2. A fruitful collaboration: Henry Wilson, the railways and the British Expeditionary Force’s mobilization, 1910–14

A contributor to the North-Eastern Railway’s staff magazine in 1912, inspired by the popular invasion literature of the time, mused upon the trauma that could potentially face the railway in the event of a German incursion on the Yorkshire coast:

To meet such a challenge, the author argued, myriad details and orders had to be prepared in advance to ensure that the fluidity of the network was not compromised by the sudden onslaught of impromptu traffic. ‘It is probably safe to assume’, the author concluded, ‘that the NER management have in their possession a secret timetable which could be put into operation at short notice in the event of mobilization’. In August 1914 the scenario was different, but the assumption was proven correct.

The evolution of modern, material-intensive industrial warfare engendered the development of armies that required quantities of manpower, munitions and equipment on scales incomparable in previous military experience. Britain’s island status, global interests and command of the seas made it highly unlikely in the early twentieth century that a large military force would ever need to be deployed on the British mainland (Ireland was an entirely different story). Therefore, any mobilization scheme developed for the BEF following its creation in 1907 necessitated the provision of sufficient transport to move the force over land and sea. For its bulk transportation needs, the British army relied upon the railways and the Royal Navy.

Yet aside from a laudatory statement to the house of lords from the newly installed secretary of state for war, Lord Kitchener, which acknowledged that the railway companies had ‘more than justified the complete confidence reposed in them by the War Office’,² Britain’s transport experts’ contribution to the BEF’s entry into the First World War received little recognition from contemporaneous military figures. Sir John French, the BEF’s first commander-in-chief, reserved his plaudits for the ‘Naval Transport Service and … all concerned in the embarking and disembarking of the Expeditionary Force’.³ Elsewhere, recognition for the British army’s successful mobilization was focused upon the QMG of the forces, Sir John Cowans,⁴ and the director of military operations (DMO) at the War Office, Sir Henry Wilson. Lord Roberts, Wilson’s friend and mentor, hailed the latter’s importance to the army’s entry into the war as early as 7 August. He wrote of Britain’s ‘indebtedness’ to Wilson for all he had achieved at Whitehall.⁵ Speaking shortly after the war, one of Wilson’s subordinates in the directorate of military operations claimed that ‘it was only the ardent spirit of Sir Henry Wilson, his tireless energy, wide vision and dauntless perseverance’ that turned hypothetical projections into the practical arrangements that existed in August 1914.⁶

Consequently, the pre-war preparations made for the BEF’s movement have been treated almost as if they were Wilson’s personal possession. John Bourne, exemplifying the historical approach to the WF scheme, referred to it as Wilson’s ‘administrative Rolls-Royce’.⁷ Robin Neillands, in the most thorough discussion of mobilization, transport and logistics in 1914 to have appeared to date, concluded his narrative with the observation that ‘Henry Wilson’s plan had worked to perfection’.⁸ Such one-sided accounts imply that Britain’s actions following the outbreak of war in August 1914 were a military-led response to the ‘unaccountable disbelief of the authorities’, which had retarded a comprehensive system of preparation for conflict.⁹ Where the BEF’s mobilization and concentration in France have not been ignored altogether, references to them have been invariably brief and limited to affirmations that the processes ‘proceeded remarkably well’.¹⁰ Indeed, most of the available literature on Britain’s entry into the war in 1914 tends to reinforce Julian Thompson’s remark that logistics only predominate over the more glamorous and controversial themes of tactics and strategy when the logistics fail.¹¹ The presence of British troops at Mons on 23 August emphatically demonstrates that the BEF’s logistical preparations did not fail in 1914.

The establishment, development and implementation of the WF scheme was not the result of one man’s endeavours. Nor was it a spontaneous reaction to Belgian and French requests for assistance following Germany’s invasion of their territory. Rather, Britain’s mobilization programme was a thoroughly prepared example of civil–military cooperation, which depended upon the input of Britain’s transport experts. Previous over-concentration on the political and military dimensions of the so-called July crisis – coupled with a desire to conceal the scheme’s evolution from the public and parliament (and, indeed, much of the government) before the war – has created an imbalanced picture of British actions in the days immediately surrounding Britain’s entry into the war. The success of the BEF’s mobilization was in large part due to the existence of a sophisticated network fostered and managed by Wilson during his period as DMO. Wilson recognized, and consistently represented to his political superiors, that it was only through careful, detailed preparations – undertaken both with future allies and the technical specialists employed to operate Britain’s largest transport companies – that the BEF could be rapidly and smoothly propelled into a European conflict. The nature of those preparations, and their influence over the decisions that governed Britain’s initial contribution to what became the western front, are the focus of this chapter.

Henry Wilson and the development of the ‘with France’ scheme

Brigadier-General Henry Wilson became DMO at the War Office in August 1910. His small and isolated directorate, established in 1904, was principally responsible for the production and assessment of military intelligence and ‘the development of strategic plans for the defence of Britain and the Empire’.¹² The duties assigned to the directorate included the collection of information about the military capabilities of the British empire, the collation of intelligence on Britain’s possible opponents in a future war, and the preparation of mobilization schemes to meet potential threats.¹³ Therefore, upon his appointment to the role of DMO, Wilson became intrinsically connected with two tasks: ensuring that Britain’s political and military leaders knew the identity and strength of Britain’s most likely adversaries; and preparing the army to respond to external dangers effectively.

Following the establishment of the directorate of military operations and the conclusion of the entente cordiale between Britain and France, Wilson’s predecessors had developed schemes for the deployment of a force beyond the British Isles within the narrow confines of the War Office. The army’s first two DMOs, Sir James Grierson and Spencer Ewart, had obtained government permission to establish contact with the French general staff and discussed the movement of British troops inland from the French coast to proposed concentration sites near the Belgian frontier. However, according to Wilson ‘they had not had time’ to investigate the question as to how the BEF was to be transported to the British coast from various locations across the country.¹⁴ Wilson’s remark was inaccurate. In fact, his predecessors had been explicitly forbidden from discussing the BEF’s mobilization plans with anybody outside the War Office, including the railway companies whose infrastructure and resources were vital to the swift concentration and movement of troops and their supplies.¹⁵ Within his first year in post, Wilson acknowledged that the ‘old scheme’ in place in August 1910 ‘had not been worked out in sufficient detail to admit of its being carried out’.¹⁶ The mobilization scheme upon which the BEF’s likely response to war in 1910 was founded consisted of hypothetical projections. It was not the product of a meticulous examination of the modern army’s transport requirements undertaken in conjunction with the experts capable of assessing whether those requirements could be met. Prior to Wilson’s arrival at the directorate of military operations, the arguments for diplomacy and national secrecy prevailed over the bureaucratic and technical realities that governed the mass movement of an industrial army.

The decision to preclude the railway companies from the planning process severely constrained both the quantity and quality of the work that the directorate could achieve in relation to the BEF’s mobilization scheme. The British government’s attitude contrasted sharply with circumstances in Germany, where the specialist railway section of the general staff – described by Mark Stoneman as a ‘linchpin’ of German war planning – cooperated closely with the civil railway administration throughout the pre-war period.¹⁷ Yet the absence of an equivalent pool of technically proficient officers within the British army, which fed into a perception within the railway industry that Britain’s military leaders consistently underestimated the railways’ capacity,¹⁸ did not mean that the army as an institution was ignorant of the technical aspects of railway operations. Each year the army made prolific use of the railways in conjunction with its annual manoeuvres. The transport demands for the army’s exercises in the years preceding the First World War graphically illustrated the size and weight of the impedimenta attached to the modern fighting force. In 1910 the LSWR was responsible for the movement of 26,000 officers and men; 8,000 horses; seventy guns; and 1,200 transport vehicles to the manoeuvre area ‘at the height of the holiday traffic’ season. ‘Between 9:55am on a certain Saturday, and 11:15am on the following Wednesday’, the LSWR successfully arranged for 137 trains to be run under war conditions on the army’s behalf.¹⁹ Three years later, the LNWR used the pages of its staff magazine to proudly record the company’s ‘exceptional efforts’ during the army’s manoeuvres in East Anglia the previous September. The troops’ concentration required the coordination of 209 trains, run over lines operated by the Great Western, Great Northern, Great Eastern and LSWR in addition to those handled by the LNWR. At the small and ill-equipped station of Potton alone, in ‘practically 36 hours work’ the railways delivered and unloaded trains containing 8,283 officers and men; 1,951 horses; forty guns and limbers; forty ammunition wagons; 251 four-wheeled wagons; eighty-four two-wheeled carts; and 124 bicycles. On the day after the successful completion of the movement, the LNWR’s general manager received a telegram that conveyed the army’s ‘great appreciation of the remarkable and efficient and punctual manner in which the move of the … army to the area of operations’ had been effected. ‘There was’, the telegram concluded, ‘absolutely no hitch in the arrangements’.²⁰

The movement of troops, both actual and potential, also engendered dialogue between the military and civilian experts concerned. Representatives of the War Office ‘confided’ with railway servants up to three months before the manoeuvres were scheduled to take place,²¹ while senior railway executives made themselves available to the army both for consultation through the mechanisms of the REC and in informal meetings with individual soldiers. Wilson’s papers from 1909 contain the notes he had taken during a discussion with the traffic managers of the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR) and the Great Eastern Railway, on the subject of a hypothetical mobilization of a division for a staff college exercise. The level of detail within Wilson’s record of the meeting illustrates that, prior to his arrival at the War Office the following year, he was thoroughly conversant with the complexities that surrounded the army’s use of railways.²² That awareness undoubtedly contributed to his determination, upon becoming DMO, to overturn the restrictive governmental decree that forbade cooperation between the railways and the War Office for the purposes of planning the BEF’s mobilization. On 9 January 1911 Wilson elaborated his reasons for seeking the railway companies’ assistance with the process in a letter to the chief of the imperial general staff (CIGS), General Sir William Nicholson:

As the lengthy gaps between the ERSC’s receipt of and response to the War Office’s exercises in the latter part of the nineteenth century had demonstrated, the coordination of large-scale troop movements across the country required thorough, time-consuming preparations. The failure to undertake those preparations in peace, Wilson believed, reduced Britain’s options in the event of a European war. The dominant military ideology of the period stressed the importance to an army of seizing the initiative through a rapid mobilization, followed by the application of that initiative to seek a decisive battle at a time and place that made success as likely as possible.²⁴ Without prepared railway timetables the BEF could not be mobilized rapidly, should the government decide to commence hostilities. Without the input of the railway companies, Wilson argued, the necessary timetables could not be prepared.

Wilson was by no means a lone voice in arguing for greater collaboration in the development of the BEF’s mobilization scheme at the start of 1911. Sir Frederic Bolton’s gloomy assessment of the railways’ ability to cope with likely wartime demands elicited a politico-military response from the new under-secretary of state for war, Colonel Jack Seely. On 24 January he wrote to the prime minster, Herbert Asquith, about the ‘[e]specially valuable information’ that could only be obtained from closer cooperation between the army and the nation’s principal railway companies.²⁵ Asquith’s reply raised no objections to the involvement of the ‘General Managers of the principle [sic] railways’, but emphasized ‘that the conditions of secrecy which have hitherto prevailed should, so far as possible, be preserved’.²⁶ Unbeknownst to Seely, Wilson had obtained authorization to discuss matters with the railways from the secretary of state for war, Richard Haldane, and the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, three days earlier.²⁷

The government’s decision to permit the War Office to discuss mobilization plans with the railway companies fundamentally shifted the relationship between the army and Britain’s transport experts. From that point forwards, the latter’s role in imperial military planning changed from one exclusively devoted to questions of national defence to one that was integral to the production of Wilson’s offensive-minded WF scheme. And the DMO quickly set about incorporating the railway companies into the task of producing timetables for the BEF’s concentration at the ports earmarked for its despatch to the continent. A schedule containing the details of every unit that required railway transport on mobilization was sent to the railway companies. The itemized list documented all of the information required by the civilian specialists to make arrangements for the move: what the unit comprised in terms of men and equipment; the station(s) from which the unit was expected to commence its journey; and the time and date – after general mobilization – at which the unit was required to arrive at its designated port for embarkation. The companies arranged the technical details of the move in consultation with either the QMG’s department or the individual home commands, and drew upon their experiences of planning the annual manoeuvres to pull together a workable programme. The companies were responsible for ensuring the provision of suitable rolling stock, for calculating the times when individual trains would pass through stations and junctions en route, for drawing up a complete timetable and for taking the necessary steps to guarantee that sufficient crews and engines would be available and ready for action when the need for them arose. Wherever potential clashes arose, the matter was referred up to Wilson’s office where decisions as to the order of priority were made and communicated back to the railways.²⁸

The LSWR became intimately connected to the evolution of the WF scheme after January 1911, thanks to its association with the principal departure point for the BEF. The port of Southampton, operated by the company since 1892, had a long history of military service and was earmarked to fulfil the same role at the outbreak of the next war as it had during the South African War.²⁹ The government covertly directed public funds to the LSWR, which were used to remove the only substantial bottleneck on Britain’s dense railway network and to increase the length of track within the port to thirty-seven miles before 1914.³⁰ The LSWR became Wilson’s ‘secretary railway’, handling correspondence between the War Office and the railway companies between 1911 and 1914. It installed bespoke diagram boards at the port to chart the specialist facilities required by certain units and allow the staff at Southampton to keep a visual record of the BEF’s complex demands, and it was the only company to be entrusted with possession of the entire programme of movements.³¹ The LSWR recruited a specialist clerk to work exclusively on the timetable, who received a list of the desired arrival times into Southampton for every train destined for the port upon mobilization. From that information each individual train was traced back to the point at which it was required to enter the LSWR’s system. Thereafter, the company over whose lines the train passed immediately prior to its transfer onto the LSWR’s network was notified of the time at which they were expected to pass the train over. Following the same method that company continued to plot the train’s journey in reverse, either to its point of origin or the next handover point on its voyage across the patchwork of lines that made up the pre-war British railway network.³² Once each journey had been traced back to its departure point an entrainment time was entered onto the corresponding unit’s individual mobilization timetable.³³

The process was not complete once the entrainment times for each unit were recorded, however. The Army Council amended the war establishments of certain components of the BEF every year, which meant that the timetables demanded constant revision. Changes to the departure time of individual trains had knock-on effects in terms of the journeys scheduled for other trains over the affected lines, while units’ embarkation points could be switched to different ports as the army juggled with the varying capacities for troops, supplies and equipment at Avonmouth, Newhaven, Liverpool, Dublin, Glasgow, Belfast, Queenstown and the port of London. Given the numerous factors involved, the process of amending the timetables consumed a great deal of time and energy on the parts of both Wilson’s directorate and the railway companies. Over the winter of 1912–13 the LNWR received such drastic alterations to their share of the programme that the company established a special department under W. E. Bradbury, chief of the timetable office in the company’s southern division, which worked exclusively on ensuring that it would be ready to meet its obligations to the War Office.³⁴ Internal memoranda produced for the DMO indicate that the amendments handed down from the Army Council in December 1913 were only expected to be synthesized with the existing timetables in four months’ time. The scheme for 1914 became operational on 1 April of that year, and provided the foundations for the mobilization programme followed by the BEF when war broke out four months later.³⁵

Table 2.1. Numbers embarked at English and Irish ports between 9 August and 21 September 1914.

In addition to moving the BEF’s various units to their assigned ports of embarkation on the outbreak of war, the War Office also had to provide transport to ship the troops and their myriad accoutrements across the English Channel. The personnel figures recorded in Table 2.1 were supplemented by at least 93,364 tons of ammunition, stores, vehicles and other items during the BEF’s initial movements. Such figures were comprehensively dwarfed later in the war, but they ‘serve as a useful corrective’ to the idea that military transport was ever ‘a simple matter of embarking and disembarking personnel and horses’.³⁶ The pre-war army was thoroughly aware of that fact, and of the deceptive complexity involved in the embarkation and disembarkation of a military force. Exercises took place at Southampton in both 1912 and 1913 to test the army’s embarkation procedures and identify the issues likely to arise when the mobilization took place for real. Henry Holmes, the LSWR’s superintendent of the line, provided the War Office with guidance as to Southampton’s capacity and underlined the importance of keeping the port’s railway connections clear of obstructions during the latter exercise.³⁷

While Wilson and the railway companies focused upon the challenges involved in the movement of the BEF on and away from British soil, Colonel Seely – who was appointed secretary of state for war in 1912 – focused on the requirements necessary for the effective disembarkation of the force on the other side of the Channel. He invited four shipping experts to investigate the complications the BEF was likely to face on the French coast: Sir Thomas Royden of the Cunard Company; Sir Lionel Fletcher of the White Star Line; Sir Richard Holt of Blue Funnel; and Sir Owen Philipps of the Royal Mail. Royden and Fletcher accepted Seely’s invitation and, accompanied by officers from the military and naval staffs of both France and Britain, made a thorough reconnaissance of the French ports designated to receive the BEF.³⁸ The disembarkation of a modern army was just as complex a technical challenge as its embarkation, and one that required detailed examination of such questions as the availability of berthing facilities, tidal limitations, the number and power of the cranes at each port, and the amount of suitable storage facilities in the vicinity of the wharves. Royden and Fletcher ‘gave up all their private work’, and devoted an entire six months to the production of a comprehensive review of the BEF’s shipping requirements. Their recommendations were handed over to the Admiralty in early 1913 and adopted as the foundations of the disembarkation instructions produced for issue to the troops.³⁹

Royden’s and Fletcher’s expert investigations uncovered serious deficiencies in the infrastructure upon which the BEF’s swift deployment depended. At Boulogne, Le Havre and Rouen – the ports destined to receive the BEF upon its arrival in France – they identified that insufficient crane facilities were available to handle the impedimenta that accompanied the troops. Therefore, to prevent backlogs and congestion the BEF’s mechanical transport, which was projected at 950 lorries and 250 motor cars, was divided between all three ports rather than concentrated upon one facility.⁴⁰ Inevitably, such dislocations to the existing plans necessitated further revisions to the mobilization programme in Britain and created additional work for the timetabling staffs of the railway companies involved. A hand-written note on the surviving records confirms that the timetables for 1913 had been amended in response to the recommendations made in the Royden–Fletcher report.⁴¹ However, the time and energy expended in peacetime to ensure that the BEF’s preparations were solid reduced the risk of delays in the time-sensitive period following the government’s decision to mobilize in August 1914. As the QMG of the forces, Sir John Cowans, acknowledged in 1918, Royden and Fletcher ‘rendered our Movements branch in the War Office … enormous assistance before the war in drawing up the schemes for the despatch of the Expeditionary Force’.⁴²

The WF scheme was not the only product of the collaborative environment of 1911–14. Wilson’s tenure as DMO bore witness to an increase in inter-organizational coordination between institutions and departments that existed for martial purposes and those whose primary responsibilities lay in the government and administration of peacetime Britain. The work of Britain’s transport experts took place concurrently with an acceptance within British strategic circles of the inapplicability of the term ‘business as usual’ to state affairs in wartime. As the CID’s secretary noted in November 1910, many governmental departments had ‘much important work to undertake – either consequent on, or contributory to, the naval and military mobilisations’ of Britain’s armed forces.⁴³ The government’s response to the national and imperial requirements for coordinated action on the outbreak of war took physical form in the shape of the war book – a series of instructions to be followed by the appropriate government departments and industrial concerns, both upon the declaration of a precautionary period and following the order to mobilize. First produced in 1912, and updated in 1913 and 1914, the book acted as a step-by-step guide for officials whose responsibilities ranged from the provision of police officers to protect vulnerable railway junctions to the despatch of mobilization telegrams to the nation’s soldiers and sailors. After 1913 the war book was arranged in chapters for each department, which allowed each to quickly obtain the instructions to guide their actions without having to concern themselves with material that only applied to others.⁴⁴ To establish their roles and responsibilities at the start of a war, employees at the post office and the customs and excise board, or in the general managers’ offices of Britain’s railway companies, simply consulted the relevant section of the war book. It represented the ‘search for order and integration’ that took place within Britain’s largest businesses before the First World War on an imperial scale,⁴⁵ and guided Britain’s entry into the conflict in August 1914.

From his appointment as DMO through to the outbreak of the First World War, Henry Wilson never missed an opportunity to highlight how anxious he was to make his superiors aware of the BEF’s state of readiness. His anxiety was frequently accompanied by a list of existing deficiencies that, in Wilson’s view, rendered the BEF unprepared for war. In one of Wilson’s regular letters to the CIGS he wrote that ‘all the great powers and many of the smaller ones are straining every nerve to increase the numbers and the efficiency of their armies: we alone are doing nothing to increase our numbers and but little, and that slowly, to increase our efficiency’.⁴⁶ During the Agadir crisis, he argued that:

When Sir John French replaced Nicholson as CIGS in March 1912, Wilson placed on record his opinion that, ‘as we stand today, we cannot claim that the E[xpeditionary] F[orce] is either ready to take the field, or capable of keeping the field as a thoroughly efficient fighting machine’.⁴⁸

Yet through the collaborative efforts of the War Office and Britain’s transport experts, by the summer of 1914 the WF scheme was complete. A full set of timetables, which recorded the peace stations, locations of equipment and places of mobilization for every component of the BEF had been copied, printed and issued to the relevant units. A series of tables indicating the day after general mobilization on which each of their units had to be ready to move had been delivered to each home command.⁴⁹ Every unit or part thereof had been assigned to a train, and the expected departure and arrival times for each train had been carefully recorded. At the ports of embarkation, troops and supplies had been allocated to a cross-Channel transport, and the serial numbers of each ship were ready to be telegrammed across the sea to inform the French authorities of their contents.⁵⁰ The 1st (Guards) Brigade’s schedule illustrates the level of detail within the programme, even for a unit with a comparatively short journey to the coast. Each half-battalion of the brigade was assigned to one of eight trains, which were timetabled to leave Farnborough for Southampton between 2:27 a.m. and 2:31 p.m. on the fifth day of mobilization. Three battalions, labelled A to C, were allocated to ships that left Southampton on the same day and were expected to arrive at Le Havre before sundown. Following an enforced rest at a base camp outside the French port, on day seven the three battalions were to entrain in France for transportation inland to their destination stations at Ohis, Neuve Maison, La Capelle and Buironfosse. The fourth battalion, D, was to land at Le Havre before noon on day six and detrain two days later at the same stations as their comrades.⁵¹

The character of modern warfare among industrialized powers demanded that the intervention of the BEF on the continent was ‘a diplomatic and military act too serious for its execution to be left to an eleventh-hour inspiration’.⁵² The effective deployment of a British force relied upon thorough planning and detailed preparations. When the government made the decisions both to commence hostilities with Germany and to send the BEF to France, the British army was able to implement a programme of movements created by the combined efforts of civilian and military experts. The WF scheme was founded upon Britain’s possession of a robust transport network and an abundance of technical specialists in the myriad professions required for the sustenance of a global trading empire. While the movement of the BEF in August 1914 represented a military manoeuvre more complex than any that had been previously attempted by a British force, the expertise that conceived and then oversaw the programme ensured that – unlike Germany’s so-called Schlieffen plan – it did not contain elements that were a gamble logistically. Martin van Creveld, in his pioneering assessment of the German commander’s infamous scheme, concluded that ‘Schlieffen does not appear to have devoted much attention to logistics when he evolved his great plan’.⁵³ Henry Wilson did, and he recognized the crucial need to involve Britain’s transport experts in the process.

Wilson’s role in the development of the WF scheme was that of a facilitator. In his biography of this ‘political soldier’, Keith Jeffery suggested that Wilson’s ‘larger than life persona’ may have made him appear more of a driving force behind the scheme than he actually was.⁵⁴ The volume of work undertaken by the directorate of military operations under Wilson’s direction provides ample evidence of his leadership skills, personal drive and energy in the role of project manager for the WF scheme. Yet it also demonstrates that Britain’s mobilization planning before the First World War was a team effort. Wilson acknowledged the significant contributions of his subordinates, whose names and roles have been eclipsed by the theatrical and divisive personality of their director. Major Marr Johnson is one such figure. In the months immediately before the war began Johnson personally hand-wrote, typed and proofread the timetables for the 1914 edition of the programme before they were approved and printed on the War Office’s secret press.⁵⁵ His work may have been largely forgotten by historians, but it was clearly appreciated by his pre-war chief. After the war Wilson attempted to gain Johnson a position in the newly established Ministry of Transport, writing to Sir Eric Geddes that:

Johnson only completed his gargantuan task in July 1914, as Europe slid towards war.

Yet Johnson’s timetables could not have been committed to paper without the substantial investment of time and resources made by the railway companies in the three years prior to the First World War. Wilson lobbied for access to the railway companies in 1911 because he understood that a workable mobilization scheme required the support and input – in terms of knowledge, resources and time – of those who both maintained the flow of men and materials around the country on a daily basis and would be required to implement the programme when war began. Britain’s transport experts were an integral part of the process that evolved from what ‘would certainly have been a shambles’ in 1910 to the thorough collection of instructions that existed by August 1914.⁵⁷ Thanks to the technical expertise possessed by a highly skilled, industrialized society, working in conjunction with an effectively managed directorate of military operations, the BEF’s movements programme existed on paper. When the signal to mobilize was issued, the same combination of civilians and soldiers was responsible for converting the WF scheme from paper to practice.

Britain’s mobilization and concentration in August 1914

Colonel Victor Huguet, France’s former military attaché to Britain, wrote on 2 August 1914 to appraise Wilson of the day’s events on the continent. Huguet informed Wilson that the French army’s mobilization had begun, and that ‘great hopes are entertained in France concerning British assistance. Should you not join us, it would be a great disappointment here’.⁵⁸ Wilson, a committed Francophile since his youth,⁵⁹ wished for nothing more than to see the BEF immediately mobilized and sent to France’s aid. He had frequently stressed the importance of the BEF’s swift mobilization in the event of war during his tenure as DMO, and claimed that the ‘early intervention of our six divisions would be more effective than the tardy presence of double their numbers’. Therefore, he concluded, ‘we must mobilise the same day as the French’.⁶⁰ However, as the French authorities began to mobilize in response to German activity on their eastern frontier on 1 August, the British government did not follow Wilson’s advice. Furthermore, when the war council met for the first time on 5 August – following the expiration of Britain’s ultimatum to Germany the previous night – it was unclear whether the timetables produced over the previous years were going to be put to their intended use.

In Britain the decision to go to war was far from constrained by the rigidity of railway timetables. In recent years David Stevenson has comprehensively debunked A. J. P. Taylor’s provocative thesis, while William Philpott has even gone as far as to claim that ‘the importance of Wilson’s timetables has been overemphasised’ in the historiography.⁶¹ However, the existence of the WF scheme – with its interlocking transport schedules – did factor into the government’s calculations in the days either side of the declaration of war.⁶² On Sunday 2 August the QMG ordered Captain Henry Mance to ‘bring all the mobilization programmes to 10 Downing Street to explain the railway situation’ to the prime minister. Mance told Asquith that ‘owing to the Territorials being scattered at that moment all over the country it would not be possible to make the following day the “First day of mobilization”[,] but that the programme would work if the “First day” was deferred’ until Wednesday.⁶³ The army’s use of the August bank holiday period as an opportunity to call out the territorials for summer manoeuvres meant that some 100,000 men were either far from their mobilization stations or in the middle of journeys to camp when the crisis in Europe deepened. All had to be returned before the mobilization programme could begin. Asquith ordered the immediate cancellation of the territorials’ movements, before raising the question of whether the order for the BEF to mobilize could be detached from the order for it to embark for France. In response, Mance

Mance demonstrated that the various segments of the railway programme devised over the previous three years could not be operated separately without ‘alterations to the orders to every unit and every railway’. Following consultation with the REC, Mance confirmed to the government that embarkation could begin on the fifth day of mobilization at the earliest.

The outcome of the meeting of 2 August was that both the size and destination of Britain’s contribution to the war in Europe remained unsettled. Consequently, when the war council met three days later, those in the room considered the BEF’s deployment to be open for discussion. Sir John French, who had been issued command of the BEF, advocated that the WF scheme be rendered void because its mobilization had not been synchronized with that of the French army. In place of the proposed transportation of the British force to the French Channel ports, as coordinated by the directorate of military operations, Sir John suggested his troops be shipped to Antwerp to act in concert with the Belgian army it had ostensibly entered the war to protect. However, as Sir Charles Douglas, Sir John’s replacement as CIGS pointed out, the arrangements that had been made for the BEF’s despatch from Southampton and other ports had been drawn up with the journey times to and from France in mind. The extra distance to Antwerp demanded either the spontaneous sourcing of extra naval transports or the recalculation of the existing railway timetables for the delivery of troops and supplies to the British coast.⁶⁵ Wilson also believed that the waters of the Scheldt, the river upon whose banks the port of Antwerp sits, could be ‘closed by a schoolboy’. In the event of a major European war, Wilson had warned Churchill three years earlier, Antwerp was likely to be ‘cut off from all direct communication with the sea’.⁶⁶ Furthermore, the Royal Navy refused to guarantee the safety of naval transports north of the Dover Straits until the German fleet had been destroyed.⁶⁷ That the BEF’s senior commander could raise such a logistically impractical suggestion augured ill for his appreciation of the role transportation was to play in the conflict.

The deliberations of the war council emphasized that the only practicable concentration scheme available to the British government in August 1914 was ‘with France’. Wilson’s carefully constructed plan boasted the benefits of interdepartmental cooperation, thorough logistical preparation and the input of suitably qualified transport experts. Once Sir Douglas Haig’s suggestion to retain the BEF at home for two to three months – during which time the ‘immense resources of the Empire’ could be developed – had been rejected in favour of the immediate despatch of four divisions to the continent,⁶⁸ the programme of movements contained within the WF scheme dictated the location to which those troops would be sent. Sir John’s attempts to reintroduce Antwerp as a possible base of British operations, coupled with Haig’s desire to hold the BEF back from France, demonstrated the reluctance of Britain’s two senior commanders to enter into too close a relationship with the French army.⁶⁹ The existence of Wilson’s embarkation programme did not govern Britain’s decision to enter the war. However, once that decision had been made – and the trains began to roll into Southampton on 8 August – the rigidity of railway timetables locked the British and French armies into a partnership, which materially diminished Britain’s freedom of action for the duration of the conflict.

By the time the embarkation process began, Britain’s transport experts and the directorate of military operations had already been preparing for war for more than a week. On 31 July Sir Sam Fay received a coded telephone call, which informed him that the ‘precautionary stage’ had begun. He set off for the LNWR offices that housed the REC and did not see his home again for a fortnight.⁷⁰ Mance was detained by the requirements of the WF scheme for even longer. He was in Worcestershire when the announcement of the precautionary stage reached him on 29 July, coordinating movements associated with the territorials’ summer manoeuvres with the Great Western Railway. He returned to London that day and slept in the War Office every night from 31 July to 24 August.⁷¹ Fay was joined in the capital by his REC colleagues, each of whom were connected to their home railways by the telephone network specially installed over the previous two years. On 4 August the War Office delivered a letter to 130 railway companies, which announced that the government had taken control of the railways and that they were to be managed on the government’s behalf by the REC. It informed them that:

Following the delivery of this letter the REC became responsible for 98 per cent of the railway mileage in Britain (but not Ireland, which was excluded from the Act), the instructions to general managers contained within the war book were brought into effect and the breadth of the secret plans developed over the previous three years was finally revealed to the majority of Britain’s railway servants.⁷³

The smoothness of the mobilization and concentration process depended upon the professionalism of the railways’ employees and their military passengers. The annual peacetime manoeuvres had given both groups invaluable experience of the technical nature of railway transport before they were called upon to realize those movements in wartime: the army with regards to the loading and unloading of troops and their equipment, and the railways in terms of the coordination of the locomotives, crews and rolling stock required for the specialist moves.⁷⁴ The 12th Horse Transport Company’s experience in August 1914 illustrates both the complications that arose from a mobilization during the summer bank holiday and the breadth of accoutrements that accompanied the industrial army. Based at Colewort barracks in Portsmouth, the company began August at their annual training camp on Salisbury Plain. Following receipt of the order to return to Portsmouth as quickly as possible, the unit undertook a march of fifty-five miles in just one day. Only one horse, which went badly lame, returned to the barracks by train. After medical inspections at Colewort the company marched out of the barracks to mobilize at Hilsea, where their ten-day mobilization schedule began. At Hilsea ‘life became more strenuous than ever as stores of all description, but mainly wagons and harnesses, were drawn from Ordnance, and reservists and specially enlisted men began to roll in from all over the country’.⁷⁵ In addition to the extra men, the company had to incorporate between fifty and sixty horses per day as they arrived by rail according to pre-arranged impressment schedules devised before the war. In less than two weeks – and a day ahead of schedule – a pre-war transport company of around thirty men and forty horses emerged as No. 5 Reserve Park, which comprised seven officers, 289 men, 153 wagons and 358 horses. The unit ‘shook down with local treks to accustom a variegated collection of men and horses to convoy duties and march discipline’, and then headed to Southampton for embarkation.

The impressment of horses provides a further example of the depth of civil–military cooperation required for the WF scheme to function effectively. Wilson observed early in his tenure as DMO that ‘there [would] be a difficulty about moving some 15,000 horses from the north of England to Aldershot’.⁷⁶ Wilson underestimated the size of the task. The BEF’s peacetime establishment of horses was 19,000. Upon mobilization the BEF immediately required 55,000 horses and the territorials a further 86,000. A census of horses, compiled in each of the home commands from data provided by local police forces, confirmed that sufficient horses were available. However, a system for the identification, collection and transport of animals suitable for army requirements had to be created. Over the next two years the War Office used the information to draw up lists of horses available in various locations around the country, and trained around 1,400 ‘prominent local gentlemen of suitable knowledge and status’ – usually landowners or experienced horsemen – to collect an assigned number of horses on mobilization.⁷⁷ By April 1913 the ‘various horsebrows, slings and stores required by the home ports’ for the embarkation of the animals had been purchased, and timetables for the movement of the horses were brought into operation on 1 April 1914 with the rest of the railway programme for the year.⁷⁸ The civilian collectors received their orders to commence the collection of horses on 3 August. Within twelve days the British army had successfully impressed 165,000 horses, an impressive number but one significantly smaller than the 615,000 initially mobilized by the German army.⁷⁹

The timetable for the horses purchased on mobilization for the Aldershot command alone highlights the level of cooperation required for the scheme to work effectively. The civilian purchasers who provided horses for the first train to depart for Aldershot had to ensure their animals were at Worcester station by 8:40 p.m. on the first day of the programme, and the final departure for Aldershot was scheduled to leave Birmingham on the third day. During that period, trains for the Aldershot troops and Cavalry Division were entrained at Worcester, Pershore, Coventry, Nuneaton, Amesbury, Basingstoke, High Wycombe, Abingdon, Reading, Aylesbury, Maidenhead, Chipping Norton, Oxford and the two Birmingham stations of Hockley and Small Heath. The stations of Bordon, Liphook and Farnborough received the animals, which had travelled along the lines of the Great Western, LSWR and LNWR on their journeys to Hampshire.⁸⁰ The surviving timetables for the eastern command present a similar story but on an even larger scale. The LNWR, Midland, SECR, Great Eastern, Great Northern and the London, Brighton and South Coast (LBSCR) railways all participated in the movement of horses from various sites across East Anglia and the south-east to fulfil the mobilization requirements of the Essex and Norfolk Yeomanry.⁸¹

The passages above demonstrate that the railways’ work in August 1914 was not merely restricted to the delivery of the BEF and its stores to various ports in southern England. In the weeks that followed the government’s decisions to enter the war and to send the BEF to France, Britain’s railways were responsible for the mobilization and concentration of the BEF, the movement of the territorials, reserves and Royal Navy personnel, the supplies and equipment required by all of the above, and the maintenance of Britain’s colossal passenger and freight traffic with as little dislocation to the rhythms of civil life as possible. Notices were pinned up at prominent stations across the country to warn commuters of potential disruption to regular passenger services by the demands of the armed forces. However, ‘the business trains to and from London ran very much as usual, and the normal service was maintained on nearly all parts of the system’.⁸² Britain’s railways ran 1,408 specially timetabled trains for the carriage of over 334,500 troops during the first fortnight of the mobilization period. The Great Western alone handled 632 special troop trains, forty-one trains containing coal for the Admiralty and 149 trains containing petrol, oil and various stores. Aside from the suspension of excursion services, the ordinary goods and passenger traffic across the Great Western’s system was maintained throughout.⁸³ Welsh coal for the fleet began to arrive at Grangemouth on the Caledonian Railway’s network on 10 August.⁸⁴ During that month the Caledonian handled 342 naval and military trains, most of which originated on their system and were composed of Caledonian stock. Thanks to the Admiralty’s decision not to demobilize the fleet following test mobilizations in mid July, the human traffic connected to the Royal Navy’s entry into the war was relatively small. Consequently, the comparatively tiny Highland Railway – the closest point on the railway network to the naval base at Scapa Flow – was not overloaded by the northward movement of reservists in early August. Those who had not been called up on 12 and 14 July headed towards Orkney from 2 August in a series of movements that were ‘carried out with perfect smoothness’.⁸⁵

It was at the opposite end of the country where the vast majority of the railways’ attentions were directed in August 1914, however. All railroads may not have led to Southampton (see Figure 2.1), but at the start of the war a large volume of traffic was delivered into the BEF’s principal port of departure. The first troops, charged with the establishment of supply bases and rest camps near the French Channel ports in readiness for the main body of the BEF, arrived on 7 August. Captain R. H. D Tompson was among them, and described arriving on a construction site as the railway access to the port was swiftly increased. The existing provision, described by Tompson as ‘a strategic disgrace’, was augmented by new construction undertaken by a ‘very large group of navvies [who toiled] night and day’. Their exertions created ‘a very fine piece of work’, which ‘seemed to grow almost as one watched’ and was complete by 8 August when the bulk of the BEF started to filter through to the docks.⁸⁶ The programme demanded that the LSWR receive 350 trains – each composed of an average of thirty vehicles – into the port, unload their passengers and cargo, and remove them from the platforms in readiness for the next train within sixty hours. They did so within forty-eight. A train pulled into the docks every ten minutes in the first twenty-four hours of the concentration period, and for the following nineteen days in a row Southampton received ninety trains per day – each one loaded with men, horses, wagons, guns, ammunition and myriad other supplies. The flexibility and contingency that had been built into the programme resulted in the majority of trains arriving at Southampton between twenty-five and thirty minutes ahead of schedule. In the first twenty-four-hour period, just one train was recorded as having arrived late, and that by only five minutes.⁸⁷

By 26 August, 65,814 officers and men had left Southampton aboard steamers sourced by the Admiralty from civilian firms – including, as the operators of a variety of waterborne services, many ships owned and operated by railway companies.⁸⁸ Second-Lieutenant Lyndall Urwick of the 3rd Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment, was among them. In an unpublished autobiography, he wrote that the scene on the evening he set sail was unforgettable:

The accumulation of men and materials at the ports proved the only major concern for the QMG’s staff during the concentration. Heavy fog in the English Channel meant that transports did not return to Britain as quickly as the timetable demanded. The weather, combined with an examination process at Southampton that Mance described as ‘too rigorous’, created a backlog of ‘over one day’s troops at the rest camps’ around the port. Anxious at the build-up of men, Sir John Cowans went to Southampton to examine whether the railway programme should be postponed for a day to allow the port to be cleared. However, the fog dispersed, the examinations process was streamlined and the natural contingency built into the railway programme from its inception meant that the arrears were rapidly rectified.⁹⁰

Figure 2.1. Diagram showing how all (rail) roads lead to Southampton.

Source: E. A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War; Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements (2 vols., London, 1921), ii. 1008.

Once the troops had disembarked on French soil they passed beyond the limits of Britain’s transport experts’ influence on the WF scheme. From that point forward the successful concentration of the BEF depended upon the collaborative efforts of Wilson’s staff and the French army. The planning for the final step of the BEF’s concentration was complicated by the different train-loading methods employed on either side of the Channel. In Britain trains ‘of medium weight [were run] at a fairly high speed; on the continent the practice [was] to run very heavy trains at slow speed’. In Britain a battalion or battery was transported in two trains; in France they travelled in one.⁹¹ Therefore, the units that disembarked in France did not entrain on vehicles of the same composition as those they had left behind in Britain. Fresh timetables had to be compiled between the British and French authorities to provide for the inland movement of the BEF. The French proved more than happy to collaborate in an activity that further cemented the growing alliance between the two nations, and in July 1914 Wilson ordered three staff officers to attend the French 11th Division’s manoeuvres alongside Sir John French, Haig and other senior figures. The object of their visit was to become familiarized with the military workings of the French railways, and the lavishness of Huguet’s praise is noteworthy:

Unfortunately, the details of ‘the very good work which they had brought with them’ was not elaborated upon. However, the results of their endeavours became clear once the BEF arrived in France a month later. Each unit was issued with a manual that advised them of the procedures to be followed on their journey to the front, while officers who arrived in advanced parties received detailed instructions that delineated their responsibilities from those undertaken by the local authorities.⁹³ There were teething problems, particularly as the British troops struggled to entrain quickly onto unfamiliar rolling stock from rail level rather than from platform level. The first unit to entrain took five-and-a-half hours to load its vehicles; the equivalent French force was expected to complete the task in ninety minutes.⁹⁴ Yet the lack of standardization between the railway operations of the two countries, and the three-day gap between the mobilizations of their forces, did not materially obstruct the British concentration on the French army’s left. The BEF entrained upon 361 trains from 15 August onwards, undertaking journeys from Boulogne, Le Havre and Rouen to the concentration area around Maubeuge, Busigny and Hirson that took up to seventeen hours to complete. Only thirty-six of the 343 trains that passed through Amiens during the period were more than thirty minutes late.⁹⁵ By 23 August, as the battle of the Frontiers raged to the south and took a horrific toll on the French and German forces involved, the BEF had crept forward to Mons where its own war began in earnest.

Conclusion

In an address to the American Luncheon Club on 13 November 1914, the acting chairman of the REC and general manager of the LSWR, Herbert Walker, remarked on the successful despatch of the BEF to the continent that:

Between 10 and 31 August Walker’s own railway had carried 4,653 officers, 113,801 men, 314 guns, 5,221 vehicles, 1,807 cycles, 4,557 tons of stores and 37,469 horses on the army’s behalf.⁹⁷ Its efforts – and those of its counterparts across the British Isles – pale by comparison to the railway efforts undertaken elsewhere across Europe as the gigantic conscript forces of the great powers readied for battle. In the first six days of mobilization alone the eastern border corps of the German army mobilized over 148,000 men, mainly drawn from Berlin and the Rhine area. At the same time, on the other side of the country, the XV, XVI and XXI Army corps received almost 112,000 men and 23,000 horses by rail. In total, the German and French armies ran 20,800 and around 10,000 trains respectively in support of their mobilization programmes; far higher than the 1,408 trains operated on the British rail network. The 361 trains that delivered the BEF to its concentration area from the Channel ports were a mere fraction of the 4,278 trains that traversed the French rail network in the French army’s fourteen-day concentration period – during which up to 380 trains per day delivered some 1,300,000 French troops into position.⁹⁸ The British railways’ effort was ‘magnificent and unprecedented’, but it was undertaken on a far smaller and less conspicuous scale than those on the European mainland in August 1914.

However, the substantial investments of time and resources made by Walker, his colleagues in the REC and the thousands of unnamed railway servants to the British mobilization should not be reduced to a mere footnote in the history of the First World War.⁹⁹ For over three years Britain’s most prominent railway companies provided labour ‘greatly in excess of what had previously been necessary’ in response to the army’s complex and changeable transport demands.¹⁰⁰ They participated in an exchange of ideas and expertise with Henry Wilson and his staff within the directorate of military operations. Their joint endeavours underline both the applicability of industrial knowledge and skills to military operations and the existence of a far closer working relationship between the army and industry than has hitherto been acknowledged. The British army, ‘contemptible’ in size as it may have been, was absolutely reliant upon privately owned locomotives, rolling stock and track for its propulsion to the front. Henry Wilson understood this, and turned a professional relationship that had been focused upon defensive and educational activities into one that was integral to the swift deployment of Britain’s ‘strike force’. By the time Europe’s armies began to roll out their gargantuan mobilization schemes – drawn and redrawn by large-scale, state-sanctioned military organizations – Britain possessed a thoroughly researched and mapped out scheme for the deployment of the BEF.

Railway timetables did not impose the First World War upon the statesmen of Britain or any other of the European powers in 1914, as A. J. P. Taylor famously asserted in the 1960s.¹⁰¹ Henry Wilson’s vituperative diary entries in early August, as his carefully coordinated plans for a simultaneous mobilization and embarkation were cast aside by Asquith’s government, illustrate the limited influence of logistics over the state’s decision-making processes.¹⁰² Yet once it had taken the decision to commence hostilities, the lack of alternatives to the WF scheme severely constrained the government’s freedom of action. No other programme of movements existed in the detail required for it to be carried out swiftly in August 1914. From the very outset the options available to British civil and military leaders were limited by the transport factor. For the four years that followed, the roads, railways and shipping lanes that had delivered the BEF to the western front became part of a global transport infrastructure that sustained and shaped the fighting that took place during the First World War. The contribution of Britain’s transport experts to the processes and procedures of industrial warfare did not end once the firing started.

______________

¹ ‘Our railways in time of war’, North-Eastern Railway Magazine, ii (1912), 67. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations in this passage are taken from this source.

² Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 5th ser., xvii (25 Aug. 1914), col. 503.

³ J. D. P. French, 1914 (London, 1919), p. 40.

⁴ D. Chapman-Huston and O. Rutter, General Sir John Cowans, G.C.B., G.C.M.G.: the Quartermaster-General of the Great War (2 vols., London, 1924), i. 287–8.

⁵ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 2/73/45, Roberts to Wilson, 7 Aug. 1914.

⁶ TNA, WO 106/49A/1, history of the growth of the scheme; preparation of a plan for rendering military assistance to France, and notes on entrainment and embarkation, Address by Maj. Gen. Radcliffe on inception and working of scheme, p. 3.

⁷ J. M. Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (London, 1989), p. 17.

⁸ R. Neillands, The Old Contemptibles: the British Expeditionary Force, 1914 (London, 2004), p. 96.

⁹ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 2/73/45, Roberts to Wilson, 7 Aug. 1914.

¹⁰ I. M. Brown, British Logistics on the Western Front, 1914–1919 (London, 1998), p. 43. For other concise references, see H. Strachan, The First World War: To Arms (Oxford, 2001), p. 206; E. F. Carter, Railways in Wartime (London, 1964), pp. 80–1; J. N.Westwood, Railways at War (London, 1980), p. 138.

¹¹ J. Thompson, The Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Conflict (Oxford, 1991), p. 3.

¹² T. G. Fergusson, British Military Intelligence, 1870–1914: the Development of a Modern Intelligence Organization (Frederick, Md., 1984), p. 203.

¹³ War Office (reconstitution) committee. Report of the War Office (reconstitution) committee. (Part II) (Parl. Papers 1904 [Cmnd. 1968], viii), p. 25.

¹⁴ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/7/2, minute to CIGS reporting progress on scheme of EF, Apr. 1913, p. 1.

¹⁵ C. E. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson Bart, G.C.B., D.S.O.: His Life and Diaries (2 vols., London, 1927), i. 91–2.

¹⁶ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/5/5, Wilson to Nicholson, 24 Apr. 1911.

¹⁷ M. R. Stoneman, ‘Wilhelm Groener, officering, and the Schlieffen plan’ (unpublished Georgetown University PhD thesis, 2006), p. 153. On the strategic importance of railways to German war planning, see A. Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian War Planning (New York, 1991).

¹⁸ ‘Railways and military operations’, Railway Gazette, 7 Aug. 1914, p. 174.

¹⁹ ‘Railways and military operations’, p. 174.

²⁰ W. E. Bradbury, ‘Manoeuvres in East Anglia’, London and North-Western Railway Gazette, Jan. 1913, pp. 6–9.

²¹ J. F. Bradford, ‘The war manoeuvres in the eastern counties—autumn 1912’, London and North-Western Railway Gazette, March 1913, pp. 89–90.

²² IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/3/11, appendix D – movement of troops by rail, Oct. 1909.

²³ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/5/4, Wilson to Nicholson, 9 Jan. 1911.

²⁴ S. van Evera, ‘The cult of the offensive and the origins of the First World War’, International Security, ix (1984), 58–107.

²⁵ NCL, Mottistone papers, Mottistone 11/40, Seely to Asquith, 24 Jan. 1911.

²⁶ NCL, Mottistone papers, Mottistone 11/42, Asquith to Seely, 26 Jan. 1911.

²⁷ K. Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: a Political Soldier (Oxford, 2006), pp. 91–2.

²⁸ TNA, WO 106/50, scheme for mobilization on a war footing – progress of scheme for despatch of forces (WH/1), memorandum by Captain H. O. Mance (staff captain, QMG 2) on the questions raised by the executive committee in their memorandum of 10 Dec. 1912, 23 Dec. 1912, pp. 2–3; E. A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War: Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements (2 vols., London, 1921), i. 27–8.

²⁹ I. F. W. Beckett, ‘Going to war. Southampton and military embarkation’, in Southampton: Gateway to the British Empire, ed. M. Taylor (London, 2007), pp. 133–46.

³⁰ D. Stevenson, ‘War by timetable? The railway race before 1914’, Past & Present, clxii (1999), 163–94, p. 174; Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, ii. 1008–9.

³¹ Beckett, ‘Going to war’, p. 142; TNA, WO 106/49A/2, Wilson-Foch scheme – expeditionary force to France, outline of the scheme and details regarding mobilization and staff arrangements, n.d., p. 12.

³² Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, i. 112–14.

³³ TNA, WO 106/49A/1, history of the growth of the scheme, address by Radcliffe, p. 7.

³⁴ E. A. Pratt, War Record of the London and North-Western Railway (London, 1922), pp. 6–7.

³⁵ TNA, WO 106/49A/2, Wilson-Foch scheme, revision of programme, remarks of various directorates, unsigned memorandum, 4 Dec. 1913.

³⁶ A. Hurd, History of the Great War. The Merchant Navy (3 vols., London, 1924), ii. 83.

³⁷ TNA, WO 107/24, release of government personnel for active service: correspondence, Notes on the embarkation of the expeditionary force at Southampton; embarkation exercises, Southampton, 1913. Statement by L. S. W. Railway. On the 1912 exercise, see Chapman-Huston and Rutter, Sir John Cowans, i. 270; Beckett, ‘Going to war’, pp. 142–3.

³⁸ J. E. B. Seely, Adventure (London, 1930), pp. 140–1.

³⁹ F. E. Smith, Contemporary Personalities (London, 1924), pp. 291–2; S. Cobb, Preparing for Blockade 1885–1914: Naval Contingency for Economic Warfare (Farnham, 2013), pp. 187–8; TNA, WO 106/49A/1, history of the growth of the scheme, address by Radcliffe, p. 4.

⁴⁰ TNA, WO 107/296, report of the British armies in France and Flanders, 17 March 1919, p. 38; WO 106/49A/2, Wilson-Foch scheme, i. Factors affecting plan of movement and staff work.

⁴¹ TNA, WO 106/49A/2, Wilson-Foch scheme, v. Sea transport.

⁴² TNA, WO 107/16, inspector-general of communications, general correspondence, Cowans to Clarke, 23 Feb. 1918.

⁴³ TNA, CAB 15/2, memoranda, series K. 1–100, ote by the secretary, 4 Nov. 1910.

⁴⁴ Copies of all three war books are available at TNA, CAB 15/3–5, war book: summary of action taken by departments, 27 Feb. 1912 to 30 June 1914.

⁴⁵ J. Yates, ‘Evolving information use in firms, 1850–1920: ideology and information techniques and technologies’, in Information Acumen: the Understanding and Use of Knowledge in Modern Business, ed. L. Bud-Frierman (London, 1994), pp. 26–50, at pp. 29–30.

⁴⁶ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/5/21, Wilson to Nicholson, 26 Dec. 1911.

⁴⁷ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/5/15, Wilson to Nicholson, 16 Aug. 1911.

⁴⁸ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/5/22, Wilson to French, 3 Apr. 1912.

⁴⁹ TNA, WO 106/49A/8, Expeditionary Force tables and details of the war establishments of units, mobilization dates by commands, Apr. 1914. The complete set of timetables is available at TNA, WO 106/49B/3, railway timetables, Expeditionary Force time tables, 1914.

⁵⁰ TNA, WO 106/49B/3, railway timetables, Expeditionary Force timetables, 1914.

⁵¹ TNA, WO 106/49B/3, railway timetables, Expeditionary Force timetables, 1914; TNA, WO 106/49B/4, serial tables: Southampton for the 2nd–19th day details of train timetables: units and goods for entrainment, weight, etc., 1914; TNA, WO 106/49B/7, disembarkation tables, 1914.

⁵² A. de Tarlé, ‘The British army and a continental war’, trans. H. Wylly, Royal United Services Institution. Journal, lvii (1913), 384–401, at p. 400.

⁵³ M. Van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge, 1977), p. 138.

⁵⁴ Jeffery, Henry Wilson, p. 99.

⁵⁵ TNA, WO 106/49A/1, history of the growth of the scheme, address by Radcliffe, p. 7.

⁵⁶ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 2/26/4, Wilson to Geddes, 3 Apr. 1919.

⁵⁷ B. Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College, 1854–1914 (London, 1972), p. 258.

⁵⁸ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 2/73/38, Huguet to Wilson, 2 Aug. 1914.

⁵⁹ Jeffery, Henry Wilson, p. 4.

⁶⁰ TNA, WO 106/47, defence and operational plans, conditions of a war between France and Germany (E2/25), 12 Aug. 1911.

⁶¹ A. J. P. Taylor, War by Time-Table: How the First World War Began (London, 1969); Stevenson, ‘War by timetable?’; W. Philpott, ‘The general staff and the paradoxes of continental war’, in The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, c.1890–1939, ed. D. French and B. Holden Reid (London, 2002), pp. 95–111, at p. 99.

⁶² S. R. Williamson, Jr., The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 336–7.

⁶³ TNA, PRO 30/66/9, correspondence and papers relating to the shipment of troops to Ireland and France, and the establishment and organization of the director-general of military railways, recollections of the first few days of mobilization, p. 3.

⁶⁴ TNA, PRO 30/66/9, correspondence and papers, recollections, pp. 3–4.

⁶⁵ TNA, CAB 22/1, minutes of meetings, secretary’s notes of a war council held at 10 Downing Street, 5 Aug. 1914, pp. 1–2.

⁶⁶ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/5/16A, Wilson to Churchill, 29 Aug. 1911.

⁶⁷ P. Guinn, British Strategy and Politics, 1914 to 1918 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 13–14.

⁶⁸ TNA, CAB 22/1, minutes of meetings, secretary’s notes, 5 Aug. 1914, p. 2; secretary’s notes of a war council held at 10 Downing Street, 6 Aug. 1914.

⁶⁹ For a discussion of Sir John’s strategic ideas before the First World War, see W. Philpott, ‘The strategic ideas of Sir John French’, Journal of Strategic Studies, xii (1989), 458–78.

⁷⁰ S. Fay, The War Office at War (London, 1937), pp. 20–1. The precautionary stage was the first of three phases of operations that took place at the outset of war, the others being mobilization (the movement of troops to their mobilization stations), and concentration (the delivery of troops to the theatre of operations). In the precautionary phase, the army communicated its railway requirements to the REC and guards were placed at tunnels and bridges to ensure the security of the network. See Stevenson, ‘War by timetable?’, p. 166.

⁷¹ TNA, PRO 30/66/9, correspondence and papers, recollections, pp. 1–2.

⁷² Quoted in J. A. B. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War I (London, 1947), p. 26.

⁷³ Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War I, pp. 26–9; TNA, PRO 30/66/9, correspondence and papers, recollections, p. 6.

⁷⁴ Norman Pattenden’s series of articles describes the LSWR’s experience of the manoeuvres in 1914, and highlights both the complexity of the work and the professionalism of the railway staff involved. See N. Pattenden, ‘Armageddon? – No just practising’, The South Western Circular, xii (2001).

⁷⁵ M. Young, Army Service Corps, 1902–1918 (London, 2000), pp. 44–5.

⁷⁶ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/6/4, note from a meeting in Major-General Heath’s room, 27 July 1911.

⁷⁷ T. R. F. Bate, ‘Horse mobilisation’, Royal United Services Institution. Journal, lxvii (1922), 16–25, at pp. 18–19; J. Singleton, ‘Britain’s military use of horses 1914–1918’, Past & Present, cxxxix (1993), 178–203, at p. 184; Chapman-Huston and Rutter, Sir John Cowans, i. 251–9.

⁷⁸ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 3/7/3A, note containing ‘48 points’ concerning the expeditionary force scheme prepared for the DMO, 3 Apr. 1913, p. 2.

⁷⁹ Singleton, ‘Britain’s military use of horses’, p. 184.

⁸⁰ TNA, WO 33/657, mobilization railway time tables for southern command, section III: Aldershot command, table 4(G) – horses bought on mobilization (revised to July 1914). Under the army horse reserve agreement, approved by the Great Western’s directors in March 1913, the railway agreed to provide the army with 221 horses on the outbreak of war. In August 1914 the army requisitioned a further 40 light draft horses from the railway, and 12 more animals were commandeered by the military authorities. See TNA, ZLIB 10/11, Great Western Railway: war reports of the general manager to the board of directors, 1914–1919, p. 16; S. Gittins, The Great Western Railway in the First World War (Stroud, 2010), p. 17.

⁸¹ TNA, WO 33/676, eastern command mobilization railway timetables for horses, Category (G) – mobilisation horses, 1914.

⁸² ‘Railways and the war. Reduced passenger service’, Railway Gazette, 7 Aug. 1914, p. 194.

⁸³ C. Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History: an Outline from the Accession of William IV to the Nationalisation of Railways, 1877–1947 (2 vols., London, 1959), ii. 300–1; Gittins, The Great Western Railway, p. 13; C. Maggs, A History of the Great Western Railway (Stroud, 2015), p. 175.

⁸⁴ Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, ii. 546.

⁸⁵ Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, i. 110.

⁸⁶ Brotherton Library Special Collections (BLSC), Liddle collection, papers of Captain R. H. D. Tompson, LIDDLE/WW1/GS/1612, diary entries 7 and 8 Aug. 1914. My thanks to Mark Butterfield for alerting me to Captain Tompson’s diary.

⁸⁷ Chapman-Huston and Rutter, Sir John Cowans, i. 281; Beckett, ‘Going to war’, p. 143; ‘Railway administration in war’, Railway Gazette, 20 Nov. 1914, pp. 529–30; TNA, ZPER 7/103, records of railway interests in the war, 1915, p. 18.

⁸⁸ A. J. Mullay, For the King’s Service: Railway Ships at War (Easingwold, 2008).

⁸⁹ Greenlands Academic Resource Centre (GARC), papers of Colonel Lyndall Fownes Urwick, 8/3/2, management pilgrimage, p. 2.

⁹⁰ TNA, PRO 30/66/9, correspondence and papers, recollections, pp. 6–7; Chapman-Huston and Rutter, Sir John Cowans, i. 282.

⁹¹ A. M. Henniker, History of the Great War: Transportation on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London, 1937), p. 14.

⁹² IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 2/73/27, Huguet to Wilson, 16 July 1914. Emphasis in original.

⁹³ TNA, WO 106/49A/7, instructions for First and Second army commanders and officers of advanced parties and railway transport establishment, pp. 1–3; WO 106/49B/1, instruction for entrainment and embarkation (short voyage) for units of the expeditionary force; BLSC, Tompson papers, LIDDLE/WW1/GS/1612, diary entry, 6 Aug. 1914.

⁹⁴ Henniker, History of the Great War, p. 21.

⁹⁵ M. Peschaud, Politique et fonctionnement des transports par chemin de fer pendant la guerre (Paris, 1926), pp. 83–4; J. H. F. Le Hénaff and H. Bornecque, Les chemins de fer français et la guerre (Paris, 1922), pp. 215–22. Lieutenant Evelyn Needham’s recollections of the ‘interminable’ journey from Le Havre to the front are quoted in P. Hart, Fire and Movement: the British Expeditionary Force and the Campaign of 1914 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 63–4.

⁹⁶ ‘Railway administration in war’, p. 530.

⁹⁷ ‘Modern armies and modern transport: the work of the London and South-Western Railway during the war’, Railway Gazette, 31 Jan. 1919, p. 160.

⁹⁸ Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg, 1914 Bis 1918: Das Deutsche Feldeisenbahnwesen (Berlin, 1928), p. 12; Les armées françaises dans la grande guerre: la direction de l’arrière (Paris, 1937), p. 24; Le Hénaff and Bornecque, Les chemins de fer français, p. 28; Stevenson, ‘War by timetable?’, p. 167.

⁹⁹ Robin Neillands, in an otherwise broad account of the mobilization process, only referred to one railway company’s contribution to the WF scheme: the LSWR. See Neillands, The Old Contemptibles, p. 90.

¹⁰⁰ Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, i. 16.

¹⁰¹ A. J. P. Taylor, The First World War: an Illustrated History (London, 1963), p. 20.

¹⁰² IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 1/23, diary entries, July–Aug. 1914. The period is summarized in Jeffery, Henry Wilson, pp. 128–9.