This film is part of a large collection made by filmmakers Debenhams & Co., established by Ernest Symmons in York before moving to Beverley just prior to the First World War. Unfortunately the records of their films are incomplete: the list of known films drawn up by Peter Robinson has no entries for the year this was made, 1915 (see References).  At least one other film concerning World War One that they made in 1915 exists, Farewell Send-Off To The Darton Recruits, held at the Imperial...

This film is part of a large collection made by filmmakers Debenhams & Co., established by Ernest Symmons in York before moving to Beverley just prior to the First World War. Unfortunately the records of their films are incomplete: the list of known films drawn up by Peter Robinson has no entries for the year this was made, 1915 (see References).  At least one other film concerning World War One that they made in 1915 exists, Farewell Send-Off To The Darton Recruits, held at the Imperial War Museum. This records the festive departure to war of soldiers recruited from the colliery town of Darton, Yorkshire, featuring the band of the 1st Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment.   Robinson records at least one other war related film from 1916: an inspection of volunteers from Beverley.   The YFA however has many other films made by Debenhams & Co. – see the Context for King George And Queen Visit Hull (1941) for more information on Debenhams.

The second part of the title of the film, ‘Aka Barnsley Battalion’, which came with the copy of the film, is somewhat misleading as it was the 13th and 14th battalions of the York & Lancaster Regiment which were known as the ‘1st Barnsley pals’ and ‘2nd Barnsley pals’. The 5th battalion were divided into three and were based on the Territorial Force. The first three Battalions of the regiment were of the Regular Army, the third one from the Reserves. The volunteer battalions, which made up the majority, were called ‘pals’ because they were set up deliberately to group together men who knew each other, either through where they lived or by trade – an idea of General Henry Rawlinson. An example of the latter are the Hull Commercials; whilst London formed a footballers' battalion, and there were also units comprised of artists and even public schoolboys. 

The battalion seen in the film must be the 1/5th Battalion, who started out in Rotherham in August 1914 before going on to York in February 1915. They sailed from Folkestone to Boulogne on 14th April 1915 and on the 15th May 1915 they became part of the 148th Brigade in the 49th (West Riding) Division, bearing the White Rose of York as its insignia. The 2/5th Battalion were formed at Rotherham on 3rd October 1914 as a second line unit moving to Bulwell in March 1915, joining the 187th Brigade in 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division, but weren’t posted to France until January 1917. The 2/5th Battalion weren’t formed until March 1915 and the nearest they got to France was Southend, in October 1918.

What might have happened to the soldiers seen in the film? Well, they soon became engaged in the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the 9th May, and later in the defence against the first Phosgene gas attack on 19th December. They stayed in Flanders and France for the duration of the war and were involved in four of the battles that were part of the Battles of the Somme: of Albert, of Bazentin Ridge, of Pozieres Ridge, and of Flers-Courcelette. In the Battle of Aubers Ridge, the Long, Long Trail website reports that: “More than 11,000 British casualties were sustained on 9 May 1915, the vast majority within yards of their own front-line trench.” Yet according to their breakdown of casualties, the 148th Brigade may have come out of this relatively unscathed. Further research on The Long, Long Trail might shed more light on the eventual fate of the men marching over Lendal Bridge.

Ostensibly Britain declared war against Germany on 4 August 1914 in accordance with the Treaty of London, guaranteeing Belgium neutrality. A great propaganda machine – led by the Central Committee for National Patriotic Organizations – presented the war as one for ‘duty’ and ‘honour’. The deeper causes of the war in colonial competition were obscured. 

The York & Lancaster Regiment has the distinction of winning the largest number of battle honours (59, including four Victoria Crosses) of any English regiment during the war. This is hardly surprising given that eight of its twenty two battalions saw action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 – these battles also cost Leeds Pals around 750 of 900 men, and both the Grimsby Chums and the Sheffield City Battalion lost around half of their men. In total the regiment suffered 48,650 casualties out of 57,000 men serving, with 8,814 killed or died of wounds (72 out of every 100 men being either wounded or killed).

With these figures it may seem surprising that the men in the film are so cheery and relaxed, as they are in many of the newsreels that had recently sprung up – beginning with Pathé, soon joined by Gaumont Graphic and Topical Budget.   But this was before the realities of the war had really been felt: as news of the horrors of war filtered back from the front line initial enthusiasm waned.   

Unlike the Second World War, the First soon got going with Britain immediately sending the, rather small, British Expeditionary Force to Mons in Belgium. Greatly outnumbered and with the French in retreat, they held out for just a day before having to rapidly retreat themselves. By the end of 1914 it was stalemate along a 475 mile front, with defence very much in the ascendency. Thus trench warfare on the Western Front became the dominant pattern for the rest of the war. The trenches evolved, becoming ever more sophisticated, with sandbags and razor like barbed wire. The German trench system was 5,000 yards deep.   The Officers might lead the attacks, but it was the lower ranks that occupied the front lines. The documentation of what life, and death, was like in the trenches is extensive (see Van Emden, References).

 Although the army had 450,000 men at the start of the war, this was still very small in comparison to the conscript-heavy standing armies on the continent.  Therefore, on the 6th August Parliament sanctioned an increase in Army strength of 500,000 men. Two days later Kitchener issued his famous call to arms, ‘Your country needs you’.  This called for volunteers, aged between 19 and 30, at least 1.6m (5'3") tall and with a chest size greater than 86cm (34”). Many were rejected on medical grounds, suffering from the cumulative effects of poor diet, medicine and housing. Altogether 5.7 million men served in the British armed forces during the war, of which 2.46 had enlisted voluntarily by the end of 1915 (a sizeable proportion from the unemployed).

The call for volunteers had a big response, with around 30,000 men enlisting every day by the end of August. By mid-September, 500,000 men had volunteered; another 500,000 had joined them by the end of the year. Apart from patriotism and peer pressure, volunteering was also seen as an opportunity for regular pay, excitement and possible training. Although Stuart Hallifax has argued that people weren’t as optimistic as the oft quoted phrase ‘over by Christmas’ suggests (References).   These volunteers had to be trained and organised before being sent into battle. It might be thought that with 41% of all adolescent boys in a youth movements in 1914 this wouldn’t be a problem. But the Boys Scouts, formed in 1908, provided only rudimentary training relevant for life as a soldier, and the more militaristic Boys’ Brigade not much more. Both France and Germany did more to prepare their youth (see Strachen, References). It was also an army largely without officers, and so these were made up of those who simply volunteered to become so. 

Conscription came in by degrees: firstly, in November 1915 with the Derby Scheme requiring men of fighting age to ‘attest’, i.e. give reasons not to join up; then a semi-conscription was introduced in March 1916, which exempted, among others, married men and conscientious objectors (of which there were about 16,000). But this was soon followed by full blown conscription in May 1916. This was bitterly opposed by many, as indeed was the war itself – for example with the Union for Democratic Control.

Yet although those on the front line were undoubtedly cannon fodder, Tony Ashworth argues that the soldiers, on both sides, devised strategies for not fighting, adopting a ‘live and let live’ attitude, especially in the early days of the war – the most well-known example of which being Christmas 1914. The men that did survive at the front did so through comradeship and with humour. The letters from the front line, although self-censored to avoid depressing their recipients, are evidence of this stoical front-line culture. Nevertheless, a total of 885,138 British soldiers were killed in the war, and double that number were wounded. The psychological and emotional damage to the soldiers and their families is beyond calculation. The quote at the end comes from Tennyson’s "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington". It goes on: He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses.

A rather different sentiment to that found in John McCrae’s, ‘In Flanders Fields’:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

References

Tony Ashworth, Trench Warfare 1914–1918: The Live and Let Live System,

John Bourne, ‘The British Working Man in Arms’, in Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced, ed. Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle, Leo Cooper, London, 1996.

Richard Van Emden, The soldier's war : the Great War through veterans' eyes, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009.

Richard Holmes, Tommy - The British soldier on the Western Front, Harper Collins, 2004.

Lyn Macdonald, 1914-1918 Voices and Images of the Great War, Penguin, 1991.

Arthur Marwick, The Deluge, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, (1991, reissued 2006).

Peter H Robinson, The Home of Beautiful Pictures - the Story of the Playhouse Cinema, Beverley, Hutton Press, 1984.

Hew Strachen, The First World War Volume 1: To Arms, Oxford University Press, 2001.

The York & Lancaster Regiment

Stuart Hallifax, 'Over by Christmas': British popular opinion and the short war in 1914

Bruce Robinson, The Pals Battalions in World War One BBC British History

Further Information

Gloden Dallas and Douglas Gill, The Unknown Army: Mutinies in the British Army in World War I, Verso, London, 1985