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This is a table of the number of recruits for the British Army during the First World War, 1914–1918. [1] [2] All recruits were volunteers until January 1916, when men were recruited under the Derby Scheme and as conscripts following the Military Service Act 1916. From July 1917, all recruits were counted as Conscripts.
All recruits underwent a physical exam by Army medical officers to ascertain whether they would be suitable for military service which used a number and lettering system to categorise the health of each recruit. The following list are the categories used by the British Army in 1914. [5]
British Army recruitment poster during the Napoleonic wars offering both limited and unlimited (long-term) service. The United Kingdom's struggle with France during the Napoleonic wars required the British Army to expand rapidly. Ordinary recruiting methods failed to supply the number of men required to fill the Army ranks.
Recruiting poster for the Football Battalion. This is a list of pals battalions (also called "service" or "locally raised" battalions) of the British Army during the First World War. Pre-war Territorial Force (T.F.) battalions have not been included, although they too usually recruited from a specific area or occupation.
The British Army during the First World War was the largest military force that Britain had put into the field up to that point.On the Western Front, the British Expeditionary Force ended the war as the strongest fighting force, more experienced than the United States Army and its morale was in better shape than the French Army.
The first units were deployed piecemeal in support of the regular army as it defended against the opening German offensive in Belgium and France in 1914. The first territorial divisions to be deployed were used to free up imperial garrisons overseas, but in 1915 they began to be deployed to the front lines on the Western Front and at Gallipoli .
The Derby Scheme was introduced during World War I in Britain in the autumn of 1915 by Herbert Kitchener's new Director General of Recruiting, Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby (1865–1948) after which it was named. It used strong pressure tactics to try to pressure men regarded as eligible to serve in the military to voluntarily enlist.
Alfred Leete's recruitment poster for Kitchener's Army.. The New Army, often referred to as Kitchener's Army or, disparagingly, as Kitchener's Mob, [a] was an (initially) all-volunteer portion of the British Army formed in the United Kingdom from 1914 onwards following the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War in late July 1914.