ABSTRACT
The British Army, like the other armies involved from 1914, was unready for an unexpected trench war quite distinct from a ‘traditional’ war of movement. Unlike other European armies, the British Army was employed in worldwide garrison and policing duties for the Empire and, while excellent for colonial warfare, its small, professional organisation was ill-prepared for continental warfare, with its clashes between mass citizen armies. Birch noted that ‘our army was to a great extent an amateur facing a professional army, and that those in command, in fact in all ranks from general to lance-corporal, had to train their men and fight at the same time’.2
