New Armies: New Officers
This presentation looks at the process of finding new officers during the first eighteen months of the War in the context of the fundamental problem of expanding the British Army so that it was capable of fighting a major continental campaign.
It focuses on a single, line infantry regiment, the Glosters, and will examine the sources from which new officers were drawn, differences between categories of units - Regular, TF and New Army - and how far the process led to changes in the social composition of junior officers.
The talk also looks at the problems faced and how these led to the important changes in the selection and training of junior officers introduced at the beginning of 1916.
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