Making a better man: training the British soldier for war, 1914-1918

This thesis assesses how British infantrymen trained throughout the Great War, using a blend of sources, primarily soldier’s accounts, formation war diaries, and training manuals, to examine how training built infantrymen’s soldierly spirit, body, and technical and tactical skills. This reveals that training was a key factor shaping infantrymen’s experiences of war, their identities, and their battlefield performance. Significantly, training was not a singular process but a collection of different methods, each with their own important nuances, evolutions, improvements, and deteriorations in effectiveness during the war. This meant the type of infantryman produced by training, the very nature of what a British infantryman was, and his effectiveness on the battlefield differed drastically between 1914 and 1918. There was no overarching clear improvement, whether consistent or inconsistent, regarding training during the war. Rather, some training methods improved, such as collective training, others like bayonet training remained stationary, and other areas such as musketry regressed in effectiveness. The different infantrymen produced by training during the war each had their own strengths and weaknesses. The infantryman who arrived at the front in 1915 was, in many respects, almost unrecognisable from the infantryman of 1918. This thesis offers new insight into the importance of training, the infantrymen’s experience of war, his identity, and his battlefield performance.