The Other Ranks’ Perspective G. D. Sheffield
Officers fell into two categories. If they passed dirty rifles, handled a spade, or carried a bag of cement, they were ‘aw reet.’ If not, they were ‘no bloody bon.’
—Pte W.V. Tilsley, a ‘Derby’ infantryman of 55th Divsion
Other Ranks did not respect their officers merely because they held the King’s com-mission. Rather, the soldier’s respect had to be earned by the officer, who had to demonstrate a number of leadership qualities. Working-class rankers tended to judge officers by a simple set of criteria. The views of working-class soldiers in 2/5 Glosters1 support Tilsley’s comments:
A bad officer, that is, a bully, is a—! A good officer, that is, a (sic) considerate, is ‘a toff.’
‘I’d follow him anywhere.’ ‘The men’s friend’; or simply, put in significant tones, a ‘gen-tleman’!
Other Ranks tended to judge officers almost entirely in terms of the deferential dialec-tic. Expressed more simply, the ranker’s view of the officer was largely determined by the way the officer behaved towards him. Officers had to juggle two aspects of their duties. They had to be both militarily efficient and also protective of their men, and these two roles could sometimes conflict. Inevitably, a ranker’s view of his officer could vary according to the circumstances. A ranker recalled that on one occasion hungry, cold men on a long march took a dim view of a normally popular officer, but that attitude changed to one of genuine gratitude when a surprise Christmas dinner was provided for the men.
Other factors were far less important in determining a soldier’s perception of an officer. Strict disciplinarians were not necessarily unpopular, as they could also pos-sess other qualities, such as leadership, of which the men approved. An officer’s youth was not necessarily a barrier to winning his men’s approval. In later life, Lt W. R. Bion (Tank Corps) wondered if anybody, ‘outside of a public-school culture, believe[s] in the fitness of a boy of nineteen to officer troops in battle?’ The answer was that the
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non-public school classes of 1914–18 accepted 19-year-old boys as military leaders pro-vided the latter behaved in an officer-like manner. An incident in Bion’s career sug-gests that a form of reverse paternalism could exist, in which rankers made concession to the youth of officers. When his tank broke down in action in 1917, Bion was calmed by the 38-year-old ‘grandfather’ of the crew who showed him photographs of his fam-ily. Pte Clarkson of 5/6 Royal Scots recalled that green young officers were inclined to try to teach old sweats their business, but nevertheless he admired their courage.
Pte A. Jobson (39th Division Field Ambulance) placed officers into three categories:
‘Good, Bad and perfectly Bloody.’ While this over-simplified the ambiguities inherent in the officer-man relationship, Jobson’s view may mean that good officers fulfilled their paternal role, bad officers did not, while ‘perfectly Bloody’ officers were those who were deliberately unpleasant or oppressive towards the men. Broadly speaking, there were three major reasons why officers were disliked by Other Ranks: failures in paternalism; failures of leadership; and deliberate unpleasantness.
Possibly the most important factor in determining a soldier’s attitude to his officer was the extent to which he cared for the well-being of his men. The diary of a ranker of 27th Division Ammunition Column shows a direct correlation between his low morale and poor conditions and food, for which he blamed his officers: ‘Rotten lot of officers—they fare alright but they don’t mind about us. . . . Fed up.’
Rankers also expected their officers to show leadership qualities in battle. Pte S.B.
Abbot (86th MG Company) condemned one of his officers (nicknamed ‘The Or-phan’) as a ‘thruster,’ prepared to endanger his men’s lives by unnecessary displays of excess zeal in ‘strafing’ the enemy positions, while simultaneously appearing to be overconcerned for his own safety. Abbot implicitly compared The Orphan with an-other officer, referred to respectfully as Mr Street, who was ‘a splendid man,’ a pater-nalist who was mourned as ‘our brave and kind officer’ when he was killed in April 1917. The essence of leadership is diverting the cohesion of the group to the ends de-sired by the military hierarchy; but this example demonstrates that if officers are per-ceived to be too eager to take risks, and thus jeopardise their troops, at the very least they forfeit the respect of their men. This seems to have happened, temporarily at least, in 2/Royal Sussex after the battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915. According to one sergeant, the men blamed the officers for adopting tactics which resulted in heavy ca-sualties. Conversely, in the eyes of his men, an officer’s courage could compensate for other failings. A group of rankers, discussing their officer, were heard to say ‘Now that little one don’t know much, but he’s always about when it comes on to shell.’
In general, a middle-class Territorial ranker wrote, officers’ ‘outward and visible standard of courage’ was higher than that of the Other Ranks. ‘Windy’ officers were usually regarded with some disgust. Both senior and junior non-commissioned ranks felt contempt for an officer of 1/13 Londons ‘for showing his fear in front of the men he was supposed to be leading,’ by ducking on hearing shells explode, the RSM2going so far as to shout at him to ‘keep his head up.’ An officer of 22/Royal Fusiliers was once found cowering at the bottom of a trench at the beginning of an attack; his platoon sergeant swore at him, and physically bundled him over the parapet. George Coppard (37th MG Company) mingled his disgust for an officer who refused to emerge from a dugout with pity for his physical and mental condition. Although one ex-ranker
wrote of men covering up the ‘deficiencies’ of ‘dud’ officers, this attitude does not seem to have been typical. Many soldiers appeared to have shared Lord Moran’s view that courage was very much a matter of character and willpower, that everyone felt fear, but only cowards gave way to it. Officers were expected by their men to set an ex-ample of courage. Cowards had, in the eyes of the Other Ranks, forfeited all right to commissioned status, and the privileges that went with it.
Rankers also expected their officers to behave in a fitting, gentlemanly manner when out of action. Genteel disgust at the loutish behaviour of some ‘temporary gen-tleman’ was shared by some rankers. An interesting insight into this is given by Pte Eric Linklater (4/5 Black Watch). One evening, Linklater was sitting in an estaminet with some sergeants when the peace was disturbed by a drunken, argumentative and visibly sexually aroused temporary officer chasing the hostess. The sergeants, work-ing-class slum-dwellers in civilian life, were ‘incensed by such behaviour in an officer of their regiment.’ Officers did not have to make an exhibition of themselves to be condemned as ungentlemanly by their men. Passages in the diary of the officers’ mess sergeant of a TF3unit, 1/5 Buffs, indicate that he respected the original officers of the battalion, who were gentlemanly and paternal, but he disliked their replacements who lacked these qualities. The sergeant was greatly aggrieved when his pay was reduced because the six surviving officers judged that he had less work to do: ‘A gentleman’s thanks,’ he commented sarcastically, ‘for what you have done for them.’ This sergeant was reacting to his hierarchical superiors’ failure to keep their side of the deferential bargain.
While failures of paternalism and leadership might be ascribed, by charitably-minded soldiers like Coppard, to the frailties of human nature, deliberate unpleasant-ness on the part of officers was deeply resented. Pte A.J. Abraham came across two officers who were regarded as petty tyrants. One, at a training unit, was nicknamed the ‘Black Bastard.’ He was ‘a mean type and we hated his guts.’ The other, Abraham’s platoon officer in 8/Queen’s, made a decision which long rankled with Abraham, when he refused to allow the men to wear greatcoats or groundsheets in heavy rain.
This failure to improve the conditions of the men was just one of many reasons why Abraham had a low opinion of this officer. However, Abraham had a very different at-titude towards others: ‘Some of our officers were born leaders, men we instinctively trusted and respected.’
It is rare indeed to find a blanket condemnation of officers in soldiers’ memoirs, diaries or letters. A furious denunciation of one officer is likely to be followed by a complimentary reference to another. Pte Frank Dunham of 1/7 Londons was scathing about one officer, nicknamed ‘Nellie,’ but wrote about Capt. K.O. Peppiatt in glowing terms. Peppiatt was ‘a sport,’ a ‘fine soldier . . . , [who] was not afraid to take his share in any of the risky jobs.’ In fact, it is uncommon to discover an officer who was ac-tively hated by his men, as opposed to one who was criticised for neglecting his men or for thoughtlessness. One such was a Northamptonshire Yeomanry officer, known as ‘the Bloody Bastard,’ described by one ranker as ‘the most detested and hated officer I ever met in two world wars.’ The interesting point is not that this officer was de-spised, but that he suffered by comparison with the officer whom he had replaced, who had been popular with the men. Because most officers were paternal and lived up II. Soldiers 125
to their side of the unspoken deferential bargain, officers who did not conform to the general pattern of officer-man relations were regarded with especial distaste by rankers.
Favourable references to officers can often be found in the writings of Other Ranks, although not as frequently as complementary references to men occur in offic-ers’ letters and diaries. In part this was a reflection of the differing perceptions of the relationship. It was also a product of the generally healthy state of officer-man rela-tions. Only if an officer was exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad, or if a particular officer suddenly came to mind, if he was killed or wounded for instance, was he likely to be mentioned in the letters or diaries of an Other Rank. To take one instance, the first fatal casualty mentioned by name in the diary of L/Cpl Joe Griffiths (1/King’s Royal Rifle Corps) was 2/Lt Bentall, ‘who was only 18 a real good sort & was liked &
respected by his men.’ His sense of loss prompted Griffiths to record his appreciation of this officer which otherwise would have been unknown.
Officers’ privileges were resented by some, mostly middle-class, rankers. One was a private of the London Scottish who objected to the greater opportunities for leave available to officers. His complaints were echoed three years later by a conscript Pay Corps private. The artist Stanley Spencer, who served as a ranker with 7/Royal Berks, slipped an oblique comment into his painting The Resurrection of the Soldiers. In among scenes of dead soldiers rising from their graves and shaking hands with their mates is a glum-looking officer—identified by his brown boots—cleaning his own kit.
These criticisms were fairly exceptional. Pte Coppard had no doubt about the rea-son why most soldiers accepted the disparity in privileges without complaint: ‘the Tommy accepted it as the natural order of things,’ although they might joke about the differences, for example by referring to ‘Old Orkney’ whisky as “Officers Only.’ Pro-vided that an officer behaved in a certain way, his privileges were not resented by the ordinary working-class soldier. If an officer behaved in an ‘unofficerlike’ way, by acting unfairly, neglecting his men or acting in a cowardly manner, in his men’s eyes he for-feited his rights to his lifestyle.
This point is illustrated by an incident that occurred on a troop ship en route to the Dardanelles in August 1915. On two days officers were allowed ashore while the men were kept on board ship. Several revealing remarks about this appear in Pte G.
Brown’s diary. First, he commented that the officers ‘didn’t play the game with us.’
Secondly, while admitting that to send a large number of men on shore leave pre-sented difficulties, he argued ‘the OCs should have been sports and tried some arrangement.’ The use of public school sporting imagery reinforced the sense of un-fairness experienced by these rankers. Whether in the trenches or on board a troop-ship, ordinary soldiers accepted that the officer might retire to a well-appointed dugout or cabin, but only after he had ensured that his men were fed and made as comfortable as possible. In this case the officers had neglected their paternal duty and officer-man relations suffered as a result; ‘[There was] Bad feeling about the business and officers were booed leaving.’
In 1916, an upper-class gentleman ranker wrote of a temporary officer who had joined a New Army4battalion at the beginning of the war, knowing as little about mil-itary life as the men he commanded. Gradually he trained as a soldier alongside his
men. Little by little he learned the character of each individual soldier of his platoon.
By his kindly and tactful handling of the men, he won their confidence, affection and love. The troops grew to feel that they belonged to him, and he belonged to them. His smile ‘was something worth living for, and worth working for,’ while ‘his look of dis-pleasure and disappointment was a thing that we would do anything to avoid.’ In the trenches, the men worried for his safety, and they mourned him when he was killed.
In the final paragraph, the ‘Beloved Captain’ appears alongside Christ in heaven.
The author, Donald Hankey, despite his upper-class origins, served in the ranks of 7/Rifle Brigade for a year in 1914–15. Later, as an officer in 1/Royal Warwicks, Hankey does seem to have been brave and paternal. His idealised portrait of ‘The Beloved Captain,’ which first appeared in the Spectator, reflects, in exaggerated form, the feel-ings of many rankers towards good officers. It would be ludicrous to claim that all rankers regarded all officers in this way, but some soldiers, working-class and middle-class alike, certainly had a very high opinion of some of their officers. Some younger soldiers hero-worshipped their officers, just as other youths idolised sportsmen or popular masters at school. More mature men respected officers for their courage and their demeanour. Ernest Shephard, a prewar Regular NCO of 1/Dorsets, described Capt. Algeo as ‘a real example of the Regular ‘Officer and Gentleman.’ . . . Absolutely fearless and [whose] first and last thought [is] for the men.’ A private of 1/15 Londons wrote that his company commander
held the devotion and respect of all who served him. . . . His officers and men were his family. He knew their foibles and most of their hopes and fears. They executed his orders explicitly and confidently.
Pte Giles Eyre (2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps) also wrote of men defending the honour of their officer against a rival platoon: ‘There ain’t no one in the Batt. like Mr. Walker, and you can swank as much as yer likes. We know’s ‘im and wouldn’t swap ‘im for nuffink.’
Just as the Beloved Captain’s platoon throve on his smile, it does seem that small acts of kindness and friendship on the part of officers had a disproportionate effect on rankers’ morale. In a letter of July 1915 a lance-corporal of 7/Norfolks, who, inter-estingly, was of middle- rather than working-class background, and an artist in civil-ian life, mentioned that he had attended an early-morning Communion service. His former platoon commander, a fellow scoutmaster, ‘came up and spoke to me after-wards, which was very decent of him.’
Rather more practically, in mid-1915 an officer of 2/Rifle Brigade told his men who had been selected for a working party that it was unfair for them to be called upon ‘to do fatigues while we were at rest, and told the men not to work too hard.’ There are two points of particular interest about this incident. First, it appears in the unpub-lished memoirs of J.W. Riddell, who was not a sensitive middle-class artist but a hard-bitten prewar Regular NCO. Second, the officer’s advice was well-intentioned, but if the troops had taken it, they would have been condemned to a longer spell in the trenches. The fact that Riddell bothered to record the incident in his postwar mem-oirs, which were extremely critical of military authority, indicates that he appreciated II. Soldiers 127
the officer’s kindness and concern for his men, and his desire to protect them against the unfair demands of the military system. It also illustrates the gulf in perceptions between the commissioned and non-commissioned ranks.
How common a figure was the “Beloved Captain’? A partial answer occurs in an in-teresting analysis of the officer-man relationship which appeared in 1938. Its author was an anonymous former ranker. This article drew attention to the ambiguities in the officer-man relationship. When he tried to recall his officers, he wrote, a trick of memory produced a composite figure:
boyish and middle-aged, cool and reckless, grave and humourous, aloof and intimate; a martinet lapsing into an indulgent father; a thwarter becoming an aider and abetter; an enemy melting into a friend.
This ex-ranker’s analysis of the attributes of the good officer, interestingly enough, had many points in common with the ‘official’ view of military leadership discussed in an earlier chapter. He regarded the officers’ battlefield role as important: ‘[we] de-spised some for their deficiencies on parade, while admiring their imperturbability under fire.’ However, other attributes of the ‘good’ officer were perhaps less likely to be approved by the powers-that-be: ‘no officer was good who had not learned when to be deaf, dumb, and blind—and when not to be.’ Most officers, the writer asserted, acquired these skills on active service. They also learned to question both Rudyard Kipling’s opinions of the private’s ‘psychology and character,’ which were, after all, some forty years out of date by the 1914–18 war, and also textbook views on ‘the be-haviour of men in the mass.’ In the field, officers learned man-management, and their effectiveness in this sphere greatly influenced their men’s opinion of them. The ideal officer, in the writer’s view, would have been a man of all-around talent. How-ever, a paternal officer who genuinely cared about the welfare of the troops under his command would be forgiven many sins of omission and commission by the or-dinary soldier. One of the writer’s officers was renowned for his ineptitude on the drill square ‘yet this officer was the best in the battalion for the care of his men in
This ex-ranker’s analysis of the attributes of the good officer, interestingly enough, had many points in common with the ‘official’ view of military leadership discussed in an earlier chapter. He regarded the officers’ battlefield role as important: ‘[we] de-spised some for their deficiencies on parade, while admiring their imperturbability under fire.’ However, other attributes of the ‘good’ officer were perhaps less likely to be approved by the powers-that-be: ‘no officer was good who had not learned when to be deaf, dumb, and blind—and when not to be.’ Most officers, the writer asserted, acquired these skills on active service. They also learned to question both Rudyard Kipling’s opinions of the private’s ‘psychology and character,’ which were, after all, some forty years out of date by the 1914–18 war, and also textbook views on ‘the be-haviour of men in the mass.’ In the field, officers learned man-management, and their effectiveness in this sphere greatly influenced their men’s opinion of them. The ideal officer, in the writer’s view, would have been a man of all-around talent. How-ever, a paternal officer who genuinely cared about the welfare of the troops under his command would be forgiven many sins of omission and commission by the or-dinary soldier. One of the writer’s officers was renowned for his ineptitude on the drill square ‘yet this officer was the best in the battalion for the care of his men in