ABSTRACT

Training the New Armies, which had been raised at the beginning of the war, so that they were capable of defeating the Germans presented a major challenge for the British Army. The formation, equipment, and training of the 30 divisions of the New Armies and the increase in strength of the BEF from 6 to 60 divisions in less than two years was a major achievement. Certainly, at first the British Army had neither the experience, training, nor ability to match the Germans in the tactical realm and ‘in an army the greater part of which had had no experience of any war except this war of trenches, a certain lack of tactical sense was perhaps not to be wondered at’.2 Against the skill of the Germans the British pitted inexperienced and undertrained troops. In September 1916 Foch noted simply that ‘our Divisions were green soldiers & his were veterans’ because the British Army had had to expand from ‘6 to 60 Divisions’.3