevant war diaries (TNA, WO
95/304, WO 95/393, WO 95/472, WO 95/479, and WO 95/543).

4
Just as proper attention to questions of organisation and armament helps the
historian deal with stenographic mistakes, due diligence in that realm can also
uncover errors of other kinds. For example, one of the most widely read works on the
operational plans set in motion at the start of World War I, argues that the provisions
for the deployment of reserve units made by Plan XVII reflected a desire on the part
of Joseph Joffre (who was then chief of the General Staff of the French Army) to
justify the ‘three-year law’ (a piece of legislation that extended the time that
conscripts spent in uniform). To support this contention, the author correctly points
out that Plan XVII had the effect of reducing the number of infantry brigades in the
reserve divisions to be formed in the event of war. Unfortunately, this unassailable
fact is immediately followed by a six-fold overstatement of the size of that reduction.
That is to say, while the actual number of infantry brigades removed from the wartime
order of battle of the French Army was sixteen, the author claims that ninety-six such
units were eliminated.4
The most likely cause for the sextupling of the number of infantry brigades
taken out of French reserve divisions by Plan XVII was an inadvertent substitution of
‘brigades’ for ‘battalions’. This, of course, is easy enough to do. In some contexts,
such as the British Army of World War I or the German Army of World War II, the
term ‘brigade’ was used to designate artillery units that occupied the same echelon in
the hierarchy of military organisations as infantry battalions. In the French Army of
1914, however, a ‘brigade’ of infantry was invariably composed of multiple
‘battalions’, with the smallest brigades consisting of four battalions and standard
brigades made up of six such units.
4
Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive, Military Decision Making and the
Disasters of 1914, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 96-97.

5
The Assignment of Brigades and Battalions to French Reserve Divisions5
1909-1914
Plan Date Reserve
Divisions
Reserve
Brigades
Battalions
per Brigade
Reserve
Battalions
XVI 1909 22 66 6 396
XVII 1914 25 50 6 300
Net Gain (Loss) 3 (16) - (96)
In addition to helping historians avoid errors of calculation and translation, a
good grounding in matters of organisation and armament improves their ability to
make sense of the causes, context and implications of many of the major events on
either side of the outbreak of World War I. The absence of such a foundation is very
much in evidence in the recent literature on the French ‘three-year law’ of 1913. In
one case, a monograph on the subject begins with the false assumption that the chief
purpose of that law was a substantial increase in the number of active units available
at the start of war. 6
In another, an argument about the deployment of forces called for
by Plan XVII is based on a more elaborate version of that assumption, which pairs an
increase in the number active units with a commensurate reduction in the number of
reserve units.7
In fact, while some early advocates of the ‘three-year law’ may have
seen it as a means of increasing the number of active units, only a handful of such
organisations (many of which were specialised artillery batteries of one type or
another) were created as a result of its passage. Moreover, as conscripts serving their
third year with the colours filled tens of thousands of vacancies in active units that
would otherwise have been filled by reservists, the three-year law actually increased
the number of men who were available for assignment to reserve units.
5
AFGG, I (1), pp. 11 and 13, Annexes 4 and 6.
6
Gerd Krumeich, Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve of the First World
War, (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1984), p. 49.
7
Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive, pp. 96-97.

6
Effect of the ‘Three Year Law’ on the
Ability of the French Army to Create Reserve Units8
Law Classes Serving
with the Colours
Classes in the
Army Reserve
Classes Available
on Mobilisation
‘two-year’ (1905) 2 11 13
‘three-year’ (1913) 3 11 14
Effect of the ‘Three Year Law’ on the Peacetime
Order of Battle of the French Army
(Exclusive of the Armée d’Afrique and the Troupes Coloniales) 9
Authorised Strength Infantry
Battalions
Field Batteries Cavalry Squadrons
1 July 1913 468 618 364
1 July 1914 468 618 364
Increase (Decrease) 0 0 0
Authorised Strength Fortress
Batteries
Heavy Batteries Horse Artillery
1 July 1913 89 21 21
1 July 1914 68 57 30
Increase (Decrease) (21) 36 9
Another benefit of the serious study of organisation and armament is the
uncovering of the tales that lie hidden in the figures. This sort of detective work,
which is the daily bread of scholars who deal with earlier periods, is somewhat alien
to most students of the document-rich twentieth century. Nonetheless, those who
move beyond the pre-fabricated narratives of memoirs and memoranda will find many
untold tales: accounts of events that were so obvious to participants that no
explanation seemed necessary, too glacial in their unfolding to be noticed by
contemporaries, or too politically sensitive to be reduced to writing.
8
Bulletin des Lois de la République Française, 1905, p. 1278-79 and 1913, p. 2084.
9
Bulletin des Lois de la République Française, 1909, p. 1434; 1912, p. 3414; 1913, p.
676 and 1914, p. 1061, as well as a condensed version of the ministerial decree of 16
April 1914, which, while strangely absent from the Bulletin des Lois de la République
Française, was summarised in the official supplement (Partie Officiale) to the Revue
d’Artillerie, 25 June 1914.

7
The keys that unlock these stories are detailed reconstruction and systematic
comparison. Detailed reconstruction is the use of a variety of sources to establish the
actual order of battle of the armies in question at various points in time. While simple
in concept, this task is greatly complicated by the fragmentary quality of many
sources, as well as by the tendency of authors to confuse theory with practice,
sacrifice full description on the altar of easy exposition, and retrofit features of later
periods upon the structures of earlier ones. Where detailed reconstruction is largely a
matter of detective work, systematic comparison is an exercise in presentation. This
second task thus begins with the discovery of ‘highest common denominators’,
features that, being shared by all armies in question, help establish the size and shape
of the military organisations being compared. (The most important of these ‘highest
common denominators’ was the infantry battalion, a unit with an ideal strength of a
thousand men or so that served as one of the basic building blocks of most of the
world’s armies, to include those of Great Britain, Germany and France, during the
early twentieth century.)
The stories that emerge from this process are of two kinds. Some describe
overarching developments, the general trends that encompassed all three of the armies
dealt with in this study. Others are tales of particular men, individuals who, when
faced with the wet cement of a dynamic situation, decided to leave their mark on the
pavement of history.

8
Chapter 1
British Infantry Divisions
At the very start of World War I, the infantry divisions mobilised by the British Army
were of two basic types. The six infantry divisions of the Regular Army were formed
upon one framework. The fourteen infantry divisions of the Territorial Force were
laid out on another.1
Designed by the same people at the same time, these two
structures had much in common. Indeed, the chief difference between them lay in the
armament and organisation of the divisional field artillery.2
The infantry divisions of
the original Expeditionary Force were provided with an ample number of thoroughly
modern artillery pieces. A shortage of these first-class weapons, however, forced the
Territorial Force infantry divisions to make do with a substantially smaller number of
obsolescent guns and obsolete howitzers. In the course of the twelve months that
followed, shortages of one or more of the indispensable ingredients of field artillery
units would continue to plague the British Army. Thus, while the authorities who
assembled the many infantry divisions sent out to reinforce the Expeditionary Force
were invariably able to provide them with close copies of the infantry, cavalry,
engineer and logistics establishments that had been designed before the war, they
could not do the same for their field artillery establishments. The result was a degree
of organisational chaos that would not be fully remedied until January 1917.
1
The organisation of the Highland Division differed slightly from the structure of the
other thirteen infantry divisions of the Territorial Force. Where the other divisions
possessed nine batteries of field guns, the Highland Division had six batteries of field
guns and three batteries of mountain guns. Archibald F. Becke, Order of Battle of
Divisions, Part 2A, (Newport, Gwent: Ray Westlake, 1989), pp. 104-5.
2
Upon mobilisation, the Regular Army and Territorial Force divisions had also
differed where mounted troops were concerned. These differences, however, were
eliminated in October 1914. Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 2A, p. 150.

9
Composed exclusively of infantry divisions of the Regular Army, the original
Expeditionary Force had only one way of organising the field artillery of its infantry
divisions. By the end of 1914, the number of distinct infantry division field artillery
establishments employed by British Empire forces on the Western Front had grown to
four. (Two of these establishments were for divisions composed mostly of units of
the peacetime Regular Army that had not been assigned to the original Expeditionary
Force. The fourth was for the two infantry divisions of the Indian Corps.) Six
months later, the presence of a Canadian division, six Territorial Force divisions, and
eight New Army divisions increased to seven the number of different organisational
patterns for the divisional field artillery of the Expeditionary Force. 3
The range of
these structures was such that one infantry division might have twice as many field
pieces (seventy-two rather than thirty-six) as another. It was also possible for one
division to be entirely equipped with the most up-to-date field pieces available to any
army on the Western Front while a neighbouring formation had to make do with
inferior substitutes – weapons that were deficient in range, rate of fire or weight of
shell. As a result, the already overworked staff officers, artillery officers, gunners,
drivers and horse teams of the Expeditionary Force were subjected to the additional
strain of shifting batteries from one part of the front to another. (On 10 March 1915,
for example, twenty-one of the forty-six field batteries taking part in the attack upon
Neuve Chapelle had been borrowed from divisions that were not otherwise
participating in the attack.)4
3
The New Armies were created on 6 August 1914 when Parliament authorised the
recruitment of 500,000 volunteers for the Regular Army, to serve ‘for a period of
three years or until the war is concluded’. They would eventually provide 30 infantry
divisions to the land forces of the British Empire. For organisational details, see
Archibald F. Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Parts 3A and 3B, (Newport, Gwent:
Ray Westlake, 1989).
4
Untitled Notes, Papers of A.F. Becke, Box 1, Royal Artillery Institution.

10
The great irony of the structural cacophony that reigned during the first year of
World War I is that the Expeditionary Force began the war with a field artillery
component that was strong in numbers, uniformly organised and extraordinarily well
equipped. 5
Each of the six infantry divisions of the original Expeditionary Force was
provided with fifty-four 18-pounder (84mm
) field guns and eighteen 4.5-inch (114mm
)
howitzers.6
A comparable German infantry division (one of the fifty-two most
favoured divisions of the mobilised German Army) had the same number of field
guns and howitzers as an infantry division of the original Expeditionary Force. These
weapons, however, were substantially older and much less powerful than their British
counterparts.7
A contemporary French infantry division was in an even worse
position. Its famous 75mm
field gun had a rate of aimed fire that was superior to that
of an 18-pounder, but fired a shell that was substantially lighter. It had, moreover, no
howitzers at all.8
5
Before 5 August 1914, the term ‘Expeditionary Force’ was applied exclusively to the
field army of six infantry divisions and one large cavalry division that had been
created to conduct major campaigns in places other than the British Isles. Once this
original contingent began to receive substantial reinforcements, the term
‘Expeditionary Force’ was increasingly applied to all British forces serving on the
Western Front. (As late as the middle of August 1914, however, military members of
the Army Council were referring to what would become the First New Army as ‘the
New Expeditionary Force.’) Later, when the presence of other Expeditionary Forces
(e.g. the Canadian Expeditionary Force) led to confusion, the term ‘British
Expeditionary Force’ came into general use.
6
The six infantry divisions of the original Expeditionary Force were also provided
with 60-pounder (127mm
) heavy guns.
7
The defects of German field artillery equipment were, to a large extent, the function
of poor timing. Having rearmed their field artillery batteries just prior to the start of
the quick-firing revolution, the German authorities decided to retrofit those pieces
with on-carriage recoil mechanisms. As a result, the standard German field pieces of
1914 were inferior to weapons that had been designed, from the ground up, as quick-
firing weapons. Herbert Jäger, German Artillery of World War I, (Marlborough:
Crowood Press, 2001), pp. 14-18.
8
Hans Linnenkohl, Vom Einzelschuß zur Feuerwaltze, (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe
Verlag, 1990), pp. 66, 74, 76, 86, 89, and 91. Range figures for the shrapnel shell
fired by the French 75mm
gun are from J. Schott, ‘Die gegenwärtige Ausrüstung der
Feldartillerie mit Kanonen,’ Militär-Wochenblatt, 1905, pp. 3,326-32.

11
First-Line Field Pieces of the British, French and German Armies
August 1914
Type Model
Year
Weight
of Shell
Range
Great Britain 18-pounder field gun 1904 8.6 kilos 6,000 metres
France 75mm
field gun 1897 5.5 kilos 5,500 metres
Germany 77mm
field gun 1896 6.8 kilos 5,500 metres
Great Britain 4.5-inch howitzer 1910 17.5 kilos 6,000 metres
Germany 105mm
howitzer 1898 15.7 kilos 5,300 metres
The field artillery establishments of the six infantry divisions of the original
Expeditionary Force were organised into four groups known as ‘brigades’. Three of
these brigades were armed with eighteen 18-pounder field guns. The fourth was
armed with eighteen 4.5-inch howitzers. Apart from the difference in armament, the
four field artillery brigades of a division of the original Expeditionary Force were
nearly identical. Each was commanded by a lieutenant colonel and consisted of a
small headquarters, an ammunition column and three six-piece batteries. Indeed, the
only organisational difference between the two types of field artillery brigade was a
function of their relationship to the infantry. Each field gun brigade was formally
affiliated with a particular infantry brigade. This meant that, whenever possible, a
field gun brigade would be located in close proximity to its affiliated infantry brigade.
It also meant that, under normal circumstances, the ammunition column of a field gun
brigade would only supply small arms ammunition to units of its affiliated infantry
brigade. 9
Howitzer brigades, however, were free of any formal connection to
particular infantry brigades. Their ammunition columns, which were entirely
concerned with the carriage and issue of artillery ammunition, were therefore
somewhat smaller than those of field gun brigades.
9
John Headlam, The History of the Royal Artillery, From the Indian Mutiny to the
Great War, Volume II (1899-1914), (Woolwich: Royal Artillery Institution, 1937),
pp. 168 and 213.

12
The second series of British infantry divisions to be formed for service on the
Western Front in 1914 (the 7th
, 8th
, 27th
, 28th
and 29th
Divisions) were, like the six
infantry divisions of the original Expeditionary Force, formations of the Regular
Army. However, as few preparations for their creation had been made before the
outbreak of war, these divisions had to be improvised from whatever elements the
War Office could lay its hands on: the small number of home-based units that had not
crossed the Channel with the original Expeditionary Force and a somewhat larger
number of units recalled from India, South Africa and other overseas postings.10
There were a sufficient number of infantry battalions in this pool of unallocated units
to create five infantry divisions of the type provided to the original Expeditionary
Force. Providing a sufficient number of artillery units, however, proved more
difficult. The formation of the original Expeditionary Force had used up the entire
supply of batteries armed with 4.5-inch howitzers. The improvised Regular Army
divisions would therefore have to go to war without any of these weapons. Batteries
armed with 18-pounder field guns were available, but not in the numbers needed to
fill out the establishments of full-strength infantry divisions. Instead, each of the five
improvised divisions had to make do with two-thirds of the field guns (thirty-six
rather than fifty-four) allocated to the infantry divisions of the original Expeditionary
Force. 11
10
In August 1914, approximately half of the infantry battalions of the British Regular
Army were serving in the British Isles. The rest were either assigned overseas
garrisons or attached (at a rate of one British battalion for each infantry brigade) to the
Indian Army. For details, see Bruce I. Gudmundsson, The British Expeditionary
Force, 1914-1915, (Oxford: Osprey, 2005), pp. 24-26.
11
In December 1914, the War Office had a small number of 4.5-inch howitzers
available for issue to the 27th
, 28th
and 29th
Divisions. However, because ammunition
for these weapons was in short supply, the divisions were deployed without them.
Minutes for the meeting of the Military Members of the Army Council of 9 December
1914, TNA, WO 163/46 and Minutes on Decisions, 1914, TNA, WO 162/1.

13
The first two of the improvised divisions to be formed, the 7th
and the 8th
Divisions, got some compensation for their missing field pieces. In addition to their
two standard field artillery brigades, each was provided with a brigade of Royal Horse
Artillery.12
(In 1914, a horse artillery brigade consisted of two batteries, each of
which was equipped with six 13-pounder field guns. It was thus substantially smaller
than a contemporary field artillery brigade.)13
The three other improvised divisions
(the 27th
, 28th
, and 29th
Divisions) received no additional batteries at all.14
In addition to reducing the firepower of the improvised divisions, the shortage
of 18-pounder field guns posed a danger to the system of affiliation that linked each
infantry brigade to a field gun brigade. (Among other things, each field gun brigade
carried a mobile reserve of small arms ammunition for the use of its affiliated infantry
brigade.) The 7th
and 8th
Divisions solved this problem by treating their horse artillery
brigades as if they had been proper field gun brigades. That is to say, rather than
being affiliated with a standard field gun brigade, one of the infantry brigades in each
of these divisions was affiliated with a horse artillery brigade. Lacking these
supplementary horse artillery brigades, the 27th
, 28th
and 29th
Divisions had to find a
12
The 7th
and the 8th
Divisions were each also provided with two batteries of 4.7-inch
(120mm
) heavy guns. These are discussed in Chapter 7.
13
The Royal Horse Artillery of 1914 was disproportionately large for the British
Army of the time. That is to say, while each horse artillery battery was designed to
work closely with a single brigade of cavalry, there were far more horse artillery
batteries (twenty-six) than cavalry brigades (nine). Indeed, even when one makes
allowance for the batteries needed by the eleven cavalry brigades of the Indian Army,
mobilisation still found a number of horse artillery batteries without a meaningful
assignment.
14
An overview of the structure of the eleven Regular Army divisions formed by the
British Army in 1914 can be found in Archibald F. Becke, Order of Battle of
Divisions, Part 1, (Newport, Gwent: Ray Westlake, 1989). Details of the formation
of the 7th
and 8th
Divisions can be found in Christopher T. Atkinson, The Seventh
Division, 1914-1918, (London: John Murray, 1927) and J.H. Boraston, The Eighth
Division in War, 1914-1918, (London: The Medici Society, 1926).

14
different solution to the shortage of 18-pounder field gun batteries.15
Their response
was to divide the thirty-six field guns allotted to each of them among three cut-down
field gun brigades.16
Like a standard field gun brigade, each of these units consisted
of a headquarters, an ammunition column and three batteries.17
As each battery had
but four 18-pounder field guns and the ammunition columns had far fewer wagons,
the brigades of the 27th
, 28th
and 29th
Divisions were substantially smaller than those
of the first eight Regular Army divisions mobilised in 1914.18
Field Artillery Pieces of Regular Army Infantry Divisions
Formed for the British Expeditionary Force
Divisions 18-Pounder
Field Guns
4.5-inch
Howitzers
13-pounder
Field Guns
1st
through 6th
54 18 -
7th
and 8th
36 - 12
27th
and 28th
36 - -
29th
36 - -
15
Three of the field gun batteries of the 29th
Division had been formed by the
conversion of three horse artillery batteries. Though these batteries retained both their
old titles and their administrative connection to the Royal Horse Artillery, they were
armed, organised and employed in exactly the same manner as contemporary field
gun batteries. R. M. Johnson, 29th
Divisional Artillery, War Record and Honours
Book, 1915-1918, (Woolwich: Royal Artillery Institution, 1921), p. 161.
16
The elements formed into the field gun batteries of the 27th
, 28th
and 29th
Divisions
arrived in the divisional assembly areas as a jumble of brigade headquarters, partial
batteries, and unmanned guns. Details of how these were formed into twenty-seven
four-gun batteries can be found in Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 1, pp.
100-101, 108-109 and 120-121.
17
Early plans for the 27th
and 28th
Divisions called for the provision of four four-piece
batteries to each of the three field gun brigades. These plans were altered, however,
by the decision to form the 29th
Division. War Office, War Establishments of the 27th
Division (7 December 1914) and War Establishments of the 28th
Division (19
December 1914), TNA, WO 24/900.
18
Initially formed for service on the Western Front, the 29th
Division was diverted to
the Mediterranean shortly before its scheduled departure for France. War Diary, First
Army, AC, RG 9(III-D-3), Volume 5068, Reel T-11132.

15
The formation of the five improvised divisions exhausted the supply of
Regular Army field artillery batteries. It also left the authorities at home with very
few spare artillery pieces of the types employed by the original Expeditionary Force.
As most of these were needed for such purposes as training, maintenance and the
replacement of casualties, very few were available for issue to new formations. As a
result, formations other than those of the pre-war Regular Army had to make do with
weapons set aside for special purposes in the years before the war.19
The fourteen
infantry divisions initially mobilised by the Territorial Force employed the
obsolescent weapons already in their possession.20
The divisions provided by
Australia, New Zealand and Canada made use of the small number of modern field
pieces purchased by their governments. Likewise, the divisions provided by the
Indian Army for service on the Western Front augmented their meagre artillery
establishments with batteries taken from formations remaining on the Subcontinent. 21
The New Army divisions, however, had no pre-existing supply of artillery pieces and
would therefore have to wait until new weapons emerged from the factories.22
19
In December 1914, the War Office had a small number of 4.5-inch howitzers ready
for issue, but declined to provide them to the 27th
, 28th
or 29th
Divisions because
ammunition for such weapons was in short supply. Minutes for the meeting of the
Military Members of the Army Council of 9 December 1914, TNA, WO 163/46 and
Minutes on Decisions, 1914, TNA, WO 162/1.
20
The Territorial Force was an organisation of part-time volunteers that had been
formed to protect the British Isles from ‘such invaders as may be able to evade the
fleet.’ When mobilised, its members served on the same terms as soldiers of the
Regular Army, with the important reservation that they could not be sent overseas
without their explicit consent. The quotation is from The Royal Review at Worsley, a
souvenir booklet prepared for a review of the East Lancashire Division of the
Territorial Force in 1909.
21
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 1; F. W. Perry, Order of Battle of
Divisions, Part5B, (Newport, Gwent: Ray Westlake, 1993) and War Diary, 1st
Canadian Divisional Artillery, AC, RG 9(III-D-3), Volume 4958, Reel T-10775.
22
The New Armies were the ‘waves’ of entirely new infantry divisions raised in the
late summer and autumn 1914. The First New Army was composed of the first six of
these divisions to be formed. The Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth New Armies were
likewise the second, third, fourth and fifth six-division groups to be created. Closely

16
During the second week of the war, the War Office was sufficiently optimistic
about the capabilities of British gun foundries that it authorised artillery
establishments for New Army divisions that were identical to those of the Regular
Army divisions formed before the war. (This was also in keeping with the idea that
New Army divisions should resemble, to the greatest degree possible, the infantry
divisions of the original Expeditionary Force.)23
Indeed, the only cautionary note in
these plans was the proviso that each New Army field battery be initially formed with
four guns or howitzers, with the two remaining pieces to be delivered as soon as they
emerged from the factories.24
By the first week of September, however, the War
Office had become less sanguine about its ability to provide ordnance to New Army
divisions and thus began to entertain alternatives to its original plan. One of these,
drafted for the director of artillery, suggested that the number of pieces in each battery
be reduced from six to four.25
In addition, it recommended that the number of
batteries in each division vary by seniority, with the first divisions to be formed
getting much more artillery than the last.26
Nonetheless, as the deployment of the first
of the New Army divisions was still several months away, the War Office made no
changes to the establishments of those formations.
associated with Field Marshal Herbert H. Kitchener, 1st
Earl Kitchener of Khartoum
(1850-1916), then Secretary of State for War, the New Army divisions were largely
composed of men who had joined the Regular Army under a special programme that
allowed them to enlist for ‘for a period of three years or until the war is concluded’.
23
Army Council, Minutes and Precis, 1914-1916, TNA, WO 163/21. The desire to
imitate the original Expeditionary Force was one of the reasons that each New Army
consisted of six infantry divisions.
24
Minutes for the Meeting of the Military Members of the Army Council, 13 August
1914 and 9 September 1914. TNA, WO 163/44.
25
‘Artillery for K Armies’, TNA, WO/161/22.
26
The director of artillery was one of the three principal subordinates of the master
general of the Ordnance. Owen Wheeler, The War Office, Past and Present,
(London: Methuen and Company, 1914), p. 300.

17
Assignment of Regular Army Service Batteries, Royal Field Artillery
August 1914-December 1914
Assignment Batteries Brigades
1st
through 6th
Divisions 72 24
7th
and 8th
Divisions 12 4
27th
through 29th
Divisions 19 6
Indian Corps (Western Front) 18 6
Indian Army (India) 14 7
Total Assigned 135 45
Estimate of Artillery Pieces Expected by 1 July 1915
(As Drafted for the Director of Artillery on 2 September 1914)
Source 18-pounder
Field Guns
4.5-inch
Howitzers
New Production 626 172
Sent out from Canada 45 0
Sent out from India 50 0
Total 721 172
Allocation of Artillery to New Army Infantry Divisions
Destination 18-Pounder
Field Guns
4.5-inch
Howitzers
60-Pounder
Heavy Guns
First New Army 36 8 4
Second New Army 36 8 4
Third New Army 24 8 0
Fourth New Army 24 0 0
Allocation of Artillery Pieces to Each New Army
Field Guns
4.5-inch
Howitzers
60-Pounder
Heavy Guns
First New Army 216 48 24
Second New Army 216 48 24
Third New Army 144 48 0
Fourth New Army 144 28 0
Total Allocated 720 172 48
Total Available 721 172 48
Remaining 1 0 0

18
On 12 October 1914, the master general of the Ordnance, Major-General Sir
Stanley B. Von Donop, made a formal argument for limiting the initial provision of
field guns to New Army divisions to four pieces per battery.27
He explained that the
orders he had placed with various factories for the manufacture of 18-pounder field
guns called for 892 such weapons to be delivered by 15 June 1915. (This was a
considerable increase over the 626 field guns of that type ordered during the first
month of the war.) When a small allowance was made for error and delay, Von
Donop argued, this volume of orders provided a reasonable expectation that 864 field
guns would be delivered before the middle of 1915. (All of the orders, after all, had
been placed with established arms manufacturers that had been working with the
British Army for decades.) These 864 field guns were sufficient to arm nine four-gun
field batteries in each of the twenty-four New Army divisions then being formed.
However, the provision of the 1,296 field guns needed to give nine six-gun batteries
to each of these divisions, struck Von Donop as well beyond the capabilities of these
manufacturers.28
(Von Donop’s predictions proved accurate. Between the beginning
of the war and 1 July 1915, the British Army took delivery of 803 new 18-pounder
field guns.)29
27
Sir Stanley Brenton Von Donop (1860-1941) was descended from a family of
Hessian origin that had been closely associated with the British Army since the late
eighteenth century. Born and raised in Great Britain, he was a career artillery officer
with a strong interest in the technical side of his profession. Prior to becoming the
Master General of the Ordnance (7 February 1913 to 3 December 1916), he served as
commandant of the Siege Artillery School at Lydd (Kent). While a number of official
documents, including some related to Von Donop’s knighthood, spell the name in the
German style (with a lower case ‘v’), the catalogues of the British Library, the
National Archives and the National Portrait Gallery treat the ‘Von’ as an integral part
of the name rather than as a separable preposition.
28
Untitled notes dealing with the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on 12 and 13
October 1914, Papers of Sir Stanley Von Donop, TNA, WO 79/79.
29
Untitled notes dealing with the delivery of 18-pounder field guns, 4.5-inch
howitzers, and 60-pounder heavy guns between the start of the war and 1 July 1915,
Papers of Sir Stanley Von Donop, TNA, WO 79/79.

19
Availability of First-Line Field Artillery Pieces30
Source 18-Pounder
Field Gun
4.5-inch
Howitzer
Available on 1 August 1914 624 128
Provided by India 240 12
Provided by Canada 84 0
Manufactured 43 40
Available on 31 December 1914 991 180
Issue of First-Line Field Artillery Pieces to Infantry Divisions
Field Gun
4.5-inch
Howitzer
1st
through 6th
Divisions 324 108
7th
and 8th
Divisions 72 0
27th
through 29th
Divisions 108 0
Indian Corps 108 0
Canadian Division 50 0
Total for Divisions 662 108
Use of First-Line Field Artillery Pieces31
Use 18-Pounder
Field Gun
4.5-inch
Howitzer
Total available 991 180
Formed into batteries 662 108
Used to replace losses 68 1
Pieces Remaining 261 71
30
‘Number of Guns Possession at Outbreak of War …,’ Von Donop Papers, TNA,
WO 79/84; Minutes for the Meeting of the Military Members of the Army Council for
5 October, 1914. TNA, WO 163/45 and A. Fortescue Duguid, Official History of the
Canadian Forces in the Great War, 1914-1918, (Ottowa: J.O. Patenaude, 1938),
Appendix 127a, p. 104.
31
War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great
War, 1914-1920, (London: HMSO, 1922), p. 491.

20
Von Donop’s proposal seems to have been well received, not so much for the
figures that provided its foundation, but for the way that it satisfied both sides of a
debate that had been simmering within the British Army for a period of years. For
several years, advocates of old-fashioned six-piece field batteries had waged a polite
but heated war of words against those who championed four-gun field batteries à la
française. This debate came to a boil in 1911, when enthusiasm for French methods
within the Royal Field Artillery was at its height. To help settle this matter, a full-
scale experiment was conducted to see if a four-piece battery was indeed easier to
move, hide, register, and control than a six-piece unit. 32
Though this experiment
failed to demonstrate the superiority of the four-piece organisation and thus resulted
in an official decision to retain the traditional six-piece structure, a number of
prominent soldiers remained convinced of the inherent virtues of the four-gun battery.
Among these was Sir John French, the ‘field-marshal commanding-in-chief’ of all
British Empire forces on the Western Front for the first sixteen months of the war.33
In the two weeks that followed his report to the Cabinet Committee, Von
Donop placed a large number of additional orders for artillery pieces of the three
types then used by infantry divisions. As these orders were not accompanied by any
significant expansion of capacity, sober observers (including Von Donop himself)
were less than optimistic about the ability of manufacturers to fulfil their ambitious
promises. This multiplication of orders might nonetheless have had the effect of
vindicating the advocates of the six-piece battery. Surprisingly, the great increase in
32
Report of the Committee Appointed to Carry Out Certain Field Artillery Trials on
Salisbury Plain, October 1911, TNA, WO 33/3024
33
In a letter to Lord Kitchener dated 28 November 1914, French wrote, ‘I am
personally in favour, and I always have been, of the four-gun battery. I have tried
hard to get this change brought in at the same time as I effected the double-company
organisation for the infantry.’ Kitchener Papers, TNA, PRO 30/57/49.

21
orders placed with arms manufacturers coincided with the adoption of a very different
solution to the problem of providing field artillery to New Army divisions. This new
approach, which first came to light in the late autumn of 1914, called for the radical
restructuring of the field artillery brigades of New Army divisions. Instead of three
six-piece batteries (for a total of eighteen pieces), each New Army field artillery
brigade was to consist of four four-piece batteries (for a total of sixteen pieces.)34
At first glance, the adoption of the ‘four-by-four’ structure for field artillery
brigades seems to have made very little sense. The new structure was a complete
novelty to the British Army of the time – something that officers had never
encountered in practice and rarely engaged in the realm of theory.35
It was,
furthermore, something that cannot be adequately explained by a shortage of the right
sort of weapons. The reform reduced the total number of field pieces needed by each
New Army division by eight, and thus the total number of field pieces required to arm
the twenty-four or so New Army divisions then being contemplated by about two
hundred. This number, however, is too large to have served as a reasonable margin
for error for the orders that had recently been placed with the ordnance factories. It is
therefore likely that the chief motivation for the adoption of the ‘four-by-four’
structure was something other than a desire to economise on field guns and howitzers.
34
The first mention of the ‘four-by-four’ scheme in the records of the Army Council
appears in the minutes for a meeting of the military members held on 12 November
1914. On that day, the military members decided that the 27th
Division should have
eight four-piece field gun batteries. Minutes for the Meeting of the Military Members
of the Army Council, 12 November 1914, TNA, WO 163/45.
35
Among the many organisational schemes discussed in the Journal of the Royal
Artillery of the years prior to World War I, only one came close to the ‘four-by-four’
structure adopted in 1914. This scheme called for a field artillery brigade that was
divided into two eight-piece batteries, each of which consisted of two four-piece
‘troops’. C. B. Thackeray, ‘Eight Gun Batteries’, Journal of the Royal Artillery,
March 1914.

22
During the decade that preceded the outbreak of World War I, one of the most
important organisational trends in the Royal Field Artillery was the increase in the
relative importance of the field artillery brigade and the consequent decrease in the
autonomy of field artillery batteries. Prior to the Boer War, what were then called
‘brigade divisions’ were temporary organisations in which the lieutenant colonel
commanding had relatively little influence. In 1900, however, the brigade division
was made a unit in its own right, with a small but permanent staff and long-standing
relationships with its component batteries. Within the next five years, the cumbrous
title of ‘brigade division’ was replaced by ‘brigade’, a programme for quartering all
three batteries of a brigade in the same location was begun, and the practice of
sending batteries overseas as individual units was replaced by the rotation of complete
brigades. The field artillery brigade was thus becoming ‘a little regiment’, a social,
administrative and disciplinary unit that was beginning to become much more than a
mere assemblage of batteries.36
Notwithstanding the growing importance of field artillery brigades, the start of
World War I found the commander of a British field artillery battery with
substantially more autonomy than his counterparts in other arms. Tradition held that
batteries were the unit of account for field artillery, the echelon at which fire was
controlled, and level at which the science of gunnery was reconciled with the art of
tactics. The introduction of quick-firing field pieces, which extended both the range
and the firepower of a battery, had the effect of increasing this autonomy, as well as
increasing the complexity of the technical and tactical problems he was expected to
solve.
36
H.C. Williams-Wynn, ‘The Brigade System in the Royal Field Artillery’, Journal of
the Royal Artillery, April 1905, pp. 17-18.

23
Finding officers capable of commanding autonomous six-piece batteries was
hard enough in a force of long-service professionals. In an army that was expanding
by a factor of five in the course of a single year, the provision of such officers was
considerably more difficult. The promotion of every captain who had been serving as
second-in-command of a Regular Army field battery or adjutant of a Regular Army
field artillery brigade at the outbreak of war (a total of some 180 officers) would have
yielded a sufficient number of qualified majors to command half of the 360 six-piece
batteries originally contemplated for the thirty New Army divisions then being
formed. This, however, would also have left 180 six-piece batteries to be commanded
by men drawn from a pool formed by the 405 or so officers who had been senior
lieutenants in August 1914. Put more bluntly, the designers of the New Armies faced
a situation in which most battery commanders would be substantially less experienced
than the officers who had commanded batteries of the Regular Army in times of
peace.
Reducing the number of field pieces in each battery from six to four promised
to solve this potential problem by simplifying the work of battery commanders. With
four guns or howitzers to control rather than six, a relatively inexperienced officer
would have a command that was easier to move, easier to hide, easier to register on a
given target, and easier to administrate. His battery sergeant major, who would
probably lack the degree of experience normally associated with that rank, would
have a third fewer men to oversee.37
His similarly unseasoned farrier would have
37
The authors of the many articles on the subject of field artillery organisation
published in the Journal of the Royal Artillery during the years immediately prior to
1914 proposed a bewildering variety of structures for batteries and brigades. They
were, nonetheless, unanimous in their assumption that a four-piece battery was easier
to handle than a six-piece battery.

24
fewer horses to care for, as well as a smaller number of shoeing smiths to supervise.38
At the same time that inexperienced officers had their duties simplified, officers with
more service under their belts would be able to have influence on more than one
battery. The most senior would take command of brigades, which they would keep
on a tight rein. The slightly less senior, whether commanding batteries of their own
or serving as brigade adjutants, could fulfil the role of mentor to the young battery
commanders.
The new relationship between field artillery batteries of New Army divisions
and their parent brigades was reflected by the way that they were named. British field
artillery batteries had carried designations that were independent of the names of the
brigades to which they belonged. Regular Army field artillery units were known by
numbers that reflected, if only in a rough manner, the sequence in which they had
been formed. Territorial Force batteries and brigades bore names that reflected the
area where they were located. Thus, XL Brigade started the war with the 6th
, the 23rd
and the 49th
Batteries, while the 4th
East Lancashire Brigade consisted of the 1st
Cumberland Battery (Carlisle) and the 2nd
Cumberland Battery (Workington). With
the imposition of the ‘four-by-four’ structure upon the field artillery brigades of New
Army infantry divisions came a new way of naming field artillery units. Batteries of
such brigades were to bear letters of the alphabet in much the same way as the
companies of infantry battalions and the squadrons of cavalry regiments. The three
senior New Army field batteries (the 148th
, 149th
and 150th
Batteries) were thus recast
as A, B, C and D Batteries of XLVI Brigade.
38
On the acute shortage of shoeing smiths, see the bound collections of War Office
Instructions, TNA, WO 293/1 and WO 293/2.

25
Options for Organising the Field Artillery of New Army Divisions
October – December 1914
Options Traditional
Structure
Three six-piece
batteries
‘Expansible
Battery’
Three four-piece
batteries
‘Four-by-Four’
Brigade
Four four-piece
batteries
Field guns for one field
artillery brigade
18 12 16
Field guns for one New
Army division
54 36 48
Field guns for six New
Army divisions
324 216 288
Field guns for twenty-four
New Army divisions
1,296 864 1,152
Number of Officers Needed by the Field Batteries of New Army Divisions
Officers Traditional
Structure
Three batteries
of six guns each
‘Expansible
Battery’
Three batteries
of four guns each
‘Four-by-Four’
Brigade
Four batteries
of four guns each
For a single
battery
1 six-piece
battery
1 four-piece
battery
1 four-piece
battery
Majors and
Captains 2 1 1
Subalterns 3 3 3
For a division 12
six-piece
batteries
12
four-piece
batteries
16
four-piece
batteries
Majors and
Captains 24 12 16
Subalterns 36 36 48
For thirty
divisions
360
six-piece
batteries
360
four-piece
batteries
480
four-piece
batteries
Majors and
Captains 724 360 480
Subalterns 1,080 1,080 1,440

26
In keeping with the policy of reducing the independence of batteries, the
establishments for the New Armies reduced the number of captains and majors
serving with those units. Regular Army batteries were authorised a major
(commanding officer), a captain (second-in-command), and three subalterns (one for
each section of two guns or howitzers).39
Territorial Force batteries were likewise
authorised a major, a captain and three subalterns.40
(As there were only four pieces
in Territorial Force field batteries, only two of the subalterns could command
sections.) After the imposition of the four-by-four structure, however, New Army
field batteries were authorised but four officers – a captain or major (as commanding
officer), a relatively senior subaltern (as second-in-command) and two junior
subalterns (as section commanders).41
The impact of this seemingly minor change in war establishments becomes
evident when the number of officers allowed for each type of battery is multiplied by
the thirty divisions’ worth of field batteries. The ‘four-by-four’ structure required 360
additional subalterns. At the same time, it eliminated the need for 240 captains and
majors. While certainly welcome, this saving of captains and majors was not the
decisive argument in favour of the ‘four-by-four’ organisation. As demonstrated by
the experience of the 27th
, 28th
, and 29th
Divisions, any four-piece battery would have
provided the same benefits. Indeed, if reducing the number of captains and majors
had been the only criterion for determining the best organisational scheme, the
‘expansible battery’, which eliminated the need for 120 additional captains and
majors, would have been preferred over the ‘four-by-four’ option.
39
War Office, War Establishments, Part I, Expeditionary Force, 1914, (London:
HMSO, 1913), p. 83.
40
War Office, Territorial Force, War Establishments (Provisional) for 1908-1909,
(London: HMSO, 1908), p. 38.

27
The consideration that gave the ‘four-by-four’ structure the decisive advantage
over other alternatives was its ability to make full use of the limited number of
officers qualified to take up key appointments in the headquarters of field artillery
brigades.42
The placing of a fourth battery in each brigade increased by a full third
the number of guns or howitzers that could be managed by a brigade commander and
his principal assistant, the senior captain who bore the title of ‘brigade adjutant’. (In
contrast to infantry battalions and cavalry regiments, field artillery brigades had no
‘second-in-command.’) At a time when the shortage of experienced artillery officers
was painfully obvious and the volume of orders for new artillery pieces was
expanding rapidly, such an advantage would have been very tempting indeed. By the
same token, it is probably no accident that the most prominent opponent of the ‘four-
by-four’ structure was Sir Stanley Von Donop, who was openly pessimistic about the
ability of British arms manufacturers to produce the required number of artillery
pieces in a timely fashion.43
41
War Office, War Establishments (New Armies) for 1915, (London: HMSO, 1915),
p. 28.
42
The absence of full-time seconds-in-command from the establishments of field
artillery brigades seems to have been an artefact of the days when the brigade was
little more than a loose confederation of otherwise independent batteries. As might be
imagined, this made the job of brigade adjutant a particularly demanding one.
43
Writing after the war, Von Donop ascribed the decision to adopt the ‘four-by-four’
structure to the Army Council. As he was a member of the Army Council at this time,
it is unclear whether he became convinced of the virtues of the ‘four-by-four’ system
or was outvoted by the other members. For Von Donop’s autobiographical writings
on this subject, see the papers of Sir Stanley Von Donop, which are divided between
the Imperial War Museum (IWM 69/74/1) and the British National Archives (WO
79/79 through WO 79/84).

28
The ‘four-by-four’ organisational scheme was officially imposed on the field
artillery establishments of New Army divisions by a War Office letter dated 6 January
1915.44
The decision to adopt this structure seems, however, to have been made
several weeks earlier. The first set of war establishments published for the 27th
and
28th
Divisions, which were issued (respectively) on 7 December 1914 and 16
December 1914, called for the provision to each division of three field gun brigades
of the ‘four-by-four’ variety.45
(The implementation of this plan was prevented by the
decision to assign twenty-four field pieces originally set aside for the 27th
and 28th
Divisions to the newly-formed 29th
Division.) During that same period, the military
authorities in Ottawa ordered the Canadian Division to modify its structure in ways
that increased its similarity to its British Army counterparts. Where infantry was
concerned, this involved the replacement of the old eight-company battalion with the
new four-company battalion.46
For the field artillery, the chief reform was the
replacement of brigades organised in the style of the pre-war Regular Army (with
three six-piece batteries) with ‘four-by-four’ brigades of the type originally laid down
for the 27th
and 28th
Divisions and eventually adopted by for the New Army
divisions.47
44
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 3A, p. i.
45
War Office, War Establishments of the 27th
Division (7 December 1914) and War
Establishments of the 28th
Division (19 December 1914), TNA, WO 24/900.
46
Minutes for the Meetings of the Military Members of the Army Council, entry for 10
December 1914, TNA, WO 163/45.
47
Four Canadian war diaries, all of which are on file at the Canadian National
Archives (RG9, III-D-3), record this restructuring: 1st
Canadian Field Artillery
Brigade (Volume 4964, Reel T-10784), 2nd
Canadian Field Artillery Brigade (Volume
4964, Reel T-10784), 3rd
Canadian Field Artillery Brigade (Volume 4910, Reel T-
10702), and 1st
Canadian Divisional Artillery (Volume 4958, Reel T-10775).

29
The form taken by the artillery establishments of improvised Regular Army
divisions had been heavily influenced by shortages of such things as formed units,
artillery pieces and experienced officers, as well as the need to get formations to the
front as soon as possible. The same was true of New Army divisions and, to a slightly
lesser extent, the Canadian Division and the two divisions of the Indian Corps. The
divisional artilleries of Territorial Force divisions, on the other hand, were shaped by
decisions taken at leisure well before the start of the war. Because of this, they
provide useful means of separating those organisational features that resulted from
wartime pressures and those that reflect other influences.
The Territorial Force had been created in 1907, a time when the Regular Army
had started to take delivery of the first 18-pounders and was beginning to test the
competing prototypes for the 4.5-inch howitzer. It is thus not surprising that the
divisions of the Territorial Force, which were designed to serve as second-line
formations, were equipped with artillery pieces made redundant by the re-armament
of the Regular Army: the 5-inch howitzer and the 15-pounder field gun. The first of
these weapons, which dated from 1896, was issued in its original state. The second,
which had originally been designed in the 1880s, was greatly improved by the
addition of a modern ‘on carriage’ recoil mechanism. 48
The peacetime Territorial Force, with 168 field batteries, had more field
artillery units than the pre-war Regular Army, which had begun the twentieth century
with 151 field batteries and, by 1914, had been reduced to 135 such units.49
As a
result, the number of obsolescent field pieces on hand was insufficient to provide each
Territorial Force division with field artillery on the same scale as a division of the
48
Headlam, The History of the Royal Artillery Volume II (1899-1914), pp. 93-94 and
Len Trawin, Early British Quickfiring Artillery, (Hemel Hempstead: Nexus Special
Interests, 1997).

30
original Expeditionary Force. The field batteries of the fourteen Territorial Force
divisions were therefore organised with only four pieces in each battery and the
number of batteries in the howitzer brigade of each division was limited to two.50
Though it greatly reduced the number of field pieces in each Territorial Force
division, this organisational scheme was not without its advantages. In addition to
making the batteries less awkward for amateur officers to handle, the low number of
guns and howitzers reduced the need for men skilled in the management of horses. 51
In a country where the mechanization of transport was progressing rapidly, the
Territorial Force would have been hard pressed to provide well-managed teams for
too many additional guns.52
Territorial Force divisions did not begin to arrive on the Western Front until
the spring of 1915. Thus, neither the 15-pounder field gun nor the 5-inch howitzer
played any appreciable role in the first winter of position warfare. By the late summer
of 1915, moreover, Territorial Force divisions in France and Flanders were beginning
to exchange their obsolescent weapons for 18-pounder field guns and 4.5-inch
howitzers. As the new weapons replaced their predecessors on a one-for-one basis,
the rearming of the Territorial Force divisions had the effect of reducing the diversity
of armament within the Expeditionary Force without reducing the number of different
organisational schemes in use.53
49
Headlam, The History of the Royal Artillery, Volume II (1899-1914), p. 5.
50
‘Number of Guns Possession at Outbreak of War …’, TNA, WO 79/84.
51
One of the most thorough descriptions of the peacetime Territorial Force is provided
by Hippolyte Langlois, L’Armée Anglaise dans un Conflit Européen, (Paris: Berger-
Levrault, 1910).
52
Officers of the Territorial Force carried out some of the earliest experiments in the
use of automobiles to pull field pieces. Headlam, The History of the Royal Artillery,
Volume II (1899-1914), p. 231. See also, ‘Reduction in Peace Establishment of Royal
Artillery’, TNA, WO 32/6778, WO 32/6779 and WO 32/6780.
53
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 2A, p. 65, 73, 81, 89, 97, and 105.

31
Options for Arming Territorial Force Infantry Divisions
15-Pounder Field Guns
15-pounder field guns Three batteries
of six guns each
Three batteries
of four guns each
Field guns for one field artillery brigade 18 12
Field guns for one Territorial Force
division
54 36
Field guns for fourteen Territorial Force
divisions
756 504
Total field guns available 623 623
Surplus or (shortfall) (133) 119
Options for Arming Territorial Force Divisions
5-inch Howitzers
5-inch howitzers Regular Army
Solution
Three batteries
of six howitzers
Territorial
Force Solution
Two batteries
of four howitzers
Howitzers for one field artillery brigade 18 8
Howitzers for one Territorial Force
division
18 8
Howitzers for fourteen Territorial Force
divisions
252 112
Total howitzers available 150 150
Surplus or (shortfall) (102) 38
Re-arming the Field Artillery of
Territorial Force Divisions on the Western Front54
Formation Arrived
Western Front
Received
18-Pounders
Received
4.5-inch Howitzers
46th
Division March 1915 Nov. 1915 Dec. 1915
47th
Division March 1915 Nov. 1915 Jan. 1916
48th
Division March 1915 July 1915 Jan. 1916
49th
Division April 1915 Oct. 1915 Jan. 1916
50th
Division April 1915 Nov. 1915 Jan. 1916
51st
Division May 1915 August 1915 Jan. 1916
55th
Division Oct. 1915 Oct. 1915 Oct. 1915
54
For an explanation of the unusual way in which the 55th
(West Lancashire) Division
was rearmed, see Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 2A, p. 137.

32
Shortly before the first of the Territorial Force divisions began to cross the
English Channel, the War Office began a three-stage programme to balance the field
artillery establishments of the divisions then serving in France and Flanders. The first
step in this reform redistributed the 18-pounder field guns of Regular Army divisions,
with four divisions of the original Expeditionary Force providing one six-gun battery
apiece for the sake of the two Regular Army divisions (the 27th
and 28th
Divisions)
that had been making do with substandard field gun establishments. (In other words,
each division that gave up a six-gun battery saw its field-gun establishment reduced
from fifty-four to forty-eight, while each division that received a pair of those
batteries saw its establishment increase from thirty-six to forty-eight.) The second
step in the homogenisation of field artillery establishments was a complex reshuffling
of howitzer units that involved six-piece batteries from Regular Army divisions, four-
piece batteries from New Army divisions, and non-divisional howitzer units sent out
from the United Kingdom.55
The last step in this programme was a simple one-for-
one exchange of 18-pounder field guns for the 13-pounder guns of horse artillery
batteries of the 7th
and 8th
Divisions, took place in June 1915.56
At the end of this
process, which began in February 1915 and was complete by the middle of August
that year, most divisions of the Expeditionary Force possessed forty-eight 18-pounder
field guns and twelve 4.5-inch field howitzers.
55
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 1, pp. 37, 45, 53, 61, 69, and 77 and Order
of Battle of Divisions, Part 3A, pp. 7, 31, 49, 57, 75, 91 and 99 and War Diary, 118th
Howitzer Brigade, Royal Field Artillery and War Diaries, Second Army,
Administrative Branches of Staff, AC, RG9 Militia and Defence (III-D-3), Volume
5068, Reels T-11131 and T-11132.
56
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 1, pp. 101 and 109.

33
Types of Regular Army Field Artillery Brigade
January 1915 – June 1915
Pre-Reform Post-Reform
Weapon Structure Weapon Structure
18-pounder 3 six-gun
batteries
batteries
18-pounder 3 four-gun
batteries
18-pounder 4 four-gun
batteries
batteries
batteries
4.5-inch
howitzer
3 six-gun
batteries
4.5-inch
howitzer
3 four-piece
batteries
4.5-inch
howitzer
2 six-piece
batteries
Equality of overall strength did not necessarily equate to uniformity of
organisation. The end of the first twelve months of the war still found five different
field artillery establishments in use by British Empire divisions serving on the
Western Front. In fact, where the internal structure of field artillery brigades of
Regular Army divisions was concerned, the reform carried out in the first half of 1915
resulted in a temporary decrease in uniformity. (Prior to the reform, there were four
different types of Regular Army field artillery brigade in France and Flanders.
Afterwards, there were five different types of Regular Army field artillery brigade
serving on the Western Front.) Nonetheless, the fact that most of these differences
were internal to field artillery brigades helped to reduce the practical difficulties of
employing, shifting and supplying infantry divisions.
The reform of divisional artillery that took place in the first half of 1915
established the New Army field artillery structure as the predominant standard for the
entire Expeditionary Force. Though the first eight Regular Army divisions to arrive
in France were granted an official dispensation to retain their six-piece batteries, all
other divisions serving on the Western Front would either be formed with a New
Army-pattern field artillery establishment or would be converted to the New Army

34
organisation as soon as resources permitted.57
In August 1915, for example, the
newly created Guards Division received a divisional field artillery made up of
brigades that had originally been formed for New Army divisions.58
In February
1916, Territorial Force brigades in France started to receive the additional batteries
that they would need in order to reach the New Army standard of twelve field gun
batteries and three howitzer batteries. Most of these batteries were formed ‘from
scratch’ in the United Kingdom.59
Three, however, were provided by divisions of the
original Expeditionary Force that had managed to retain more than their fair share of
field batteries. 60
The reform of the artillery of Territorial Force divisions, which was
complete by the middle of May 1916, thus had the effect of reducing the number of
distinct field artillery establishments on the Western Front from four to two. The
differences between these two remaining establishments, moreover, were entirely a
matter of battery organisation. The number of field artillery brigades in each division,
as well as the total number of field guns and howitzers available to each formation,
was finally the same.
The twin field artillery establishments that had been enthroned by the first
great reform of the field artillery of the Expeditionary Force would only reign for a
matter of weeks. Beginning in May 1916, the British Army launched the second
major reform of the field artillery establishments serving on the Western Front. The
first step in this reform was the abolition of the distinction between howitzer brigades
and field gun brigades. This measure, which anticipated the provision of a fourth
57
The field artillery establishments of the Indian Corps did not participate in this
second phase of the field artillery reform of 1915 because that formation had already
been earmarked for transfer to Mesopotamia. Perry, Order of Battle of Divisions,
Part 5B, pp. 53 and 89.
58
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 1, pp. 28-29.
59
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 2A, pp. 64-65, 72-73, 80-81, 88-89, 96-98,
104-105, and 136-137.

35
howitzer battery to each division, resulted in the conversion of all field artillery
brigades into ‘mixed brigades.’ (Each of these consisted of three field gun batteries
and a single howitzer battery.)61
The second step of the second great reform was the
recasting of all four-piece field artillery batteries as six-piece units. Ironically, this
measure was inspired by the same desire to economise on experienced field artillery
officers that had motivated the earlier shift to the four-piece battery. This time,
however, the officers being husbanded so carefully were not the old captains and
majors who had learned their trade in the long years of peace, but the young battery
commanders who had proved their abilities in the course of the war.62
60
Becke, Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 1, pp. 52-3 and 76-77.
61
The idea of forming mixed brigades was far from novel. A discussion of the
composition and employment of various types of mixed field artillery brigades, for
example, took place at the General Staff Conference of 1913. Conference of General
Staff Officers at the Royal Military College, TNA, WO 279/48 and Headlam, The
History of the Royal Artillery, Volume II (1899-1914), pp. 229-30.
62
Alan F. Brooke, ‘The Evolution of Artillery in the Great War’, Journal of the Royal
Artillery, 1925, p. 371.

36
Chapter 2
German Infantry Divisions
The tale of the evolution of German infantry divisions during the first half of World
War I is, in many respects, similar to the story of the development of their British
counterparts. At the start of the war, both the British and German armies rushed to
create a large number of improvised formations. As these had to be assembled from
resources at hand, the particular shape that these formations took was of much less
importance than the rapidity with which they could be sent into action. The result
was a degree of organisational diversity that, in addition to violating the aesthetic
sensibilities of many professional soldiers, greatly complicated the chief business of
higher headquarters: shifting formations from one place to another, providing
supplies and reinforcements, responding to operational emergencies and laying the
groundwork for great battles. Because of these difficulties, the senior leadership of
both armies took pains to impose a single organisational scheme upon their infantry
divisions.
By the end of the first year of the war, the British Army was well on its way to
accomplishing this goal. While there were still considerable differences in the
internal structure of field artillery units, the overall strength of the artillery
establishments of most divisions had been equalised. The German Army, however,
was on a very different schedule. The first anniversary of the mobilisation of 1914
found it at the very start of the long struggle to rationalise the structure of its infantry
divisions. Just how difficult this effort would be can be seen in the simple fact that
the German Army of the summer of 1915 had nine standard types of infantry division
as well as more than a dozen formations that were entirely sui generis.

37
At the very start of the war, what little variety there was in the organisational
structure of German infantry divisions lay in the realm of field artillery.1
An active
infantry division (known simply as an Infanterie Division) was invariably provided
with twelve battalions of infantry and twelve batteries of field artillery.2
A reserve
division (Reserve Division) usually had twelve battalions of infantry and six batteries
of field artillery.3
Within three weeks of mobilisation, this relatively neat
arrangement was profoundly disturbed by the appearance of a number of improvised
formations. The creation of nine of these divisions, the six Ersatz divisions and the
three divisions that formed the main reserve forces (Hauptreserven) of large
fortresses, had been foreseen before the war.4
The assembly of the rest, however, was
a reaction to the Russian invasion of East Prussia. As might be expected, the
organisational structures of ‘main reserve of a fortress’ and Ersatz divisions were
more consistent than those of the ad hoc formations. Nevertheless, the patterns
providing this consistency were substantially different from those used to shape the
divisions that had been originally assigned to field armies.
1
Unless otherwise indicated, descriptions of German units and formations were
derived from the detailed order of battle appended to the first volume of the German
official history of World War I. Germany, Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, (Berlin: E.S.
Mittler und Sohn, 1925-1956), I, pp. 664-687.
2
Nine of the twelve field artillery batteries of each active infantry division were armed
with field guns. The other three batteries were equipped with light field howitzers.
3
Most reserve divisions were provided with six field artillery batteries, all of which
were equipped with field guns. Four reserve divisions, however, took the field with
larger artillery establishments. The 23rd
and 24th
Reserve Divisions were each
provided with nine field gun batteries. The 26th
Reserve Division had six batteries of
field guns and three of light howitzers. The 1st
Guard Reserve Division had the same
artillery establishment as an active division.
4
Though formed on a different pattern, the divisions that provided the ‘main reserve
of a fortress’ were numbered in the same series as the reserve divisions formed for
service with armies in the field. Thus, the ‘main reserve of the fortress of Metz’
(Hauptreserve der Festung Metz) was also known as the ‘33rd
Reserve Division’.

38
The six Ersatz divisions were formed in the middle of August 1914 by
assembling eighteen mixed Ersatz brigades (gemischte Ersatz Brigaden) into groups
of three.5
Each of these mixed Ersatz brigades was a small formation in its own right,
with four battalions of infantry, four batteries of field artillery, and a troop of horse
cavalry.6
The Ersatz divisions might thus be seen as organisations comparable to
contemporary Belgian divisions d’armée, formations that were neither conventional
infantry divisions nor traditional army corps. A further peculiarity of the Ersatz
divisions was the way in which their field artillery batteries were formed into larger
units. Standard field artillery groups (Abteilungen) of the German Army invariably
consisted of three batteries. Those of Ersatz divisions had but two. Most German
field artillery groups were uniformly armed with either field guns or light field
howitzers.7
Half of the field artillery groups of Ersatz divisions, however, consisted
of one battery of field guns and one battery of light field howitzers.8
There was no tactical rationale for the peculiar organisation of Ersatz
formations. Rather, the odd structure of Ersatz brigades and divisions was an artefact
of the German mobilisation system. The depots of a typical peacetime infantry
brigade mobilised a complete Ersatz infantry battalion. Sometimes called a ‘brigade
Ersatz battalion’ (Brigade Ersatz Bataillon), this battalion bore the same number as
5
The six Ersatz divisions formed in 1914 were the Guard Ersatz Division, the 4th
Ersatz Division, the 8th
Ersatz
Division and the Bavarian Ersatz Division.
6
Two of the eighteen mixed Ersatz brigades formed into divisions in August 1914 had
five infantry battalions rather than four. The one Ersatz brigade that escaped being
incorporated into a division in 1914 (55. gemischte Ersatz Brigade) had six infantry
battalions.
7
In all chapters dealing with the German Army, the term ‘field gun’ refers to the 77mm
Feldkanone 96 neuer Art. The term ‘light field howitzer’ refers to the 105mm
leichte
Feldhaubitze 98/09.
8
For a detailed description of the formation of mobile Ersatz units, see Bavaria,
Heeresarchiv, Die Schlacht in Lothringen und in den Vosegen, die Feuertaufe der
Bayerischen Armee, (Munich: M. Schick, 1929), I, pp. 1-33.

39
the peacetime brigade that created it. At the same time, the depots of a peacetime
field artillery brigades usually mobilised two Ersatz batteries. Thus, as most
peacetime army corps each consisted of four peacetime infantry brigades and two
peacetime field artillery brigades, the Ersatz brigades they mobilised each took the
field with four infantry battalions and four field artillery batteries. Similarly, the two
peacetime army corps that possessed five peacetime infantry brigades created Ersatz
brigades with five infantry battalions.9
The three divisions that provided the main reserves for the fortress complexes
of Metz, Strassburg and Thorn were hybrid organisations that combined features of
conventional reserve divisions with those of Ersatz formations. On the one hand, the
infantry establishments of these divisions consisted of twelve reserve battalions that,
like most active and reserve battalions of the German Army at that time, were formed
into three-battalion regiments and two-regiment brigades. On the other hand, their
field artillery consisted of Ersatz batteries that, like the batteries of Ersatz formations,
were formed into two-battery groups. As was the case with Ersatz formations, the
structure of the ‘main reserve of a fortress’ reserve divisions was more the by-product
of the German mobilisation system than the fruit of unfettered design. In particular,
the decision to provide field artillery in the form of four two-battery Ersatz groups
seems to have reflected nothing more than the fact that it was easier for the depots of
the artillery regiments in question to create two Ersatz batteries than three reserve
batteries.
9
All told, 19 (out of 25) peacetime army corps, 86 (out of 109) peacetime infantry
brigades and 44 (out of 50) peacetime field artillery brigades mobilised mobile Ersatz
organizations. As might be expected, army corps and peacetime brigades that had
been formed recently were less likely than their older counterparts to form affiliated
Ersatz organisations. Hermann Cron, Geschichte des Deutschen Heeres im Weltkrieg,
(Berlin: Karl Sigismund, 1937), pp. 119 and 144.

40
The improvised divisions created on the Eastern Front were cobbled together
from whatever units were at hand. The four chief sources for these units were the
Landwehr, the Landsturm, regimental depots, and the garrisons of fortresses. Like
mobile Ersatz units, Landwehr units had initially been formed into mixed brigades.
The Landsturm was a home guard organisation, composed of men who were too old,
too young, or insufficiently fit to serve with the field armies. Landsturm units were
tied closely to the army corps district that created them and were initially deployed as
individual battalions, batteries or squadrons. Regimental depots had been created to
serve as organs of training and administration, a means of forming and feeding
combat units rather than serving alongside them. Nonetheless, a number took the
field during the Russian invasion of East Prussia and, having proven their worth as
combat units, remained in that role for the rest of the war.10
The garrisons of
fortresses included a variety of Landwehr and Landsturm units, as well as machine-
gun, pioneer and heavy artillery (Fußartillerie) units of the active army.11
The creation of both the Ersatz divisions and the ‘main reserve of a fortress’
reserve divisions had been greatly facilitated by measures taken in time of peace: the
stockpiling of arms and equipment, the designation of leaders, and the writing of
orders. The divisions of the first series of formations to be systematically raised by
10
The regimental depots shared the term Ersatz with the units of the mixed Ersatz
brigades and the batteries of ‘main reserve of a fortress’ reserve divisions. As might
be expected, this created much confusion, not only for enemy intelligence officers and
latter-day historians, but also for contemporary German soldiers. (Among other
things, these poor souls had to distinguish between the Ersatz Abteilung Feldartillerie
Regiment 21 and the Feldartillerie Ersatz Abteilung 21.) Lest this confusion find its
way into the pages of this work, the use of the word Ersatz will be restricted to units
of the type associated with mixed Ersatz brigades, i.e. units that started the war as
combat units rather than as regimental depots.
11
For examples, see Dennis Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (North
Haven: Archon, 1991).

41
the German Army after the completion of mobilisation, however, were formed
without the benefit of such preparations.12
Often called the ‘war volunteer’ divisions,
these owed their existence to the realisation that far more recruits had reported for
duty than the authors of mobilisation plans had anticipated.13
Not all of these men
were the song-filled students of German patriotic lore.14
A few were fully trained
reservists of older classes. A good number were ‘substitute reservists’
(Ersatzreservisten), men who, though surplus to the needs of peacetime army and thus
exempted from most (if not all) peacetime training, had remained liable for service in
the event of war.15
The building blocks used to make the thirteen divisions of the first series - the
infantry battalions, artillery batteries, cavalry squadrons, and pioneer companies -
were entirely new, formed at regimental depots throughout Germany.16
Leaders and
12
The scheme used here to name the series of new infantry divisions formed
systematically after the completion of mobilisation is the one used by Ernst von
Wrisberg. It begins with the ‘first series’ (erste Räte) and ends with the ‘fourth
series’ (vierte Räte).
13
Prussia, Kriegsministerium, letter MJ 3531/14 A1 dated 16.8.1914 and signed
‘Falkenhayn,’ with enclosed organisational charts, NARA, M-962, Reel 3.
14
For a description of the legend of the student volunteers, see Robert Cowley, ‘The
Massacre of the Innocents,’ MHQ, The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Spring
1998. For a detailed analysis of the composition of these divisions, see Alex Watson,
‘For Kaiser and Reich: The Identity and Fate of the German Volunteers, 1914-1918’,
War in History, January 2005.
15
Reserve Infantry Regiment 210, for example, seems to have had comparatively few
war volunteers in its ranks. Over half of the 954 men of the 19th
Reserve Jäger
Battalion, present for duty on 6 November 1914 were older men with previous
service. Günther Gieraths, Geschichte des Reserve Infanterie Regiments Nr. 210 und
seiner Grenzschützformationen (1914-1920), (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1928), p. 19 and
Albert Fahrtmann, Das Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 19 im Weltkrieg, (Berlin: Verlag
Tradition Wilhelm Kolk, 1929), p. 4.
16
Ten of the divisions of the first series, the 43rd
through the 52nd
Reserve Divisions,
were raised in military districts subordinate to the Prussian War Ministry. Of the
remaining three divisions, the 53rd
Reserve Division originated in Saxony, the 54th
Reserve Division hailed Wurttemberg, and the 6th
Bavarian Reserve Division was
entirely Bavarian. Ernst von Wrisberg, Heer und Heimat, (Leipzig: Verlag von K.F.
Koehler, 1921), p. 16 and Cron, Geschichte des Deutschen Heeres im Weltkrieg, pp.
98-9.

42
instructors were, for the most part, officers and non-commissioned officers already
present at those depots.17
(The more fortunate units could benefit from the experience
of leaders who were recovering from wounds inflicted in the opening battles of the
war. The rest relied on officers and non-commissioned officers who had been out of
uniform for quite a few years.) The essential weapons (rifles, machine-guns, and field
pieces) were of the same type as those provided to the rest of the field army. Just
about everything else, from uniforms and personal equipment to mobile field kitchens
and other types of transport, had to be improvised.
The divisions of the first series left for the front in the middle of October
1914. Within a few weeks, the depots that had formed them were hard at work
creating the building blocks that would be used to create a second series of post-
mobilisation divisions. Not nearly as famous as their immediate predecessors, the
nine divisions of this second series were nonetheless formed in very much the same
way. The infantry regiments, cavalry detachments, and pioneer companies were
newly raised from men being trained at various regimental depots.18
The one
exception to this rule of units ‘cut from whole cloth’ was provided by the creation of
17
Strictly speaking, the cavalry ‘squadrons’ of the divisions of the first and second
series were ‘cavalry detachments’ (Kavallerie Abteilungen) of roughly the same size
as a cavalry squadron of the time (125 to 150 horsemen). In 1914, the term Abteilung,
which literally means ‘division,’ was used for units of varying size and composition.
These included battalion-sized artillery groups (of three batteries), company-sized
machine-gun units (of six machine-guns) and aviation units (of twelve aircraft), as
well as the independent cavalry platoons (of fifty or so horsemen) of mobile Ersatz
brigades.
18
The collection of documents consulted in the course of writing this chapter did not
contain the actual letter ordering the formation of these divisions. It did, however,
contain several documents that made explicit reference to this order
(Kriegsministerium M.J. Nr. 11204/14 A.1., dated 18 December 1914.) See, among
others, Gardekorps. Stellvertr. Generalkommando. Sekt. Ia Nr. 31007, dated 19
December 1914 and a very detailed warning order Kriegsministerium, letter MJ
11007/14 A1 Geheim, dated 13 December 1914. All of these letters can be found in
the NARA M-962, Reel 3 (folder marked Akten des Königlichen Militär-Kabinets
Abteilung I betreffend Mobilmachung 1914, 1. Allgemeines, Band 1A.)

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