Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors. Richard Holmes
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were few enough swords to be seen on the Western Front, save in the cavalry, by this time, and instructions had already been issued for sending them home. Nevertheless, a photograph of the RSM of 14/Welsh in 1917 shows an elegant figure with gently waxed moustache, officer-style cap with the stiffening removed, officer’s tunic with baggy ‘patch pockets’, Sam Browne and empty sword frog. It is only when you see the royal coat of arms on his forearm that you can tell that he is actually the RSM, rather than a much grander rank. Small wonder that newly-commissioned officers made awkward mistakes when confronted with such splendid figures, as the greatest of the war’s skits, The Song of Tiadatha, tells us:
Then at last my Tiadatha
Sallied forth to join the Dudshires
Dressed in khaki, quite a soldier
Floppy cap and baggy breeches
Round his waist the supple Sam Browne
At his side the sword and scabbard
Took salutes from private soldiers
And saluted Sergeant-Majors
(Who were very much embarrassed)
And reported at Headquarters
Of the 14th Royal Dudshires.21
In contrast, CSM Jack Williams DCM MM and Bar (his VC still in the future) of 10/South Wales Borderers, serving in the same division as the 14/Welsh, is scarcely distinguishable from a private soldier save by the brass crown on his sleeve. Nothing could make the gulf between the two grades of warrant officer clearer.
The RSM of a battalion was part hero, part villain, and part shaman, encapsulating all the glory of his tribe and the status of his rank. John Jackson worked for a Glasgow railway company and enlisted in the Cameron Highlanders (‘a choice of regiment which I never regretted’) in August 1914. He fought at Loos with its 6th Battalion, and one of his lasting memories was of RSM Peter Scotland, upright and steady, though his battalion had lost both commanding officer (‘our brave old colonel’) and adjutant (‘cool and unruffled to the last’) as well as 700 of its 950 officers and men, reading the roll-call after the battle:
There were few responses as names were called, though what little information there was about missing men was given by friends … Another good friend, big ‘Jock’ Anderson was missing, and to this day his fate remains an unsolved mystery, but I have no doubt he did his bit, for Jock was a whole-hearted fighter.
Wounded, Jackson was posted to 1/Camerons on his return to France, and the battalion was paraded by RSM Sydney Axton, ‘known through all the Cameron ranks as “Old Joe”’:
As a new draft, we had come out wearing khaki kilt aprons, and I well remember the first order of the RSM was, ‘Take off your aprons and show your Cameron tartan.’ ‘Old Joe’ was the real old fashioned type of soldier, a smart man in every way, a terror for discipline when on duty, a thorough gentleman off duty. A man who would sing a song or dance with the best; who knew everything there was to know about soldiering, and took the greatest pride in his regiment. His decorations numbered 9, and included the Military Cross, won on the Aisne, and the Distinguished Conduct Medal, won in the South African War, so that he was a real old warrior. His word was law in the battalion, and he would give an officer a ‘lecture’ just the same as he would a private soldier, so all ranks looked up to him as a man to be respected. Personally I always got on well with him, my duty bringing me often in contact with him, and I soon learned that his bark was worse than his bite.22
Doug Beattie was RSM of 1/Royal Irish in March 2003 when Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins made his famous pre-battle speech before the entry into Kuwait. Beattie feared that the message ‘had been rousing, but also sobering. It pulled no punches’, and there was a danger that the men would become morose and reflective. And so they
were going to stop thinking about Colonel Collins and start paying attention to their regimental sergeant major. And woe betide any who didn’t. I began to bollock them. I yelled at them about the pitiful state of their weapons. I laid into them over their poor state of dress, their abysmal personal hygiene, their failure to salute senior officers, their inability to get anywhere on time. I told them they were a disgrace to their uniform and weren’t fit to call themselves soldiers of 1 R IRISH. I accused the warrant officers of running slack companies … I called the CSMs to me. They sprang to attention … and marched forward, coming to a halt in a perfectly straight line, shoulders back, chests out. Beyond the earshot of the rest of the ranks I explained what I was trying to do … It is true that battalions are commanded by their officers. If 1 R IRISH was a car the driving would be done by them. But the engine that powers that car is to be found in the sergeants’ mess, with the five men now standing bolt upright in front of me.23
Today’s non-commissioned hierarchy reflects other changes. The Wellingtonian army selected its corporals from trusted private soldiers known, by that most satisfying term, as chosen men. Chosen men soon became lance corporals (‘lance-jacks’), with a speculative etymology linking the word to the seventeenth century ‘lancepesade’. The word derives from the Italian lazzia spezzata or broken lance, because the soldier in question was a veteran, likely to have broken a spear or two in his day. Initially the post of lance corporal, its holder distinguished by a single stripe rather than the maturity of the full corporal’s two, was an appointment rather than a rank: easy come, easy go. Before long ‘lance’ became a prefix for junior sergeants too. Having lance sergeants was a matter of regimental preference, as First World War headstones demonstrate. The Foot Guards have retained the rank, although it really equates with corporal. Any Queen’s Birthday Parade will show that lance sergeants, with their three white stripes, are not quite the same as sergeants proper, whose gold braid tapes earn them the sobriquet of gold sergeants.
A short walk through a military cemetery tells one a good deal about an army’s character. A First World War German cemetery abounds with the specific ranks that say much about the man who lies beneath the greensward, even if he was only a private soldier. The rank of grenadier and fusilier shows that he served in a particular sort of regiment. A jäger, hunter, is the same as a French chasseur, with keen eyes and quick step, and would have served, flat-shakoed, in a jäger battalion. A gunner is a kanonier, and different sorts of cavalrymen get a proper job description: hussar, uhlan, kurassier or dragoner. A kriegsfreiwilliger had volunteered to serve in the war, a reservist was precisely that, and an ersatz reservist had contrived (probably through having a student deferment from conscription) to incur a reserve liability even though he had not done basic training.
In a British cemetery of the same era, in contrast, most unpromoted men are privates. Privates in Foot Guards regiments are described as ‘Guardsmen’, although this rank was granted retrospectively, for it did not exist till 1922. Although ordinary soldiers in the Household Cavalry were termed trooper, they were still called privates in the rest of the cavalry, and the 1922 change in terminology did not affect those who had died before this date. In consequence, the last British soldier killed in the war was Private George Ellison of the 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers, a Leeds man, buried at St Symphorien, just east of the Belgian town of Mons. The rank of trooper first referred to privates in the cavalry, then spread into the Royal Tank Regiment, and has most recently appeared, as the evocative hybrid air trooper, in the Army Air Corps. Rifle regiments had called their soldiers riflemen very early on, and the notion of ‘the thinking, fighting rifleman’ was an attractive currency.
Fusilier regiments followed with ‘fusilier’. The Royal Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers selected the word ‘craftsman’ for its private soldiers; and the King’s Regiment, coming close to the end of its own independent existence in the 1980s, took up ‘kingsman’ for its private soldiers. The Queen’s Regiment considered ‘queensman’, but consultation with soldiers about to receive the new designation revealed that they were firmly against it, fearing that inter-regimental debates on the word’s precise meaning might have regrettable outcomes.
Rank is one thing and appointment another. In an infantry battalion or cavalry regiment the adjutant remains the commanding officer’s personal staff officer, responsible for what became known as ‘A’ matters: everything to do with personnel and discipline.