With the outbreak of war in August 1914 plans were put in hand almost immediately to augment the strength of the British regular and territorial army.
Lord Kitchener who had been appointed Secretary of State for War appeared on posters throughout the land with his now familiar pointing finger exclaiming ‘Your Country Needs You’. The effect was immediate and the recruiting offices were soon overwhelmed by the numbers of young men clamouring to sign up for the ‘King’s Shilling’ which was the amount payable on enlistment. By the end of August, Lord Derby had introduced the idea of raising battalions from within existing communities and thus encouraged friends, workmates, sports organisations and youth organisations, indeed any kind of group to join up together and so bring with them an already established indigenous sense of comradeship into the new battalion. As examples, the 16th Royal Welsh Fusiliers were originally recruited from employees at the City Hall in Cardiff and the first thousand recruits wore the badge the Cardiff City coat of arms. The 10th and 13th Welsh were recruited from the mining areas and became known as the 1st and 2nd Rhondda. The 14th Welsh owe their existence to the Swansea Cricket and Football Club. Interestingly the 15th Welsh had well over three hundred recruits from Bolton in Lancashire and were known as the 15th Carmarthanshire.
It was David Lloyd George who was Chancellor of the Exchequer of the then Liberal Government of the time who proposed to recruit and form a Welsh Army of two divisions. The idea went ahead but recruitment was slow and the intended target of the first 50,000 seemed a long way off as many Welshmen had already responded and joined in other regiments. It was some twelve months later before the target figure was reached. The idea of a second division was then abandoned. Having created a Welsh Army the problem of how to lead it presented itself. There was a general shortage of officers in all of Kitchener’s ‘new’ armies, and many officers were brought out of retirement and some of these had only limited experience. The ‘political’ dimension created by the decision of the Chancellor to involve himself in a personal recruitment of a Welsh Army was heightened when a number of the senior officers were appointed through the influence of David Lloyd George.
38th Division
The men of the 38th (Welsh) Division who arrived on the Somme had come marching south from their initiation in the trenches during the early months of 1916 further to the north. Marching for a week, contemporary reports describe them as being tired and footsore on their arrival.
38th Division at camp.
