Talk:Recruitment to the British Army during World War I

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"Pal's battalions" were not unique to the UK in WWI: according to family tradition, when my maternal grandfather volunteered to fight in the American Expeditionary Force with the rest of the prospectors/miners in county, they did so with the understanding that they all would be in the same combat engineering unit.

(Feel free to incorporate this in the relevant article.) -- llywrch 21:33 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

It's still true in the US military (at least as of a few years ago). You can enlist with a friend with the guarantee that you can serve together, so long as the jobs you apply for are located together. -- Zoe

The US National Guard worked this way in WW2. (Probably still does.) The AIF certainly worked that way. Tannin

Well the point I was trying to make was that the entire group of miners or prospectors in the town -- I have the impression we are talking a company-sized group of men here -- wanted to serve together. Which would be a daunting number of men for a relatively small group of officers -- both COs & NCOs together -- to manage. (Would *you* want to be the outsider commanding 20 men who have been close friends since childhod?)

I'll concede that the US military may still make -- & honor -- a promise like this; there's a lot about the military a civilian like me only knows at second-hand. But the problems that would result from a promise like this makes this me surprised that it happened. -- llywrch 04:34 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

It was the rule vs. the exception during the American Civil War, but it changed during the Spanish-American War. -- Zoe

[edit] British Conscientious Objectors sentenced to death in WW1

I would be very interested to know the source of the author's figure of 41 COs sentenced to death. According to both Hansard (HJ Tennant, Under-Secretary for War), 26 June 1916, and The Tribunal, 29 June 1916 (derived from the Friends' Service Committee), the figure was 34. According to the N-CF Souvenir, 1919, the figure was 30 (with no explicit reconciliation with the earlier figure). Whence is the figure of 41 derived - and is a list of precise names available? I have already done much work on a number of the names in both lists.

A less important issue is whether Lloyd George had anything to do with overriding the sentences, rather than previous directive by the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith.

William Hetherington

Honorary Archivist,

Peace Pledge Union

archives@ppu.org.uk

NUMBER OF MEN THAT SERVED

Is it true that 1 in 4 of the TOTAL male population in Britian served, or just simply 1 in four of those that were liable to serve?( i. e. those of military age). Britian had about 46 million people in 1914, I had always thought that the ratio of the male population that served in WWW1 in Britian was among the lowest of the European powers if not THE lowest.

12.199.96.253 15:36, 4 August 2006 (UTC)