The Civil Service Rifles in the Great War

All Bloody Gentlemen

Author:

Jill Knight

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Inspired by the restoration of an old Board of Trade memorial, Jill Knight, a civil servant at the Department of Trade and Industry, has produced a painstaking and meticulously researched history of The Civil Service Rifles. This regiment, formed of civil servants and their friends, fought on the front line during some of the most terrible battles of the Great War.The book is packed with photographs and extracts from letters, diaries and memoirs. It will strongly appeal to anyone who can trace their family back to the regiment, and to those who have a specific interest in military history and the Great War. But can it have any appeal to the modern civil servant with no such particular ties?

Jill Knight's avowed aim is to describe the sacrifice of those who volunteered for service with the regiment, and to do justice to their achievements. She has succeeded admirably, producing a book that is detailed enough to satisfy the historian but brimming with humanity. The statistics, the detailed maps and descriptions of manoeuvres are all there but so are the voices of the men who fought; it is this that prevents it from being a dry, special-interest only work.

As the chronicler of the regiment, Jill Knight has clearly done extensive research going back to the birth of the volunteer movement in 1859 when civil servants - from senior officials to junior clerks and messenger boys - became enthusiastic recruits to the newly approved combined corps. At this point it seems to have had more in common with a very pleasant gentlemen's club: concerts and amateur dramatics were just as popular as "appearing in uniform for marching, drilling and shooting". Very quickly the regiment developed into a useful tool for heads of department to encourage a disciplined and respectful workforce.

One fascinating aspect of the regiment, however, which was present from its very inception, was its surprising democracy. All new recruits began as privates, regardless of their civil service rank, and officers were not seen as a class apart. It was recognised that, unlike regular army units, both officers and men came from similar professional and social backgrounds. The importance of this lack of social distinction, which prompted one regular soldier to remark that "this mob's all bloody gentlemen", is highlighted during the 2nd Battalion's tour of the Middle East in 1917 when morale was particularly low, arguably due to the harsh discipline imposed by a colonel more used to the ways of the regular Army. The replacement of this traditional disciplinarian by an "informal, cheery young regular captain on promotion" worked wonders for morale prompting one soldier to remark: "He realised very early on the type of men of whom the battalion was composed, and was content to lead and guide rather than to drive." Considering the appalling privations that the men who fought in the Great War had to undergo and the monumental sacrifices that were asked of them, this democratic spirit seems to have been crucial to their survival.

The bulk of Jill Knight's book is taken up with detailed descriptions of the part played by the Civil Service Rifles in many of the major actions of the war: the dreadful battles of Loos, the Somme and Ypres, and the capture of Jerusalem, as well as the peculiar interludes away from the true theatre of war, such as the time spent by the 2nd Battalion in Cork following the Easter Uprising of 1916. But for me it is the almost unbearable poignancy of the stories of the individual men who witnessed such unimaginable horrors that will stay with me. As a historian, Jill Knight rarely comments on the disasters of strategy that led to the dreadful waste of so many good men, but perhaps this is how it should be. She does not stand in judgement, but allows the men to speak for themselves and heir story is all the more powerful.

Reviewed by Ruth Raskin.

Extent	224 Pages	Sub. No.
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Format	Hardback
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