WWI

by Gen

Within hours of the declaration of war, many men and boys swarmed to recruiting stations in Britain to enroll for military service. Posters were everywhere with Field Marshal Kitchener's pointing finger urging, "Your Country Needs You!". This was part of a program to recruit a massive new army of volunteers to reinforce the regulars who were already fighting in France. Within the first month over 1/2 a million men enlisted in Britain and a proportionate number of men stepped foward in every country of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Enlistment in Britain averaged over 100,000 a month for the next 18 months and eventually totaled 3,000,000 volunteers. In all, the British Commonwealth and Empire mobilized nearly 9,000,000 men. They and the Commonwealth troops were to be solely needed because by as early as October 1914 the small British Expeditionary Force had been badly depleted by an early war of movement following the Retreat from Mons. But the nature of the fighting was to change. When the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) returned north to counter the German thrust for the Channel ports, both sides collided in a fierce battle at Ypres. Although the Germans sustained enormous casulaties, the dwindling British force was in worse condition with few reserves.


German Strategy

Germany conquered so much strategic and industrial territory in 1914, including most of France's coal and steel making regions, that General Erich von Falkenhayn could afford to withdraw his army from less defensible ground and fortify generally higher and advantageous positions. This placed British and Frech troops at a disadvantage throughout the war; they continually had to occupy militarily less suitable areas and impermanent earthworks. In addition to this, as Germany was the occupier and defending her gains, most of the attacking between First Ypres and Spring 1918 was done by the Allies in attempts to oust that occupier, and the attacker almost always suffers more heavily than the defender.