My dad just told me about his grandad who was drafted as a private in 1916 and became a lieutenant by 1919, and was thus able to attend the University of Bristol. He's wondering how common an occurrence this was, and also whether it was part of a deliberate policy, or simply the result of the aristocratic junior officers' high casualty rate. So I thought I'd ask here if anyone can tell me, or at least recommend some reading material that'll help. Thanks!
Its certainly correct that the army had very quickly to expand beyond its traditional recruiting base for the Officer Corps.
The reasons for this are fairly obvious - large number of officer casualties combined with unprecedented demand for officers as the army expanded.
To put this into perspective, in the course of the war, the army granted around a quarter of a million commissions, while the average number of commissions granted between 1908 and 1913 was approximately 650 per annum. In 1914, there were approximately 28,000 Officers in the Army, of which around 4,500 became casualties in that year, with ~600 replacements sent out.
The impact of this arithmetic is obvious. Battlefield casualty replacements were consuming almost the entire annual supply of new Officers, leaving virtually none to take their place in the the New Armies and even then were only replacing ~10% of losses.
Clearly this was unsustainable, even in the short term.
However, the writing was on the wall even before the war, with the Adjutant General recognising in 1910 that “We are coming to the end of our tether as regards candidates from the limited class which has hitherto supplied the commissioned ranks”.
During the Boer War, the top ten public schools had supplied 41% of Officers, with Eton alone contributing 11%. To solve this problem, the War Office created ‘Officer Training Corps’ (OTC’s) at public schools, grammar schools, and universities. Those attending or who had attended OTC’s would eventually supply around 100,000 Officers with other promising candidates “of good general education” advised to apply so that he could be judged in the flesh as to his suitability for the Officers’ Mess.
The overall effect of this was to give the Officer Corps a distinctly middle-class flavour. On demobilisation it was found that those being demobilised were from the following occupations (non exhaustive list):
Commercial/Clerical – 27% - 38,500 men
Students/Teachers – 18% - 25,500 men
Professional men – 15% - 21,750 men
Engineering – 8% - 11,300 men
Men from working class occupations were predictably less likely to be commissioned but included 99 leather tanners, 1,016 miners, 184 dock workers, and 266 porters.
With the need for Officers still pressing, Kitchener ordered every unit to put forward the names of NCO’s likely to make for decent Officers. Territorial Force battalions, the ranks of which were likely, in many cases, to be filled with educated, literate men with the benefit of some military experience proved fertile ground for such recruiting. Indeed, it was proposed to convert the Artists Rifles in its entirety into an OTC, while the CO’s of other TF battalions nervously applying the handbrake lest their entire commands evaporate into commissions!
Some battalions of the New Armies also proved a good source of Officers, with even the less socially prestigious 93rd ‘Northern Pals’ Brigade proving a rich seam of Officers.
By Spring of 1917, all battalions were required to put forward the names of 5 privates or NCO’s a month who might be suitable for commissioning.
Thus, a form of meritocracy developed in the Officer Corps, limited though it might have been by existing Edwardian social beliefs.
………………
The long term impact on the army was somewhat mitigated by the fact that few such commissions were regular – the use of temporary commissions did, to an extent, insulate the Officer Corps from such a dramatic social earthquake. Nevertheless, the process which had been recognised pre-war in which the character of the Corps would have to change for good was complete, and it would no longer be the (almost) exclusive preserve of the major public schools.
More broadly, the effect on society as a whole is difficult to differentiate from dramatic changes brought about by the war. However it should be noted that this was the first time the middle class had the experience of war en masse - those middle class Officers included literate, sensitive men such as Owen and Sassoon, brought up in safety and comfort and with no experience of hardship.
Fair to say that the middle class never recovered from the shock of their experiences, and the writing, plays, and poetry of such men continues to shape and indeed distort our view of the war today.
Source - Gary Sheffield: Leadership in the Trenches