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However, Lord Kitohener himself was now at the helm, and this was the best angury for the future. Not that in respect of improvement in the fighting line he could then effect anything. He had a far wider and bigger task in hand, and as the initiative in all matters concerning the fighting force had necessarily to come from the Commanderin-Chief in the field according as the necessities of war demanded, it was some months before the bitter experience of the trench warfare of the winter showed how lamentably deficient we were in the engineering branch of the army, and in our organisation for utilising the science of engineering to military needs.

with swiftness and secrecy, good it had accomplished the In some respects the employ- Kitchener Committee of 1911 ment of the best mechanical need never have assembled. means for saving labour and money and time had been considered, but not even the greatest panegyrist of the General Staff would think of asserting that this consideration had gone beyond certain very limited, though important, applications of engineering to transportation, and certainly no one can say that the subject had been considered at all by the Staff in connection with the operations of battle. That the units of the Royal Engineers in the various divisions of the foroe were thoroughly efficient and well officered is admitted by the universal consent of the Army. But there was no higher organisation, no Engineer-inChief of the Force, and no Chief Engineers of Corps. There was at G.H.Q. a senior officer as "engineering adviser" attached to the Staff, and there were similar officers with each Army Corps. But the entire establishments of these functionaries consisted in each case of one soldier clerk, and the officers in question were advisers only, with no executive powers to purchase materials, hire labour, or carry out any work whatever. The contrast between their position and that which, at a later period of the war, was held by the Engineer-inChief at G.H.Q. with his large organisation of experts, and elaborate sections for defences, mining, water supply, &c., is very remarkable. At the beginning of the war all this was non-existent, and for all the

Meantime there was engineering on a vast scale to be done at home. The first 100,000 of the new army sprung at once to arms at the call of the great leader. It had to be housed as well as olothed, fed, and armed. The housing of troops and selection of sites, &o., was then in the hands of what was, somewhat inappropriately, termed the Peace Distribution Committee, composed of representatives of nearly every branch of the War Office.

A small sub

committee (one of whom, Colonel Pell, was killed a few months later when gallantly commanding a battalion of his regiment, the Queen's, against tremendous odds, but who then was on the training branch, of

the General Staff) was scouring the country for suitable sites for hutted camps, and had just received a patriotic offer from Earl Brownlow, placing his beautiful park at Belten, in Lincolnshire, at their disposal. A contractor of worldwide experience offered his services in an executive capacity to Lord Kitchener. The technical staff of the War Office was busy, day and night, designing the details of the typical huts required. By the 14th of August the plans were ready and approved. But it was not an unqualified approval that Lord Kitchener gave. True to his invariable habit of weighing the end with the means, and careful to observe public economy, he at once asked for an estimate of the typical cost for a battalion of 1000 men with all the necessary accessories of water supply, drainage, roads, and lighting. On being told it would be £15,000, he at once said that it was too much, and that although the first lot might go on, care must be taken hereafter to reduce the cost. He only sanctioned such shelters as were a substitute for tents, and could be rapidly provided to serve for the emergency of the war only. It was pointed out to him that the coming winter would demand something better than the rough shelters he indicated, and that some of the amenities of life, such as recreation-rooms, would be required in addition to what was needed for health, and these arguments he admitted. But anything like

permanent barracks or hutments were rigidly barred.

On the 23rd August, the first encampment for a division the 11th, which afterwards was so terribly tried in Gallipoli-was begun at Belton Park. The work was completed in less than three months.

Lord Kitchener's biographer has

related how on that memorable 23rd August it was discovered that the Germans' great outflanking movement was taking place, and how in the early hours of the 24th this serious menace was made known to Sir John French.

At 9 A.M., on the 24th, Lord Kitchener was in his place at the War Office and sent for me. I went along the passage expecting some further development of the hutting orders, but when I entered his room the first word he said was "Havre." Then he asked whether I had worked out any scheme for the defence of the base ports overseas. I replied that I had not, both because any operations in the field were outside the limits of my duty, and also because the initiative in such matters emanated from the General Staff. Then he asked me to name two of the best engineer officers I could lay my hands on, in order that they might be ordered without a minute's delay to proceed to France and work out sohemes for defence of the base ports. I named two officers, one from Dover, another from Chatham, both of whom earned high distinotion

afterwards in the war. I pointed out, however, to Lord Kitchener that the orders for them and for the whole soheme should emanate from the Chief of the Staff, and that the artillery for the defence would have to be settled by the Master-General of the Ordnance, whom indeed he had "short-circuited" by sending for me at all, as I was under the orders of that Member of Council. "I know that," he said, "but they (the C.I.G.S. and the M.G.O.) are not here yet, and we cannot lose a moment. Off you go and summon those officers, and tell the C.I.G.S. the orders I have given you." I went off accordingly, gave my message, got hold of plans of the base ports, and before noon had the two officers in question from Dover and Chatham and some others (subsequently ordered by the C.I.G.S.) despatched with full instructions what to do. They were away for about a week, and if, as Lord Kitchener evidently expected, the Germans had advanced on our base ports, the defences would have had to be pushed on night and day, in consultation, no doubt, with the French local authorities. But, strange to say, the Germans missed a ohance such as they never had again of seizing the Channel ports. We now know that von Kluck imagined he had entirely out off our communications-whereas, by utilising our naval power, we transferred our base to the Loire, a splendid feat of organisation to which sufficient oredit

has never (I venture to think) been given to the InspectorGeneral of Communications, Sir F. Robb. Anyhow, Lord Kitchener at once saw the danger, and took steps to minimise it at once.

The Peace Distribution Committee was not allowed to continue its labours in selecting sites for hutted camps. It was abolished, and the question of sites was placed under the QuartermasterGeneral. The rapid development of the new armies necessitated more, and yet more, hutted camps, and endeavour was made to meet Lord Kitchener's wishes as to cheapening them. He saw some of these first built, and said they were too good, and that they took too long to build. every possible means was taken to out down cost and labour; but the position of many of the sites, either far from railways or else in the vicinity of camps already occupied by troops, and therefore congested with men, stores, &c., made the introduction economies very difficult.

So

of

One day in September, when things in France were looking a little better, but still full of anxiety, he sent for me and gave me the surprise of my life. He said, "I want to consult you about some work I am doing at my place in Kent. My architect has sent me drawings of a door leading on to the rose-garden," and so on, calmly discussing the details of an improvement in a country house, with great evidence of taste and culture,

but hardly the sort of thing to be expected from the War Minister of our country in the throes of a life-and-death struggle. I think he forced himself to do this, just to relieve his mind of the strain of the war.

About that time we were bombarded at the War Office by ingenious inventors and their friends, who apparently thought we had not enough work to do. Lord Kitchener must have had an enormous number of these, but he passed on very few of them. It was difficult sometimes not to take notice of them, when such a letter as the following came in: "I send you a memo. from Sir the great specialist in He thinks that his invention will solve a most difficult problem in military operations, and he will be delighted to discuss (or he proposes to come at 3 on Tuesday next to discuss) the matter with you. I am sure you will receive him with the courtesy his eminent services and scientific attainments deserve." Later on, the Munitions Inventions Department gave one most welcome relief from this sort of thing, but at one time it

was & terrible burden, especially as about 95 per cent of the proposals were hopeless. But if Lord Kitchener kept his subordinates from being pestered by these busy bodies, it does not mean that he was indifferent to the utilisation of inventions. Sometimes he would ask, "What are you doing about wireless (or searchlights, or bridging)?" and he

satisfied himself thus that we were alive to outside influences and ready to use them. So it was with regard to Tanks in the early developments. The Navy was certainly ahead of us in this matter, and therefore he quite agreed to their being left to work out the problem; but I do not think, otherwise, he would have been satisfied with the answer that it was insoluble.

About the end of November 1914 the Q.M.G.had come to the end of his proposals as regards sites for camps, and still more were wanted. Lord Kitchener sent for me and for some of the Q.M.G.'s staff, and said he wanted to build for six more divisions, 120,000 men. I suggested the Heythrop country in Oxfordshire, where we had been on autumn manœuvres in 1909, or the Bedale country in Yorkshire. "Oxfordshire, Yorkshire," he said, rather pathetically; "I have been so long abroad that I don't know England at all. You go off (to me) to Yorkshire at once, and you (to one of the Q.M.G.'s staff) to Oxfordshire, and let me have schemes early next week, You know Aldershot, of course (to me), well; it had to be turned into permanent barracks from huts at great expense some 40 years after it was built. See if you can't build a camp in Yorkshire so that, if need be, after the war, we may have an Aldershot in the north. We need something of the kind there badly." I do not know whether the Q.M.G. consulted the Master of the Heythrop,

but the idea of a hutment in that distriot never came off. As, however, I hold that nobody can know a distriot so well as a master of hounds, I wired to the M.F.H. of the Bedale to meet me and some representatives of the General and Medical Staffs at Ripon, and we spent a few days examining the country between that little cathedral town and Richmond. I had the plans ready for Lord Kitchener in a few days, and he agreed to our trying "an Aldershot in the north," near Richmond, at the camp now called Catteriok, where the huts are all built of concrete, and the whole town of 40,000 men (2 divisions) is self-contained, i.e., with its own water supply, sewage scheme, electric light, hospital, railway, roads, and two churches (subscribed for by the Yorkshire people). At Ripon, a little town normally of some 8000, the presence of a military camp of 40,000 must have been rather startling; but the problem there was not so complex as at Richmond, for many of the accessories, e.g., roads and water supply, already existed. The cost of the latter was little more than the former.

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of my pen to describe. There was no executive control, however, and soon this want had to be remedied. Lord Kitchener's proposals of 1911, which were modest beginnings of the solution, were carried into effect, and 8 proper system of superintendence was inaugurated. Pioneer battalions, on the system adopted in India, were authorised for each division, and proved most valuable. Field engineers and assistant field engineers, also an Indian arrangement, were appointed. These were officers of practioal experience, either civil or military engineers, who were not attached to units, but had the task of exeouting works-roads, water supplies, defences, &c.-by civil labour. Most valuable work was done by these officers in all parts of the theatre of war. A proper system of supply of stores was also worked out, and was working_admirably when I was in France in the autumn of 1915. In the summer of 1915, labour battalions were recruited in England from navvies employed од our large public works. These were men too old to be enlisted in the fighting units. They were not supposed to be taken over fifty-five (I quote from memory and may be wrong), but there were certainly many many over sixty. All the officers were civil engineers, architects, surveyors, or in some cognate profession. These also did admirable work. More dan

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