ABSTRACT
Years later, J.W. Roworth, an unemployed labourer, would remember the words of the recruiting sergeant. He thought them a ‘mouthful’, but enlisted anyway.2
He was not alone. After Britain entered the First World War on 4 August 1914, British men volunteered for military service at a rate never before seen in her history. By December, more than 1 million had enlisted. By the end of 1915, more than 2.5 million had joined. These volunteers made up half of all British servicemen in the First World War.3 They fought in Britain’s most sanguinary war. They were the soldiers who marched forward at the Somme. They were the soldiers who slogged through the mud at Passchendaele. They were the soldiers who absorbed the Germans’ spring offensive of 1918, and then, through the summer, pushed them back to the border of Germany. They were the soldiers who fought and won the war for Britain.
