'The Army Isn't All Work'

Physical Culture and the Evolution of the British Army, 1860–1920

James D. Campbell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317044529
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

Between the Crimean War and the end of the First World War the British Army underwent a dramatic change from being an anachronistic and frequently ineffective organization to being perhaps the most professional and highly trained army in the world. Historians have tended to view that transformation through the successive political reform efforts of those years, but have largely overlooked the ways in which the Army transformed itself from within. This change was effected through the modernization of training, operational and leadership doctrines. The adoption of formal physical training and organized games played a central part in this process. With its origins in elite public schools and upper-class country homes, the Army's philosophy of Athleticism was a part of the ethos of 'muscular Christianity' widely held in contemporary British institutions. Under the potent influence of this philosophy, military sport went from a means of keeping soldiers from drink and the officers from duty, to an institutionalized form of combat training. This book documents the origins and development of formal physical training in the late Victorian Army and the ways in which the Army's gymnastic training evolved into a vital building block of the process of turning a civilian into a fighting man. It also assesses the nature and extent of British military sport, particularly regimental sports, during this period of evolution for the Army. Through an investigation of the Army's physical culture during this dynamic period, one can gain an understanding of not only how the Army's change from within occurred, but also of some of the important links between the Army and its parent society.

PART I
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano: The Origins of the Army Gymnastic Staff and Regimental Sport, 1860–1880

Chapter 1
Officer Sport: Aristocrats and Schoolboys

I am sure that I am not exaggerating when I say that whether at cricket, boating, boxing, hunting, racing, shooting with rifle or gun, we invariably held our own. … We suffered under one grievous misfortune … we never in my time, excepting in the rebellion in Ceylon, were engaged in any campaign. We have fought with every kind of wild animals, but never with human beings.

Johnson Wilkinson, East Yorkshire Regiment (15th Foot)1

Being a good sportsman, a good cricketer, good at rackets or any other manly game, is no mean recommendation for staff employment. Such a man, without book lore, is preferable to the most deeply-read one of lethargic habits.

Colonel Garnet Wolseley (later Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley,
Commander-in-Chief of the British Army), 18692

During the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, British Army officers were of primarily upper-class origins, with a majority coming from landed families. Those officers not coming from such a background quickly conformed to the social mold of their peers, or were ostracized and, more often than not, hounded into leaving the service. These facts have been well established in numerous detailed demographic studies of the Victorian and Edwardian officer corps.3 With the officer corps firmly rooted in the social and cultural traditions of the rural upper class, it would naturally follow that the values and pastimes of that class would dominate the British officer corps, and they did. One of these class characteristics that dominated the life of the British officer was a passion for sport—mainly field sports and competitive games. This passion was a major factor in the Army’s decision to institute a formal physical training program, and is a primary reason for sport and physical training becoming so widely embraced as integral aspects of training in the late Victorian Army.

Field sports—hunting, fishing, shooting, horse racing—are occupations traditionally practiced by the European upper classes. In many respects these pastimes largely defined the rural upper classes in Britain before the world wars. Major estates were maintained at great expense solely for the purposes of sport, with the owners of these estates spending enormous sums of money to manage and record hunting pursuits and provide for small armies of gamekeepers, stables of horses, packs of hounds, and even “Earth Stoppers,” men who were employed to see to the maintenance and wellbeing of fox lairs and new litters of pups within the estate.4 Sport has been viewed by historians as a significant means of fostering upper-class identity and unity, and these elements of sport clearly apply to nineteenth-century Britain’s overwhelmingly gentry-derived officer corps.

For centuries, field sports and athletic pursuits have been associated with the profession of arms. Many of these sports originated as means of military training, and so have enjoyed an accepted place in the lives of warriors down to the present day. These pastimes, however, occupied a place so central in the lives of Victorian British Army officers that it is in some respects difficult for us to fathom today. The average officer spent the vast majority of his time occupied with sport, more so than any other single activity, to include his military duties. The pursuit of sport, even during wartime, had a long history in the British Army: it was a widespread practice among the officers of the Peninsular Army to maintain personal and unit packs of hounds. Wellington himself kept a pack of hounds until his dogs and his huntsmen were captured by the French.5 Some regiments maintained packs of hounds that followed them from posting to posting, following the tradition maintained by their forebears in the Peninsular Campaign. The Green Howard Hounds were an Army institution, started just after the Indian Mutiny and lasting for nearly a century.6 Outside the unit hunts, the imperial community maintained hunt clubs across the Empire. In addition to numerous clubs in Ireland, such clubs as the Peshawar Vale Hunt Club in India and the Cape Foxhounds in South Africa were well established and extremely popular. General Sir Evelyn Wood said that he normally hunted forty-six days per year, but due to his “heavy work load” during the South African War he was only able to hunt twelve times that year.7

Another officer recorded in his diary kept during that war,

a prodigious slaughter of fowl, buck, antelope and Cape Buffalo when he was based at Naauwpoort, regular hunting with the Cape Foxhounds at Wynberg, and 140 days of polo in South Africa: “What with polo three days a week, and hunting three days, and a shoot on Sundays, I managed to keep myself pretty fit!”8

Officers were afforded ample opportunity to indulge their passion for sport because of the prodigious amount of leave time available to them. These men were granted leave in a way that would seem astounding to an army officer of today. Officers could be granted leave for sometimes six months or more during the year, and they also had the option of going on half pay for any length of time to tend to personal business or for other reasons, such as to serve in the government. Commanders would routinely authorize extended leaves for the purposes of hunting or other sporting activities, and actively encourage subordinates to engage in sport and games, even while on active service.9 Hunting could supplement the meager fare available to soldiers in more remote stations within the Empire, and aside from this rather obvious function, most officers saw sport as a way to alleviate boredom and promote good health.

Officers especially took advantage of this liberal leave policy in Ireland. Ireland was for many a posting where the average officer had little to do but play games and engage in field sports. There it would appear that most of these men did almost nothing but ride to hounds, fish, and attend race meetings. Reflecting on his Irish service in the early 1880s, Sir Edward May fondly remembered the regimental races, hunting, and cricket: “Such sport I have never had before or since.”10 Major General J.F.C. Fuller recalled of his time at the Curragh, “it was a delightful life, mostly duck shooting and hunting in the winter, and tennis and cricket in the summer.”11 In his Personal Adventures and Anecdotes, retired Colonel J.P. Robertson relates the history of his time in Ireland before the Crimean War as a pleasant series of social engagements, yachting trips, and fishing expeditions, only occasionally disturbed by civil unrest. He admits that, while stationed at Enniskillen, he only attended to his military duties every other day, as on alternate days he was busily occupied with salmon fishing.12

Even more so than Ireland, India was the true military sportsman’s paradise. Officers posted to India could look forward to a strong likelihood of participation in combat operations, and reaped the benefits of a much lower cost of living than that in either Ireland or England. The primary attraction of India, however, was sport. Lieutenant General Adrian Carton de Wiart thought India tawdry. Full of “revolting smells and noises,” its only attraction was that he knew it to be “a wonderful centre for sport.”13 Most memoirs and regimental journals provide a vision of the officer’s life in India that centered almost exclusively on sport. As Johnson Wilkinson, an officer in the East Yorkshire Regiment recalled,

I am sure that I am not exaggerating when I say that whether at cricket, boating, boxing, hunting, racing, shooting with rifle or gun, we invariably held our own. … We suffered under one grievous misfortune … we never in my time, excepting in the rebellion in Ceylon, were engaged in any campaign. We have fought with every kind of wild animals, but never with human beings.14

The time spent planning, participating in, and recording sporting exploits would certainly suggest that officers were full-time athletes and sportsmen, and only part-time soldiers. Winston Churchill, describing his first trip to India as a subaltern in the 4th Hussars, said that, after making suitable living arrangements, he and his fellows in the regiment were able to devote themselves to “the serious purpose of life. This was expressed in one word—Polo.” Churchill states that the officers of the 4th Hussars spent more time on polo than on any other activity, with the possible exception of “duty.”15

Lieutenant General Lord Baden-Powell’s memoirs of his service in India are largely taken up with accounts of his sporting activities, primarily polo and pigsticking. He was also an avid big game hunter, and spent a large part of his career on various shooting expeditions in Africa and India. According to Baden-Powell, when posted to India his regimental duties occupied an infinitesimal amount of time compared to that spent on sport, and he argues that time spent hunting or playing polo was far more valuable for his career than that spent on his relatively minimal regimental duties. His advocacy of the outdoorsman’s life and the sporting ethic would be incorporated as an integral element in the scouting movement he founded, and all of the various books and pamphlets he wrote for Boy Scout consumption are peppered with anecdotes and lessons from his hunting and outdoor experiences.16

Regiments and individual officers in India kept detailed records of their hunting expeditions and their “bags”: the game books and hunt club records of some units record a vast destruction of native fauna that would be unthinkable, if not impossible, today. The 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders game book from their time in India between January 1902 and December 1912 records that officers shot:

674 big game of thirty-six species, including three elephants, six tigers, twelve panthers and eighty-four boars. They also shot 27,293 small game, including 4,256 pigeons, 7,549 ducks and 9,354 snipe. The officer with the “best bag” killed ninety-nine head of big game of twenty-five species in four and a half years.17

Service in Africa was also a prime opportunity for many officers to engage in sport. Although more recently colonized and therefore more primitive, the sporting promise of Africa was well recognized by many Victorian soldiers. The wide variety of terrain, climate, and fauna was conducive to a full range of sporting activities, from hunting with the Cape Foxhounds, to snipe hunting in Tunisia, and hippopotamus and elephant hunting in Kenya. Baden-Powell, in Sport in War, describes a series of exciting encounters with lions during his service in the Matebeleland campaign. While on various scouting missions in hostile territory, he thought nothing of suspending operations for as much as a full day to track, shoot, and skin lions. He always made a special point of allowing his bearers to take parts of the lion for medicinal and shamanistic purposes.18 General Sir Alexander Godley described in his memoirs “great sport” hunting jackals with the regimental hounds during his service under Wolseley in Rhodesia. Godley’s account of that campaign is strongly colored by his wonder at the amount and variety of game available for shooting in the region, as well as his concern for the care and training of the regimental hounds.19

These sporting activities continued well into the First World War, often causing bewilderment and consternation among friend and foe alike. French and German soldiers thought this British attachment to sport archaic, unmilitary, and even immature.20 Yet despite censure from allies and ridicule from enemies, the King’s officers persisted in behavior that they firmly believed set them at a level far above that of their detractors. I...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• “Vitaï Lampada”
• Introduction
• Part I Mens Sana in Corpore Sano: The Origins of the Army Gymnastic Staff and Regimental Sport, 1860–1880
• Part II “Play Up and Play the Game”: Physical Training and Army Sport, 1880–1908
• Part III “Training For Sport is Training For War”: 1908–1914
• Part IV “The Greater Game”: Army Physical Culture in Wartime
• Select Bibliography
• Index