During the First World War, thousands of Welsh women became involved in the production of munitions and food for the war effort. This thesis examines attitudes towards and experiences of women workers employed in munitions and agricultural production in Wales during the war. It explores the organisation and recruitment of women in these areas, the employment of women in both fields, the organisation of welfare and leisure within and outside the workplace, and women’s experiences of demobilisation. Throughout, it considers women’s motivations for undertaking war work, as well as their experiences, including their involvement in strike action and in sporting activities, and how these were affected by class, age, and locality. The thesis argues that while the war lasted, women gained greater self-confidence and started to forge a collective identity as workers, but their contribution to the labour market was always viewed as temporary and valued less than men’s work. After the Armistice, women were forced back to the home or to traditional ‘feminine’ occupations. This thesis therefore contributes to long-standing historiographical arguments about the extent to which the war brought about lasting social change for women. It makes a significant contribution to the under-researched field of Welsh women’s experiences in the First World War.

This thesis explores the economic, social and political changes in society of the largely rural Welsh county of Pembrokeshire during the First World War to establish to what extent war conditions were a major agency of change and whether that change was of short duration or long lasting. Regional and local studies of particular counties and towns provide for a micro-historical test of national hypotheses. The methodology of this thesis has been to extensively engage with all existing primary sources, for evidence of social change. The potency of a conservative reaction seeing custom, tradition and hankering after pre-war certainties has been identified as a factor successful in limiting the scope of social change. The introduction places the thesis in its historiographical frame and presents the national debate of continuity verses war-generated change. Chapter one investigates state expansion and regulation of everyday life through the Defence of the Realm Act. Chapter two discusses changes to the Pembrokeshire economy and the implications of wartime price rises. Chapter three discusses voluntary military enlistment, the operation of conscription at the local level through Military Service Tribunals, conscientious objection and female paramilitary military service and the gender implications which it raised. Chapter four considers the changing identities of individuals and the rich diversity of expression of patriotic wartime forms. Religious and cultural changes are analysed in chapter five with the effects of carefully choreographed propaganda expressed in public events. The vicarious experiences of war on a distant rural population, including spy and war scares, expressions of the psychology of wartime, are reviewed in chapter six in the v context of Pembrokeshire being a coastal county. The thesis concludes with an assessment which detects limited social change and greater long-term continuity than war exceptionalism as the Pembrokeshire experience.

119 Brigade, 40th Division, had an unusual origin as a 'left-over' brigade of the Welsh Army Corps and was the only completely bantam formation outside 35th Division. This study investigates the formation's national identity and demonstrates that it was indeed strongly 'Welsh' in more than name until 1918. New data on discipline and the social background of men and officers is added to that generated by earlier studies. The examination of the brigade's actions on the Westem Front challenges the widely held belief that there was an inherent problem with this and other bantam formations. The original make-up of the brigade is compared with its later forms when new and less efficient units were introduced. Training is identified as key to success in battle. The controversial Frank Percy Crozier commanded the unit for most of its active service and the study examines the often-quoted books by Crozier putting them into context and concluding that they must be used warily as source material. The study advances the view that Crozier, while not an easy man to like, was an efficient and effective commander during the Great War and not the 'callous and overbearing martinet' often portrayed.

The evolution of infantry battalion commanders in the First World War progressed from a pre-war system based mainly on promotion by seniority to one largely based on merit. It remained a weighted process, however, favouring the professional officer, particularly during the first two years, and biased against the Territorial. The quality of the pre-war officer appears higher than has been estimated. Average command lasted 8.5 months. Eleven per cent of COs were killed, ten per cent promoted, and 18 per cent invalided. The army practised quality control, removing 38 per cent from command, although reduction in removals as the war progressed indicates a refinement of quality. The army committed itself to professional development, teaching technical aspects of the CO role, as well as command and leadership. Citizens of 1914 with no previous military experience rose to command, this progress taking on average three years. Despite the social opening-up of the officer corps, these men tended to be from the professional class. By The Hundred Days, infantry battalion commanders were a mix of professional soldiers, pre-war auxiliaries and citizens - younger, fitter and richly experienced; many being quick thinkers, self-assured, and endowed with great personal courage and well-developed tactical ability.

This thesis examines the conceptual origins of the control of the air in Britain between 1911 and 1918. It concludes that military and naval aviators possessed an innate understanding of the concept, informed by the wider operational and organisational context of their respective parent services. For the Royal Flying Corps, the control of the air was understood in terms of providing auxiliary support to the British Army in the field. For the Royal Naval Air Service, the concept possessed an inherently strategic slant. Pre-war theorising, developed during the First World War, has been the subject of some controversy in the literature. The overtly tactical focus of the Royal Flying Corps and its concept of the control of the air, praised in the first instance, is now widely criticised. In contrast, naval aviators, highlighted as lacking focus and direction, are now hailed as progressive innovators. By examining various facets affecting the conceptual origins of the control of the air, including doctrine, education, and relations with allies, this thesis attempts to reinvigorate the traditional interpretation of military and naval air power in Britain during this period.

Infantry brigades have been described as the ‘building blocks’ of the British army. Despite this, their role and that of their commanding brigadier-generals have been labelled as being concerned primarily with the provision of ‘training and administration’. The conventional criteria used to evaluate the performance of brigades and their commanders, however, has been their battlefield performance. This study challenges these orthodoxies. The Battle of Arras 1917 was the first offensive action which provided the British army with an opportunity to implement the lessons derived from its experience drawn from the Battle of the Somme. A cohort of one hundred and sixteen brigadier-generals commanded cavalry and infantry brigades involved in the battle. Collectively they are the subject of analysis. Five of these brigadier-generals, their battalion commanders and principal staff officers, are the subject of case studies over the period mid-October 1916 until mid-May 1917. These studies reveal a number of threads, in addition to battlefield performance, that are argued to be essential elements in understanding the role and functions of brigadier-generals. Their most significant contribution was to ensure, despite the unglamorous treadmill of building and rebuilding their brigades, that they retained the capacity and capability of their brigades for battle.

This thesis charts the military education of junior Edwardian army officers, moving chronologically through key aspects of the process. It examines the detail of curricula at Sandhurst and Woolwich, the prevalence of entry via auxiliary forces and the military knowledge of men who gained commissions by that route, the training and study officers undertook after commissioning, and the education available at Camberley and Quetta. It thus offers a holistic examination of officer education. It concludes that there was a strong and growing professionalism among the junior commissioned officers, founded on their acquisition of skilled expertise and their expectations of advancing in their careers on the basis of professional merit. This thesis contributes to broader debates in three ways. Firstly, by going beyond existing studies which focus heavily on the upper echelons of the officer corps, it allows a more complete examination of the competence and military capacity of the Edwardian army. Secondly, it contributes to discussions on professionalism and processes of professionalization at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thirdly, it considers the nature of the training and education that the Edwardian Army undertook and seeks to locate this within discussions on the proper form and objectives of officer education.

The thesis addresses the question, ‘How did the First World War affect the religious faith of the people of Britain?’ The ways in which wartime preachers, hymn-writers, diarists and letter-writers expressed their faith are examined. For the vast majority, the War was both a military and a spiritual conflict of right against might and the rhetoric of a Holy War was popular. Questions of divine omnipotence and providence troubled many, the standard response being that war was a consequence of God’s gift of free will. The language of sacrifice dominated public discourse, with many asserting that the salvation of the fallen was ensured by their own sacrifice. Prayers for the dead became widely accepted in the Church of England. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy promoted the belief that God shares in human suffering. However, there is little evidence that his advocacy of divine impassibility was influential subsequently. Wartime ecumenical activities and attitudes are analysed, the hopes for Christian unity of the 1920 Lambeth Conference are discussed and the naïve optimism of many bishops is contrasted with the reality of ecclesiological differences. The conclusion is that the War’s influence on people’s faith was limited and reasons for this are suggested.

The British army officer commissioned from the ranks had become a rare and politically contested phenomenon in the years leading up to the First World War. This research addresses a previously unexamined phenomenon; how the conflict saw almost 10,000 commissions awarded to soldiers from the ranks of the pre-war British Army, and over 7,000, of these were ‘permanent’, constituting 42 per cent of regular army commissions. This was deeply threatening to the identity of gentleman-officers that had embedded a culture of gentlemanliness parsed into the rules and behaviours that governed army life and the homo-social space of the officers’ mess. This investigation shows the emergence of the ranker officer identity, progressively defined during the war through a process of Othering in terms of socio-cultural differences, particularly presentation and speech. The post-war officer class resumed its pre-war social and cultural character, maintaining its exclusivity and ethos and the ranker officer was increasingly caricatured in the discourses surrounding regimental officering and Englishness. The ranker officer, is fully examined for the first time in this thesis and this examination crucially informs our understanding of the persistence of an elite through the continuing gentlemanly appropriation of British army officer identity.

The Battle of the Sambre was the last large-scale set-piece battle of the Great War. The German army was determined to hold a defensive line incorporating the Mormal Forest and the Sambre-Oise canal, hoping to buy time for a strategic withdrawal to the Meuse and thereby negotiate a compromise peace. This thesis analyses the battle at the operational and tactical levels: the BEF was no longer striving for a breakthrough – sequential ‘bite and hold’ was now the accepted method of advance. The difference between plan and reality is examined, highlighting the levels of tactical competence of units engaged and also the role of the Royal Engineers, whose tasks involved devising improvised bridging equipment to facilitate the crossing of the waterway. The competence of brigade and battalion commanders is examined: some proved capable of pragmatic flexibility in the face of stubborn enemy resistance and were able to adapt or even abandon original plans in order to ensure ultimate success. It was a decisive victory for the BEF, which irrevocably crushed the will of the German defenders, leading to the pursuit of a demoralised, broken and beaten army, whose means of continued resistance had been destroyed, and thus expedited the armistice.