The British & Canadian Infantry in Normandy 1944
Recruitment, Selection, and Concerns about Morale
The bibliography for this series of articles is available here
The Medical - Infantry Training Centre 1942, © IWM018458
Recruitment
In September 1939 the British Government introduced the Conscription Act which made all males between the ages of 18 to 41 liable for call-up. Despite the legislation, many men decided to volunteer, for those that did so were allowed to opt for the service of their choice. Conscripts were only permitted to express a preference, which could not always be honoured. As a result of voluntary and enforced enlistment the army expanded rapidly, almost tripling in size by June 1941. Thereafter the rate of growth slowed markedly and from 1942 onwards the army started to run short of men. It was the infantry arm that felt these shortages most keenly. The situation in Canada was different. Home defence conscription was introduced in June 1940 but was not extended to overseas service until late 1944. Consequently, the Canadian soldiers who fought in Normandy were all volunteers.
British strategy after the fall of France accorded the army a secondary role in the fight against Germany. Churchill wrote in March 1941 that the size and strength of the Axis forces made it: -
“…impossible for the Army, except in resisting invasion, to play a primary role in the defeat of the enemy. That task can only be done by the staying power of the Navy and above all by the effect of Air predominance.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that the high water-mark of intake into the British Army was reached in 1940, when 1,131,900 men were inducted, of whom 252,100 (22%) were volunteers. By 1944 the total yearly intake had diminished to 251,900 men, of whom only 33,200 (13%) had volunteered.
The majority of volunteers for military service opted for the RAF and the Royal Navy and most conscripts also expressed a preference for those organisations. As a result, the air force and navy could pick the most physically and mentally able men and the army had to make do with the rest. Even though statistics were not gathered until the second half of the war, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many of the men the army received were unfit, poorly educated and below average intelligence. Of the 710,000 recruits that passed through the General Service Corps scheme after July 1942 only 6% were identified as having the potential to become officers and the same percentage to potentially become NCOs. Half had received only elementary schooling and a quarter were assessed to be educationally deficient or illiterate. The Canadian army in Britain had similar problems. Major-General Price Montague reported in July 1941 that 10,717 other ranks were of “low mental capacity” and incapable of effectively performing the duties of a soldier. When the Canadian Minister of Defence visited London in August 1943 he was told that there were still approximately 15,000 “unabsorbable” personnel in the UK (6.8% of the Canadian Army Overseas). The British and Canadian armies, therefore, had to make do with a significant number of low quality recruits, certainly in comparison to the other services. The problem was made worse by their failure to make the best use of the men they did receive.
The General Intelligence Test, February 1942, ©IWM017184
Selection - Other Ranks
British (and Canadian) army doctrine dictated that battles were to be won by machines delivering the maximum amount of firepower and with the minimum number of men exposed to danger in the front line. This meant that men of higher intelligence, or possessing technical skills, were placed in areas such as the Royal Artillery, the Royal Armoured Corps, transport, signals and engineering. The more aggressive and motivated recruits were often selected for one of the Special Forces. The remainder went to the infantry. Such was the preponderance of manpower allocation to technical areas, by September 1944 the infantry component of the British Army was a mere 21%, the Canadian only 17% and these numbers were made up of the least able men in what was generally seen as the least skilled arm of the service. Many officers probably had no problem with this state of affairs, preferring docility and obedience in their troops rather than initiative and inquisitiveness. However, the army was not making the optimum use of the resources at its disposal. Prior to 1942, new recruits were posted to a particular arm of the service with only the most perfunctory investigation of their skills and abilities. The consequences were that large numbers of men had to be reposted or discharged and a significant proportion broke down under training. Morale suffered and there was considerable discontent in the ranks.
The situation improved when Sir Ronald Adam became Adjutant General in June 1941. He established the Directorate of Personnel Selection which was instituted to analyse all the jobs in the army and devise and implement aptitude and intelligence tests for new recruits. Adam was also instrumental in creating the General Service Corps in July 1942, in which new soldiers spent their first six weeks of army life. They received basic training at a Primary Training Centre to identify their potential and were then posted to a Corps Training Centre to receive specific instruction. Selection tests improved morale as men felt they were being valued for their own abilities but despite this “…serious shortcomings remained in the way the army allocated and trained its personnel and these undoubtedly contributed to degrading its combat capability” (French 'Raising Churchill's Army' p.69). The army did not receive sufficient numbers of competent men to fill all the available jobs and it was the infantry that experienced the consequences of this problem most acutely. Even after Adam’s reforms the technical arms continued to receive the cream of the intake and the infantry was left with the residue. The Canadian experience was broadly similar to the British. Consideration was given from an early date to scientific means of assessing the suitability of recruits. In July 1941 the Personnel Selection Section was set up at Canadian Military HQ in London and a Directorate of Personnel Selection in Ottawa from September. From then on, teams interviewed and tested most of the volunteers for service overseas. This improved role allocation in the Canadian army but the tendency of the technical arms to swallow up the most proficient men affected the infantry in the same way as it did the British.
The Interview, February 1942, ©IWM07181
Selection - Officers
In the early war years, the process for candidates seeking placement in an Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU) was a brief interview with a divisional or district commander combined with a report from the applicant’s Commanding Officer (CO) on his suitability for a commission. The view still prevailed in the army that men of upper and middle class backgrounds were more likely to exhibit the qualities of natural leadership than lower middle and working class men. By 1941 most officers were selected by Command Interview Boards but the system did not work well. Half of all OCTU candidates failed, too many who were commissioned had nervous breakdowns and many felt they had not been treated fairly because of the class prejudice of the selectors. In Spring 1942 War Office Selection Boards (WOSB) were established. Each WOSB had a permanent president, a number of experienced officers, a psychologist and a psychiatrist. Much less emphasis was placed on social class as a determinant of selection. From 1942 to the end of the war approximately 140,000 candidates passed through the WOSBs, 60,000 were recommended for officer training, more other ranks applied and morale improved. There is evidence that the WOSB procedure improved selection because the supply of material increased, more applicants were rated above average and rejection rates fell.
However, it is doubtful that the quality of officers improved dramatically as a result of these changes. Many in the army believed that the CO was still the best judge of potential officers and were also suspicious of the use of psychologists and psychiatrists. Senior officers in 21st Army Group saw little difference between the products of the WOSBs and the previous system of awarding commissions. This was also the experience of many ordinary soldiers. Morale reports issued quarterly from 1942 onward indicated a serious “us and them” attitude of soldiers towards their leaders and commented on the poor management skills of young officers who had little interest in their men. With regard to the Canadian army, British concerns with officer selection greatly influenced its policy. In Autumn 1940 a selection committee of Canadian officers was set up to interview candidates recommended by unit commanders, the Canadian OCTU receiving the successful applicants. In fact, by 1944 the Canadian army had a surplus of officers and 622 were seconded to British infantry units under the Canloan scheme.
Physical Exercise at an Infantry Training Centre April 1942, ©IWM018465
Concerns about Morale
In an address given to the Royal Society of Medicine in November 1946, Field-Marshall Montgomery defined morale as: -
“…a mental rather than a physical quality, a determination to overcome obstacles, an instinct driving a man forward against his own desires”.
He identified four factors crucial to the maintenance of high morale - leadership, discipline, comradeship and self-respect. It was important, therefore, to ensure as far as possible that the soldiers of 21st Army Group exhibited these qualities prior to embarkation to France and kept them going once they were engaged in combat. However, many senior officers, Montgomery included, were concerned that the fighting spirit of the men (particularly the infantry who were at the sharp end) would be difficult to sustain in battle conditions.
Following the evacuation of Dunkirk, the morale of an army that had left virtually all of its heavy equipment on the beaches and could do nothing but await an invasion was at a very low state. There was no official method in place to determine the level of morale in the army and one of the reforms introduced by General Adam was the creation of a permanent Morale Committee in the second half of 1941, one of whose tasks was to produce quarterly summaries of the mood of the army at home and abroad. Over the next few years the reports identified a number of issues that were having a detrimental effect on the morale of troops stationed in the UK, such as boredom, domestic worries, money troubles, the poor relationship between officers and men and the failure of the army to place soldiers in occupations that best suited their skills and interests.
Some attempt to address these problems was made via the Army Training Memoranda (ATM), issued every few months to every officer and officer cadet in the army. For example, ATM No. 41 (October 1941) contained an article titled “How Do You Measure Up?” which warned of the “fear of boredom” and the strain of preparation for action as opposed to action itself. It went on to say that officers should know their men and their “mental background”, share with them the burden of their domestic concerns and stand “in loco parentis” if the unit were to be a happy family. Morale did improve in the run up to D-Day as many British and Canadian soldiers, believing themselves to be taking part in a great purpose and having waited so long for its implementation, felt only anticipation and excitement.
Cross Country Training 1942, ©IWM018708
Nevertheless, there were deep worries about how these soldiers would behave when they came into contact with a determined enemy. There were several reasons for this. A major concern was inexperience. On the eve of D-Day, the forces that comprised 21st Army Group were largely untested in battle. Of the thirteen full divisions fielded by the British in Normandy, only three – 7th Armoured, 50th (Northumberland) and 51st (Highland) – had seen service overseas. The Canadian Army was in an even worse position with regard to combat experience as only 2% of the troops earmarked for the invasion had previously seen action. Although there was a good deal of enthusiasm among officers and men to “have a crack at Jerry”, many saw the coming ordeal as the supreme test of their masculinity and many feared that they would fail it. It has to be remembered that there was no great martial tradition in either Britain or Canada and both nations were secure, stable and peaceful - violence was in decline, punishments were becoming less severe and transitions of power were not accompanied by significant civil unrest. Another factor of importance was the shadow cast by the First World War. Most extended families had experienced loss in the Great War and boys growing up in its aftermath heard plenty of lurid and terrifying stories from relatives and family friends who had taken part. The poetry of Wilfred Owen and the memoirs of authors such as Robert Graves fuelled the pacifist sentiment which perhaps reached its summit in 1933 when the Oxford Union passed its famous motion, "This House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country”.
In December 1943, the Director of Military Training expressed concern that because men had been brought up to look upon wars as beyond human endurance and not to be contemplated, they would, on hearing their first mortar round and artillery shell, immediately go to ground and not be persuaded to continue fighting. It is perhaps not surprising that Montgomery wrote to General Brooke “The trouble with our British lads is that they are not killers by nature”. The Germans, however, were perceived to be killers by nature and ordinary soldiers agonised about how they would fare against such formidable adversaries. The common view was that German troops were tough and disciplined, physically superior, better armed and ideologically indoctrinated to the point of fanaticism. Even when they were no longer a threat they could be terrifying, as the following account from Normandy shows: -
“The (German) dead lay everywhere. It was odd how alike they looked: all young, all with strong white teeth in mouths where the flies were gathering, all with the same golden sun-tan, now like a mask on the bloodless faces beneath. Wilson couldn’t help comparing them with the usual British infantry platoon, with all its mixtures which were a sergeant-major’s nightmare - the tall and short, bandy-legged and lanky, heavy-limbed countrymen and scruffy, swarthy Brummagem boys with eternally undone gaiters. Even in death, he found something frightening about such fine German manhood”. (Wilson, Flame Thrower, pp 69-70)
Montgomery was, therefore, keenly aware that the morale of his men was in a fragile state and the maintenance of morale in the coming campaign was to be be given high importance. Indeed, it would, to a very large extent, determine the way in which he fought the battle.
In the next article we shall look at the central feature of British and Canadian tactical training, battle drill.